For most of you on this site, the end of November will no doubt see your wallet being approximately as light as mine, which is to say, empty. I cannot fathom why circumstances demanded that Mario Galaxy, Contra 4, and Ass Creed (have yet to pick up Mass Effect) all be released within two weeks of Black Friday. What I do see with perfect clarity, however, is that I have the following: three great games that constantly hinder me from planning from the future, virtually no savings on hand, a waiters' salary (thank god business is picking up), a large payment owed to my university, and several hundred dollars of computer components I need to get very badly this friday, before they magically become a thousand dollars of computer components on saturday.

The computer components are so I can piece together a vaguely shiny new rig. I suffer no delusions that I have the scratch to build Deep Thought or its present-day equivalent, but my old computer recently advised me that it no longer cared for this "accessing the internet" nonsense, and that I could go fuck myself. I could just reformat, but the newest thing in my case is my RADEON X850, so it's probably time for a major overhaul, and Black Friday is the day to do it.

Enter the problem: I really, really want to pick up Mass Effect. It is physically harming me that this game isn't spinning in my 360 right now. But I'll be lucky if I can dig up enough cash to get all the parts I need this Friday. And then, at the end of the month, I have to send a heart-rending amount of money to the University of Tulsa business office.

tl;dr: I'm broke. What can you do about it? Very little, considering most of you are probably now broke as well. Does anyone know if there's a better compendium of Black Friday ads than this?

I finally dug up the scratch to pick up Super Mario Galaxy, and all I could think as I fired it up was in my best mental Mario voice, "Yahoo! Haha!"

All I've had time to do (technically I could have lost my job and kept playing) is clear the first galaxy, and so I have simply the following remarks to make.

This game is beautiful. I could easily be speaking generally, but I am looking chiefly at graphics in this particular bullet point. The art style is gorgeous, and this game is precisely the answer I was looking for about a year ago when people were complaining about the Wii not being a graphics powerhouse. This game proves conclusively, at least in my mind, that all the consoles at present have reached the point where you can make a good looking game without needing a shining golden graphics processor. I could sit there all day and watch the title screen twinkling, telling me that I R MR GAY.

The controls work perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, that I am beginning to suspect that Miyamoto thought up Galaxy first, and then dreamed up a console to put it on.

This is so much fun. From the moment I first jumped into a Launch Star, I was loving every second of this game. It's not hard, it's not especially challenging, and the storyline isn't the most novel thing in, well, the galaxy. But this is almost definitely going to be my favorite game of this entire year. It's good to see Nintendo still knows how to press pure glee onto a game disk.

In short, if this doesn't win pretty much every award 2007 can throw at it, I am going to be fairly cross at judges' panels everywhere.

Funny story, gang. I just got back from a trip to Target to replace my headphones (previous ones stopped working on the right side, got a glorious new set). As I'm perusing the Electronics section, something strikes me as amiss. I notice that the Xbox 360's demo screen is dark. I look around the display case until I find the demo unit, and this is the sight that greets my eyes:



That is all manner of good advertising, folks.

I've always gotta bitch about something, don't I? I was sitting around earlier today, wondering why I keep playing either Secret of Mana or its sequel, Seiken Densetsu 3 about once a month, and I think I've figured it out. Unlike the vast majority of SNES-era RPGs, I am not playing these games for the story. I've never been particularly enamored of the Mana-series' stories, they are passable at best (in my opinion). I am playing these two games solely for the retarded awesome combat systems therein.

They are two distinct systems, but they really feel more like variations of each other. I'm going to take a second to discuss them, so anyone who's already familiar with them can skip it, should you care to do so. Secret of Mana featured a rhythmic, methodical, action-RPG combat system, in which you strike with your weapon, wait for a recharge, strike again, or charge up to perform a stronger attack. The way that attacks often stunned your enemies allowed for a great deal of tactics to be exercised, but for me the place that the combat system truly shined was the casting system, which allowed you to chain spells right after one another (and I mean immediately), allowing that lovable sprite character to convert all of his MP into damage within a matter of seconds. SoM still contains the most disgustingly ridiculous burst damage I've ever seen in an RPG to date. And while this is all technically solid, the system managed to contain a more important element: fun.



Secret of Mana combat was not particularly fast, which places it in direct contrast with its sequel, SD3. In this game the same sort of melee combat was sped way the hell up, to create a hectic sort of melee. In fact, next to SD3, the melee in SoM was downright tedious by comparison. But I missed the casting from SoM, as the casting in SD3 was slowed down and disallowed the sort of burst damage that occured in SoM. Still, the improved melee combat, the new class system, and the return of the ring menus meant that SD3 was a worthy successor to the franchise. Both of these games helped make my SNES experience what it was, and I came into the N64/PS era eager for more.

Square then proceeded to be a cocktease all the way to the present. They released Legend of Mana for the PSX, but the combat system had little in common with its predecessors, and it even got rid of the little ring menus. Its most vile transgression, however, was the loss of the 3-player co-op that had made SoM and SD3 so beloved. And the game mechanics that I had grown to love never came back, despite numerous new entries to the series. The worst, for me, was Return of Mana. I heard about this game at last year's E3, nothing more than the name, and I immediately began to get excited. It only got worse when Square-Enix assured everyone that this would be a true successor to the franchise. It turns out, they meant it would continue the story, which I never cared about.

Long story short, this is a call to any game developer that is listening (meaning nobody): I need a new Secret of Mana game. It doesn't need to be called that, it doesn't need to be in the same universe, even. I just need it to bring back the old game mechanics I loved from it and its successor: a fast-paced, rhythmic ARPG with delightfully hectic melee combat and the sort of casting that was present in SoM (perhaps borrowing spells from SD3). Also to be included is a class system like SD3's, and 3 or 4 player co-op. Feel free to add ring menus. I really, really want this game badly.

So how about it? Would you buy the game I just begged for?

I'm thinking I might start doing something like this more often: borrow mechanics from this game and that to make a game concept I really want somebody, somewhere (indie devs?) to make.
-Pangloss out.

So I already made one largely incoherent rant on the topic of game stories, but I fear my work is not yet done. Stories in video games have yet to make a miraculous improvement, even though I wrote about it on my blog. What gives, developers? Aren't you listening? The answer, assuming any developers had heard the question and bothered to respond, would be a resounding "no".

So anyway, down to business. The way I see it, most stories have three necessary components, plus twenty thousand other components I'm probably forgetting about. But if we make extremely broad and perhaps inaccurate generalizations about game stories, it boils down to three things: characters, setting, and action. Characters were for the most part the subject of my last post, and they're a huge problem in today's games, because it's not enough that an interesting character exists; He/she/it must have some sort of development to endear him/her/itself to the player. Setting refers to not only the place and physical environment of the game, but also the social and historical background of a game. Fortunately, setting isn't really a problem. We see rehashes of settings all the time, but for the most part it isn't that challenging to find a new game set against a fresh and interesting backdrop, the exception to this of course being WWII games. Setting is only a problem for most games inasmuch as it's usually the only element of a story present in games.

Action is a problem in today's games. Understand that when I say action, I am referring to the progression of the plot, including introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, etc. The number of games that have nebulous plots is truly staggering, but depending on the genre, that's not such a huge problem. After all, when you're running around shooting aliens and Nazis, or winning an international fighting tournament, etc., the story is largely something to be brushed aside so you can focus on the other kind of action, the stuff you're making happen on-screen. Stupid stories are much more of a problem when they make their appearance in RPGs, such as Grandia III, but typically storylines in RPGs receive much more attention and as a result contain less suck. At any rate, there's not much to be said about stupid plots, because there's no easy guide to making good plot progression.

One of the biggest challenges to decent plot progression in games, in my opinion, is the plot twist. All too often I see it used in lieu of an actual story, and it really is infuriating. A good, interesting, unexpected twist can elevate an otherwise decent story to excellence, but all too often it gets misused. There are good twists and bad, pointless twists, of course, but there's a third kind, far more insidious. I call it the placeholder plot twist, and it's the kind that is all too often what takes the place of an actual story.

It should go without saying at this point that I'm gonna be dropping mad OMG SPOILARZ from here on.

Gears of War is rather fresh in my mind at the moment, so I'll mention it as an example: the mapping bomb or whatever not working is a pointless twist. All it changes is where I am going, not how I am seeing the game. FFVI changed how you looked at the game, because an apocalypse tends to do that. As much as I love Baten Kaitos, and enjoy its story, it features one of the most pointless plot twists ever seen in the endgame: why bring back Geldoblame as a horrendously weak boss? It really does nothing for the story, and it’s far too late to change something, especially for a character that’s been dead for half the game and can only deal 1 damage. You want an excellent plot twist in the finale? Try Beyond Good and Evil: Peyj being infested by the DomZ makes for mad suspense, denies you full closure, and is just a generally cool twist.

Placeholder twists rear their heads when a developer just can’t be bothered to write an actual fucking story. And even worse, developers lately seem to be convinced that their placeholder twists set against a barren wasteland of a plot is, contrary to outside observations, an excellent, deep story. Epic and Gears of War, I’m looking at you. I distinctly recall CliffyB chatting the internets up about how great Gears’ story was going to be great, and it was going to have fleshed-out, interesting characters. I didn’t believe it, but I did pause and think, “What if?” Gears’ plot can be broken down to three main points, making it pretty standard for shooters: 1) use gadget to map tunnels for a bomb 2) shit, it didn’t work, and the grand finale, 3) fire ze missiles anyway. I think if Epic had just left out step 2 altogether, they would have realized that their “story” was a list of objectives, and then they might have bothered to develop a character or two. I realize I pick on Gears’ story, quite a bit for an FPS, but CliffyB drew my ire when he decided to talk big about it.

Please, please, developers. Before you stick that plot twist into your game, take a step back and make sure it’s a piece completing a larger jigsaw puzzle, so to speak. Because if it isn’t, that one piece of a story will look awfully lonely and stupid.

I know, I know, tl;dr. Basically, plot twists are what game developers seem to be mistaking for stories more and more. This sort of one-shot story development is one of many cancers killing game plots. If there’s anything I’m forgetting, or if you’d just like to call me retarded, hit me up in the comments. Next time I'll try to intersperse all those words with pretty pictures for the illiterate demographic.

It seems as though I've begun to care less and less about stories in video games as time goes on. No, scratch that: stories in newer games have tried and failed to interest me, over and over again. It's no coincidence that Final Fantasy VI (stop calling it FF3, you unwashed heathens) marks the last time I could muster the energy to give a shit about the plot in a Final Fantasy game. And the Final Fantasy series isn't alone: I'm trying desperately to think of all the recent games whose plot I enjoyed, but so far I have roughly four, give or take, out of all the titles I've played in the last year or two. That's just plain shameful, especially when you consider that RPGs are responsible for a sizable percentage of my game collection, probably a plurality. It frightens me that I can play all the way through an RPG and remember more about the combat than the story. After all, what's the first thing that jumps to your mind when someone says "Chrono Trigger"? For me, it's Magus, perhaps the greatest BAMF in RPG history. As great as the combat was, it's the story and characters that are foremost in my mind in these classic RPGs. Yet for some reason, the bulk of newer RPGs I've played don't follow this pattern.

This brings me to what I feel is wrong with today's stories: the characters. It seems like none of the characters in the games I've been playing recently have been anywhere near developed enough. Again returning to FFVI, it feels like character development dropped off immediately afterward in the franchise, with killing off characters completely becoming the best development they could muster. The only character that even came close to interesting me in FFVII was Tifa (I wanted to know why the hell she was interested in such a confused, angsty, aloof asshole who kept ignoring her for another girl), but unfortunately, the only characters who got more than one or two scenes of development were Cloud, Aeris, and Sephiroth, and I couldn't stand any of them. FF8 only got worse, by which I mean I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the party members. Cait Sith was a well-developed character by FF8 standards, I swear to god.

I'm gonna try to stop talking about Final Fantasy now, I swear I can do it. Gears of War, I think, marked the first time I realized that well-crafted narratives were almost nowhere to be found in the gaming industry. I recalled CliffyB going on and on about how Gears strove to tell the story of simple soldiers or some nonsense like that, and I didn't really expect anything, but if you're going to talk up the story of a shooter, you should at least give the plot a passing glance before you send the game to stores. While Gears admittedly had one of the best comic relief characters I've seen in a while, not one of the characters ever saw any real development, ever. And let's be clear, my beef is not with storylines in the shooter genre, indeed, I never expect to encounter any story other than "go to X and blow up Y". Gears is a problem because Epic truly believed they had an awesome, interesting story backing up their action, when in fact there was nothing there but a setting. The industry has come to believe that this crap they slammed out overnight is the height of moving, intellectual literature.

All too often a developer sticks a plot twist in their game, and believes that's all they need for a good story. But the fact is that no matter how good, surprising, original, or whatever your twist might be, and however fresh, dramatic, etc. your plot may be, it does not matter one bit if I cannot care for your characters. That means that you have to actually take time out and flesh them out, give them a history, motivation, goals, etc. The most interesting character on earth is worthless if all that they ever do, story-wise, is introduce themselves, then stand in line with the party and shoot their gun. I'm looking at you, Vincent (dammit, I swore I wasn't gonna bring FF7 back up).

On the brighter side of things, Baten Kaitos in particular (and Monolith/Tri-Crescendo in general) is a series that gives me hopes for the future of RPGs. Not only do they stick in well-written, unexpected twists on a regular basis, but their characters are well-rounded for the most part. The story is at times cheesy and random, or even stupid, but for the most part the writers are always making an active effort to develop their goddamned characters.



I realize that this is a topic that gets beaten to death here on Destructoid, and every other damn gaming site in existence for that matter, but I just wanted to give my personal take on the subject. Maybe I feel this way because I'm an amateur writer with a few half-baked novel ideas in my notebook, and a dream of one day writing a video game with a decent story. Regardless, my stance is that solid, well fleshed-out characters always have been and always will be the foundation upon which any decent story must be built. So there, my first real blog post is done, and I'm not especially offended by it. Sometime soon I'll come back with a second (albeit shorter) part to this rant, on my problems with the way plot twists are used in most of today's games.

TL;DR: stories in today's games suck, because their characters are flat. Thoughts, criticisms? Am I an idiot? Was FF7's story marvelous? Can you think of eleventy-billion games you played last year with kick-ass stories? Get your comment on and let me know (except about FF7, jesus god I'm sick of hearing about how moving Aeris' death was).

-Pangloss out.