Random encounters, less is more

I recently tried Breath of Death 7, a parody game filled with references to retro JRPGs. It had great music and visual design. Unfortunately, I overall didn’t enjoy it. It did get me thinking about random encounters, and the difference between difficulty and the frequency of battles.

Random encounters are one of those features that, despite being nostalgic, are an archaic mechanic. Even in the SNES era with Chrono Trigger, games were drifting away from surprise battles that popped out of nowhere. Random encounters did linger for a couple console generations, but now they are mostly found in games trying to tap into nostalgia.

I noticed that my frustration with random encounters is not consistent. Some games I find to be slog, while other I thoroughly enjoy. This made me stew on what the difference is, and why is it in certain games I become engaged with the random battles, but in others I become frustrated. I don’t have an ironclad answer, but I think I’ve gotten close to parsing it out.

High encounter rates

I’ve started to really dislike high encounter rates. They create a frustrating sense of interruption. Recently, I started to wonder why. A RPGs combat is one of its main features. So why would more fights tip over into annoyance? I think it’s dependent on the difficulty of each fight and how much time you spend popping in and out of battle.

If the fights are difficult, and a battle is triggered once every few steps, then the dungeon turns into a slog. Having to intently focus on each fight while making minimal progress doesn’t feel satisfying. Often, our goal in a dungeon is to reach the end, constant interruptions every few steps impedes our progress. It doesn’t feel like solving a puzzle, but instead like wading through mud.

Making the encounters easy doesn’t change much either. In those instances, the player is likely to button mash their way through fights. It’s not engaging to have auto-battle turned on for an entire dungeon, with the only interesting encounter being the boss.

The longer, more maze-like, and puzzle dense a dungeon is, the more a high encounter rate becomes infuriating. If we’re trying to find our way through a maze, or backtrack to solve a puzzle, constant surprise battles at a high encounter rate become a hindrance. If surviving battles is a tertiary goal, then their inclusion takes away from our primary and secondary goals—in this case solving the puzzles and getting to the end of a dungeon. An example of this is Final Fantasy II, which had long maze-like dungeons, but with an encounter rate so high it made navigating each map a pain. There’s a reason common sentiment is to avoid the original release and instead play the pixel remaster, which allows you to turn off encounters.

Later entries in the series caught on to this. In Final Fantasy X, there are no random battles in any of the trials, which were areas dedicated to solving a series of puzzles. If there had been, I guarantee it would’ve become a recurring complaint from players.

Low encounter rates

I prefer low encounter rates. They make each battle more impactful, and allow you to engage in the mechanics of the fight without the pace feeling bogged down. Final Fantasy IX is a good example of this. In FF9, you’re likely to only have one or two battles per screen. Often, there are no encounters over multiple screens as you navigate the environment. This gives you freedom to explore, with the fights being more engaging because of their infrequency.

And there are whole segments of FF9 where the random battles are turned off, instead opting for planned encounters. These integrate with the narrative far better, usually having enemies deliver dialogue or take an action before initiating the battle. This gives extra context, adds to the sense of verisimilitude between gameplay and story world, and creates build-up that excites us to partake in a story moment via the game’s battle system. It’s a far better and more immersive way to engage players in combat.

Why I didn't like Breath of Death

Breath of Death has great visuals and music. I also like the combo system, where certain abilities increase your combo modifier, the higher the modifier the more damage finisher attacks do. It’s a simple and clever way to get the player to use all their abilities instead of defaulting to the biggest damage ones.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the game, and ended up not finishing it. The most frustrating part for me was the dungeon designs and high encounter rate. The dungeons are long and maze-like, with winding corridors broken up with little bits of impassable debris that you have to zig-zag around. While trying to navigate these long dungeons, the player is bombarded with constant battles at a far too high frequency. This turns dungeons into a frustrating experience of constant interruptions while trying to find where the exit is.

It's made worse by the fluctuating difficulty of each fight. Some fights you can button mash through, others you have to stop and pay attention or you’ll die. And dying boots you back to your last save. Since there’s no autosaves, not remembering to save regularly could mean you lose a large chunk of progress.

The high encounter rate mixed with long, maze-like dungeons created an unenjoyable experience for me. It felt like a slog grinding through so many fights while searching for the dungeon’s exit, doubly so with the fluctuating difficulty of battles.

There’s a “Fight!” option in the menu that lets you initiate a battle whenever you want. Each dungeon has a set number of encounters, about a few dozen. You can park next to a HP/MP replenishing save point and grind through all the dungeon’s battles. This ends all battles and lets you roam the dungeon freely. I wasn’t keen to sit in one spot and grind out fights, and the option to do so seems like a band-aid solution to larger problem. I’d much rather have the encounter rate lowered, so each fight could still be difficult but not feel like a constant hindrance while trying to navigate the labyrinthine dungeons.

Just recently, the creators released a remade version, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning: Reanimated. This new remake has updated visuals, music, and quality of life changes. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like an impressive revamp of the original. Despite my frustration with Breath of Death, I’m very interested in trying this reanimated version.

Conclusion

I have a lot of nostalgia for the format of retro JRPGs, including random encounters. But, I can’t deny that it’s an archaic design choice that modern games have drifted away from entirely. Opting instead for planned encounters or having enemies visible on the map, which I think is better overall.

When random encounters are present, I think the best mix is to have a low encounter rate with higher difficulty. This means that each fight can feel more impactful and force players to use all their abilities. Less, more engaging fights means dungeons shouldn’t feel like a slog, hitting the right mix of forward progress and challenge.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and narrative regression

I really enjoyed Dawn of War 2 and its expansions, especially how it streamlined RTS mechanics and introduced RPG style loot and upgrades. This made me curious to try out the first in the series. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was surprised to find a robust—though straightforward—narrative campaign. So much so, that it made me retroactively disappointed in DoW2’ story campaign. This disappointment was cemented when I finally played DoW2: Retribution, which I’ll talk about at the end of this newsletter.

Dawn of War, a surprisingly robust narrative campaign

I was really surprised by Dawn of War’s story campaign. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much. But the narrative is engaging, with a protagonist whose internal conflict drives the story forward. There are also cutscenes before and after every mission that help to build up and progress the story. It might seem trivial, but compared to DoW2’s lackluster mission briefings, DoW’s cutscenes, voice acting, and interesting main character really put into perspective what was lacking in DoW2.

Even DoW’s mission briefings are written like a captain’s log, helping to do the double duty of further defining the protagonist and communicate worldbuilding elements.

Dawn of War’s story has some twists, buttressed by a heaping dollop of paranoia. The expected infighting and suspicion typical of the imperium is at play, and it ties into our MCs past, coming together to make an engaging narrative.

I enjoyed it overall, but couldn’t get over my frustration that these elements were lacking in Dawn of War 2. I think it was a huge mistake for DoW2 to have a nameless protagonist. There are benefits to having a player-insert, but in this case DoW2 lost far more than it gained.

Streamlined RTS

Where Dawn of War 2 leaned more toward a squad-based RPG, the original Dawn of War leans toward traditional RTS gameplay. DoW is much similar to something like Warcraft 3, but still streamlined. The resources are capture points, which I really preferred. I didn’t miss chopping down trees. I also found building up a base and getting elite units to be pretty quick.

Having the resources be capture points and getting a fully upgraded base quickly encourages you to push forward. The capture points create an interesting tug-of-war dynamic, as the enemies are trying to steal them from you.

Although, in the last quarter of the game, I found myself getting burnt out. Many of the missions are similar, and by that point most of your units have been unlocked. The maps started to feel repetitive (outside of a couple interesting scenarios), and towards the end I started to miss DoW2’s upgrades and loot. Maybe a couple of the longer missions could have been reduced, or had more mission variety.

Overall, I still enjoyed it. It’s incredibly satisfying to have a swarm of space marines and dreadnoughts wade into an enemy base.

DoW 2: Retribution, more options aren't always better

I wrote about Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising previously, I enjoyed both and wanted to try DoW2’s final expansion, Retribution.

DoW2: Retribution still has the squad-based gameplay, but introduces a variety of units that you can summon from control points. This creates a nice mix of traditional RTS unit management, and squad-based RPG gameplay. Out of both games, the core of the gameplay in Retribution might be my favourite.

Unfortunately, it’s marred by the bizarre choice to have six copy/pasted campaigns. There are six factions you can choose from, and each of their campaigns is the literal, exact same. Same maps, mission objectives, and the overarching story of each is relatively samey with only a few lines of dialogue to differentiate it.

This was such a huge letdown. I would have much preferred two or three unique smaller campaigns that were interconnected, instead of more factions with the exact same missions. The only thing that changes are the units you control and a few lines of dialogue. Even then, much of the dialogue is variations of “destroy the tower,” but with a different accent. Even worse, some of the characters in your squad don’t even have voice overs or any dialogue whatsoever, like the Commissar in the Imperial Guard campaign. And a handful of missions toward the end of the Imperial Guard campaign don’t even have mission briefing text. This is absurd.

The only campaign that is fleshed out, and clearly the canon one, is the space marines. If you’re going to play Retribution, then I’d recommend just playing the space marine campaign, and maybe trying a few missions of another faction to test out their units. Otherwise, I do not recommend trying to play through multiple campaigns. I did the Space Marine, Imperial Guard, Ork, and a quarter of the Eldar before tapping out.

I cannot stress how much of a letdown these campaigns were. I don’t understand why they chose to have six repetitive campaigns. More options aren’t always better.

Conclusion

Despite my issues with DoW2: Retribution’s single player campaign, I still really enjoy the gameplay. But, the original DoW’s story mode put into perspective how much the sequel flubbed its narrative campaigns. I think it was a huge mistake to replace a named character with a player-insert, the story lost so much personality, and our squad members were not engaging enough to compensate.

Still, halfway through DoW I found myself missing DoW2’s more RPG adjacent mechanics. If I could mix the original Dawn of War narrative campaign with DoW2’s squad-based gameplay, then I think that would be my ideal Dawn of War game.

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Despite its missteps, I’ve become a fan of the series. I’m looking forward to playing DoW’s subsequent expansions, and then Dawn of War 3. I’ll share my thoughts here, subscribe so you don’t miss out.

Fiction update and recommended reads

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This year is when I tried to hunker down and get back to finishing my sci-fi novel. I dropped it for several months, so I had to go back and reread it along with working through the old worldbuilding for it. Interestingly, I drifted away from some of the core ideas in the original draft. This led to me changing characters and figuring out reworks for the story’s universe. I like the direction it’s going in, but those reworks didn’t necessarily translate into an increased word count. Right now, the draft is at about 65k words. My goal is 90k, and I should be able to hit it without having to smudge any corners.

My end goal with this novel is to shop it around to hopefully get an agent. I feel pretty confident about it, but I still need to finish the damn thing before anything else. Hopefully I’ll be able to start submitting it next year. Stay tuned to this newsletter for updates.

Speaking of this newsletter, I’ve been consistently posting a new Hello Void on the first of every month for the last few months. I’ve enjoyed writing about games, and using it as an excuse to play older games I’ve been curious about but never got around to. I especially like going back to the 2000s era where there’s a bunch of interesting 3D games, I’ve become oddly partial to those blocky polygon models. Expect more of that in the future, with of course some newer games thrown in.

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Short stories have always been my weak spot, but I’m going to give them another try. I’d written them off as something I’m not good at, and maybe they just aren’t a narrative form I connect with, but I’m still going to try writing a few and shopping them around to venues. I’m working out the rough idea for two fantasy stories right now. I’ll update this space if they manage to see the light of day.

Recommended Reads

Here are a few newsletters and books I’ve read recently and really enjoyed.

“What Hawk the Slayer Got Right,” by Alec Worley. This a great dive into a movie that I’ve always wanted to watch. It’s from an era that I find fascinating, and Alec Worley explores the history surrounding it in an incredibly engaging way.

Combat in fantasy series, by Danie Ware. I really enjoyed Danie Ware’s Judge Anderson and Sisters of Battle stories, I’ve been a fan ever since. Recently they’ve been sharing advice on writing combat in SFF. Check out Combat in Fantasy, Part One, and Combat in Fantasy, Part Two, for some great insight.

Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliot. This has been on my TBR for a while, and I finally got to sit down and dive into it. It’s a phenomenal sci-fi story with both space battles and political intrigue. It follows Sun, a princess navigating conspiracies and backstabbing, all while intent on proving herself capable to inherit a throne.

Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West, by Aidan Moher. It’s no secret that JRPGs are one of my favourite genres. I grew up with them, and think a lot of my love for fantasy and sci-fi came from games like Final Fantasy, long before I started reading SFF books. Fight, Magic, Items digs into the history of the genre and shines a light on the people who made these cultural touchstones. If you have even a passing interest in the history of JRPGs, then I highly recommend this book.

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I hope everyone has a good holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

-Matt

Worldbuilding Revisited, Internal Logic

This is an old post from my blog, originally shared in the eon past of 2016. It was apart of a short lived worldbuilding series I did. Looking back, I have mixed feelings on some of the entries I wrote, but feel this one holds up. Anyone who’s been writing SFF likely won’t find anything new here, but I like to revisit the basics every now and then.

An important caveat about the original worldbuilding series, but also with anything that orbits writing advice:

This series was about the things that I've learned, or am learning, about worldbuilding. It's me trying to level up my craft, and documenting the process. These posts represent my personal approach to worldbuilding, and the way I do it might not be right for you. I'm not an authority on writing, and so everything in these posts should be taken with not only a grain of salt, but a heaping bucket of saline.

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Worldbuilding, Internal Logic

Can the manticore bite through steel? Does the dragon’s fire melt stone? What happens when someone gets hit with those mage fireballs? Any piece of fiction that has fantastical, sci-fi, superhero, or any variation of those elements needs to have consistent internal logic. It’s the thing that keeps us, the audience, rooted in the world even though Strongman is swinging a bus like a baseball bat. 

I see internal logic as the rules of your world. If you have a fireball flinging mage, then the damage of their fireballs should be consistent. That way the reader knows that when the fireball hits a wooden shield it’ll char it, but if it hits a steel shield it won’t do any damage. Things like that, that remain consistent throughout the story, are what help keep the reader immersed in the world. If the fireball doesn’t do anything to a wooden shield, but turns a steel one into a pile of molten goop, that takes me out of the story because it doesn’t seem to make sense without an added explanation. If later in the story the fireball turns a wooden beam to ash, then I’ll start to think the writer doesn’t have any internal rules that govern the mage’s fireballs, making it hard for me to get into the story because it feels like there’s no consistency.

I’m using things mostly associated with fantasy as examples, but this really applies to any kind of story. It can be extended to all kinds of things in a whole variety of genres, from character traits, to tools, sci-fi gadgets, or even laws and the consistency with which they’re enforced. When any kind of “rule” is introduced to your world, you should stick to the general parameters of that “rule” throughout the story.

Rules could be things like:

The fireball cannot melt metal

The comm-link requires wifi access

The yeti needs to eat, like, a *lot* of food daily 

And so on. The rules can be loose, or more like guidelines that can be bent this way or that, but in general there should be some consistency to their implementation. Maybe the mage fireballs can only melt metal if their being cast by an elder mage. That would be a good way to bend the rule, or add an addendum to it. 

And I prefer to know the limitations of these abilities or powers. It makes it easier to build the world around them, to know how they would act in most scenarios. It feels like you’ve laid out your tools, and now it’s just a matter of how you want to use them.

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Does it hold up?

I think the idea outlined here is solid enough. I will say that the bounds of how magic works in your world can be bent and molded however you want. How stringently you want to adhere to consistency might also change whether you have a soft or hard magic system. Although, I’d ere on the side of caution with letting a soft magic system be an excuse for excessive leniency. I think there should still be limits understood by your readers. If vaguely understood magic keeps solving problems, then the conflicts presented to your characters will feel lackluster and their solutions unsatisfying.

Anyway, I’m still learning. So take this all with a grain salt.

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If you enjoyed this post, then subscribe. You can also check out my archive to see the other topics I write about (it’s a lot of RPGs).

Warhammer 40,000 and brutal simplicity

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 just released a little bit ago, and it looks awesome. I’ve wanted to play it, but unfortunately my CPU is too old. So, I decided to go back and replay Space Marine 1.

I’ve always been interested in the WH40k universe, but never really dove into it. Lately, I’ve been engaging with it way more. Not only did I replay SM1, but I also decided to play through Dawn of War 2. That, alongside watching lore videos and ogling Ork miniatures, I’m pretty sure the Warhammer universe has its hooks in me.

Something that struck me about both games though, is how each is streamlined in their own way. Making both Space Marine and Dawn of War 2 good entry points into the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

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Space Marine

Brutal, and to the point

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a straightforward experience filled with brutal action. It drops you onto a planet with a single mission, evacuate a titan as the world succumbs to an Ork WAAAGH!

You then proceed to eviscerate Orks with chainswords, thunder hammers, meltaguns, and the classic bolter. It’s a satisfying experience to fend off hordes of enemies, and the pacing never edged into dull. There isn’t an upgrade tree, but the game managed to keep things unique by slowly introducing new weapons throughout the experience. Meaning there’s always something new around the corner. Combine that with the temporary jump pack upgrade sprinkled throughout key moments, and it keeps combat engaging.

It was refreshing to play something that’s straightforward. Space Marine nails its core gameplay, creating a satisfying experience that can be repeated over and over. It doesn’t need superfluous mechanics or mini games, if anything that would likely mire the pacing. We drop into an Ork horde and get to let loose. The guns feel impactful, the melee weapons visceral, all coming together for an adrenaline-fueled bloodbath.

One of the ways Space Marine facilitates this is with executions. There’s no cover system here, instead you’re encouraged to get in the thick of it and lay waste with melee attacks. This provides opportunities for you to initiate context sensitive executions, which when performed regenerates your health. This is a brilliant way to encourage an aggressive playstyle, as you benefit from taking risks. It’s also incredibly satisfying to land executions, making you feel like a rampaging juggernaut.

I think Space Marine is a phenomenal game. Its satisfying, brutal, and straightforward. This is the second time I’ve played through it, and I doubt it’ll be the last. I also think it’s a good introduction to the world of Warhammer 40,000, as it gives a good foundation of the tone, and a few of the galactic actors. It doesn’t infodump an overwhelming amount of information, nor does it rely on an expectation of you already being knee-deep in WH40k lore. All that said, I definitely recommend it.

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Give us an Ork game

Listen, I can’t be the only one that wants this. I know there are a smattering of other Ork games, but I think we need one in the style of Space Marine. Let us control a Nob or Warboss and go ham on the Astra Militarum. Space Marines might be the most popular faction, but our Ork boyz need some time in the spotlight.

At this point, I’m just trying to will this into reality. I’m sure there’s an audience for an action oriented Ork game. Give us an excuse to WAAAGH!

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Dawn of War 2

RTS, but not really

Dawn of War 2 has been in my steam library for years. I’ve bounced off it twice before, for whatever reason I just wasn’t connecting with it. But this time around, it got its hooks in me. Maybe because I’d been going deep into lore videos and genuinely engaging with the world of Warhammer 40,000.

DOW2 is structured like an RTS, but doesn’t quite play like the ones I’m familiar with. The biggest difference is a lack of base building, DOW2 is squad based. Instead of hunkering down to harvest trees and gold, your squad drops into a map and goes straight for the objective.

At first, I found this jarring. I was used to the base building of Warcraft and StarCraft, but this squad-based gameplay ended up being much faster and more engaging. Each one of your squads, led by a named Space Marine of the Blood Ravens, has unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. There’s a scouting squad that can go invisible and plant explosives, one that’s melee based with jump packs so they can get in and out quick to be disruptive, and so on. Each of your Space Marines has a talent tree, and can change loadouts with new weapons, armors, and accessories. All of this makes DOW2 more akin to an RPG than a traditional RTS.

Each mission feels more like loading into a dungeon, with a faster pace than hunkering down and building a base. My only complaint is that in the original campaign it’s not always clear what weapon types are effective against which enemy types. But the subsequent expansion, Chaos Rising, improved this by providing more info in the mission briefing. I also think Chaos Rising is where DOW2 really shines, as the missions are paced better, and structured in such a way that really forces you to take advantages of your squads’ strengths.

I’m glad I gave Dawn of War 2 another try. This time around I’m really enjoying it, and much like Space Marine, find it to be an engaging and straightforward experience that prioritizes intense action. DOW2 also doubles as a good entry point into WH40k. Overall, I’d highly recommend it, just don’t expect a typical base building RTS.

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Conclusion

Both Space Marine and Dawn of War 2 streamline their respective genres into a satisfying laser focused experience. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with each, and plan on trying out the other two Dawn of War games. I’m also looking forward to eventually getting to play Space Marine 2, when I finally upgrade my CPU. Hopefully by then we’ll finally have an Ork game in the style of Space Marine, WAAAGH!

Final Fantasy II, the bad one

Final Fantasy II is the one entry in the series that is rarely talked about. It always seemed that when listing oldschool FFs, you could find people who had good things to say about one, three, and everything after. But FF2 was oft skipped. I didn’t give it much thought until recently, when I started to become curious. It’s the only game that I knew nothing about. I had no concept of FF2’s characters, villain, abilities, anything.

Most online sentiment for FF2 is not very positive. Particularly for the original release, which was apparently brutal. But, the pixel remaster fixes all that and makes the game far more playable. So, I finally gave FF2 a try.

Too many random encounters

This is agony. The encounter rate is atrocious. It’s way too high, every few steps triggers a fight, making exploring dungeons a chore. The fights themselves are also really easy and straightforward, to the point that I played nearly the whole game on auto-battle. I wasn’t engaged with the combat, just auto-attacking through everything. With such a high encounter rate, I can’t imagine what it would be like if each fight was difficult. I probably would have tapped out and not finished the game.

The high encounter rate makes the pace of the dungeons grueling. Each dungeon is built like a maze, with multiple floors of winding corridors and dead ends. The exit to the next floor isn’t clearly marked, and is usually hidden behind a door. The game loves to fill dungeons with empty rooms, that means you’ll be going in and out of doors with little to no reward, butting up against dead end hallways, and doing it all while the high encounter rate bogs down the whole experience. This makes dungeons a frustrating grind, which is unfortunate considering there isn’t much else to the game other than its dungeons.

Thankfully, the pixel remaster gives you tools to mitigate this. You can turn encounters on and off with the press of a button. And, there is a boost option in the configuration menu that allows you to apply experience multipliers, so you can level up faster by doing less fights. I still find it frustrating that I have to go noodle in the options menus, and turn off combat—a core feature of the game—to enjoy it. I’d much prefer having the encounter rate reduced overall, with more exp from each fight, so we could just play the game from beginning to end without any hinderances. They could’ve added a classic mode for those who wanted to play through a grinder like the original release.

Flat characters

I didn’t find the main cast interesting at all. There’s not much to them, nothing interesting is revealed about their past, and their relationships with the other characters are sterile at best. This is true for almost all the NPCs in the game, from the princess who gives you your early quests, to the final villain. There’s no substance to any of them.

The rotation of guest characters doesn’t fare much better. They all fall into the same category, uninteresting and flat. The only intriguing thing about guest characters are their interesting visual designs, but that only goes so far. Even then, they lack a sense of uniqueness in combat, since each character has the same moveset and spells. Unless you keep the guests with their original weapons, like the dragoon with a spear, there isn’t much that differentiates them. They don’t even get special abilities like jump, steal, chakra, or any of the other Final Fantasy staples. All this makes the guests feel like just another unit, easily replaced with a blank soldier rather than a named character.

Proto-Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II has many of the hallmarks that would become the norm for the series, like guest characters and character deaths. But, being an early entry in the series, none of it is fleshed out yet. The characters and villains are loosely tied together, but not in a way with any meaningful depth. The guest characters feel shallow, and the deaths are often lacklustre (except one that I thought was well done). All in all, FF2 very much feels like a proto-Final Fantasy. An early version filled with all the narrative beats that would become standout moments in the following games. The characters and story arc even feel like an early version of Final Fantasy IV, like FF2 was the rough draft to FF4’s final edit.

Conclusion

I thinks it’s fascinating from a historical perspective, but on its own I can’t say it’s a good game. I would not recommend playing it, especially if you don’t already have an interest in the history of the series or that of JRPGs. If you do play it, I’d suggest making shameless use of the experience multipliers in the boost menu, and turning encounters off whenever they start to annoy you.

The boost multipliers and toggle for encounters help a lot, but I still find it frustrating that I have to turn off a core aspect of the game. The most fun I had was when encounters were off and I was only fighting monsters from chests and bosses. Which made me wish they’d modified the encounter rate and experience by default, and then gave players some kind of classic option for those that want the grind.

Despite all that, Final Fantasy II grew on me in the end. This is clearly an important part of Final Fantasy’s foundation, one that future FFs would build off of. Even if I can’t wholeheartedly recommend FF2, I’m still glad to have experienced it.

Darkest Dungeon and Narrative Context

Darkest Dungeon is the best game I’ve played that doesn’t have a plot, and yet has a story. It’s a peculiar distinction to make, but it’s the only way I can think to describe how Darkest Dungeon’s narrative and themes are laced throughout every aspect of the game, without having a point A to point B plot.

Darkest Dungeon is layered in a gothic Lovecraftian aesthetic. You find yourself pitted against tentacled horrors and warped pigmen. The whole game has an oppressive feel, bearing down on you with inescapable hopelessness. It’s phenomenal. This is all communicated with an amazing mix of art and sound that comes together to create a vivid experience.

The final knot that hold the whole experience together, is the ancestor’s voice over.

Conflict and Tragedy

The ancestor’s voice over narrates the entire game, from combat, to the Hamlet (the game’s hub town), and all the little pieces of exposition we’re fed over the course of the game. It’s a low, pained tone that haunts us as we try and clean up the ancestor’s failings.

Darkest Dungeon is inextricably tied to the ancestor’s actions. We see the remnants of his dark rituals, grotesque experiments, and disregard for the townsfolk who were his charge. Each dungeon, each boss, and every broken thing about the Hamlet is the ancestor’s fault.

This is where conflict and tragedy intersect, rooted throughout the game’s design. Each boss is tied to the ancestor’s actions. When you enter a boss dungeon, the ancestor narrates a snippet of that boss’s history. They are always created by the ancestor. A problem that was the result of his greed. And you are there to clean up, throwing body after body at horrors to fix his mess.

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings...

—Ancestor

The ancestor starts in a position of power. A leader of vague title to the surrounding town. He’s wealthy and wants for nothing. But then his greed and selfish fascination with the Darkest Dungeon drives him to more extreme actions, until his end (this is all shown in the opening cutscene). Which is when the player, as the descendant, enters a derelict and broken Hamlet.

The ancestor starts as a powerful leader, but we enter after the tragedy, when he has already brought himself low and expired from this world. The ruins of the Hamlet, the dangers of the dungeons, are all that’s left of him. And it is all failure.

The minute to minute gameplay is laced with this subtext. Every raised undead and grotesquely summoned monster is reinforcing the ancestors actions. He may be gone, but his failings haunt us. The player is partaking in the tragedy, at the very tail end of it, by throwing heroes into the fray. And our frustration, either when a leveled up hero dies, or we run out of gold, its all part of the hopelessness that hangs over the Hamlet. All initiated by the ancestor. His actions still affecting us.

Plot vs Story

I wouldn’t say Darkest Dungeon has a plot. It may be possible to very loosely apply the boss encounters and build-up to the final dungeon on a plotline, but that feels like a stretch. Really, the game is about grinding out levels while partaking in the gothic fantasy atmosphere. But there is still a story.

The discussion of what plot versus story is can get convoluted, it depends on who you ask. In this context, I separate plot as being the story beats that make the backbone of a narrative. Hero leaves town, meets mentor, encounters villain, climbs Mt. Doom, etc. But lacks all the characterization, worldbuilding, and atmosphere that makes a story complete. The two are so intertwined that is makes sense to not break them apart outside of noodly conversation around narrative.

For games though, the way stories are presented can be very different than other media. Darkest Dungeon might not have the player following a clear route through a plotline, but it’s still enmeshed in story. The narrative permeates every aspect of gameplay. Heroes permadeath frustrates us, makes us angry or hopeless, even feeling like we wasted our time. The background sounds, especially when the torch is at 0%, evoke horrors just beyond our sight. And all of this, the reason we’re sending heroes to die in nightmare wrought landscapes, is because of the ancestor’s actions.

The game design is the narrative. Grinding levels is part of the conflict, a result of the ancestor’s tragedy. One the player strives to push against, despite the consequences of our predecessor’s actions constantly bearing down on us. Each dungeon run has narrative conflict rooted in its foundation, and supports the ancestor’s tragedy. The narrative and game design are so expertly interwoven that it creates an amazing experience. There’s no part of Darkest Dungeon that feels out of place.

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If you can’t tell, I’ve been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon lately. I went through the same stages many players do, where at first I got incredibly frustrated, considered dropping it, but then ended up hooked. It’s a peculiar game that can shift from infuriating to comforting once you learn the tactics to deal with each enemy type. But I was particularly struck by how the narrative is tied to the gameplay, it really is phenomenal.

If you haven’t tried it, and you like the sound of a turn-based rogue-like, then I highly recommend Darkest Dungeon.

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Make bad art

Photo by Christa Dodoo on Unsplash

I’ve been in a slump recently. Dragging my feet across all metrics, staring at manuscripts, books to-read, blinking cursors on blank pages. I lost it, the urge to keep going, keep writing. Putting one word down, and then the next, seemed so insurmountable. One brick at a time, build that wall.

I think there’s only so many failures most people can take before it grinds them down. The threshold is different for everyone, but there’s a threshold nonetheless. I was confident I’d hit it. Tired of trudging through the muck, knee deep and going nowhere.

And then I ran into this twitter thread, from an account I’d barely ever heard of. For some reason, it flipped a switch. Wtf was I doing? Agonizing over whether my work was good or bad, if it would fit this market or that. I’d lost the plot, started comparing myself to other writers, convinced there was nowhere to go but down.

Fuck it. Make art. Make bad art. Make shit, and then make shit again and again. And when you’re done, start over and make more shit. Just keep making.

I guess sometimes we really do need to hear it from someone else. To see there are others going through the same thing you are. We’re all trudging through the muck together, it doesn’t benefit anyone—least of all yourself—to stop. Keep moving forward, keep making, inch by inch. We’ll build that wall, make some shit, then do it again.

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Anyway, I’m probably self-publishing another novella early next year. So subscribe or whatever if you want to know when it happens.