sup! im @queen-zigzag and this is my sideblog where i talk about indie games. most of the time im gonna be writing a little review of a game i just finished, but i also give impressions about demos & upcoming games, and look back at games that stuck with me from before i started this blog
im one of those people that use words like ludonarrative and diegetic. i like looking at games from a design perspective, considering what they do to take advantage of the medium and interact with the player as an art form. i also have a lot of fun with literary analysis, looking into the themes and narrative and all that silly english class nonsense
if you have any suggestions for games i should check out, or just want to see what my opinion is on something, i love getting asks!
now heres a tag list if you wanna see what im all about
#defeated - talking about a game i beat, whatever that means
#completed - talking about a game i got 100% completion with, usually just meaning steam achievements
#revisit - a game i completed before starting this blog that i still wanna talk about
#in_progress - talking about a game im currently playing
#abandoned - a game i couldnt/didnt want to finish all the way. be warned, these are usually gonna be a bit more critical
#thanks for the ask! - uh... the ask tag
#promo - usually a reblog thats someone advertising their game, or a kickstarter or something
#hall of fave - my favorite games, top 10 level stuff (may be more than 10)
>find a visual novel called God Is In The Radio by catsket
>install it with the itch app and decide to get to it later
>it's later
>while i was gone the dev got on a roblox team
>one of the team members assaults another member
>catsket gets cancelled too
>from what i can tell it was about how she was complicit with their actions and was ablest?
>so catsket makes a 20+ page response document taking accountability
>part of this is leaving the internet forever and deleting everything she's ever made
>all of her itch visual novels are lost media
if anyone has any of her games saved anywhere let me know, i respect her not wanting to be online and stuff but i don't think art should be destroyed
The Most "It Could Have Been So Good if it Was Good" Game We've Ever Played
Hey, so we finished Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc last night. What a game. I can't find the date we started it at the moment, but it was maybe 6 months ago? So some of my early game memory is lacking. But okay, so what an interesting game. You've got all these characters in a mysterious high school that's totally isolated from the outside world. You've got a murderous lil robot bear guy running around in charge. It's a cool setting with lots of questions to answer.
It's got some incredibly interesting characters that have so much going on. However it hates its most interesting characters and WILL kill them as soon as or even before their most interesting parts are revealed. It also has quite a few characters that may as well be cardboard standees. Makoto stands out as the most nothing protagonist I have ever seen; put that girl on estrogen and grow her a personality maybe. Most of them have their niche though and I can respect that. Sakura was so cool and honourable and was the real star of this story in our opinion. I think she stood for and lived and died for the themes of hope and friendship more than anyone else. She looked out for everyone, especially Aoi. There have to be some good fics of those two, that's my OTP of the story.
Chihiro was such a good girl and the story was so rude for treating her like a failed man. I'll die mad about it I think. She did her best in a nightmare situation for someone like her. She is so skilled she made a sentient computer program that saved at least one life. The whole case about her murder feels really bad from here. And the way her pronouns are ignored for the entire rest of the game really sucks.
The whole Kiyondo thing! Such an interesting idea! But they killed him so immediately and completely wasted him. Come on.
Toko and Genocide Jill... I was soooo ready to be upset about evil serial killer alter girl. Toko's a weirdo about things and the way she fawns over that guy is pathetic in a way that I think could be really interesting! In particular I think it would have been much more interesting if Genocide Jill wasn't grovelly and submissive to him. She should view him as beneath her, I think. That and their nearly complete memory barrier could make for some fantastic moments. And do in canon a few times. The bit at the end where Jill says she knows about the outside world but nobody asked her directly was so funny! Really, I think these two are surprisingly interesting. Sneezing as a switch trigger is fun and could be played with a lot. I love Jill's stupid tongue. There's probably something cool to say in there about a yin/yang theme supportive of the story as a whole, but I'll let someone else write that.
When the murders started happening and the game picked up, we enjoyed the clue-gathering process the most out of any part of the game. It's fun to look around the environment and see what's deemed relevant in there. As far as other game mechanics go, we even enjoyed the trials except for the nonstop debates because the controls sucked so much. The sounds we made in response to how bad it was to select the right truth bullet. The... it feels like an insult to rhythm games to call bullet time battles a rhythm game. Those were basically nothing once we figured out what to do.
On the story itself, the setup is good. The setting is weird and cool. The arc of the story overall was good. We found the story satisfying overall! Things building up to and culminating in the battle of hope vs despair was cool! The contrast between the pace in downtime and investigation and the trials was good. The pacing within scenes often seemed to us like it dragged out because it seemed like the characters said the same thing five times in a row. And something I hate is being offered the illusion of choice. The times where we went into a room and were offered several things to click on, but were blocked from engaging with until one specific thing was done and then we were ejected from that location frustrated us. I get how it's better for the story to get an event done before exploring, but if that's what you want don't lie to me and say we can look at other stuff first. Just do your thing if that's what you want game!
I'm glad we played it. It had a lot going on in good and bad ways. But it had some genuinely cool and interesting characters that I'm so glad we got to meet.
or: how no more heroes 2 does a bad job at living up to the first game because it's doing the video game version of a fawn response
my favorite fight in the first game is shinobu because it DEMANDS that you play the game on her terms. if you don't play defence you get killed and that's a really great shake up for what's been a normal hack and slash so far. all the bosses so far could just be dodged and mashed at, but shinobu introduced the basic loop of whiff punishing the bosses that all the best bosses follow, where if you rush in without thinking then you're the one getting whiff punished
destroyman has the ranged attacks you need to play around and when he gets close you need to watch for the electricity crap so you have to learn how to dodge to the side or else. holly is all about environmental awareness, meaning you have to be careful and cautious when you're approaching her. harvey's instant kill is more annoying than anything, so it's about learning how to tell how to tell the difference between attacks and how to dodge appropriately. this all culminates in the real final boss, bad girl, and before you ask the other two don't count since the game makes you get all the beam katana upgrades to get the good ending so you can just spam your charge attack since it does super high damage and has crazy i frames. seriously my first playthrough fight against shinobu took longer than my whole bitter playthrough because of how overpowered that thing is
you have to be attentive of what move she's doing, you have to play defensive and be aware of travis's shortcomings (like his crazy end lag), you have to know how and when to dodge, you have to earn every combo, it's a crazy fight that rewards you for doing all the things the game has taught you and getting better as you go along
but that's kinda annoying. i don't like being attentive and cautious in life-or-death fights, i want to be a loser otaku that can annihilate everything in my path for minimal effort. also i want to fuck the manipulative scammer that spent the whole game stringing me along and insulting me, also there should be platforming
yeah i'm on team "nmh2 was a downgrade". first let's get the obvious one out of the way, the overworld. oh no there's like less than a minute of driving between locations, i need the developer's head on a pike i guess. like, it made santa destroy feel alive, and more importantly it made it feel dead. it's a miserable concrete desert where the only thing you can really go out and do is like, hang out in a stadium. i'd probably kill people for fun if i lived in that shithole too, and the second game's menu is not as good at getting that point across. i had people watch me play through both games, and a few of em only caught the second game, right? it took them until he fucked sylvia to realize that travis lives in a motel
oh right speaking of sylvia, all the characters are just worse. in the first game, sylvia was smart enough to know that directly insulting the guy you're manipulating is a bad call. in 2 she's dedicated her life to calling travis a cuck even though he's supposed to be even better at killing that he was in the first game, and she already knows he's on a rage fueled war path, so what the fuck is her plan? and travis just regressed, man. the first game made his arc about realizing that killing is a serious thing that he was only seeing as something for cool badass manly men, and he only progressed in life when he made the choice to step back from the arbitrary expectations of masculenity and treat everything with more emotional maturity (egg btw). the second game... also had him do this. but also revenge is bad because killing is wrong. like, okay, he already knew killing was wrong, that's why he decided to stop being the protagonist last time. the plot being about character regression and then him figuring out how to re-progress feels like a waste of time
and the bosses, the fucking bosses. skelter helter is designed like a no more heroes boss, where you have to watch for his attacks and learn how/when to punish. nathan (i'm gonna bold all the names of the bosses that i first-tried on bitter) has an environmental awareness gimmick, but the only part you really have to worry about are the guns and you can just guard them. are we just tutorializing the recharge mechanic? whatever, first boss. charlie macdonald feels like playing footsies in slow motion against a seven year old, why was a gimmick like this the second non-tutorial fight? kimmy howel has one combo, granted it's still all about cautious attack analysis, but it's still really easy to just mash her. matt walsh helms is just a grappler, everyone knows that you rushdown and stun them so they don't get off their windup. being all up in his grill means he never does his molotov attack, the hitboxes of his flamethrower don't reach you, and the only things he has left after that are windups so long that travis has time to attack like twice before you have to dodge them. and chloe helms walsh was designed to be easier than him? letz shake speaks for himself, and million gun- okay, right, shinobu
so, like, jumping, right? why? i forgot it was a thing every time i got into combat because her jump attacks are less than useless, and the platforming is just so, so bad. it's neat to see that her mastership or whatever is going alright, but why would sylvia just let other people climb the ranks on travis's behalf? anyway you beat million gunman by doing two light attacks, doing a dodge roll, and waiting for the start of his attack animation before rinsing and repeating. i didn't know he had a ricoshot until bitter and i still kicked his ass. you can lame out destroyman by just getting the punch one behind some shipping containers in the corner, killing him, and then charge attacking the ranger whenever he gets on the ground to revive him. at least the melee destroyman is a decent challenge, but like, he's still less difficult than the first boss in the first game
mimmy is annoying to listen to but her attacks are so straightforward that the only challenge is figuring out how the fuck henry's dodge works. seriously i have used the same input sequentially without mimmy moving and i have gone like, forward, forward, sideways sideways sideways other sideways, back, forward, motherfucker is dashdancing and i can't make him stop
but like, after this, it gets good! like, really good! better than the first game good! ryuji's bike sumo brings him down a whole tier, but the fight itself is just hardcore essentials, like the edge from furi. margaret made me feel like i was fighting a zoner the same way matt made me feel like i was fighting a grappler, but it was interesting and creative! her keep away tactics means you can't just force her into close quarters the whole fight, and you get punished hard by getting launched back hard when she hits you and she goes straight to sniping again. it's a really interesting switchup on the usual approach. vladimir had a fight mostly spent running from one end of the arena to the other, but he was about as good to fight and as cool as the magician one from nmh1. alice was just another really solid boss, the tactic was like million gunman but better at dodging, so you had to be attentive to know when and how to retaliate by interrupting her combo without leaving yourself open, and she has a form change that keeps you on your toes with a thing where you have to get close to coax her into vulnerability but you can't stay too close for when she attacks, and like! this is such a good and fully formed boss battle! so much done so well that i gotta ask where this energy was with all the others!
caine from the amazing digital circus used to be a top ten youtuber like a decade ago, called the autarch of flame. i watched his videos all the time, and he talked about jasper batt jr more than once. he wasn't the only one either! it was just kind of expected that if you were talking about shitty boss fights, you had to call out JBJ. people made video essays talking about how he was made bad and shitty on purpose to make this whole ludonarrative point that revenge is bad (not because it's fruitless, cyclical, and generally self-destructive, but because it's an annoying thing to commit to?). but, no! he was normal! he was a total b-tier motherfucker! people always harped on the second phase for the window thing, but the wind punch is the most telegraphed attack in the whole game. his worst attack is one nobody talked about, where he teleports before punching three times, and even though it's quick you can just spam dodge if you're not on bitter. and don't even get me started on the third fight, it's the culmination of everything this game stood for as a blind button mashing waste of time
it was a fun enough video game at the end of the day, but the first game felt like it was trying to do more than just be a fun time. it did the thing that the best video games in the world do where you felt like you, the player, leveled up every time you overcame a challenge because you built the executive and observational skills on your own. plus the ludonarrative, which you know i'm always a total slut for. playing those minigames to progress made travis feel like way more of a loser than he does in the sequel, where the money is a total afterthought. once you buy the last katana from naomi like halfway through the game it's just for cosmetics
i guess my main complaint at the end of the day is that it just feels so much like a compromise. oh, some player reviews didn't like the friction from the first game, so let's just remove it. it feels like it's a desperate struggle (oh, shit!) to get players to like is after the first game, and i dunno if i'd react much different if i was in the director's chair. but it still disheartens me to see how much the soul got sucked out of this game compared to the first
oh my god that makes what happened to kurayami so much worse. shadows of the damned came out like the year after nmh2. if i was someone as focused on my vision and the peculiar of my specific direction as i figure suda51 is, i'd step back too. what a fucking conga line
this is somehow one of the most pretensious reviews ive ever written, which is saying a lot
so ive always been interested in the whole "games as art" argument, mostly because of how easily people seem to get distracted. people who are both in favour and against its classification, in my anecdotal experience, tend to lean into how well video games replicate other forms of art, namely movies. i still see people argue beyond that, but they still keep themselves in the realm of games that are made deliberately to be art. these "art games" are kinda hard to put into a solid bubble, like most genres its mostly vibes-based. if i were to define it, id say it is a game designed primarily to be appreciated as art, including cultural connotations such as looking traditionally visually appealing and having an emotional or 'deep' story.
this is nothing against art games, i think theyre a very enjoyable and worthwhile genre, but i think the politics around them is a bit misguided. what im saying is that, when considering what makes a video game art, you have to consider stuff like gris and firewatch with the same seriousness that you consider pac-man
video games are a distinct medium with a very unique feature: ludology. as all art is a conversation between the artist and the observer, there is the level of interaction inherent to perceiving art, but i dont have to tell you that video games are much more direct. movies and video games can both condition their audience; Cars 2 (im sorry thats the first thing that comes to mind) conditions the audience into laughing at mater's bullshit antics, in order to make the emotional core of him lamenting he cant be taken seriously resonate more with the audience, as they participated in not taking him seriously. video games can condition in the same way, but theres a unique level of micro-level teaching that can help players react to the world to fit the game's design. Psychopomp is a good example of this: you cant see far through the darkness, and enemies are very sudden and very unrelenting once aggravated. this encourages a playstyle where you always have a weapon prepared, you carefully sneak around corners at full alert, and generally adopt the same paranoid approach to the world that our conspiracy theorizing protagonist would be expected to. this is ludonarrative: when the narrative being presented by a video game is enhanced by the interactive aspects of the gameplay, both working congruently to create an experience greater than the sum of its parts.
this is impossible in other mediums. even in the best case of show dont tell, you are not the one struggling to overcome adversity. survival horror games uniquely play on therir genre with dwindling supplies, adding an element of anxiety to literally every interaction that simply isnt possible in even the best horror movies by the virtue that you are the one who wastes the ammo. now keep your aim steady, its getting closer. you cant just trust the character to do it, you need to open your eyes and fight the monster, and you will feel every fuck up
this brings us, finally, to dear esther. i feel like this game wants to be perceived as an art game, and rightfully so. the landscape is like a painting, the voice work is rightfully haunting, and the music is subtle yet perfectly emotional. but as someone who was dismally aware of the zeitgeist when it was first released, and looking through contemporary opinions now, i dont really see people analyzing how the gameplay works to enhance the artistry. like in most art games, its often brushed off as being incidental, as if the medium was an accident. well, id like to take a moment to talk about how dear esther takes deliberate mcluhanist advantage of its medium and uses its ludology to emphasis its artistic intent
first, subversion. usually when i see this word get tossed around its in reference to something defying expectations from within its genre, such as a detective story that deliberately has the person who seems the most guilty from the start indeed be the culprit. i dont often see things that instead subvert their medium. a good point of reference is spec ops the line. its not unique for having an anti-war message, as contrary to popular belief this was mostly incidental to walt williams' main goal of fucking with people who play shooters. he does this by deliberately subverting expectations taken for granted in most military settings, such as the player's faction being justified & heroic. you can perform over-the-top flashy executions as a gameplay reward for taking down an enemy with proficiency, with the added caveat that youre humiliating a man forced into defending his family by your bullheaded hero complex. it plays the medium of a military shooter video game straight as an arrow in order to have the narrative subversions be more harrowing, drawing a deliberate contrast
esther, meanwhile, subverts the expectations of the medium. ive talked before about how the indie scene often fills a void left by the mainstream, such as when many indies became deliberately difficult to counter the perceived "casual-ification" of video games in the mainstream around the 2010s. dear esther came out in 2012, along with the following critically acclaimed titles: mass effect 3, borderlands 2, and call of duty black ops 2. its also the year that thatgamecompany's journey came out, but that game wasnt made in the same engine as half-life. this was a deliberate choice to invoke the feel of a shooter, in order to make the absence of its mechanics feel more like a vacuum. and like all vacuums, it gets filled by what is surrounding it: the narrative. specifically, the closest thing the game has to a game mechanic as theyre traditionally understood: slowly walking around and triggering narration. this highlights this as the thing you do in this game. in shooters you shoot, and in dear esther you listen
lets talk about the walking. it wasnt made slow on accident. ive been playing a lot of yume nikki fangames lately, especially collective unconscious. unlike in most fangames where speeding up requires activating a mutually exclusive form that limits the ways you can explore and interact with your surroundings, you have a togglable sprint button. i respect this decision as a reasonable quality of life feature for an mmo, but i left it off a lot of the time. the crux of yume nikki and its derivatives to me is to analyze the main character through their dreams. if you speed to the next area, you dont have the time to synthesize the implication of your surroundings with your preexisting understanding. this is the same reason youre slow in dear esther, to force you to consider your surroundings longer than otherwise.
this is especially cogent because a main thematic element to the narrative is the passage of time. you play as an old man, your speed also fostering an understanding of how age has wracked his body. youre exploring a beautiful island, but he only dwells on the mistakes of his past, only really talking about his surroundings to clinically recollect facts or spring-board into his own misery. and every second you spend walking that path, you spend stewing in his words, just as he would. you dont get to move on yet, he sure as hell cant. just like psychopomp, the game is using its gameplay to guide/force you into a playstyle that characterizes the protagonist while also fostering a greater sense of situational understanding from the player. combine this with the natural connection players feel by the sheer fact that he only moves when they decide he moves, and i just dont see how you could replicate this feeling in a film
and the backtracking! on my first playthough, i backtracked to the cave, i backtracked to that big hole, and i meandered through the whole beginning before forcing myself to shuffle on. because of your speed, this causes a gnawing familiarity. i was trapped in a small town for most of my young life, and it felt smothering to be surrounded by inescapable familiarity at all times. i had exhausted all my experiences, but i was still stuck in place, unable to move on. this is how dear esther makes me feel. i feel trapped on this island, and while it looks pretty, players will be struck by the lack of interactivity. then, as you slowly wander back to where you started, it starts to settle in exactly how long this man has been here.
there's an element of randomization ive never seen in a narrative-focused game like this before. basic aspects of the events and characters will change from playthrough to playthrough. the circumstances of the man's guilt are notable, especially. how in control was he of the accident? was he a drunk who ignored his responsibility and hurt others in the process? was it an incident of fate despite everything being done right? well, either way, it doesnt matter to the game, it plays out all the same. in other words, this element of gameplay is making a narrative statement: the incident doesnt matter as much as the grief. losing a loved one doesnt really get better or worse. assuming the watsonian explanation that his memories are getting foggy in his age, the finer details dont matter. remember or forget all you want, youre still [ending of the game redacted]
in closing, i believe something becomes art when the observer decides to perceive it as art, and in doing so allows themselves to interact with the art's design and attribute it meaning. what is decided to be held in a museum can be ascribed the same symbolism, skill of portrayal, evocation of emotion, and prerequisite artistic talent as children's cartoons, graffiti, and room decoration. games are art because we as the audience can recognize the skill and passion required to balance the behavior of inky, blinky, pinky and clyde in order to strike a balance between challenging and intuitively conquerable. the thought that went into pacmans character design, the means by which you interface with the cabinet, not just the composition of the music itself but when it plays and how this accounts for sound effects. it evokes meaning from the player, using its medium to convey emotions, in a conversation between artist and audience. just like anyone can make a song but music theory determines what sounds good to the ear, the video games have a grammar that elevates it to unique heights of audience engagement when used well.
dear esther takes that advantage of its medium through subversion, the lack of expected interaction emphasizing the emptiness; the slowness forcing you to mimic the protagonist by dwelling on the island and his past by extension; the shifting details drawing attention to their ultimate irrelevance. all done in a way that cant be done in non-interactive mediums to the same degree of effectiveness, making us feel the narrative stronger than any words could convey
i guess my final thesis statement is that you cant really experience a game secondhand, you have to play it in order to really let its design resonate with you. i dont care how good jacksepticeyes swansea voice is, you havent experienced mouthwashing until youre the one feeding curly.
one day, there will be a last generation. this is a game about them.
this is one of those games where like, there is a story, but since nobody really talks out loud and it only effects the gameplay in subtle ways it's easy to only piece things together in retrospect. sure, attentive players can pick out newspaper headlines and stuff, but it took me until That Level to realize the main conflict of the setting. that's fully on me, I went into this game expecting something that was more about having disconnected vibes-based vignettes, so this is your heads up to pay more attention and piece things together. i really regret not paying more attention when i should have.
because the environmental storytelling in this game is top notch. it makes perfect sense, since as a photographer, you're gonna be going all around the level and examining things in all directions. one of my favorite details is that, while this is totally a budget/scope limitation, you never really see people go into the shops lining that one street level. everyone is dancing outside. this not only shows a great level of community involvement, but it also hints at economic issues stopping people from being as consumerist as usual. conversely, there are a lot of people in high-tech smoking lounges and expensive bars, spending money on fake dancers they're barely paying attention to anyway.
like, just the fact that you're a delivery person. every level has a time limit for your package. this paints a grim picture that despite doing something as important as trying to document [spoilers], you also have to hustle on your side gig. it's a total distraction from what should be your primary focus, and this is perfect at demonstrating how destructive capitalistic demands can be on creative endeavors and culturally important tasks that aren't traditionally monetizable.
i love the detail that your friends always follow you around, and they're totally down to pose for some cool pics. I feel like the game really benefits from having familiar faces, it keeps things from feeling too automated. characterizing the main character as someone who exists in the world outside of what is immediately presented in gameplay also brings to mind the idea of capitalism whittling away at one's identity and autonomy. try not to waste too much time taking pics with your buddies, you've got a job to do. it really reminds you how much it sucks to be reduced to an automaton working through a checklist, in a really creative way that doesn't negatively impact the game (looking at you nmh1... jk ily)
speaking of the main character, he's(?) yet another silent protagonist, but in this case it'd be weird if he was the only one who talked. plus, like I said, there's plenty of stuff to give us an idea of what type of guy he is through gameplay implication. people who have gone to school for this, lend me a hand. there has to be a word for knowing what a character is like through how the game is designed, like how we know sonic likes to go fast because he's always in games where you go fast. anyway, whatever that term is can be used here pretty well: they are implied to spend pretty much all their spare income on camera parts and equipment to help them take better shots, they sneak into restricted areas as a normal part of their job (but nobody's gonna mind if I stick around and take some shots), they get in on protests for the photos without throwing bricks on the front lines. this person is a photographer at heart who can read the writing on the wall and has decided to do what they're best at in the most socially conscious way possible.
it is very important to the themes of this game that theres nobody to defeat and no way to defeat them.
oh damn I haven't talked about the gameplay yet. its classified as a puzzle game where you gotta take pictures of what theyre asking for. they specify the subject, and extra conditions like if it has to be a close-up or if you need a specific lens. then its just a matter of looking through the stage, taking in the atmosphere and keeping an eye out for some killer pics. its not on some pokemon snap algorithm bullshit, you can use some basic principles to take better shots, but theres no such thing as a bad picture. also, you should keep an eye out for the delivery spot to finish the level. you probably should go quickly to deliver it before the timer runs out, but... lets be real, the writings on the wall. take your time, enjoy the world, take plenty of pictures.
damn it i stopped talking about the gameplay and slipped into thematic and aesthetic appreciation again. i guess that just goes to show how well those are intertwined here.
honestly, im not sure what else i can say. at least not without giving away the thing at the end, which is best pieced together along the way. its not a very long game if you rush, but i really dont think you should. put your favorite shots on social media, youve got a little folder of em you can export. maybe itll even inspire you to take some more pictures irl? it did for me. like, this game teaches you how to take pictures well, but it also encourages you to appreciate the world around you more. pay attention to whats happening and what the results are.
umurangi is te reo, the language of the maori. it means red sky, in reference to the phenomenon of wildfires turning the sky red. you can see the effects, even if the fire itself is far enough away that its not an immediate threat. at least, not yet.
it's not like there's anything you can do about it anyway
how the fuck did this take 40 hours (spoilers btw)
so for context right. im insane as fuck about too kyo stuff. if i didnt have a whole girl in my brain dedicated to making good financial decisions then id be all in on buying everything that kodaka and uchikoshi have ever touched. ive played all the danganronpa games, all the zero escape games, the first two somnium files, and unfortunately punch line. and since too kyo, ive been playing at all their stuff too. i was first in line to buy worlds end club for the switch, i'm still trying to work through rain code (expect that post fucking some day before i die), i played tribe nine for the few months it was active, and akudama drive is like the best anime ive ever seen. i am ride or die so i was PUMPED for when hundred line released. and then i saw the price and i was PUMPED for when hundred line went on sale
so i know my shit. i went in and i fully expected for there to be some weird shitty first episode twist. "lmaooo surprise that thing that we advertised as being part of the game was misleading and youre actually playing as raiden." so when sirei died like day one i was just like "okay im down for this. theres a lot here" because right away it seems like this is a game about fascism. sirei explains nothing about who he is and what is going on, because he knows shit like the exodus project is going to turn his troops sour on him. so he keeps them intellectually in the dark and preys on their emotions to manipulate them into fighting, intentionally using karua as a bargaining chip to force takumi to fight for her sake. and from then on every time anyone who isnt just a freak for violence (takemaru darumi haruko) needs to be convinced into it by leveraging their loved ones, and takumi actively participates! the propaganda doesnt work unless youre propagating it, whats the point of you believing it if others dont too? if its okay for tsubasa to stay out of the fight even though she has family to protect, then takumi might end up hesitating on if he's doing the right thing and if he does that then he'll have to grapple with being wrong and we can't have that. he has to accept what he's done as right, since changing your cognition is WAY easier than changing the past (r0 remember)
wow im rambling. this is why the game and all its characters use their loved ones as a rallying cry, no matter how far the goalposts move. oh, the invaders are just the earth's nervous system and theres never going to be a point where theyre defeated in any meaningful way? i guess we just gotta keep fighting and hope that our glorious leader was right about the promised day. oh all our loved ones are on another planet? i guess we know where to point when we win. oh the invaders are people with feelings? lets never think about this again
to be clear. i am not calling these developers fascist. this is a game about fascism, on purpose, talking about how bad it is and why. i havent played anything other than r0 yet but it seems like its centrally about fascism fails and the consequences of it failing. charismatic leader as a focal point in perfect control of everything? massive point of failure, eito was just objectively correct when he took him out and ruined everything for everyone. and because he was the only one who knew what was going on, as is right for the glorious fascist leader, nobody knows what's going on and the army is a headless chicken without direction. the only reason they dont starve to death is because takumi was taken to second-to-last by almost pure coincidence, and it also just so happened to have enough rations for all 15 of them for all remaining days? the only reason they dont all die in a firey hell of military razed earth torture is because eito didnt know about the system before he sabotaged it. its only luck or systemic redundancies (something fascist governments kind of dislike) that keeps them alive. because fascism is a suicide cult of ignorance and violence
this game is fucking awesome. oh wait no its not what the fuck was up with the kako persuasion bullshit
so to recap. takumi is getting worried that the people he met like a month ago arent doing enough to fight in his war. so he wants to talk to the twins about how theyre the only conscientious objectors. then ima stabs the physically strongest person on the army, literally backs takumi into a corner, and implicitly threatens him into abusing kako by proxy. you see, she wants to have a life and make decisions beyond her family and holy shit my hands are already shaking. you have to play a minigame where you convince an abuse victim to stay in an abusive relationship
i get it. i promise. he was scared of ima (you have died before and you will die again) and he was desperate for more units (he thinks the world is at stake whatever) and yeah it doesnt work because kako has the heart of a warrior but holy shit man. holy shit
and they just kind of dont give a shit is the thing. ima dies and everyone says "oh no ima this is awful" and nobody even mentions it. what the fuck. that alone brings this route down like 5 points out of ten, you mean to tell me you made me do that shit only for it to not matter to the plot at fucking all
anyway character tier list
top tier: i know im biased because im trauma bonded with her but kako is cute and her clairvoyance is fun and i want to see her do detective stuff. the others just didnt give me enough time to get a read on them in r0 i hope they actually do stuff later
a: nozomi is so fucking weird. why does she care so much about the war and why was she in kamukura hospital and whats with her weird mommy complex. darumi is an annoying weirdo but in a fun way
b: kind of bland so far. haruko died early on so i cant parse her as anything but a goth warmonger, and tsubasa is kind of just a worrywart whos the latest "engineer magic ticket when the plot needs a machine thing to happen" like miu and kazuichi. takumi feels a less bland than makoto but more bland than hajime and shuichi. hes defined too hard by his relationship to karua, there isnt enough to get attached to yet. eito has a LOT of potential with the reveal but god it was so obvious that he was evil. oh haruko was about to reveal more info but then died mysteriously just like sirei (who was cut into even quarters and eito is the only one with a slicing weapon) after eito was the only one in the room beside us when she said that. the cg of him under the bed is funny enough that it almost makes up for 80 days of being strung along
c: characters who are actively annoying but in an endearing way. i hate rich people and kurara should take her mask of more. shouma reminds me of myself when i was worse so i hate him on principle. gaku is is an annoying weirdo but not in a fun way, hes too incel with it. i love kyoushikas art direction, sincerely, shes weirdly stilted but it makes sense for her character, i just hope she has some serious stuff to do later because she was just a lame joke character. a fun one, but i want substance damn it
d: just bland. i dont know what makos character is but if its anything like her imposter then i dont think im gonna like her if shes just the wrestling one. takemaru is just a meanie gangster aniki guy and hes not even that good in the fights
ima. look, right. characters need to be annoying bastards sometimes. eito is a good example of this. he has a neat motivation and he does stuff important to the plot about it, he has relationships with the other characters. does ima have any of that other than his incest bullshit? i sincerely dont know what would justify his presence in this story as a character if kako died. the other characters are at least characters, i can imagine moko and takumi in different situations and imagine what theyd do. if you put ima in a situation that kako isnt in, he would spend the whole time looking for kako or mourning kako. and when he does have kako, on the rare situation hes not abusing her, hes reminding you of his backstory (the same one kako has) or just saying some meaningless catty bullshit. unless theres a route that gives him a serious flesh-out, hes the worst thing about this game
so all in all i think r0 did its job pretty alright. it did a decent job of emphasizing the themes of the game and setting up for the actual choice-based gameplay. it still leaves a lot of stuff unanswered, which is a little frustrating, but i get that its not like the game is over yet. i feel like ive got a good grasp of the characters and i wanna see more from most of em. also, the bullshit, which is imperitive to my enjoyment of too kyo stuff, was off the charts. why did they put ima in sirei? why did they kill nigou twice? why did they make nozomi such a chick magnet for no reason? why did takemaru try to threaten hiruko into (de?)transitioning, why did gaku drop the funniest line in the game to no fanfare ("not even my father hit me! i mean how could he i never met the guy"), what the fuck was that whole sequence with shouma getting buff, why did everyone seem so chill about keeping a prisoner of war, why is one of the last commanders an idol singer that makes everyone anime? in order for a too kyo game to be good i should be saying "what the fuck am i playing" as much as possible and so far hndr is nailing it
prediction time, keep me on these
-theres going to be a route written by uchikoshi where someone impersonated kurara just like k from vlr
-since theres an extra slot on the exploration screen either the pow invader defects and joins us or flame guy figures out how to join. im not checking but the deciding factor is that 15 is an odd number and its whoever evens out the gender ratio
-kodaka is going to write a mystery solving route where kako dies because he thinks cheap shock value is more important than meaningful character development
-nozomi is either karua's daughter or a clone of her
-oh yeah the reviveomatic just clones you into a new consciousness and everyone freaks out about the morals of this
-shouma transitions
you know, the more i think about it, the more i'm convinced that UT/DR discussions would benefit a lot from people having played The Stanley Parable. if you wanna discuss the interplay between the agencies of the human player and in-game avatars, it's very valuable to have a handle on what "agency" can even mean in the context of a video game in the first place
Both the broom closet "ending" and the genocide route of undertale are commentary on how players in a videogame based around choice will almost always stop interacting with the story emotionally, and begin treating the game as explicitly a video game, just so they can exhaust every possible choice and route it has to offer.
The Broom Closet "Ending"
I say "ending" in quotes because it's not even an ending. The game never restarts, and you are always free to leave the closet at any time and get any actual ending that comes after the employee meeting room. It only "ends" because the narrator eventually stops talking (which, granted, is nearly the same thing, see: the Zending and Apartment Ending; also Whiteboard Ending for commentary on what counts as an ending).
In usual Stanley Parable fashion, most of the analysis is done by the Narrator himself, very explicitly, out loud, but easy to miss if you're not engaging with it as analysis. What frustrates him the most about the situation is that there's nothing to do in the closet, assuming you're still engaging with the game's story. There no new choice to be made, no indication that there would be one, not even a prompt to make another choice as it tradition in the game ("He entered the door on his left" and similar cues).
Then the Narrator prattles on about how there's literally nothing to do in the broom closet, etc, etc. What he comes close to realizing but never quite does, is that him ranting about the broom closet is precisely the point of the Broom Closet "Ending". There's nothing relevant to the story or universe or the game here. The only reason people stay in the broom closet for more than 10 seconds is that they've completely abandoned caring about the actual story, and their suspension of disbelief.
Not that the game actually judges/moralizes you for that. The story is paper-thin. Stanley is a non-character, maybe even the quintessential non-character. It's a parable, it's not meant to have worldbuilding or lore beyond what's needed to expose its points. The Narrator and the logic of the world change radically and inconsistently with each ending to better serve its purpose. Interpreting this ending as the devs whining that people would follow a choice they coded in is, I think, doing a major disservice to the cleverness of the writing in this game.
You stay in the broom closet because, on some level, you are keenly aware that games are made by people, with only finitely many paths coded in (sorry, Raphael), and that the Narrator acknowledging you is the ultimate proof of there being something to do. In continuing down this path, you have to completely stop caring about the game on a story level. The devs ensured this by making the broom closet utterly boring: there's literally nothing else to do in that thing (it's a broom closet!).
Interestingly, the Narrator very quickly matches the player's detachment, beginning to addressing them as "you" and implicitly being aware of there being a real person behind Stanley. He then starts going on about how you'll mention this event as "OH, DID U GET THE BROOM CLOSET ENDING? THEB ROOM CLOSET ENDING WAS MY FAVRITE!1 XD" to your friends.
This happens completely without fanfare too, the pronoun switch is done within one sentence and the narrator never goes "oh you're a real person"; there's a whole other ending where the main point is the Narrator reaching that conclusion. But here there's no point, because to reach this dialogue in the first place, the writers know you must have already revealed yourself as a real person playing a video game, so he doesn't need to play coy.
Interestingly, the Broom Closet "Ending" is also one of the very few endings that "reward" you with a lasting effect beyond a restart: if you go back in the closet on the next restart, the Narrator flips out and leaves you without further dialogue. If you restart once more after that, you find the closet very amusingly boarded up. In the Ultra Deluxe bucket version, you get stickers that stay on the bucket for the rest of your save file.
Undertale's "Genocide" Route
I hope the parallels became clearer with my above explanation. The main commentary made about this route is that carrying it out requires the player to, again, detach themselves from emotional involvement in the story and characters (which is a lot more significant here than in TSP), and begin treating it as a mere video game, with XP to get, LV to gain, bosses to beat, and crucially, routes and events to exhaust.
The route is filled with comments that point toward this, and I don't know if it's really pertinent to list them all, so I'll just give a few illustrations.
Flowey puts this almost as explicitly as the Narrator. He recounts how once he got the power to SAVE, he initially still cared about the people of the underground, until that bored him and he started treating the Underground as a giant dialogue/story tree just to see what would happen.
Many characters comment on how the player is not really a human through the route. It's both a way of highlighting their in-universe cruelty and also a correct assessment that if you are motivated to see the route to its end, you've already given up on embodying an actual human within the story of the game, and that you're here to see what happens, to exhaust every path that had to be manually coded in by Toby Fox.
This is also the ending where the SAVE mechanic is the most explicitly discussed. It's still a thing in other routes, and still part of the story there, but it's no coincidence that Genocide draws attention to the video game mechanics you're using to treat Undertale as just a video game.
It is also, very famously, the ending of Undertale that permanently (short of messing with game files) affects your save files and "taints" any subsequent Pacifist endings. Just like TSP, it acknowledges you engaging with it as a video game, by giving you a ""reward"" that crosses over resets and restarts.
Similarly, I've seen people online frustrated with Genocide, interpreting it as Toby Fox putting himself on a moral high ground, admonishing the player's morality for being evil while playing the route. Just like in TSP, I think that's missing the point, and a disservice to the game's writing. I think the route is meant to make you feel bad, insofar as it tries to draw attention to how you remove yourself from caring emotionally about very endearing characters. But I don't think Toby Fox is over there moralizing players for playing a huge route he explicitly and painstakingly coded into his game.
The route makes you feel bad because these are characters you're supposed to care about, and because the grinding gameplay is boring as fuck (just like the broom closet). This is so you realize that your motivation for pursuing it lies outside of the story of the game, and within the fact that you are a real person playing an actual video game made by another person, as opposed to an interactive documentary of the Underground.
Most of this discussion carries over to Deltarune's Weird Route as well, whose discourse is wrought with terrible takes that miss this commentary. However this post has gotten long enough, maybe I'll make another one for it. thanks for reading all the way through
Gamble your blood, upgrade your luck with insider deals, and sew fish tails onto human torsos. Use the profits to pay off your debts and bri
So, I'm on a lot of game developer subreddits. The dev of this mermaid cannibalism/corporate management horror game asked for advice on how to get people to click through and play this. People universally started clutching their pearls about "oh no??? cannibalism??? a horror game where you play as the bad guy???"
.... And, uh, I can't speak to the quality of this game, but I told the dev it'd do numbers on Tumblr. Wanna help prove me right?
So, for anyone who remembers this old comic that started it all…
I’ve made a GAME inspired by it!
🖤My free-to-play visual novel, “Phantom of the Black Rose Revue,” is now available!🖤
This nostalgic yuri game features 19 animated CGs, 13 original music tracks, and an introduction to the world, mysteries, and love interests of the Revue! 🖤
Signal boosts greatly appreciated, especially as this game is entered in the Spooktober Game Jam!
sincerely, actually, not fucking around. the greatest story ever told. a must-play video game in every regard. i dont say this lightly since i know how stupid it is to recommend a puzzle game to an action gamer etc etc, but i do not care what your preferences are or what you usually play. you owe it to yourself to give this game an honest try
so im not gonna say shit! im not gonna tell you what happens! if you don't know how this game works, good!
okay no thats dumb
people always try to sell outer wilds on just "trust me bro" which makes it sound like a ddlc thing when its just about exploration and discovery. so heres the game:
youre a protagonist. and therefore, youre in a story. the story has a narrator who tells you what to do, and its up to the player to decide how thoroughly the protagonist obeys, and it what ways. these decisions do a LOT to determine the direction of the stories and the characters. youre gonna hear that and get intimidated, but every full story branch lasts like 30 minutes if youre really dragging your feet, and you can reach an ending in like two and a half hours. that isnt gonna be THE ending, its a game where youre supposed to replay it a bunch to see all the things, but the branches are all short enough that it only took 25 hours to get literally every single thing, like every single screen and line of dialogue. if you only care about seeing all the branches and all the endings, it'll probably take like... a little over ten? it is not a high investment and it is worth every second and every cent
also you dont like, have to be plural to like it, but it sure enhanced the experience for us
i guess what i'm trying to say is that if i had a version of danganronpa that had more consistently good writing and less problematic elements, i would feel like its edges had been sanded off, in a way. it would be better, but it wouldn't quite be danganronpa, yknow? sometimes art is compelling BECAUSE of its faults. it's like watching a car crash
this is a point of view that I suspect will be of great use to you the further you progress into Homestuck, and also explains why so many homestuck fans latched onto Danganronpa in the past.
oh hey, they announced a new danganro- oh christ why does everything move like a tiktok edit. oh well, may as well fish this out of my drafts
this is going to be a really in-depth and critical retrospective on the danganronpa series, specifically focusing on how i would personally improve on v3. itll be really long and pretty harsh so strap in
qualifications:
i have 600 hours in this series, not including both anime and zero and killer killer and kirigiri sou. i am fucking insane
also, this is gonna have spoilers. its hard to talk about what a game does right/wrong without talking about, like, what happens in them.
first, ill touch really quick on my thoughts when it comes to pre-v3. the first game was very rough around the edges, with the visuals and even some of the design. but the setting and the presentation is basically perfect. the plot of the dwindling student body encouraging perpetual distrust is incredibly compelling, making a 40 hour locked room mystery. imagine if in ace attorney all the characters where established in case one and we never met anyone else, so you had to be careful about who you make friends with. the dating sim mechanic builds off this perfectly, where youre encouraged to get closer to people before they fucking die. if you dont level a person enough, you lose out on the benefits of it, which does a great job of fostering attachment in the player through tangible mechanic rewards. from a game design perspective, its immaculate, and thats not even getting into the sheer fun factor of shooting a gun in court
the writing though? theres like, a new thing to critique every case. fridging a woman for no other reason then subverting expectations, squandering the dynamic she could have with other main characters. think about how sayaka, whos very emotional and intuitive, would butt heads with byakuya and kirigiri? but nah, itll be surprising when we kill her. chapter 2 falls into a bizarre trend ive noticed in japanese media where they incorporate queer/gender themes while doing whatever they can to build a contrived excuse to avoid making a character thats actually transgender. also, even if youre totally unsympathetic to people with DID, youve gotta admit that genocider syo is a poorly done example of a bad trope. chapter three is predictable as hell, which is really bad for a mystery show. chapter four is generally solid, but it highlights how wasted some of the characters are. hagakure and touko are just here because nobody could be bothered to kill them, and they totally wreck the seriousness of scenes theyre in with jokes that arent funny.
but when it hits, holy shit the character beats hit good. id like to say now that i talk a lot about character development in this, but im fine with a character being static growth-wise as long as they have an arc. celeste is a good example, shes desperate to be seen as a high-class noble, and so she dehumanizes those around her. this leads to her using her peers as collateral in a high-risk high-reward murder plot, the failure of which reduces her to something youd find on r/publicfreakouts before being killed in an unremarkable way. that is delicious, delicious irony. she failed to improve as a person and was narratively punished in a way that perfectly correlates with her vices. i dont think you can write an arc that good accidentally.
i wanna emphasize the point of wasted characters. earlier i talked about how you can use gameplay to essentially manipulate players into feeling certain ways about your characters. losing a tangible gameplay benefit when someone dies is a great way to make even more pragmatic players mourn them, and losing out on courtroom bonuses and an achievement if you dont max a social link is a great way to do that. conversely, if somebody doesnt contribute to the game in a productive or positive way, it makes a player/viewer question what theyre doing here. obviously irl you dont have to justify your survival, but in written fiction where characters are tools its noticeable when tools are misused or go to waste. makoto, byakuya, and kirigiri are active both in developing as characters by growing past their flaws, but also work towards solving the plot and opposing the killing game. touko (until udg, at least) and hagakure stand out by being much more static and being way more reactive, just kinda going along with what happens around this.
wasted characters sting harder when theyre contrasted with characters that the audience feel should have survived instead. i understand a central theme of the series is the idea of any death being premature, that the despair comes from young and talented people dying before their lives can really begin. this is intentional, and i think it works even when characters have a full arc that involves their deaths. as critical as i am about how chihiro is written, i still think his (i know, but i can't criticize the character for not being a trans woman unless i acknowledge he's a cis man) character has a really well-written tragedy to it while still maintaining sympathy. him deciding to work to overcome his physical weakness can ironically be seen as him being too scared to 'come out' until hes more conventionally masculine (which is fucking bizarre for a transfem-coded character? this writing is so fucking confused), and this is contrasted by mondo being physically strong but cowardly and unstable. in a perfect world they shouldve worked together to improve each other, which is even implied to be what happened in school before their mind wipe, but the volatility of the killing game means that murder was essentially a forgone conclusion. that is such an interesting and compelling tragedy, something that feels complete and fully realized while still playing into the theme of premature death
compare this to kiyotaka/kiyondo. it feels like they just kinda didnt know what to do with him? like, here's a character with a very strict moral compass who forged a close connection to a gang member, seeing him as essentially a surrogate brother that encourages him to become stronger. the theme of inspiration to become stronger is a really interesting thing to explore, and the chapter 2 trio of chihiro/mondo/taka are all primed to explore it in different and interesting ways. encouraged to get stronger for misguided reasons, jealousy towards other people getting stronger when you feel helpless, and in kiyo's case, the rock keeping your strength afloat suddenly dying and leaving you regressed into a traumatized husk. straight away, im inspired to envision kiyondo as a culmination of this theme by someone initially getting stronger for another person's sake, and when he once again fails by preventing the next murder, he comes to the realization that you have to get stronger for your own sake. yes, you can say its noble to get stronger to try and take on a tough world, or because you want to be like someone you admire, or because you just think its what a man should do. but in the end, strength doesnt come from placing all your faith on something external, and being strong means you have to be reliable and capable on your own. i dont think its a flawless message, but its a great direction for kiyotakas character, as a man who lives his life based on social standards and expectations finally lives life for his own sake
but nah he just dies. he gets bonked cuz he fell in yaoi with a computer. like, this isnt just me, right? i can rationalize that this thematically ties back to the trio's theme of strength and external reliance, but like... you already explored how that can fail in a previous chapter, why do you have to kill another character to emphasize it again in the same way when the alternative seems much more compelling? its the same with sayaka dying too early to challenge the more logically minded main characters, it feels like a total waste of interesting potential. in short, "missed potential" is my biggest criticism toward the first game in a nutshell, it feels like they did juuuuust enough characters perfectly that the poorly done characters feel so... like, they couldve been great!
in general, danganronpa 2 is my favorite in the main game trilogy, because it expands on everything the first game did well. jabberwock island isnt as claustrophobic as hopes peak, but the size helps emphasize the dwindling cast more than the first. and im just a sucker for the contrast of a murder in paradise, the vibes are amazing. the only thing is that for everything it heightens about the good parts, it lowers the worse parts to match
like, when they bother to make characters matter, it feels great! i usually hate pervert characters, but i think teruteru isnt that bad in the main game. he doesnt outstay his welcome, during serious moments he doesnt fuck around and shows a vulnerable emotional side... but still tries to hide it in a way that really gels with his characterization as someone who wants to be perceived as being cool. he wants to be a chef, not a cook. and his character design is silly, but it also builds on this central characterization, because he just doesnt look like a cool guy. the tragic backstory helps too.
but when a character is wasted... god damn. you can really feel that akane was stripped for parts in the writing room and left with fuck-all to really contribute. there are so many opportunities for her to develop beyond "if goku had fat tits" but they just... dont go anywhere. the despair disease couldve been a great way for the cast to help her work through her emotional side and help her stop the clear repression shes doing, but nobody gives a shit so we just move on. mahiru doesnt have an arc because she barely has a character, hiyoko gets killed off before she can do anything with her clearly built-up arc of maturing, they made nekomaru a fucking robot? and dont get me started on how kazuichi is flanderized to shit by being made a stalker that can also build deus ex machines, and sonia is just a nothingburger joke about foreigners from beginning to end. it really feels weird seeing those one-note jokers survive next to fuyuhiko, who had an amazing arc about seeing other people as equals and moving past being groomed into a yakuza, and hajime's fucking spectacular journey towards having an identity and being his own person. like, it almost feels like an intentional subversion of the blank slate protagonist (i hate that trope btw) by making him reject being an emotionless husk only identified by his abilities and forging a future for his own sake.
real quick, lets talk about the technological level of the world we're discussing. the first game establishes alter-ego and an amnesia machine, and i think the sequel does a great job at interrogating it and lifting it to a mostly reasonable end. the killing game happening in a simulation is what allows for the whole thing with the remnants of despair, the most interesting thing danganronpa has ever done because it raises discussions about the extent of hope and interrogates those discussions (fuck you danganronpa 3 despair side). making a video game from scratch about a crime nobody should know about just feels like the kinda shit monokuma can do. but the dispair disease and mechamaru push the envelope juuuuuust a bit too far in my opinion. yes, fiction is your playground to make whatever you want happen, and to their credit mechamaru leads to a really cool piece of evidence in an underrated trial (the octogon thing was a clever twist and im tired of pretending it wasnt). but for where you are in the game, where youre expected to take everything at face value as being something real to the characters, stuff like the despair disease brings a real "fuck it why not" to the investigation, which personally kills my interest in a mystery. my favorite part about your turn to die is that all the technology is slowly built up to and built upon over the course of the story, and they fully explore the limits of dolls and ai imitations. it makes danganronpa feel like a sketch comedy show that occasionally remembers it has to explain a murder to the audience, yknow what i mean? it feels inconsistent and wishy-washy about its own ideas, which is weird after doing so much to strain suspension of disbelief and invoke a vibe of anything-goes weird anime bullshit. yes, its a simulation, but just because the inexplicability is justified in-universe doesnt mean i dont check out when it feels like theyre introducing random shit and getting bored of it just as fast.
so yeah, i think dr2 was in general an improvement, even if i harped on the negative parts for a long time. again, when an arc is good, its really resonant and memorable! the investigations and trials at their best are engaging and fun! the vibes are immaculate! but still, the worst thing about it is that it establishes trends and exaggerates the original's flaws. it cares even less about the characters that they sideline, leaving a lot of victims with single-sentence depth. it queerbaits the fuck out of nagito and hajime but always in a way where theres plausible deniability that they could both still marry women in the future, while the molester that looks funny jokes about being perverted enough to like men. most damningly, it follows the same structure as the first game. the first victim is someone who seems more important than they are, the second case is second degree involving shit from before the game, the third is a double homicide that is the worst in the game, the fourth kills the big guy, the fifth kills off the most important characters they can afford to lose, and the sixth is a long-ass exposition dump thats barely a trial. this is a mystery game, and while predictability is fine when its done right (nobody expected manfred von karma to be a good guy) it really clashes danganronpa's weird obsession with subverting expectations and surprising the player above all else.
so: what v3 has to do to be the perfect danganronpa game is to not follow a predictable formula, dont leave characters to be one-note wastes, and try to have just the right amount of wacky anime shit without going overboard. all you have to do is not go out of your way to make the series' previous flaws worse
i refuse to believe you can fuck up this much accidentally
lets talk about predictability. its fine for mysteries to have structure, right? i mean, if everything was alice in wonderland nonsense itd be bad, youve gotta let the audience follow the deductions and reasonably guess the outcome. but not only does v3 follow the exact same convention as the first two games, meaning you know that rantaro doesnt survive when you meet him because hes way too important, you know gonta doesnt make it past chapter 4, you know somebody is going to have some bullshit alter-ego (syo, kamakura, and indeed korekiyo's sister)...
but you know for a fact who lives and dies as soon as a chapter begins. this is because of a single rule: talent labs remain locked unless their corresponding students survive to unlock them. this means that, with the sole exception of rantaro (hes the subversive one you see), kokichi (but he has so many death flags by chapter five it doesnt matter, you know hes going out anyway), miu (so they can use her inventor shit to move the plot along, more on that later) and the survivors that make it to chapter 6, every student becomes an inventory item that the plot discards after they unlock a door. kaede dies in the same chapter she opens the piano lab, ryoma and kirumi die after they get their labs, same with angie and tenko and korekiyo and kaito. when the story esentially vocalizes "this exact person is going to die right now" for half the cast, youve made a shit mystery game
and the characters. oh my fucking god the characters. there are five-ish characters that change or have a compelling tragedy. the rest are either gimmicks to fill the roster or you get reveals about their past, which can trick you into thinking a character is dynamic but it needs to be done in conjunction with development or tragedy. maki is a good example of this. the reveal that shes an assassin enhances her character pre-development by contextualizing why she acts the way she does, but it does nothing to alter her as a character. its her connection to kaito, him forcing his way passed her defensive walls that makes her open up and become more in touch with her emotions and the other students. shuichi and himiko have borderline identical arcs where their love interest dying spurs them into self-improvement to honour their memory, just replace the word "shy" with "lazy". although i think shuichis is done better just because at the end of the game his growth leads him to being actively defiant of his fate, while himiko just seems to follow his lead. and kaito works with kokichi, setting aside his hot-headed tendencies in recognition of an extreme situation to work together with someone he dislikes for the greater good. thats it!
kaede is the most arguable about where she changes as a character, but i dont think she does. she starts off with a determination to stop the mastermind, its just that as the game goes on its revealed how deep this determination goes and what ends it drives her to. this isnt a change, it just feels like one since the audience learns more about her, even though shes the same as how she started. there is a neat tragedy to how she was so commited to saving everyone she killed someone about it, and i will admit that this is an interesting spin on a protagonist's blind hope towards a solution they believe in, so i would give her a pass... if she wasnt another female love interest killed in the first chapter to encourage male character development. bruh.
rantaro could have learned to stop being cagey and work with others, learning to trust them with his past, but he dies too soon. between you and me, having a character that clearly knows more than they let on die so soon is a good way to build intrigue, so ill say this is actually pretty worth it in his case. and his secrecy is what led him to going to the library alone, so sure, its pretty fine. but he still feels like a sacrificial lamb. theres no chance to become attached to him, unlike the romantic connection to sayaka and the recognition in imposter byakuya, so he just feels like... a chill guy thats hiding something. hes more of a tool of the plot than a person i wanna see more from, which can be fine, but feels weird when compared to how loud and distinct the others can be.
ryoma starts with suicidal depression, and this culminates with him essentially letting himself die without fighting back, with no change in between. yeah, that flaw got him killed, but theres no poetic irony, it just feels like something that was a foregone conclusion. kirumi starts as robot with a cold devotion to her service, and again, just because there are hidden depths that are revealed later about how far this devotion goes doesnt mean theres a satisfying character arc. that said, i think this is another well done example, just because of how deep this recontextualization goes... even if the circumstances really push on suspension of disbelief. thats the last forgivable part, because nobody improves from here.
tenko starts as a misanderist with no social literacy and dies as a misanderist with no social literacy because she got unlucky. korekiyo starts as a creepy freak and dies as a creepy freak because he was too much of a creepy freak. angie starts as... oh my god angie
angie is the worst character in v3 for a lot of reasons, and most of them are racist. unfortunately she made the choice to have dark skin, which means she gets punished by being a simpleton with a hot body and not much else. her beliefs are never taken seriously by the story, caricaturized into being a cult (which the localization makes worse, more on that later), and she literally only smiles and feels a distant bubbly happiness for the entire game. and nothing is done to explore this
they couldve explored why angie always smiles. what does it take for her to stop? why doesnt she seem to care about people dying? are these her true feelings or is she hiding/repressing something? delve more into her religion, especially since its a central trait of hers. what are their tenants, what are you supposed to do and why? we know more about hagakures beliefs because he offhandedly says he cant touch corpses, angie doesnt even get that much. why does she fall into a leadership role so well? what is she seeking to get from starting a student council? shes more mysterious than the boys they deliberately built to be mysterious and its entirely because they couldnt be fucked to establish anything about her except being foreign and having an emotion. imagine a game where shes a survivor, seriously stop for a second and think about one of the millions of ways they couldve effectively explored this character if they put as much effort in as with byakuya or fuyuhiko. maybe the council falling apart and even actively contributing to a murder makes her reevaluate her devotion, seeing it as something thats been blinding her to reality. maybe at the end when she figures out her god is a racist hack job by tv execs she loses her smile for the first time and realizes that she has been praying to nothing this whole time (both of those slot fucking perfectly into the games overarching theme of fiction vs reality and the power of lies). maybe that weird love triangle she makes with himiko and tenko can make her reevaluate the role she has in other peoples lives and have her reconsider the value of proselytizing, maybe it can help her realize her values are harmful and oppressive because her god doesnt let her mourn her friends. hell, maybe it could be an analysis about how relying on faith can be an effective and reasonable way to survive hardships, and how it doesnt matter if your god is real or not as long as your belief makes you a better person. but nah. whatever who gives a shit. make her go :3
holy shit korekiyo. chapter 3 feels like a deliberate set up for an interesting and engaging twist to the danganronpa setting until its deliberately avoided because, like, i guess they just didnt wanna? im talking about how there is a rule established, in this game for the first time, that if there is a second murder after theres already a body on the floor, it effectively doesnt count. the murderer cant be rewarded with freedom or punished with death because theres no trial for them. literally everyone who played the game thought to themselves that korekiyo might be a murderer that survives until the end with everyone because of a loophole. and then they just executed him anyway because he also killed the first one. like... think about that dynamic. think about how much an anthropologist could help with the shit that goes down with kokichi later, how that could built to a group dynamic where theyre forced to trust his intuition despite him being an insane serial killer. it could even fit the stupid tradition they like by having him be a parallel to syo, or keeping him under surveillance like nagito was after his first trial. but nah i guess they didnt really feel like trying to make that work so whatever. flushing onomatopoeia.
gonta starts out as a moron and dies as a moron because he was tricked into doing something moronic. its not a clever twist, it just feels mean. his feels deliberately "know your place and dont bother trying to defy your role you bleeding-heart individualist" because hes explicitly trying to be a gentleman, and everyone treats him as a stupid jungle freak anyway, including kokichi when he manipulates him into murder.
miu is introduced as an annoying whore and dies as an annoying whore because her talent means she could pragmatically set up for a neat twist during the trial. maybe she couldve moved past her weird kinky superiority/inferiority issues, or just learned to respect her peers more, but that mightve made it harder to make porn of her so why bother.
like! you can have characters be static! mizuki is a really fun character in AiNi, even though the game doesnt really do much to make her reevaluate her thoughts or value things differently or whatever. but she is still fun and cool! she's just sassy enough without being annoying, she knows when to take shit seriously, and she has flaws that can actually cause friction like getting pissy easily. just because she doesn't change much (in this game) doesn't mean she isn't compelling and fun to read a story about. so if you're going to have a static character, at least try to give them depth, but nah. you can describe most of the cast with two words, maybe three.
oh yeah, miu's other character trait is being a ticket to make whatever science fiction bullshit the plot needs at that point, which brings me to my next point. everything is too fake to matter. its weird to call the older games down to earth when theyve got monokuma walking around and a whole-ass simulation world, but comparatively, theyre pretty tame when it comes to what you can expect from them. if nothing else, they follow internal logic and help you build realist expectations about the world. a turing-level ai program can exist, but its implied that its the years long pet project of the best programmer in the world. theres a whole side game explaining why monokuma exists as a tool for junko (oh yeah, i didnt talk about udg. it would be the shittiest shooter ive ever played even without the loli shit. moving on.). it takes a whole game to set up and justify the technology of the neo world program, and then its an evolution of stuff that we already know exists like the amnesia tech and alter ego.
but then v3 just has fucking magic. no, not you himiko. kiibo is a whole ass autonomous robot who keeps conveniently having inspector gadget shit come in handy for trials. miu can just kinda make anything with enough time, it starts out modest with just a camera timer but then its hammers with emps inside and a vacuum that can suck up microscopic technology. oh yeah, theres also a swarm of microscopic cameras that not only support their own weight while remaining imperceptible to the naked eye, they record footage and transmit it wirelessly, implicitly at a level of hd television. so anything fucking goes. when youre clearly making stuff up on the fly and the rules are this loose about the limits of what the cast can and cant do, it makes it a lot harder to get invested. like, eh, whatever, theyll probably just pull something out of miu's ass again. look, its fine for mysteries to be unpredictable, right? i mean, if everything was totally structured itd be bad, youve gotta keep the audience on their toes so they dont get bored of a stock plot. wait, im getting deja vu... doesnt this contradict the point of sticking to the formula? what the fuck was the goal here, do you want to be a brand new experience or the same thing again? whos got that simpsons clip with the focus group
we gotta talk about kokichi. from the beginning, i got the feeling that he was a desperate attempt to try and recapture the magic of nagito, the same way nickelodeon tries to make all their cartoons spongebob. he deliberately causes conflict for the sake of his esoteric morality and has a homoerotic relationship with the main character, thats just nagito. he learns a specific piece of information near the late-middle point of the plot that changes his role into that of a central antagonist but then its revealed that he was just trying to take down the killing game itself in an extreme way its just nagito again. the only deference is they made him an annoying twerp. okay. i dont know why you thought that would work but i really dont think it did
the localization fucked him over too. in general they do a really bad job at keeping characterization in the dub. they totally change angies religion from being a vaguely monotheistic god figure to a racist caricature of a real polynesian belief system because i guess angie has dark skin so why not. they made gonta sound way, way more stupid, not only by writing all his dialog in third person (which yeah, he does in japanese, but it sounds a lot less jarring than english - ibuki and tenko talk the same way) but also by giving his voice actor direction to sound like tarzan, when in japanese he just sounds like a pretty normal polite guy that can just get kind of intense sometimes. but kokichi got it the worst. heres an excellent post that goes way more in-depth than i can, but the tl;dr is that the localization team
i get translation is a difficult and thankless job, but got damn man, thats just a different guy now.
oh yeah, kiibo and tsumugi. theres a hint that tsumugi regrets what shes done during the final cutscene of the game, which is interesting, but... like, its just a hint. im not following for the sherlock bullshit where they hint that theres something deep and interesting about a character to build intrigue without ever really paying it off. and kiibo is revealed to have been controlled by the fans this whole time, which again, reveals dont equal development. BUT, his reaction to his inner voice encouraging a false, fictional "hope" that only made their suffering worse is what causes him to declare that the danganronpa series sucks and there shouldnt be more of it. thats character growth, good job kid
i am completely serious btw. if you havent played the game you might think im fucking with you when i say that the resolution is for the characters to make an ending that is deliberately shitty in order to make danganronpa fans hate the series and stop asking for more, but uh, no thats literally the text of the plot. yknow how i said earlier that its hard to fuck up this bad on purpose? its hard to waste all this potential, hard to make a less satisfying mystery experience, and hard to make a setting where anything goes and devalue the stakes, unless you were trying to make it bad on purpose? well, i think they did exactly that. its a danganronpa game about being a danganronpa game, and the conclusion that "danganronpa has worn out its welcome and should stop" wouldnt hit as hard if it was, like, good.
this brings me to the central theme of the game: fiction vs reality. this is... excellently done. the thematic weight given to the idea about accepting hard truths about reality instead of escaping into easily accepted lies is, sincerely, master-class shit. kokichi as a character, as much as i dislike his presence, is still a good exploration of why escaping reality with convenient lies is harmful for everyone involved. his stupid gambit to end the killing game couldve worked, but because everyone wasnt working with the same understanding of reality (his philosophy of "lies can make whatever reality you want" taken to a reasonable conclusion), it was totally undermined and effectively sabotaged by the people he was trying to save, all because he couldnt tell the truth. im fine with him in particular not having character development to the same level as some of the other characters (he stops being as much of a twerp when its convenient, but his morals and beliefs are never challenged in a way he has to evolve around, and remember our talk about reveals vs growth) because hes meant to be tragic in the same way chihiro and mondo are, by exploring a flaw to its reasonable conclusion and letting the story explore why exactly those flaws are harmful with a tragedy. its a fully explored character.
in this game, everyone (at least everyone who's a real fleshed out character) either lies or has to contend with the truth in a way they hate. keade lies about accidentally killing rantaro for a whole trial, which burdens shuichi with unveiling the truth and killing the girl he loves. kirumi is the first murderer that cant face the reality of their crime and tries to escape execution, and now that i think about it we never really got any proof that she really was the prime minister? i know it was all fake anyway but that would be a really interesting analysis, even if it seems like accidental subtext. maki lies about her past and her talent, and only grows as a person after she accepts the truth. chapter three is a bit of a wash, i guess the truth about korekiyos motivation was hard to accept because its so weird? either way, in chapter 4 nobody can accept that gonta is the murderer, and it takes the liar character to prove it. chapter five is all about a plan to deceive as many people as possible. and every time, people who lie or embrace a lie are made worse because of it. the only way forward is the truth
and then the ending. personally, i think the epilogue was just a little heavy handed, but it was probably added after people got pissed at test screenings. after three games of detective work, where you the player are always told if you got an answer right in the end, are finally given clues outside of a gamefied structure that you have to put together yourself. theres no "sorry you used the wrong truth bullet" its just leaving you the pieces and seeing if you can put them together. then, you have to come to your own conclusion about what is a lie. thats a perfect final note for such a thematically cogent game
how do i feel about danganronpa being fictional? well... i think they made it work the best they could. yeah it sucks knowing the series just didnt matter until now, but... its not like it ever pretended to not be fiction. you knew the series wasnt real, right? they made chiaki up. the game forcing that into a plot point, directly challenging the player's inevitably high investment if they made it to game three... i think thats actually really cool and interesting. remember what i said before about making the player feel the same way as the characters? well, the revelation that the series is fictional in-universe forces the player to choose between believing an attractive lie or accepting the truth, just like the characters. and personally, having accepted this, and incorporating it into my analysis, i think the story is made better for it.
so i have... complicated feelings about v3. the writing is excellent when its dealing with its central theme of truth and lies, and when its writing characters that it actually cares about. as much as i dogged on them earlier, i think the survivors, kiibo and kaito have well realized characters. that said, its awful when it comes to writing good mystery stories (shuichi never played pac man) and wasting half the cast. the graphics and polish are great (atmosphere, visual design and sound design are off the charts like usual), but it gets lost in the sauce of spectacle and makes the player feel like theyre along for the ride and become less invested. the worst part is that i cant tell how much is intentionally meant to emphasize the flaws of danganronpa as a concept in order to further the message of the finale, that idolizing fiction is harmful and you need to live your own life.
i dont know if me trying to fix the game, like making the mysteries less easy to just blindly guess without evidence and fleshing out some of the ignored characters more, would even improve the game, because the impact of the ending relies so heavily on forcing you to acknowledge that fiction isnt worth it. saying "getting lost in a false reality is bad" wouldnt land if that reality was cool and good, yknow?
i guess my take away is that its interesting. ive never seen someone do it like danganronpa, for better or worse. yes there are objective flaws that should be improved upon like the racism/colourism and queerphobia, and the localization dropping the ball, but other than that i think to really respect the series you have to accept the weird bullshit as part of the package. so yeah, i did a fuck ton of complaining, and if you asked me to rewrite v3 i know exactly what id do to make it fit my vision of a "good" story, but i cant invalidate the final product here as something ineffective, partially because the bad parts work so well with the good parts to make such a comprehensive whole. what im saying is that its shit but its got soul, and it does just enough outstanding stuff to be hard to hate. i would hate this game way, WAY more if they played it safe. im not writting a fucking essay about a game thats acceptably serviceable, am i?
but honestly the board game mode is what you really buy the game for so ignore all the boring shit i just said. it sucks youve gotta go through this lame-ass mystery novel shit to unlock it but when you do youve unlocked GOTY 2017 babyyyyyyyy
also before i end it... i didnt know where else to bring this up but. why the fuck is the incest foreshadowing? like, we all know the game has too much incest. but its there to foreshadow the mastermind. for my first playthrough i thought it was going to be miu, becuase she resembled junko the most and i didnt think theyd be able to resist doing something like that, and because her talent would justify why the killing game was so technological compared to the others. but i got tsumugi's love hotel event the same chapter that miu died, right after a bunch of other incest events, and that made me think. what if shes using the obligatory mental manipulation tech thats kind of inevitable in a danganronpa game to, like, give people her kinks and encourage the killing game to cater to it. and that made me think about how the flashback lights could be faked, and basically i solved chapter 6 before it began because of the mastermind's poorly disguised fetish. what the fuck is this game. i cant tell if thats the coolest or stupidest foreshadowing ive ever seen so im gonna keep it on "weirdest" because. just. what the fuck man
me n my buddies were about to do an EVIL curated itchio bundle a couple days ago, but it took us a few to set this up instead. theres no payment involved now, just promoting EVIL scary sexy games
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THE EVIL QUEEROTICA BUNDLE *that kills you*
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