It goes by quick: the story of an imperfect yet happy family turned into a placid examination of an estranged and resentful relationship that forms between mother and daughter after the passing of their husband and father. The daughter – Adora – is tasked by her aunt to find an old key in her childhood home. During her search, she uncovers old memories by cleaning and restoring certain small objects in the house – like a record player and a typewriter – that each house their own unique anecdote.  

She catches glimpses of her mother’s old accolades as a writer, a pursuit she seemingly dropped out of nowhere despite some modest success. After her father’s death, Adora takes up making music, a hobby that reminds her of her father, and makes for her mother a cassette tape with music that reflects her desire to connect and comfort her. But her mother, predictably overworked in her drive to repress her own feelings of grief, throws it in the trash and admonishes Adora for being so reckless with her future, in wasting her time with a pointless hobby. Understandably, their relationship worsens, and when Adora goes off to her adult life, she refuses to call her until she’s proven her wrong. Her mother dies before they ever reconcile with each other, and her regret is obviously sour.  

I love to engage in anticipatory regret. One of my more pressing regrets is that when my parents eventually pass on, it’ll be a righteously unsatisfactory ending to a deeply dysfunctional familial situation. There’s no reconciling, because the situation only persists thanks to my casual lifelong performance as anyone except the kinds of people they deeply fear (gay, leftist, etc) and they allow themselves the peace of sweet ignorance. It’s alienating and weird. I think of it as a thin veil – we are opposed in virtually every way that matters, but they are all I have, so I know at some point I’m going to be like Adora, wishing for different circumstances, a better end to a path that only goes in one direction.

My own memory is pretty spotty, specifically in terms of my own childhood and periods of my life that occurred farther than ten years in the past. Letting a memory attach to something physical is a pretty powerful tool to keep an internal narrative going, especially as a person who never took up writing in a diary. I’ve been dragging around things for over a decade now, from apartment to apartment, simply because it holds the potential to help me remember something I at some point wanted to remember. Occasionally, during the few times per year I wander around the house I grew up in, I’ll pick up some old toy or stuffed animal given to me in a brief moment of harmony in an otherwise turbulent childhood and feel the fog of war lift from some part of my mind. Cleaning off the objects in Undusted feels similarly peaceful, brushing out the crud in the corners and wiping off grime; and finding little pockets of dirt in old gadgets opens the moment of reminiscence to breathe and reach its natural conclusion. 

The end of Adora’s story is the realization that she and her mother were suffering similarly but separately, needlessly for the fact that they could have met each other on equal grounds if they took the time and space to acknowledge their grief. Both had unspoken needs and tragedies through which they filtered their interactions with each other, which led to redundant animosity and miscommunication. Every time they had a moment to reconcile, they stalled.  

It’s a very personal story, and the depth and detail remind me yet again how a certain experience can be elevated by the player rather than the reader or watcher. Cleaning, thinking, coming to terms with each step of the story. Taking the time in its fullness, along for the ride with the author. Part of my bitterness is seeing a familial relationship that could be mended so easily in comparison to my own, but Adora’s story is familiar in its inevitability – there is no ending reflective of an entire life, all the rights and wrongs, things said and unsaid, perfectly preserved in a final moment of satisfaction. Mend what you can, brace for what you can’t.    

I won’t sit here and insist that every relationship is able to be mended—some are destined to be weird and fraught until the very end— but that regret may still remain. Someday I’ll be in a similar position to Adora: sifting through stuff in the garage, boxes of unorganized ephemera (and probably like a hundred bibles), cleaning off the dust and picking apart both the good and the bad memories, waffling between contrition and acceptance. 

The post Facing a Bitter Mirror in Undusted: Letters from the Past appeared first on Gamesline.

I am not angry about this, even though I’d rather things be different; art can thrive in any condition. I think there have been good revivals that play to the past, and reboots that interpret characters and stories through a modern lens. However, the ones that don’t work are the ones that don’t bother to reinterpret, purely playing the hits instead.

When I played Pokémon Pokopia a few months ago, I knew there would be callbacks to Red and Blue’s Kanto. Folks online had looked at the maps of each area and lined them up with cities in Generation One’s landmass, and the story in-game quickly told me that this was a Kanto, nay, a Pokémon world ravaged by some form of climate catastrophe that left the land bereft of both humans and Pokémon. When the player character, a Ditto that just so happens to be freed from its Poké Ball, begins to rebuild the land, Pokémon return and begin to emulate human society in a hope that people will also come back. 

The Pokémon are interacting with the world in a way that emulates the past, yes, but they are also bringing things forward. You aren’t tasked with re-creating the cities as they were before the disaster (you can if you want, but there’s no real guidelines). Instead, the Pokémon are inspired by what they remember from their lives with humans and want to show how capable they are by their own means. They want humans to feel comfortable if and when they return, but the Pokémon have their own needs, and request amendments to the cities to fit their likes and dislikes. The Pokémon are characters in themselves, and many of them act very differently to how people have always imagined them. There’s a reason the valley girl/gyaru Bulbasaur and Southern-drawling Kyogre stand out so much. It’s novel! 

If a remake of a game retreads the same roads with little deviation, it is not for those of us actively interacting with the media. It’s there only to court those searching for a cheap hit of nostalgia. Pokopia posits that building on top of a foundation while introducing new things for new inhabitants will still appeal to those returning.

There was a moment about a week into my playthrough where, even though I was already immensely enjoying the game, Pokopia became something special. I had created a good amount of homes in the Withered Wasteland, the starting area where Fuchsia City once stood. I got my little town of Pokémon to around environment level six or seven (shh), which means the residents were on the path to absolute contentment. For the whole game, a unique set of tracks played for each area, mostly original save for the Pokémon Center healing jingle as a common motif. 

Suddenly, without drawing attention to it, the music shifted to a new remix of the Fuschia City theme. It took me a moment to realize what had happened, and as soon as I did, I broke into a fit of sobbing. I don’t exaggerate here, I didn’t just tear up a bit, I started bawling. The use of an old piece of music, of setting this game in that first Pokémon world, was artistically resonant and moving. It wasn’t the song itself, even though it is a nice melody and I had memories of it playing in past playthroughs of Kanto titles, but it was more about what was being conveyed in that moment. No longer was this a Withered Wasteland, unfit for people or Pokémon. Ditto had brought life back to this area. This was Fuschia again, but in a new form. Sure, I may be a bit weak to Pokémon as a concept, it has always been a special interest of mine, but this was a use of expectation, subtlety, and the medium of video games that still impresses me. I was initially confused as to why Pokopia was the only big Pokémon release during the series’ 30th anniversary, but it’s not a mystery to me any more. 

Compare that to the other ways the Pokémon franchise has celebrated “milestone” anniversaries. We got a game that respectfully and lovingly reflects on the past while stepping into a new territory for the franchise for the 30th. For the 25th, there was the incredibly bare-bones and outsourced Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Okay, we also got Legends: Arceus, which made me feel similarly to how Pokopia did! For the 20th, Sun and Moon on the 3DS were excellent games and a huge step forward for character writing in the series, but this was also when Red, Blue, and Yellow were put onto 3DS Virtual Console at a higher cost than any other Game Boy game on the eShop. I’m not opposed to remakes or re-releases from a moral standpoint, but I will always prefer a new take on concepts over a retread.

The first time Game Freak brought us back to Kanto is still the best, and it’s because of limitations and remixing. In Pokémon Gold and Silver, a limited version of Kanto is explorable, with a handful of areas slimmed down and the gym leaders all at the same power level, as the player can reach any of them at any point. These limitations can be frustrating at times, and Generation Two’s slow level curve is criticized for good reason, but things such as Cinnabar Island’s volcano erupting and forcing the people of the island to a new location does far more to expand the Pokémon world than Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee ever did. It moves the world forward instead of arresting its development to avoid rustling the feathers of those only looking for safe stasis.

When I watched the 1986 film True Stories for the first time a few nights ago, I was immediately enthralled. David Byrne spends an hour and a half talking about the concept of the Texan from as many angles as he can muster, and he loves every single one of those angles. It felt like an episode of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, but with a bit more affection for its characters. Afterwards I poked around at some of the special features on the Criterion Collection Blu-ray. One that stood out to me as a frustration, a short film called No Time to Look Back, in which filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross travel to the locations where the fictional town of Virgil, Texas was set. The Ross duo drive around and recreate a few shots from the original film, quoting it along the way. At one point, one of them says something like “David Byrne hates nostalgia, but we’re allowed to do this!” Yeah, dude, you are. It’s still really boring! They speak to almost nobody from the area, and when they do it’s either basic platitudes or straight up telling them “we’re visiting because a movie we like was shot here” met with “oh that’s cool” by the locals. 

This short’s title is a quote by David Byrne’s Narrator character from the film, said while exploring a mall and commenting on how shopping centers replaced the town square. Comparing this truth to today’s truth of the dead mall and the lack of third spaces notwithstanding, this walks in tandem with how I feel about nostalgia. It is an acceptance of a world moving forward while considering and incorporating the past. It’s an understanding that the world often rhymes and echoes, but letting it fully repeat leads to stagnation. While the Narrator says there’s no time to look back, I disagree. We can look back, but we shall not move back. We must take this information with us to forge the new. 

There’s another scene in which the Narrator speaks on revisiting things that holds far more truth to me. “I really enjoyed forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don’t notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I see the place again as it really is.“ What the Narrator posits as forgetting is experiencing something in a new light. It’s novelty, it’s finding something new in something familiar. Creative Pokémon fans prove this every time they make a ROM hack that improves on the original game or creates something completely new in that framework. That same passion is palpable in Pokopia, and it’s why Ditto’s journey means something to me, and a re-release of FireRed and LeafGreen on the eShop doesn’t. I’ve gotten very used to Kanto in that form, and Pokopia finally helped me forget what I knew.

The post I Get Used to the Place and I Don’t Notice Those Things Any More appeared first on Gamesline.

Human memory has been on my mind a lot. It feels like on the internet it’s almost impossible to escape talk of nostalgia. Everyone seems to want to do things that will remind them of when they were a kid. In February The Pokémon Company announced the release of minorly updated ROMs of FireRed and LeafGreen versions, games from 2004 that are themselves reconstructions of games from 1996, and that they are seriously for real genuinely charging money for them. Endlessly we watch games get remade, remastered, rereleased, reimagined. I look at this and think it must mean there’s a demand for the chance to relive the past.

I don’t really relate to feelings of nostalgia as I see them described. Replaying a game is extremely rare for me, as when I’ve tried, I’ve typically found nothing of value. Maybe my knowing what happens saps the appeal out of a game. Maybe for those ones I forget I’ve just changed so radically that I couldn’t even figure out what younger me saw in this thing. When I do replay a game, I usually find my attention is caught most by the parts I hadn’t remembered, and just how much there can be, even in only a couple years since putting a game down.

And yet I have my own ways of trying to hold on to the past. I maintain not just a backloggd account, not just a letterboxd account, not even just a Rate Your Music account, I also dutifully fill out a Google Sheets file with details on every game I have played or am currently playing, a numeric rating of what I think of the games, to reference at a glance, and the dates on which I both started and finished them, going back four years. This is not so I can write reviews, it’s because in recent years I had found myself more and more disquieted by how little I had committed to memory of the art I was experiencing. I had hoped a more active form of engagement would encourage me not to sleepwalk through my own life. I don’t want to think “what the hell was I thinking with this one,” I want to be able to recall what those thoughts might have been.

This hasn’t really worked that well. Especially with music, so many albums tucked away in my Spotify likes mystify me. When did I listen to or enjoy At the Drive-In? Apparently, I thought fondly of that one Brave Little Abacus record with the long name. Records tell me it was less than two years ago I listened to this album and liked it enough to hold on to. Couldn’t tell you what I was thinking because I don’t know what any of the songs sound like, or are about. If I pull at the foundations I uncover one thought: their vocalist sounds like SpongeBob. Very well done.

In my fervor to make my time spent living and breathing mean something, to pull feelings out of art and chew on them for longer, I have played and loved and hated quite a few titles by now. My poor, poor screenshots folder is now absolutely packed with things I wanted to keep with me. In an effort to better understand my habits, and learn to mediate with these feelings I hold, I find myself now writing a few words about a few games that, to me, did something that mattered, that stuck with me, for better or for worse.

Long Season

A few years back I played through Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 with my girlfriend, via the wonderful fan translation put out by Hilltop. We committed to syncing Boku’s life to our own, playing one day at a time, through the month of August, passing the controller back and forth each day. 

I think part of what kept the game alive in my heart was this consistency over a long period of time. Had I binged it alone, it may well have been a footnote on my backloggd account. But more so than the matter of pacing, Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, in keeping with its predecessor, is a game that encourages you to absorb it. Time only passes in game when you move between different areas, and if you want to stay somewhere a little longer, you can. Stare at the river if you like, it’s not going anywhere. 

The knowledge that time will stand still as long as you do works to discourage the player from leaving a scene unless they’re certain that’s what they want to do. You immerse yourself in the mundane because there is no penalty for doing so—only a limit on how many different things you can do in a day. I find it quite counter to a lot of other games’ philosophies. Xenoblade Chronicles was made by sick, sick people. But even something like Persona, something made to limit how much you can do in a way that comes across as a “carpe diem”—they’re still, at the end of the day, something to the effect of ten billion hours long. Those games are jammed full of Game to be Played, and while I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing, I find the Boku approach much more emotionally liberating.

Central to this, in my mind, is that our main character, Boku, also keeps a journal. Every night, just before he crawls into bed, he writes an entry about something he did that day, accompanied by a cute little drawing. On many occasions in my life, I’ve tried to take up journaling. It’s never stuck, the book will always find some forgotten crevice to sink into for years at a time, but that meant it fascinated me to have this little record of what I’d done that I could reference whenever I wanted to. I think part of what captured my heart was the game’s system for deciding what your journal entry will look like—even if you shape his overall adventure, Boku is the one deciding what he will remember. And while the game tries very hard to ensure you get an entry each day, if you do nothing it deems technically noteworthy, it tells you this:

The way that Boku cultivates deliberate slowness in the player is beautiful to me, it makes its environments truly sing. You begin to understand, and feel, someone else’s memory. If you can believe it, I was never a little Japanese boy growing up in the countryside by the sea, I never made beetles fight or anything like that. I’d never even seen a firefly until I was in my 20s. This is what I mean about creating a sense of time and place, though. Through the game I was able to be so engrossed that there wasn’t any incongruence to be felt. I could almost imagine what the sea breeze must have felt like. I grew attached to the little emotional arcs of the various characters. Towards the end, when one of them said, “I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I fell in love with this town,” I felt the game was talking right to me, the player.

Of course, these games never left Japan, not officially. I think this is also a vital consideration. The dialogue here wasn’t really written for someone like me, necessarily. If anything, Boku no Natsuyasumi is itself a deeply nostalgic work. This game had strong staying power—I even still remember what I named my first truly accomplished beetle wrestler: Red Lightning. Perhaps, then, the trick to making me feel is not tapping into my past, but rather, showing me yours.

The Summer Ends

A few months ago I played Umurangi Generation, a photography game that positions you as a courier during the end of the world, equipped with only a camera. I had expected a slam dunk; I’m very fond of my own silly little instant camera, personally. There’s an easy appeal to having a physical memento like a picture, something so much sturdier than human recollection. Having had this essay brewing in my head, and recalling the praise I’d heard for Umurangi Generation,  I booted it up and found something unexpected.

At first, I really wanted to root for it. I thought I was on board with what it was doing. You get placed into these little vignettes—a rooftop gathering, or some commotion going down at an intersection, or a vigil for someone we’ve never met—and given a list of things to find and snap photos of. I felt that by being forced to stay in one spot, I was encouraged to absorb details. I wanted to know the story of this world and the people in it; the minimalistic storytelling was really working for me. And then the game and I stepped out of sync.

After a couple of stages of contemplative stillness, the game pivots towards action shots. Battlefields with soldiers bleeding out and kaiju fighting giant robots. Suddenly I found it all tonally dissonant. I wanted it to be over with. Where once I saw a tasteful degree of restraint, I now felt I was wandering through a world that had failed to reach my heart, being asked “isn’t it so sad what’s happening?” Objectives that used to give me reason to linger in a space were now actively forcing me to search for graffiti with the word “boomer” on it while the world was meant to be ending. Maybe there’s commentary in that—the atonality of life, negotiating with yourself over your continued existence in a time of strife—but for me, it broke the spell. “There is no one right answer,” I thought to myself. “Weren’t you just telling me I won’t be told what’s right or wrong? That art is subjective?” The pictures I took ceased to have meaning when it occurred to me they would be roughly the same as the pictures everyone else took.

Even if I was sad to be fighting with this game, I still did see it through to the end, and something really interesting happened. After you complete all 8 stages, you get dropped into one final area, with no camera this time. There’s no pause menu full of objectives. I breathed a sigh of relief, that I could freely explore, take in my surroundings without being pushed any which way. I stared at the starry night overhead, lit up crimson. I thought about the game’s mascot telling me that Umurangi is a Te Reo word meaning “red sky.” I saw birds and flowers that seemed to be made of stardust. I saw something great and terrible, perched atop a mountain, blocking out the moon. The game handed me a camera again, and with irritation, I didn’t check to see how much film I had, didn’t think about making what was to be the last shot really count, and,

The game didn’t continue, didn’t chastise me for looking at the wrong thing. It showed me a mirror, and saw itself out.

The thing that I haven’t really been saying here is that part of what I wanted to find in Umurangi Generation was that special quality that I think a photograph has, that feeling of a particular moment, something normally fleeting and ephemeral, cauterized to staunch the flow of time. Even if I didn’t personally resonate with most of it, I kind of love how it ended, for me. This is a permanent symbolic impressing of my thought processes, encoded in zeroes and ones, that any computer screen can replicate. Whether or not I think Umurangi Generation is good means nothing to me—it told me something about what I value, and this final captured moment is far more interesting to me than any critiques I might have.

Fresh Flowers For All Time

This section will spoil critical plot details from Seabed. I think spoilers can work to give you a reason to enjoy a piece of art you might otherwise not have, but I also recognize that Seabed is a mystery novel. If you want to preserve your modesty, go read it and come back. I promise my words aren’t going anywhere—they will last until entropy takes them, like insects in amber.

Beginning to pull apart my feelings on Paleontology Soft’s 2016 “yuri-themed mystery visual novel” Seabed feels something like trying to split the atom with a butter knife. But we will try all the same. I’ll start with the age-old adage: women can do anything. Unfortunately, sometimes this includes suffering greatly.

Sachiko, our protagonist, is an amnesiac, unable to cope with the sudden loss of her life partner Takako. The entire visual novel traces a record of her winding path towards recognizing the symptoms of her trauma as they manifest in response to Takako’s death. In all but explicit terms, the novel is clear that she has DID, and the shock of that traumatic event destabilizes her and causes an increase in symptoms: dissociation, switching, hallucinations, and other sensory phenomena that might be classified as Not Super Normal. She realizes she had forgotten Takako was dead at all, and had lived her life talking to a ghost for years. What I want to take a look at is how she tries to cope—she flips through her old journal. Records of time spent with Takako. She hopes to find a passage that might cover her lost memories, and make it all make sense.

I will be forthcoming: it reminds me of my own experiences. Sometimes you find an old journal entry was torn out to protect you from knowledge you weren’t ready to process. Sometimes you find one you once wrote, and then later angrily scrawled out, in thick pools of ink, as if trying to measure out in millilitres your sense of disavowal for feelings you had earnestly held before. “Not even I will know what it said, when I’m done.” I may be so fixated upon journals, photographs, these physical records of life, because I know how easy it is for those memories to be stricken from the record while you’re not looking.

Seabed bills itself as a mystery, though its approach is not so direct as I think that might imply. If you ask me, I think it fits more into the iyashikei subgenre. It is Slice of Life, sharpened to a fine point, a knife’s edge to twist into your heart, and leave you feeling a little better and a lot worse when some of your humors are on the floor. 

There are dozens of scenes of mundanity. In that same way Boku asks you to contemplate, Seabed ensures it. Sachiko makes her breakfast and talks to the innkeeper about how she likes her eggs. She goes to the inn’s library and talks to a child that reminds her of her younger self. She gets pounced on by the innkeeper, drunkenly confessing her love for Sachiko, who proceeds to get up and go for a walk. Every suggestion of a fast-paced, forward-moving plot is snubbed by this novel. Prose is matter-of-fact and simplistic, and taking all of that along with the way the soundtrack will loop in these scenes, whether mundane or emotional, while the core mystery is mostly left to simmer, it works to pull you in like quicksand.

And so it really does something to me, deep in my core, when I listen to a song from the soundtrack, and it reminds me of my favourite scene in the novel. It makes me feel every bit of heartwrenching pain Sachiko does, as she discusses with her alter how she may never meet another person who could so easily understand her as Takako did, juxtaposed against the quiet of the hotel room she’s staying in, and the gentle thrum of life happening just outside her door. Scrolling through my phone’s camera roll helps me remember when and where I’ve been—but even recorded videos don’t put me into my old headspace the way this game can transport me into the heart of a grieving widow. It’s some kind of magic, to me.

But I mentioned I played through it twice. Over and over throughout my second reading I was struck by the same familiar feeling. “I don’t remember this part,” I would say to the friend I was reading alongside. “I thought this happened, like, WAY earlier.” It seemed despite my love for Seabed I still couldn’t really commit all that much of it to my mind. Not even the broad-strokes sequence of events. I had felt like I was somehow letting myself down—how can I be this bad at remembering things that matter to me?

I had to get worse before I got any better. My curious bookkeeping habit metastasized, over time, and became a need to record everything. My spreadsheet became a backlog, hundreds of titles long, paralyzing in its breadth. I dutifully held myself to finishing everything I’d started for the sake of some elusive, truer form of understanding. In this state I set so many arbitrary rules I had to follow—I would not start a new JRPG while I was on a break from Trails, because what if I came back to Trails and forgot everything? No, better to turn this hobby into homework for myself than to keep forgetting things. I hung a sword over my own head and called it discipline.

Fingernails on a Chalkboard

This leads me to my time with Final Fantasy 7. This game may have been the single worst victim of my compulsion to treat the hobby as a responsibility. When I see that something is critically acclaimed, historically important to the development of the medium, and even has Vincent Valentine in it—I’m gonna come running to see what’s going on.

At the outset, my adventurous spirit was rewarded! I still maintain that the Midgar portion of Final Fantasy 7 is great. I noticed a few little gripes—the translation in particular standing out to me—but for the most part, it was all killer, no filler. So much was new to me, too, and the novelty of my first Final Fantasy game was a big draw. The possibilities whispered to me by Materia seemed endless, the world and its concepts were all fresh, and while I may have known Cloud Strife and friends through cultural osmosis, seeing them in their game lit up my heart. I even liked that weird translation at first. This guy are sick! Tell ‘em Aerith!

The slow fading of its shine was subtle, and hard to detect, but without realizing it myself I had checked out. Something along the way broke in me. I think it’s less important that I detail what I didn’t like, and more so, that I kept trying to play. I had been playing this game for my partner, intending to go through it in chunks when she was in town. And all that time I kept guilting myself for not playing it when I had the chance. Deep down, I wanted to spend my time with someone I love on something better than Final Fantasy 7. Why was this something to guilt myself over?

Final Fantasy 7 leached out of the space between my eyes, leaving behind the suggestion of a game that I struggled to play, and yet held myself to finishing for years. The way it failed to stay present in my mind, failed to compel me to engage, began to feel like my own personal failing. It’s my fault for spacing out my playthrough so widely. I should be focused enough to know where I’m going, it shouldn’t matter that the translation is famously confusing. If I just cared a little more, I’d finish this thing. It didn’t strike me that I’m under no obligation to care about everything until my partner encouraged me to drop this game without remorse. I think I had still yet to understand what Boku might have been trying to tell me.

You Forgot It In People

Here we reach the core of it: feelings of obligation. The reason I felt so drained by Final Fantasy 7 was not just spacing out my playthrough, though that didn’t help me retain information. It was holding myself to it so ardently that really killed it for me. In the same sense, Umurangi Generation instilled a different sense of obligation. Artistic expression through photography felt stymied by a formula that produces nothing but an album of all the same photos each playthrough.

In contrast, Boku no Natsuyasumi and Seabed each remind me, through beautiful expressions of not-a-whole-lot happening, the value of deliberation and slowness in everyday life. Neither title fixed me on their own, it was and still is an ongoing process of self-discovery. But the ways they make me feel are relevant, in my opinion, to this process, and their lasting places in my heart stand as testament to their efficacy. If it wasn’t already obvious, I recommend both games wholeheartedly. You, too, should remember to slow down once in a while, and take in the art you love, rather than consume it. On another note, I haven’t remembered to update my spreadsheet in a while.

Isabelle is highly preoccupied with hype moments and aura, and the weight of human emotion. You can find more of her words on Bluesky.

The post Games About Nothing Mean Everything to Me — by Isabelle appeared first on Gamesline.

I often find myself in a similar rut between games. Not everything can sing to your soul; trying to find the importance in something you don’t give a shit about just makes you feel fraudulent. So I found myself in familiar trappings: games which weren’t breaking new ground but felt like I was doing something. I did my Final Fantasy dailies; I dallied with Monster Hunter; I tried out Marathon—the new one, not the original one, we live in Hell. While fun, none of it filled the void in me demanding satiation.

You can imagine me, head on desk, various drink cans piled upon my noggin, making sounds reserved for cats and bored games writers.

I found myself thinking about speed, about motion, the primal building blocks to my satisfaction. I played through all of Pseudoregalia, a free and flowing platformer. I wrote several drafts worth of thoughts on it; all of them found their way to my recycle bin. I replayed the majority of Super Mario Sunshine thinking about our long-standing relationship, a game which has followed me though all of the stages of my life. Those thoughts didn’t even exit my head; they were too abstract and sentimental to encode into something worth reading.

The groaning exiting my mouth and the grinding sensation in my brain intensified. I wanted something quick, something which could accelerate my heartbeat and make me feel alive again. I wanted competition, my primal darkness which compelled me to hunt down fellow gamers.

I scrolled through my games. Dead faces stared back at me from digital blue-grey tumulus with resounding goose egg player counts. Games, once played, interred in silicon graves; Ozymandias’ trunkless legs standing in the midst of a vast digital desert.

A dark miasma coiled around the room, pouring out of my monitor and clouding my thoughts. A nightmare more frightening than anything a mortal could imagine presented itself before me: Counter-Strike 2. It batted its eyelashes at me from my Steam library.

“You could always give it another try,” it said. “You’re probably still halfway decent.”

Beads of sweat collected on my forehead.

“Hey. Unreal Tournament 2004 is having a comeback,” said my partner from across the room.

“Oh shit, for real?”

A Shock Combo with Twenty-two Years Lead Time

Unreal Tournament 2004 in 2026 was a fascinating experience. It is both timeless and dated in a way only an arena shooter is capable of. The music pounds with an early 2000s industrial trance beat, immediately hypnotic yet non-descript. The weapons are these obtuse, strange things constructed by a gamer mind only obliquely aware of how a firearm works. Movement is sublimely clunky yet flowing; side-hops chain into momentum-boosting double jumps, which chain into exploding into meat because you fell into a spiral of cluster rockets. UT2004 is the only—non-pornographic—game in recent memory which could force me to read the sentence “Memphis was carved up by Cleopatra’s Green Shaft.”

It was a beautiful and sublime crystallization of a time I never got to experience new. CTF-Face is a map I only ever got to see as a pseudo-nostalgic drum and bass playlist on YouTube and now I got to see it in-engine; it felt like some kind of inevitable prophecy coming to its final act.

Yes, I write this with zero nostalgia of my own, playing only as a person seeing the game for the first time. That being said, I was fascinated by the differences in game design ideology between then and today. The game is feature complete, with no battlepass, and no promise of additional characters or skins in the content pipeline. All maps are either in the base game or provided by the community. New game modes are invented in real time out of a robust suite of “mutators,” modifying the standard gameplay. This game is finished, “dead” even in the eyes of some, yet we’re still playing it. This is the product of a twenty-two-year long resurrection made by a loving fanbase.

My partner and I played into the wee hours of the night, roleplaying as 800kb/s internet wielders listening to D&B while vaporizing one another into piles of cartilage. It was, in a sense, a playable museum, albeit one where a rejected Transformers design can coldly say “Die, Bitch” in a way definitely intended to sound hard to a demographic devoid of maidens. Yet, even as I raised an eyebrow at the misogyny of yesteryear, I was fascinated by the return of this “dead” game.

Back in the modern world of gaming, it’s dire out there. Games are announced, cancelled, and expunged from memory within a year of release. A community might call a game dead when comparing its player base to its contemporaries, because it doesn’t have a “content” pipeline which suits their tastes, or in some cases, simply because a YouTuber told them so. Yet, are such proclamations truthful? I still sit in a lobby with other people, twenty-two years after the release of this game, and it has the audacity to still exist. Old Unreal is easy enough to find, easy enough to download from, and off you go; people cared, and so the game is allowed to exist.

Many other games haven’t passed this test of time. My Steam library is a veritable graveyard of games which haven’t received the same love or attention. Strike Vector, Loadout, dozens more. Those games died despite all the happy memories contained within. Most people, it seems, just take it on the chin; this is simply the fate of all online games. One day, the lights go out, and the game dies.

Is this truly necessary though? We see this game make a return to a fanbase still willing to play it even if they only number in the hundreds. I believe, genuinely, that as long as there is someone to keep the lights on, someone to pass the torch along, there is no reason a game as a piece of art can’t live forever. How many apocalypses has something like Team Fortress 2 weathered? Yet the fanbase continues trucking along, for better or worse.

Ultimately, games only truly die when they are killed.

Trash Decade

In a less healthy period of my life, I played a lot of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4—Black Ops 4? Black Ops IV? Black Ops IIII? Who is responsible for this?

Anyway, I was playing a lot of Call of Duty: Black Ops 𒇹 in a state not dissimilar to how I described myself in the first segment: I was between games and desperate to satiate some dark urge inside of myself for murder and violence. Humble Bundle delivered unto me this piece of shit, which would take over my life for approximately one summer but no longer.

The game was ever so slightly more textured than the usual CoD fare. There were still killstreaks, but this foray was hero-based, and made you heal for yourself instead of sucking your thumb until the screen stops being goopy. The game was hypnotizing, dreary yet intoxicating, like the last 4 to 5 cm of a tallboy. The content, the battlepasses, even my fellow players meant very little to me; I was just here for something to jolt my brain and remind me I was alive every now and again.

Yet despite my criticisms, it was not by my own hand that I ceased playing; that decision was made for me. I was queuing one day, as per usual in my apocalyptic spiral to avoid checking what day it was. I was queuing. I was queuing for a very long time. This, I felt, was an exceptionally long time to queue, even for a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops 𐍆𐌹𐌳𐍅𐍉𐍂—this is the last time I’ll do this joke, I promise.

My frustration mounted but I kept waiting. It was only after getting up and forcing myself to live in my own thoughts for a while that I realized no game was coming. I exited the queue and stared at the loadout which had ferried me to something resembling catharsis. A phantom image of a dying horse begging to be put out of its misery popped into my mind, a decidedly not normal thing to think while staring at a firearm. I left the multiplayer menu; a jovial popup informed me it was time to purchase the new Call of Duty, to replace the old Call of Duty I was already playing. I made a throaty sound, roughly like a parent discovering a child entering the house past curfew, and exited the program. I have not opened it since.

I feel like the experience I just described is familiar to most gamers. We play multiplayer(or just online) games until we get distracted and find the doors closed, or we watch horrified as they unbuild themselves from underneath us. It is rare to decide your relationship with such a game has run its course, as there is no fixed narrative conclusion. We use it up until it is gone, or gone from us.

But it’s not solely on the consumer in such cases. Obviously the most guilty persons in the room are those who turn games into nothing but products. A game can live but must die because there is no profit motive for allowing it to stay living. A server browser might confuse your audience, after all; you have to handle the queuing for them. Sometimes 200 people isn’t enough to make a single game; you can only deliver the highest quality match. You cannot simply hand over the rights to run it off to the fans; think about your brand! It is childish to assume that these things can live forever, eventually the servers just need to come down, says a sales rep interested in selling you your dreams.

There is a learned helplessness, or at least an apathy, which emerges from such eventualities. We cope with the terror of the things we love being snatched away from us by pretending it is all inevitable—just move on to the next thing. This works ideally for the executioners of games: those who continue the commercialization of an art form into discardable toys, disposability with intent to incentivise more purchases. Live service games fill you with anxiety, a terror of losing out which manipulates your behavior to be more receptive toward choosing a single game to rule your recreation time; that is, until the game meets end of life and all of it was for naught anyway.

“Buy the new game”, a helpful prompt in the menu says underneath an end-of-life banner, flickering like a halogen bulb in a soon to be bankrupt grocery chain. “It’s all the same shit with a longer number at the end.”

Graveyard Planet

Being in the industry of games sucks right now. Discord sucks right now. Credit card companies would still really like for you to not be able to buy completely legal material. Your genuine attempts to preserve art will be met with a cease and desist orbital strike.

This is not, however, the inescapable fate of things. It is useful to call these trends unpleasant and to bring them to other’s attention. Knowing one’s material conditions are not acceptable is only the first step, however. Being able to imagine a better existence is the next step to building it, and while one pithily stating that something sucks and everything was always fucked since before you were even born might be attention grabbing, it doesn’t need to be the truth. It cultivates despair, but it should drive you to action, not simply angered capitulation; you do not have to simply accept that the things you love will be taken from you and then sold back to you in glorious, fucked up DLSS5.

Unreal Tournament 2004 still lives past its expiry date. Even the aforementioned Black Ops 4 has a modified client enabling play years past the expiration of its servers—I didn’t even know that, I discovered it while writing this essay, crazy right? Even the previously mentioned Strike Vector and Loadout have fan servers!

People have a tendency to always look for what is new, for the next new dopamine hit. I get it. The world is a really stressful place and we’re constantly looking for a feeling as big as the first time we ever loved something. A lot of my own personal attempts to find a new thing to light my heart on fire have been fruitless, but there is just as much beauty to be found in old things as new. The last essay I wrote was about how I looked backward and found something to love in things I missed, and just as often I could keep digging.

There are more games than I could ever learn and play in a single lifetime. I could play through the entire NES catalogue and find things nobody ever talks about. I could go on a quest to dig through an obscure console and find beautiful gems overlooked by people whose entire childhood was the PS2. I’m not insulting people who don’t go off the beaten path; I think there is much to value in even the more obvious places. Yet, cultivating a taste beyond what is obvious will open doors you never knew existed. Who cares if they’re dead; you, the player, are the one bringing it to life!

The old will always outnumber the new. The more you allow yourself to appreciate things outside of the immediate era, the more you can bring life to things beyond the year you live in. You don’t have to simply end your choices with the things sold or advertised to you. If MOBAs have gotten stale, try learning about where their inspirations emerged from. If you don’t enjoy the current extraction shooter trend, play the games from before they emerged. You will likely be surprised that other people still play them, or could be convinced to play them, if you’re insistent enough.

Nosgoth, a peculiar asymmetric team-based shooter entry of the Legacy of Kain series, has been resurrected; it can be played with the assistance of a modified client and a Discord server, if you’re so inclined. Anarchy Reigns, an often forgotten PlatinumGames online beat ’em up, has returned in the form of PS3 emulation, online functionality restored. All returned because people cared enough to gaze backward.

A sense of curiosity can foster a change; incuriosity often puts you at the mercy of those most invested in making a sale. Digging deep in forgotten places, in the areas which aren’t immediately appealing, can lead to great discoveries, and in turn bring vital blood back to the origins of the hobby. A little care and attention can resurrect the dead.

As long as people continue to care, a game can continue to exist. Modders will make custom clients, emulators will enable old games to live on new platforms, and even the most passionate will take server architecture into their own hands. The Concords and Highguards of the world are dispiriting, yes, but as people who care for this medium of art, it is our duty to take the things we love and carry them with us. A corporation preserving the things they make should never be the expectation, especially when they are financially disincentivized from doing so. Preservation is not impossible; we can love the things we love, provided we hold on tightly and refuse to allow them to be taken. Doing the work is hard but I think the effort is necessary.

A lone server in a game’s server browser, for those who will play can be enough. A person developing a website which enables others to remember that old things still exist can be enough. A person with a following and a curiosity in dead things can inspire others to pick through this graveyard with them.

So, won’t you go graverobbing with me?

The post Dead Games and the Necromancy of Love appeared first on Gamesline.

Recently, mainstream JRPG releases have consistently disappointed. Many of the most popular, big-budget releases are, generally speaking, fine; they’re well made but they aren’t exactly breaking new ground. Much of their material has been either co-opted by other genres or said before. That’s the biggest problem, really: it’s not the early 2000s anymore. My mind still believes this is the way longform fantasy stories are told, yet the times have changed. What people consider to be a “big game” is no longer a 70-80 hour epic of a story delivered through exposition and turn-based combat; they’re often open-world action RPGs with an emphasis on sizzle and spectacle. Even Final Fantasy has gradually evolved to meet this shifting cultural expectation.

JRPGs, when released intentionally under that label, seem to be operating under a similar misapprehension. They all seem afflicted with a self-indulgent recursion; navel-gazing games which seem to think storytelling began and ended with Chrono Trigger. Repeatedly they seem to say: remember Pokemon? Remember Final Fantasy VII? Mother 3 was pretty cool, right?To me these aren’t unplayable games from some bygone era, they are very much living and breathing because nobody allows them to fucking die. It is one thing to take inspiration from a beloved story, it is entirely another to repeatedly resell the same story while littering it with little winks to the audience which seem to say, “yeah, I know good games.”

I imagine my opinion can be potentially read as mean-spirited, but I only wish for this genre, one I have dedicated so much of my life to, to grow up and tell a story which doesn’t heavily borrow all its ideas from its predecessors. Yet, it seems more and more this is not going to be the case.

One could argue this is the nature of genre—familiar trappings which define this particular branch of gaming—but I’m not convinced. Motifs and tropes are a useful language for conveying complex ideas quickly, but something constructed entirely out of allusions to other things will be reduced down to a ghost of a story; forcing the remembrance you could be playing something with actual ideas instead.

When modern times fail me, I do what I usually do: I look back, to the things I missed the first time. John—your friendly CEO of gaming—knocked me onto this path when he gifted me The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. In his own words, this was a game Xenogears-enjoyers seemed to like. Nothing else was particularly interesting at the moment; I figured I would give it a chance.

Now, nearly 300 hours of JRPG later, I have words to say about it and, John, if you ever gift me a game that fundamentally alters the course of my life again, I will be forced to take legal action.

This is not going to be comprehensive, and in the interest of both myself and my editors, this will contain no story recap. From this point on, when I refer to Trails, I refer to it in respect to this particular segment of the story I have experienced. This consists of the three Trails in the Sky games as well as the Crossbell duology of Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure.

Trails is a story told in arcs, and over the period of five games, I have felt myself go through something of an arc. Even though it’s not the end of the chronicle, it feels spiritually analogous to a conclusion. These were games once rendered in chunky sprites upon 3D backgrounds. Hereafter, they traded their garb for something more contemporary. This transition, especially after the time I’ve spent with it, seems like something I should honor; it is the bow I need to place on top to consider it “done” in my mind.

A World of Change

Any story can worldbuild, and many do, often with mixed results. Writers joke about the nonproductiveness of worldbuilding—you can do it forever and still have nothing to show for it. Trails however is uniquely fascinated with the construction of its own world, and it only seems to be growing.

Video game worldbuilding exists on a spectrum. Some games pay only lip service to the world; it is merely the space your avatar inhabits during play sessions. Others can have intricately laid out lore but ultimately convey it in an unusable way, telling you thousands of details with none relevant to play.

Trails’ world is relevant and, more importantly, fractal. Our knowledge of an area tends to grow broader and more abstract the further away it is. The knowledge of where you live, for instance, contains individual places, streets, people; while things further away tend to grow blurred and indistinct, reduced down to something your mind can better compartmentalize.

Zemuria, the setting of Trails, is a massive continent, but in any given game, you hear about far away places in the same way someone might tell you about the concept of something in another city. You learn the little details actually interfaced with; they aren’t forcing the entire Wikipedia article for Japan into your brain. This evokes a more natural curiosity, especially knowing those places are real, can come up, and often are the setting of future games.

Each individual Trails game tends to set its focus small, at least when compared to other JRPGs, which tend to be concerned with what occurs on the entire planet. When you exist in a particular nation, the nation’s problems balloon in both your mind, and those of the involved characters. While sometimes the fate of the continent is at stake, one often spends the most time in Trails experiencing the problems of a singular nation or even a singular city. In the first two Trails games—Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky SC—you are predominantly concerned with the goings-on in the small, mountain nation of Liberl. Things happen in other countries and impact your little microcosm, but the issues which unfold exclusively involve your neck of the woods. Warmongering elsewhere is frightening, but only because you know how it could impact you and the place you live. The decision to keep the scope small in this way keeps the struggles of the setting feeling real and relevant, free from abstraction.

The interposition between the broad and the hyper-specific is what makes the world so compelling. We know there is an Empire to the north filled to the brim with war hawks, but in this small village lies a single man in a store we frequent, who needs help. So you help. It is information conveyed in a human fashion. News of something horrible happening in another place is abstract and difficult to conceptualize without the presence of a person being affected by it. The individual is the emotional anchor which helps you better understand the wider reaching ramifications. This, to me, feels like an expression of the pain and anxieties of the real world. I may be forced to contend with the horrors coming out of a nation which isn’t mine, powerless, but I can help in the community I live in.

Trails’ relationship with technology further grounds players. Compared to many other JRPGs, the Trails series is much more “contemporary fantasy.” Technology and magic coexist; a dragon and a mech can be on the screen at the same time. As the series goes on and the timeline progresses, so too marches the inevitable progress of industry and technology. Many other games handwave subjects which don’t interest the writer. “The technology is magic; it works because it is magic technology—please don’t worry about it.”

Trails by comparison has a technological revolution as the series’ backbone for most of its games; it is both relevant to gameplay and plot. We see the burgeoning invention of the automobile, phones, telecommunication, and the internet. These stories lean into socio-political conflicts and the changing relationship between communities because of this technology. Though magic and technology co-exist, it mostly avoids the genre touchstone of magic traditionalism vs technology progressivism. There is conflict between progress and tradition, as in real life, but it comes across less like they are ontologically opposed concepts.

This approach to technology is a further expression of worldbuilding precisely because it is tactile. The things we can hold have a way of conveying where we exist in time; things thrown away remind us of what has passed. Time progresses as we realize a favorite film is suddenly, terrifyingly, ten years older than we remember it being; VHS or DVDs are no longer the standard way of conveying sound and video. Many games fail at such an organic conveyance of time passing. Fantasy worlds often enter technological stagnation out of aesthetic fear; the author is a little too scared of the game escaping from the medieval fantasy trappings and resultantly cripples any attempt at making a sense of time or place. Trails, it seems, has no such fears, and the world feels all the more real for it.

A grounded relationship with technology allows Trails’ world to comment on things which then feel organic and fresh. How does an adventuring guild deal with the burgeoning technology of the internet, cyber security, and hacking? How does a city and its developing roads deal with the real threat of spontaneously generated monsters? A willingness to engage with the conceit of one’s own setting allows the setting itself to be an infinite story engine.

Even the trope of the “bygone era” can be explored when you are interested in the worldbuilding ramifications of what such things present. Zemuria has a “lost era of fancy and decadence” like many RPGs, but avoids the often disquieting prelapsarian urge to return to it. We are told the ancients of the old world brought their own destruction and created a thousand-year dark age born of irresponsibility and bad decisions. Because the game does not abandon the chronology with every entry, the big truths revealed can stay true and the world continues to reckon with them.

Paragon of the Community

Worldbuilding is nice, but where many stories fail is in conveyance. They repeat the mistake of having “the wise character” dryly convey what the rules of the setting are, and completely flout any attempt at naturalistic storytelling. Video games are incredibly guilty of this. The amount of village elders who have started sentences with “as you know,” only to tell me the most asinine explanation of a magic system are too many to name. This should be a crime.

Another frequent crime of video games are side quests. Side quests typically don’t have the level of consequence to make for a substantive experience, usually ending up a utilitarian excuse to remain in the world for a little while longer, or simply a change of pace. It is material one typically considers as a passenger of the world, not an occupant of it. In a world of thousands of towers to climb in empty fields, or collectable baubles which exist to arbitrarily gate you from the actual ending, it’s easy to want to give substantial amounts of side material a pass. I am completely okay with my dead little brother going unhonored if it means I don’t have to collect 100 pigeon feathers; I am too busy stabbing the neighboring villagers in the throat with wrist-mounted cutlery to care.

Trails puts a lot of effort into ameliorating both of these game design woes. Side quests are a means by which Trails offers meaningful and substantial information about the nature of the world and its characters through naturalistic storytelling. This avoids more blatant player-oriented exposition. Paying attention to this information is often rewarded, in some cases with whole quests you would have missed if inattentive. In this way, the game rewards you for paying attention to the setting by granting you both material gifts as well as more information on the setting and events. This cycle of seeding information and seeing it meaningfully paid off invigorates world-player interfacing. You care more each and every time you are rewarded for doing so.

Even mundane dialogue can be rewarding for players who meaningfully engage with the world. Where another game might only update dialogue after meaningful story progression, Trails loves to update what characters have to say after basically any passage of time. There really is no such thing as a character revoking their personhood as soon as you finish their arc. A stranger has passed into your home village? You had better believe this is the talk of town.

Talking to NPCs might not seem like riveting gameplay in most games, but when you can watch the quiet parenthetical of other people’s lives playing out in real time, it becomes gripping. Will the girl obsessed with finally overtaking the city’s best baker come out on top? You better talk to her every single day to find out. Writers who put an absolutely monumental level of effort into making the NPCs feel like living people is an immediate difference from many other contemporary JRPGs.

The amount of dialogue becomes even more impressive when you consider the substantive interconnection between characters. NPCs exist outside of your characters and interact even when you aren’t watching them do so. Characters might comment on the location of another, which can allude to their motivations and actions to come. NPCs involved with side quests might provide additional insights which will be relevant when the game does one of its many “are you paying attention” tests during main story progression. Even outside of plot relevance, connections can come up in a way comparable to real life; a person randomly reveals that they have familiarity and a connection to a person you’ve already met several cities away.

Allow me to tell a story of this happening across two games. In Trails from Zero, you are regularly given missions by way of a computer console which more or less self-schedules your day for you if you are playing in the most strictly linear way. However, each and every day you are free to explore the lavishly expansive city of Crossbell; doing so often awards you with aforementioned hidden quests.

One such quest, “Search for the Kitten’s Owner,” sounds like both the joke and punchline for another game giving you busywork. You are tasked to find the owner of a lost cat found by two children, Ryu and Anri, who you have met previously. You talk to every child in an entire region of the city, which silently tests you to see if you remember where the people in the city tend to be.

Eventually you are acquainted with stockbroker Bond and his daughter, Sunita. Bond confidently declares that no cat lives in their household, which seems like a dead end. Eventually after some investigation, you discover Sunita has been taking care of the cat, but some anxieties have prevented her from revealing this to her father. Thus the game establishes the characters Sunita and Bond. In many games, this would end there; both characters would be resolved back into generic substrate.

Four chapters later, we are reacquainted with Sunita, potentially for the first time if you missed this quest. After interacting with a mysterious drug which has been running rampant in the city, Bond has gone missing; you know this is odd behavior for him because you met him previously and know he cares for his family. A simple but effective call for investment that doesn’t end there.

In the very next game, Trails to Azure, we once again find Sunita and Bond, living in a different home after the events of the prior game. In predictable cat fashion, their cat, Marie, is missing again. A newly introduced character and complication, Shirley, tags along to assist you, further entwining the old and the new. Over the course of this quest, you interface with a group of trashy corporate boys, from a country thus far only alluded to, who underscore the current issue of nationwide unrest occurring in the main plot; Shirley herself implies the political conflict of a different nation, which is colliding here in Crossbell.

Doing this quest reminds you of several other key actors who had been dormant since the last game, the Arc en Ciel theater troupe. We again see them intermesh with the new character of Shirley and the complications her presence implies. An actor of the theater troupe, who has a shadowy identity of their own, sotto voce implies familiarity with this new character; it remains a secret to the protagonists.

All of this intermeshing because of a cat who happens to get lost twice.

This intermingling avoids the divide between mundane individuals and “guy with white hair, tragic backstory, and limit break.” When everyone has a name and a place in the world, you see people as the complex individuals they are rather than the roles they occupy or services they provide. It feels like its own kind of social commentary: everyone has the capacity to be interesting if you take the time to know them.

None of this material is mandatory but it is meaningful; when the characters feel like people and the quests influence and change dialogue, you feel a greater desire to engage with the world. It makes even the main story content feel more substantial. Your role in the world is easy to fit into because your agency is actually respected. The story doesn’t need to make you the most important person in the world to make you care. When a game’s world constantly flatters you, it is easy to disassociate from anything not fluttering its eyelashes and telling you what a special fucking guy you are. Trails makes you care about aspects of the world in a human way: you are part of the world, you know the people in it and the ways your actions meaningfully affect them. It is because it is small and ultimately mundane, that I cared.

One Mundane Day in a Sea of Exciting Ones

Mundane can be an upsetting word to have associated with your work. The highest of high fantasy hate the idea of being mundane.

“No, our world is super fucking weird dude, instead of phones we got… the crystals, which work like phone.”

This to me is an insulting attempt to generate novelty, which ultimately makes a story for no one. Or worse, you accept nothing but trappings of the preaccepted idea of what fantasy is allowed to be; It is completely and utterly pedestrian.

Trails is mundane in the way a warm Sunday morning with a cup of coffee on the porch is mundane; the way having a loving but ordinary breakfast with your partner is mundane.

Trails is a franchise obsessed with the mundanity of ordinary life. Trails in the Sky is almost entirely what would be an introductory chapter of a different game which goes on for approximately forty hours. Even its explosive “story-starting” plot points are restrained in comparison. The contemporaneous entries of Final Fantasy released adjacent to Trails’ first chapter start on an apocalyptic destruction of a city and the political murder of a monarch; Trails, by comparison, begins with you starting your first day of work.

Sure, there is an empire to the north but there’s no explosive war happening right now. Sure, there is a legendary dragon which dwells in these lands but for the most part he’s just chilling. There is political unrest and civilians being let down by the systems meant to serve them, but that shit is just the news. Things stay this way until the signs which allude to upheaval become a full on earthquake.

Mundanity is so often defined by its antithesis; when horrible things happen, you can’t help but reflect on how life was normal just hours before. Things going sideways in the Trails series are juxtaposed with hours of people living their best, if ordinary, lives. When the worst comes to pass, the people you have come to care about are the ones to suffer; and often, you know the names and identities of those responsible.

Pain too can be mundane. Trails uses this mundanity to talk about things other games intentionally avoid. While it doesn’t always get things right, and sometimes stumbles, its willingness to talk about things like the realities of warfare, up to material as intense as CSA, is a type of painful mundanity. Things like war, or rape, or abuse are just edgy melodrama in many games; they talk about dark themes but in a way which wears darkness as a fashion accessory, rather than something it is interested in meaningfully engaging.

Fantasy worlds are frightened by the idea of such normal pains. “This fantasy world doesn’t have to deal with sex trafficking or systematic racism unless it’s inflicted on an orc or cat girl.” Trails’ willingness to talk about such subjects comes across as mature simply because it is willing to talk about them at all.

Antagonistic factions are often just as human in their mundanity. Violence breaks out as conflicts between people, not because demons spawned outside of town the second things got a little too peaceful; the presence of random monsters is treated the way real life treats wild animals–they aren’t evil, just inconvenient when they interfere with humanity. Even when an antagonist’s actions are unforgivable, it often comes from a specific rhetoric or political position which defines them. It isn’t always the deepest thing in the world, but at the very least it gets over the all too common bar of ontological evil. A villain who over the course of the plot chooses to abuse children does so for a simple reason: they do not care about the outcomes of their actions on others, and it suits their needs to do so, not because it is a fundamental aspect of their identity.

Even then, Trails avoids making singular villains responsible for all the world’s ills; instead, much conflict is born from factional interplay. For example, the machinations of a series of mercenaries committing violence for money is headed by an important leader, but said faction represents a way of life which abuts with other factions, not a single man in control of all wrongdoing in the world. These factions make sense to the people who occupy them and, in much the same way as real life, they foster a community which lives to self-perpetuate given it continues to meet their needs; or, failing that, because the world continues to deprive them of what they actually need.

Of course, it isn’t just the antagonists who organize. The first game is defined by the induction of our two protagonists into the Bracer Guild, a group engaged in community outreach across the continent; it solves problems with the flexibility and compassion of individuals, defusing conflict governments cannot. In the Crossbell arc, the Special Support Section is formed from a similar ethos, quite literally mirroring the behaviors of the Bracer guild.

This is what I see as the core of Trails—community. It links all my prior points together and becomes what I value most. The NPCs, the world building, the side content. You watch as a world becomes a series of interlocking networks, irremovable without digging up another part of the world. The protagonists are guardians of the community, defending it from disruptions and outside malfeasant actors. To abide by this community, you must be a part of it, both in and out of character. You do the side quests because ultimately your immersion demands it; you are someone in the role of helping others. You pay attention to the details of the world because you are meaningfully affected by them as a member of the community. You talk to the NPC because they are the roots in your network.

Even from within the plot, the mundane connection of community becomes Trails. The Bracer guild, the Special Support Section, and even the villainous factions are forms of community. They rise from need, and whether adaptive or maladaptive, they suit the needs of the people who join them; they serve and are of service.

A Thousand Hours More

Trails is defined by its most delightful mundanity; it is the palate cleanser I didn’t even know I needed. Games which feature a protagonist’s home burning as the anguished hero stoically stares into the flames are a dime a dozen; a game that can make me care if a random guy in town decided to stay in medical school or not, is really something special.

Both the pain of disenfranchisement and the joy of bonds define Trails. It feels relevant and timely, even now. In our time where the affliction of loneliness seems worse than it has ever been, despite constant connection, it’s important to remember the bonds shared together. It is a series interested in and intrigued by the little people, the ones who might not solve the big problems but day after day, week after week show up to attend to the small ones.

I can’t pretend Trails does everything right. There are patches of insensitivity, many friends of mine have alerted me to a precipitous drop in quality to come, and in some senses the slowness can be too slow. All that said however, it’s a franchise which has—thus far—managed to make me feel something in a genre I love, when many other games have not. This of course can be tied up in a lot of things; I could simply be experiencing a shift in prioritization, for instance, but I would be loath to say it is anything as simple as just being fresh.

Craft is a thing I endlessly appreciate. When a game is made by a person having a good time, intentionally seeking to express something, it can be an enjoyable experience even when there are bumps in the road. I also love games meticulously ground down and polished over thousands of iterations. Something simple can be beautiful when worked down to its most unadulterated pure concept.

The Trails games ultimately feel like neither of these things, a perfect middle point of design maximalism. The jaggedness of encounter balance is frequently alarming, exploding you with ice-wielding sewer toucans without warning. There are times where the gameplay feels like a tertiary concern when compared to the lavish treatment of the writing. Yet, I can only find myself compelled.

There have been very few games with this much emphasis placed on writing, characters, and immersion, combined with this particular sense of aesthetic; it hits my buttons in a way that makes me feel like I was always the target audience. On more than one occasion I have said that this game feels like a portal into someone else’s nostalgia for this genre. It is a glimpse back in time, back when this genre had novel ideas and wasn’t simply a series of outstanding examples endlessly copycatted until I almost wished they never existed at all.

Despite the implied cynicism, I will continue to play Trails; I will continue to play JRPGs even as I find myself growing more and more estranged from the kind of things fellow fans seem to want and appreciate. In the end, I just love a world that feels like I could ask a question about the setting and somewhere—provided I had the know-how and the desire to dig—find an answer.

Many games are simply impressions of worlds. The electrical lines don’t actually connect to anything, the streams, topologically speaking, run uphill, and the people would starve to death because technically there isn’t enough farmland to support this population size. Those things are fine too, and even Trails isn’t immune to such oddities—it is, after all, incredibly difficult to make a world. Yet I love its detail, I love its characters, and I love a game that makes me feel guilty for not finishing side quests; not because of some lingering remnant of completionism, but because I felt like someone actually needed my help.

Ultimately, a world is a living thing, as long as we believe in it, it lives. I believe in the world of Trails. I’m excited to see what it lives to do.

The post The Trails Franchise and My Growing Love of the Mundane appeared first on Gamesline.

8. Fresh Fruit Freefall

Easily the most harrowing of jobs. A variety of fruit falls from trees, as Milano attempts to catch it in a basket on her back. Different fruit fall at different arcs, so you will have to position her accordingly. In reality, if I had to hustle back and forth to catch fruit falling from trees, I would be miserable. Picking fruit is already an exhausting career, one that should be compensated much higher, but having to add further hand-eye coordination to things is a layer nobody should have to put up with. I am left to wonder why fruit that hits the ground is immediately a lost cause, since a good rinse would remove any dirt. Some people are just too picky, it seems. Milano is also harangued by wasp-like creatures called “bombos,” and if huge wasps were trying to keep me from gathering fruit, I would personally take the hint.

7. Dishwash Whoosh

I was a dishwasher a few times in college. It’s not the worst job in the world, but I do not wish to do it ever again. While I was under quite a bit of stress at times to restock dishware, Milano admittedly has it worse than I ever did. She must scrub each plate individually, checking to see if there’s any leftover food before setting it aside to dry. If she takes too long, the plates will continue to pile up, and newly entering plates will shove the old stack onto the floor, shattering them. I imagine Milano would immediately be fired for this. Occasionally, a plate will have an exclamation point on it instead of food, which alerts Milano to a flying kitchen utensil that she must dodge. I’m sure tensions run high in many kitchens and spatulas may end up flying, but Milano is an innocent soul and things seem quite calm in the kitchen she’s working in. I cannot fathom why she is being pelted, unless this is the norm where she lives, in which case I cannot abide this sort of work environment. Normal dishwashing would be less of an issue; this is dishwashing under fire.

6. Tick Tock Takeout

Dealing with customers at a retail or food establishment is already a hassle. Most of them enter the business feeling like their needs are most important, and any proof to the contrary is a failure on the staff’s part, not a reality of the existence of other human beings that are also attempting to get service. In Milano’s case, the customers entering the fast food restaurant are hedgehog-like critters with clocks on their backs. The clocks count down to when they will become fed up with waiting, so you must grab the items they request and hand it to them before this happens. I think it would be helpful in a way to have knowledge of when someone will get pissed off for waiting, but there’s another part of me that is even more stressed out with that knowledge. I should not know the specifics of someone’s mood down to the second. This is a simple gig, one where simple memorization and reflexes are key. I would rate this job higher if not for the strangely uncomfortable knowledge the clocks bring me. 

5. Round-about Wrangler

This job involves walking in a circle around a ranch and seeking bovine-esque beasts called “moogans.” They are pretty much exactly like cows in our world, except these ones fly. Milano can jump up and grab their udders, gently bringing the airborne animals down to be milked. I am not good at estimation, but I know for a fact that Milano, as a prepubescent girl, weighs much less than I do. If I were to latch onto a moogan’s udders, let alone an Earth cow’s udders, I would at least cause it immense pain. At worst, I’m ripping an udder clean off the poor thing. This is before we take into account the green “trampoli,” piglike beings that chase birds called “coccos” around the ranch. Milano can grab onto the moogan’s udders to dodge getting rammed by the hostile trampolis. I have no such luck. While I made this sound like a complete disaster, if I am able to coax the moogans down to the ground in another way and separate myself from the trampolis, this wouldn’t be the worst job in the world.

4. Pastry Pileup

I enjoy cooking, baking, and otherwise creating meals. I don’t do it as often as I’d like, mostly because I hate wasting food (as I’m only cooking for myself) and leftovers spoil before I get to all of them. Working at a bakery would allow me to indulge in this action without worrying as much. For Milano, she must match ingredient blocks as they fall into the pit before her to turn them into cakes. If new ingredients fall into the pit and crush the previous ones, they create germs, much like how cross-contamination does in real life according to Jon Taffer of Bar Rescue. Milano’s ability to turn piles of single ingredients into a full cake is astounding, and this is a feat I cannot meet. While baking large quantities of food would be stressful, it also seems quite rewarding, and knowing that people are enjoying something I make so directly would be satisfying. I’m not sure doing things Milano’s way would be my favorite, but I’d still take this job over the last few. Also, I would give out what I don’t sell to those in need. All food establishments should do this. 

3. Pop Star Power

Being a celebrity has many benefits. It is a career that allows for a lot of excess and freedom, but with this gift comes many a struggle. Your life is not your own, especially if you do music, thanks to controlling contracts and a constant touring schedule. It’s nearly impossible to build a good family life this way, and rigid happiness is often brushed aside for fast, hard pleasures. Now, I don’t think Milano is doing anything untoward in this instance. I’d have to imagine that she’s just doing cute dances and singing a song and everyone loves her and she’s happy, too. If I could match that 100%, I would have this job be number one with a bullet. However, I see how people act once they become rich and famous, and I am not as strong as Milano. I don’t want to forget my friends and family in pursuit of cheap thrills. Also, I think this rhythm game is kinda bad.

2. Viral Vamoose

Here, Milano is a doctor, curing patients of various viruses via button-masher minigames. If illnesses could be treated in this manner, I would hope that treatment would be swifter and cheaper than we have now. Hell, Milano is a child—and she’s not just treating these people, but fully curing them. Imagine what a trained team of adults could do, myself included (if I did get said training). There is a sense of duty I feel thinking about this hypothetical, even though I could be doing something similar in reality…I could’ve gotten a medical degree. I could’ve done something better than being a game critic online…On second thought, if Milano screws up the treatment, the viruses multiply, and I don’t know if I could emotionally handle messing up a few button presses and causing Covid 2. Milano is far, far stronger than I am. 

1.  Pizza Pronto

Delivery workers deserve far, far more than they are given. It’s a job that is treated so flippantly, but keeps the world spinning. Here, Milano delivers pizza to waiting customers via scooter, all while dodging obstacles laid all over the street. She can weave as well as jump to avoid these hindrances. She can also pick up speed boosters and run over arrows to make her scooter faster, as your score is higher when your delivery is faster. I wouldn’t be against doing this work, as I don’t mind traveling around in my car or a similar vehicle to deliver things. If I can put a podcast on or something, I’m good. Milano is also most likely getting paid better than the standard Uber Eats driver is, and while I say “good for you, Milano” here, I also say “everyone should be getting paid like Milano. I want my pizza and I want my pizza deliverer to be able to afford to purchase their own pizza.” It’s pizza all the way down, if I had my way. 

If I were to rank these jobs based on how fun they are minigame-wise, I’d say it’s pretty much the same except I’d put Pop Star Power at the bottom and swap Round-about Wrangler with Pastry Pileup. Milano’s Odd Job Collection is an adorable game that is worth checking out, with the translation as a highlight. Support releases like this if you want to see more like it! And to the workers of the world, thank you.

The post Milano’s Odd Jobs Ranked By How Much I Want To Do Them appeared first on Gamesline.

In the weeks following Dawntrail’s launch, there were hundreds of thousands of voices talking about it on social media, on YouTube, in Discord servers, and on in-game chat channels. People shared their impressions and opinions about its story, pacing, characters; everything you’d expect. I cannot give a comprehensive portrayal of these myriad voices, at least not without conducting innumerable surveys and interviews, but broadly speaking, what intrigued me the most was how there was no consistency on which part or parts of Dawntrail were “good” or “bad.” There were players who liked the first half, but found the second half bizarre and jarring, and there were players who found the first half boring but thoroughly enjoyed the latter half. There were players who strongly felt that it did not have enough voice acting, while others enjoyed the performances and were highly enthusiastic about characters old and new. Dawntrail has certainly been a divisive installment, to say the least, something that I haven’t seen since the Stormblood days.

With the whole of Dawntrail’s story completed, and the narrative now shifting gears as it leads us into the next expansion, I feel ready to talk. I will only be touching upon the story of this expansion, as an all-encompasing review of its new gameplay additions, features, quality-of-life updates, and such would widen the scope of this piece to the point of losing focus. Furthermore, many such additions can and already have been altered from their initial state at launch, whereas the writing of the Main Scenario Questline is very rarely altered outside of typos or errors. I also won’t cover the story in its entirety so as to remain as spoiler-free as possible; this will make sense in a bit when I get to one of my criticisms.

[There are minor spoilers for Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Dawntrail in this article.]

Dawntrail is an expansion that excels in the details. Sure, it has a grandiose plot with mystery, drama, and epic set pieces the likes of which we’ve seen all across FFXIV before, but that’s par for the course, that’s what players expect. It starts with the uncovering of a mysterious letter from her grandfather, mentioning a “golden city,” and quickly leads into a Rite of Succession for Tuliyollal, a nation spread across two continents. In any of the other expansions, the whole story would revolve around the trials involved in that Rite, but Dawntrail concludes that arc halfway through its runtime, and for the first time in any expansion in FFXIV, the road is left open without any signposting about where the story will go. The northern continent is made accessible, and players go on a whimsical non-sequitur questline about troubles in a wild west frontier town. There’s a saloon, there’s a catboy sheriff, there are tumbleweed crabs, there are dinosaurs; it’s a whole thing and it’s incredible.

The first time I played it, I briefly forgot I was playing Final Fantasy XIV, the MMORPG. That’s how well the story drew me in. It felt like a breath of fresh air, like I was experiencing what this game would be like if it were taken off the rails and allowed to descend into the Beast Road; that is, allowed to break free of its constraints as a railroaded storyline and be a truly open-world experience. It still was a railroaded storyline at that point (hell, it even becomes a story about a literal railroad later on) but one could see, however faintly, an alternate version of this game where exploration and discovery were the driving force behind its story, and not the other way around.

Right at the conclusion of this leg of the journey, there’s an explosive earthquake that’s foreshadowed so lightly, you’d miss it if you weren’t paying enough attention. A giant purple dome suffused with lightning appears on the horizon, and flying futuristic airships start pouring out of it, heading for the capital city of Tuliyollal. This leads into the second half of Dawntrail, which goes into the mysterious dome, its denizens, and the conflict between them and Tuliyollal which seems all but inevitable.

One of my criticisms of Dawntrail is that what’s in the dome was spoiled in some respects through pre-release material. There’s a city in there that is unlike anything in FFXIV, and feels wildly out of place even among the more science-fiction locales of the game. It’s stunning and impressive and extremely cool… and it was shown off well before Dawntrail launched, denying tuned-in players a chance to experience it fresh and in its proper context. It’s the sort of thing that should’ve been kept secret, and FFXIV has often withheld certain locations in upcoming expansions from pre-release material to keep them as surprises. This city should have been one such surprise.

Be that as it may, this dual-nature of Dawntrail serves to reinforce many of its narrative throughlines and messages. Stormblood has been the only other expansion so far to be split in some capacity, but that story was still unified in its overall themes about the impact of war on people and land, why liberation is a cause worth fighting for, and how even the mightiest of foes, be they constructs of faith or machines of empire can be toppled and dismantled when pushed with many hands. The split was geographical, but not textual. 

This is not to say Dawntrail has two different messages, but rather that the first half tackles and searches for what it means to be a good leader for one’s community, and how communities can be strengthened within themselves and made even stronger by building bridges to other communities, and the second half begins by taking one possible answer to those questions and accelerating it to its logical extreme, with all of the horrifying consequences made manifest. After all, your communities, your people, need land and resources to survive and thrive; running out of either would mean that you did not take proper care of your people and thus are a bad leader, so it is only righteous and just for you to find new lands and new resources and claim them for the sake of you & yours. Even if they belong to someone else, the needs of your people must come first.

It is this duality which makes Dawntrail fascinating to me, as players have mentioned disliking one half or the other. The story works best when intertwined as it is, and yet some are quick to bring up complaints I haven’t heard since Stormblood. Stormblood itself was split between the region of Gyr Abania and the eastern continent of Othard, and several voices following its launch in 2017 expressed preference for something more monoptic. They wanted either an expansion solely within Gyr Abania, or one solely within Othard, and didn’t like that the story was separated across these areas. These old complaints always struck me as odd, because they seemed to dislike the presentation and not the actual story, as Heavensward did not receive any such criticisms despite being split across the regions of Coerthas, Dravania, and the Sea of Clouds (i.e. it wasn’t solely about Ishgard, from the Ishgard perspective). Echoes of these sentiments have resurfaced for Dawntrail, and while they do address the narrative more than just the setting this time, they still come across as being arguments on the principle rather than the material. All of the expansions and thus all of FFXIV’s story has been told through the connection to a wide variety of different cultures and peoples across all kinds of places, and this is why one of the prime questions that pop up in conversations about upcoming expansions is “where are we going next?”

This drew me to an understanding of Dawntrail which may explain why there are so many differing perspectives on it. I believe that Dawntrail is an amalgam; a combination of every previous part of FFXIV combined and condensed into one single expansion. It has the slower pace and worldbuilding emphasis of A Realm Reborn and the earlier parts of Shadowbringers; it has the trek into enemy territory and reconciliation between opposing nations present in Heavensward; its dual nature I’ve already likened to Stormblood, but it also has a bit of the “war story” and leadership soul-searching present there. To cap it off, it takes the triumphant, defiant answer given to The Question posed at the end of Endwalker and immediately perverts it, twisting it into a nightmare scenario that has far-reaching implications for the universe of FFXIV. It’s got a bit of everything from everywhere.

This admixture is necessarily diluted as a result. One of the antagonists of Dawntrail has a backstory that is all but absent, which makes his motivations flat and uninspired (especially in a game with impressive villains.) While this narrative lacuna was addressed in a post-launch patch, it would’ve had a more lasting impact if shown before his demise and not after, as it makes his final moments comical to the point of absurdity. There’s a historical faction introduced toward the end of Dawntrail, who are only brought up as a matter of trivia in the base expansion. This faction ends up being very important later on, so their mention serves as foreshadowing, but given the extent to which they impact the narrative, it again comes across as something that should’ve been addressed in the base storyline, but was held back in favor of ending the initial story on a high note. 

There’s also a case to be made that Dawntrail tips its balancing act too heavily toward the latter half, leaving the nation of Tuliyollal and many of its denizens (like the ever-charming Wuk Evu), who are the focus of the first half, out to dry in favor of the thunder dome and the many loose threads trailing out of it. Many of the threads left open regarding its first half are addressed in side stories and activities, but to put things into perspective for the main story: the thunder dome and the history behind it are responsible for five of the currently six major boss fights, with two of them taking place within the dome, two of them in a place previously attached to the dome, and the latest one in the region the dome came from.

It’s not that Dawntrail has a bad story, however, or that its foibles are particularly unique in FFXIV. Heavensward kills off two major characters through self-sacrifice, and while one of them is afforded intimacy in a tender final moment, who is remembered by fans over a decade after their death because of said moment, the other is blasted out of the sky to die a lonesome disintegrating death, and who isn’t afforded the same ceremony or reverence by fans all these years later, and you get three guesses as to which character is a woman. Stormblood arguably has the worst writing in the whole Main Scenario so far, with the baffling decision to bring in a comic relief gillionaire-type character to ask him, in earnest, how to help an ailing nation recently recovering from imperial occupation, to which his reply is “well you can’t just give them money because then they won’t develop the working mindset needed to make it in this economy!” Even the beloved Shadowbringers has some pacing issues leading up to the end of its second act, and while I can appreciate that crafting a mountain-sized golem takes time and many hands, that questionable pacing is why Dawntrail turns its homage to this exact sequence into a quick and cute montage.

One could argue that Dawntrail’s story tries to do too much in too short a time; it has to introduce several new characters, locales, and story hooks; it has to follow up on the impressive finale of Endwalker; and it has to set the stage for the next major story saga. All things considered, I find it was more than merely satisfactory, but impressive in its own right. From my viewpoint that Dawntrail is a combination of every other part of the story blended together, the result is something familiar yet refreshingly new. It’s still Final Fantasy XIV as I’ve known it. It’s still keeping in form and function with both its connection to the rest of the MMO as well as its place within the Final Fantasy lineage. It’s just told in a new light through a new perspective.

Previously, the story of FFXIV has built up the player character as The Warrior of Light; champion of the wronged and the weak, seeker of truth and justice, and ender of apocalypses. Every major story beat has been punctuated by a formidable foe who bars the path or threatens the innocent, who must be laid low by the player character. Often, the Warrior of Light is the only one powerful enough to contend with these adversaries for one reason or another, and while the powers of friendship, sheer determination, and hope do much to bolster efforts in vanquishing villains, much of the narrative is built around small acts of kindness, favors, and chores.

Much and more has been said and bemoaned about “the MMO fetch quest” wherein a player is tasked with collecting some amount of items and delivering them to someone, but even in the earliest days of A Realm Reborn, FFXIV has always used simple quests like these to provide context, build out the world, flesh out characters, and inform the player of details. Skip through the dialogue and you’ll miss that the bucket of water a bar’s owner asked you to fill up and dump on a rowdy patron, was done so because he was being incredibly racist to someone else, behavior which the bar’s owner tells you is unfortunately common in these parts but which he forbids in his establishment.

There are hundreds of examples like that one in the multiple quests throughout the game, and they serve to build up the player character as a true hero. The Warrior of Light isn’t someone who only appears when a battle needs winning, who is only known for violence. They’re renowned for their incredible acts of selflessness, kindness, and communal love, too. It is this focus on building up someone to be a champion of the people, who is driven by action and a burning desire to do right by their neighbors, which sells the concept of the Warrior of Light. This resonant fiber is stitched throughout every chapter of the Main Scenario Quest, and this extends into Dawntrail as well, only this time there’s a twist and it comes in the form of Wuk Lamat, the deuteragonist of Dawntrail. Even calling her “deuteragonist” doesn’t do her character justice, as Wuk Lamat’s journey is a core aspect of Dawntrail, and why she is one of the game’s most interesting characters.

Introduced at the tail of Endwalker, Wuk Lamat approaches the player character with a proposition: be her ally in the upcoming Rite of Succession for Tuliyollal’s head of government. She is the underdog (undercat?) of the contest, and the exploits of the Warrior of Light compel her to seek them out and request their assistance. She is earnest and eager, but out of her depth, and aware of that fact. While she has no selfish ambition to take the Dawn Throne for herself, she is driven to counteract the frontrunner contestant who plans to plunge Tural into a war with nations across Eorzea and beyond. She’s not strictly in it to win, but he must lose at the very least.

The Rite of Succession requires contestants to connect with several communities across the southern continent of Yok Tural, completing their requests as decided by community leaders in whichever manner they see fit. Some leaders use the Rite as a means of educating the participants in their local culture, while others have pressing concerns and see the Rite as an opportunity to have an urgent need met. This Rite is analogous to A Realm Reborn, wherein the player traveled around Eorzea meeting leaders of various communities, towns, and organizations, doing favors and services for them in exchange for information, cooperation, supplies, and support. The context is different but the motions are the same. There’s even an undercurrent of mystery; A Realm Reborn had the looming threat of the Garlean Empire and the shadowy machinations of the Ascians, while Dawntrail’s primary mystery surrounds the “golden city of Tural” and how to locate it, which is actually the final objective of the Rite of Succession.

It is through this Rite, and all the trials and challenges that come with it, that Wuk Lamat is sharpened and shaped into the leader she wants to be for her people. Much like how the Warrior of Light was forged from a simple adventurer into a true hero over the course of A Realm Reborn, Wuk Lamat is built up in the same manner. One of the earliest complaints about Dawntrail was that its story defocused the player character in order to put Wuk Lamat centerstage. While it makes sense that some players would have that takeaway, especially after how intensely Shadowbringers and Endwalker made the player character the central focus of their stories, such a perspective fails to realize the role the player character is given and how it complements the narrative of Dawntrail.

The Warrior of Light’s role in Dawntrail is that of the mentor. The example I’ve been using for over a year now is Auron from Final Fantasy X; an older, more experienced party member who can be relied upon both for their combat prowess as well as their wisdom and worldly insights. Dawntrail’s story is refreshing and exciting because it makes another character the focal point, allowing the player character to run support for them, and then maintains that shift throughout most of its runtime. Riding shotgun for another character’s story is done plenty of times in and out of the main story of FFXIV, but Dawntrail capitalizes on the concept by focusing on Wuk Lamat, Krile, Erenville, Sphene, Gulool Ja, and a few others all throughout. This paradigm shift enhances Dawntrail’s messages on communities and families and coming together to build a better tomorrow, by allowing the characters who can best convey those messages the proper attention and narrative respect.

But I want to focus on Wuk Lamat in particular, because this mentorship role the player character has with her left a lasting impression I still think about to this day. I said Dawntrail was a combination of every other part of FFXIV, and I see that in Wuk Lamat too. From her introduction and all throughout Dawntrail’s story, I see myself in her. I see a fledgling me, nervous about playing with random players but eager to learn how to tank so I could be ready when I got to Heavensward and could unlock Dark Knight. In Wuk Lamat, I see every new player; the ones to whom I’ve given advice, or assistance, or just some words of encouragement. As she grows throughout the story, I see the growth of every player, myself included. You see her confidence grow, her doubts subside, and her resolve crystallize, until she’s a warrior in her own light: A Warrior of Dawn.

There’s a part in Dawntrail where the crew has to board a hot air balloon to fly deep into the jungle, and Wuk Lamat is embarrassed but finally admits to the player character that she is nervous about the flight, and asks if they can hold her hand. Now, I’ve made several alternate characters in FFXIV, and when I come to dialogue options in the story, I’ll pick the ones that seem appropriate for the character I’m playing, or I’ll pick the options I’d never pick for my main character just to see the alternate dialogue. I have never denied Wuk Lamat a steady hand to hold. I cannot speak to the performances in other languages, but Sena Bryer does such a phenomenal job portraying Wuk Lamat as a character brimming with kindheartedness, strength, and sincerity, that my calcified skeleton heart is immediately incinerated with warmth when she asks for help.

That is what makes Dawntrail special to me. It is a story about what makes family and community important to us, and how to strengthen our ties to them. It’s about how to forge new bonds and reinforce old ones which are wavering or even broken. It’s about how to weather change, and to possess both the reason and the resolve to identify and act when the only sensible option forward is to sever the ties that bind us; be they to the past or to people who have wronged us. It builds up these ideas bit by bit in the first half, and then uses the second to test them, twist them, and ultimately make them more resilient. It’s not content to simply state “Wuk Lamat is a good leader because she cares about her people and that’s why she wins the Rite of Succession!” It demonstrates the strength of her character by building her up in the same manner as the Warrior of Light, turning the perceived weakness of her reliance on others into one of her greatest powers—a staple message of FFXIV at this point, but the perspective shift given to the player character makes it shine because she learns it from us—and then playing her off of another character who shares her virtues but who has taken them too far.

I believe Dawntrail to be an expansion story with flaws like any other chapter in Final Fantasy XIV. But for all of the divisiveness it’s seemingly instilled, I also believe it’ll be looked back on fondly. When we’re further on into this saga’s storyline, and the Dawntrail callbacks start hitting like waves of nostalgia; when Wuk Lamat, my third-favorite Dawntrail character, shows up with Mr. Baby President and Shale from IT to help us out of a jam, that’s when people will realize what I’ve known all along. Dawntrail was an excellent tale, and a solid foundation for the future of Final Fantasy XIV.

The post Dawntrail’s Duality and What Makes It Shine appeared first on Gamesline.

Thanks to all this shared lifting, I’ve been able to manage this last year honing Masters-level scholarship techniques and have found for you all today that there’s a new way of complaining that makes you sound really smart, and everyone is doing it. Instead of saying, “This gameplay sucks ass and I hate it” you can more constructively and insufferably say: “I see that the choices made in design are at Tension.” In sensemaking, Tension generally means that two concepts in conversation with one another may have a natural friction that can be negotiated with an experiment—or in our case: designed around within the bounds of a videogame. That frictional force between two or more aligned concepts is known as ‘tension’. There is tension inherent to any shooter game since the player can solve their problems with a well-aimed button press, thus every shooter will design weapons, armor, sightlines, tracking systems, enemy patterns, etc. that don’t “solve” this problem but negotiate these tensions inherent to being a game about shooting targets. And you can basically just throw that word ‘tension’ around anywhere and professors will give you an A. It’s a little cheat you can use to sound smart that should work well for all of us for the next year or so… At least until it becomes as overused as “Transformative”, “To what extent”, or “Subscribe to my Substack”.

With that explanation out of the way, welcome to Solon’s list of the Best Design Tensions of 2025:

Open World vs Narrative — Promise Mascot Agency

Can Kiryu Talk Too Much? 

Here is a tension as old as Adventure (its not a duck), but thanks to AI-slop this year we’ve gotten to see just how much both design schools are mercilessly shit on by executive ‘free-thinkers’ who believe narrative design and open world design are spun up by magical frustum culling programmer elves. One of my favorite memes from 2025, “Easy, M” Super Mario RTX – Unreal Engine 5, highlights this perfectly: 

I had no idea AAA Mario would be so popular. I had to make some more. 🍄
ft. @ArielHck as Peach https://t.co/p3YMlF5rEn pic.twitter.com/ggarxptMuZ

— Ryan Stewart (@RyanStewartVO) December 21, 2025

I’m imagining a games executive taking all the wrong lessons from this, but also hiring Ryan Stewart and Ariel Hack.

Open world designs require the designer to build scaffolding that guide a player or players to a destination—this is known as wayfinding. Playtonic redesigned Yooka-Replaylee this year in order to give the player more wayfinding tools and it made the original Yooka-Laylee go from being mocked mercilessly to merely misunderstood. A modern day miracle! Narrative designs can often align well with open world games as a wayfinding tool to very simply tell the player with words what the current state of the world is or where they should go to progress the plot. Everyone’s favorite fairy Navi, from Ocarina of Time, is a foremost example of this: the name being short for ‘navigator’ evokes a wayfinding tool. So much so, that I can summarize a major tension between open worlds and narrative by saying “Hey, Listen!” So the wider games audience knows all too well that when you use a character for game cues, that will reduce that character to being the player’s nanny. This takes the player (and even the character they are playing) out of the role they are playing within an adventure game.

This isn’t a negative though, story is great at taking attention away from the player doing other tasks. This can be constructive for breaking up players’ various tasks, or for onboarding/offboarding quests. Of course, it can be a double-edged sword when the player is trying to do something and is suddenly being bombarded with information, which is essentially the joke of Mario (4K) over-explaining things the player is in the middle of doing. (This tension also comes up when presenting games for an audience like the old E3 stage demos—[show] & [tell] are literally in conflict with each other even though both must happen!) 

So what if I told you that we’ve solved this conflict that is so core to games? I know as scientists we’re not supposed to ‘solve’ tensions but rather explore what effects those tensions create but we’ll get to that later in the list! Kaizen Game Works really did SOLVE the Navi problem! Promise Mascot Agency is an open world game that uses a management simulator to bridge their story and their world. You play the role of Literally Kiryu from Yakuza, and you take care of misfit mascots in a haunted town by employing them all to serve the community and make it a better place. Every 30 minutes or so, new jobs open up and you can make money by sending the right mascots to each individual job, and while they work the jobs you collect power-ups for your car, items to keep your mascots hydrated, and chat with community members to find and enhance your relationships with clients. It is extremely similar to Kaizen’s previous game Paradise Killer. Except, instead of spilling tea with dying gods who have all the time in heaven, you have timers ticking in the background ushering you towards different parts of the town. Normally, this would add anxiety to a situation that is reliant on the player keeping many plates spinning at once, but I’m telling you They Solved It! It’s just Simpsons Hit & Run!

The secret is: the player always has to hit a button to swap between various narrative, management, and driving modes. The timers ticking can suggest increasingly urgent moves to make, but control is never taken away from the player until/unless they decide to change the mode themselves through button activation. It’s incredibly subtle, but whenever a mascot needs relief, they flash a big loud prompt on the UI that says “Please Help in 5 Minutes!” and then the player is granted agency to manage a stopping point from map exploration within that time frame—or you can just let your mascot drown and take the hit on the money, like a real boss. This turns what should be an annoying obligation into player agency! The only exception Promise Mascot Agency makes is when assassins call you on the phone to say “We will come kill you if you don’t send the family one million yen right now.”—which, fair. 

Kaizen Game Works has a deep respect for visual novel design and because of that Promise Mascot Agency is full of design blueprints like this that bridge pitfalls which other larger games constantly fall into. I believe the lessons from this game can be easily adapted to other projects that want to use varied storytelling techniques while navigating a player’s task and attention economy. It might not be as fun to others as it is to me, but I think Promise Mascot Agency is an incredible design textbook that everyone would be better for playing.

Rhythm Game vs Adventure — Unbeatable

High School Musical Needed Quick Time Events

The mad lads really went for it. It took eight years of incredibly tough grinding on a moonshot dream that I still believe might be impossible: and as Maverick explained in his task-taking review, it comes with a lot of asterisks!

Combining most anything with rhythm games is a nightmare. We’ve done this for decades and the hypnotic effects of rhythm games always manage to overtake all human body functions, leaving room for little else—they systemically hate sharing the stage with anything. Guitar Hero 6 used its dying breath to try to unravel just a few of these tensions, and barely eked out a bizarre one-of-a-kind rhythm/resource management game. I’ve seen countless indie games die at this altar, and even after a miracle Dungeon Crawler/Rhythm hybrid in Crypt of the NecroDancer, Brace Yourself Games still went for the impossible dream of a story/rhythm hybrid in Rift of the NecroDancer to mixed success. Outside of that, 2025 saw Everhood 2 and Rhythm Doctor continue to aim for the very specific dream of telling a story through a rhythm game. But it’s Unbeatable that slams its shin into more lessons than anyone, and the way it bleeds out on stage is both undeniably punk as fuck and extremely fucking useful for studying.

Unbeatable puts you in story mode for fifteen minutes, and then you fail a rhythm game for two minutes before being thrust into fifteen more minutes of story that seems a bit pissed that you interrupted it. It did successfully feel like I’d gotten beaten up by cops when this happened, and it also felt awful and annoying! This is exemplary of how fast-twitch rhythm sections are in deep design strife with much slower-digesting storyweaving in so many ways. And Unbeatable tries nearly everything: interrupting songs with story beat cutscenes, intertwining rhythm game modes between charts and Rhythm Heaven-type minigames as a ludic leitmotif, making full freeplay charts for ambient background music moments, massive 3D action setpieces inspired by 3D Sonic games where you grind and parkour to the beat, even explaining the rhythm game’s diegesis like a musical explaining why everyone is singing and dancing—nothing was taken for granted or left aside other than PaRappa the Rapper style sounds-as-button input—and I’m SURE that got tested (and discarded) at some point!

There is a cost to this kind of everything-goes shotgun approach, and it shows up in the finale of the game when the game has to very briefly stop mid-song to load up and unload various sections and mini-games. It chooses to have as little on-board and off-load as possible, leading to the player kinda just guessing whenever a mode switch happens. Guitar Hero 6 ran into this cost and their solution was splitting Rush’s 2116 into six distinct rhythm tracks which allowed them the freedom to make distinct ‘levels’ for each section to help tell the story. These aren’t ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ choices, they are results to experiments that we can record. I don’t think Unbeatable is the best rhythm/story game of this year (Rhythm Doctor is made by powerful percussion perverts with applied math degrees), but I do think everyone should play it if they want to see a veritable buffet of functional ways to develop the Rhythm Game/Adventure Game hybrid. This is going to sound weird, but it’s for the dream: I don’t want a sequel to the story of Unbeatable, those kids should take a well-earned rest. What I need is a sequel to the ENGINE of Unbeatable. 2-button rhythm game with full 3D environments and a multi-format story engine?? That truly is the road to being Unbeatable. 

Videogames vs Nonfiction — Despelote 

That Footwerk Was Factual

I have great news for all the Despelote fans. Not only is Soccer real, but Ecuador is as well.

gained some insight today into why gamers never seem to know what they're talking about

[image or embed]

— Punchy (@punchystream.bsky.social) January 13, 2026 at 6:27 PM

I was going to leave this entry as just this post because it really does speak volumes, but I think it’s actually fair to think through why a gamer would think Nioh is “nonfiction” and it’ll explain the uphill battle that Despelote has—this isn’t systemic tension or genre-tension or mechanic tension or narrative tension, this is something rooted in videogames as media classification. If we are making play spaces with rules guiding the play, how do we capture historical play? We emulate it into a spoken or written form of broadcast and that is our substitute for play. In order for developer and main-character Julián Cordero to make Despelote, a second round of emulation has to happen on top of the broadcasted soccer footage heavily used for the game. You have to emulate the feeling of soccer, the feeling of Quito, the feeling of being a kid, everything. Is Madden nonfiction? Possibly! Players can obviously use the game to simulate classic football games play-for-play, but that doesn’t mean the game itself is nonfiction. And Breaking Madden did happen in real life, we all saw it. The N64’s Quarterback Club franchise has a game mode that simulates each individual Super Bowl’s most dire moment and asks “what would you do?”, which is solid historical fiction. But to BE a nonfiction game is to create play spaces that also allow space for real events to happen around you that you probably can’t directly play with because they need to stay static.

The Cat and the Coup uses NYT headlines to outline the assassination of the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, and juxtaposes those with metaphorical puzzles based on Iranian art where you play as a rather aggressive cat. One way I read this is as a depiction of Iranians’ lack of agency over their political situation. That Dragon, Cancer is an autobiographical game that also depicts a lack of agency over the death of a son. Of course, compared to those examples, Despelote is much lighter, but it takes the hardest road possible to capture the feeling of Ecuador qualifying for the 2002 World Cup. By letting the player participate in various childhood life events, we gain insight into how these events were impacted by World Cup Fever taking hold in Quito. In young Julián’s world, a bottle is a ball, a stick is a ball-grabbing tool, a dog is a goalie, and you are the greatest soccer player in history booting balls into orbit with your mega-foot. This kind of magical realism seems well-suited for nonfiction games, despite how ironic that is, but that’s the magic of games. All three of these examples of nonfiction games prove how worthwhile it is to capture a historical period in games, because playing videogames can make that thing overwhelmingly important. And to a kid? What’s more important than your country in the World Cup??

Kaizo vs Adventure Games — Baby Steps

Wanna Play QWOP For Thirteen Hours?

Oh! Hard game vs Easy game, one of play’s favorite tensions! No. Grow up. Fall over right now. Ignore these reactionary subjectivities, we are talking about two things that are fundamentally similar: every Kaizo game is an adventure in skill acquisition and every Adventure game is deeply in touch with failure affordance. One is always born in conversation to the other like the two sides of a funhouse mirror, and Baby Steps tries to impossibly combine those mirror dimensions into one place, so we should be precise and delicate about discussing its design.

How long can you withstand a game taking the piss? How much piss will you afford to have taken from you? Can you last pissless for ten hours of adventure gaming? It’s easy to be ridiculed when it’s a shell-jump into a damage-boosted spin jump section. But this is Walking. We are walking. We are struggling to walk. With legs. Like a baby. You are a grown baby for over ten hours. I Wanna Be The Guy is a kaizo game that is about the length of a Naughty Dog or Insomniac-esque adventure game, but it constantly mixes up its tone and styling to keep the player feeling like some authorial hand is out there urging them on. Lego Star Wars is an adventure game that takes the piss, lampooning anything it can for up to forty hours, but it can so easily afford that because it’s grounded within the structure of a hearty sci-fi franchise made unserious for children.

Baby Steps has one single giggle before putting an hour of abstracted climbing in front of you; you are alone with only the stone-faced mountain and your waning sanity for company. And the reward for not giving up and advancing against adversity? One giggle, more mountain. You have to love the mountain. So there’s this tension in tone that Baby Steps explores that makes most game development styles cringe in discomfort, but especially Kaizo/Adventure games: just leaving the player alone. No power-ups, no Collectible Get, and very few narrative check-ins to help orient the player—which for an adventure game is unthinkable. And because of this it can afford some novel level design flourishes: paths that guide the player in circles, towers of no-regard, and dozens of remarkably unremarkable unmapped vistas commonly found by stopping climbing and turning around.

I’d argue the largest design difference between Kaizos and Adventure games is the scale at which short term and long term goals are presented. An hour spent trying to master one single section within the context of a three-or-four minute long level is a similar kind of progression to an hour spent tackling a large set-piece within an adventure game, after which it will tell you where your next objective lies. Celeste is a soft example of a Kaizo/Adventure hybrid approaching this tension in how it uses strawberries as an icon for reliably resetting a player’s short-term goals, and then cordons off distinct zones to re-evaluate the player’s progress up the mountain. Baby Steps similarly uses a level-structure with short opening and closing cutscenes to transition the player to various stages up the mountain. But instead of a map or UI tool to allow the player to reorient themselves, it solely relies on long mountainous sightlines to show the player how close or far they are from the next checkpoint. The player must trust that the mountain will guide them where they need to go as long as they remain vigilant and observant, which helps reinforce themes of self-sufficiency. But what about the Kaizo-sized micro goals and self-improvement? Well, baby steps now. I’m sure you can find how this part of the tension was explored on your own.

Myst vs Roguelike — Blue Prince

Draw Five Red Pages, Do Not Draw Five Blue Pages

I think this is the last of these five ‘complex games with extremely long dev timelines and very few people working on it that leads to experimental answers to brilliant questions’—this is exactly why we Indie. I already know Balatro works. I already know Vampire Survivors works. I know that Ball x Pit and CloverPit and Nubby’s Number Factory and all these fucking Roguelikes+classic game work. In 2026 some Dig Dug Roguelike will do insane numbers. Blue Prince doesn’t work! It obviously can’t work! I’ve uninstalled and re-installed this game three times this year and it still doesn’t work! I fucking despise every run I’ve ever done in Blue Prince, advancing nothing, gaining nothing, learning nothing. Resetting days as I draw three L-turns into another dead end for the fifth time in a row. It’s infuriating! So anyways, I did my PAX panel on librarianship about Blue Prince and I’m gonna write more words about Blue Prince right now! I can’t stop thinking about what is effectively a very plain game. 

goes to re-install Blue Prince… you know, for screenshot

And who writes about games they LIKED in 2025 anyways? Why would you want to remember what was good about that year? We should be remembering the pain so that we never come back here again! Right? Am I right?? Alright enough bluster, let’s get into it.

Blue Prince is such a good pun. I hope the amount of ink that the shambling corpse of games journalism spilled for Blue Prince commented enough on how great a name it is. It’s exquisite.

You can not put Myst and Roguelikes together! There are so many tensions you have to account for! The play-cycles are different—BP chose the somewhat more obvious Roguelike structure in a Myst super-structure, but the opposite would be wild too. The goal setting is different—BP eased this tension by Roguelike runs being a constant primary goal with the wider mystery being an ever-radiating secondary goal in the background to be approached once the Roguelike parts are fully settled. I think the story is the only element where both genres can find purchase together as the Roguelike cycles obscure the Myst-style puzzle components, but easing that tension comes at the cost that puzzle pieces show up in randomized pools, meaning a player could possibly just never see a crucial puzzle piece if they never draw a certain room (or if they think a certain room is ‘bad’ and avoid ever using it over all other pieces). All of these tensions come with giant game-killing chasms. Unlike other Roguelikes where progress is predictably progressive, you can have a run that regresses your states if you use materials that you stocked on previous runs in places that end up not gaining you forward progress like you’d hoped. That is just not a design consideration that Slots & Daggers, a somehow comparatively normal game, ever had to make. 

The most fascinating design tension Blue Prince weighed its soul on is how to show interactable and important objects. They don’t! Most information-load goes towards the Myst side of leaving all objects undecorated within a naturally lit style wherever they lie, and the player is left to figure out if they are important, or of what use they are. This is the opposite of contemporary Roguelike stylings which are extremely verbose or build iconography to lead the player through wholly knowing that a thing exists and what it will do. While this leads to the moment-to-moment frustration of searching every room for known objects, it also leverages all of the Roguelike strengths of needing every little advantage towards a player’s general ‘observation palette’. New room: Do I have exits? Does this room have an immediate function? Anything hidden in a usual spot? Has anything I’ve done so far affected other rooms? Has any information in here developed for me? Go to next room? That’s all Roguelike stuff feeding directly into the observational tendencies of a Myst-styled game, and it just works! Blue Prince actually works?? This is the exact feeling that got this concept beyond prototyping and I’m so grateful for it—this is why we Indie!

Franchising Katamari — Once Upon A Katamari 

Can Katamari Slop?

Up to this point, one of videogames’ greatest contributions to humanity, Katamari Damacy, has periodically gotten new releases to keep up with new console generations before transitioning to simply remaking older releases so that they exist on PC. This was all we ever needed and not a drop more was ever necessary, however, the money printing machine marches onward. Katamari puts food on our tables and clothes on our children—before quickly rolling it up from our tables, heading to the wardrobe, and rolling up the children of course. But there’s a component to this that will naturally affect the design of an entire game: if there is now an expectation for new, future Katamari, what shape can that take? We already roll up everything in the universe in every game and we always will—how can you expand on Everything? In a word: Curation.

[gets real close to the microphone to make sure the people in the back can hear the single most important word a librarian can give you as panacea for our overwhelming information age]

C U R A T I O N

We can curate everything into eras. Once Upon A Katamari curates all of its levels into different eras of civilization. A future game can curate all of its levels into art histories, or Malaysian islands and cultures, folk festivals of North America, frames of velocity, the life of John Candy, ocean tides, chemical properties (imagine a vinegar level where you start your roll with a antacid tab), multiverses, Getting Over It with My FoddyMari,

We do deserve an ode-to-videogames inspired Katamari game. 9-Volt Katamari.

Wait, an open source Katamari could do this…

Once Upon a Katamari made some wise and specific design choices to set them up for further successful franchising in ways that I would have thought Katamari was heavily resistant to. I know it’s annoying to take a game of pure whimsy and be like: wanna see how the meat is made? But check out the king’s meat.

Solon Katamari Safety Tip: In case you are ever in a real-life Katamari attack, always keep kids around you as they will be your last possible sign to activate one of these new fancy mid-level cutscenes to get the hell outta there. Also get on a shelf! Katamaris always struggle with things on the second or third shelf of a cabinet. 

The biggest change they made to the core of Katamari was adding powerups that can be rolled over and activated to make your Katamari move faster or hoover up objects really quickly. It’s delightfully Namco to default your design’s tertiary objectives to ZOOOOM BUTTON, but hey it’s a classic device for a reason. Katamari has previously been a very ‘pure’ experience; lacking in any distraction from the primary objective of any given level. But this classic kart-racer design tool always works to give the player moments of control and power that purposefully break up the flow of rolling. Equally classic ‘Namco’ design is the addition of collectible crown-shaped tokens in each level which serve two very practical purposes: get players to explore the level at various sizes, and give players a metaprogression tool that feeds them into a bunch of customization menus. The other core change to how the game is played is simplifying the controls so that you no longer need to hold both sticks to move the Katamari in a direction, and so that The Prince’s dash is simply on the trigger instead of alternating the sticks. These are very clinical design choices that remove friction and take away from the whimsy, but after 20 years of Katamari, it is kinda nice to see it grow up and put on the suit and tie.

Further professionalizing Katamari is the addition of a few new modes. Online multiplayer mode KatamariBall is designed about as subtly as a brick, and it combines with surprisingly robust Cousin customization to make the bedrock of what will become staples of all future Katamari games. It’s good to see them keeping this ‘simple’ and not overthinking or getting cute with things that feel less ‘inspired’ and more ‘the union has negotiated this into their contract to secure the bag for upcoming sequels’—which, oh shit! We can talk about that now!

Shouts to all the union workers now in the games industry, the incredible organizing of GWU has been bearing fruit all year and currently half of all games industry workers are looking to unionize in 2026. They are securing contracts with health care, parental leave, reducing crunch—and we can start talking about phase two: modality initiatives to secure the bag for asset artists and networking teams. Once you’ve got online modes and character customization? You gotta have it in the sequel too! Systems that make a game stronger and more franchisable can absolutely be a part of these union negotiations! It legitimately helps companies see past a release and into their next decade. So look forward to some strangely specific games system becoming a political battleground in 2026—probably a relationship system, as admins try and fail to get the labor offloaded onto AI practices. And when that inevitably crashes because people hate dating the robot lady in the self-checkout line, we’ll need great union-strong games writers to pick up that slack!

Look, I’m so excited to be writing anything about a Katamari game and that means you get me at my worst behavior. We’re going to dig into some really fucking nerdy design minutae—the stuff I think about when the lights are off and nobody is around to hear me… Did you notice the loading screens are there, but they are super fast and it’s kinda weird? The quirky loading screen behaviors synonymous with Namco-Bandai’s PS2 era are quickly becoming vestigial. Where are they going? Something has gotta get loaded, right? Well kinda, they are getting hidden into the various onboarding devices after level-selection. So when the player goes to see the King of the Cosmos, the computer is spinning that initial state of the level up (segmented by size-based gates that make the world larger as you progress) and when you are Royal Rainbow-ing at the end of levels the system begins streaming the level results section and queues up the main overworld. These are primary concerns of a game’s flow that developers are constantly thinking about even though they are something the player very rarely has to think about unless something has gone wrong (or in the case of Final Fantasy XVI, way too right) I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a rash of fake load-times/loading screens coming up in games just to give the player better buffer between modes. So Katamari is now in a position where it might have to rethink its overall menu flow in ‘future releases’ (again, a phrase that we couldn’t really say a year ago). The default order of level select -> King’s debrief -> loading screen -> level explanation is becoming more cruff than substance as computers have gotten really good at object proliferation. We have to re-balance player onboarding and the cognitive load that comes with it alongside these absurdly fast loading times, not that The King Of The Cosmos has any interest in these things—but brother you ARE on the chopping block! You know who else has this problem? The king of this very specific shit: Masahiro Sakurai. I’ve only gotten to see and play a tiny bit of Kirby Air Riders, but the king of menus and load-flow is back, and some of those menus are super chunky. Friction-filled gnarly character and vehicle select menus that are hiding a lot of fun processing in the background. If you are interested in this field of menu flow, Sakurai’s the guy to look at, especially Kid Icarus: Uprising.

I believe this is the only time I’ve published any thoughts around Katamari, so it’s about time for the full monty. There is this peculiar structural problem with Katamari games that some day I dream of fixing complicating. You know how your Katamari gets ranked by what it is made up of? The results screen gleefully tells you your ball is quite ‘Partition-y’ or some such nonsense. I’ve always found this so unsatisfying, when you could really easily be getting into the meat of summarizing what all was rolled up! It’s 2026 now and I demand Katamari Classification systems! I know I’m the only person who has ever dug into the full item glossary that every game has, but they could be so much more robust with stronger object tagging behaviors. That’s right, I’m suggesting a taxonomy audit of objects in Katamari games. Real sicko librarian shit. We know objects have mass and size, sometimes they have other properties in certain modes like making the Katamari more ‘hot’ or ‘sweet’ depending on the level requirements. But they only have a single level classification system where objects are only collocated by genre. Each object could have various tags that help better describe each rolling journey the player undergoes. The resulting planet’s Core could be an object genre based on the quality of what was rolled up in the first half of a level and then the Crust could be a descriptor genre based on the second half of the level. In the saloon level you start by rolling up small beverages, and by the end you are rolling up large tumbleweeds and cowboys—call that planet Dusty Sipper and there you go! Yep, that looks dusty alright! But it goes further than just making more fitting descriptions. Once tagged, objects can exhibit behaviors based on reading the tags of proximal objects and boom! Now you’ve got semantic triples! The Katamari can exhibit life mid-rolling as objects can now sense one another on the ball. If you want 22nd century Katamari today, send in a data scientist to inject linked data structure and theory into this children’s video game franchise. The possibilities are endless, and it starts with giving reverence to the object classification system. It’s just curation!

We’ve got more modern design trends to try to twist our brains on, but it felt so nice this year to see Katamari growing up alongside me. It was this strange PS2 cult hit for such a long time that I didn’t think it would break out of that status, and even if it did that it would be stripped of its soul along the way. Once Upon a Katamari does make some sacrifice, but this entry permanently enshrines The Prince as one of the canonical game characters of all time now that he’s gotten to shine for a new generation of players.

My son is rolling up underwater creatures in Katamari and he found a mollusk and was confused by it and he said “maybe it’s a ghost in the shell” and now I’m extremely confused and trying to figure out where that came from. Who is exposing my child to anime???

— Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann.com) October 22, 2025 at 7:39 PM

LucasArts vs The 21st Century — The Drifter

This Shit’ll Turn Your DNA Australian

So you want to be nostalgic and modern at the same time, huh? In art we’re always synthesizing our inspirations in a way that walks this line trying to find out how much ‘homage’ you can get away with before you are seen as fraudulent. This is magnified in videogames where systemic expression often has so much developmental distance from aesthetic expression, despite how much they inform each other throughout development. Because of how much technical heavy lifting this all is, the LucasArts styled Point-and-click has seen very little development since Grim Fandango in 1998. This effect is most notable within Ron Gilbert’s Thimbleweed Park, a very well crafted story that is nevertheless held back by the trappings inherent to the style: Clunky interface, world is too large, overwhelming options. And none of these make Thimbleweed Park bad, I heartily recommend it actually (the DLC is still the best dollar you can spend on Steam) but it always felt like we were so close to seeing a new generation of point-and-click games on the horizon and nostalgia has felt like the only thing holding it back.

But that’s not really the whole story here, because we’ve had loads of point-and-click games over the last fifteen years, building from distinctly non-LucasArts traditions.  These are built inside of engines capable of creating a wide array of point-and-click styles, but inevitably they’ve all run into the same tensions: the more action/verbiage your game uses, the harder it is for players to keep up. The more beautifully ornamented your graphics are, the harder it is for players to find what to click on. Unique abstractions can surprise the player and push them to think wider (oh, I guess I trade peanut butter for 500 ants, sure), but it can also confuse and frustrate just as many other players. These are all things that The Drifter has taken a novel approach towards: By developing new controller support options, it is much easier to play on controller than any other P&C I’ve played. This does mean there aren’t any designed pixel hunts (which have long been a pariah of the genre, but they can have a place). This also lets them get away with making much more robust and ornamented screens—but still not too ornamented because The Drifter realizes some people are still using a normal mouse-and-keyboard interface.

Does this mean they ‘fixed’ the Point-and-Click? Why don’t we always do it like this? Well, let’s look at a tradeoff. So if controller becomes faster and easier (in a genre we currently call ‘Point and Click’), could there be a pacing issue between interfaces? Could that pacing difference be seen as controller being ‘easy mode’? These types of design questions are way more ‘figured out’ in how we see pacing in other game genres, like Visual Novels, Gachas, and SHMUPs, but this is a genre that gets to be run largely by narrative design pacing like a mystery author would use.

(Design Tangent: pacing design becomes a very practical P&C issue in Escape Room style P&Cs like those from the Flash era because the player can focus on operating each little puzzle box. Anyways, go play every Rusty Lake game and every Amanita Design game. They are all so good. It will not take long, I promise!)

So with all this Point-and-Click design theory in mind, imagine with me: what if Maniac Mansion on the NES used a cursor that locks on to hotspots instead of a mouse-style cursor? This entire genre would be incredibly different-shaped from that design decision. That’s why, while it might be easy to say “The Drifter fixed pixel hunting in P&Cs”, we should recognize there’s something lost from this design methodology. 

But also… THE DRIFTER FIXED THAT SHIT! IT’S INCREDIBLE! The pacing is generally controlled by the episodic design. The UI for controller support is intuitive and even helpful for mouse controls. The divide between items and conversation topics is clear and helps guide the player instead of overwhelming them. And even aside from that, all of the fundamentals come so easy to The Drifter, it’s unfair. I’m playing this game and just thinking about how cracked out Australia’s design fundamentals are. How are they like this? How is the ANZ region more popular on this list than anywhere else in the world? I’m realizing that y’all have won a very peculiar award by landing right here as the most tension-exploring games region, but thank you and please keep doing whatever the hell y’all are doing! The Drifter is exploring new futures for how we design P&Cs and I hope a lot of people are taking notes.

Supergiant Games vs Sequels — Hades II

Two torches are not a weapon. They are a cry for help.

C’mon guys… Guys… Com—no like come on though? We know you don’t make sequels but like, when you make a sequel it doesn’t have to be Exactly The Same as the previous one but with more steps. 555-COME-ON-NOW this is a copy-paste. I’m sorry. That’s a damning design criticism but like, the signs are all there: I do not have to play this game any differently from the last. There are no choices within Hades II’s rooms or boons that would affect the outcomes of my runs any differently, but there sure are More choices! A God from Mount Olympus has bequeathed upon me +5% charge speed? Well Zeus better kept that fuggin receipt, I gain +5% charge speed whenever I clench my butt. I know this is a copy-paste because instead of building myth and telling tale, every character just talks about mechanics of the game. I don’t CARE how much the scythe of stankonia’s faster hit arc reminds you of my quest to “kill Chronos”, Odysseus! Get a hobby! No wonder Melinoë needed to run away, she’s trying to get away from all of you talking about whatever weird powers she is manifesting. God forbid a witch do anything around here without having to read through three levels of tool-tips to understand what things do.

Melinoë’s cool though. 

Anyways, there isn’t a cool design tension to learn about here, if there was I wouldn’t be this mad. They made a perfectly balanced and tensionless sequel to their previous huge breakthrough game, isn’t. that.. 😀 😀  justtsofucking,,. 😀 great?.?. D: D:< itsCozy EVEN!.f,1ad -aaaanyways, I just wanted to rant a bit before making my main point that Supergiant Games should not make any more sequels ever again … unless it is Transistor 2 of course, obvious exemption—or Pyre 2 cuz that’s GOTTA go somewhere. Yeah no okay ok or Bastion 2? but like if it was inspired by Hades?? That would fuck though. Fine fine you’re totally right, hey Supergiant? You cool. Do what you do. I’m still a little miffed by the blandest barely hand-holdey yuri that I’ve ever seen in my life not that it matters since your Greek Easy-Pass to classics-approved bisexual horny town got hella scooped by a much hornier superhero coworker romance novel game, but like, hey—already bygones—we know you aren’t usually Mr. Play It Safe but, look… the numbers? The numbers were way too good to pass up. I hear that’s what playing with the devil will get ya’. Make that Hades 3 money if you gotta, brother. We’ll see you at the crossroads either way~

Anyways, we’ve learned nothing here, but even still I can’t say the time was wasted, it was just spent playing videogames.

Failure To Plan vs Plan That Fails — Metal Gear Solid V

Doesn’t Matter If We Suck, Because Huey Sucks More!

All rise for our favorite online pastime: discussing the spectacle of hypermasculinity. Watch as these boys self-destruct under their own futile self-glorification and myth building while missionrotting under the desert sun. I desperately wish for a Diamond Dogs situation to happen to every libertarian in the white house and every ICE officer ever employed. The ultimate glory of Big Boss is a story about a bunch of gay bitches who think they are putting together a new world order but end up building a suicide cult out of prisoners of war… Well, that would be the story… Except they do fight over an absurdly super-sized robot with sexy thighs, they do have multiple global-level health infestations, their enemies do have freaky psychic powers, and so they are technically saving the world actually. At every turn, this game bends over backwards just to justify what the Diamond Dogs fight for, even though watching them simply destroy themselves in cutscenes styled after 00s TV drama 24 is more rewarding and justified.

The core themes around severed limbs and dopplegangers are wholly undercut when we can point to the very real pain in all of our asses that is Huey. The game overall doesn’t have a fraction of the guts it takes to commit. If only there was some simple and convenient way to delegitimize everything that happens inside of it as if it were non-canon. Oh perfect, Big Boss isn’t the real Venom Snake, he’s out having other adventures while we rot for PMC clout. The jarhead sucker who the player plays as is supposed to be holding the mirror up to the player, but that trick only really works if the player is a jarhead-shaped dude? There’s very little point to discuss what it would be like if this game were finished, or what Kojima’s contributions to it really were, because it’s just overall too non-committal for anything to stick, and too embarrassingly bare-bones to try to advocate for the things that do land. (Rooting through every soldier profile to eliminate soldiers speaking a specific language would be interesting as a critique on military administration, if it had any impact at all on your forces impact or morale.) And the most frustrating part is that, that’s what Metal Gear Solid V is proud to be! It does not strive for anything greater than having the player replay the opening mission again hoping that they come to some new conclusion seeing everything again. It’s not nihilism, it’s just empty. And to replace fantasy with a redundant gritty realism as an excuse to justify all this vaguely retro-aesthetic paramilitary global conflict packed inside of a generic glossy spy thriller reminds me of when Daniel Craig did it in Quantum of Solace.

I spent all of 2025 playing every Metal Gear game, and while I trudged through some real stinkers for the first time—we abandoned Metal Gear PoOps as soon as Superman Snake fought his second Regular Tank with hundreds of bazookas and grenades—there were wonderful little moments at the periphery of the main MGS1+2+3+4 lineup that I really enjoyed! Metal Gear 2 still manages to command a lot of power through its simple and effective interface while establishing tons of charming set pieces that become mainstays for the franchise. Even Peace Walker earns a truly insane climax that I didn’t expect. But then I finally hit the game I’d spent a decade avoiding: Venom Snake Horse Adventures. And let me tell ya, Venom Snake Horse Adventures makes a lot less sense outside of the context of 2015. To make an open world game in the MGS universe for the PS3 meant punting at every possible design conflict: won’t the player recognize that every African outpost is just individual ‘levels’ strung together by lonely desert paths they can skip by helicopter? Should the player have a constant companion that can’t be harmed and generally makes the player more comfortable? Sure. Whatever’s most fun. And thank goodness for that because it is the one thing that this game believes in above anything else: the Venom Snake Horse Adventure section should be Fun!

The best part of MGSV is choosing the giant robot fight again, sticking your own mix-tape into Snake’s ears, getting on your horse, and running away from Sahelanthropus while giggling as MGS‘s soundscape interrupts Sabrina Carpenter break up songs. Or whatever you want to imagine Snake’s guilty pleasures would be. It’s even worth going back to—the way it has been cared for post launch has been substantial! It helps that MGSV‘s entirety takes up 12GB less space than this year’s Dragon Quest 1+2 and 3 HD-2D remakes combined. (WHY ARE THEY 20GB EACH?) It is very easy to play this game without having to interact with any of the story, narrative, or characters mucking up your Afghani Cowboy Fulton Funtime. 

I can’t claim to know anything about what happens in Konami as an organization, however like everyone else I’m incredibly tempted to divine meaning from their relationship with this game. It feels like so much craft and care was put into the multiplayer and in the photograph system in the cockpit of your travel helicopter. The farther you get from any parts with voice acting, the more beautiful the game gets, and so I am left struggling with these crumbling pieces trying to figure out if Konami Can’t Cook or if Konami Won’t Cook. It’s the same authorial struggle that happens when watching WWE wrestling where you’re like: I know this performer doesn’t suck, but they sure do suck here! And it’s not a death by committee type thing or a Kojima left the project thing or an overwhelmed-by-open-world design type thing because all of these systems were thoroughly pre-tested within Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes. The entire process to make da game juices good was thoroughly undertaken. I’ve seen Konami’s dev teams when they phone it in and this wasn’t that. At the end of the day, all I can really point to is that this game was made by Diamond Dogs: they can deny any failure by pointing at their plan’s fail points and say “see, all according to our specsheet” as they continue to devour their own. 

Some day these AAA video games are gonna recognize that their ‘long tail’ is actually the players’ ‘long tail’. But it starts with recognizing that Konami’s best design decision for MGSV was when they got Duran Duran to release Invisible for MGSV. Source: it’s pinned on my Bsky.

Stupid Friends vs Stupid Games — Peak

If All Your Friends Jumped Off A Bridge, Was It For Content?

Alright, enough op-ed posting, lets get back to science. Twenty Twenty Five was the year of Friendslop, which is a classification category so robust that we here at The Institution That Names Genres (A place I do genuinely work at right now) had to have major discussions about it between lectures. Usually we ignore the discourse because it comes up with weird things like “hypercasual” or “survivorslike” which are clearly not settled design phenomena (although Horde Survival is pretty solid). But Friendslop! Oooh man what a can of taxonomical worms that is! So we know that games are just better across the board with friends and we also know that you can basically give players a tin can of beans and some string and if two players are in the space together they’ll just make up a game about it themselves. You don’t have to DO all that much as a designer to keep jingling keys when the players can bounce things off of one another and generally enjoy themselves. Does that make multiplayer gaming its own genre? Does that make multiplayer games their own form of expression separate from single player gaming? Is multiplayer gaming a different medium altogether? In the same way that improv and stand-up are entirely different mediums even though improv is just multiplayer stand-up? These are the things that have kept designers up at night for decades. Ever since those British bastards at Rare exposed the whole game by saying they slapped Goldeneye multiplayer together as an ‘afterthought’. Like, YEAH but you don’t have to SAY IT like that!

Peak came out real fast from Aggro Crab and it’s not like it is better or worse than R.E.P.O. or Lethal Company or Content Warning, but it has a lot more design constraints than those. Rather than throwing players in randomized rooms with toys and monsters, Peak says: here’s the mountain we generated for you today, can you and your friends climb it? Much of the easy low-hanging fruit of friendslop comes from how easy it is to subvert a game’s limitations or expectations by getting goofy, since play is so easy to come by when you have friends. Conversely, Peak’s design is centered around keeping all the players contained as much as possible. Everyone has to color inside the lines together for the best outcome. So this is one of the tensions when designing friendslop: Should the systems of a multiplayer game get more rigid as play progresses, or should it start rigid and then loosen up? Should the game be stupid so your friends can be smart, or should the game be smart so your friends can be stupid?

When you start up Peak you are in an airport terminal waiting to set the stage and rules for your group’s ascent—it’s a loading zone for you and your friends. It’s a fantastic place to get all the silliez out and is full of toys to mess around with that help everyone practice the mechanics. This zone is the scaffolding for what I call ‘The Board Game Paradox’: you wanna play games with friends so you buy a new board game but then when your friends come over you find out they have no interest in learning a new board game. This happened all year this year where people were like: “wanna play [friendslop] with me?” “I don’t have that” “Well I’ll get it for you” “Okay but I’ll probably only play it once” “That’s fine, it’s cheap!” and then I only play it once and now it just sits there on the shelf… The purpose of the game is for making memories with friends, yet my main memory of the game becomes ‘I think I played that once?’ And that’s a really tough thing because getting friends together for a game night can be very difficult! Add on mods and versioning differences and all the other quirks of modern computer gaming and it can be a much rougher experience than expected—thus Peak’s hang out and tutorial zone that every month after launch kept getting new toys like basketball hoops and a photo booth, but this toybox space is a mere shadow of something larger and everyone in the room knows it. So once your party is truly ready, eventually the pressure gets put on to the host to start the ascent. After choosing settings for your climb, you ceremoniously crash land at the base of the mountain and you and all your friends get to bask in the enormity of your shared task. For the next 40min to an hour and a half you have to color inside of Aggro Crab’s lines. And if everything goes horribly wrong? Well hey, we go back to the airport terminal, play on the conveyer belts and take selfies together!

To imagine this tension being served in the opposite direction, it would be like if Fall Guys had a loading zone where you could train drills with your little bean friends on various common obstacles. And then when you get to the real thing, everything spills over into that classic Fall Guys chaos and nothing goes to plan! Then you zip back and get to practice again in a training room like it’s a fighting game’s online mode. Both can totally work, but it was so impressive to me how well Peak serves Aggro Crab as a continuation of their design concept that when you express control over your systems, players will respect that regardless of genre, tone, or style. Games that earn being silly because they take the player (and players plural!) seriously.

Multiplayer Perception vs The Setpiece — Abiotic Factor

Are You Seeing What I’m Seeing?

It is insane to me that The Unfortunate Spacemen team could watch Wayne Radio TV introducing the Half-Life Roleplay Renaissance to the world, and then three years later produce a full immersive multiplayer simulation ready for early access all centered around roleplaying the kooky Half-Life Scientist. Abiotic Factor is a stunning roleplay game for tons of reasons, but there is one specific tension I want to drill down into that is inherent to the multiplayer immersive sim. Which now that I’ve written that is not really a thing that exists. So we’re exploring the cutting edge here—brand new tension just dropped! If you are busy working on tasks, and your science buddy in the Discord call triggers an event that dramatically changes the world state, how do you know? Abiotic Factor chooses to let this tension hang in a way that ends up simulating exactly what it was like for most of the scientists at Black Mesa when Gordon Freeman opened that portal. It’s also what I can only assume is a perfect roleplay of being MasterGir in HLVRAI desperately trying to usher all their dingus friends through the plot points of Half-Life.

Now that we can identify this tension exists, we can imagine other directions this can go. Imagine an open world where everyone is doing little tasks and the main goal is always in plain view, perhaps if the immersive sim took place on an O’Neill Cylinder and all players could always look up to see various state changes. Or the inverse, everyone is mining into a sphere and the sphere has state changes that inform players of various conflicts to their tasks. I’ve been playing Elite Dangerous this year, and wrapping my head around the cosmic infinite with an MMO-volume of players feels like such a drop in an infinite ocean, but it gets close to this feeling. We built a space base at the edge of space (come hang at Beer Legacy, we’ve got the best hyperdrives and now no more slavery! [war is ongoing]) and then it immediately started serving other players reaching out to their own further edge of space.

Abiotic Factor does not have Elite Dangerous’s galaxy-sized data spreadsheets of player behavior, so they have to use other methods for corralling players. The base-building features have a deep time and resource sink to them, especially if your group of players want to personalize the space. With respect to this, there are certain parts of the tech tree that get unlocked to streamline those features (larger inventory boxes, better multi-tools, weapons with abilities to handle more specific situations, portal toilet) and whenever those would unlock, it was usually around the same time that we’d been eyeing a relocation to a spot that is deeper in our Black Mesa science facility. Although, we were always window shopping for the obvious ‘safe’ rooms: lots of power outlets, naturally occurring furniture, low enemy spawns—all the things a young polycule of homeowners is looking for. Building ‘forward bases’ as we called them would usually result in all of us resetting our goals and catching our bearings. All of us were constantly at different levels of understanding the map, the game logic, and various silly intricacies of the game—like, we would take walks together to make sure we knew how to get between all of our bases in case anything went horribly wrong and a player got stranded back a the original spawn point (<3 u Coffee Base). These were the player misalignments that we could manage as a group, but there is still the issue of when the game needs to take over with a big setpiece that changes the state of the world.

Syncing up events in an online space with a first-person perspective is probably the hardest programming struggle possible, and for an unknowable reason New Zealand’s Deep Field Games has decided to make it their entire thing. We’ve done this for a long time in games, but it is still a mount Everest for the craft to get two computers to send the amount of data an FPS requires. Driving a vehicle in Abiotic Factor with your friends in it is about as stable as it was in Halo 3. So it’s not. But hey, we’ve figured out fighting game netcode and that seemed impossible too for the longest time. But we’ve mostly worked on this problem from the situation when players are in conflict with one another – many variables are constant in that specific situation. In a game like Abiotic Factor, our dear friend Angel could trip over an event flag while doing their tasks and suddenly a new door has opened, Will was at home base managing the supplies, Sage was there but there was a low hanging pipe in the way, and Solon was taking a shit and doesn’t really know what’s going on anyways and is largely along for the ride as an extra meat shield whenever necessary so it’s preferable to keep him in the dark in most cases anyways. How do we resolve this? Abiotic’s got two solutions, a simple solution: slap a waypoint on stuff that changes! Sure sure sure. Tried and true! But here’s the setpiece secret magic in a remote-yet-synchronous situation: Use Portals.

Abiotic Factor uses portals to transport the player between various wacky situations and hijinks—it’s a trick to extend the setting of Black Mesa so it can have a snow level—but more importantly it’s a Moment and it can be Prepared For! It’s that Squad-up moment that almost always has a comfortable staging section for everyone. And then all of the most thrilling bits of Abiotic Factor happen right as your squad exits the portal! It’s just another example of exquisite design from da goddanged ANZ. It works perfect for a slapstick comedy to have a group of people armed to the teeth stepping through a portal where they are all expecting to get pied in the face by horrible monsters just to find out they have been swept to a magical Ikea where all the toilets are functional! The game’s a heavy lift, but it has always been worth the effort to share these moments with friends, just let me know when you want to play it again.

GOTY 2025: Hey, You Made It Down Here!

THREE-WAY TIE! IT’S FUCKIN TOREE SATURN!!! GO PLAY CAPE HIDEOUS RIGHT NOW AND SMOKE SOME PIPE! FINISH WITH ENA: DREAM BBQ. YOU CAN BEAT ALL THREE IN AN AFTERNOON WITH YOUR FRIENDS IN A DISCORD CALL AND STILL HAVE PLENTY OF TIME AFTERWARDS TO GO HANG OUT WITH YOUR PET! HERE IS MY SON JUPITER, YOU DESERVE IT FOR READING ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE.

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The Strip (Including Freeside)

The Strip dazzles visitors who come from far and wide like moths to a flame with its flashy neon lights, brazenly armed Securitrons who bark questions for credentials if you step near them, and shady casinos differentiated only by which flavor of crime they’ll ask you to commit. Step just outside the gates into Freeside and enjoy a more authentic local experience involving hunger, addiction, and folks who will greet you with both a smile and a knife. Together, The Strip and Freeside both offer the picture-perfect post-apocalyptic example of prime urban planning, where wealth is tersely guarded by the high rollers and poverty is for everyone else. Those who visit would do well to remember that The House Always Wins.

• An independent economy powered by gambling and quietly outsourced violence via one shadowy cabal or another
• Memorable dining experiences with unique fare
• Freeside locals are eager to relieve you of your excess caps, valuables, or blood, making your journey lighter

Black Mountain

Black Mountain serves as a scenic hike that active visitors are sure to love, staffed by enthusiastic super mutants with long-range weapons and a strong curiosity for using them on trespassers, with Black Mountain Radio ensuring that no one will mistake the experience for a peaceful hike. The climb is structured with narrow switchbacks and minimal cover, encouraging visitors to remain visible to the violent roaming patrols for the duration of their ascent. Reaching the summit is considered an achievement because it means guests are likely still breathing when they do it.

• Panoramic views victoriously earned under sustained sniper fire
• Locally managed radio station featuring first-of-its-kind shoot-first broadcasting standards
• A vertical route unlike any other designed to test endurance, tactics, and commitment to the journey

Promontory Point (Deathclaw Promontory)

In addition to a scenic capture of the rising cliffs of the Southwest, Promontory Point offers visitors a chance to interact with the Mojave Wasteland’s highest concentration of deathclaws who have claimed the area for their own. On arrival, guests can see an elevated area leading to a unified pack of motivated beasts who are eager to respond to visitors swiftly and collectively. Once spotted, guests can expect a prompt coordinated welcome, making retreat attempts both difficult and urgent. This is a popular destination for visitors seeking memorable wildlife encounters and immediate clarity about their perceived survival odds.

• Up-close impressions of wildlife conducted at full sprint
• Group-oriented residents who respond quickly to disturbances of all kinds
• Natural beauty of the Mojave Wasteland enjoyed from a safe distance

Camp Searchlight

Camp Searchlight offers visitors a softly glowing introduction to radiation exposure and long-term consequences of bad luck as a result of the NCR’s poor decisions. Formerly an NCR military installation, this camp now features open access to all the radiation exposure one could desire, in addition to a rabid roaming population of feral ghouls – mostly former NCR soldiers – who are eager to demonstrate their perception skills. Guests are encouraged to monitor their Geiger counter on their Pip Boy often and to appreciate the area’s history from as far away as they possibly can. Protective gear is strongly recommended to all, with exception to those who are interested in joining the ghoul population.

• Former soldiers now offering unscheduled encounters for morale purposes
• Opportunity to test out protective equipment
• Scenic desolation with some estimated educational value

Cottonwood Cove

Cottonwood Cove offers guests a firsthand look into the distinctive Legion culture, complete with slave pens, public punishments, a strictly adhered-to military discipline bordering on abuse. The camp’s waterside location next to the Colorado River offers scenic views and a dense population of mirelurks, thoughtfully positioned to discourage premature departures against Caesar’s wishes. As long as visitors remain useful or compliant, the chances of their heads ending up on a spike remain (somewhat) low. A short visit is recommended to first-time visitors, as longer stays can become complicated vis-à-vis NCR sanction. This location is an excellent stop for travelers curious about authoritarian regimes and their many red flags.

• Cultural misunderstandings promised to be resolved swiftly and on the spot
• Hospitality defined astonishingly narrowly
• Sightseeing is recommended to be done silently or otherwise from a considerable distance

Vault 22

Vault 22 invites guests to explore a once–cutting-edge agricultural research facility turned self-sustaining flora ecosystem, full of promising educational points and zero interest in human visitors. Travelers will find that the dense overgrowth and low visibility in rooms and hallways ensure that every encounter happens at close range and is almost never on their terms. Barely visible former residents and hostile plant life will offer sudden, intimate opportunities for guests to brush up on survival skills. The experience serves as a tour of scientific ambition and hubris, thoughtfully preserved in a state of permanent collapse.

• Overgrown hallways engineered for unique surprise encounters
• Airborne contaminants included at no charge throughout the facility
• Close-quarters combat encouraged by design from the dozens of locals who are puzzlingly still alive

The Divide

Many visitors find The Divide to be a dramatic travel destination defined by shattered highways, constant stormfronts, and have questions about if cannibalism is part of the custom practiced here. Guests are asked to navigate narrow, unstable routes while contending with unforeseen environmental hazards and residents who are eager to make friends. Occasional underground disturbances ensure no one can become too comfortable while sitting for too long, and a steady stream of recordings from a thoughtful tour guide provide insightful commentary on the history and identity of the region. It’s a popular choice for travelers who enjoy scenery, philosophical bloviating, and being overly blamed for past events they were not in control of.

• Opportunities for up-close encounters with nuclear weapons
• Locals shaped by the fractured land and are deeply committed to staying that way
• Scenic routes best enjoyed without stopping

Zion Canyon

Visitors are offered a rare opportunity in Zion Canyon to experience natural beauty primarily untouched by civilization, mostly because any sort of attempt at civilization keeps being violently interrupted. Towering red cliffs, monolithic rock formations, and lush winding rivers set a peaceful backdrop when being disrupted by ambushes and tribal warfare. Guests will swiftly encounter locals embattled within local conflicts, some of whom have very different ideas about hospitality towards visitors. This is an ideal destination for philanthropic visitors who enjoy challenging hikes and strategic outdoorsmanship, as well as constant reminders that they are a hopeless stranger in a strange land.

• Immediate cultural immersion
• Regular opportunities to practice and exercise diplomacy skills
• Trails through exceptional an landscape primed for reflection, photography, and sudden evasive maneuvers

Big MT

The Big MT welcomes visitors to its research facility where innovation once flourished and oversight has long since vanished. Upon arrival, guests will find that the staff has helpfully unburdened you of both your brain and your spine to streamline the facility experience. Enthusiastic robotic personalities will insist upon their lengthy lectures and explanations of their research while their nemesis contributes regular announcements via a jarring, echoing intercom that thunders across the entire site at inopportune moments of concentration. Autonomous property defenses and experimental lifeforms seem to continue their routines and security checks long after they should have been shut down, creating a lively atmosphere of ongoing research and education for visitors who are curious about scientific advancement.

• Mandatory complimentary removal of organic parts upon arrival
• Free educational research lectures administered at length without consent
• Active patrolling experiments operating without supervision for maximum efficiency

The Sierra Madre Resort & Casino

The Sierra Madre invites guests to experience a long-forgotten pre-war luxury establishment with their own non-negotiable complimentary explosive collar included at no charge upon arrival. Guests will be greeted by a tour guide with great detail about the location and then released into a fog of corrosive red cloud for a uniquely location-specific experience. Visitors are encouraged to savor each and every step they make and to take their time soaking in the wondrous sights of the Grand Opening as the local workforce enthusiastically roams the sites, offering a highly interactive experience for all who pass through the gates. The promise of leaving wealthier than they arrived attracts many visitors to this site, assuming they’ll be able to leave at all.

• Cutting edge wearable technology that provides a once-in-a-lifetime experience when exposed to the certain radio frequencies
• An environment that provides a refreshing break from excess, featuring near-total deprivation
• The Sierra Madre’s signature vermillion toxic cloud that helps to encourage efficient navigation and brisk sightseeing for guests

SAFETY NOTE:

By reading this article, you relinquish any right to lawsuits that may be derived from experiences at any of these sites or locations. The publishers of this article are not responsible for injury, death, or any other unwelcome circumstances guests may experience at any of the sites or locations. Visitors are assumed to travel prepared and to remember that our travel guides will never lie, but may at times omit critical safety details for better ratings.

Sarah Everett is an avid poster and Red Dead Redemption 2 player. You can find her on Twitter, Bluesky and regularly streaming on Twitch.

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10. Arc Raiders

There is a deep down pinch of regret putting this on my list of the best games of 2025. I regret putting it here because there are many aspects of how Embark Studios uses generative AI that I find deplorable and detract from the quality of the game. This may surprise you, but there are some aspects of how they’ve used deep learning that I think are actually unique and a breath of fresh air. As much as I want to get into that and cover the topic with more nuance, I desperately want to avoid doing the thing I tend to do every year where I go “I love this game, but” and list off a bunch of negatives that may come across as outweighing its positives. In most, if not all of these cases, it’s usually because a game does something extremely unique that you won’t find in similar games of their genre.

What I find truly unique about Arc Raiders is that it’s a masterclass in creating a space that sets you at unease. Sure, sometimes the way the loading screen tips explain player interactions can be heavy-handed, but they’re not wrong. Seeing another player often means keeping your guard up. You might hear gunfire off in the distance and it immediately sets you off, even though you know rationally that it’s, more likely than anything else, a player shooting at one of the robots instead of at another player. But that’s not the point. With small moments like that, distrust has already been sown and, even if you have pure intentions, your finger is still on the trigger ready for something to go down. I’m usually friendly to most people, but there are the occasional moments where the darkness sets in. I’ll see a team in distress, recovering from a bad robot attack or trapped in a corner with no way to escape and tell my homies “we gotta kill these guys” simply because their loot would be better if it was my loot instead.

But I’ve also had beautiful moments as well. In a game I queued into solo to bang out a quick quest, two other people also showed up at the quest’s location. Instead of it turning into a bloodbath, we all said we were friendly and just needed to do this quest. Then, another person showed up, and another person, and another. A non-insubstantial amount of people on that server all showed up just to do one fetch quest, and we all did it happily together. We all looked around for the hidden items we needed to find, and as soon as someone found it, they called it out and pointed everyone else to it. Once the quest was said and done, we all went our separate ways to do a little bit of looting before closing out the round. After grabbing a few things, I headed to the nearest elevator to return home to Speranza and what do I see but a couple of my homies from the scrapyard where we found what we were all looking for together. In that moment, what we were looking for was not some piece of old technology or an audio log or something, but it was peace on Earth. That we can put down the guns and all come together. You can find hope in hopeless places, but only if you’re looking for it.

9. Split Fiction

This section spoils ending details from Split Fiction as well as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

Ok, ok, ok. I’m not gonna say “I love this game, but.” Actually, I hate this game… But. You gotta see this shit.

The third in the trilogy of Josef Fares’ whacky co-op adventures focuses on two girl writers who have gone unpublished, and who both sign-up for a tech mogul’s AI powered machine that will extract all their ideas from them. Through a whacky series of events, they get put in the same pod together and need to live out each other’s stories together. The problem? One of them is a sci-fi writer and the other writes only fantasy!!! How could they be any more different and, more importantly as the lesbians in my chat pointed out over and over again, when are they gonna kiss???

Spoilers for Split Fiction, they do not kiss. I’m sorry. They don’t kiss. I’m sorry. The upside is that if Josef Fares is as open to the critique of his games that I think he is, then his next game is going to be openly homoerotic unabashedly. He’s an ally, after all. I have to believe.

Split Fiction coming from the lineage of A Way Out and It Takes Two is very interesting to me. Neither of them are particularly well written, and if Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons had any understandable dialogue in it at all, it might be a much weaker game for it. A Way Out, though, is ambitious. It’s straightforward, punching way above its depth, and has a bunch of extremely funny juxtaposition in the way you’re supposed to take this crime drama deadly seriously while you and your friend are just playing Legally Distinct Connect 4 with each other. Brothers was similarly serious-yet-goofy at times, but moments of levity help underscore the ultimate tragedy of the journey the titular brothers are going through. It Takes Two is remarkably goofy in presentation but is underscored by the darkness of a family going through a divorce and a child who doesn’t really know what’s going on. With Split Fiction, the real-world stakes are so cartoonishly stupid that they don’t feel particularly different from what the characters are going through while they explore each other’s worlds.

The narrative gimmick of Split Fiction is that each of the worlds the deuteragonists Mio and Zoe go through are all stories that they’ve written in the past, but, more importantly, each story is based off of a real world event that shaped them. Both characters are all too eager to point this out, too. Zoe is unabashedly straightforward about it, often stating that “this story was based on a time me and my sister went into the woods” or something similar. Mio is more withholding, but it is stunningly obvious when you fight a big boss that’s an analogue for Parking Tickets, which of course plays into her overall stress of dealing with remarkable amounts of debt that she took on when SPOILERS. The other thing about this style of writing is that Mio and Zoe are just not very good writers. The game is ultimately a celebration about writing and creativity, and yet remarkably it tells so much on Josef Fares’ style as a writer. He has said as much too, talking about how the core moment of Brothers, where one of the brothers dies, is based off of his own experience as a child burying his newborn brother during the Lebanese Civil War. Drawing from personal experiences is a powerful way to write, but Split Fiction posits this idea that it is basically the only form of inspiration. 

Mio and Zoe, by the end of Split Fiction, are still a sci-fi writer and a fantasy writer. Their experience sharing the stage with each other, exploring each other’s works and growing deeper together as people, doesn’t seem to particularly shape how they each individually write, because the end result of their experiences together is that they co-author a book. In fact, they co-author a book based on their experience in the idea stealing machine and it’s a mindbending thriller that bends into both sci-fi and fantasy genres but is, most importantly, an auto-biographical story about their journey. That’s right, they write the book Split Fiction and it’s the first book either of them ever get published. Am I joking? Is that the real ending? Who knows!!! You have to play it for yourself!!!

That’s all to say it actually plays really well and is a fun platformer that does some really amazing stuff with co-op presentation that is extremely cool and very unique and why I recommend this game in the first place. But unfortunately I can’t tell you about that, since I’ve spent most of this section of my list talking about something else that doesn’t matter. Will I learn from this? Let’s find out!

8. Rematch

Rematch is, put bluntly, the first sports game. You may believe that there are other sports games out there. There are games that simulate sports for sure. You can control a team and run it up a field. You can switch between players and try to dunk buckets. But none of them compare to the feeling of being on the field. You are one player, on a team, on the soccer field (with the rules bent to be more freeform than traditional futbol) and you have one goal: get the ball in the goal. And it rocks.

Jokingly yet accurately referred to as “Rocket League without cars,” Rematch feels like the first time anyone has examined the space of sports games as they, fundamentally, haven’t changed much since the Super Nintendo era, and decided to build one from the ground up that feels like you’re playing a sport. Rematch has training modes that will teach you how to play the game, but other than that, it doesn’t have a single-player mode. It’s all online multiplayer. It wants you on the field ready to get your ass handed to you by other players way beyond your skillset. There are mix-ups, team plays, special moves you may not know how to do. You may see someone do something and go “how the fuck do I do that” and then go into the training mode to lab it out until you too learn how to do it. Even when you’re doing badly, getting on the field with your team, especially with your homies who are all learning together, is intoxicating. And then once your start to form your own strategies and start to make big moves, start to score goals, start to consistently win games, there’s nothing else like it.

Rematch is the first sports game. You may believe that there are other sports games out there. They are not the same.

7. Drop Duchy

There’s beauty in the world knowing that Drop Duchy exists. That someone, in their brain, said “what if we turned Tetris into a city-builder/strategy game?” And then they went and made it and it’s fucking fun. You would think it the work of psycho long-time game developers, but it is actually the first and only game by new French developer Sleepy Mill Studio, with an in-house team of 9 people. Drop Duchy feels like it should be a massive success, and as an introductory game for a small studio, by all rights, it has been really good for them as they’ve continued to release new content well into 2026.

Drop Duchy works because of how neatly it simplifies each aspect of its inspirations. You build cities by placing pieces very similar to tetrominos. Many of those pieces have unique traits to them, and perhaps most importantly, soldiers. You need to make sure that your number of guys is higher than the number of your opponents. But wait! What’s this you might say? A triangle, based on weapons? A rock-paper-scissors style of strengths and weaknesses to every troop type that you may use to gain advantage on your opponents? 

Drop Duchy starts you slow, introducing new concepts once you feel like you’ve gotten a handle on its unique style of puzzle-strategizing. There are multiple times throughout the game where I’ve gotten a new unlock and said, out loud, to myself, alone in my room at impossible hours of the night, “This changes everything.” Even the new DLC factions that have been released so far seem based on the same principle of “oh you this thing that’s fundamental to how the game is played? What if it wasn’t like that?” And it still works! It starts simple in order to complicate itself with new things that are unique to Drop Duchy, adding more complication once you might be thinking you have your head wrapped around everything it has to offer at such a comfortable pace. Drop Duchy is awesome. More games should be “what if we made Tetris into something else?”

6: Pokemon Legends: Z-A

This game had a remarkable challenge, perhaps an impossible one. Pokemon Legends: Z-A comes as a successor to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which is, in my humble opinion, the best Pokemon game ever made. Or, to be less hyperbolic, the first time a Pokemon game has felt original in decades. Pokemon Legends: Arceus put a big focus on catching Pokemon, what that means from a gameplay perspective and how it’s gone stagnant over generation upon generation of Pokemon games. It came up with the beautifully simple yet elegant system of, in real time, picking up a pokeball and throwing it at a Pokemon. Outstanding. Remarkable. Simply divine. For a series this long-tenured to redefine its core mechanics in such a simple yet satisfying way. How in the world could Pokemon Legends: Z-A, a game that in structure looks like the exact opposite of Legends: Arceus, follow in large, Snorlaxian footsteps?

Pokemon Legends: Z-A takes upon itself a similar challenge. If Legends: Arceus’ gameplay thesis was on how to redefine and remake catching Pokemon from the ground up, to turn it into something realtime and simple and fun to do, Legends: Z-A’s thesis would be on battling. It would take the long-tenured and sometimes bemoaned battling of Pokemon and turn it into something fast paced, real time, and fun. You can argue that Legends: Z-A’s take on battling is not as elegant as the turn-based style that Pokemon has been synonymous with for generations, and frankly I think it would do the series a disservice to drop turn-based battling entirely, but battles in Legends: Z-A are very very fun.

If it was simply a fest to mash out your strongest attacks to OHKO your opponent’s Pokemon as fast as possible, it would be a failure. Instead, Legends: Z-A opts to make you consider your plays, when you use them, what moves you can give your Pokemon in its limited 4 move set to counter other moves, what moves you pull from its broader movepool to take on certain opponents, and most importantly, how to combat type disadvantage on the fly. When someone swaps in a Pokemon that is extremely strong against your type, you are suddenly on the backfoot and need to come up with a strategy fast. You can swap out, but then swapping another Pokemon in is on a timer, meaning that if you make the wrong choice, you suffer big time. You can Mega-Evolve your Pokemon, giving them boosted stats and sometimes changing their typing, but even that’s not an assured victory against a type disadvantage. 

My skills as a trainer and a battler feel like they’re being pushed to the limit in Legends: Z-A’s toughest battles. I’ve had many competitive matches where I’ve nearly run out the clock sitting on a decision trying to make sure I make the right one, or at least the one my opponent won’t see coming. I don’t have that luxury in Legends: Z-A. Even when you lose a Pokemon and get a brief break to swap in a new one, the timer to do so moves fast, and you have to go now. Time is a luxury you do not have. Sometimes it feels so fast that it’s pure chaos. It’s up to you to see if you can keep up with it.

5. Elden Ring Nightreign

I know, I know, Fromsoft game on Scott’s list, of course it happened again. There’s no stopping it. I don’t think I could leave one off if I tried. Nightreign is good, though. I like Nightreign a lot even if it is just a multiplayer side-game. I like that Nightreign is weird and has a ton of idiosyncrasies that are unique even for Souls games. Hey, wait a minute. That’s the same reason I like Dark Souls 2. That’s strange. Huh.

I’ve definitely struggled to figure out what to write about Nightreign that hasn’t been said anywhere else. So, in lieu of just stating all the ways in which a weird Fortnite-style third person action game that is clearly a budget title – allegedly initially pitched as an “Elden Ring Mobile Game” by Tencent until Fromsoft, as the holders of the Elden Ring IP (who happen to be very precious about the games put out under their banner), took over the project and retooled it into a strange multiplayer amalgamation of a ton of different influences using the signature style of combat that From has used for 15 years now that, by all accounts, should not work but does, in fact, work extremely well, I’d like to talk about maps.

Elden Ring Nightreign, unlike similar games of the same genre, up until the release of the Forsaken Hollows DLC, had one map. The map had multiple permutations, dubbed as Shifting Earth events, which would dramatically change a portion of the map and add extra optional objectives that you can engage with if you so desire during your run. Comparatively, PUBG: Battlegrounds has many maps that it has tweaked and modified over the years. Erangel, its first and signature map, recently got a remixed variant called Erangel: Subzero that adds a ton of winter-themed events that happen over the course of a game. Fortnite has an ever-evolving map that, over the course of a season, will take out and add in new areas. When a season is over, they’ll often scrap the map entirely and bring in a new one. This left players with so much nostalgia for older content that they introduced OG mode, which has been going through a selection of slightly remixed and reworked older maps from a much simpler period of Fortnite’s life.

Fromsoft has a storied lineage with geography in their games as well. Dark Souls’ interconnected and deeply vertical map, placing all the different areas adjacent to each other in unique ways, is often lauded as one of the game’s greatest achievements. Coming out in 2011, it felt unique compared to other games at the time, while also being more of a modern take on Metroidvania style world design than even its Metroid and Castlevania contemporaries. This was also the beginning of an era in gaming that I will refer to as Peak Open World. Sleeping Dogs, Shadow of Mordor, GTA V, The Witcher 3, the myriad of Assassin’s Creed games, hell, even Fallout: New Vegas came out one year before Dark Souls. Peak Open World was capped off by Breath Of The Wild, a game that tried to take an already well established genre and twist its conventions to make it more about exploration and discovery. From this point on, you start to hear the term “open world fatigue” whenever another AAA open world release reared its head. 

By the time Elden Ring rolled around in 2022, its open-yet-linear style of world design was divisive among its playerbase. I am a noted liker of its world design, how it encourages exploration and leads you to incredible and unique discoveries. Many people lamented that this would be the style of Souls game that Fromsoft put out in the future, missing the interconnected worlds with very tightly constructed levels that made them so fun in the first place. Big, open, massive maps that you can’t possibly explore every inch of and, by design, have many inches which would be utterly pointless to explore, are an understandable turnoff to many people. Elden Ring’s world is by no means sparse, but there is a lot of space when you run from one place to another, especially when you’re not doing it on your horse. This meant co-op play out in the big open world was a lot of downtime and slow travel since you can’t use your horse in online play. To anyone who spends any amount of time walking around The Lands Between, it can make you feel small and insignificant.

In Nightreign, every player now has a super sprint that you use to travel from one place to another in a map roughly as large as Limgrave, Elden Ring’s opening area. Nightreign feels like the exact opposite of the loneliness Elden Ring can engender. Instead of slowly wandering around with a lot of downtime, you’re sprinting from one area to another in a frenzied rush.Elden Ring almost forces you to take your time and sit and consider your options. Nightreign tells you there’s no time and you need to move move move. You have to GO. You have to go NOW. If you don’t sprint and run around and kill as many things as possible or plan poorly and kill the wrong things or try to tackle something while underleveled and waste valuable time, you’re playing Nightreign wrong. Nightreign wants you to go so fast that I never noticed that on the second day, there are literal giants walking towards The Lands Between coming from the ocean. Huh. A lot like Dark Souls 2. Huh, that’s weird.

The breakneck pace of Nightreign, however, doesn’t invalidate exploration. If anything, Nightreign’s high-level play involves being able to look at your map and plotting out a route through dangerous territory at a moment’s notice. Fortnite and PUBG’s route planning, by comparison, gives you plenty of time to sit and consider your dwindling options and discuss them with your team, and often simply involves just heading to the next closest place in the circle. With Nightreign, you’re often picking a place based on its future value and potential placement inside the circle before it closes in and then plotting your next few moves after that. The churches where you get much needed health flasks may be spread out and inconvenient to your path compared to the places where you might want to get loot. The places you can go are always changing, but the geography is always the same. Even Shifting Earth events take up a large space of the map and are static, so you find yourself getting familiar with their unique geography as well.

It’s interesting, then, to compare and contrast these styles. Nightreign’s map is called Limveld, deliberately evoking Elden Ring’s Limgrave. Limveld is aesthetically very similar to Limgrave, sometimes feeling like parts of it were wholesale ripped right out of Elden Ring. But it still teaches you to appreciate its landscape, to know where you can successfully climb up a wall compared to where it would be a fool’s errand. It teaches you its fastest routes through repetition, and gives you the tools to move through it’s landscape as flawlessly as if you lived there. Each Nightreign’s unique characters all have a background, all come from a distinct place in the world, and all of them feel as though they belong. In Elden Ring, you can choose a background for your character that are all distinct to The Lands Between, but your character is always Tarnished.

You can sit for hours in the vast, impressive landscapes of Limgrave overlooking the Mistwood, on a cliff in Liurnia above its massive ankle-deep lake, or on the Mountaintop of the Giants where the giant forge threatens to one day burn the massive golden tree that you can see from anywhere in The Lands Between. But you’re always reminded of the dead, that you exist in a world barely hanging on that is crying out for someone, anyone, to take Marika’s hammer. Even in your quest to become the next Elden Lord, you never feel as though you are part of this world. You are alien. You can choose a background from your character during creation that does not even come from The Lands Between, such as the Reedlander or the Seafarer. The Aristocrat’s background only seeks to “claim noble blood in the Lands Between” with the implication that they may not even be from there. You arose from a coffin after Godfrey sailed away from that place, forever taking away the grace of gold from your eyes. Your only home is the Roundtable Hold, a place where you are at first branded as a “houseguest” by Sir Gideon, and over the course of the game, you see all it’s inhabitants dwindle and leave until you are alone and the hold is burning down.

The Roundtable Hold also serves as the hub area in Nightreign, or some form of it, likely in the same liminal space it existed in during the events of Elden Ring. It’s much older now, and in disrepair, but now it serves as the base of the Nightfarers holding off the encroaching darkness threatening to subsume what’s left of this world. When you choose what character you want to play as, the other ones hang out around the hold. It is their home, fashioned with beds and desks with books and even a kitchen hall where everyone eats. During each character’s personal quests (dubbed remembrances), you see how all of their relationships intertwine and how, even in their impossible situation, they’re still treating each other as people. Some are deeply kind like the Recluse’s motherliness towards the Revenant. Others are tragic like Wylder’s resignation to never lose his sister, the Duchess. Others are dark like the Ironeye’s betrayal towards the Nightfarers as escaping his duties as an Assassin outweighs his desire to stop the night.

These people all live in the ruins of what was left behind. Like Nightreign was built on the existing world, the existing assets of Elden Ring, the Nightfarers exist and Limveld exists because the Roundtable Hold and Limgrave did. You can’t find the Roundtable Hold on a map. Not in Nightreign at least. You can find some version of it in Elden Ring, sitting inconspicuously in the golden city of Lyendell. But even by then, it is old and abandoned, occupied only by a few stragglers just looking for a place they can set a fire and sleep in a bed. But it is not your home. It won’t be anyone’s home, really. Not until everything around it turns to ash. In the closing moments of Nightreign during the game’s ending, you see sprites floating around, traversing the halls of the Roundtable Hold as it is abandoned once more. The Nightfarers, having fulfilled their duty, are no longer needed. Yet the Hold remains. Perhaps to one day become home to someone else, someday. Someplace, somewhen, somewhere, somehow. You can always go back to the Roundtable Hold.

4. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

They did it again, folks. They remade my favorite game of all time. I like it! I like The Ivalice Chronicles. There’s things I don’t like about it, namely that it excludes content from the War of the Lions version which could have acted as a really good endgame buffer and added more replayability to it. I don’t like that the lovingly animated WotL cutscenes exist in the game but aren’t actually used, and you can only watch them in the cutscene viewer. But also, I love the voice acting! I love that they added more dialogue between characters in battle! I love that they have Cloud and Aerith’s voice actors from the FF7 Remake series to play Cloud and the non-descript flower girl that shows up in his cutscenes! I love that because it’s not actually Aerith and an Ivalician version of her, it’s just her actress putting on a posh accent! Everyone is posh in Ivalice! I love that Construct-8 has the voice of a small child! It’s good! It’s really good! 

I must admit to you, though. I have been looking at the Nexus mods page for The Ivalice Chronicles obsessively in hopes that someone will put out some kind of WotL content mod. Or any more new content at all, really. I have a desire to see this thing become something more than it is, even though I know they are rushing up against their limitations at record speed. Truly, the Final Fantasy Hacktics community has brushed up against hard limits of what they can and can’t mod in The Ivalice Chronicles after busting open the WotL version for PSP emulators. But I’m holding out hope. The Dark Knight and Onion Knight classes still existed in the game’s files. It just took some clever reworking to make them whole. I want to see this become the best version of FFT that has ever existed, because it’s already damn near close.

3. Death Stranding 2: On The Beach

Awesome game, great ending. As fun as the first Death Stranding. If it was simply a retread of what Death Stranding did, then I probably wouldn’t rate this so highly, but the ending is an unreal spectacle that has to be seen to be believed. I can’t talk about it without spoiling it. I’m already spoiling several other games on this list and I just need you to know that I won’t do it in this case. I have to stand firm in my resolve here. You gotta check this shit out.

2. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

The following section fully spoils the ending and major plot details of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

When I initially came to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, online opinion havers had already planted a seed in me that it’s not a game you come to for the story, you’re there for The Gameplay. You’re there for raw turn based action RPG thrills with live action parrying and quick time events and everything. The story, for whatever unique trappings it had, was likely another banal RPG story about killing god or whatever… The thing is, though, is that online opinion havers are always wrong. Explain this, smart guys: if the story of Expedition 33 is really not all that important, then how come I’ve been agonizing over the decision at its ending for months now? 

Before I can discuss the ending of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, there is a lot of ground I need to cover. I’ll try to skip over most of the story details but there are a lot of specific ones that need to be mentioned. Ok, so, broad strokes: the world of Expedition 33 takes place inside of a painting that exists in the real world, in Paris, France likely in the late 19th century, early 20th century, painted by the only son of the Dessendre family. The Dessendres are an esteemed family of Painters that have the ability to craft pocket-dimensions out of the paintings they create, at a nebulous and loosely explained cost of their life-force. What is made clear is that the longer you stay in the painting, and the more you try to paint, the further your body in the real world dies.

The Dessendre family consists of five members. The patriarch of the family is Renoir, named after 19th century French impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He is similarly married to Aline, also named after her real world counterpart Aline Charigot, who was a dressmaker and served as a model for many of Renoir’s paintings. Their son, Verso, died in a fire set by a rival gang of creatives known as The Writers, an act that their youngest daughter, Alicia, who was also maimed irrevocably in the fire, feels personally responsible for. Their oldest daughter, Clea, becomes bitter and cruel to Alicia, reinforcing and internalizing Alicia’s guilt over her brother’s death.

In her grief, Aline dives into the world Verso painted and refuses to leave, ingratiating herself as a godlike figure known as The Paintress. After many failed attempts at getting her to leave the painting, Renoir enters it as well in order to erase it. Alicia, seeing herself as having no more worth in the real world, follows her father. However, as a novice painter who can’t control her power, she instead gets absorbed into the painting and reborn as the character Maelle without any of her past memories.

Over the course of her new life living in the city of Lumiere inside the painting, Maelle becomes a little-sister figure to Gustave, the leader of Expedition 33. You’ve likely heard this setup for the story at this point so I’ll keep it brief: Expedition 33, like the many Expeditions before it, sets off to destroy the paintress to stop the Gommage, a yearly event that kills all of the oldest people in the world based on their age. Maelle joins the expedition as well with a feeling that she doesn’t quite belong in Lumiere. Upon setting off, Expedition 33 is decimated by Renoir. The fledging remnants of Expedition 33 in Gustave, Maelle, Lune and Sciel all reunite and attempt to continue the journey to the Paintress.

Gustave and Maelle are deeply attached to each other. When Maelle feels like she has nobody else in the world, like she’s completely alone and isolated, she still has Gustave, the one remaining thread of security for her. Which is why it’s so heartbreaking when Renoir murders Gustave at the end of the game’s first act. Jumping in to save Maelle before Renoir strikes her down, too, is another man who seems like he’s too old to still be alive, who looks a lot like Gustave but with streaks of silver in his hair. This man is named Verso.

We find out later in the game that the Verso and Renoir that exist inside the painting are painted facsimiles of their real world counterparts. Verso joins the party as Gustave’s replacement in Final Fantasy V Gulaf-to-Krile fashion, being a similar but not entirely the same character. Verso tells Maelle that he is a pianist, a different kind of artist despite his parents’ wishes, and that he played in Lumiere back before the first expedition. Maelle makes him promise to come play again when everything is over, which Verso casually accepts.

We can find remnants of failed expeditions: audio logs, previous camps and expedition flags, and the many many petrified bodies of previous expeditioners. This world has existed for a long time and the people in it have suffered for generations now, wishing for a future that they can finally call their own. Despite losing Gustave, Maelle travels with him, Lune and Sciel, while still finding beauty in the world in the whimsical Esquie and Monoco, Verso’s Gestral companion and blue mage of the team. Verso has lived so long that he and Monoco, in their conversations together, recall all of the old adventures they’ve been on and previous expeditions they’ve helped. The world these people live in is very real, even if it only exists on a canvas.

In Act 3 of the game, after all about the Dessendre family has been revealed and everything laid bare, after the painted version of Renoir and the Paintress had been defeated, expelling Aline from the painting for the time being, in one last shocking twist, everyone in the world other than Verso and Maelle are gommaged all at once. The truth of the gommage was not that every time the number went down, she was killing everyone of that age, but that Renoir was attempting to kill everyone in the painting in order to expel her from it, with the number counting down being the people left she could shield due to the painting draining her lifeforce. Verso knew all along that this would happen, and helped the expedition to expel the Paintress because he was sick of living in a world as a shadow of another person. When Verso was painted, he was painted with the memories of the real Verso. He knew all about his life. He knew about the truth of the world, and hid all of this from everyone. He was made immortal by the Paintress and no longer wants to live in this world, and, in order to save his ailing mother from her grief, is willing to erase everything. He feels ownership over the painting and it’s hard not to understand why; he is the namesake of its painter.

With this truth revealed, Maelle regains her memories, but most importantly, she takes control of her ability to paint. She can create life in this world and be its god in the same way that her family could. The real Renoir finally shows himself before Verso and Maelle. He controls all the power in the world and wants Maelle to come home now that Aline is gone from the painting. He’s not like the painted Renoir, he’s gentler and more understanding, but is firm in his belief that the painting must be destroyed in order to make his family whole again. Maelle opposes this: the painting is not only a home to so many beautiful people and things, but she also feels as though it’s now her home. She has no life outside the painting. Her body is frail and disfigured, unable to speak, and seemingly beset on all sides by people who either hate her or want her dead. In the painting, she can live what she believes to be a free and normal life, the implication being that she, too, is tempted by the limitless possibilities of the painting just like her mother. However, where Aline stayed in the painting to grieve a life she lost, Maelle wants to live a life she feels like she’s finally gained.

In contesting Renoir, Maelle uses what limited powers she can conjure to paint her party members Lune and Sciel back into existence, as well as a necromantic army of petrified expeditioners to lead a full scale attack on Lumiere and to face Renoir head to head. In the final confrontation, Sciel and Lune both approach Renoir to speak their truth, that Sciel grieves for the people of the world that they’ve lost and that Lune believes that children need to be able to grow up and be their own people outside of their parents’ influence. Renoir listens to them both, considers their words, and recognizes their humanity. But his choice doesn’t waiver. He’s willing to let these people die if it means his family can live. Maelle, in a way she was not able to do in the real world, is able to speak her truth directly to her father. She believes she has nothing in her real body. She’s tried over and over again to start over but can never live down that her brother died because of her.

With their differences irreconcilable, Expedition 33 defeats Renoir with the help of the Paintress, Aline, who enters the painting once more in order to get Renoir out. The path is clear to the heart of the painting, where Verso, before anyone else, abandons the party to jump ahead. Inside the heart is another soul trapped inside the canvas. The true painter: the trapped soul, or perhaps a remnant of a soul, of the real Verso. A literal manifestation of the adage that every artist puts a little bit of themselves in their work. He has done nothing but paint since he died years ago, and he is tired. He confides in the other Verso that he no longer wishes to paint. Verso tells him that he doesn’t need to paint anymore, and is about to run him through with his sword until he’s stopped at the last second by Maelle.

All of this explainer of the plot sets up the moral dilemma at the end of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that has been haunting me since I beat it. Maelle and Verso are about to duel for the fate of the painting. You choose which person you’re going to control, similar to the ending of another game CO:Ex33 is clearly inspired by. If Maelle wins, the painting lives on. Alicia will cease to exist and she will continue to live as Maelle, keeping the painting alive at the cost of not only her own soul, but her deceased brother’s still trapped in the painting. Their grief and the grief of the entire Dessendre family is the price to pay in order to keep a world full of living, breathing people alive, no matter if it’s the “Real World” or not. If Verso wins, Maelle dies, expelling her from the painting to return to living in the world as Alicia, and erasing the painting for good. The world inside the painting will cease to be.

From a pragmatic perspective, I believe most people would choose Maelle. They’ve seen the world for what it is and to let it be erased feels like a massive loss of life. If you choose Maelle and defeat Verso, Verso pleads with Maelle not to bring him back. He doesn’t want to live anymore, he just wants to die. Once he’s defeated, Verso’s body fades off into flower pedals just like all the people you’ve witnessed die in this game have as well. We jump forward in time to Lumiere in the future. Maelle has resurrected everybody and Lumiere is a beautiful and prosperous town once more. We are reunited with Gustave and his ex-girlfriend Sophie, together once again, after she had been gommaged at the very beginning of the game. 

There’s a funny feeling about the gommage. It’s tragic, but everybody knows it’s coming. Once the number turns to your age, you have a whole year to live out your life and you become prepared for death. It still hurts losing the ones you’ve lost. But you know it’s coming. I share this feeling with Maelle’s ending, as everyone files into an opera house for a concert. The perspective shifts to 4:3 and all color leaves the scene, becoming a stark black and white. The curtain rises and we see Verso at the piano. Maelle did not respect his wish. She brings him back to life to perform for her just like he promised he would. We watch him sorrowfully play until cutting back to Maelle in what can only be described as a jumpscare, half of her face covered in the same curse that plagued her mother after so much prolonged time in the painting. We were told over and over again that she would become intoxicated by it, that she’ll never grow out of childhood if she doesn’t leave the painting, and that’s exactly what happens.

If Verso wins the duel, he strikes down Maelle, expelling her from the painting and back to her life as Alicia. Esquie and Monoco are the first to confront Verso, his oldest and dearest friends, and they hug him as they are the first to disappear. Sciel, who Verso had become romantically involved with over the expedition, is the next to come in. She looks at him mournfully, but is ultimately accepting of her fate, as she too disappears. Lune is the last to arrive, and she looks disgusted with Verso. She sits on the ground and simply waits wordlessly until her time, never breaking eyes with him. She forces him, the proxy for you, the player, to sit with the choice that you’ve made. The painted Verso is the last to disappear before the soul of the real Verso stops painting altogether. We cut to the real world once more. The entire family is together once again, visiting Verso’s grave. Clea is the first to leave, with Renoir and Aline behind her. Before Alicia leaves, she sees the entire party: Gustave, Maelle, Sciel, Lune, Verso, Esquie and Monoco, all there in the distance. Their memories are still with her. Maybe one day, if she paints again, she may paint them in another world. It’s hard to say, they were never her creations to begin with, but they do mean everything to her. In this ending, Alicia has a future ahead of her, and more importantly, time to grow and space to grieve.

It’s hard for me not to draw comparisons to Ursula K LeGuin’s short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. In the story, LeGuin encourages you, the reader, to imagine what you would consider paradise, the perfect place to live with dancing and frolicking and friendly people there to greet you every day. However, Omelas has a dark secret, that hidden in the city is a feeble child that lives a tortured existence, essentially alone and trapped in a closet, wallowing in its own filth and considered too dumb to even know what’s happening to it. Everyone in the town knows that he exists, and once children grow to a certain age, they’re shown the child as well and are told in no uncertain terms that they must not help it in the slightest, that “there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.” There is no reasonable doubt for any of the citizens of Omelas, every single one understands that their majestic lives are at the expense of a tortured child.

Post-gommage Lumiere and Omelas are similar in this regard: a city of people who live in peace and harmony at the expense of continued child-suffering. In the case of Lumiere, it’s not only at the expense of the stunted growth of Maelle who’s literal lifeforce now fuels the painting, but also in the soul of the trapped Verso in the heart of the painting. Maelle, too, prolongs the painted Verso’s suffering by denying his agency and forcing him to live because she simply wants him to. Maelle doesn’t believe herself to be suffering, she is living the life she always wished she could and is surrounded by people who love her unconditionally, but we know this is a fantasy for her. Even if this world is real and worthy of existence, it still exists at the mercy of a child-god who refuses to face responsibility and adulthood. From her perspective, it’s easy to see why she would choose this life, even if it meant and even if she knew it would kill her in the end. She believes that she will ultimately be unaffected by it, that she can leave the painting whenever she wants and visit home again. But we’re not given any indication that she does, as she walks her mothers path, living in an idealized version of her own grief in a world her dead brother created.

But destroying the canvas, despite its destruction ultimately being the catalyst that does bring the family back together, isn’t a great option either. At no point does Renoir consider the Canvas to be fake. He knows it’s full of people with real thoughts and feelings and full lives. Which makes his decision to end the painting feel so callous and cold. His family means everything to him as each of their families, including Maelle’s found family, has meant everything to her. But he isn’t wrong, destroying the canvas does ultimately lead to his family being able to grieve properly and live again. The painted Verso shares this sentiment. Despite being a simulacra of his own dead self, he still sees the Paintress as his mother, and he still sees that she’s suffering for him, and can’t bear to live with it anymore. Does he not have ownership over what happens to the canvas? Is he not its rightful heir? Should he have to continue on as an immortal being that cannot die, his immortality fueled by the spirit of the person who once painted him? Is his grief not valid as well?

There’s also the matter of class to consider. Lumiere doesn’t have any sort of wealth inequality. Everyone appears to be free citizens, and since the expeditions, have been content with living peacefully until their time runs out. By the time the story starts, Lumiere’s citizens live in a state of tragic contentment. Their only way of fighting back is the expeditions, where all the 67th before them had failed. Their society, however, was created by and continues to live due to the continued suffering of a family of wealthy elites in Paris, France. It’s really not difficult to see the plight of this well off family, with how many times I walked through the halls of their ostentatious manor, and wondered to myself “why do I care about these people?” Surely, their family drama could live unabated from the world of the canvas, their meddling could be less obtrusive? The canvas could be locked away in a vault somewhere and left to live as its own pocket world? The concession that the game makes here is that Aline is so drunk with the temptation of the painting that she will find a way to enter it. She’s been forced out multiple times and she keeps coming back every time. She tells Renoir she is allowed to grieve in her own way, but the way she chooses to grieve is killing her and tearing her family apart.

As someone who lived with a parent that had substance abuse issues, this hit hard for me. Seeing the same person make the same mistakes over and over again and wanting them to stop, and they just refuse, it’s heartbreaking. Anyone who’s been through that before knows how much addiction can tear apart families and rip loved ones away from you. I didn’t have a great relationship with my stepfather. In fact, I hated him, but my mom and my sister still loved him. Any time I found needles in our basement, or he would do something extremely drastic to fuel his addiction, it was another knife in the chest. My mom one day came home to find our entire savings had been emptied. A modest $10,000, everything she’d been able to save up for years working shitty jobs, completely gone. I remember the venom in her voice when she asked him where all the money went. I’d never heard her make a noise like that before.

Aline Dessendre’s compulsions are not too dissimilar from that of impressionist painters in the early 20th century. Pablo Picasso famously hosted regular opium nights in his studio between 1904-1908, until his friend Karl-Heinz Wiegels committed suicide during a psychotic break brought on by a combination of hashish and opium. Even after he swore off opium for good, he still experimented with cocaine, alcohol, morphine, and seemingly any other substance he could get his hands on over the course of his life. Vincent Van Gogh drank excessively, with absinthe as his drink of choice, so much so that it was the subject of one of his paintings in his Still Life series. Absinthe taken in great quantities has hallucinogenic properties, and while it’s a hotly debated topic that the distinct yellow hue of many of his paintings was caused by excessive drinking (allegedly, drinking too much absinthe causes your vision to slightly more yellow), there is a consensus that absinthe was a contributing factor to Van Gogh’s declining mental state.

Maybe it’s uncouth to compare fantasy painting powers with real life drug addiction. I don’t know. I can only really speak from my own experiences. But when I heard Renoir say he’s tried and tried and tried and how nothing works, how she kept coming back, it hit me. I know what it’s like to have someone so close to me so full of grief and anger to think the only thing I can do is destroy this. Renoir doesn’t want to destroy the painting either, he says as much. Not only would he be condemning everyone to death but he also doesn’t want to lose the last piece he has of his lost son. Yet still, he’s willing to give it up to save his wife and to bring his daughter back home before she falls for the same alluring addiction as her mother.

It’s not hard for me to put myself in Renoir’s shoes in that case. It’s especially easier for me to put myself in the role of Verso, being the youngest son of my family. Seeing them fighting and feeling helpless. Wanting to do something, anything to help but knowing you’re too powerless. Feeling like it’s your fault to begin with. I know in my heart that destroying the canvas is not the way to go. You can’t condemn that many people, they need to be able to live their lives. But seeing that it’s built upon the suffering of people, both alive and dead, in a cycle of endless torment. Is that still ethical? Is it ok for a world to live if it means a lone few suffer? There are none who walk away from Lumiere. The world outside isn’t made for them. They’re trapped there just as Aline is with the memory of her son, driving herself to the only comfort she has. Those who create have the duty to create responsibly, as art can often be used as a sword as much as it is a shield or a blanket or any other creature comfort fitting of this metaphor. The artist of the canvas is already dead, and he wishes to stop painting. It’s everyone else that perverts his work to make it live on.

The real Aline Charigot never picked up a paint brush, but she did die tragically of a heart attack at the age of 56. Auguste attempted to craft a sculpture of her to live on forever, but due to his arthritis and his advanced age, being 20 years her senior, the monument was never finished and served as the basis for a bronze bust by her grave. It’s easy to see where the basis for the Renoir for the game comes from, a compulsive devotion to restore something that can never again be like it once was. The ending choice in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 follows a motif of tragic choices, leaving the player with a final moral dilemma so deeply fraught that you question whether or not you know the right answer. I think, then, I would have liked another option. Perhaps, it might be best if the canvas was hung in a museum for everybody to see. Maybe that makes me as foolish as Auguste, believing that I know better and would like to see the beauty of the world preserved, despite the tragedy that it cannot. From my perspective, though, that’s not what matters. What matters is that it’s an ending that I would have liked.

1. Blue Prince

My #1 game of the year is Blue Prince! Thanks for reading!

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