#oneaday Day 828: It’s Time to Get Over the Graphics Thing

I read this piece on Game Informer tonight. It made me cross. If you can’t be bothered to read it yourself, the gist of the piece is that Xenoblade Chronicles, one of the best games of the generation (in my humble opinion, anyway) “deserved better than what [Nintendo] forced [it] to be.”

To be fair to the author Chris “Warcraft” Kluwe, he does commend the game’s strengths: its excellent world, its inventive, creative ideas; even going so far as to say that the game had the potential to be “this generation’s Final Fantasy VII“. But to say that the Wii “laughs at [developer MonolithSoft’s] dreams… and flushes them down the toilet of GameCube-era hardware Nintendo likes to call cutting edge” is a spectacularly blinkered viewpoint.

The fact is, it’s unlikely that Xenoblade Chronicles (and its spiritual successors The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower) would ever have been released had it not been for the Wii. The Wii’s lower demands in terms of asset production means that a sprawling, ambitious game such as Xenoblade Chronicles can be produced on a fraction of the budget of an HD title. Even then, though, MonolithSoft had to cut corners; the “gasping fish mouths bobbing up and down through beautifully crafted dialogue” that Kluwe refers to are a symptom of this.

The sad fact is that Japanese role-playing games are not the unstoppable juggernaut they once were. Where once they were a system seller, now they are a niche interest at best. The “mainstream” has shifted well and truly to the West; even Square Enix’s venerable Final Fantasy series is seen as little more than a particularly well-polished curio these days. Big-budget role-playing titles for HD consoles such as Lost Odyssey and, to a lesser extent, titles like Nier (aside: which I’m currently playing and is awesome) struggle to find a substantial audience (compared to “triple-A” titles, anyway) and, by extension, the ability to recoup the enormous spend necessary to craft a beautiful world in high definition and 5.1 surround sound. So developers and publishers simply aren’t taking the risk because it’s, well, too risky.

But the Wii gives them a platform to make these titles without having to spend as much money and time on the creation of assets. It’s not a case of Nintendo “shackling an obviously talented team like MonolithSoft to the ball and chain of the Wii because [they] want to sell waggle” (for just one of many things wrong with that statement, Xenoblade Chronicles features no waggle whatsoever). It’s a case of Nintendo giving talented teams the opportunity to do what they do best and then release them to a market of enthusiasts who are still clamouring for these titles. Yes, the Wii has a lot of waggle-based crap. But it also has an impressive library of Great Games That Absolutely Fucking No-One Has Ever Heard Of Ever Because They’re A Bit Weird Or Nichey And Have 480p Visuals.

Just because JRPGs don’t sell well compared to titles like Call of Duty and Mass Effect doesn’t mean that no-one wants to play them any more. In fact, the audience for the genre is probably actually the same size that it’s ever been; the difference is that the Call of Duty players have sprung up around them and outnumber them considerably. Given the simple choice between making something that will make fans happy and something that will make a metric fuck-ton of money, the vast majority of publishers will take the latter option. That’s simply “good business”, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all — developers gotta eat, after all. But to deride Nintendo for providing a platform eminently suited to developers who actively want to create niche titles for console — games which often provoke intense passion among their fans (as you can probably tell from this post) — is simply ridiculous.

It’s an age-old adage in the games industry that graphics do not maketh the game. Never has it been more true than in this strange period where we have two HD consoles and one SD system. Would Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower have been better games had they been released on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3? Absolutely not. (Pandora’s Tower, in fact, would have been considerably inferior due to the fact it actually makes good use of the Wii’s unique control scheme.) They would have been better-presented games, sure, but the core gameplay in all three cases is brilliant — and, to add insult to injury, the graphics for all three aren’t even what you could possibly describe as “bad” — just low-resolution. There’s a difference — sadly, one seemingly lost on many reviewers who describe their visuals as “muddy” or “poor” and, in many cases, knock a point off the final score in punishment. I defy anyone who has stood on the Makna Falls overlook in Xenoblade Chronicles, seen the beautiful afternoon sunlight and shadows in the castle courtyard in The Last Story or stood atop the Observatory gazing towards the Thirteen Towers at sunset in Pandora’s Tower to say that these games have “poor” visuals.

As such, I implore those of you who are gamers to stop caring so much about titles having pin-sharp graphics, fully orchestrated soundtracks and a voice cast of Major Hollywood Talent. Yes, these things make games more impressive and exciting to watch and play, but given the choice between a world made up of nothing but HD first-person shooters starring Morgan Freeman (with the world’s population of racist teenagers on backing vocals via Xbox Live) and a world where I can play 100+ hours of Xenoblade Chronicles in 480p with a selection of unknown (but excellent) British voice actors, I know which I’d rather spend my time in.

That’s just me, though. I illustrate my blog with stickmen, so take my word with a pinch of salt if you wish.

(Edit: Here’s an unedited picture of Pandora’s Tower running in 480p taken with my iPhone camera. Looks pretty lovely to me.)

#oneaday Day 824: Pandora’s Tower: A Scoreless Review

Pandora’s Tower, the last of the three “Operation Rainfall” JRPGs for the Wii, is a beautiful game in many ways: visually, mechanically, thematically and in the simplicity of its execution. It’s a fitting sendoff to three of the finest games of the entire console generation — and, indeed, some might say, to the Wii itself.

In Pandora’s Tower, you take on the role of Aeron. Aeron is a quiet sort of chap, though not quite entirely mute. Aeron is in love with Elena, who is a singer from the “wrong side” of the war that our hero was involved with. She’s also, thanks to a series of events which come to light over the course of the story, cursed to turn into a slobbering monster unless Something is Done. That Something, as revealed by a peculiar frog-like woman named Mavda who inexplicably carries her gigantic, incomprehensible skeletal husband in a cauldron on her back, is to consume the flesh of twelve “Masters” who reside in the Thirteen Towers, a mysterious structure suspended across the top of a seemingly bottomless chasm known as The Scar.

Thus begins Aeron’s adventure, which is roughly equal parts dating sim, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus with a splash of Zelda here and there. It’s up to the player to guide Aeron through the Thirteen Towers in an attempt to lift the curse from Elena while simultaneously ensuring that his beloved still loves him by showering her with gifts and affection.

The exploration of the towers makes up the meat (no pun intended) of the gameplay in Pandora’s Tower. Unfolding from a series of non-controllable but dynamic camera angles, Aeron must work his way through the challenges that each tower confronts him with, smash the chains which lock the Master’s door shut and then kick some serious ass.

Aeron is initially armed with a sword and the Oraclos Chain, an implement that symbolises the bonds between people and the power held within them. Using the chain, it’s possible for Aeron to hookshot into far-off areas, tie up monsters, pull remote switches, tie things to other things and generally cause plenty of mischief. While it’s tempting to charge in and simply attempt to hack-and-slash your way through the game’s combat, the melee weapons Aeron acquires are in many way the least important things in his arsenal. Rather, the chain is the key to keeping Aeron out of harm and the numerous denizens of the Towers at bay.

By aiming the chain using the Wii Remote‘s pointer function (or the right analogue stick on the Classic Controller), it’s possible for Aeron to attach the chain to all sorts of things. Hook it on to a handhold and he’ll pull himself up Batman-style. Clip it on to a switch and he’ll be able to pull it from afar. Attach it to a monster and it’ll provide him with a suitably unfair advantage to exploit depending on which part of the monster it is hooked on to. Pull it taut and a “chain strength” gauge will gradually power up, enabling it to stay attached to things for longer or do more damage if jerked away suddenly with a flick of the wrist. It’s a relatively simple mechanic — point, shoot and tug — but executed extremely well, making brilliant use of the Wii’s unique control scheme without overusing any of its gimmicks. The variety of creative methods in which the chain is used throughout the game help keep it fresh despite the fact that Aeron doesn’t really learn any new moves over the course of the game.

It quickly becomes apparent after a short period of play that combat is not the main focus of Pandora’s Tower, however. Rather, it is an environmental puzzle game where the challenge is to determine how to reach a destination which is often in sight but tantalisingly out of reach. The fixed camera angles are used effectively to point the player in the direction of a puzzle’s solution, helping to eliminate the frustration of pixel-hunting found in some games with a freely-controllable camera. The only slight issue with these is that sometimes enemies like to hide off-screen in the “changeover” point between camera angles, but they can usually be dragged around to where the player wants them using the chain.

The puzzles gradually ramp up in difficulty with each new tower at a good pace but never feel unfair — and there’s an enormously satisfying sense of achievement when you figure out a particularly troublesome solution. This comes to a head with the game’s Master battles, which are similar in concept to the Colossus battles in Shadow of the Colossus — each Master has a specific weak point which must be exploited through manipulation of the environment, spotting the patterns in their attacks and sometimes figuring out a quicker way to achieve something that initially seems obvious. The battles are more puzzles than anything, with a big part of the challenge being in figuring out what on Earth you’re supposed to do, because the game certainly isn’t going to tell you or hold your hand — a real strength of the experience and a big contributing factor to the aforementioned sense of satisfaction.

The dungeoneering segments are exceptionally well-designed, in short. This is a good thing, because not only does Aeron have to find his way to the Master’s chamber alive, he also has a time limit to contend with. While he’s in the Towers, Elena’s curse is constantly progressing, with her inexorable descent into disgusting sliminess measured by an ever-ticking meter in the corner of the screen. Should this meter run out, Elena is beyond help and the game is over, so Aeron has to carefully manage his time between pushing forward in the tower he’s currently exploring, and returning to Elena to temporarily stave off the curse using meat acquired from the tower’s normal enemies.

Rather than this mechanic forcing the player to backtrack completely at regular intervals, however, the dungeons are designed in such a way that solving puzzles often opens up shortcuts to and from Elena. Find your way to a difficult-to-reach ledge and your reward will often be a ladder you can kick down or a locked door you can batter open, shaving valuable minutes off your time when you return to the tower once more.

Returning to Elena never feels like a chore, however, because Aeron’s interactions with her are as well fleshed out (again, no pun intended) as the dungeoneering segments. When back at the couple’s “home base”, Aeron is able to chat with Elena, ask her to translate books and texts he’s found in the towers and around their base, occasionally ask her specific questions about recent events and give her gifts. Most of these interactions have an effect on an “affection bar” at the side of the screen, which denotes how much Elena likes Aeron and also determines which of the game’s endings will unfold once the story comes to its conclusion.

Aeron doesn’t say much, but the player gets to know a great deal about Elena over the course of the story. She’s a well-defined character with her own history, likes and dislikes, all delivered in an adorable soft Yorkshire accent. She does have something of a tendency to slip into sexist stereotypes — one exchange between her and Aeron sees her asking what he’d like her to concentrate on in the base, with the available options being “cooking”, “cleaning” and “sewing” — but let’s not forget that she can turn into a slobbering evil monster at a moment’s notice, which does kind of undermine her “demure housewife” persona. To her credit, though, she does always feel bad whenever she makes a mess or breaks a gift as a result of her transformation.

Alongside interacting with Elena, Aeron is also able to call upon the mysterious Mavda between sorties to the towers. Mavda acts as a shop, crafting station, source of information and means of upgrading weapons, and there’s a surprising amount of depth to these mechanics. Upgrading weapons, for example, usually requires several different components. If the player hasn’t managed to find certain specific components, it’s often possible to craft them using other pieces of detritus that they’ve picked up over the course of their last dungeon crawl. Certain components may only be found in certain towers, as each is themed after a particular element and contains its own distinctive monsters. Finding all the pieces for a particular weapon upgrade becomes a sidequest in itself, though it’s a completely optional one that players don’t need to engage in in order to be victorious.

These mechanics are all very well and good, but in the “HD age” a big determining factor in whether or not a person will take to a new game comes in its presentation. Pandora’s Tower does not disappoint in the least: it is a lovely-looking game. Forget the fact it’s running in 480p resolution on the Wii; this ceases to matter within a few short minutes of starting to play. This is a game with exceptional art design. Aeron is a young, fresh-faced youth with intricately-designed armour. Elena is a pure-faced, simple beauty, which makes her monstrous transformations all the more traumatic to witness. Mavda and her skeletal spouse are by turns grotesque and compelling. Outside the observatory that Aeron and Elena call home during their quest, lush green grass and cloudless blue skies fade into golden sunsets and deep navy nights. Inside their temporary quarters, everything is suffused with a warm, homely sepia glow. Within the towers, beams of light pierce the gloom through long-broken windows, brightly-coloured crystal formations cast strange glows on everything around them and the emerald green of natural foliage contrasts starkly with the dull greys and browns of the stone bricks that make up the tower surrounding it.

And the sound. Oh, the sound. Based largely on classical themes including Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem and Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3, the soundtrack to Pandora’s Tower is not the sort of in-your-face electronica-and-electric-guitars chaos typically associated with modern Japanese games — rather, it gives the game a unique atmosphere all of its own, filled with drama at some times, overflowing with love and tenderness at others. It perfectly reflects the small-scale, intimate tone of the game’s narrative and rounds out a complete package that is beautifully, distinctively presented.

Pandora’s Tower is a worthy successor to Team Ico‘s classic titles in many ways. It’s a well put together game with exceptional presentation, a touching, intimate story and a sense of personal drama and emotion far removed from the ever-increasing stakes of mainstream titles. It’s not just a fine Wii game, it’s a fine game, full stop, and deserves to be looked back on in the future as a title that dared to try something a little different from the norm, with great results.

Time will tell if that’s how history will treat Pandora’s Tower, or whether it’s doomed to be one of those increasingly-rare games that is always talked about in sentences that begin with “I wish I’d played…”

I know I’m glad I played it. If you get the chance, you should too.

#oneaday Day 823: Information Diet

Know what I hate? Chavs. Know what else? Teaching. Know what else? We could be here a while. I’ll tell you. Press embargoes.

I get why they happen, obviously — publishers and their PR people want to ensure that coverage of something is coordinated nicely so that everyone gets suitably whipped up into a frenzy all at the same time. But there’s an unfortunate side-effect if you happen to, say, follow a bunch of different video games outlets at the time a major announcement happens: everyone bellows the same fucking thing at the exact same fucking time.

It’s happening more and more nowadays, too. The most notable examples that stick in my head in recent memory are Assassin’s Creed III and Borderlands 2, both titles that I have a passing interest in but find myself becoming curiously resistant to the more and more I get battered in the face with the same information from slightly different angles.

I think, on the whole, this is the “problem” I have been having with mainstream gaming overall. There’s too much information out there — too much coverage, too many “behind the scenes” videos, too many “exclusive” interviews, too many press releases announcing a single screenshot (yes, that is a real thing I received today and I have no shame in naming Square Enix as the perpetrator). After a while, you become completely saturated with information about a product and subsequently have absolutely no inclination to want to touch it, ever. This was a big part of why I didn’t want to play Mass Effect 3, for example — EA’s appalling behaviour was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, really.

I feel for my friends who work in games PR for “B-tier” games, too. It’s hard enough to get a title like, say, Risen 2 noticed at the best of times but when you’re competing with everyone beating themselves into an orgasmic and/or angry frenzy over Mass Effect 3, there’s little hope for your title outside of groups of people like me who have forsaken the mainstream in favour of enjoying less heavily marketed titles.

Conversely, the games I have been playing and enjoying are the ones where information has been trickling out slowly, usually straight from the developers mouths without dribbling through the PR sieve. Take the “Operation Rainfall” RPGs Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower (which I’m currently playing), for example — these received very little in the way of press attention despite being fantastic games. The aforementioned Operation Rainfall, a grassroots campaign to get these three excellent games localised and released in Europe and the US, received plenty of press, but information on the games themselves was conspicuously absent. As a result, I was able to go into all three of them pretty much blind and have a fantastic experience in the process — a big part of what made all of them great is the sense of discovery inherent in all of them. That just doesn’t happen if you’ve been smothered in information for the six months leading up to the game’s release.

As a result of all this, I’ve come to a decision, and if you’re feeling the same way as me, I recommend you follow it too.

Cut back. Cut out the crap. If you follow a buttload of games journalists and outlets on Twitter, unfollow them. If you want some gaming news, pick one outlet and keep it on your follow list, but chances are if you follow lots of gaming fans, someone will retweet the news as it happens anyway. Otherwise, go seek out the news when it’s convenient for you. Check the sites when you feel like it. Subscribe to their RSS feeds. Use Google Currents or Flipboard to receive information in an easily-digestible format. Receive information on your terms, not that of a carefully-crafted PR campaign.

This doesn’t have to apply just to games — it can apply to pretty much anything that suffers from the problems described above. Film, TV, celebrity news, business, tech… anything, really.

I’m going to give this a try. It will doubtless initially feel somewhat weird to not see some familiar faces and logos in my Twitter timeline, but I have a strange feeling that I’ll be a lot happier, less frustrated and less cynical as a result. Check back with me in a week or two and we’ll see.

(If you’re one of the people I do happen to unfollow, it’s nothing personal. You just might want to consider getting separate professional and personal accounts!)

#oneaday Day 815: Pandora’s Tower — Some First Impressions

So, the third of the three “Operation Rainfall” titles is finally upon us here in the UK (well, technically tomorrow, but Amazon were good enough to ship it to me a day early), completing the Holy Trinity of Wii-based Japanese role-playing games that many are lauding as the real last hurrah of Nintendo’s system. (I’ve actually lost count of how many times people have referred to Wii games as the system’s “last hurrah” or similar, but with Wii U on the relatively near horizon, it might actually be true this time.)

Like its predecessors Xenoblade Chronicles by MonolithSoft and The Last Story by Mistwalker, Ganbarion‘s Pandora’s Tower is far from what you’d call a conventional JRPG. In fact, of the three titles, Pandora’s Tower is the least traditionally RPG-ish and will likely prove to be the most divisive due to its curious mix of game styles. That’s not to say it’s bad — far from it, in fact — but those coming in and expecting a traditional globetrotting adventure with a cast of loveable misfits will find themselves surprised by what they discover.

Pandora’s Tower tells the story of a pair of young star-crossed lovers named Aeron and Elena. Aeron, the player character, doesn’t say much besides the odd grunt and “yes” but is clearly devoted to Elena. Elena, meanwhile, has a bit of a problem; she’s cursed. And, as curses go, this one’s a doozy — she’s slowly turning into a slobbering monster with icky skin and tentacles wriggling out of her shoulder. Discovering the nature of the curse at a harvest festival, Aeron and Elena flee into the wilderness accompanied by a strange old crone named Mavda who inexplicably carries a jar on her back containing an enormous skeletal man who occasionally babbles indecipherable gibberish. Madva reveals that there is one way to break the curse — for Elena to eat the flesh of twelve “masters” who reside in twelve towers that make up an imposing-looking fortress hovering over a terrifying-looking abyss known as The Scar.

As you have probably surmised, this is where the player comes in. Elena, being rather delicate and demure when she’s not slobbering and betentacled, isn’t exactly equipped to go monster hunting, so it’s up to Aeron to take his improbably large sword, magic chain (provided by Mavda) and floppy hair (model’s own) into the aforementioned towers to defeat the masters, rip out their “master flesh” and feed it to Elena (who was, at least until this whole mess started, a vegetarian for religious reasons) in order to save her from a hideous fate. Simple, right? All in a day’s work for an almost-mute hero.

Gameplay evolves in several discrete sections, and it’s the combination of these factors that makes Pandora’s Tower such an original, distinctive experience. If you were to boil it down to video game math, then the following equation would probably cover most of what I’ve experienced so far:

(Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Patrick Stewart) + Ico + Shadow of the Colossus * Zelda + dating sim = Pandora’s Tower

There are two main components to gameplay: dungeoneering and downtime. During downtime, the player may, as Aeron, hang out with Elena in their makeshift hideout, ask her about the lore of the world, shower her with gifts, feed her various meaty treats and throw her untranslated texts so she can make herself useful. Aeron may also call up Mavda, who appears to perpetually live outside the back door of the hideout, and buy things from her, get her to craft and repair items, get her to upgrade equipment and offload excess meat. She’ll also pay Aeron for any texts he’s found — including newly-translated ones from Elena — which provides the player with a decent income stream if they take the time to explore and discover things. That completionist’s nightmare — the “percentage completed” gauge — makes an appearance in the game’s menu so those who want to make sure they get the full experience can see at a glance how close they are.

All this downtime activity isn’t just for show — most of the Elena-related activity affects the couple’s relationship, and providing certain gifts also causes her to spruce up the hideout with her own personal touches. The game’s ending is supposedly determined by the relationship value between the two by the time the story comes to an end, so it’s in players’ interests to ensure that they keep their lady sweet.

Upon leaving the hideout and heading for one of the dungeons, however, gameplay takes a decidedly different turn. It becomes a combination of third-person combat and environmental puzzle solving. Aeron may attack beasties with his sword and unleash combos, but it’s the chain that provides the most interesting gameplay possibilities. By aiming the chain with the Wii Remote’s pointer (or the right analogue stick on the Classic Controller) and attaching it to enemies, environmental structures and all manner of other things, Aeron is able to cause all kinds of mischief. And there’s plenty of scope for creative silliness, too — try attaching one end of the chain to one enemy’s legs and the other to another enemy’s face, for example.

Aeron’s goal in each dungeon is, like a Zelda game, to unlock the boss chamber and then defeat said boss. Rather than relying on a huge inventory of items, however, the majority of the game’s puzzle solving comes from creative use of the chain. Sometimes you’ll be pulling levers with it, sometimes you’ll be throwing chunks of ore into soft walls to use as hooks to grapple on to, sometimes you’ll be tying sentient plants to pillars and chopping them to bits before they burrow into the ground. And you’ll often be using the chain to rip out gobs of flesh and other crafting ingredients from fallen enemies, because Elena’s curse isn’t waiting for you.

No, indeed — a timer in the corner of the screen shows the progress of Elena’s transformation. It can be reset by grabbing some tasty meat and taking it back to her, but this requires you to make your way back through the dungeon you’ve just battled your way through, then delve back into it once you’ve given her her treats. Fortunately, the dungeons are designed in such a way that progressing further in them allows you to set up various shortcuts, and knowing the layout of them a bit better also allows you to romp through them fairly quickly. Progress doesn’t reset upon leaving the dungeon, so it’s perfectly feasible to unlock the boss room, go back, feed Elena and then go kick some boss ass.

It becomes an exercise in time management — can you make it through the boss fight before Elena goes all tentacly? (Should she find herself going all tentacly, this does, as you may expect, have an adverse effect on the couple’s relationship.) Or should you play it safe and head back with a bag full of meaty treats? This constant weighing up of pros and cons is further exacerbated by the fact that Aeron can only carry so much crap in his bag at once, necessitating a return to the hideout every so often to offload junk or craft it into useful items. This does, however, provide an opportunity for Aeron and Elena to spend some time together and improve their relationship, so it’s not a wasted trip — though the traipsing back and forth may annoy some.

There’s a lot to do, but the dungeons (at least the two I’ve completed so far) are well-designed and satisfying to figure out. A real sense of urgency is provided by the curse timer ticking away in the corner of the screen, and I can only imagine how the intensity of this will increase as the dungeons grow in complexity. The story is told in a less “in your face” manner than a lot of other games, with a strong focus on the relationship between Aeron and Elena, and a lot of environmental storytelling through discarded notes and architectural design. It’s an intimate sort of game, by turns lonely and daunting in the dungeoneering segments and heartwarming when the couple is together. At its heart is the tale of a relationship between two people and the lengths people will go to for love — an experience that, so far at least, is altogether unlike any other Japanese role-playing game or action adventure that I’ve played in recent memory.

In short, it’s a fitting dénouement to the “Operation Rainfall” trio of titles — and to the Wii’s catalogue in general. It’s actually pretty remarkable that three of the best “core” games of the generation are on a system that many people denounce as being “kiddy”, “casual” or a waste of time — or dismiss outright for not being HD. Deprive yourself of these three games simply on the grounds that they don’t look as good as, say, Mass Effect 3 and you’re depriving yourself of three distinctive, bold and original titles that are the perfect antithesis to the “cookie-cutter” approach of triple-A development and publishing. I hope beyond hope that their small but loyal fanbases will be enough for these studios to be able to keep doing what they do.

Further thoughts on Pandora’s Tower will follow when I’ve beaten it. In the meantime, if you’re American, go pick up a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles before it becomes impossible to find, and be sure to support Xseed’s release of The Last Story — and whoever picks up Pandora’s Tower — when they show up later this year.

[Edit: Apologies — I misread some recent news that made it look as if Xseed was bringing Pandora’s Tower to the US later in the year. It seems the status of that title’s US release is still somewhat up in the air — but we can hope!]