A New Genre Awaits

For the past few weeks, I have put over 40 hours into Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This in itself is nothing new or surprising - since discovering Awakening on 3DS, I have completed every game in the series, including all three pathways in Fates. Clearly, Fire Emblem is a series that is close to my heart.

At the start of 2019, however, I was also hooked on another game - one that has resonated even stronger with me than Fire Emblem ever will - Hypnospace Outlaw, perhaps a lesser known title, which is available on the Steam service on PC. Hypnospace is a game that I still think about - perhaps not on a daily basis, but certainly weekly. In many ways, it was a game tailored to my own age and demographic, in addition to my own online history.

In exploring both of those games, and by subsequently noting elements of these titles that resonate through other games I have enjoyed in the past 15 years, namely: Phoenix Wright, Virtue's Last Reward, and Persona 4: Golden, I have come to a stark realisation.


I really like visual novels.

(Hypnospace Outlaw, 2019, No More Robots)

(Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 2019, Nintendo)

In all of the titles mentioned above, there is a different mechanic with the way in which the player navigates the game; with Fire Emblem, your character engages, between discussions, with turn based combat with a multitude of enemies; in Hypnospace, you are surfing, and sleuthing, an alternate reality simulacrum of the internet, circa 1999; Phoenix Wright sees you making choices of evidence / conversation topics to win defence cases in court; Virtue's has your protagonist solve fiendish escape-room games in order to progress, and in Persona, the dialogue is couched within a massively-scoped role-playing game, requiring grinding (see previous posts) and careful choice of battle mechanics. 

All of these games, however, use the trapping of a variety of different genres of titles that all fold back into one - the visual novel. 

Popular mostly in Japan, the visual novel is as literal as its title suggests - that the narrative of a story will unfold with character reactions or settings to represent what is described. These can vary from the absolute mundane - a character's day at school, as in Persona, to romantic choices, to stories that carry elements of pornography in their descriptions. 

Perhaps to call this a 'genre' is a misconception.

What visual novels allow, is an element of author control that can often be missing in other titles, such as open world-games. Imagine a Grand Theft Auto where you are told on your screen that "Trevor walked in to the bar and sat and had a drink".For any players of the game, this is absolutely one of the things that Trevor may do. However, Trevor is also a psychotic, unhinged character, one who will murder for fun, and is supposed to be the player's cipher for whatever mayhem they may wish to unleash. The visual novel works when there is a story to be told, and the player may have some (note, some)agency as to the outcome, but these endings are set in stone. 

And yet, I play through a number of titles, including GTA, Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, Saint's Row, all open world games, despite enjoying, and preferring the authored content. The reason for this is I love an ending. I love to see where the game will take me - how will my murderous character ultimately finish the game?

In a previous post, I discussed the ending of the game GTAIV, because I believe the pathos of the finale made the rest of the game important. Every decision your character made, led them to one of two outcomes, one I believe to be more important than the other. I am a huge fan of authored content, and enjoy following the journey that creators take me. It may be time for the admission (and absolutely not humble-brag) that I have never played Minecraft as I did not see the purpose of it, and bounced off The Sims, although with a slower curve, because I could not see the end point.

The visual novel is exciting, because, as mentioned, the trappings around it can appeal to a number of different type of players. What I like most around it, much like good cinema, is following the vision of a creator. I want to see where they feel the characters should go, and, if I don't agree with this, to be able to at least have a concept of their journey. 

I Am Bad At Monster Hunter

It is a truth universally acknowledged, but never commented on. I am terrible at  Monster Hunter games. I have been playing them for a decade now, as of 2019, and I still cannot quite do the things it wants me to do.

For the uninitiated, Monster Hunter is a series of games made by Capcom, which have spanned consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. These are third person action games, with very specific controls - for each action you do, you cannot stop it. Should you stop to sharpen your weapon (essential as it depletes its sharpness over time) your character is locked in a 7-10 second animation of sharpening, during which time, of course, you can be attacked. The games themselves may vare, but each of them is defined by a few simple ideas.

1) You will get better the more you play - more on this later.
2) The game is desinged to be replayed and replayed - as you kill monsters, they issue 'drops' which are specific items. Players will often 'farm' (replay) monsters to try to get specific items, which may show up as little as 1-3% of the time.
3) The monsters themselves have no health bars, or no otherwise explicit indicators as to how they are doing. The player is supposed to 'read' the health of the monster by looking for signs such as - deterioration of their scales on sides / tails; limping, particularly in combination with heavy breathing (shown by steam arising from their mouths) ; the running away of a monster, most likely towards a place it can sleep and restore energy.

The most recent title in this series is Monster Hunter World. This was released last year on Xbox, PS4 and PC. As such, it diverted from the previous place these games were published - the Nintendo systems, most notably the 3DS. As a result of this, I have had far less time to play the game due to not having it on transit
This excuses nothing. I am bad at Monster Hunter. 

Monster Hunter World (Capcom, 2018) 

The game is due to have its first massive expansion next year, known as Iceborne. This follows a tradition of games where the concept of 'G Rank' re-releases exists - you've destroyed all the monsters, let's add another 10-20 and they're REALLY hard. 

So it was that in advance of this, I returned to World this morning. I discovered I was seriously lacking behind, with several important plot points in front of me. And then I hit it. Paolumu. 

Paolumu is more fun to describe than to actually post a picture of. Imagine a bat. Now imagine its an albino bat. Now imagine that when it gets angry, its neck fills with air like a puffer fish and it uses this to attack you. Paolumu is cool. 

Unfortunately, it also exposed a glaring weakness in how I play the game. When I play Monster Hunter, in the varying ways a character can organise themselves, I always go for power. A weapon called the 'dual blades' is, well, exactly that. Thus it was this morning that I sprang into action and was thoroughly routed. There is a system called the 'SOS Flare' on the game - hit it, and it allows other players to join your game and try to destroy the monster together. No one came.

There is a type of game made in Japan, that Monster Hunter falls into, that I have never managed to engage with. These games prize player skill over gaining reward after reward. In these games, such as Demons Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, the reward for the player is the knowledge they have earned - they have learned their enemy's patterns, they have mastered the 'tells' of their attacks. Knowledge is power. And Monster Hunter falls into that category. Whilst your character may increase their armour against particular foes, their health will never significantly increase. In the game, the ability to read each monster's tell becomes power. 

And I have never mastered this. Every journey I have made in these games was through brute-force, or relying on the support of people far better than I. I adore the Monster Hunter world. It's fun, funny, and always full of surprises. But what the title tells me is that my own skills lie in games that reward the individual - here, take this perk that makes X enemies do Y. It's a world beyond me. Again, or so I thought until I considered what I would play next - Mario Maker 2.

The game I love most, Super Mario World, also fits into the Dark Souls/Monster Hunter category. In Mario titles, Mario's move set is incredibly defined - it's very likely that people unfamiliar with modern games have a strong understanding of the mechanics of how the Italian plumber operates. Every move is co-ordinated, and in his world, every mistake that is made is one of the player.. It's a distillation of the concept of 'fairness' into videogames. Yet part of me cannot extrapolate that into other titles - Bloodborne remains and interesting enigma, I spent an hour once trying to find a ladder in Dark Souls. I will stick with Monster Hunter,  through thick and thin, because the game world,. and the sense of discovery far outweigh my own failings. 

Please help me complete Iceborne. SOS Flares are at the ready. 

Nihilism and Games

One hundred years ago, in one of my favourite novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald allegorised the death of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby. The promise of making it in the world, of being able to rise above one's assigned status was one that formed the founding of the Constitution, and of the deplorable Second Amendment that shortly followed - that the freedom of the individual had the right to strike back against governmental dictats.

In the past week, we have seen sadly all too-recognisable horror in The States, following two mass shootings. The subsequent fallout has seen people across the media and political spectrum, blame, amongst other elements, videogames. as a significant trigger, despite the overwhelming and regular evidence that suggests otherwise. My own first encounter with this blame-shifting came in 1998, following the massacre at Columbine. I remember, as a very young teenager, reading of Quake and Marilyn Manson as key triggers for the shooters.

Since those shootings, and considering the foundations of the 'American Dream', I've been thinking a lot about Grand Theft Auto IV, a game I can't say I particularly love - Rockstar games always seem more a curio than a game to be enjoyed to me. Yet, what sticks to me about the title, moreso than any other game in their canon, is the tragic arc that the character takes. Unlike Red Dead Redemption 2's solitary story, GTAIV casts a dark shadow not only over the protagonist, Niko Belllic's life, but over a country in which the society has been left to run, unchecked and unfettered by a 200 year old document. In doing so, it debunks the myth that videogames themselves cause violence, and instead looks at societal, political and economic causes that lead to people carrying out despicable acts of violence.

Grand Thedt Auto IV (Xbox 360, PS3, PC), 2013

With GTAIV I wish to specifically focus upon the ending of the game, so this is obviously a spoiler warning at this point. 

In the initial trailer for the game, channeling the film Koyaanisqatsi with its initial trailer, Niko Bellic hints at his past - fleeing from violence, war crimes, and the horrors of Eastern Europe, evoking such tragedies as those in Sarajevo. 

In Reggio's film, which the trailer replicates, down to the Phillip Glass score, the title translates in Hopi as 'a life filled with corruption', suggesting that Niko's dreams of escaping the horrors of his past to the 'utopia' of America will be one that is for naught.

And so it is. 

Throughout the 20-30 hours of the game, whilst dating, drinking, bowling with your cousin, and other sidelines of modern privileged existence, Niko's character becomes embroiled in a cycle of violence, one which shadows itself under the illusion of 'The American Dream'. Much like Fitzgerald's Gatsby, Niko has to become someone else, someone who can adapt into a variety of circles, be they biker gangs or the mob, in order to make his way in the world. And this brings the core of the game, and the reality of America, to the fore. There is not a sense of 'every man makes his own way' in either the game, or the country. 

Instead, what we have is a game in which there is one identity perpetrated, one in which the cycle of violence, guns, and power are perpetrated. In America, the only way to seem powerful is to look powerful. 

The climax of the game is an extended chase sequence in which your character, Roman, your cousin, and a Rastafarian character named Jacob end up chasing after either the mob boss Jimmy who initially told them 'everybody is trying to fuck over each other - they just do it with smiles on their faces.,' or with another immigrant, Dimitri Rascalov. The second of these two stories is the one I wish to focus on. 

Dimitri and Niko both share the same DNA in that they believe America will be the place where their lives can be changed for the better. Both are corruptedd by 'old' America, that is, Jimmy, where there is only the hegemony of 'America' as first and foremost one's own livelihood, as documented in the Constittuion. 

Dimitri does murder Jimmy in this ending of the game, however this is only for Todorovian purposes, to take his place as the new face of this status quo. 

At the end of the game, your character engages in a prolonged chase with Dimitri, only to end up murdering him. The site of this revenge? The Statue of Happiness, Liberty City's own version of New York's Statue of Liberty. Whilst the Houser brothers, voices of the game series, have never been known for their subtlety, the symbolism of the game's final act, one in which Niko becomes part of the system of violence, of destruction, of America, is an incredibly powerful one. Niko ends the game considerably richer than he started, but without the solace he was looking for when he first landed on Liberty City. 

Games have the power to do more than give us power fantasies. They can comment, they can criticise, they can suggest new possibilities. Grand Theft Auto IV is an an incredible game in scope, if not always execution. Beyond the wanton mayhem that the series constantly provides, however, is a prescient, if not important, suggestion about the state of the Nation, the failings of its original document, but sadly, not a way out.