To speak for the "..."

This piece is my attempt to speak for the unspoken - the silent protagonist. The archetype has been in a rough patch for a while, with countless more to come, no doubt, but there's value in the character. Playing the archetype "straight" in today's climate would likely cause more people to roll their eyes but there is space for subversion.

Dragon Quest V is that sort of wilful experimentation that only comes from years of exploring the same subject matter. The Silent Protagonist is always the hero? Then let's tear them down and force them to watch a chatty NPC replace "their" duties instead. Dragon Quest IV showed shades of this deconstruction with its focus on telling the stories of your comrades before yours, but Chunsoft and Yuji Horii really laid the despair on thick in Dragon Quest V. It's a fantastic game that everyone should play if only to realise that Dragon Quest has been, and always will be, more than "the same old thing".

Let games be as challenging as they need to be

In which Alois defends the value of easy games. Also Boku No Natsuyasumi.

I hate listening to/complaining about difficulty in games. It feels like such a non-issue. A triviality. The people that really get to me though are the ones that argue modern games aren’t any good because they’re easier to complete. What sort of metric is that? I welcome the idea that by making games easier, we’re letting more people experience the medium and even allowing people to finish titles, too.

Because name another medium where some people don’t even see the complete work? Yes, book and movies can be placed aside whenever someone wants to but they require no effort on the viewer to see/read the whole thing. They’re open to be discussed by anyone.

And games need that level of approachability. We don’t have enough people talking about games.

Colonialism under the guise of the dungeon crawl: Etrian Odyssey and the invasion

I talk about a lot of things that make Etrian Odyssey great in this piece but the best thing about the game, what makes it rise above and beyond even the oldest games in the genre, is how it uses the DS screen.

Because dungeon crawls can be awful to the perfectionist. You have to buy graph paper because you’re gonna be drawing a lot of maps, and normal white paper simply won’t cut it. Then you have to buy a bunch of pencils and various fine pens so you don’t smudge or ruin your map. Then you have to annotate it and make sure every event or treasure is marked correctly. It’s a blissful, addictive experience that’ll ruin even the most patient of people.

Etrian Oydssey dedicates the touch screen entirely to your map. It’s an empty grid at the beginning of your adventure but gradually transforms into a perfectly aligned map. It maintains the intoxicating lure of drawing your own map and gets rid of all the awful ink spills and blotches that can ruin everything. It’s wonderful.

After Pressing Start: Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing never quite gets the attention it deserves. Like a lot of great games, it defies categorisation, appeals to the young and old, and players of all sorts.

But have you ever tried to explain it to somebody? More often than not you’ll be met with a curious stare and questions as to what makes it so enjoyable. Or -even worse- why you would play a game like that when you can simply go outside and do the same thing.

In building mechanics around fishing, eating, writing, catching bugs, moving future, and generally living a normal (well, let’s say “country”) life, Animal Crossing makes the mundane as exciting as blowing up a Grunt in Halo. It’s a charming simulacrum of reality that fills you with FEELINGS each time you boot the game up.

Animal Crossing is real life through a filter of pure happiness.

(The art accompanying this post was done by a Mr. Jake Lawrence of TimeCowboy fame. You should check out his other stuff!)

After Pressing Start: Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen

Blurgh! Before I forget, I wrote two things this week! I know, right? Busy, busy, busy.

A typical complaint with the Dragon Quest games is that they're all the same. This is a surface level observation. Yes, in terms of genre trappings, Dragon Quest IV is intensely familiar to the ones before it, but it's in the broader details where the differences pop up. Each game is a reaction to the previous one.

Before Dragon Quest IV, Dragon Quest III introduced flexible, player-defined companion characters. Much like the original Final Fantasy, you built your team from the beginning from whatever class you wanted. You could have a full party of mages if you wanted. All dem' options!

So, Dragon Quest IV took player-defined companions from Dragon Quest III and applied personalities and aspirations to them. You were now playing your companions, and it was their stories that were important.

Dragon Quest V would also go on to do its own thing, but that's a tale for another day....

The Zoology of Dragon Quest

So, I wrote this thing at nightmaremode....

It started off as a poorly thought out statement trying to talk about the unexplainable reasons we like specific games, but gained shape when I settled on a couple of key monsters and extrapolated on why I liked them. From there it was simply a case of Youtube-hopping through various animal documentaries and faint memories of Biology class.

I had a lot of fun writing this and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!