Communication and Interaction in Fable 2

It has been far too long since I have last written a blog entry here. I have finally sat down to revive this blog with a post about a game that has been out for a couple of years: Lionhead Studio's Fable 2. I finally got around to playing it for the first time over the last week, and it was actually a fair bit better than I was expecting based on some reviews I have read about it. Unfortunately, one of the key selling points of the game, the ability to interact with the common characters throughout the world to earn their love or their fear, just fell flat. In practice, the lack of any real communication and the ability to only interact with faceless NPCs devoid of characterization makes it feel like the whole game world, including the player's own character, feel empty and lifeless. Fable 2 doesn't create the feeling that there are actual relationships between characters.

The fundamental problem with Fable 2's interaction is that it is impossible to actually talk to people; all you can do is use emotes called Expressions to get vague ideas across. Every NPC in the game-world seems to have their own base impression of the hero based on a combination of his renown (a value built up by doing quests), his alignment, and his appearance. From there, it is possible to further manipulate the impressions of the NPCs by taking various action, primarily Expressions, around them. For example you can pose heroically to impress people. NPCs will then occasionally make voice-acted comments as the hero walks by based on their personality traits and current impressions of the hero. However, at no point in this process do the NPCs and the hero actually interact in any significant way. It just feels like the player and the game-world are just talking at each other rather than engaging in anything substantial. It isn't even possible to tell which specific man or woman is actually doing the talking when they are in a crowd.

The biggest reason this interaction feels so hollow is because the people filling the game world really are hollow and lifeless. They are nothing more than names pasted onto three to six character personality traits, a handful of likes and dislikes, a generic character model, and a generic voice. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them where cranked out by a random NPC generator program. Furthermore, all of those statistics are devoted to determining how the NPC reacts to the hero performing any given Expression. All these NPCs are capable of is wandering around and reacting to Expressions. At the same time, none of them really stand out at all. They have no interesting personalities, they all look the same, and, worst of all, they are all equally frivolous in their emotions. Just by having my hero put on some nice clothes, half a city fell in love with my hero. Why should the player even care what the NPCs think of the hero when the NPCs are nothing more than generic background characters?

There are several honestly interesting characters in the game who are part of the story and the games various quests, such as Barnum, Hannah, and Garth. Unfortunately, these few interesting characters are completely segregated from any interaction. They generally have no reactions to the hero performing Expressions nearby, and they can't even be killed (one quest giver still offered me a job after I shot him in the head a couple dozen times). You can't even lock onto them to check their stats like you can with every other character in the game. It is really frustration that the only characters in the game that I actually care about don't really care much about my character.

The whole problem is compounded by the limitations of the Expressions. The Expressions are grouped based on how they influence people, and these groups include Flirty, Scary, Rude, and Fun. Pretty much all of the Expressions represent conscious performances put on by the hero to influence people's emotions and impressions. What is missing are Expressions that actually express the hero's own emotions. For example, it is possible to point and laugh at people to piss them off or humiliate them, but there is no crying emote to express sadness. This actually comes up in the handful of cutscenes where the player is asked to use Expressions to interact with story characters, such as when the player is attending the funeral of a slain monk. Without the ability to actually express the hero's own emotions, it is nearly impossible to engage in anything resembling a conversation. While the game does offer up Expressions for the player to use in such situations, trying to figure out the meaning of any given Expression in the scene's context is often very difficult. As such, the player's own character feels just as hollow and lifeless as the NPCs filling the world.

In the end, I never really bothered interacting with the NPCs of Fable 2 much during my go through. The game didn't give me much real motivation to do so. The NPCs and Expressions just felt too much like a mechanical puzzle to be cracked than anything with actual emotional payoff. In order to succeed with this kind of thing, you need to breathe life into the NPCs and treat them like actual characters, not just set-pieces.

Shadow of the Colossus: Argo

I finally managed to track down a copy of Shadow of the Colossus not too long ago, and I have finally beat it. Despite the games short length, I think that it is a real masterpiece of a game. Shadow of the Colossus is such a success because it manages to create powerful experiences and evoke strong emotions in those who play it. Since, I have already discussed fighting the Colossi before, this time I will talk about perhaps the most compelling character in the game: the hero's horse, Argo.

Even though Argo is merely a horse, and thus has no dialogue, he is nonetheless a character that I became attached to over the course of the game. Argo is the hero's, and thus the player's, constant companion throughout the course of the game. In particular, almost the entire entire exploration and journeying aspect of the game takes place from Argo's back. While the player often has to leave Argo behind in order to actually confront the Colossi, Argo does play a pivotal role in several of the game's epic battles. Furthermore, Argo is really the only friendly character the player has to interact with in the game, since the only other characters are Dormin, who is really only an ominous disembodied voice, and the hero's deceased love. As such, Argo's unwavering loyalty to the hero is the only thing that breaks up the quiet solitude of the game.

What really distinguishes Argo is that he is not just a vehicle for the hero to ride around on; Argo was created to be a character for the player to interact with. Argo doesn't just sit around waiting for the player, he often wanders off on his own, generally following the player around if you walk around on foot. Furthermore, once you saddle up, Argo proves to be realistically stubborn. I found that I had to be persistent and keep prodding Argo to get him to turn and run like I wanted him to. While Argo's tendancy to be difficult to control was annoying at first, I quickly got used to it and in the long run it made him a very realistic character. Pretty soon, I even discovered that I could use his intelligence to my advantage, since Argo was perfectly capable of navigating narrow canyon roads and such without any guidance from me other than an occasional reminder to keep running fast.

This characteristic of Argo's ended up being critical during the fight against the tenth colossus. In that battle, I needed to lure the fast-moving Colossus to pursue me as I fled away from it on horseback, at which point I could turn around in the saddle and fire an arrow at it's weakpoint. At first though, I kept aborting my attacks in order to guide Argo and make turns to avoid running into walls. As such, I had trouble making well-aimed shots, and I couldn't hit the enemy's weakpoint. I was only able to persevere in that battle when I came to the realization that I had to stop treating Argo like a vehicle under my control and I started to actually put my faith in him. So, I readied the bow and stopped worrying about trying to guide Argo around obstacles. Argo rewarded my faith several times over. Not only could Argo avoid obstacles and running into walls without my guidance, but he ended up being much better at dodging the attacks of the enemy colossus without my input. With Argo keeping us away from the enemy on his own, I was able to focus all of my attention on making my arrows hit their mark. Shortly thereafter, I started to make real headway in that battle. That was the point in the game where I fully stopped looking at Argo as tool in my arsenal for fighting the Colossi, and I started to see Argo as my partner.

By the end of the game, I had really grown attached to Argo. That is why the scene where he sacrifices himself and falls off a crumbling bridge t his apparent so that the hero could face the final colossus felt like a cheap gut-punch. During the game's ending, probably the most emotional part for me was seeing Argo walking back up the outer steps of the shrine like he always did. I was both very glad to see that he had survived the fall, and felt bad seeing him limping with a wounded leg. In the end, the fate of a horse overshadowed all of the other crazy things that happened during that ending. I suppose that is prook that the creators of Shadow of the Colossus made an amazing character.

I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more horses in future videogames act more like Argo. Maybe Epona could learn a thing or two.

Dragon Quest 4: Chapters

Dragon Quest IV's distinguishing characteristic is its chapter-based structure. The game is split into five chapters: the first four chapters introduce most of the major controllable characters, while the fifth chapter encompasses the majority of the story. While I am still only in the fourth chapter, I think that the chapter based structure is a great idea. The four early chapters do an excellent job of setting up the central conflict in a believable manner and making a large number of characters interesting.

Establishing the history and motivations of a large supporting cast is easily the most important outcome of Dragon Quest IV's Chapter structure. Compared to most Dragon Quest games, Dragon Quest IV has a lot of characters. I have been introduced to eight permanent characters so far, and there very well may be even more yet to be introduced. With a cast this large, it is very easy for characters to end up being underdeveloped or overshadowed by other characters. However, by giving various members of the cast their own introductory chapters, most of the characters of the game are put into the limelight as the central character in their own fairly involved adventures. These chapters introduce most of the cast as adventurers and heroes in their own right, before they are ever recruited by the main hero. These chapters introduce the various characters' motivations for becoming heroes, as well as what sets them on the path to becoming part of the main party of heroes. As a result, the entire cast of characters becomes very interesting.

The four introductory chapters are also put to good use as a means of foreshadowing the central conflict of the game. While each of the first four chapters has its own self-contained story, most of them directly tie into the larger chain of events going on behind the scenes. Furthermore, each of the chapters has so far set up different facets of the plot and added various mysteries to the game. So by the time the main hero enters the action, a lot of set-up has already been done. The four chapters also flesh put a significant fraction of the game world, much of which the player will need to travel through again later on in the game.

A particular advantage of the four chapters of Dragon Quest IV is that all of them give the player different gameplay experiences. While some of the chapters are more focused on a single character, others give the player multiple characters to use. While some of the chapters are dominated by powerful physical fighters, others primarily have magic-oriented characters. The kinds of dungeons and situations the various characters come across vary wildly as well. Even the enemies that appear are pretty different. No two chapters are exactly alike, so in some way it feels like several different RPGs rolled into one. This variety keeps things plenty interesting as the player goes from one to another.

There is another game that takes advantage of the introductory chapter concept: Seiken Densetu 3. In that game, all six possible characters have their own unique starting chapter, usually consisting of a sequence of story events leading up to a short dungeon. Like in Dragon Quest IV, these prologues do an excellent job of introducing major characters and establishing their motivations for becoming heroes, as well as introducing various villains and the major countries of the game. However, I think the set-up in Seiken Densetsu 3 is not as good as in Dragon Quest IV because the player only has to play through the chosen main character's prologue, and only gets a cutscene summary of the other character's prologues. This does have the effect of marginalizing the plots of the two supporting characters, which is a trend seen elsewhere in the game.

Thinking about it, one can argue that the split-scenario section of Final Fantasy VI is more or less the same thing as Dragon Quest IV's Chapters. The scenarios too are something that occurs relatively early in the game as a means of temporarily putting the spotlight on individual characters. The scenarios in FFVI are even the time where several major characters are first introduced as well.

Personally, I love having individual chapters in an RPG. This is another device I would like to see revisited in the future.

Lost Odyssey: Mortals and Immortals

After clearing Grandia last week, the game that I have been playing the most of has been Lost Odyssey for the XBox 360. Honestly, it feels more like a Final Fantasy game than Final Fantasy XII does, so I have been enjoying it quite a bit. The main premise of the game is that the main character, like several other major characters, is an immortal who has lived unchanging for one thousand years. However, while Lost Odyssey has plenty of game mechanics in place to help tell the story of immortal characters traversing the ages and a strong base concept, it doesn't seem to really take advantage of what it has in place.

Lost Odyssey splits all party members into two groups: immortals and mortals, and uses different mechanics to determine what skills and abilities they have. Mortals are pretty straight-forward: they gain new spell levels, skills, and passive abilities as part of leveling up. For example, Cooke gains White Magic spells and abilities to augment her healing magic as she levels up. On the other hand, Immortals acquire Skills through two methods: learning a skill that a Mortal knows by fighting alongside that Mortal, and permanently learning a Skill from an equipped accessory. Furthermore, Immortals acquire more Skill Slots (and thus the ability to equip more learned Skills) by using items called Slot Seeds. As a result, Immortals tend to be much more flexible than Mortals, with greater access to passive abilities and complex combinations of abilities. Between the Immortals' added versatility and potential power over Mortal characters and the strong story emphasis on them, the Immortal characters tend to stand out as main characters over the Mortals. In many ways, the game system seems perfectly suited to telling a multi-generational story, where you have a fixed number of Immortal characters in the party at all times, and a large cast of Mortal characters who enter and leave the party as the story progresses and the years flow by. Unfortunately, that is not what the game designers opted to do.

Instead of telling a story that crosses the ages, Lost Odyssey has so far played out like a fairly ordinary RPG. Despite the fact that Kaim Argonar and the other Immortals have a thousand years of history behind them, most of the major plot points seem to have taken place within the last thirty or so years of the game. At the same time, most of the major character development for the Immortals took place in the unseen past. Most of this backstory is conveyed to the player through the "Thousand Years of Dreams", a collection of short stories written in the first person that can be viewed whenever the party rests at an inn. However, almost all of the dreams that I have viewed are stories more focused on various people Kaim has met across his journeys, instead of on Kaim's own character development. So, Lost Odyssey has so far felt like a game with a typical RPG plot and limited character development for the central characters. I am hoping this will change as the game goes.

I think a multigenerational story would have worked much better. That way, the player could watch the character development of the Immortals first hand, as opposed to learning about it after the fact. The game's story as a whole would have stood out much more as well. The real shame is that the game system seems so perfectly suited for such a story that it feels like wasted potential.

Grandia: Story

After more than a month or so, I finally finished the original Grandia early this week. It is a game that has a few issue and shows its age, but it is a game that certainly has some great moments. Sadly, most of the moments took place in the first half of the game. While the first half of Grandia was brimming with a unique charm, the second half of the game ended up reducing the plot into a recycled cliche. In many ways, Grandia would have been better off if the developers had tossed out the Gaia plot in favor of focusing the story more strongly on Justin as an adventurer and explorer.

In the first disc of the game, the plot is centered on a very simple concept: Justin's long and difficult journey to discover the truth of the mythical civilization of Angelou and the enigmatic Icarians who were depicted in its art; a journey that is inseparable from Justin's own growth and coming of age. From the outset of the game, the plot sets up these elements: in the very beginning, Justin is just a bratty and energetic kid who dreams of becoming a famous adventurer like his father and grandfather and is fascinated by the myths of the ancient Angelou civilization. When he stumbles upon a device left behind by Angelou in an old ruin that gives him a clue to the existence of the Angelounian city of Alent, he sets out on his journey. The structure of the game from there on does a lot to emphasize the "journey": the first disk is defined by a number of points in the story where Justin makes a crossing into a new land, leaving the old places he has visited behind forever. The most remarkable of these is where Justin and company climb the End of the World, a massive wall dividing a continent no one before had ever successfully crossed on foot.

In the first half of the game, most of the fun comes from this journey and the sense of being the first one to see these things and meet these strange tribes of people. For me, one of the most memorable events in the game is when Justin and Feena (Justin's love interest) are roped into agreeing to be the couple of honor for a festival, only to discover that they just agreed to be sacrificed to a dragon. Justin's dauntless personality drives the spirit of the game early on, since while he is constantly getting the party into trouble with his reckless abandon, he also spurs the other characters on to accomplish things they never felt possible before.

Sadly, the entire mood of the game changes drastically early in the second disk. Instead, the plot begins to revolve around the ancient monster Gaia, a creature that was only vaguely hinted at in two or three scenes in the first disk. Now then, Gaia does fulfill a role: it serves as an explanation for why the Angelou civilization was destroyed and is the big bad evil thing that the heroes have to kill to get the ending credits to roll. Unfortunately, that is all that Gaia ever really is, and it ends up dragging the rest of the game down with it. Apparently, the developers thought that they needed a powerful, world-destroying evil in order to have an appropriate final boss. So, they spent most of the second disk building up Gaia as a threat by showing off towns that have been destroyed by Gaia turning everything into stone.

However, the emphasis on Gaia and the plot-lines surrounding it comes at the expense of the spirit of the game itself. There are no more grand journeys into unknown lands in the second disk: the entire thing takes place in a single area that all of the locals are pretty familiar with. Character development suffers as a whole, since the usually talkative and interesting Feena falls into a quiet, depressed mood for most of the latter half of the game, and Justin himself goes from being the driving force behind the party to being someone who needs other people to constantly be telling him where to go and what to do. The point where it becomes absolutely clear that the plot of the game has become twisted is when a certain character asks Justin why he is going to Angelou. The player has three choices: "I don't know", "To find answers about the secrets of Angelou", and "To save the world"; "To save the world" is the only correct choice. When Justin and his friends finally reach the lost Angelounian city of Alent, what should have been the grand culmination of Justin's entire journey is nothing more than a brief stop-over where the heroes don't learn anything they didn't already know.

I don't think that a "save the world from destruction" plot necessarily adds anything to a game. Grandia would have been a lot better off if had focused on a the more personal story of Justin and his journey to uncover the secrets of Angelou and become a legendary adventurer.

Devil May Cry 4: Nero

Introducing a new main character into an established and popular franchise is very tough. The poor fan reception of Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2 is proof of that. However, I think Capcom did a very good job of bringing in Nero and selling him as a cool character. I think that this is in large part due to how the developers went out of their way to emphasize that Nero is a very different character than Dante, as opposed to being a clone or a replacement.

From the beginning, it is obvious to any long-time fan of the Devil May Cry series that Nero plays very differently from Dante. While he still uses both a rapid-fire gun and multi-hit sword combos, Nero's specific combos and special moves work very differently than Dante's. Furthermore, instead of copying Dante's styles or ability to weapon change, Nero uses the Exceed system and the very powerful Devil Bringer. The Devil Bringer in particular differentiates Nero and Dante, since it forms the core of Nero's fighting style, especially against bosses. In fact, even though Nero and Dante will both fight the same bosses, it is noticeable that very different tactics are needed. While Dante can count on superior mobility and long-range firepower, most of Nero's strategy focuses on finding opportunities to hit enemies with his Devil Bringer's Breaker attack. The two character's Devil Trigger abilities and appearance are even significantly different.

The Devil Bringer is certainly a fun weapon, particularly since there are custom animations when Nero uses it against bosses or various normal enemies. Nero's Exceed ability, which let's him charge up his sword to get more powerful sword attacks, allows for some pretty spectacular combos as well. Unfortunately, it is pretty obvious that these powers are new additions to the series, and thus need some more refinement. Despite being the power that distinguishes Nero the most, there is surprising little to do with Devil Bringer. The player can pretty much just use Snatch to close the distance with the enemy and Breaker to unleash a punishing throw. While Nero later on gains the ability to hold an enemy as a shield, that rarely seems to work like it is supposed to and ends up feeling like a minor side-note. I would have liked to see a lot more functions and upgrades for the Devil Bringer, such as the ability to throw an enemy away from Nero, choke an enemy, or something else like that. Exceed can also use a little more work, since I ended up forgetting about it more than half the time. While it is possible to easily build up a single level of the Exceed gauge by using Exact, that isn't enough to allow use of the more powerful Exceed 2 or Exceed 3 abilities. And while Exceed attacks look cool, no enemy seems to have a particular weakness to them, so there often isn't a whole lot of point to building up the Exceed gauge. Still, Nero's abilities were well-executed enough that I actually missed having them when time came to switch to Dante.

The game developers also did a pretty good job of differentiating Nero and Dante's personalities, even though they are both generally cut from the same mold. Even though both characters fought many of the same bosses, their banter with the bosses and general behavior is very distinct. While they are both cocky and confident, Nero tends to be short-tempered, straight to the point, and serious, while Dante tends to be relaxed, joking, and generally more of a show-off.

Finally, I think the story of Devil May Cry 4 did a good job in making Nero feel like an interesting and important character. Metal Gear Solid 2's big mistake was in hyping Solid Snake as the main character in most of the promotional material for the game, making him the starting playable character, and then doing the surprise character swap to Raiden a quarter of the way into the game. That process made Raiden into an unexpected and unwanted replacement for Solid Snake. In Devil May Cry 4 though, Nero was very much at the forefront of the trailers and demos for the game, so players went into the game expecting that there would be a new playable character. Making Nero the starting character also gave him a chance to establish himself and his role in the story early. The end result is that even someone like me, who is a big fan of Dante after playing the previous games in the series, ended up liking Nero a lot.

Grandia: Characters Leaving the Party

Grandia is an unusual RPG in that it features a fairly complex system of building up characters and at the same time has multiple characters that leave the party permanently. Normally, it is very disappointing and disheartening when a character you have spent hours building up properly leaves, but Grandia has an interesting mechanic that helps alleviate this problem.

Grandia's ability system is built around building up a characters skill levels in their weapons and in the game's four magic elements. By building these skill levels up to certain pre-determined levels, a character can learn new special moves or magic spells. However, doing so can involve putting in a lot of dedicated effort and intentionally dragging out fights to acquire more skill experience points. Furthermore, giving a character access to one of the four magical elements requires the player to trade in a Mana Egg, a rather rare and valuable item. So, building up a character requires the expenditure of a lot of time and limited resources.

Normally, it is advantageous for a player in an RPG to neglect spending valuable resources on temporary characters. However, even knowing beforehand that certain characters in Grandia were going to leave the party at the end of the first disc, I still ended up building them up. I felt comfortable doing so because Grandia gives a consolation prize of sorts when a party member leaves for good: skill books that can be used to transfer part a fraction of the old character's skill levels to another character. So, if I spend a lot of effort building up the stats of a party member who will leave, I can give a part of those stats to either help a new party member catch up or to help a character get a high level move late in the game. In that way, building up a character who is going to leave becomes advantageous in the long-term, since if you don't spend the time building that character up in the first place, you won't have any skill levels to pass on to other characters.

Grandia II does something very similar to the original in this regard, but at an even better deal. When one of the game's characters leaves the party for good, the player gets a skill book that transfers that character's accumulated skill points and magic points in total to another character of the player's choice to do with as the player pleases. I think this approach to handling leaving party members is a lot more interesting than what happens in games like Final Fantasy V, where the party member who leaves is replaced by a carbon copy clone stat-wise.

There is a lot of story potential to be had from a main character leaving the party, and it would be a shame to let a game's ability system get in the way of that. However, you don't want the player getting too upset about a character leaving for game mechanic reasons, and giving the player a reward for putting time and resources into a temporary character is a great way to ward that problem off. It encourages the player to become more invested in every character, irregardless of how long the character is in the party.

Grandia: Conversations in Town

Every year in the month or so leading up to Christmas, I end up pulling a game that I haven't played in years out of the depths of my collection. This year, I decided to restart the Playstation version of Grandia (a game I have mentioned on this blog before) and finally sit down and beat it. It didn't take me long to be reminded how long it takes to talk to everyone in a town in this game. Since a town can have two or three dozen characters, and each character has anywhere from one to five things they say, it can easily take an hour or more to properly talk to everyone in a town. In the first ten hours of the game, I spent significantly more time talking to people than exploring dungeons or fighting monsters. Yet, I don't regret doing so in the least, since the NPC conversations in Grandia are almost always entertaining.

Unlike in many RPGs, where NPCs just give a few lines of generic back-ground information to the player when talked to, talking to NPCs in Grandia is used to help flesh out and develop the main characters. Instead of just quietly listening to the NPCs, the main characters of Grandia talk to the NPCs, ask them questions, and make jokes to each other. If an NPC mentions a future dungeon, Justin (Grandia's energetic main hero) will respond and talk about how excited he is at the prospect of going there. Seeing the characters' reactions to this kind of information really helps flesh out their motivations, interests, histories, and random personality quirks, without dumping all of this information on the player as part of the story. Since the main characters talk to each other too, it helps develop what the relationships between the main characters are like as well.

The NPC conversations in Grandia also do an unusual good job of revealing how famous the main characters are in the community and what their reputation is. The NPCs always address the main characters directly, often by name (if they know it), and often talk about what they know or think about the characters' actions. For example, when the party first arrives in a town, most of the locals point out that the main characters look like they are not locals, and the main characters are usually full of questions about the town. However, after some events and dungeons, the locals have become more familiar with the main characters and their exploits. They become more familiar with the main characters and start praising them for their heroic actions. Since the main characters are generally treated with the levels of respect and recognition that they deserve in these conversations, there is something very genuine about them that makes the world of the game more engaging. It also helps reinforce to the player that his actions have had an effect on the game's world.

Finally, the conversations in Grandia are entertaining because they are usually hilarious. Like in many Game Arts games, the characters in Grandia run the gamut from cooky to eccentric to downright insane. The witty, light-hearted nature of Grandia is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

Game Mechanics and Character Quirks

One thing that I am always glad to see is when game designers put in the effort to make characters, enemies, bosses, and NPCs more than just a collection of dialogue and basic statistics. One of the best ways to reinforce this is to give characters special statistics or AI routines that reflect their personality and individual character quirks. These kind of things can be small in the greater scheme of things, but can go a long ways towards making a character stand out in the player's memory.

This topic came to mind after I read some information on the recently released (in Japan) Super Robot Wars Z. In that game, every character has a bonus they give their squad-mates if they are the squad leader. One of the characters in the game, Kei, is a serious flirt and womanizer, so the game developers made his squad leader bonus a 20% bonus to damage when fighting men, and a 20% penalty to damage when fighting women. It is a small thing, but it suits his personality perfectly.

A similar example can be found in Final Fantasy 8, in the form of Raijin. When the party fights him in a boss battle, Raijin will generally not attack any female party member, thanks to a customized AI routine. This does a lot to reinforce aspects of his personality.

Another thing that I have seen done to great effect in various RPGs is giving characters specific characteristics or vulnerabilities that go outside the regular range of effects seen in the game system. For example, the is character in Wild ARMs 3 named Todd who has an Afro hair style. Todd also has the unique vulnerability that his afro can be lit on fire with any fire element spell, which causes him to lose hit points every round of combat. When I first discovered that quirk, I found it to be hilarious, and I still remember him for it.

A good example for traits like this in a non-RPG game is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In various boss fights, the player can draw out various personality quirks and vulnerabilities from most of the bosses. It is possible to impress Ocelot if you perform fancy tricks with the Single Action Army revolver. It is possible to distract and annoy Volgin in any number of ways, such as by throwing certain mushrooms at him. And most famously, it is possible to beat The End by letting him die of old age. All of these characteristics do a lot towards making these characters feel fleshed out and real, as opposed to just challenges dropped in the player's path.

I think that adding in small details like this to flesh out characters in a videogame is an excellent means of making a game more enjoyable and memorable.

Megaman Starforce: Geo and Omega-Xis

My brother and I have been putting a lot of time into Megaman Starforce 2 (both versions) for the Nintendo DS over the last week. I have been a big fan of the Starforce series and the original Megaman Battle Network series for years now. However the two main characters of Megaman Starforce, Geo Stellar and Omega-Xis, have become my favorite characters out of the entire combined series. As a pair of characters, they regularly produce fun scenes and hilarious dialogue. Without their interactions, the two Megaman Starforce games would not be anywhere near as fun.

In the original Megaman Battle Network series, the equivalent characters to Geo and Omega-Xis were Lan Hikari and Megaman.exe (otherwise known as Hub, Lan's twin brother). Like most Net-Navis in the Battle Network series, Megaman.exe was in many ways an exaggerated or slightly distorted mirror-image of his operator. In general, Lan was the slightly more aggressive and confident of the two characters, while Megaman.exe tried to act as Lan's conscience. However, the two were both pretty straight-forward heroic characters, and thus were generally in sync with each other. Unfortunately, this meant that the character interactions between the two were often somewhat bland. While there were some truly touching scenes built around the fact that they were two brothers (found mainly during endgame sequences), many of their regular interactions often boiled down to Megaman.exe nagging Lan to do his homework.

In comparison, the conversations Geo Stellar and Omega-Xis have even during routine gameplay range from mildly entertaining to downright hilarious, thanks to the strongly contrasting personalities of the two characters. On one hand, Geo Stellar fits perfectly into the reluctant hero archetype: he is a rather timid boy who lacks drive and confidence who is dragged into dangerous situations against his will. However, Geo possesses strong morals and dreams about becoming someone like his father. In comparison, the alien warrior Omega-Xis is an incredibly aggressive character. Omega-Xis thrives on combat and excitement, is always eager for a fight, and has no qualms about doing things like poking around people's secret data files. It is difficult to imagine two characters more different than these two.

These contrasting personalities fuel a huge range of funny and entertaining interactions and conversations. One of the most distinct is the hilarious scenes where Omega-Xis (who dwells in the computer Geo wears on his left arm) literally dragging Geo around by the arm because Omega-Xis got bored and wanted to go somewhere more exciting. We see Geo protesting when Omega-Xis wants to invade someone's computer to take a peek at people's diaries, before Omega-Xis ignores him and does so anyways. And we see Omega-Xis constantly teasing Geo about the various girls who have crushes on him. Because both characters have such contradicting perspectives on everything, it is easy to write a wide variety of interesting material for them.

Perhaps the most useful outcome of Geo and Omega-Xis's personalities is that it gives a very good justification for why a reluctant hero like Geo would actually become a game's main character. In Megaman Starforce 1, Omega-Xis makes it clear to Geo from the get-go that he knows something about what happened to Geo's father, who mysteriously disappeared some time prior. So, Geo has a very good reason to put up with Omega-Xis. From that point, Omega-Xis simply drags Geo from one dangerous situation into another until Geo has slowly become accustomed to being a hero. So there was no point in the game where I asked myself "So why is this guy the main hero?".

In the end, I think the direction the developers took with the personalities of Geo and Omega-Xis was the right one. It has produced really entertaining results so far. While the risk that the writing for the game will get stuck in a rut still exists, I hope that these two characters will be able to avoid that fate.

Final Fantasy IV DS: Party Based on Plot

Final Fantasy IV used a very unique approach when it came to creating a party of characters for the player to control: party members moved in and out of the party based solely on the demands of the story, rather than through direct player control. While this approach takes some control over the game away from the player, I think it can allow for a game with a much more personal story than is seen in many RPGs.

There are two approaches to RPG party construction that tend to be much more common than FF IV's approach. In the first, as seen in games like Dragon Quest VIII or Wild ARMS 3, the party consists of a handful of characters who join early and are never swapped out. In the second major method, as seen in every Final Fantasy from VI on, the player has a large pool of characters, of which only a fraction can be in the party at a time, but can be freely swapped in and out. The second approach in particular is almost a standard feature of RPGs. However, these approaches force the game developers to write the plot of a game in a particular way, limiting the kind of plots that are possible.

The second approach's main problem can be very visible: the game developers can rarely customize the game's story and events for specific party compositions. No matter which characters are involved in an event, the event will have to resolve the same way. Let's look at Chrono Trigger as an example. Chrono Trigger gave each character in the team custom dialogue for every scene. However, the characters in the game were only playing out generic roles in each scene. For example, after the Ocean Palace, one of the characters in the party takes over a leadership position and asks the local elder some questions. No matter which party member is placed in that role, the same general information is communicated to the player, particularly since the NPC dialogue is inflexible. So even in Chrono Trigger, one of the best games at handling a swappable party in history, can at best offer only minor variations in dialogue and minor additions to scenes based on party composition. In games with larger casts, such as Final Fantasy VI, developers often have to resort to using generic dialogue. In many cases, developers do not even give dialogue to characters who can be swapped out. The result of this overall approach is that it mandates that the story has to be more about the team as a whole than the individual party members.

The set-up where there is a single unchanging party can avoid the problem of generic dialogue and uncustomized scenes, but does require certain plot considerations. Most notably, the entire party typically has to be introduced within the first several areas of the game. Furthermore, once the party is together, it can no longer be separated for any long period of time. A good example is Wild ARMs 4: the first three party members all join in the opening segment of the game, while the fourth joins soon afterwards. Once the four characters are together, the party is only broken up for a couple short scenarios before it reunifies. This actually produces similar results to the previous approach: the stories of the individual members who make up the group are subsumed into the story of the team as a whole, which can potentially limit the growth of individual characters. The game need to put the party together could also result in rather forced introductions in games (in other words: "Why are all of the characters from the same place when the world is so huge?").

The strength of the approach where party members join and leave freely based on plot is that it makes very few demands on writers. The only demand that it does make is that party members join and leave the party under plausible conditions. However, the act of a party member joining or leaving can create a lot of drama in a game. Tellah's confrontation with Edward in Damcyan castle, Leviathan's attack, Palom and Porom's sacrifice, Rydia's dramatic return in the underworld, and so on are all plot points created to justify the appearance or disappearance of a character, but they include most of Final Fantasy IV's most memorable and dramatic scenes. This also puts the focus of the game's plot on the individual stories of the characters. Tellah is a good example: he joins Cecil at first when their paths go the same way, but leaves after his daughter's death to pursue revenge on his own. When Tellah returns to the party, he joins only to get a chance at taking his revenge, which he ends up sacrificing his life for. The entire time Tellah is a part of the story, his tale of loss and revenge is an ever-present undercurrent in the game that is never completely subsumed by Cecil's journey of redemption. The plot-based approach opens up the opportunity for specific characters to introduce their own sub-plots, develop them, and then bow out of the main story when their own plots are resolved, without ever having to pace out their stories based on the flow of the game as a whole.

The biggest weakness of Final Fantasy IV's story-based approach to party membership is that it is not well suited to game mechanics that involve long-term character customization. It would be really disappointing for a player if he sinks hours into carefully building up a character only to watch that character leave after the next plot event. However, the story approach does work well with game systems like FF VII's Materia system or FF VIII's Junction system, which allow the player to customize characters by equipping them with abilities kept in a party-wide pool. I am actually rather surprised that I have never seen a game that combined such a system with plot-based party membership.

I would like to see more games that used Final Fantasy IV's way of doing things. It is a system that has never seen as much use over the years as it deserves.

Kingdom Hearts II: Organization XIII

Organization XIII was a really interesting concept for a villain group, but I don't think their role in Kingdom Hearts II worked out very well. Even though Kingdom Hearts II is a fairly long and involved game with numerous stages and boss battles, the main villains of the game hardly got any screen-time or character development. As a result, it was hard to remain interested in them as characters. In order to have been good villains, the various members of Organization XIII should have appeared before Sora much more regularly than they did in the game.

The weakness of Organization XIII in Kingdom Hearts II is particularly glaring because Organization XIII put in a very strong appearance in the GBA game Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. First off, the four members of Organization XIII from Sora's story in Chain of Memories appeared regularly in the games plot from the get-go. At the end of every floor of Castle Oblivion, the members of Organization XIII either appear before Sora to talk to him or talk about their plans with each other in a cutscene away from the main characters. They also regularly appear as opponents: each of the four Organization XIII members fight the player twice over the course of the game. As a result of all of this, those four members of Organization XIII leave a strong impression.

Sadly, the seven (or eight if you count Roxas) members of Organization XIII who feature prominently in Kingdom Hearts II don't have nearly as much stage presence as the original four (which is rather ironic, since Axel appears in both games). A great deal of this comes from how seldom many of the Organization XIII members appear individually. Other than Axel's two-part appearance in the Roxas prologue, the player first encounters Organization XIII when all six of the remaining members appear as a group to taunt Sora. After that, only Axel and Saïx reappear on a regular basis. Here is a basic summary of the appearances of all of the members of Organization XIII:

Demyx:
1) Puts in a short appearance in Olympus Coliseum (1st) (not even as a big part of the world's plot) where he mostly runs away and acts cowardly. At least he forces the player to fight a short minigame-type battle. Unmasked.
2) Appears out of nowhere during mid-game Hollow Bastion event. Boss battle and dies, having never played a role in the game's overarching plot or done anything significant in any of the Disney sub-plots.

Xaldin:
1) Plays mindgames with the Beast in Beast's Castle (1st).
2) Helps carry on the plot of Beauty and the Beast(2nd). Unmasked, boss battle and dies (in really short succession), having never played a role in the game's overarching plot.

Xigbar:
1) Taunts Sora with mysterious words during the original Organization XIII appearance in Hollow Bastion. However, since he keeps his hood down and doesn't reveal his name, the whole time he just looks like a generic member of the Organization, so it hardly counts.
2) Shows up in the Land of Dragons (2nd), where he has one line of dialogue and no major story role. Unmasked.
3) Appears out of nowhere in the final dungeon. Boss-battle, dies, having never played a role in the game's overarching plot or done anything significant in any of the Disney sub-plots.

Luxord:
1) Shows up to brilliantly outwit the party in Port Royal (2nd) and set up some challanges. Unmasked.
2) Appears through a Megaman-style fortress boss door in final dungeon. Boss-battle, dies, having never played a role in the game's overarching plot.

Axel (this is where things improve somewhat):
1) Appears before Roxas in the prologue during the Struggle match. Mini-boss battle.
2) Shows up to have a major battle with Roxas at the end of the prologue.
3) Appears in several scenes alongside Saïx in and around the mid-game Hollow Bastion event as a means of bringing Kairi into the plot.
4) Comes out of nowhere to fight alongside the heroes against the horde of Nobodies en route to final dungeon. Sacrifices himself heroically. Dies.

Saïx:
1) Shows up alongside Axel in various scenes around the mid-game Hollow Bastion event as a means of bringing Kairi into the plot. He performs most of the major exposition of Organization XIII's plans here. Unmasked.
2) Reappears in numerous cut-scenes in the final dungeon, helping move along the Riku and Kairi plot and doing basic exposition.
3) Appears through a Megaman-style fortress boss door in final dungeon. Boss-battle, dies.

Xemnas (the leader):
1) Appears briefly in the mid-game Hollow Bastion event, and in a few associated flash-backs. Unmasked.
2) Reappears in final dungeon after all of the other Organization XIII members have been killed. Talks melodramatically with the party a little. Chain of final boss battles, dies.

In summation, only Axel and Saïx have any major recurring appearances across the game, and even those are limited to a few discrete sections of the game (near the mid-game Hollow Bastion event and the final dungeon). Saïx is also the only member of Organization XIII to regularly interact with other members of the Organization. He is also used to do all of the plot exposition. The rest of the members often feel like they are really only filling out a necessary quota.

The biggest problem with how the Organization XIII members are used is that they never interact with each other in any meaningful way. In Chain of Memories, the four members of Organization XIII interacted with each other constantly, engaging in a complex web of alliances and betrayal. Those interactions established their identities and built an exciting basis for the game's plot. The Organization XIII in Kingdom Hearts II would have been much more interesting if it was full of sub-factions and individual members pursuing their own agendas. Without complex interactions and individual motivations, most of the members of Organization XIII end up acting like a random collection of generic villains with themed super-powers.

The other big problem of Organization XIII, their lack of on-screen appearances, could have been remedied in a number of ways. One of the biggest would have been to make the Organization as a whole more prominent in the Disney Worlds. While Xaldin has a big role in Beast's Castle, and a few of the others make minor appearances in others, the developers could have gone a lot further in integrating the Nobodies into the Disney stories. For example, Demyx or Luxord could have easily replaced Ursula in Atlantica's plot, which would have made a lot of sense, considering that Ursula was defeated in the last game and returns inexplicably in Kingdom Hearts II. They could have also put in a more prominent appearance in Agrabah, where the game does mention that a Nobody interfered but never shows it happening.

In addition, having the player fight various members of Organization XIII multiple times would have improved things a lot. For example, introductory boss battles against Saïx or another Nobody in Twilight Town or at the end of the big mid-game event would have been appropriate. Having a second boss battle against a villain elevates that opponent from one-shot boss to recurring character in a players mind. For example, Black Waltz no. 3 from Final Fantasy 9 is a very memorable opponent because of its persistence, even though it doesn't have any kind of major story role. In any case, more Organization XIII fights wouldn't have hurt, since they were generally the most exciting battles in the whole game. Maybe have a few of the members transform into those giant Nobodies like Marluxia did at the end of Chain of Memories?

If you create a large group of villains instead of one or two, you need to do something different in order to make them work. You have to do more than just rely on the threat of the whole group, but instead sell all of the individual members as credible characters in their own right. Giving them all consistent appearances and strong individual motivations goes a long way in achieving that. If the developers of Kingdom Hearts II had stuck closer to what worked so well in Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II would have had a much stronger cast of antagonists.

Persona 3 FES: The Growth of SEES

In a lot of my writing over the last month I have been pretty critical of Persona 3's storytelling, so I have decided I am just going to write a lot about how the game managed to redeem those failings and turn the whole thing around into a pretty good story.

The single factor that covers up most of the weaknesses in the game's story and makes the story truly enjoyable is the strong central cast of characters: the members of SEES. These characters, the main characters who fight alongside the main hero and struggle through many victories and tragedies alongside him, are likable, interesting, believable, and complicated characters who grow and change greatly across the course of the game. In many ways, I consider the core cast of Persona 3 to be one of the best groups of characters I have ever seen in a videogame.

Two of the SEES characters, Yukari and Junpei, and particularly important to the game experience. These two characters are introduced at the start of the game, and they are the very first characters to join the hero in battle (in fact, you need to climb the entire first block of Tartarus with only their help). They are also the hero's classmates and dorm-mates who sit right next to him in class and struggle right alongside him through all of the troubles of his double life. Just like the hero, they start the game as ordinary students who have just joined SEES and have no real experience with the Shadows or the Dark Hour, and in the end they stand by the hero in the final battles, risking their lives alongside his. In many ways, they are the most believable characters in the game, and the events that help them change and grow are the most memorable and endearing scenes in the entire story. Because of all of these factors, these two characters mitigate the impact of one of the game's greatest flaws.

As I wrote at length about before, I don't consider the main hero of Persona 3 to be a very good character, but in many ways the strong presences of Yukari and Junpei throughout the game helps make up for that weakness. Yukari and Junpei are alongside the hero through the entire game, but unlike the static and silent hero, they speak up and have their own stories, and as a result they often supplant what should be the hero's role in the game. When a hero needs to say something but the silent protagonist remains silent, often it is Yukari or Junpei who will step forward and respond in his place. One place in which this is done very well is in the case of Ryoji. The bond between the hero and Ryoji is what is essential to the game's story, but all of the interactions between the hero and Ryoji are brought about because Junpei befriends Ryoji immediately. Junpei's automatic friendship with Ryoji is not all that important in of itself, but it works to make up for the limitations of the hero's silence. In another example, a minor plot element important to the game, the initial fear and hesitation the members of SEES feel regarding their Evokers, is explored entirely through Yukari, and it is left vague whether the hero struggles with that at all. Beyond all of that, Yukari's grief over her father's death and struggle to understand why he died works well to fill in for the game's lack of development regarding the hero's dead parents, and Junpei's involved and touching romance with Chidori helps add a lot to a game where the hero's own romance subplots are detached and often flawed. The strong similarity between the hero and those two characters, and the strength of their stories, works well to make a strong story out of a game with a weak main hero.

However, Yukari and Junpei are not the only interesting characters in the game; just about everyone in SEES is a great character. Akihiko and Shinjiro's old friendship, marked with tragedy and disagreement, and way Shinjiro's death moves Akihiko to become a much greater person, works incredibly well. While it develops a bit too rapidly all at once near the end of the game, the story of how Aigis, a robot built only to destroy Shadows, tries to find a place for herself in the world as a living being is surprisingly moving, particularly due to the Aeon Social Link, and is probably one of the best versions of that kind of story that I have seen in quite a while. I can say similar things about almost every member of SEES, really. Even minor subplots, like Junpei's struggle to overcome his jealousy of the hero and disappointment with his own limitations or the way Ken is embarrassed about and tries to hide the simple fact that he really is still just an elementary school kid who misses his mother and likes superhero stories, make the game characters feel genuine and help the player empathize with them.

As a whole, the members of SEES go through a classic "heroic journey", where they start as normal people and after many trials end up changing their world for the better. At the same time, they go from being a group of people who hardly know each other and often don't get along into a group of people who have formed an unbreakable friendship and are willing to face certain death in order to hold on to that bond. The grow up from just being a group of people trying to serve their own interests and become a band of people who are willing to abandon an easy road to happiness in order to build a better future. It is a very common kind of story, but this game proves the general rule that as long as you put a lot of effort into making a story good, it doesn't matter how common it is. Also, in this game where the main hero is left undefined, having the entire central group of characters undergo the heroic journey helps a lot in implying that the hero himself has changed and undergone such a journey, even though the game system does not support such a journey very well in of itself.

Persona 3 FES: Conversation and the Hero's Identity

A few days ago, I finally managed to complete the main section of Persona 3 FES, "The Journey". I have been playing this game quite a long time, and the final part of the game was fantastic, so I am quite happy. Now that the game is complete, though, I may as well write a bit about a topic I have been meaning to address since I first started the blog: the story role of Persona 3's main hero.

It is quite clear that Persona 3's game designers wanted to let the player control the identity and personality of the main hero as much as possible. Other than the few voiced lines the hero speaks when summoning Personas in battle, he is a classic "silent protagonist", and every line he speaks in the story (when he even speaks at all) is presented as a conversation choice for the player. The player can choose to have the hero be kind, rude, quiet, or anything else. In theory, this should let the player give the hero whatever personality he wants, but in practice this does not work out very well at all. Important factors in this are the vagueness and completeness problems that are almost pathologically inherent to the conversation choice system. Half the time, it is just hard to figure out how characters will react to a particular choice, and the other half of the time the given choices never really seem to cover how you really want the hero to respond. Beyond this, though, there are two problems that are particularly glaring in Persona 3: advantageous conversation choices and a lack of any permanence for the player's choices.

In Social Links in particular, it is simply to the player's advantage to just say whatever the person he is talking to wants him to say. In almost every conversation choice presented to the player during a Social Link event, there is a single "correct" choice, and selecting that choice will (quite visibly) help build up the affinity between the hero and the Social Link character, making it easier to build up the Social Link to the next level. Since there it is to the player's advantage to build up these levels as quickly as possible, it means that in all of the conversation choices presented in Social Links (the lion's share of all conversation choices), the player is strongly encouraged to say what is advantageous for him to say (usually what the Social Link character wants to hear), rather than what the player wants to say or thinks should be said. This sabotages any possibility of characterizing the main hero in a coherent manner, since the hero is encouraged to act like a carefree goof-off when talking to carefree goof-offs and act like a driven workaholic when talking to driven workaholics. At times, it can feel like the game is encouraging the player to make the hero act like an insincere brown-noser, which is hardly the kind of character I want to play in a game like this.

The other major problem is that, other than Social Link level and affinity between characters, the game doesn't seem to actually make a record of what choices the hero has made. Almost any dialog choice made by the player will only affect a few sentences' worth of game dialog, before the conversation possibilities converge again. Whether you do something to make someone happy or do something to make that person angry, five lines later the dialog will continue the same way regardless. In the longer term, even if you do nothing but be rude, spiteful, and insulting, the characters in the game will never start acting accordingly, and will just act like the hero is a generic nice guy. The game simply does not give the player any feedback for giving the hero a consistent personality, and as such there is really no reward for doing so. No matter what the player does, the hero will be just as generic and undefined at the end of the game as he was in the beginning as far as the story and characters are concerned.

With all of that criticism said, I should be a bit fair by saying that the impermanent, undefined, and necessarily inconsistent personality of the main hero does actually fit with some of his limited characterization and the mechanics of the Persona system. Unlike the other characters, who have a consistent personality and a single Persona, the hero has an ever-changing identity to match his ever-changing array of Personas. Personas are supposed to be a reflection of a person's identity, and the hero has over a hundred and seventy of them, more than a hundred contradicting reflections of his "true self". The game even supports this idea by giving you a bonus to Social Link growth if you have a Persona of the same Arcana as the Social Link you are trying to build up, and thus have an "identity" that is compatible with the Social Link character. I actually have to applaud the way the game designers managed to make story and game mechanics compliment each other in such a way, but I think that the failings of the current system are too great to be outweighed by such a small benefit.

The main hero may be portrayed as having nearly infinite flexibility in characterization, but that just means he ultimately is never developed as a character at all. At no point can the player really do anything to turn the main hero into someone they can identify with or empathize with. For example, you can have him say to other characters that he has a reason to fight, but you are never allowed to establish a particular reason for him to fight as a fact within the game. I can make the decision that the hero is fighting to end the Dark Hour for Yukari's sake in my own head, but I can not have the hero act on that decision in any way, even though the question of "what are you fighting for?" is central to the themes of the game. It may simply be a limitation of the conversation choice mechanic itself, but ultimately, the player only gets to decide what the hero says, but not what the hero is thinking or what the hero believes, so any characterization made by the player is shallow and short-lived.

Finally, I should at least briefly mention that the one system the game actually does provide for characterizing the hero, his Academics, Courage, and Charm attributes, is fatally flawed in its own right, for similar reasons to those I described above. To illustrate this, in my last playthrough I played a hero who started with maxed out Academics, so the hero aced every test at the top of his class without ever needing to study once, but still needed to go to Summer School because Mitsuru was worried about his grades falling behind because of too much time spent as part of SEES. There are so many inconsistencies and flaws with that I can't even begin to get into it all, but the main problem is that what the hero does, what the hero is capable of, and what the other characters think of the hero are all disconnected from each other.

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Laguz Lords

Radiant Dawn's four Laguz Lords, Caineghis the Lion King, Tibarn the Hawk King, Naesala the Raven King, and Nailah the Wolf Queen, are extremely powerful characters who deserve special mention. They are Laguz, but because they are so overwhelmingly powerful and do not operate under the same limitations that normal Laguz must suffer through, it is almost unfair to try to compare them directly. Even powerful third tier Beorc characters, who normally are so much more reliable than Laguz, pale in comparison to the mighty Laguz Lords.

The Laguz Lords have many advantages over normal Laguz. They all start at high level, have incredibly good starting stats, and even their stat caps tend to be higher than those of normal Laguz. For example, Caineghis starts at level 36 (four levels short of max level for Laguz), and his stats start out about as high as Skirmir can hope to attain, and a few of his stats (like Speed), start at what would be Skrimir's cap and can go higher still. What is more, most Laguz Lords start with SS-rank innate weapons (which are very difficult to attain for most Laguz), and their weapons are slightly more powerful than normal Laguz's innate weapons (Tibarn's SS Great Talon has 2 more Might and 10 more Hit than any other Hawk's SS Talon). Further, most Laguz Lords have a greater number of innate skills than normal, and far greater skill capacity. Finally, their greatest and most defining advantage is that they have the Formshift skill, which lets them transform at any time and stay transformed indefinitely without any regard for the transformation gauge that restricts every other Laguz. With all things considered, the raw power of the Laguz Lords completely surpass every other Laguz and all but the very strongest Beorc, making them unquestionably the strongest characters in the game.

The existence of these four extremely powerful characters severely distorts the choice of "who will I bring into the final chapter". Any character who specializes in melee physical attacks will ultimately be compared to the Laguz Lords, especially any Laguz. After all, the Laguz Lords can easily tear apart just about anything in the game other than the two strongest final enemies (one of whom is himself the lord of the strongest Laguz type, Dragon King Dheginsea, and the other of which is the final boss), and those two bossess are so powerful that the overwhelming power of the Laguz Lords is practically a necessity. There is almost no way to justify bringing any Laguz other than the Laguz Lords unless you either really like Laguz characters and just want to bring more than the Lords and the required Heron and Dragons, or you are deliberately holding back on bringing some of the Lords because you want to make the final battles a bit more difficult. Truthfully, it is hard enough trying to justify using a normal Laguz even without the all-powerful Laguz lords showing up in the very end.

I will say, though, that I appreciate the presence of the Laguz Lords in the earlier missions of Part 4 of the game. In the Fire Emblem games, it is often extremely useful to have a character who is reliably powerful enough to defeat any foe or hold any position. and having a Laguz Lord along with each of the three groups helped balance them out and let them survive some of the tough battles.

I also think that it was fairly appropriate that such power was given to the laguz royalty, characters who were given an incredibly important story role. Looking at some other data, there is some similar power given to some other characters important to the plot, such as Ike, Micaiah, Elincia, and Sanaki, who all have somewhat higher stat caps than comparable normal characters, though unlike the Laguz Lords their power is not as obvious and guaranteed (and they don't have either the boosted skill capacity or stats that can go above 40). In this regard, the Laguz Lords work very well as characters who are particularly powerful due to their role in the plot (which is usually associated with being royalty). That said, the immense power of Formshift throws things a bit out of balance. In many respects, the limitation of the transformation gauge is what keeps Laguz (whose stats can surpass 40) from surpassing Beorc (whose stats have an absolute limit of 40). As I described in my last post, the transformation gauge overcompensates a bit too much and ends up overly limiting many Laguz compared to Beorc, but because the Lords do not use the transformation gauge at all, they don't have any effect that reins in their power and end up being too powerful. As a result, while powerful Beorc royalty do not completely make normal Beorc characters obsolete despite their greater potential, Laguz Lords do make normal Laguz obsolete.

At this point, I wonder if it would have been better if the Laguz Lords simply had a more favorable version of their own tribe's transformation rates. For example, perhaps Caineghis could have had the high gauge growth rate of a Tiger or Cat, but kept the low decline rates of a Lion or maybe even a Dragon. That way, he would be a lot more flexible than the other Lions, but not absolutely better than them. Even just giving the Lords the ability to start each battle with a full gauge, rather than an empty one, might have been enough. There must be a way to make particularly powerful Laguz without removing the one trait that most defines Laguz as a whole.

Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Laguz

Looking back at it, it has been quite a long time since I talked about the mechanical implementation of the Laguz in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. When I made my original comments about them, I had barely even used a lot of the Laguz characters, and I had not yet seen how they compare to Beorc characters in the final stages of the game. It seems I never went back and corrected some of my observations. I guess I was too wrapped up writing about the plot at the time. I guess now is as good of a time as ever to write at length on the subject.

Most notably, I need to revise the statement I made that the main system of stats for the Laguz, the fact that their stats double when they transform, is a system that works reasonably well. I really don't think that it is the case anymore. It is certainly an interesting way to make even minor changes in stats very important to a Laguz character, but it ultimately results in a Laguz character simply being far too weak in its human form. Because of the huge difference in defense and speed, any enemy who would be a reasonable threat to a transformed Laguz can easily kill an untransformed Laguz, because they are guaranteed to use a high-damage double attack, often against a target who can't fight back. Finally, combined with the different level systems for Beorc and Laguz, the stat doubling just makes it harder to compare the fighting ability of characters of different races.

A major problem for Laguz characters that I didn't mention last time around is the fact that they just don't seem to be able to level up well compared to Beorc. It is just hard to get a Laguz to gain levels and stay at an even level with Beorc characters. Even if a Laguz does gain enough experience (such as with a large amount of bonus experience), they seem to slowly lose effectiveness compared to their Beorc allies.

The reasons for the Laguz's inability to gain experience are a bit complex. Certainly a major part of it involves the fact that laguz just seem to earn less experience while they are transformed. Because Laguz levels mean something different than Beorc levels, a Laguz should require about 1.5 times the amount of experience as a Beorc to go up an equivalent level, but Laguz seem to just earn less than that in battle. A far more certain factor about this issue is that Laguz just can't fight as often as a Beorc character. and thus has a bit more trouble building up experience. Laguz have periods in which they can't fight, but you must fight in order to earn experience, so Laguz just can't earn as much experience as a Beorc given the same period of time. What is more, some of the best ways to build experience, such as holding a choke-point and fighting off a wave of many enemies, are impractical for a Laguz because their transformation gauge empties with each fight. Because of this, most Laguz need to focus on killing at least one enemy every round they can, but most of the time this is impossible. On top of all of this, many Laguz can't be deployed in battle as often as Beorc characters, so they have even less of a chance to earn experience.

The other issue for Laguz characters, the fact that even if they do gain levels they don't seem to compare well, has its own set of reasons. Even though Laguz gain levels more slowly, their stat growth rates tend to be poor, so they often don't level very well. Each Laguz level up benefit is worth twice as much as a Beorc level up benefit, but they get so much fewer that it cancels out that advantage. But because their stat growths for important stats are so low, levels gained from Bonus Experience tend to be absolutely terrible for Laguz characters, often featuring only a boost to HP (less than what they get from normal level-up), Luck (the one stat that doesn't double), and a single major stat. What is more, Laguz characters don't Class Change, and thus don't benefit from the same Class Change stat boosts that Beorc characters do. Finally, even if a Laguz character manages to reach its stat caps (which is harder for them than Beorc), that only puts them on an even level with a Beorc character who has reached its stat caps. Ultimately, a top-level Laguz who can't fight all day and can't use special weapons has the same stats as a Beorc who can, and events in the late game even negate the advantage of their unbreakable claws.


Now that all of that is out of the way, I will take a moment to comment on the individual Laguz tribes.

Wolves: Their transformation gauge fills by 6 for every turn spent untransformed, and it empties by 4 for each turn spent transformed. Fighting while transformed lowers empties the gauge by 3. As such, a wolf will empty the gauge faster than it can fill it, even if it only fights once per transformed turn, and thus it must spend more time untransformed tan transformed, unless it uses Olivi Grass or a Laguz stone to fill the gauge more quickly. Because the gauge fills so slowly for them, they will only be able to transform on the sixth turn of battle, so one of those items is necessary to get them into battle in the first half of a fight, but even Olivi grass only helps that by two turns (it is three points short of getting a third turn, which means three wasted points). It is just hard to effectively use a Wolf in battle.

Cats: Their transformation gauge fills by 10 for every turn spent transformed, and it empties by 5 for every turn spent transformed. Battle is beast form emptied the gauge by 4. A cat's transformation gauge fills very quickly (they are the only Laguz who can afford to wait and let their gauge fill naturally), but it also empties quickly. Fortunately, a cat's transformation gauge fills faster than it empties (slightly, assuming only one battle per turn), so they have no trouble recovering from battle. This makes it seem like Cats should be very useful, but I have always had problems with them. I think the reason for this is the fact that, because their gauge fills and empties so quickly, it is a poor choice to use items on them. An Olivi Grass only speeds initial transformation up by one turn and wastes 5 points. A Laguz Stone would be a waste on them because their gauge would empties so quickly. Cats are not bad, but they are just hard to use to their full potential.

Tigers: Their gauge fills by 8 for every turn spent transformed, and it empties by 4 for every turn in beast form. Battle in beast form empties the gauge by 3. Like Cats, they gain more than they lose, but unlike Cats they don't lose so much per turn that using item is ineffective. Using an Olivi Grass reduces initial transformation time by two turns, at a loss of just 1 or 2 wasted points (depending on how you count). With Olivi Grass, a Tiger can transform just as quickly as a Cat that is using Olivi Grass, and fight quite a bit longer. They are the first kind of Laguz who can actually afford to hold a position and take a number of attacks (though not indirect ones). For them, the math actually works.

Ravens: Ravens use the same numbers as Wolves, with the same poor result. They are simply lackluster.

Hawks: They use the same numbers as the Tigers, and work equally well. One thing that is particularly noteworthy about the Hawks and distinguishes them from other Laguz is their special abilities. The Hawk named Janaff has the skill Vigilance, and the Hawk named Ulki has the skill Insight. Unlike most other skills, these abilities are character-specific and can not be removed. Both skills give a significant boost to combat ability, and Janaff's Vigilance gives him a far greater vision range in Fog of War maps. Because of their reasonable transformation time and powerful skills (not to mention flight and Canto abilities), the two Hawks are some of the few Laguz who are on par with or better than most good Beorc.

Herons: Now we get into something a bit different, but first... Their gauge fills by 3 for every turn spent untransformed (4 for Reyson), and their gauge empties by 5 for every turn spent transformed. They should never get into battle, so battle numbers don't matter much. Obviously, their gauge drains faster than it fills (even without battle), so they spend more time in their human form than in their bird form, but it hardly matters. For Herons, being transformed means they do the same thing they do when not transformed, except they happen to be slightly better at it, so unlike other Laguz they don't need to be transformed in order to be useful. Also, Herons are the ultimate support characters, both able to use Galdr to actively support and Blessing to passively support. Heron Galdr are so useful that a turn spent increasing their transformation gauge with items is a poor choice simply because they could instead be using Galdr. Herons are the one kind of Laguz that are unquestionably useful throughout the game, and might serve as a model on how Laguz should be designed in the future.

Lions: Their transformation gauge fills by 5 each turn spent in human form, and empties by 3 for every turn spent in beast form. Battle empties the gauge by 2. They build up slowly and can stay transformed for very long periods of time, and naturally fill and empty the gauge at the same rate (assuming one battle per turn). Using Olivi Grass reduces initial transformation time by three turns, with no wasted points, and transformation takes so long (and lasts so long) it makes using a Laguz Stone a very good choice. Much like with Tigers and Hawks, the ability to get a lot of benefit from items in order to fight a long time makes Lions a lot more effective than Laguz who rely on natural restoration of the transformation gauge (though it helps that Lions only join late in the game when you can actually afford the kind of items they rely upon).

Dragons: Their transformation gauge fills by 5 for each turn spent in human form (4 for White Dragons), and empties by 2 for each turn spent in dragon form. Battle empties the gauge by only 1 point. They have even better transformation gauge fill/empty rates than Lions (who were pretty good already), and thus gain even more benefit from items like Laguz Stones and Olivi Grass. In addition, they are the one kind of Laguz who can fight using indirect attacks, and White Dragons are the only kind of Laguz who can inflict magical damage. Because of all of this, they are far more useful than most Laguz and can actually match the long-term endurance of the Beorc and Laguz Royalty. Above and beyond their combat strength, though, they have an even greater role: support. Dragons have the powerful passive support skills Night Tide, Blood Tide, White Pool, and Boon that can heal and strengthen their allies, making them incredibly valuable even if they are not transformed, much like a Heron. It is a shame that Dragons only join absurdly late in the game.

As a whole, the entire system of transformation is incredibly dependent on items, so the Laguz that have good synergy with Olivi Grass and Laguz Stones are far more useful than the Laguz who don't. If there was some other way to build the transformation gauge other than natural restoration that also depended on the natural growth rate, it would probably have balanced the system out a bit more (and made Cats very useful). As it stands, though, relying on natural growth is just too slow for any Laguz.


One thing that I can't help but notice is that some of my favorite Laguz, the Herons and Dragons, both use powerful support skills to help allies even when not transformed. They don't have the kinds of unique weapons that boost their own power in special ways like the Beorc, but they have skills that boost the power of allies and add to their value. Unlike the many kinds of Bird and Beast Laguz, Dragons and Herons have advantages that go beyond the mere stat comparisons that tend to favor the more reliable Beorc characters, so it is easier to justify using them in battle. In my opinion, this is an advantage that could become a true niche for all Laguz characters in future games. Many Laguz already have slight nods towards this kind of role (skills like Howl, Glare, and Shriek weaken foes under special conditions, and many Satori Sign skills have similar weakening effects alongside their heavy damage), and there are a number of skills that could be easily altered to add to this (for example, turning an effect like Daunt into a Laguz innate skill). If nothing else, powerful character-defining skills like Vigilance and Insight can become more common. A move towards a combined combat/support role would put Laguz on a more even level with Beorc, help differentiate them from Beorc, and add to the tactical complexity of the game.


That covers most of what I have to say about the Laguz. Well, I still need to write about the Laguz Lords, but they deserve their own topic anyways. I may also write a bit more about the Herons as well. I really hope that the people behind the Fire Emblem games continue to use the Laguz in future games, and continue to improve upon the concept.

Apollo Justice: Characters

I was surprised at how few characters from the Phoenix Wright trilogy made appearances in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. Many of the most important characters from the first three games in the series don't appear at all in the new game, and a couple only make minor cameo appearances. In fact, only two major characters from the first series are still important in Apollo Justice: Phoenix Wright himself and the Judge. Noticeably missing are Miles Edgeworth, Franziska von Karma, Pearl Fey, and most notably Maya Fey. Instead of bringing back these old characters, it seems that the designers of the series chose to start over from scratch.

Honestly, I can't really say that they made a mistake in focusing on a brand new list of characters. By the end of Apollo Justice, I really liked most of the new main cast. Apollo, Trucy, and Klavier Gavin are all interesting and entertaining. Making the transition from Phoenix Wright to Apollo Justice as main character, and selling that transition to the fans, was the developers' hardest task in the game. If the developers had relied heavily on familiar faces from the first three games, it would have felt too much like Phoenix Wright was still the main character. That would have undercut Apollo's chances of being accepted. Instead, the developers created new characters to fill out familiar roles in the story.

Most of the new main characters in Apollo Justice are essentially replacements for the old Phoenix Wright characters. Ema Skye is replacing Detective Gumshoe, Klavier Gavin replaces Miles Edgeworth, and Trucy Wright replaces Maya Fey. However, since many of these characters have very different working relationships and interactions with Apollo than their originals did with Phoenix Wright, it helps to make them feel very different than the originals. Ema Skye's moody personality, love of forensic science, and general openness with Apollo are very different than Gumshoe's overall pathetic but good-natured personality and sometimes oppositional attitude towards Phoenix. Klavier Gavin is certainly more laid back than any of the Phoenix Wright prosecutors.

The only character who is somewhat problematic is Trucy. Admittably, part of my problem was that I incorrectly guessed that she was actually Pearl Fey based on promotional information. After all, Trucy was the same age Pearl would be, had the same hair and eye color, and had the same bouncy personality. So I was quite surprised to find out in the third case that she was most certainly not Pearl, but instead a completely new character. I was disappointed, since it meant that there wasn't a connection to the original story that I was expecting, and it meant that Trucy was simply an Expy of previous characters (Maya and Pearl). However, my opinion on the matter has reversed since I finished the last case. The revelation of Trucy's real connection to Apollo has put a fresh spin on the character concept that I like.

At this point, my only complaint about the characters in Apollo Justice is that Apollo Justice himself sounds too much like Phoenix Wright during investigation phases. During trials, Apollo feels like a very different character because of his distinctive expressions, special power, and favorite sayings (Phoenix wouldn't be caught dead saying "Here comes Justice"). However, his narrative voice and thoughts while examining objects and evidence use the exact same brand of humor that Phoenix used in the in original series. Apollo just doesn't feel different enough. It might have been better if he was more foolishly optimistic than dry and sarcastic like Phoenix was.

Anyways, now that the first Apollo Justice game has fully established Apollo and the rest of the new cast, I expect the second game to bring back more characters from the first three games. A big part of the fun factor of a time jump is seeing what has happened to familiar faces during the intervening time period. I would be very disappointed if there was no resolution to that.

Persona 3 FES: Character Specialization

I believe I have briefly touched on this point earlier, but Persona 3 FES is a game where it is not advisable to pick a small subset of your allies and use them the whole game without ever using the rest. The main reason for this is simple: every character has unique strengths and weaknesses that can not be ignored. Partially, these strengths and weaknesses are explicit elemental attributes. Yukari is the only ally who uses Wind magic, Wind magic can hardly hurt her, and she will be badly hurt and knocked down by Lightning magic. Akihiko is the only Lightning magic-user, he won't be hurt much by Lightning, and he is vulnerable to Ice magic. Against any enemy who uses Lightning magic or is immune to wind magic, Yukari is a poor choice compared to Akihiko. If there are a lot of enemies around who are vulnerable to Wind magic, then Yukari almost becomes a necessary choice. All of the characters in Persona 3 are specialists. No single character can do everything and fight every battle, and I like that about the game.

There are four important factors at work that I like regarding the characters in Persona 3.

1) Every character specializes in some way. This is the most basic and central factor of this. Each character specializes, with both strengths and weaknesses. No single character can do everything, and every character can do something. Any videogame that allows multiple characters must have some element of this, or the choice between different characters becomes shallow and meaningless.

2) Every character's specialization is unique. This is one of the most important ones. No two characters are identical in role and ability. Any point of similarity between two characters is balanced out by a way in which they are different. Every character has a unique way to fight and contribute to the team. The lets characters have a memorable identity reflected in the game mechanics, so characters are individuals rather than faces and names added onto generic shells or copies of a limited set of archetypes.

3) There are many ways to build a team that can do anything. While this doesn't apply to attack elements, every character does have a focus that overlaps with other characters. Junpei and Aigis are very different, but they both have buffing spells and a variety of powerful physical attacks. If you need to use physical attacks, you have a choice between the two of them. Yukari is a stronger healer and Mitsuru is a stronger magical attacker, but both can heal and use magic attacks, so neither is strictly necessary. There are meaningful choices to made regarding team members, but it is not so inflexible as to force you to use a limited set of "good teams". Instead, you only need to worry about whether individual characters are good for particular situations or not, and can mostly leave the rest of the team up to preference.

4) There is no way to build a team that covers every weakness. Unlike many RPGs, where elements are always constructed in opposing pairs that are both strong and weak against each other, characters vulnerabilities are not based on their strengths. To compare, in Chrono Cross you can always build a team so that you have one ally who is is resistant to fire and vulnerable to ice and another ally who is vulnerable to fire and resistant to ice. In such a case, weaknesses balance out, so any time one character is in trouble, there is another character who is in no danger at all who can pick up the slack. Because vulnerabilities are asymmetric in Persona 3, and because there are an odd number of allies, there is no team that can have resistances and vulnerabilities balance out as nicely as they do elsewhere. There is always an element that can be used against the team that will do extra damage against someone and normal damage against every other team member. Because of this, there is no team that can survive against every possible encounter.

RPGs that allows you to pick a team from a larger pool of characters, yet still has all of these traits, are rare indeed, even though I consider it to be one of the best ways of designing a game built around a team.

Anyways, I should mention that everything I mentioned above is not quite accurate, since I am making a deliberate omission: the main hero. If you add the main hero of the game to the mix, it changes things slightly, but that difference is a topic for another day.

A Villain's Presence

Good villains have lots of screen-time. This is a recurring trend that I have noticed in many video-games. The best villains are typically the ones who make it a habit of appearing before the player often. It is hard to like/hate distant or faceless villains. So, a good villain needs to make their presence known to the player. And in a videogame, the best way to give a villain screen-time is to let the player directly interact with the villain. In other words, giving the player a chance to confront and fight a villain multiple times across the length of a game is one of the best ways to make a villain interesting and memorable.

Dragon Quest VIII, which I just completed, does a good job of utilizing its main villain. From the outset of the game, it is made clear that hunting down the evil jester Dhoulmagus is the party's main goal. He first appears in a flash-back sequence, but quickly appears in front of the heroes himself, performing all of his evil deeds right before their eyes (and dropping hints to the player as to his real goal). About halfway through the game, the player finally gets the chance to fight Dhoulmagus directly. And yet, that is just the beginning. The heroes battle against the true villain of the game in three more major boss battles before the player even gets to the final dungeon. By the time of the second fight against the main villain, he had even started to recognize the heroes, and knew that he had to be cautious when fighting them. It created a wonderful sense that it was an ongoing battle directly between the main heroes and the villain.

Perhaps the all-time greatest console RPG villain is another evil clown: Kefka, from Final Fantasy VI. From the very first part of the game, where Kefka can be seen placing the Slave Crown on Terra's head, he has an almost constant presence in the game. He first appears to the heroes in person threatening King Edgar, lighting Figaro castle on fire, and sending a pair of Magi-Tech armor to kill the heroes, all the while filling the game with his insane personality. Whenever he appears, he does so by making his distinct evil laugh. He commits evil deeds across the entire length of the game, usually right before the heroes' eyes. He is rarely gone from the action for long, and appears in at least three boss fights in the first half of the game.

What made Kefka so interesting was not just his evil deeds and character design alone, it was the way he could be interacted with by the player. He doesn't just appear in cut-scenes to taunt the heroes, he is part of the game-play. When Kefka first appears in Figaro castle, he just stands around and can be talked to like any other NPC. During the chase scene before the poisoning of Doma Castle, he runs around the imperial camp, and the player has to actively chase him down and even fight him a couple of times. During a visit to the Imperial capital, the player can listen to him rant as he stews in a jail cell. These interactions make Kefka a vital part of the game experience, as opposed to just a character in the game's story.

For an action game villain, a great example is Virgil from Devil May Cry 3. Virgil appears as a major boss at the end of all three major sections of the game. Beyond that, he appears in half of the game's cut scenes. While his personality and design are obviously a big part of his success, his strong presence in the game is a big part of his success as a villain.

In contrast, the worst villains in videogames are usually the ones who don't even appear until the very end of a game. In Final Fantasy IV for example, the player doesn't even hear the name of the real villain, Zemus, until the second to last dungeon of the game. He only appears in front of the heroes two minutes before the final battle. Because of this, Zemus has never been a very popular villain. He never even had the chance to be seen as the game's real villain.

SRW:OG2 Damage Scaling

In my current playthrough of Super Robot Wars: Original Generation 2, one of the characters I have used the most is Arado Balanga, who pilots the mech called Wildwurger. Arado is a decent pilot with a very high defense stat, and because I have used him so much (he is one of my top four aces), I have been able to build his stats to be well above average. His mech, Wildwurger, is a high speed aerial machine that also features high defense, and because I improved the mech's capabilities to the maximum it has one of the highest defense values that is possible to achieve. Through most of the game, Arado has been almost untouchable by any opponent, since he is able to dodge almost any attack and anything that does hit him tends to do very little damage. One of his most important roles in the game is using his "Defensive Support" ability to take hits instead of allies. He is designed to be one of the best tanks in the game.

Despite all of this, I recently watched Arado get taken down in a single hit from a foe which was supposed to be little more than a glorified miniboss. What is more, the hit rate of the enemy's attack was an uncomfortably high 44%, despite the fact that Arado was standing next to allies who raise his evasion rates. As such, one of my strongest units had a 44% chance of being destroyed outright whenever he tried attacking a foe, even though I needed as many units attacking as possible to even have a chance of defeating that opponent.

I think this is a textbook case of letting offense scale unreasonably high compared to defense in a game. While I appreciate that, on the highest levels of difficulty, SRW:OG2 demands that you use Spirit Commands in order to succeed, I think scaling things so far that a top-notch defensive unit can't survive a direct hit and that my most mobile units can't evade without spirit commands goes a bit too far. Characters should be able to reliably serve in their role at every stage of the game. Characters built around evasion should be able to evade reliably. Characters built around defense and survival should be able to survive reliably. Characters built around attack should be able to attack reliably. Even though it is assumed in SRW that characters need Spirit Commands to emerge victorious, they should not need Spirit Commands to even be useful against a mere miniboss. I should be able to rely on the fact that a character who has been able to survive every single attack made against him in the whole game will survive another hit, but in this case I was mistaken in doing so.

If the amount of damage being inflicted upon Arado was just a bit lower, or if he just had a few more hitpoints, I could accept the 44% risk of being hit, but as it stands the damage values have scaled just high enough that Arado can no longer be used in the same way I have been able to use him for the whole game.

I really need to finish up those last few stages of the game... I may never beat the game if I keep at this rate.