falciesystemessays

[falciesystemessays]

the thing is, right. for a genre like platformers, there is a generally agreed-upon set of guidelines for what makes a good platformer. mechanics are intuitive, controls feel responsive, level design is challenging but in a way where it's clear what else you could've done. obviously not every platformer follows these conventions, and they can still be good, but they are intentional subversions to genre conventions that are there for a reason.

with rpg's though, especially jrpg's, it's not an uncommon sentiment that they are just innately bad, either most or all of the time. so a lot of indie devs will set out to "fix" the genre, either by changing the combat system to be less turn-based or by hacking off everything that could be conceived of as a flaw. a lot of rpg's these days have a fucking bone to pick with other rpg's, and a lot of the big success stories are praised specifically for not being like other rpg's. and like, i dunno, as an rpg dev, i don't want us to be the nlog's of video games.

[falciesystemessays]

[falciesystemessays]

the core question you must ask when creating genre fiction is, are you making this for the accuracy pedants, or for the people who have only ever seen these things in anime?

[falciesystemessays]

i've been playing fire emblem: sacred stones recently. this is actually my first time really giving it a shot, and in general, i think i like it. it's gotten me thinking about the appeal of 2000s fire emblem. and naturally since i'm a game designer, i've been thinking a lot about the game's mechanics and the experience they create.

the thing with 2000s-era fire emblem is that, in the spectrum of turn-based tactical rpg's, the basic decision-making is fairly simple. it's a question of who you send to attack who, and with what weapon. and with heuristics like the weapon triangle and weaknesses, that's usually not very hard to figure out. i don't say this as an insult, i actually think it's cool that fire emblem is decently approachable to people interested in it.

but i point this out because like... i play a lot of tactics games. midnight suns, hundred line, triangle strategy, etc. i'm even making one right now (password Ketanso). and while all of these games (in my opinion) have amazing combat, i think a lot of them are missing something that fire emblem nails: the long game.

like, okay. i'm playing fe sacred stones, and i want to send out my sword guy to rough up a bunch of enemies. i don't care if this sword guy is bottom tier or whatever, that's not the point. this is the point:

what weapon do i send him out with?

every fire emblem weapon has its own numbers for damage, accuracy, crit chance, and more. while every weapon comes with strengths and weaknesses, if i'm choosing between a Steel Sword and a Killing Edge, there is a correct answer here. the second one has the same accuracy, but is lighter, deals more damage, and adds 30% to your chance to crit. the killing edge is an amazing weapon, which is why you shouldn't use it.

because weapons degrade in this game! every single one of them! and every hit you land with that killing edge is one use of 20 you're never getting back! so use it, if you have to, but it's up to you to decide when you "have to." and that's the thing fire emblem has over these other games. the way that even tiny combat interactions become part of a larger game. the way the question isn't just "how do i beat these enemies," but "how do i beat them while conserving my best tools? is it worth using them in this moment?" the way micro-level tactics weave into macro-level strategy in a way that's just beautiful.

[falciesystemessays]

okay so last year i made a post detailing mario kart's history of retro courses. this was before the recently released mk world, but after the dlc for 8 deluxe. in it, i lamented how between ds and 8 deluxe, the intentionality of these throwbacks got lost. we went from "each game gets 4 tracks here" to "let's just find we haven't used" to "fuck it, play the hits." it feels less like an interpretation of series history, more like a play for nostalgia.

then mario kart world came out. full disclosure, i have not played this game, i do not own a switch 2. it looks really cool, but i follow guybrush rules these days. but, yeah, like the two decades before, this game has retro courses. and it actually incorporates them into the overworld in a way i find interesting. if somebody who plays mario kart world sees this post and has something to add, please do, but for now i'm just going to look at which games get represented, and what tracks are used.

(breathe iiiiiiiin)

several tracks from super mario kart are in world in some form. mario circuits 1, 2, and 3 are made into one track with three sections, and koopa beach 2 comes back as just "koopa beach." but several other tracks, particularly the ghost valleys, koopa beach 1, choco island 2, and vanilla lake 1, aren't "tracks" in the grand prix, but still fully intact in the world. it's really cool honestly, i can tell a lot of love went into reimagining the snes tracks for this new context.

i cannot say the same for the gba, which has 0 tracks represented in this game. did they just decide they had their fill after putting so many in 8dx and tour? could they not figure out how to incorporate super circuit's track design into mario kart world? or do they just think super circuit kinda sucks? i don't know! i'd love to find out! give us modern gba rainbow road, cowards!

but, okay, i skipped a game there. the 2 mk64 tracks represented here are choco mountain (which was already done in ds and 8dx, but whatever) and wario stadium. that last one actually means that now every single track from mario kart 64 has been represented in a mario kart game, not even including tour. i guess, from that perspective, it makes sense to focus on "playing the hits," because where else do you go at this point?

double dash is represented with 2 tracks here: peach beach and dino dino jungle. the first was already a retro course in wii, and the second in 7. again, i get this, there aren't that many tracks they could put in that they haven't already, and i've a feeling that mushroom city, wario colosseum, bowser's castle, and rainbow road all felt redundant for what other tracks are in world.

ds got 3 tracks: desert hills, dk pass, and airship fortress. these were already in wii, 7, and 7 again. and i do get it, like at this point all they could really do different is the boring starter figure-8 circuit, the redundant bowser castle, and of course rainbow road (which tbh i was surprised 8dx didn't do, but whatevs.)

wii got 2 tracks. moo moo meadows, boring! and toad's factory, interesting! this is one of those no-brainer things, like of course a new mk game was going to bring back toad's factory. but looking at the full table of retro courses, it's actually kind of astounding just how much of wii was brought into 8 and 8dx. all that's left is the boring luigi circuit (i like it tho), mario circuit (not a bad mario circuit tbh), bowser's castle (seeing a theme here?) and, if we're not counting tour here, dry dry ruins. god i should play mkwii again sometime.

mk7 got 2 tracks: shy guy bazaar and wario shipyard (or wario's galleon if you're euro) it's worth noting that, while they are both in tour, neither are in 8dx. honestly, if we are counting tour here, the only tracks not represented are the wuhu island ones. which... god, wuhu island. not counting tour though, we could stand to get daisy hills, cheep cheep lagoon, mario circuit, and bowser's castle. and honestly... of those, mario circuit is the best one. that should tell you the state of things. i can see why they didn't.

mk8dx and tour got exactly 1 track in world: sky-high sundae. i suspect part of this is exhaustion with those games, and also because a lot of mk8's tracks are just incompatible with world's own gimmicks. bit of a shame, i would've liked to see thwomp ruins or sunshine airport, but we move on.

making this list, i've realized that, to an extent, the mario kart team have done the best they can over these past two decades. there aren't that many unused oldies to pick from anymore, so, yeah, it's either play the hits or delve into the land of mediocrity. i can see why they chose the former.

but i just... something was lost here. there's something beautifully symmetric about mario kart ds's retro tracks. each retro cup, in order, has a track from the snes, n64, gba, and gcn. it's like, a full look into the series' history to that point. and while wii inevitably had to split this up, it did so thoughtfully, giving 4 new tracks from each 3d game and 2 from each 2d one. while my whole project here is, ultimately, an ocd-driven desire for order, i think there is a tangible difference between "showing old stuff to new players" and "giving old players what they want." and it feels like over time, we've drifted more and more to the second. and i'm not sure how to feel about that.

[falciesystemessays]

there's an idea about fighting games that's been like the dvd logo in my head, that i've been trying to articulate for years. i think that like... part of the draw of fighting games, particularly for the diehards, is this sense of pure, untainted meritocracy. however much the system has wronged you, whatever your place is on a hierarchy made hundreds of years ago, we are all equal on the stick (or gamecube controller, in my case).

[falciesystemessays]

[falciesystemessays]

[falciesystemessays]

something that's been gnawing at me for a while playing the hundred line is that... it seems like at least the male class armors are fashioned off of ss uniforms. particularly the lightning bolt and iron cross. it's not an exact match, but it feels like one of those "if you know you know" things. i'm starting to think it was definitely intentional, that this is a comparison the game wants you to make.

i'm not going to give any spoilers for what happens in dialogue and cutscenes, in part because i'm not far enough in the game that i really have the full picture. but in combat, there is a distinct death worship in the mechanics. if you've played it you know, the game actively wants you to kill your units. i feel this particularly acutely in the boss fights, where often to get a speedy s-rank i just... throw bodies at them until the problem goes away.

while i don't know where the hundred line is Going With This, the combat sequences put you in the mindset of a military leader with no regard for human life, on either side. it's chilling. i kind of love it.

[falciesystemessays]

playing the hundred line and getting fire emblem fates flashbacks. like, the two gay characters in this game are a mentally unwell sapphic absolutely obsessed with her crush, and a sadistic bisexual whose constant horniness makes the people around him uncomfortable. but while rhajat and niles were bad enough to make queer fans petition nintendo about it, i think darumi and yugamu are kind of the best characters in the hundred line. so, what's the difference?

i think what it comes down to is contrast and perspective. like, niles and rhajat stand out in a fire emblem game, where most of your army are generally decent people with light anime quirks.* in the hundred line, everyone is some kind of sicko, so queer ones aren't uniquely strange. compared to the intensely irritating ima or the actively hostile kurara, the hundred line's gays aren't even the most antisocial ones in the room. it's also a matter of scale. two gays in a cast of fourteen is genuinely kind of progressive for a AAA game. but you're telling me that in a cast of over 60 player characters, the only two romanceable queers you could come up with are these two? really?

but that last point is something you could make about the hundred line too. after all, of any two characters to make queer, why them? why the suicidal edgelord with an abusive past? why the scary kinkster who literally wants to predate on your body? these are harmful to an even greater degree, right? well, first of all i'd say it's clear the game is just as horny for them as they are in general, and these traits are a clear part of their appeal. second, the game also has a straight sicko in Gaku, with his weird brand of toxic masculinity. like, queer people do have higher rates of mental illness for a myriad of reasons, and do tend to have more of a willingness to engage in kink. i don't think it's inauthentic to represent that, as long as it's not portrayed as a unique evil.

but most importantly... i think yugamu and darumi are just, good characters. like if even you're not like me and don't relate at least a little bit to darumi's absolute loserdom, she is still sympathetic. it's clear that she's been through a lot, but has chosen to express that in deeply unhealthy ways. and yugamu, despite literally being an assassin, isn't a bad guy. he uses his unique skills to save the party, not just to kill. and while there is sympathy to be found in both niles and rhajat, the nature of being in a fire emblem game means you need to actively seek out whatever might lie under the surface.** and, while this is harder to prove... i think the hundred line is written by people who actually understand queer people and want to pander to us. can you really say the same about fire emblem fates?

*yes i know fates's cast, especially conquest's, has a higher sicko concentration than average. but there are so many and so intensely normal characters like silas, mozu, and the game's lead, that the off-beat characters stand out way more.

**this is part of a broader conversation about fire emblem's complicated relationship to storytelling. this would be its own post that i'll probably make someday, but the gist is that permadeath puts heavy limitations on the kind of story you can tell, and the kind of role that a character can have in that story.

[falciesystemessays]

kind of the thing with talking about top 25s or generally rating stuff with me is that like, i don't think i have a single thing i would ever give a 10/10. i have a ton of favorites, things that have made a big impact on me that i would wholeheartedly recommend, but i don't think "a perfect piece of art" ever can or will exist.

i think it's really important, even if you love something, to recognize its flaws and think of how it "could have been better." i put that in quotes because, very often, it couldn't have. especially in the game industry, where constraints of time, budget, and staff are a real concern, it's often not worth addressing a small problem when you have so much else to deal with. that doesn't mean the flaw is not acknowledging, but it's not a "lazy devs" situation, you know.

and, yeah, it's important to take this view of your own work, in my opinion. now a lot of artists, myself included, have the opposite problem where flaws are often the only thing we can see. and it's worth acknowledging that making anything is nothing short of a miracle. but growing as an artist does require a level of humility, of self-reflection, and the ability to see where you can grow.

my favorite depiction of this mindset is in "keep your hands off eizouken," an anime about high school girls making anime. asakusa, the director in the team, always sees flaws in her work, sees things she could have done better. but while it starts out as self-deprecation, at the end of the season she's happy about it. she's proud of what she's made already, but knows this isn't the best she can do. the recognition of flaws becomes an opportunity to grow. and i think that's important for all of us on our own journeys.

[falciesystemessays]

the thing about the hundred line is that it's genuinely a really good tactics game. like, it is exceptional how good this combat is. i haven't played a tactics game this thoughtfully designed since into the breach. it's doing something actually unique for the genre, and executing on it well. its combat is extremely satisfying, but has actual thematic layers beyond just Being Fun.

it's a game that makes you feel powerful, while also making you feel the physical toll of that power. and unlike basically any other game i've played, you are not just allowed but encouraged to kill your units. because they come back in the next wave, their suicide supers are powerful as hell, and one unit dying both isn't a big deal and also builds your super meter. it encourages you to see your units as disposable, to actively embrace death. and that is just... so cool to me as somebody who preaches the value of gameplay as storytelling.

i didn't expect the hundred line to be this good. i expected it to be at least a good visual novel, but i was not expecting the danganronpa people to have tactical greatness in them. and this speaks to my bias, i am a tactics game developer myself, and i feel protective over "my turf." but between this game and unicorn overlord, i'm starting to think it's time to eat crow on this. i have never been more excited for this genre than i am now, and i'm glad to be part of the future.

[falciesystemessays]

that alex avila video about ai makes a point that i've been chewing on since it came out, like... whatever you or i have to say about ai art, we do still have to compete with it, in a very capitalistic sense. 'cause like, yeah, some of the stuff is genuinely aesthetically pleasing, i don't think it does us any favors to pretend it can't be. for people who only care about the output of an artist, it doesn't much matter whether something took two years or two seconds. to be clear, i don't very much respect people who don't care about the input, about the people and the process behind the work. but they do exist, and in higher quantity than people want to admit.

ultimately, people like me who never plan to use generative ai have to find a new angle to set ourselves apart from the people who do. and i'm... maybe not worried, but skeptical, that the answer we seem to have settled on is branding. i mean it makes sense, if you can't compete on output, then input becomes the selling point. there's an increased emphasis now on the person behind the work. their personality, their process, their reasons for doing what they do.

in many ways, this is a really cool thing, i like that audiences care about shit like process and vision, care about the people who make the art they love. but it's also very... you know, there's issues with branding art with a person, with the kind of auteur worship and parasociality that inevitably leads to. and i worry also that people will stop caring about the output, which is, ultimately, the thing i really care about in my own work. i don't want the emphasis in "Daybreak Hearts: an Angie Nyx Games production" to be on Angie Nyx. i want people to know that people made this, that they put time, care and effort into it. but i want them to experience the game for what it is. and i want them to like it.

[falciesystemessays]

one of my favorite things about into the breach is the way it desensitizes you to what happens in it. this is endemic to all games, the more you play something, the more you stop seeing the people in the buildings, the more you stop seeing your kills as formerly living things. but in into the breach i think that works well as a commentary on eternal war. the war in itb can never be truly won, there will always be another timeline, and the game never stops to question this. all signs that more is at play here, like the vek expressing signs of being more than mindless parasites, are subdued and never dwelt upon. it is on you, the player, to decide how to feel about that. personally, i feel chills of dread, and i feel it periodically as i play. because i still play into the breach. i still fight the eternal war. into the breach, once more.

[falciesystemessays]

level 0: video games are not art, because their interactivity prevents an artist from expressing a vision (the roger ebert take)

level 1: video games are art, because they can still express ideas and make us feel things (the common response to the roger ebert take)

level 2: video games are capable of expressing a vision, but the expectation of a gameplay loop gets in the way of that (what a fair few artsy games folk feel nowadays, known also as kill gameplay)

level 3: gameplay is an exploration of concepts that a player then finds and crafts meaning within (the clint hocking take, and what i've decided to go with)

[falciesystemessays]

i think every game in the zero escape series is my favorite in a different way, but also my least favorite in a different way

999

i think 999 is probably the most cohesive and satisfying as a whole work, but a lot of that's because it's the least ambitious. that's not to say it isn't cool as hell, but when you're only trying to do one cool-as-hell thing, it's a lot easier to execute on that. like i can see why no game ever reviewed higher than 999, it is the best as a whole package. but the later games fumble more because they have more to fumble, and if they weren't as ambitious as they are, they would be way worse.

also both versions of 999, i feel, struggle in some major way. someone in my discord server pointed out that the remake generally streamlines a lot of the time travel experience in a way that interferes with the original's intended flow, but he himself admitted to needing a guide to beat the original ds game. i can confirm, i needed one too. that might be a skill issue, but a test of skill, truly, is not what i come to games like this for.

Virtue's Last Reward

vlr is a complicated case to me, because i hated the ending, and loved everything before it. but this is the kind of game where a bad ending retroactively ruins the rest of the experience, because those hype moments were supposed to be buildup. to be clear, i do not think vlr's ending is a poor execution of uchikoshi's vision. i just think that he and i have different values about what a story like this should even be.

because from the lens of a puzzle box sci-fi mystery, the ending is everything it needs to be. But thematically, as someone who was genuinely taking meaning from the individual scenes... the ending just feels like needless complication that renders the game's best moments completely empty of value. which is a shame, because they were some of the series' best moments. i really appreciate this game, as someone who cares a lot about storytelling through play. i just wish it stuck the landing.

Zero Time Dilemma

ztd is... definitely the game i have the most negative to say about? the puzzles are abysmal and only there as a formality. the shift to fully cinematic cutscenes just cannot be supported by a shoestring animation budget. and there's a lot of moments in the story, particularly in the twists, that are just real stinkers all around. like, yeah, this game could never have brought zero escape outside of cult hit territory like it so badly wanted to. it's just not good enough for that.

but i also kind of just... love the energy of it? one of my favorite things about zero escape as a series is that it always knows how to escalate. i came out of each game wondering how the next one could possibly top it, and each time i am shocked at just how much they do. ztd's level of unhinged is, i think, perfect for the end of the series, and although the execution of that could have been better, i think there's no other way this series' vibes could go besides zero time dilemma. i just wish that it more fully embraced the parts that it does well.

[falciesystemessays]

when i think about art, i think of the word "gestalt."

like most words, i first heard it somewhere else, and started using it myself. i have only just now bothered to look up a definition, because its use to me is very specific.

the gestalt of a work is the whole of it. the holistic identity the experience holds. it cannot be captured only by raw description. you might describe it as the work's core, its heart its soul.

remember that part for later.

a couple years ago i asked a friend how they'd describe my approach to games. this friend is one i've clashed with on this subject many times, but i hold a deep respect for them. they told me that i care very deeply about the core thing a game is doing. the gestalt, in other words.

it is strange for me to imagine this not being universal, but i suppose i've seen that in action. much of the gestalt of fandom is isolating the bits you obsess over, and disregarding the rest. a lot of people simply do not see the value in a holistic understanding.

although they might pretend to.

about two years ago, a former friend of mine got to watch me play their favorite game. i had never much liked it, but wanted to give it a fair shake. i found pockets of joy scattered throughout, mostly in places they'd never looked. but everything they liked, i hated. despite giving my praises to certain parts, i could never appreciate the gestalt like they thought i should. but their appreciation was just as selective as mine.

and anyway, i'm the one making a game here, right? development of daybreak hearts has come a long way. i don't like bragging or commiserating on a public platform, but my process has had both the highs of development going well, and the lows of emotional overwhelm. i'm nearly out of one of those lows right now, but a nagging question still refuses to leave my head.

do i... have a gestalt?

i don't just mean my work here, i mean me. i mean, they're tied. i feel often like my work doesn't have a soul, because i don't have a soul. there's just an empty void where my heart should be, only capable of imitating the real thing until it's time to be whole. i feel like other people, other game developers, just have something where i don't.

and this game is in a similar spot. i've been spending months polishing up individual levels, and only now am i starting to think about they come together. what is the gestalt of daybreak hearts? i know that a lot of art only comes together late in development, like how the final edit makes or breaks a movie.

but i feel completely overwhelmed trying to find that cohesive vision. and there's just this hanging sense that i can't do it, that i'm just missing something as a human being that would make me capable of doing what i need to do. and i know this sounds irrational, and it probably is, but i'm going to have to get past this roadblock if i'm going to do what i need to do.

(sigh)