I'm Just About Done With Persona's Length

I was a little over 90 hours into Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth when November hit and I shelved it to focus on NaNoWriMo. I was disappointed that I didn't get to finish it, but I really wanted to get back into writing after being out of commission most of the year.

After finishing my 50,000 words, I came back to Persona Q2 and decided to power through to the end so I could finish before the end of the year.

About 95 hours in, I realized I'd likely finished all known side quests and had about two floors of dungeon left to complete. This would probably clock in about a 100 hours. (It was eventually 100 hours and 22 minutes, so my guess was really close!)

And I realized, this is way too long.

I've felt all right up to 70 hours with an RPG, even 80 for one I'm really enjoying, but something about crossing the 90 hour mark really deflates my balloon, even for a franchise I'd ordinarily enjoy. I mean, Persona Q2 is pure fanservice. I got to build a dream party out of all my favorite characters from Personas 3-5, even the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable! There's nothing wrong with the combat system, the persona collecting, or the story. It's just so long that I was ready for it to end at about 90 hours.

I ended up doing a lot of gaming this year due to being on medical leave and lacking the focus to do creative work. (I seriously tried doing revision work while going through radiation treatment and ended up deciding to lay down instead.) So this year I had a lot more game time than I ordinarily would.

This is a day and age when the capacity for a game to be long is greater than ever, but as a working adult who loves games, this also means that there's also a lot out there that I really want to play that long games prevent me from getting to.

Persona 5 was similarly a 100+ hour game for me, and though the upcoming Persona 5 Royal rerelease is supposed to streamline some of the gameplay in acknowledgement that perhaps it was too long, Royal is also adding new content, so the end result is likely to be the same length or a little longer.

I don't precisely remember my Persona 4 playthrough time, but I think it was about 80 hours, which is long, but not unforgivably so.

I usually buy the extended versions of the various Persona games at some point, FES and Golden, so I'll likely get Royal as well, but I already know it's going to be something tossed in the backlog and when I finally get around to it I'll play on the easiest difficulty because I already did it "for real" on the original version and a second time around would just be to see the new stuff.

Atlus is probably in the planning stages for Persona 6. I can't imagine they're not already thinking about the next game while they're milking Persona 5 for all the spin-offs/updates they can get.

But please, shorter this time. And while I'm asking for ponies, give me a female protagonist too.

RPG Talk: Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: 3DS
Release: 2019

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth was going to be the rare RPG I played the day of release. Being built on a hybrid of the Etrian Odyssey dungeon delving mechanics and the Persona fusion system, it's easy enough to play through without requiring much in the way of a walkthrough, which solves my biggest issue with most modern RPGs (needing a walkthrough to make sure you don't miss anything).

Unfortunately my health problems escalated right about when my pre-order arrived so I set it aside and eventually forgot about it, even neglecting to list this on my Reader's Pick poll, which Final Fantasy XV won.

But I came back to it afterwards, and was happy I did.

Since this game is less than a year old, here is your spoiler warning as I'll cover everything up until the end of the game.

Persona Q2 is first and foremost a fan game. It exists as a crossover to allow the casts of all the modern Persona games (3-5) meet each other at the peak of their Persona-fighting abilities. The first Persona Q did much the same thing, only with the casts of 3 and 4.

Unfortunately there appears to be no continuity with the first game as the returning characters behave as if they've never met each other before, but the structure is very similar. For some reason or another, each cast has stumbled into movie worlds connected by a single theater from which the audience cannot leave due to a series of locks placed around the door to the exit. Much like the first game, completing each dungeon (in other words, a movie world) grants a key that removes one of the locks.

Unlike the first game, where players could play from the perspective of the P3 or P4 casts, this one is solidly from the POV of the P5 crew. The player starts with them and Joker is the only one allowed to make dialogue choices. But the flipside of that is that the P3, P3P (yes, the female protagonist is here!), and P4 protagonists all have actual personalities that make them their own people.

The P3P protagonist is especially a ray of sunshine. Though she has her doubts and can be overly cheerful at times, she gets to hang loose in a way that the other female party members don't. She's used to be outspoken and marching to the beat of her own drum, because where she comes from, she's the party leader and she has the confidence to match.

Also, it's about time she got featured in a spin-off game! I understand the male P3 protagonist is canon, but the P3P female protagonist has never been offered in other games, even as DLC when she could be safely included without worrying about whether her existence breaks the laws of reality. She's long been a popular request in the English fan community, and Persona Q2 has finally brought her back in a big way, making her a major player in the storyline. She appears much earlier than any of the other Persona casts, joining the Phantom Thieves as early as the second floor of the first dungeon.

While the story of Persona Q2 isn't her story in particular, her subplot is given a lot of space. She meets the Phantom Thieves while separated from her companions, so one of their early goals aside from trying to figure out their current circumstances is to reunite her with her team. But the second dungeon yields the P4 Investigation Team rather than SEES, and when she finally does meet SEES in the third dungeon, she's distressed to discover that not only do they not recognize her, but they have a different leader who she doesn't recognize.

The male P3 protagonist is pretty accepting about it, concluding that they are essentially alternate universe versions of the same person (which they are), though I wish the two of them had more lines interacting with each other. It would have been funny if they commiserated over the P3 cast's foliables as only people who share the same group of friends could. Sadly, they might as well not exist to each other for the majority of their time together, which makes their mutual farewell, with the understanding that they'll never meet again, ring hollow. This could easily have been fixed with a special screening side quest to unlock a team attack, but oddly the game never tries.

Since Persona Q2 is of debatable canonicity, it's not surprising that its story is ultimately not about the Persona characters or the struggles they're currently in the middle of. Rather, like the first Persona Q, the story is about the new characters specific to this game; Hikari, Nagi, and Doe.

When the Phantom Thieves first arrive, they quickly figure out their new situation. They are trapped inside a movie theater with two other people; the theater curator, Nagi, and a high school girl, Hikari. There is also a mysterious inhuman projectionist called Doe (for John Doe) that doesn't speak or seem to be hostile, but nevertheless runs the movies that the Phantom Thieves can enter by jumping through the movie screen.

Each of the movies revolves around some element of social unfairness. For instance, in the first movie, Kamoshidaman, the superhero runs the city because he's the hero, so of course he's in the right. But he's not actually a nice person and makes objectionable judgement calls. Though people might privately feel disagree, no one is willing to call him out on it because he's the one in charge and to fight him is to lose.

By journeying through the movie, the Persona casts are able to change the endings to those movies by defeating the various bosses and convincing other characters that it's okay to disagree, that it's okay to be yourself, it's okay to have a different opinion.

All these changes have an effect on Hikari, who (though it's not immediately apparent) is suffering from memory loss. Hikari is incredibly shy and introverted, so she understands the various characters who are oppressed in the movie worlds. Standing out and making trouble can actually make it harder for the person who has to endure the scorn of others. But as each movie is changed, Hikari comes to understand that even though putting one's head down is the easy way, it's not really the way she would like to live.

This culminates in Hikari getting kidnapped by Doe and being brought into the fourth movie world, which is a musical that reflects the worst moments in her life. Being berated by her teacher, even though Hikari was following the rules, was what led to the formation of the movie world with the abusive superhero. The other movie worlds are similarly inspired by key moments in Hikari's life that caused her to give up what she believed in.

Since Hikari has grown over the course of the game though, she's now able to challenge Doe on her own terms and recognize him as a distorted fear that her father (who actually loves her a lot) would reject her in the same way that so many other people in her life have. After coming to terms with Doe, she realizes that her father doesn't hate her and regains her sense of purpose. This allows everyone to leave the movie theater.

But, since this is a Persona game where things happen due to the involvement of supernatural entities, that's not the end of everything. Though Hikari is free to leave, and by extension so is everyone else, there's one more dungeon to defeat Enlil, the being that trapped Hikari in the first please. Enlil is fine with Hikari leaving since her theaters are supposed to be a way to placate for people who've given up, but naturally Hikari wants to restore to hope to others who were like her, so the team stays long enough to beat up Enlil.

While Hikari's story isn't bad, it's not as heavy as Rei's storyline from the first Persona Q and lacked the same punch when the truth was revealed. Perhaps being the second game it wasn't surprising that the main thrust of the plot would be around Hikari instead of the established Persona cast, but it also felt that the messaging in the movies was too explicitly geared towards someone with Hikari's personality, making it obvious by the second dungeon that Hikari was the reason we were going through these movies at all.

The rest of the game is pure crossover fun. Shinjiro (known to be a good cook) gets to feed Yusuke (known to be frequently hungry), Akechi and Naoto get to solve a mystery together, and Makoto and Mitsuru get to talk about what it's like being a student council president.

If anything, having the entire roster of the modern Persona games shows what sort of tropes are in play and how the design team has tried to make them all a little different, by mixing and matching character attributes or putting a little spin on their personality. Makoto might be a student council president like Mitsuru, but she's also a knuckle-wielding bruiser in combat like Akihiko. Junpei, Yosuke, and Ryuji might all fill the male protagonists' best friend role, but removed from that they don't feel like the same person copied and pasted into three games.

That said though, I think the next game should avoid student council presidents, detective princes, and wealthy heiresses (all of which were revived in Persona 5). And though I know it's unlikely to happen, it would be nice to see a male navigator character for once as Persona Q2 made it glaringly obvious that every navigator the series ever had has been female. A lot of the party roles, elemental alignments, and weapon types switch across genders. Even the protagonist has had a female option. But the one thing we've never had is a male navigator. We've had males in that role temporarily (like Morgana and Teddie, who are notably both "not human"), but they always leave it once the real navigator shows up.

As far as the ending goes, Persona Q2 ties itself up better than its predecessor, which left the door open for everyone remembering their encounter. (I suppose this means that for the P3 and P4 casts, Persona Q could have happened after Persona Q2 to preserve continuity.) Everyone loses their memory of the movie world when they go home, which naturally makes everyone sad, especially since everyone wanted to see the movie Hikari would make once her love for cinema is rekindled.

The game takes steps towards making this "reunion" happen by featuring the P3, P3P, and P4 casts taking the unusual step of sitting down and seeing a movie together. The P3 protagonist picks up a DVD even though he's not really sure why, and in the P4 time period Nanako mentions that the movie they're going to watch has a dinosaur that looks like Yosuke, which was leading me to believe that Hikari had come from a time period before all three games. Since she never confirms what year she's from, that would have been entirely possible, and I would have found it heartwarming, if she'd turned out to be a director beloved by all three casts.

Unfortunately the P5 cast's epilogue wrecks that but having them attend a high school movie festival (showcasing films are made by high school students), where they watch Hikari's movie and when the director of the film is introduced, the game cuts just as the P5 protagonist recognizes her. So what was even going on with the P3 and P4 casts? Why is there a movie with a dinosaur that looks like Yosuke that has nothing to do with the events of this game?

I don't know.

Though I enjoyed the game, it was just a little too ham-handed, and even the supernatural events felt like rehashes of previous Persona games (Enlil's motivation is a lot like Izanagi's from P4 and Doe's existence is like a cognition from P5). I enjoyed it for the gameplay and the crossover fun, but this isn't one of the better spin-off stories.

Attack on Titan: Sometimes the Smaller Characters Matter

On occasion, I really fall in love with a secondary character. And I don't mean the fan favorite, the sort of character that has primary character potential. I mean a character that will in all likelihood live out their life in their secondary role. In a long running series (or game), they might only have a few scenes.

I'm going to talk about one of them from Attack on Titan, and be warned, there are spoilers for manga Chapter 124, which was released just yesterday.

One of my favorite characters in Attack to Titan is Nile Dok. I hesitate to call him my favorite out of all of them, because he's definitely not part of the main cast and isn't given as much breathing room, but he is definitely my favorite secondary character.

I like Nile because he's complicated, and in a setting where most of the primary cast is willing to lay down their lives for what they believe in, Nile is a lot more humble than that. He could have joined the Survey Corps like his friend Erwin (who eventually became the Commander of said Corps), but instead he decided to settle into a job with the military police and marry the woman he loved.

Though he considered it a bit of a cowardly move on his part, because out of all their classmates only Erwin survived, Nile does not regret it, because that decision allowed him to have a family that would have been impossible for someone in the Survey Corps (which is known for its high fatality rate).

Nile was not popular when he was first introduced, because he appears in an adversarial role. He wants to take Eren, the protagonist, away from the Survey Corps, a group of people who Eren (and by proxy the audience) highly respects. When everyone else is hiding away within their walled cities away from the titans, the Survey Corps explores the outside, hoping to discover the truth about their world and the titans that surround them.

But gradually, through his connection with Erwin, Nile's backstory comes through and he becomes a more sympathetic face among the leaders in the military. By the most recent story arc, he's willing to take a chance on peace by discretely handing off a child combatant from the opposing country to the boy's older brother. He's not supposed to do that, but he knows that the boy should really be with his family rather than in the middle of a warzone.

It's sadly the last good deed that he gets to do.

We know from earlier in the arc that Nile has been "infected" (for lack of a better term) with some spinal fluid that's going to turn him into a mindless titan when the antagonist gives the signal, and the signal goes off. He wasn't the only character infected, so narratively the transformation had to happen to avoid making it a toothless threat, so I'd made peace with the fact that in all likelihood Nile was going to die and never make it back to his wife and kids.

It's how he died that bothers me.

There are multiple named characters who are transformed by the signal, and the two who clearly die as titans this chapter are Pixis and Nile. Pixis is killed when the Titans in the city are led to the fort and they're collectively taken out by members of the Survey Corps. However, Pixis gets a few lines said about him and regrets expressed by those about to kill him. Pixis, at this point in the story, is the de facto head of the military and he's also the first sensible officer the series introduced, so it's not surprising that he would get a little bit of a send off before being slain by his own soldiers.

Nile is handled differently though. None of the primary cast has ever been in Nile's court aside from Erwin, who is long dead by this point. Any relationship has been a professional one. But we as readers still know Nile and that he was one of the ones who should have transformed, so it's not surprising that he appears post-transformation so we can learn about his fate. But it's not a reluctant send-off by those who care about him.

Instead, he's used as a prop to recreate the trauma Kaya expected when she saw her mother being eaten right in front of her. This allows Gabi to save her life (causing Kaya to see her in a new light) by killing Nile. Gabi and Kaya have no idea who Nile is. All Gabi knows is that it's a titan, and it's about to eat Kaya.

Gabi and Kaya have had it rough, Gabi being a child soldier and Kaya having lost her sister due to Gabi killing her during the invasion of Gabi's hometown. But Gabi eventually learned that Kaya's people aren't the heartless devils she thought they were, so she's learned to see them in a new light. Putting them in this situation where Kaya's about to get eaten allows the two of them to start talking again (instead of trying to kill each other).

I understand what the story was going for, but it was really hard to cheer for Gabi when she's killing my favorite secondary character in an incredibly heartless (but necessary) manner. From her perspective, it really could have been any titan, and the result would have been the same.

But for me, the reader, it wasn't, so the choice to put Nile there was purely authorial intent. For the most part, I think was simply a tidy way to wrap up Nile's fate, but there's a problem with that, because even though Nile isn't part of the main cast, he has been given enough depth that he's not simply a cardboard cutout. He has a life beyond his immediate function on the story, and he's been built up so that there's a reason to care about him.

Attack on Titan isn't a series that's kind to its characters, so I wasn't expecting survival, but I did expect closure, and for what Nile has been, it's a sad thing to go out as a character building prop.

Thoughts on Psycho-Pass 3

Psycho-Pass 3 launched last month, and we're just over halfway through the season. It's weird though because numerically we just finished episode 5, but in terms of run time, it's actually more like episode 10. I've never watched an hour long anime episode before. They aren't usually structured that way, but aside from some rockiness in episode 2, Psycho-Pass 3 seems to be making good use of its extra time, and in that way, we'll be getting what would ordinarily be sixteen episodes' worth of dystopian crime goodness.

Fair warning, there be spoilers ahead!

I fell into Psycho-Pass late, but since then it's become one of my favorite anime series. I still think the first episode of the first season is one of the best examples of world building I've ever seen. Though the second season was definitely a mixed bag (to the point I think the spin-off visual novel did a better job), it wasn't bad enough to sour me on the series as a whole, so I was waiting with both anticipation and trepidation for Psycho-Pass 3 to come out.

Would it be watchable since the Sinners in the System movie trilogy was never released in the US? Would I be happy with the new protagonists? And most of all, could it find a new angle on what it is like to fight crime in a world where it is possible for criminal intent to be read before it can ever come to fruition?

So far, the answer to all three is yes!

Granted, not having seen Sinners in the System means that there is a new character who I don't know much about, but given that there is a clear time skip between Psycho-Pass 2 and Psycho-Pass 3, she doesn't feel too much out of place. Since the composition of Division 1 has changed, it's not surprising that someone new would slide in representing a different part of the organization. Aside from the fact she exists at all, there's no knowledge needed that the show won't tell you regarding how she fits in and why Ginoza, Teppo, and Kogami are now working for her. (Well, seeing Kogami is a bit odd, but hey, time skip.) Frederica's team isn't the focus though, so I don't feel we have to have a lot of detail on how her team came to be. And judging from some comments I've read, a lot of this is new even to people who've seen the movies.

My biggest surprise though was how well Arata and Kei won me over as the new protagonists. The original Division 1 was the best, and while they got jumbled a bit in Psycho-Pass 2, at least we kept mainstays like Akane and Ginoza. But I think the series is better for setting up our new duo, since they're able to give us a new story with fresh points of view. It also allows Akane to be moved into another role. While she was the rookie in the first season, the veteran in the second, she is now, oddly enough, imprisoned in the third, and no doubt the mystery of why that happened will be part of the story.

And finally, does Psycho-Pass 3 manage to find a new way to tell a crime story in a world where criminal intent can be monitored before a crime happens? Why yes it does! And it does it through diffusion of responsibility, a real world phenomenon where a person does not feel responsible because of group think; because they were just following orders, or because they assumed someone else was taking care of it. If a dozen people individually do small things that lead up to an accident, and the victim feels that dying in said accident is better than the alternative, then who can be blamed? Even if the suicide is awfully convenient for someone else.

There are some things that feel different though. For one thing, even though there is still a fair amount of Dominator pointing, it takes until the third episode for someone to even fire the thing. While that's partially due to the lack of an enforceable target, it feels strange not to have anyone use the show's signature weapon, especially since the cast change and time skip make this a decent entry point for newcomers. Some of that might be a bit of a backlash over the second season's willingness to explode bad guys left and right, especially since the blood and gore for such lethal enforcement has been drastically toned down. (No bright red to be seen, no sir.)

But we also see new protagonist Kei get into fisticuffs a lot for an inspector, which is really supposed to be enforcer work. The whole reason inspectors have enforcers is so that the enforcers (who are latent criminals cleared to do detective work) do the dirty work so the inspectors' psychological profiles remain undamaged. Kei even punches someone in anger at one point, and though he was temporarily suspended, I was surprised he passed the psychological exam to come back to work. Though Kei outwardly appears calm and composed (until he isn't), the opening animation suggests another side to him that could be a lot more manic and dangerous, so I'm curious if this is something that has always been lurking in him (in which case why isn't he already a latent criminal) or just that he has yet to turn.

Kei and Arata are more maverick thinkers than Akane and Ginoza too, in that the two of them are clearly pursuing their own agenda. The Sybil System did not find them to be compatible as partners, and yet they choose to work together anyway. Moreover, we know that Arata's father killed Kei's brother, so the fact they are working together means that they suspect there's more to the murder than what has been publicly declared the truth.

Though Akane has always had a humanitarian side to her, in that she would prefer to avoid killing if at all possible, I believe Arata is the first inspector to point out that the Dominator has a trigger for a reason, so if the inspector or enforcer feels that Sibyl is in error, they can choose not to shoot. Akane believed that implicitly, but Arata is the first to call out what has always been true. And once it's spelled out, it's actually a fascinating consideration given that Sibyl otherwise controls so much of people's lives.

The new enforcers in Psycho-Pass 3 also get short-changed, though to be fair, this is also a problem Psycho-Pass 2 had due to the shorter season length compared to the first. Though Irie and Todoroki got a little character development, we don't really see much of Hinakawa and Kisaragi. Kisaragi looks like she's going to be getting more focus soon, but we're past the halfway point and she's barely done anything other than look sharp in a suit. Hinekawa arguably had some development in Psycho-Pass 2, but I still don't feel like I know the guy. Since he and Karanomori are the only returning members of Division 1 I was hoping he was kept so they could do more with him this time around, but that hasn't been the case. I get that he's the introverted hologram expert so he's not cool like Ginoza and Kogami, but he still could be more of a character with his own personal stakes.

The funny thing is that the season has now aired five out of its scheduled eight episodes and I feel like there's no way Kei and Arata are going to unravel this conspiracy and learn the truth about their family members in the three episodes we have left. And yet, if this wasn't an hour long show, I wouldn't be as concerned with six episodes remaining. Logically, they should have the space. There's still a third of the season left.

So far I've been enjoying Psycho-Pass 3 a lot more than its immediately predecessor, so here's hoping it can make a strong finish.

Loscon and NaNo Progress

I will only be at Loscon for one day this year, but if you happen to be there, you can see me on Ethics in Speculative Fiction at 10:00 am on Sunday, December 1st. I'll likely hang around for a little while after as well.

It's kind of funny heading back to the same hotel again so soon since it's where World Fantasy was only a few weeks ago!

In other news my NaNoWriMo progress is going well, and I'm pretty happy with that. Not just because I'm on track to finish, but because this means that I'm getting over the creative logjam that started with my illness earlier this year. It was a little nerve-wracking getting started and my outlines are never as thorough as I want them to be, but I'm relatively pleased so far.

I'm currently at the 30k mark and have started the second story arc. I don't want to talk details this early in the process, but I'm stretching my creative legs and trying a few things I haven't done before. I can see there the rough spots are and I'm already leaving myself revision notes, but I think the draft will be viable.

This is going to go past the 50k NaNo target range, which was expected, but how far, I'm not sure yet. I was picturing the novel broken into three parts, but at the same time I don't see this draft hitting 90k as the middle arc feels leaner to me.

Jack of Spades, Now at Curious Fictions

I'm trying an experiment. As mentioned in my original health post back in July, I wanted a chance to earn some of the support I was eventually given. And one of those things was asking people to support my writing through Curious Fictions.

For the past few months I've been posting a backlog of the reprints I had the rights to, some of which have never been available outside of a physical copy or paywall, and now I'm moving on to the bonus item, the novella Jack of Spades. This is something I wrote quite a while ago. To give you an idea of how long ago, one of the reasons I stopped submitting it is that the Hunger Games became popular and I was afraid people would think I was trying to cash in on that.

I also wasn't quite the writer then that I am now. But I still liked the story.

So I decided that I would offer it as a special bonus to subscribers. Much to my dismay, it wasn't at the level of storytelling my memory told me it was, so I rolled up my sleeves and started revision work. I think it's much better now, though I know readers won't be able to compare!

Now Jack of Spades is live and you can read the first chapter for free. New installments will go up every two weeks until it is done.

If you like the idea of seeing additional fiction from me on a regular basis, please consider subscribing. If this does well, I'd love to write more serials.

NaNoWriMo 2019

I'm going to be doing NaNoWriMo again this year, though I'll be getting a late start since I wanted to wait until after the World Fantasy Convention ended. (It's really hard to work while at a con.) So today is really my first day of work!

That puts me behind a bit, but after writing so much, I've learned a lot about my novel writing and revising process; enough to know that I don't actually like writing the 1667 minimum words per day. I like to write more, and the reason for that is 1667 words is not a chapter for me. It's too short.

My chapters tend to be somewhere between 2000-3000 words (closer to the 2000 word end on first draft, as I'm definitely a put-in more than take-out sort of person when doing revision).

I could write less than a chapter a day, and in previous NaNos I did, but I discovered during revision that I had to make more edits that way, because I would forget details from the day before. So now what I do is write my chapter straight through until it's done, so I can manage its beginning, middle, and end in one go, keeping the entire "arc" in my head. And it's worked better for me.

This also means that it only takes me 25 days to hit the NaNo goal (probably less, because I'm not always writing the minimum--the chapter is whatever it requires) and I'll still finish by the time the month is over.

Since I've been dealing with cancer most of this year, I haven't had much chance to write, but now that I'm healthier again I'm hoping that I can kickstart my writing engine with a new book.

World Fantasy Convention 2019

I'm going to be at the World Fantasy Convention this coming week and I have two panels.

California Screaming: Modern Golden State Horror Stories and Writers
31 Oct 2019, Thursday 14:00 - 14:55, Marquis 4-6

The Fantasies of Hayao Miyazaki
2 Nov 2019, Saturday 14:00 - 14:55, Marquis 4-6

Feel free to catch me at either of them. I expect to be at the convention all four days though, so even if you can't make those, I'll be running around, or possibly be working in the lobby!

After all, NaNoWriMo is starting and if I have a few minutes to myself I might break out the laptop and get a few words in.

RPG Talk: Divinity: Original Sin

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: PC (though it's also on PS4 and XB1)
Release: 2014 (classic), 2015 (enhanced edition)

This week was supposed to finish up my series on Final Fantasy XV, but seeing as I'm still struggling with the last of my DLC, I'll resume the series in a couple weeks after the World Fantasy Convention. In the meantime, I realized that I never actually posted my RPG Talk for Divinity: Original Sin, which I had finished earlier this year. So here it is now.

I do play western RPGs, though my article list suggests otherwise. It's just the ones I do are so few and far in between that the last one I played, Dragon Age: Inquisition, was released before I started blogging regularly. For a while, the Dragon Age series alone was enough to scratch my itch, but in the void of waiting for a fourth game I've found I needed to look elsewhere.

There were lots of candidates for that old school computer RPG feel; Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Wasteland 2, but I settled on Divinity: Original Sin. I found out about the series through articles on Kotaku, and it sounded like people were having fun, setting their characters up with shenanigans involving status effect spells, terrain effects, and general creativity such as walling off a room from enemies by putting down paintings. You could steal just about everything from everyone and looting was a valid source of income.

(Having primarily grown up with JRPGs, where it's intended that the player can take everything that's not nailed down, I've had difficulty abandoning the habit in western RPGs. If it's there, it's meant to be taken, and I am very sad that the town guards don't see it the same way.)

I decided to start with the first Original Sin game since it was heavily discounted during a summer Steam sale, and played the Enhanced Edition. My first impression of it was not that great though. It took a while for me to settle into the game world and get a feel for its cities, factions, and gods. The lore doesn't pop in the same way that it does for Dragon Age and I suppose that's because when I read a lore book I feel more like I'm reading someone's world building notes rather a treatise that is part of the world itself. But there are some things that the game does extremely well, especially if you're willing to do a little role-playing.

Since Original Sin can be multiplayer, there are two main characters and in multiplayer mode the players each control one. Whenever a questionable conversation comes up, one that the player might want to weigh in on, the two protagonists can choose separate answers. In multiplayer it must be a lot like role-playing in a table-top game when different characters might have different opinions on how to do something. But this option is kept in single player.

And it works really well as a storytelling device if the two protagonists disagree even if they're controlled by the same player. My two agreed perhaps 70-80% of the time, but the 20-30% they didn't was enough to mold them into different personalities working towards the same goal, and it allowed them to snipe at each other in unprompted conversations that felt perfectly in character. It was an experience I'd never had before with player created party members.

Another thing I liked is that early in the game it becomes apparent that there is something special about our two protagonist Source Hunters, and that they may be the reincarnations of previous heroes. At the first whiff of such foreshadowing in an RPG, it's a given to assume that it's true, and I was afraid the game would beat around the bush about confirming it. Though it does take a while for the characters to really consider it (and to be fair, from their perspective it's not obvious), the game gets it out of the way early in Act II, which is pretty good. That's before the halfway point, and allows exploration of their predecessors' doings while knowing these actions were at one point their own.

Much of the lore fun is learning about their pasts, what went wrong all those years ago, and how that ties into the present day. Also the more powerful, inhuman NPCs will acknowledge who the protagonists have been in their past lives, or be amused by the fact they would rather "pretend" to be a mundane Source Hunter when they are clearly demigods.

Divinity: Original Sin also subverts things in unexpected ways. We learn early on that there's a cult, but surprisingly, when we confront their leader, we learn that she doesn't believe in her goddess or any of her religious teachings. Her organization is a cult because it was the most effective way for her to lead a bunch of devoted followers and get what she wants.

The game is also populated with a number of distinct female characters. Half the recruitable party members are female, including an older woman who is on the verge of retirement. Madora gives an air of been there, done that, came back with the t-shirt, and serves as the group's cranky veteran, which is amazing. She's also a front line fighter with a two-handed sword. Since my party was mostly ranged, we were all hiding behind the bulwark that was Madora.

This makes it a shame that the primary villain, Leandra, only seems to have gone bad because she was on the losing end of a love triangle. She began as an otherwise interesting villain (what I mentioned about leading a cult when she doesn't believe in the goddess she preaches about) and I was disappointed when I found out that she and her sister Inara only started to have problems because there was a man they both liked and he chose Inara.

There's more to it than that, but because that's when Leandra leaves her it makes it look like that was the pivotal moment, and a petty one at that. Even when we learn more, we never truly see what happened to cause her fall, which prevents us from properly reframing her transformation into a villain.

I really enjoyed the first act of Original Sin, because it's different from the standard fantasy RPG. It opens with the Source Hunters being dispatched to Cyseal to investigate a murder that was potentially done with Sourcery (the game's punny way of making a Source Hunter a hunter of sorcerers). While there is some of the usual orc and undead bashing around the outskirts of the city, most of the act is spent inside Cyseal itself hunting down clues as to what actually happened the night of the murder.

It's a lot of fun, with red herrings and suspects right under your nose. You get tons of experience running around town and leveling up by doing your investigation, which makes for a brainy way to progress through the game. And due to the layout of the map with the city in the center, going out into the city surroundings felt like side trips, keeping the city the main hub of all activity.

The second act loses a lot of this and comes off much more directionless, even a bit forced. Though the Source Hunters supposedly have the option to call it a day once they find out the reason for the councilman's murder (that he was part of the cult and the person who killed him is trying to stop the cult), the game railroads them into chasing down his murderer and investigating what the cult is really trying to do.

Though stopping the cult is a good idea, the Source Hunters' motivation for doing so feels rather weak, probably because the protagonists are allowed to debate over whether it's part of their organization's business. I think if the game had made it more clearly an extension of their original mission this would have come off better.

Aside from that, Act II just felt too large, with too many quests spread across the map (including a mammoth side area) without a clear grouping or order in which to tackle them. I even had one quest break on me because I happened to have an item in inventory that an NPC wanted to me to get, but I already had (since there are several Blood Stones throughout the game, not just the one he specifically asks to be retrieved).

It didn't help that the Source Hunters' personal story ended up slowing to a crawl, though that will not be everyone's personal experience, which I'll get to shortly.

Fortunately, once the player gets to the Phantom Forest and the third act of the game, the story pulls itself tighter again like it was back in Cyseal. Hunter's Edge has a lot of interconnected quests, so there's a lot to do in a small area that feeds into itself. The Phantom Forest map also sees the resolution of multiple companion subplots and builds itself on the bones of the backstory laid out in previous acts.

By this time the player will have stopped the undead in Cyseal, learned about soul-forging, freed Icara, and learned of Leandra's plans to unleash the Void Dragon that is basically eating all of creation starting from the future going back.

There was just one tiny problem, and it turned out to be a pacing issue that I didn't know existed until I found myself unable to proceed in the game. I'd found a door, but it wouldn't open, and it turns out I wasn't the only person looking up the solution online.

As I mentioned, we gradually find out the stories of our Source Hunters' previous lives as heroes who were eventually elevated to immortals. There's a decent chunk in Act I. Each time the player discovers a Star Stone, a new chamber opens in Homestead, the player's home base at the end of time, and in each room we get a letter, journal, or the like detailing the actions and thoughts of two ancient generals.

We also know that Leandra is corrupting Star Stones into Blood Stones, and the player will find several across their journey, but Blood Stones are not mandatory to use and heal the party to full on top of removing all status effects, so I tended to save them unless required for a side quest. (After all, such things would be better used in a truly difficult boss fight.)

Using up a Blood Stone also counts for purposes of discovering a Star Stone, which means that by saving mine up, I delayed learning the backstory for my heroes, and it's only after the Source Hunters know everything about their past that they can get through the door near the end of the game. This means that I got multiple chamber/backstory unlocks in a row in the second half of Act III rather than being more evenly parceled out over the course of Acts II and III.

I feel like having the backstory unwind naturally through the discovery of stones (Star or Blood), rather than making up any Star Stone deficit by using Blood Stones, would have improved the pacing a lot. I would have learned more backstory while my interest in the game was flagging (I actually took a break of several months in the middle) and then I wouldn't have gotten stuck at a door for the obtuse reason that the game wanted to make sure my protagonists knew everything before proceeding.

What I did like about the Source Hunters' past lives though, is that it turns out that they weren't great people. In a way, they were massive failures. Though they were hailed as heroes for defeating the Void Dragon in the distant past, we can see from their writings that they flamed out spectacularly afterwards, with one becoming a bloodthirsty warmonger and the other withdrawing from the world entirely. When the gods finished sealing the Void Dragon in the Godbox and wanted it guarded by immortal Guardians, the two only volunteered out of guilt. They knew they had messed up, not only after the battle, but during it as well. They only won because a third general had died had rallying them when they were too terrified to fight.

When the Void Dragon eventually escaped, the two Guardians chickened out (not believing they could beat it without their third), and left the goddess Astarte to fight the dragon by herself. Unable to handle their latest failure, they tore themselves out of time so history would no longer remember them and they would no longer remember themselves. And eventually, who knows how many years later, they were reborn as the two protagonist Source Hunters, who are still very much their own people, if you choose to play them that way. And I like that the two Source Hunters can be completely disappointed in their prior selves (though they can also be sympathetic if you want).

The story beats are fairly predictable aside from the Guardians themselves. Once everything is in order, the two protagonists go off to pop the Void Dragon and reseal it, thus redeeming themselves and saving existence. There is a nice moment at the end though where they go report in to headquarters and their boss asks about Councillor Jake, and by that time it's been so long it was a little funny to see how this all started by investigating a councillor's murder.

I think with some pruning and a little more depth to the side characters this could have been a really good story, but instead it falls a bit short.

RPG Talk: Final Fantasy XV - Episode: Ignis

Unlike the other Final Fantasy XV party member DLCs, Episode: Ignis is flawlessly integrated with the main game, so at no point do you feel something was missed or rushed. It takes place at a time when Ignis is naturally away from Noctis, during the attack on Altissia, because all the party members are separated from him. This also means that unlike Gladio and Prompto's episodes, it's harder to see where his story is going or what it's going to cover.

In some respects, that's a good thing. Episode: Ignis's most dramatic moments are ones we had no idea existed, and make perfect sense given that Ignis is not the type of guy to toot his own horn. But on the other, Episode: Ignis is not really a self-contained story. It covers things we didn't see in the battle of Altissia, and heck it even fleshes out Ravus and Ardyn's motivations in ways the original game neglected, but even though Ignis makes for a compelling protagonist, the story told is not about him in the same way it was for Gladio and Prompto.

Rather, Episode: Ignis is a showcase for Ignis's dedication to Noctis.

Imperial forces are still swarming Altissia after Noctis's battle with Leviathan ends, and in the main game we just skip to everything being over and Noctis waking up in a hotel room to discover Lunafreya left the Ring of the Lucii to him and that Ignis has been blinded by an injury. Episode: Ignis covers everything that happened after the moment the battle with Leviathan ended.

Surprisingly, Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto are all together at the start of the DLC, since it was implied that they split up (and Prompto is even flying solo during part of Chapter 9 when he picks up Noctis to try to bring him closer to Leviathan). When the three try to retrieve Noctis following his victory over Leviathan, the fighting with the imperials destroys the bridge they're on and Ignis is separated.

What follows is Ignis desperately battling his way through the city to reach Noctis. He's largely on his own, because the evacuation must continue, and it's a little funny when other people are the ones telling him not to do something stupid since he's usually the party's voice of reason. Combat aside though, the first half of Episode: Ignis is pretty light on story, though we do get to see the return of one of the side characters. If you wanted to see the demise of Caligo (the imperial officer the party fails to kill in the Chapter 6 base infiltration) he finally meets his ignoble end here.

The second half sees Ignis partnering with Ravus so they both can rescue the people they care about most; Noctis for Ignis, and Lunafreya for Ravus. This gives us better insight into Ravus and his nonsensical hatred for Noctis. We still don't entirely understand why he joined the imperial army in the first place, but now it's extremely obvious why he's slated for execution in later chapters. Not only does he call back all the imperial soldiers over the course of the battle, but he ends up attacking Ardyn, the imperial chancellor, after he and Ignis find Noctis and the dying (or possibly already dead) Lunafreya.

Episode: Ignis might not flesh out Ignis's backstory as much as Prompto's did, but it makes it explicitly clear just how devoted Ignis is to his prince. It's not to say the rest of the bros aren't, but we get to see Ignis at his most desperate, knowing that he might not be able to reach the prince before something happens to him. This forces him to cooperate with Ravus, who he has reason to distrust (given that Ravus is a general for the other side), and once the unlikely pair reach Noctis and Lunafreya, they are forced to confront Ardyn, who as usual, appears to hold all the cards in his hand.

This DLC visually shows Ignis's gradual loss of control through his hair and his outfit. So he begins the storyline in his usual Crownsguard uniform, but after the bridge collapses, he's dunked into the canal and loses his jacket. After his boat is blown up by Caligo he's soaked and some of his immaculately coiffed hair comes down. By the time he's apprehended by Ardyn's escort, he's lost his glasses and his hair is completely plastered wet around his head.

When it looks like Ardyn is going to kill Noctis right in front of Ignis, you can feel his despair. We know Ignis isn't capable of fighting Ardyn alone and Ravus has been restrained as well, but there is a tiny light of hope in that the Ring of the Lucii has landed next to Ignis, leading to one of the ballsiest moves in the game.

Ignis puts on the ring, and since he's not of royal blood it starts to burn him from the inside out, but because he's fighting to protect Noctis, the Lucian kings allow him to use it just long enough to go toe-to-toe with Ardyn and drive him off, allow the rest of the gang to eventually catch up. This gave him the injury that permanently blinded him in the main game. It's a really awesome moment, and a powerful sacrifice, but unfortunately it could have been better telegraphed, and even as I was reveling in the moment, I wanted it to be better.

There are two things that bring me up short. The first is that Ignis and Ravus get to be a bit of a break midway through their battle through the city, and it's possible to ask Ravus about his prosthetic arm. At this point I don't remember if it was in secondary media or later in the main game, but Ravus lost it because he tried to put in the Ring of the Lucii, but was declared unworthy. Ravus does not mention this when asked about his arm, so it's possible the player will not know ahead of time what the penalty is if a non-royal puts it on.

The second is that Ignis mentions that if a Glaive can manage wearing the ring in service of the king, he should be able to as well. This is a problem because it's a reference to the Kingsglaive movie (which the player might not have seen) and also because Ignis should not have any knowledge of the events in that movie since he was not in Insomnia when the relevant Glaive made that sacrifice. The only character in the main game who knew about the Glaive putting on the ring was Lunafreya, who Ignis only catches up with when she's already dead/dying.

If Ignis and the player were both on the same page, I think it would have made the event that much more powerful. Because Ignis gives up more than his eyesight.

When he nears Noctis and Lunafreya earlier in the DLC, he meets Pryna, Lunafreya's otherworldly dog, who gifts him a vision of the future. So when Ignis reaches Noctis, he already knows that the prince is destined to sacrifice himself in the future. After the battle, when Noctis is recovering, Ignis visits him and asks if he would reconsider his journey. Noctis refuses, since it would mean throwing away everyone else's sacrifice, including Ignis's, and Ignis does not further try to dissuade him. It feels very much in character for Ignis to not bother telling Noctis how he lost his sight, or what the future has in store for him. Ignis asking Noctis not to continue is a selfish request, and when Noctis is not interested, he backs down.

But for those who would prefer Ignis to have made a different decision, there is an alternate ending!

The alternate ending splits from canon when Ardyn has captured Ignis and Ravus, and jokingly offers a chance for Ignis to come work with him. Canonically Ignis continues fighting (and it's the only option you can take on first playthrough), but the player can choose to play along instead, which leads to Ardyn leaving Noctis and taking Ignis all the way to Gralea.

Though Ignis is supposedly playing along, it narratively doesn't hold up very long before he and Ardyn start fighting again so Ignis can preserve Noctis's future. Ardyn makes it clear that he has nothing personal against Noctis. He's just really bitter about not being selected by the Crystal as the first of the Lucian kings. It's not much revelation into his character, but it's still something and clearer than it was in the main game.

This battle sees Ignis once again use the Ring of the Lucii to make him Ardyn's equal, and from a storytelling standpoint it does something cool. When he puts on the ring he's given the choice of doing so with the understanding he will risk his life for his king, or that he will sacrifice his life for his king. "Sacrifice" makes him the strongest, but puts up a timer after which Ignis will burn out and die, no longer being able to control the ring's power.

But this is the toughest fight in the DLC and you have limited healing items, so more fumbly players (like me) are probably going to want to choose "risk" a couple times before the game forces the "sacrifice" option to extend the duration of the fight without killing Ignis. While I needed the extra time, it just didn't feel quite as heroic, since Ignis is ranting about how he does not want Noctis to die and he will do anything to prevent that.

And it looks like he beats Ardyn well and good, possibly permanently since Ardyn dematerializes and it seems involuntary.

Noctis and friends catch up shortly, since Ravus defected to help them, and Noctis goes into the Crystal voluntarily this time to reach his full power so he can better protect his friends. This leads to an alternate ending where it seems the long night has come, but Noctis does not sacrifice himself to end it. Instead, he gets to rule as king, making for a happier ending.

Episode: Ignis doesn't give itself the time to explain the particulars about how this works though (probably because it's an alternate ending). As the credits roll we see people going about doing things in daylight, but then we also see Ardyn lurking around the empty throne in Insomnia (is he dead or a ghost?). It's nighttime when older Noctis and friends return to the Citadel, but instead of leaving his friends behind to face an army of daemons while Noctis goes up the steps to sacrifice himself, he meets up with older Ravus, who gives him his father's sword, as he'd meant to do in the main game if he'd lived long enough.

And then from there we see daylight and all seems well again.

Ardyn wasn't the root cause of the eternal night, but was tied to the daemons that came with it, so it makes sense that they wouldn't go away with his death. But it's not clear how or why Noctis doesn't need to die this time around, other than somehow Ignis's sacrifice allowed Noctis to forgo his own.

For these reasons I don't find the story in Episode: Ignis quite as put together as Episode: Prompto. It fills in some nice gaps, has some cool scenes, and presents an alternate ending, but it doesn't feel entirely well thought out. This is probably because it's trying so hard to contribute to a larger story that even though Ignis is unquestionably the star, it doesn't feel like the story is about him. There's not even really a plot per se. It's just a chapter we didn't get to see in the main game. In the end, it's still about Noctis and not a personal story that belongs to Ignis himself.

The canon DLC storyline even bookends the story with Noctis as a child taking Ignis's hand, and then Noctis (post-timeskip) doing it again just before they head to Insomnia, in gratitude for everything that Ignis has done for him. And I suppose that was done to give a better sense of conclusion since there is otherwise no character arc for Ignis. He goes in much the same man as he comes out.

I came here expecting I'd like Episode: Ignis the most, since he's been my favorite of the bros and this DLC was well reviewed, but I actually liked Episode: Prompto more.

RPG Talk: Final Fantasy XV - Episode: Prompto

I enjoyed enjoyed this DLC much more than I thought I would, even though I already knew the key details of Prompto's backstory that were skimmed over in Chapter 13 of the main game. It takes place several days after he's been pushed off the train by Noctis in Chapter 11. By this time Noctis and the others have already met with Aranea in Tenebrae, placing Episode: Prompto during Chapter 12.

Following his separation from the rest of the party, Prompto is desperately trying to catch up with everyone and he's trekking through the snow to get to Gralea, where the group had been heading, but he passes out from weakness and the cold and is brought by magitek troopers to a research facility. Why did they capture rather than kill him? Most likely because of Ardyn, who appears in this DLC for no discernable reason other than to offer zippy one-liners and send Prompto on his way with a physical handgun since the one he would normally summon as one of Noctis's retainers doesn't appear (presumably because Ardyn is blocking it).

It's a pretty flimsy setup, but it gets the meat of the story rolling as our poor guy is trying to find his way out of a hostile facility full of magitek soldiers who would love to kill him. Yes, after dragging him there in the first place.

We know from the main game that Prompto is a sort of proto-magitek soldier. Magitek soldiers are created by infecting babies with the plasmodium parasite that turns people into daemons. When the infected babies sublimate as adults they're ultimately turned into the magitek cores that power the mechanical soldiers. But the main game doesn't really go into more than that. Prompto brings it up when he returns to the party, but it's kind of awkward as he goes through the cliff notes version of his backstory in about 30 seconds and then it's over.

Episode: Prompto draws out everything we couldn't see, but was implied to have happened off camera. There are some really nice touches too, as we see Prompto discover research notes and draw his own conclusions about his origin.

The first time he activates a door lock at the facility he uses his barcode by accident, just by bringing his hand up to the door. But the second time he encounters a locked door, it's only after he's discovered the research into daemonifying human infants and learning that one of them was stolen from the facility by a Lucian. He's been in denial that he could be a part of this, despite the mounting evidence (like his barcode matching the established guidelines issued to every infant based on their birth year), and he knows that if he uses his barcode to open that door he's acknowledging this facility as a part of his past.

It's a really good scene.

Prompto is so much better when he's allowed to be more than the goofy comic relief and deal with his own insecurities. Though it's not directly spelled out, the reason he is the comic relief who generally gets picked on by the other guys is because he's terrified of getting kicked out of their social circle. Being the man of least influence is better than not having friends at all.

But once he learns the circumstances of his birth, he begins to question whether there's a place for him within that circle at all. After all, he was created to attack his friends' homeland. Prompto begins to see himself inside the magitek troopers he's fighting, and at one point even hallucinates Noctis trying to kill him just like the prince had killed many of those soldiers in the past.

After he escapes the facility with help from Aranea, he looks at the barcode tattooed on his wrist and contemplates burning it off, but even if he tries (player's choice) it can't be removed. It's irrevocably part of who he is.

Gradually though, with a little tough love from Aranea, he comes to accept that he can't help where or how he was born, but he can choose how he wants to move forward with his life, and that leads to striking back against his researcher father, who is one of the imperial faces early in the main game who inexplicably never returns again (until this DLC).

It's pretty good stuff and we see genuine character growth from the Prompto who started this DLC to the one who ends it, which I really wasn't expecting, and it's too bad we don't get to see this transformation over the course of the main game.

Prompto has his terrible reunion with his dad, who he was cloned from. He takes out a magitek factory. His episode covers how much researchers in the empire knew or didn't know about what they were doing. It makes the cold unpopulated opening to Chapter 13 make sense. Sure, we find out later in the main game why everyone's gone, but if we'd gotten that information chronologically at the same time Prompto did it would have prepared the player in advance.

But at the same time Episode: Prompto is designed to be played after Chapter 13. With a couple tucks I think it could have been made to run concurrent to the main game's Chapter 12. It shouldn't matter whether we find out Prompto's origin from his own mouth in Chapter 13 versus his father's research in Episode: Prompto.

The problem is that the ending of his episode shows Prompto waking up imprisoned in Chapter 13, though we don't know why/how other than Ardyn probably had something to do with it. We see Noctis and company rescue him, and in the post-credits scene Noctis apologizes to Prompto for pushing him off the train and basically saying that it doesn't matter where Prompto came from.

It was nice having Noctis apologize, since he never does it in the main game, but if we cut the credit roll scene and post-credits scene, we wouldn't have any Chapter 13 spoilers and you actually could play Episode: Prompto right after Chapter 11 when he gets booted off the train and it would work seamlessly with what's already in the main game.

And there are ways the main game could have been altered a bit to make Prompto's "by the way" bombshell a little less of a surprise, especially since most players probably ended up going through the main game first, making Prompto's origin reveal all the more awkward. If, for example, the player could discover research notes not just related to humans being turned into magitek soldiers, but that one of the infants had been kidnapped to Lucis that would have helped. Just little tips that would eventually make the player realize before Prompto returns that Prompto was born to turn into a magitek soldier.

That would better set up the fact that the rest of the party tells him it's no big deal that he was born in the Niflheim Empire, because they, and the player, would have already had time to process that information.

One small thing that still sticks with me after the DLC though, is that Prompto used to be chubby as a kid, and that's how he looked when he first met Noctis and was encouraged by Lunafreya to befriend the prince. It seems like becoming the trim person that he is in the present day is likely part of trying to look like a presentable member of the team, one worthy of being a companion to Noctis. So it comes off as cruel now that one of the main game's party banter conversations is Prompto asking if they can check out the Crow's Nest diner for food, and Ignis telling him that's fine if he wants to put on weight.

Ignis is probably not trying to be mean, as that doesn't seem to be in his personality, but considering he already knew Noctis at the time Noctis met Prompto, I find it difficult to believe that he's completely oblivious to the fact Prompto used to be overweight.

The fact that Episode: Prompto has made me think a lot about it following the ending and recontextualize conversations in the main game makes it a solid addition. I can't speak much for the gameplay since I'm not a shooter fan, but for non-shooter fans it's not too difficult to complete even on Normal difficulty thanks to the existence of healing potions.

Next week I'll take a look at Episode: Ignis, finishing off the party member DLCs.

RPG Talk: Final Fantasy XV - Episode: Gladiolus

I didn't hear great things about this DLC when it came out, but it provides about an hour and a half's worth of play time for $5 unless you rush it. If you remember in the base game, Gladio disappears at the start of Chapter 7 saying that he needs to take care of some business, no further explanation given, and then he's just gone until the start of Chapter 8.

At the time I found it bizarre. Prompto and Ignis's disappearances for their DLCs are perfectly woven into the story, whereas Gladio's is so abrupt that I wonder if the design team simply had no idea what to do with him.

In Chapter 6 of the main game the four guys run into Ravus in an encounter so bland that I barely remember it happened and had completely forgotten that Gladio was upstaged by Ravus. Even with a refresher that the two had met, and vaguely remembering something about Ravus forcing Gladio out of the way, I couldn't quite recall Gladio actually being flat out beaten by him. Maybe there was a cut scene. There certainly wasn't a boss battle.

The fact that a scene I barely remember serves as the impetus for Gladio's solo journey is probably why his departure reads so poorly. It's not possible for the player to see that Gladio is so upset that he needs to take some personal time off. While Gladio in Episode: Gladiolus plays it off as not wanting the other guys to worry (and he is certainly the "tough guy" of the bunch), it makes it harder on the player in the main game, lacking this point of view. It could have been solved with Noctis realizing that Gladio is suffering from something, but as we already know, he's not the most emotionally aware prince in the world.

So Episode: Gladiolus covers Gladio's attempt to take on a trial intended for Shields of the King. He figures with this he'll come back as a stronger Shield for Noctis and be able to protect him in ways that he couldn't before. This trial, though, is a deadly one, which no one has passed and only one survived, Cor Leonis, the marshal in charge of the Crownsguard.

I like that the DLC presents the trial with a frame story, with Noctis and friends sitting around the campfire asking Gladio about what he was up to and how he got his new scar, because that's a conversation that should have happened in the main game.

Though the opening of Gladio's retelling begins in the ever popular Crow's Nest diner where he meets Cor, it quickly moves past it to the trial dungeon. Cor accompanies him and the two share a few Cup Noodles together at various campsites in the game's ongoing product placement. Aside from that though, the camping allows us some insight into one of the more compelling early game characters who just disappears in the second half.

We get nice tidbits about Cor's past when he was a hothead teenager who thought he was all that and how he gained the sobriquet "the Immortal." It's a bit hilarious realizing that Cor got it for living despite failing the trial. It's a constant reminder that he wasn't good enough. He just didn't do as badly as everyone else.

And people did do badly. Though there are daemons in this dungeon as expected for this setting, many of the enemies Gladio faces are the souls of those who failed the trial.

Though Cor helps Gladio through most of the dungeon, Gladio is left to face all the bosses by himself, and they're all straightforward affairs to ensure he is tough enough to face Gilgamesh, the first Shield of the King, and thus tough enough to do his own job of protecting the Chosen King.

The funny thing is though, initially Gladio wants to do the trial to get more physical power to protect Noctis, but he doesn't leave with it. After the confrontation with Gilgamesh, what he gets is his confidence. He doesn't initially think he even passes the trial, because he realizes during the battle that he might never be capable of protecting his king to the degree that he wants, but the trial forces him to accept that and he becomes a stronger person for it.

Oh yeah, and we also get to see that Gilgamesh is the "other guy" who gave Gladio his scar, which was more or less expected, though it was a bit wonky seeing a cut scene fly up in the middle of combat to show the moment.

Episode: Gladiolus is not a terribly deep story and I can't really advocate playing it for the plot. I'm annoyed that the opening created for it in the main game was so bad, and if the DLC had been a rewarding look into Gladio's character, the abruptness could have been forgivable. I wouldn't go so far as to say the DLC is bad though. If you like Gladio and fighting with a massive two-handed sword it satisfies well enough.

It's just that there's not much to the story aside from the trial, some backstory about Cor, and a few words about Gladio's father. I guess I'm starting to see why Gladio didn't talk about his trial when he got back, because there really wasn't much to say about it.

Fortunately, that's not the case for all the DLC. Episode: Prompto is next.

RPG Talk: Final Fantasy XV - Noctis

I realized I had to have a blog post specifically about Noctis's journey when I was trying to write my original RPG Talk for this game and realized that 3/4s of it was all about Noctis and there wasn't going to be room for anything else. Perhaps more than in most RPGs, Final Fantasy XV is really about Noctis's personal journey than anything else. Other protagonists in other games might be the hero who rises to the occasion, and it's not to say that Noctis does not, but so much of the story is intrinsically tied to who he is and his family's heritage.

Noctis begins the game as a bit of an emotionally stunted and socially awkward prince who has never been outside of the capital city. He's sent off by his father to his arranged marriage to Lunafreya as part of a peace arrangement between his country of Lucis and the Niflheim Empire. Rather than a more elaborate retinue though, he's simply sent off in his father's car with three of his friends/retainers.

At first it seems drastically little for a prince being escorted to a major political ceremony. Their car even breaks down on the way to the port where he's supposed to catch a boat. But it quickly becomes apparent that his father was trying to get him out of the city before the Niflheim Empire attacked, knowing that they had no intention of actually following through with the peace accord. Then it makes sense that the prince would have left the capital with such a small retinue via a method of transportation that gives him an incredible amount of discretion.

Noctis, however, isn't ready to be king.

He's known since he was a child that he's the Chosen and that the kings of Lucis have a duty to the Crystal that protects their country, but he doesn't fully understand what it means to be Chosen. Only Lucian monarchs are able to use magic and gift it to their followers. (When the party enters combat and weapons materialize in their hands, that's not a cosmetic affect for gameplay purposes. They are literally summoned through Noctis's power as prince.) However, using the Ring of the Lucii necessary to commune with the Crystal saps the user of their vitality, as Noctis knows from how frail his father was getting. He knows what kind of future lies in front of him and it's one of self-sacrifice.

Heavy burden aside, Noctis is a young man who is still trying to get comfortable with who he is. Though he doesn't come off as spoiled, Noctis is clearly uncomfortable with how to behave around others. Early in the game, when Noctis first interacts with people on the road there are many chances for him to ask his friends what kind of answer he should give to a person and whether he should help them out.

His friends, though they are that, are also clearly there because they are chosen retainers. Gladio's family has served as the king's shield for generations. Ignis, a noble scion, was introduced to Noctis when he was six and is considered his royal advisor. The only spoiler in the bunch is Prompto, a commoner who befriended Noctis. But even that feels a little calculated, as if to remind Noctis of what the average citizen in his country may be like.

Throughout the first half of their journey they banter like a group of friends who have known each other for years. It's rare to find an RPG where the party at the beginning is the entirety of the party at the end. They joke with each other, take each other to task, and through Prompto's constant camera clicking we're reminded every time the guys bed down for the night that despite everything going on, these are a group of young men who enjoy each other's company.

However, Noctis is clearly the one in charge, even if he doesn't say a word about it. When they drive into town, sometimes Gladio will ask what they intend to do there, and Ignis will reply that it is up to Noctis. When Noctis decides to go fishing (at the player's discretion), he can literally leave his friends bored for hours when he pursues his hobby without a second thought that they might rather be doing something else. And we know they're bored because they comment on it.

Noctis doesn't impose his wishes over theirs maliciously (his behavior is pretty much what any player does from a meta perspective), but the game makes it clear that much of what the party does is because of or on behalf of Noctis, because he's the prince and he's the one who matters, whether he likes it or not.

It's telling that when the Crown City falls that Noctis only freaks out about his own family and doesn't spend a word asking about the families of his friends, though they must have had family there, and that's confirmed later when we find out that Gladio's younger sister, Iris, was spirited out of the city. Since she's the only one we hear about, presumably the rest died in the attack, including Gladio's father, who was serving as the king's shield for King Regis like Gladio does for Noctis.

Once the capital falls, Noctis is forced to come to terms with the fact he needs to become Lucis's next king and fulfill his fate as the Chosen, but he's not happy about it. He's doing it because he's told he has to and not because he wants to, and all the things that subsequently happen around him are because of who he is.

One of the things the game makes clear is that when a previous king is toppled, it is not just his family that is removed from power, but that of his followers. When Gladio's younger sister escapes the Crown City she does so along with the Amicitia family's personal retainers, who are still loyal despite the danger and the turmoil. While Noctis is running around getting royal arms and meeting with Astrals, one of those retainers is killed by agents of the empire. The retainer might have been able to save himself if he revealed Noctis's location, but he didn't. Noctis isn't even able to properly avenge the guy.

When Noctis faces his trial against Titan, it's narratively the most dangerous part of the early game, and Noctis begins freezing up, but Gladio forces him to accept that he's going to be king and he needs to start acting like it. If the burden becomes too great, then he needs to realize that he can give some of it to Gladio to share. Gladio has to tell Noctis this because Noctis himself isn't aware enough to know when to volunteer.

Though Noctis doesn't entirely lose his awkwardness in the first half of the game (allowing him to get all but bullied into side quests for certain NPCs), he gradually gains confidence and begins to call some shots of his own instead of letting himself get dragged where fate tells him to go.

Once the second half of the game begins, the open world is closed off and stakes get high fast. Noctis wants to reunite with Lunafreya in Altissia, where she plans to awaken Leviathan so he can receive her blessing as the Chosen, the True King. In order to do that, he has to negotiate with another state for the first time as a representative of his country, and in a nice touch the player gets to choose how Noctis will handle his attempt at diplomacy, which can be clumsy or surprisingly adept. This also results in splitting up his team so they can help evacuate the city in the event Leviathan turns destructive, which turns out to be the case.

It's an exciting chapter with Noctis getting powered up with the might of previous Lucian kings, and the city is destroyed, but at the same time Lunafreya is killed.

I wish, though, that he'd had more time with her so her death had meant as much to me as a player as it presumably did for Noctis. The game plays it cool, given that they were supposed to have an arranged marriage, so when Noctis and Luna exchange messages via notebook throughout the first half of the game, Noctis can be brusque or genuinely looking forward to the idea of seeing her.

Someone made the effort to code different descriptions of the notebook following Lunafreya's death, depending on how Noctis corresponded with her, but chances are most of the player base will never see it, which is a pity. Since Noctis is an introvert, it's not surprising he's not comfortable talking about Luna with the other guys, so reading the notebook description after her death is really the only way to know how he felt about her, and it's entirely player decided. I played Noctis as genuinely looking forward to marrying her, and learning that he kept the notebook, now stained with the tears he shed after her passing, was moving, but I only discovered it towards the end of the game.

After the battle, Ignis is the one who delivers the news of Lunafreya's death to Noctis, giving our prince a one-two punch as he realizes that his plan has not only cost Luna her life, but his friend's eyesight. He walks slower and uses a cane, and in the ensuing chapter, Gladio will chew out Noctis if he runs so far ahead that Ignis is left behind. Eventually, Ignis brings up the elephant in the room about his disability and that he still wants to come with Noctis, but that he will need to be left behind if he becomes a burden, because Noctis is king and his duty takes precedence, and you know Noctis doesn't want to be a position where he one day has to make that choice.

But when it comes to leaving someone behind, it's not Ignis who is lost, but Prompto, who Noctis accidentally pushes off a train due to an illusion.

When the battered group finally reaches Gralea, the capital of the Niflheim Empire, their party is down to three, and their car, the Regalia, is smashed getting them inside the city gates. I have seriously never felt as sad about the loss of a game vehicle than hearing Noctis's farewell to the Regalia, since it ended up being one of the last things his father gave him.

And shortly after that Noctis is separated from his remaining friends and his powers as sealed, leaving him nearly helpless and unable to call on his magic or his weapons in a strangely vacant and nocturnal city which has now been filled with daemons. It's so bad that he finally puts on the Ring of the Lucii, which is the only thing that still works, even though it's probably killing him every time he uses it. While the gameplay changes in this chapter in ways that I didn't like (shoving in survival horror stealth aspects along with jump scares), there's no denying in how effectively it isolates Noctis, who finds himself not only shouldering the fate of his kingdom, but now the world.

Through his losses and his acceptance of the burden he bears, Noctis pushes on even though it's entirely possible he has no one left to count on. Though the team reunites again before the end of the chapter, even Prompto, Noctis is forced to leave them behind again, voluntarily this time, so he can go for the Crystal while they hold off what looks like a never ending horde of daemons without him. He doesn't want to, but he has to, because he's the Chosen and if he doesn't make it to the Crystal nothing else will matter. The aimless Noctis from the beginning of the game isn't there anymore.

But the Crystal doesn't turn out to be the saving grace he expects it to be. Rather he's consumed by it and learns what it truly means to be the Chosen. Just as his subjects will devote their lives for the king, he has to sacrifice his own to save theirs.

The game doesn't pull any punches with it. Noctis spends ten years sleeping inside the Crystal and when he finally wakes the only thing on his mind is meeting up with his friends again to finally end the literal darkness that is covering their world.

After the timeskip, he emerges a much more somber character and cognizant of what he needs to do without having to be prodded. In the mid-credits scene, which actually takes place prior to the final battle, he tells his friends that he's made peace with what he has to do, and finally, though it's hard, he manages to tell them how happy he is to have known them.

When Final Fantasy XV was still in development, they announced "Stand By Me" as the theme song, which I thought was an odd choice, given that it's an American song from the 1960s, but after it rolled on top of the first set of credits I was stunned by how appropriate it was. The friendship between Noctis and his friends is the emotional core of the game, but the story that sticks with me beyond the plot to save the world from another evil empire, is that of Noctis's personal journey. He started the game as an aimless prince, but ended very much a king.