#or unlike Disco Elysium’s psychology driven commentary on player insert RPG characters

[lintwriting]

Undertale and Crow Country: More Alike Than You Think!

A lot of what’s sweeping about Crow Country reminds me of what swept Undertale into massive popularity. Great music, retro but in a way that plays with the source materials, a good story—but most importantly, one with time to breathe.

Like some of Undertale’s most memorable aspects were the way it played with the player in a way unique to video games and RPGs.

Genocide and pacifist routes play with the standard RPG violence that most games never question.

The player chooses to name a character at the beginning who is NOT your player character, but instead a different character altogether, and your player is actually a character in their own right (named Frisk) rather than a character you can project onto/role play as, as would be the norm in a ROLEPLAYing game lol.

(The RPG Disco Elysium was also famous for these kind of meta elements, with the game making it clear (through the narrative device of amnesia) that while you can customize the player character, he is not a blank slate/player insert either! Much like the way someone in real life will still find themselves predisposed to certain traits through nurture/their environment, even if they make their own choices. Read my thoughts here!)

Undertale I remember being considered very retro at its time for being an 8-bit RPG. Particularly memorable is that people clowned on the graphics, which I thought were cute as someone who wasn’t very familiar with video games, but I didn’t realize that the 8-bit stuff wouldn’t be commonplace for most gamers. So yeah, it was considered weirdly retro at the time.

Similarly, Crow Country plays with nostalgia in a way that I’m not familiar with at all. I’m unfamiliar with its influences—unfamiliar with Final Fantasy, unfamiliar with PS1 graphics (except as the new trend that’s been making the rounds as of late). As such, it’s not nostalgic to me beyond being a puzzle game like Undertale and a lot of RPGmaker games were. But yeah, both Undertale and Crow Country bring something new to the table to this nostalgic rehashing.

Undertale mostly with its meta storytelling/themes, though the combat system was unique. And Crow Country in its faux pre-rendered background, mimicking old survival horror games, that acts as an immersive-sim-like interact-able background that would’ve been impossible for its era. The ability to interact with objects you assume are just part of the background is a hugely pleasant surprise in a game like this, rewarding exploration—a key game mechanic. A positive feedback loop.

And like, the nostalgia is HUGE. A lot of the moments reviewers keep referencing are the bits where characters make cute jokes about how it’s weird you need to go through like 5 puzzles just to get a key, referencing in-universe how weird their world is. That’s the type of joke you only get once a genre has established tropes and cliches, aka when a genre has been around long enough to feel nostalgic. Undertale also made similar meta jokes that show a love for the genre it’s in, as does Disco Elysium, and it creates a sense of kinship between the player and the characters and the developers (because it’s an in-joke and a badge of honor).

Finally, the moments to breathe. The game encourages and rewards exploration, and it has story beats and moments that reward slowing down before a big moment and to just feeling what the characters are feeling AND appreciate the experience of this genre of game itself.

With Undertale, it’s the whole “filled with determination” save mechanics and the “you’re still you” mirror scenes.

With Crow Country, it’s Mara’s scene where she appreciates her key items (like a lot of survival horror fans do near the end of play throughs). Mara has her own quiet save room areas, too.

Along with the almost tonally abrupt Undertale lore dump of the echo flower room. A dump would be boring in a different game, but the echo flowers, thanks to its visceral atmosphere, instead feel like the intimacy of a child finding out their family secrets. To achieve this, rather than characters telling you, it’s just flowers echoing you secrets from the past—leaving you the player alone enough to really take in the info (as if you were Frisk) and letting you process it as you will, without any push from other characters. Not frisk (who doesn’t speak), not any other character else, just the player. Alone with these secrets.

Similarly, that scene where Mara is climbing down into the heart of darkness on that ladder. Just an endless view of her going down and getting smaller and darker, like Omori going down the stairs. Oh boy, it’s that same feeling of letting you really process what you’re getting into, of slowing down to feel the visceral emotions and enjoy the experience thanks to its intense atmosphere. But it contains that same heart pumping, introspective feeling of appreciation and excitement that Undertale has with its save points, with none of the dramatic fear that Aomori’s stair scene evokes, because it’s a slow moment to breathe.

(this gif and its texts via ElucidatedByFire's WONDERFUL video on Crow Country. Truly underrated and highly recommend!!!)

Cross-Demographic Appeal

I think under this lens, it makes a lot of sense why Crow Country is on such an "easy" mode despite ostensibly being a survival horror game. I feel like in a lot of ways, it has cross-demographic appeal, specifically connected to Undertale’s more RPG puzzle/newbie/young demographic. Undertale even has that horror level with the creepy amalgamations.

So while Crow Country’s survival horror audience is baffled at its choice to make "easy" mode the default, since the whole point of the genre is stuff like resource management and the adrenaline of trying to survive, an RPG audience is not quite as used to that level of anxiety while playing lol.

It would be forgiving to these undoubtedly beginner players who come for that RPG crossover appeal, who don’t know what to expect and therefore wouldn’t know to go on “easy” mode (if murder mode was set as “normal”). Though maybe this is a bit too coddling XD