I gave the PS4 horror game Daylight a go this evening. It was super-cheap thanks to a hefty discount on PlayStation Plus, and I'd always found the concept to be interesting, so I felt like giving it a shot, even though its reviews hadn't been all that positive. (But when have I, a proud Hyperdimension Neptunia fan, ever cared what reviews thought of a game?)
Daylight's unique selling point is that it's a procedurally generated horror game. What this means in practice is that the various environments you wander through as you piece together the fragmented story are chopped and changed around a bit with each playthrough. I've only done a single playthrough so far — it's pretty short — so I can't say with confidence quite how much it's different each time around, but I can see how it would make changes without altering the fundamental structure and "journey" that the protagonist goes through.
Daylight casts you in the first-person role of Sarah. We don't know much about Sarah upon starting the game, save for the fact that she's woken up in what appears to be a ruined hospital, and some random dude with a frankly villainous voice is talking to her through her cellphone, which she has the good sense to use as a torch to light the darkness. (It's also a handy minimap.)
Gameplay is, I am assured, somewhat of the Slenderman mould, in that the vast majority of what you are doing throughout the game is picking up notes with various bits of Plot on them while attempting to fend off the unwanted attentions of various lurking horrors and ultimately unlocking the way to the next area. In Daylight's, case, you achieve this by collecting a particular number of "remnants" — notes and memos scattered around the area — until a "sigil" unlocks in a creepy room covered in strange symbols, and you must then take the sigil to a locked door to open it and proceed to the next area. The game alternates between these "scavenger hunt" sequences and calmer puzzle areas until you eventually reach the game's conclusion.
There's no combat in the game; this is a horror game in the Amnesia mould, in which just being near an enemy is enough to hurt you. However, there are several means of dealing with them rather than just running away screaming: simply making sure you're not looking at them keeps you safe, for one, but if you do happen to find yourself face to face with one of these bloody horrors, lighting a flare will cause them to combust in a satisfying fwoof of supernatural smoke and fire. These flares are, naturally, in rather limited supply — you can only carry four at once — so on occasion, it's better to try and avoid trouble rather than defeat your foes. You also can't use flares while you're carrying the sigil for an area, so it's a good idea to find the exit before you pick up the sigil just so you can make a break for it.
Like a lot of horror games, Daylight's story is piecemeal and leaves a lot up to interpretation — perhaps a little too much. It's not especially clever like the stories of its genremates in the Silent Hill series, and it's riddled with cliches, but it was enjoyable enough to pick through and come up with a few theories about, and it had a nicely creepy atmosphere to the whole thing.
Not the best horror game I've ever played, then, but an interesting one, nonetheless, and worth giving a shot to while it's cheap on PSN.
You know me by now; I enjoy a good 100+ hour RPG that I can sink my teeth into over a long period of time, but I'm often reminded quite how much a short, simple, straightforward game can hit the spot on occasion.
There's a lot of different places you can get this sort of experience, but I've been finding it particularly pleasant on the PlayStation 4 recently — thanks in part to freebies delivered through PlayStation Plus, and partly simply due to the selection of excellent, low-cost indie titles available on the platform.
Triple-A junkies are quick to whinge about the number of indie titles on PS4, particularly when they show up as PlayStation Plus freebies — they're seen as "less valuable" somehow — but, in actual fact, the PS4 is a good home to them. Not only is the Dual Shock 4 eminently suitable for fast-paced arcade games — which a lot of these titles, which tend to channel retro sensibilities somewhat, err on the side of — but social features like the screenshot sharing, online leaderboards and live video broadcasting make otherwise solo experiences into much more compelling prospects that can be shared with others.
Most recently, I've been particularly enjoying a couple of games, and in many ways they are polar opposites of one another.
The first is a title called Woah Dave, an Atari 2600-style platformer from the people who created the Bit Trip series a while back. Woah Dave is a deceptively simple but enormously addictive take on the Mario Bros/Bubble Bobble formula in that all you have to do is survive for as long as possible while fending off never-ending waves of enemies. You can jump, you can pick up things, you can throw them. That's it. It gets more frantic as you progress, and the only reason to play is to try and get a high score. And that is reason enough.
Woah Dave is testament to the fact that strong gameplay will always be compelling and enjoyable, regardless of technical proficiency. That said, while the game looks like a mess of gigantic pixels in about 8 colours, it runs at a silky smooth framerate, with extremely responsive controls and a very enjoyable overall "feel" to the whole experience. It's dumb and it's silly and it's shallow, but it's a lot of fun.
The other game I've been playing a bit recently is a shoot 'em up called Astebreed. I was a big fan of this when it originally released on PC, so I decided to "double dip" on the PlayStation 4 version, and haven't been disappointed.
Astebreed is a beautiful-looking, 1080p, 60 frames per second cinematic shoot 'em up in which you pilot a giant mecha with some unconventional weapons systems as you attempt to fend off the unwanted advances of alien race the Filune. Along the way you learn more about their human experimentation and the true fate of your adoptive father and his two daughters, who have been made into living parts of a Filune reality alteration system that has the potential to be used as a deadly weapon.
The plot is pure anime — and, frankly, a little difficult to follow, given that a lot of it unfolds while the action is coming thick and fast on screen, leaving little time to read subtitles — but it's snappy, pacy, dramatic and even a little emotional. Unlockable documents that you can read after clearing the game once show that the game world, setting and backstory have been very comprehensively fleshed out, too, and the whole experience is wonderfully polished until it shines.
Having finished the main story of Heavensward, I returned to Omega Quintet this evening in the hopes that I would be able to polish off the "true ending". I succeeded, though this isn't the end of my time with the game just yet: there's the optional "training facility" dungeon, which features some of the toughest monsters in the game, and there's a bunch of sidequests that open up even after the "final" boss. I'm undecided as to whether or not I'm going to pursue the Platinum trophy, as a few of the trophies are a bit grindy, but I probably will end up going for it.
As for the true ending — oh, spoilers ahead, by the way — it was a satisfying conclusion.
For context, the "normal" ending was surprisingly downbeat, even bleak, leaving the story with a somewhat bittersweet ending that didn't really leave any of the characters in a situation that could really be called "happily ever after". Aria was revealed to have become a Blare when she was attacked prior to the events of the game, with the Blare in question effectively devouring her emotions and turning her into the seemingly morose individual she is depicted as throughout the main narrative. Said Blare is revealed to be the cat-like creature that had been following her around for the whole game, and this obnoxious little creature "awakens" Aria to her true Blare self.
This sets up the final confrontation of the normal ending, where the depleted ranks of the Verse Maidens, now a quartet rather than the quintet they had been for the majority of the game, have to strike down their former friend, who is, it becomes clear, utterly beyond help. But even after she's defeated, the people of the city no longer trust the Verse Maidens thanks to Aria having tricked them for so long, and as such they're doomed to a life of unappreciated toil, fighting back the Blare for a populace that hates them.
The true ending takes this as a starting point but makes a few changes. When the time comes to fight Aria, she doesn't completely lose herself and transform into the "Avatar of Destruction" she becomes in the normal ending. Instead, the Verse Maidens strike her down but refuse to eliminate her, instead dragging her back to their headquarters despite her protestations — but not before "Pet" has revealed its true nature and threatened to bring even greater chaos to a world that is already practically in ruin.
It's a slow route to healing for the populace, but eventually they come to accept and support Aria once again, as her mysterious nature had always meant she was one of the more popular members of the quintet. Ultimately, the girls discover that Pet's plan is to gather as many Blare as possible in one place and attempt to control them in the name of "fun"; Pet, having consumed Aria's original cheerful personality but lacking the emotional maturity to know how to handle it correctly or appropriately, is more concerned with entertaining herself than any great master plan, and it eventually transpires that she neither knows what to do with all the Blare once she gathers them in the city's Central Tower, nor is she really able to control them effectively.
Thus begins the true final battle, first against Pet, who eventually admits defeat and volunteers to try and get rid of the trouble she caused following an epiphany brought on by having the shit kicked out of her, and subsequently against a gigantic, horrible monster that appears as Pet allows herself to be completely consumed by the Blare she summoned. The Verse Maidens are ultimately triumphant over this fearsome foe, and a convenient side-effect of the fact that it was made up of so many Blare concentrated in one place means that their conflict all but frees the city itself from the oppression of the Blare.
The world still has some healing to do, however; the story ends with protagonist Takt and one of the five girls (you get to choose) setting out on a grand journey into the wider world, clearing out the Blare as they go and discovering a new-found appreciation for one another. The post-final boss gameplay, meanwhile, unfolds before this happens, and sees Takt and the Verse Maidens — plus their predecessor Momoka, who manages to come out of retirement thanks to a useful bit of experimental technology — attempting to clear up the last few stragglers around the area of the city and continuing their work as Verse Maidens, bringing hope to the people.
It was an enjoyable ending and the final boss battles were pretty great; the last one in particular had some superb music. I'm interested to see what the post-game has to offer now; the Training Facility dungeon promises to be a stiff challenge, and there's proficiencies to level up, affection to increase, archives to find and quests to complete, so I think even though I've technically "finished" the game there's still probably a fair amount left to do!
To cut a long story short, Omega Quintet is an excellent RPG that I'm very glad I took the time to play. It's another in a long line of titles from Compile Heart that has helped cement this quirky Japanese developer's position in my mind as one of my absolute favourite game makers out there, and I have to feel a little sorry for those people who can't find joy in their colourful, humorous, witty games that are absolutely bursting with character and soul.
Finished the Heavensward main story quest today. WOW.
Spoilers ahead!
I was pleased that the team went all-out and gave us a full-on Final Fantasy finale. The final dungeon, the Aetherochemical Research Facility, gradually gets weirder and weirder as you progress through it, until you eventually reach what is clearly The Final Boss Room, in which you're set upon by not one but two Ascians, the dark-robed ne'er-do-wells whose evil machinations have been behind most of the Bad Things happening in Eorzea throughout the Final Fantasy XIV narrative.
Delightfully, this battle against the Ascians even does the typical Final Fantasy thing of unfolding across multiple forms, with the "merged" form of the two Ascians creating "Ascian Prime" and battering you with some of the most spectacular attacks in the entire game. Lest you thought that Final Fantasy XIV would lose some of the series' trademark spectacle owing to the fact that its multiplayer nature makes cinematic camera angles and lengthy spell sequences impractical, this confrontation very much dispels that notion.
That's not the end, though. The battle against Ascian Prime — the conclusion of which finally sees recurring villain Lahabrea apparently dealt with once and for all — is followed up by an eight-player Trial in the research facility's Singularity Reactor, in which you face off against Ishgard's Archibishop, Heavensward's main villain.
This being Final Fantasy, however, you don't just fight a doddering old man with an obscene amount of hit points. No; shortly before your battle with him, he draws upon the power of the Eyes of Nidhogg to channel the spirit of Ishgard's legendary king Thorden — he who, with his knights twelve, originally laid Nidhogg low and took the great wyrm's eyes — and become a Primal incarnation of the ancient king. Naturally, this involves him growing to approximately ten storeys in height in the process, and his bodyguards, the twelve knights of the Heaven's Ward (do you see what they did there) undergo similar transformations prior to your final battle against the whole sorry lot of them.
The actual battle against Thorden and the knights is amazing. Final Fantasy veterans will doubtless recognise this setup as an excuse to bring in the notorious summon "Knights of the Round", and indeed the final boss battle is effectively you fighting Knights of the Round, complete with ridiculously overblown attack animations — including, at one point, the reactor in which you're fighting seemingly floating up into space, then your entire screen shattering to bring you back to reality. (This animation is pretty much a direct reference to Knights of the Round's appearance in Final Fantasy VII, whose attack animation "Ultimate End" was the most powerful ability you could equip your characters with in the whole game.)
It's a fitting end for Heavensward's story, which has overall been a great addition to the ranks of Final Fantasy narratives throughout history. And it leaves some nice open teaser threads at the end ready for future content patches and the continuation of the story — most notably the character Estinien's possession by the spirit of Nidhogg, the latter of whom is understandably pissed off at the world for numerous reasons, not least of which being the fact that he had his eyes scooped out, and some thousand years later, was killed by some young upstart claiming to represent the spirit of the planet itself.
Anyway. It was good stuff, and sets the scene nicely for the launch of the new raid dungeon Alexander, which must be due pretty soon now. (Indeed, the ending cutscene shows Alexander rising out of the water in the Dravanian Hinterlands, though it is as yet impossible to enter the great iron giant.)
I'm glad I beat the story (and the two "post-ending" dungeons Neverreap and The Fractal Continuum, both of which are a lot of fun — and pleasingly challenging) and am looking forward to seeing what's next. In the meantime, I have an official full-on review of the expansion to write for Gamespot, so watch out for that soon.
Back to "reality" for Andie and I now, and we're both closing in on the finale of the main story quest in Heavensward. It's been a pretty spectacular journey up until this point, which I shall endeavour not to spoil to a significant degree in this post, largely because I don't yet know how it all ends.
Heavensward has achieved that which I wasn't sure it would be able to do: it's surpassed A Realm Reborn in almost every possible way, but particularly when it comes to the main story. While A Realm Reborn had a solid narrative that chronicled your character's humble beginnings up to their awakening as the Warrior of Light and beyond, taking in their victories over the fierce Primals of Eorzea and the Empire's ultimate weapon in the process, I found the Final Fantasy XII-style political manoeuvring that made up a significant part of the plot to be less interesting than something a bit more, for want of a better word, "JRPG".
Heavensward, meanwhile, feels more like a "Final Fantasy". This isn't to say that A Realm Reborn didn't feel like Final Fantasy at all — I described it as one of the best new Final Fantasies in recent years back when I reviewed it for USgamer, after all — but Heavensward feels more like a traditional Final Fantasy.
It achieves this in a number of different ways. For one, it tones down the political machinations that gradually built up over the course of A Realm Reborn, and which came to a rather shocking climax at the end of patch 2.55, Before the Fall, which acted as a prelude to Heavensward. These narrative threads are picked up and explored further — though some look as if they're going to remain unresolved until a later content patch — but for the most part Heavensward is an all-original story.
For another, the narrative feels more like an epic journey. In A Realm Reborn, you spent a lot of your time going back and forth between the three main areas, and, aside from the initial quest where you leave your starting city to go and visit the other two, it didn't really feel like the typical JRPG journey of gradually getting further and further away from your starting point, with more and more outlandish things happening as you go. Heavensward, meanwhile, does adopt this style of journey, beginning in the familiar snowy wastes of Coerthas, some of which we had the opportunity to explore in A Realm Reborn, but before long giving way to the lush forests and rocky mountains of the Dravanian Forelands, the otherworldly floating islands of the Churning Mists and the Sea of Clouds, the mysterious abandoned city of the Dravanian Hinterlands — an important location to Final Fantasy XIV lore as a whole, as it turns out — and, ultimately, a final region which doesn't feel at all like a typical MMO field, instead very much feeling like an authentic JRPG The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
The journey you undertake throughout the narrative is emphasised by some lovely narration from David Warner upon your first entry to each area. A Realm Reborn had plenty of florid prose, but Heavensward refines this with some almost poetic writing that gives the game a very distinctive voice and tone throughout. It feels strange to compliment the writing in an MMO, a type of game not particularly known for stellar storytelling (Hi, World of Warcraft!) but Heavensward really doesn't skimp on this front, and it's all the stronger for it.
I'm really looking forward to seeing how the story ends — and, of course, getting involved with what comes after that. It can't be long now until the launch of the new raid dungeon Alexander, and I'm very intrigued to see how all that fits in with the overall lore. Previous raid The Binding Coil of Bahamut turned out to be extremely relevant to the original game's lore — and even more relevant to Heavensward, as it happens — so I'm looking forward to experiencing Alexander's encounters and story to see what happens.
For now, though, I'm still flagging a bit after all the excitement of the weekend, so I think it's time to get some sleep.
I know I said I wouldn't write about Heavensward again today and I'm not going to focus on it too much, but it will enter into the discussion a little, for reasons that will shortly become apparent.
The separately-sold "expansion pack" as it existed in the '90s and early '00s is something of a rarity these days, typically confined to the MMORPG subgenre, while other types of games tend to leverage the high-speed Internet connections most people have these days by offering lots of smaller bits of piecemeal downloadable content.
In some ways, this works well; the "a la carte" approach of piecemeal DLC means that you can pick and choose the things you want to bolt onto your game for a lower price without potentially being stuck with some things you don't want. On the flip side, however, in my experience, a lot of DLC — though not all — is significantly less substantial in terms of content and value for money than your average expansion pack. There are exceptions, of course — Oblivion's Shivering Isles DLC springs to mind, as does Burnout Paradise's additional island whose name escapes me right now — but those are actually both getting back into "expansion pack" territory again, and thus are outliers to a certain degree.
Bungie's MMO shooter and "thing that isn't Halo" Destiny had its new expansion announced recently, and it's kicked up a bit of a fuss, specifically over its pricing. The base game of Destiny has plummeted in price since its original launch, meaning that the new expansion — which costs the same as a full game at £40/$60ish — will, in most cases, be more expensive than the main game. But that's not what's got people riled up: the problem is that there's a super-expensive "Collector's Edition" coming that features some exclusive content that can only be acquired through this special edition.
Nothing unusual, you might think, until you hear that the Collector's Edition is only available as a bundle deal including Destiny, its expansion and the pieces of DLC that have been released to date. This means that fans of Destiny who want to get their hands on the exclusive content pretty much have to buy the game and DLC again just to play the expansion. And the alternative means of buying the game for new players — a bundle including Destiny and its expansion for around the £55 mark — effectively means that new players are getting the expansion for considerably less than veterans.
I can't say I care a whole lot personally because Destiny simply isn't my type of game, but what surprised and dismayed me a bit about the whole situation was this interview on Eurogamer with creative director Luke Smith — a guy I don't know that well myself, but who used to work with my brother and was, as I recall, part of the 1up crew. Smith was, to my recollection, always rather outspoken about things, particularly when it came to companies doing shitty things, so it was a tad disappointing to read his responses to Eurogamer coming out as little more than PR-fed "we can't talk about this" nonsense. And if it was PR-fed, the PR company wants sacking, because Smith's responses did nothing to alleviate the concerns of players who are upset over all this, and more than likely infuriated them further.
The reason I brought up Heavensward at the beginning is because it's actually in a similar position to Destiny's expansion. Final Fantasy XIV itself can be picked up for a pretty low price these days, but Heavensward is not-quite-full-price-but-nearly. The difference, however, is that both existing and prospective players have plenty of choices of how they pick it up. They can buy A Realm Reborn and Heavensward separately. They can buy a bundle including both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward. They can buy Heavensward by itself, in standard and special editions. And they can buy most of these options in both physical and digital formats.
As such, even though Heavensward might seem expensive for an expansion pack — though it's worth noting that in terms of content, it's seriously rivalling A Realm Reborn's base game, at least in terms of story length, sidequests and open-world areas — the player base has had absolutely no objections to how it's been positioned and sold. In fact, I've seen more new players in the game in the last week or so than I have for a very long time — and those new players won't even be able to touch any of the Heavensward content until they complete A Realm Reborn and its five subsequent content patches.
But they don't mind, because they've been given options, and those options have been made clear. Where Bungie is falling down with Destiny — and where they're going to lose a lot of previously loyal players if they're not careful — is this communication side of things. Smith's responses suggested that Bungie was either unwilling or unable to listen to player concerns on these matters; it may well be a matter of the company's hands being tied by publisher Activision, but still. That's not how you build loyalty. That's how you destroy loyalty.
Level 56 now, and I'm starting to really get a feel for the new skills that have been added to Paladin.
Paladin often drew some criticism — or, rather, accusations of being "boring" — for the fact that it was a relatively straightforward class to play, with only two real combos of abilities to use in different circumstances compared to a much wider array of things to do if you're playing a Warrior. Its main perk over its raging counterpart, however, was its survivability; Warriors have a ton more HP than Paladins, but they also take more damage, while Paladins have fewer HP but a lot more in the way of defensive abilities to mitigate or even nullify damage.
Still, though, I understand the criticisms; once you unlocked all the abilities to form your basic combos, it very much became a case of pressing ability 1, 2, 3 and occasionally stepping out of enemy ability telegraphs. Post-50, though, things get a lot more interesting.
The oddly-named Sheltron, for example, is an ability whose usefulness doesn't become immediately apparent. What it does is guarantee that you will block the next physical attack you take. Blocking an attack is usually determined by random chance, influenced by the stats on the shield you're wielding alongside your sword. Sheltron guarantees a block, and while blocking doesn't nullify damage altogether, it does reduce the damage by a significant amount. It also has the handy side-effect of restoring some of your magic points when the block goes off, meaning that the Riot Blade combo is no longer the only way to regenerate MP.
Blocking also allows you to counterattack with a move called Shield Swipe, which is actually one of the Paladin's more potent offensive moves, and also inflicts a status that prevents the enemy from using abilities of the "weaponskill" type. It's not quite as good as a Stun or Silence, but it can be helpful and give a moment's grace. The damage is very nice, though — particularly as it's been buffed since its original incarnation — and it also now generates aggro, meaning you're not losing out by weaving in a Shield Swipe when it's up.
The other ability I've had the opportunity to play with now is Goring Blade, which follows on from the Riot Blade combo, previously used just for regenerating magic points to allow you to keep casting Flash, your main means of controlling larger groups of enemies at once. Goring Blade, meanwhile, has a solid initial hit followed by a damage-over-time effect. Paladins don't do a lot of damage generally — it's not their role, after all — but adding the ticks of damage to what you're doing anyway — particularly if combined with other DoT effects like Circle of Scorn and Fracture — you can actually put out some fairly respectable numbers. Plus Goring Blade has like the coolest visual effect of all Paladin's moves that I've unlocked so far.
I just reached level 56 this evening, which is a level at which I unlock another new ability. I'm not sure what it is yet, but I'm very much looking forward to finding out and experimenting with it — one of the most exciting things about the new expansion is the fact that everyone is getting these new abilities at the same time, so there isn't yet an established "right way" to do things. As such, experimentation is key, and it's really rewarding to work out an efficient use of abilities for yourself.
But anyway. That's three days in a row I've talked about Heavensward. (It's really, really, really good.) I promise I will attempt to talk about something else tomorrow. Probably. Maybe.
Spent some more time playing Heavensward today and am having an absolute blast with it.
It's been an odd adjustment to move from the rather freeform, "pursue your own goals" gameplay of a level cap character back into the routine of doing quests, exploring and all manner of other things. But I'm enjoying it a lot, particularly as so far Heavensward is proving itself to have a wide variety of things to do and ways to earn those all-important experience points.
The main story quests have been very good so far. They always were mostly quite interesting (though in the post-50 ones there was quite a lot of lugging boxes around and other menial tasks in between the more dramatic moments — not exactly the Warrior of Light's finest hour) but Heavensward has raised the bar somewhat.
One way in which it's done this is through the use of instanced quest battles — scripted encounters that take you out of the main multiplayer world and put you in your own private little area to complete objectives. In A Realm Reborn, these were usually fairly small scale but fun; in Heavensward they're much more ambitious affairs with their own unique mechanics. One particular highlight relatively early on sees you running through one of the earlier dungeons by yourself in the attempt to rescue a prisoner — while you do so, their captors start filling the place with poison gas, so you have to deal with that as well as finding a way to release them.
The main story itself is interesting and feels more focused than A Realm Reborn, too. Taking a somewhat darker overall tone, the plot thus far has seen the Warrior of Light (you!), one of your erstwhile companions and two other characters who each played roles in A Realm Reborn exploring the lands beyond Ishgard in an attempt to stop a war between the Dravanian dragons and Ishgard that will doubtless end with much death and destruction on both sides.
A Realm Reborn set up dragons mostly as fearsome, dehumanised foes to be treated with respect but defeated nonetheless. They played a relatively minor role in the overarching storyline until the latter hours and the Binding Coil of Bahamut storyline, but they were there nonetheless — and as you progressed, particularly through the Bahamut narrative, it became very apparent that they weren't quite the simple foes you might have expected them to be based on their appearances in other fantasy media.
Heavensward runs with this theme, with both the main story and sidequests going some distance to help us understand the dragons a little better. One questline in particular sees you helping out an Ishgardian who is essentially a "racist" of sorts against dragons — he refuses to believe they are anything more than monsters, but as you complete his quests, both you and he come to see that the dragons apparently have feelings and society just like the humanoids of the world.
The sidequests are kind of interesting in that they further your understanding of the game world much like in A Realm Reborn, but unlike the base game, the darker tone seeps in quite often, with many quests ending in less than perfect circumstances. In some regards it feels like some cues have been taken from Nier — also published by Square Enix — by demonstrating that sometimes, even with your best intentions and god-felling skills and abilities, you simply can't bring about a happy ending for everyone. It's sobering, but very much in keeping with the overall tone.
Then you have boss fights in which you and seven friends take on a giant insect god with a penchant for swinging four gigantic swords around at once, and you remember that this is still very much a Final Fantasy game at heart — and oh, do I love it for it.
Well, it's finally here: Final Fantasy XIV opened the doors to its first full expansion Heavensward today — for those who preordered it, anyway — and I've spent literally all day playing it.
It's good.
The story follows on directly from the end of the 2.55 story arc, which I won't spoil here for those who haven't seen it in all its ridiculous and tragic glory. Suffice to say, however, that it provides good reason for the Warrior of Light (that's you!) and occasional companion Alphinaud to head in the direction of Ishgard, a region which had previously been closed off to outsiders, but which became a little more open-minded after seeing how you (and seven friends) fended off an absolutely massive dragon towards the end of A Realm Reborn.
The city of Ishgard itself is beautifully rendered, being somewhat similar in design to a cross between Final Fantasy XI's cities of San d'Oria and Jeuno. It has its own very distinctive character that is separate to the three previous city-states we had the opportunity to visit in A Realm Reborn — the verdant, nature-filled environs of Gridania; the tall towers and tall ships of Limsa Lominsa; and the juxtaposition between extreme affluence and extreme poverty of Ul'Dah — with an austere, almost unwelcoming facade and some beautiful architecture. The kind of place where you'd be slightly afraid to touch anything, lest you befouled or defaced it in some way or another.
Outside the city, things get interesting. Early on, the main scenario quest sends you off in two separate directions: in one direction lies the Coerthas Western Highlands — a snowy, mountainous region similar to the existing Central Highlands region, but with more in the way of sheer cliff faces and inconvenient but impressive-looking lumps of rock all over the place — while in the other lies the Sea of Clouds, a floating archipelago of islands in the sky where skies are often clear and blue by simple virtue of the fact that the islands are above the clouds, but whose altitude drops the temperature to less-than-inviting levels. There's a huge contrast between these initial two areas; Coerthas is drab, monochromatic and somewhat grounded in reality for the most part (huge dead dragon corpse aside), while the Sea of Clouds is dramatically colourful, the stuff of pure fantasy. I haven't proceeded further afield just yet, but the main story is shortly to have me heading for Dravania, home of the dragons, so I'm interested to see how that compares.
One really striking thing about Heavensward is its sense of scale. A Realm Reborn was no stranger to sprawling environments that were impressive to behold, but Heavensward takes it to a new level. Ishgard is gigantic and imposing in the same way an old cathedral is; meanwhile, the field maps are huge in terms of both surface area and variation in altitude — the latter aspect of which is, in part, designed to accommodate the new flying mounts you can ride around after completing the surprisingly enjoyable task of hunting down a number of hidden "aether currents" scattered around the region.
Another striking thing about Heavensward is nothing to do with its architecture, however: a good 80-90% of the original voice cast appears to have been replaced, meaning some characters sound quite different to how they sounded in A Realm Reborn, with several even having picked up regional accents (primarily Yorkshire so far) in the intervening period. It's initially somewhat jarring, but overall the quality of the voice acting is much better than A Realm Reborn. This isn't particularly difficult, however, because although A Realm Reborn had an excellent localisation (albeit one that diverged quite a bit from the original Japanese script and took on something of a life of its own) its voice acting was passable at best and woefully awful at worst. At least in English it was, anyway; the Japanese voice acting makes use of well-known voice talent like Rie Tanaka (Hyperdimension Neptunia) and Eri Kitamura (Senran Kagura) and as such has always been pretty good, but it's clear that the English dub was perhaps, to put it politely, done a little bit on the cheap side.
It's not entirely surprising, mind you; A Realm Reborn was a huge risk for Square Enix given Final Fantasy XIV version 1.0's critical and commercial failure. As such, the decision to perhaps skimp a bit on the voice acting budget — many scenes in A Realm Reborn and indeed Heavensward also are unvoiced — was understandable. However, since A Realm Reborn achieved the seemingly impossible and rescued an all-but-dead MMO from oblivion, turning it into one of the company's greatest success stories in the process, it's gratifying to see that a bit more effort has been put into aspects of the presentation such as voice acting — even if the change in some characters' voices is a little surprising the first time you hear it.
I'm yet to try out a huge amount of the new gameplay features — I'm concentrating on levelling my main class Paladin to 60 before levelling anything further — but the new skills for existing classes look interesting, and the altogether new classes seem to be really cool, though it looks as if "lolDRK" is going to become the new "lolDRG". (Context for those unfamiliar: for the longest time, Dragoons (DRG) were notorious for dying a lot, due in part to their low magic resistance but also due to awkward animation locks on certain skills making it difficult to move out of the way of attacks; hence, "lolDRG" as the response to a Dragoon's inevitable death; Dark Knights (DRK), however, appear to be ready to take up the mantle for themselves, from what I've heard so far.)
Oh, and the music is amazing. And the story is interesting. And I've fallen in love with this stupid game all over again. There goes the next few years of my life…
In the early hours of this morning, Wuckle and I achieved something I hoped we'd achieve before Friday: we defeated Bahamut Prime in The Burning Heart, bringing our expeditions into the Final Coil of Bahamut to a close — for now, at least; we have some members of our static raid group who are still yet to clear these fights, so we'll be helping them through at some point soon.
As the "true final boss" of the game, I was hoping that the Bahamut Prime fight would be pretty spectacular, and sure enough I wasn't disappointed. Here's a video (from my character's perspective as a Black Mage) of our clear:
The fight is not only a suitably challenging battle to bring the main endgame raid of "vanilla" Final Fantasy XIV to a close, it's also a fitting conclusion for a Final Fantasy game. Japanese role-playing games are often known for getting a little… peculiar in their final confrontations, with final bosses often being fought in space, in clouds of darkness, in strange swirling miasmas or inside the cores of planets. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV, your battle against Bahamut Prime takes place within Bahamut's own heart — Bahamut Prime, it seems, is not literally Bahamut himself (since he is both absolutely massive and in the process of being regenerated by the various Coils) but rather a manifestation of his will and rage.
This doesn't stop him being a formidable opponent, mind you. The fight combines mechanics from a number of earlier battles to create a confrontation where you have to use everything you've learned about handling mechanics to be successful. There's heavy amounts of damage. There's people taking responsibility for ensuring the group isn't wiped out by carelessness or inattention. There's puddles of nasty shit on the floor that you have to drop carefully. And, of course, there are Divebombs, Final Fantasy XIV's most notorious enemy ability, first introduced in the Turn 5 fight against Twintania, later seen in a somewhat different format in the Turn 9 fight against Nael deus Darnus and finally seen from not one but two independent sources in the Bahamut Prime battle.
Divebombs are notorious because in the case of Turn 5 in particular, they were the "roadblock" that stopped a lot of groups from progressing further, simply because they're tricky to handle properly and can have devastating consequences for the whole group if handled incorrectly. Their inclusion in each of the three "final" battles in the three separate parts of Coil shows the battle designers' awareness that they are a challenge — albeit a surmountable one — and a desire to test players' abilities to the maximum, often without the helpful visual telegraphs that many of the other enemy attacks in the game have.
But anyway. You didn't come for a deconstruction of the mechanics of Final Fantasy XIV's raids. (Probably.) You came to hear me enthuse about beating a spectacular final boss fight — and, if you've watched the video, you'll see that it most certainly is.
As I've written about a few times previously on these pages, I'm a big fan of well-done final confrontations, and a big part of an effective one in my book is good use of music. Turn 5 and Turn 9 (the previous "final bosses" of the game prior to the introduction of Final Coil) both had great music that was unique to the fight (or "almost unique" in the case of Turn 5 — it's also used for the final boss of the main 2.0 storyline as well as a later confrontation); Turn 13, meanwhile, makes stunningly effective use of the game's main theme song "Answers".
"Answers" is one of the first things you hear in A Realm Reborn, since it accompanies the dramatic introduction sequence that depicts the end of the 1.0 world through the Calamity — an event that those who played the original incarnation of Final Fantasy XIV actually lived through.
The Calamity saw the descent of the artificial moon Dalamud as a result of the machinations of Nael van Darnus, an overly ambitious Imperial legatus and the main antagonist of the 1.0 storyline. As the moon approached Eorzea, however, an unexpected thing happened: it burst open to reveal a very angry Bahamut, who proceeded to lay waste to the realm in his somewhat understandable rage — after all, you'd be pissed off if you'd been locked inside a moon since ancient times, wouldn't you?
All looks lost for Eorzea, but the intervention of Archon Louisoix, a major character in the 1.0 storyline and quests, sees something mysterious happen that no-one quite understands or remembers. Everyone wakes up five years later in a realm that is somewhat different to what it once was, but still very much intact. This is how A Realm Reborn kicks off, but the main storyline then goes off in its own direction and the truth of what really happened in the Calamity doesn't start to be revealed when (if) you venture into the Binding Coil of Bahamut.
Through your explorations of the three Coils, you discover not only the truth behind the Calamity, but also what happened to a number of important characters who had apparently disappeared or died — most notably, Louisoix himself and Nael. Needless to say, everything comes back to Bahamut in the end — but during your investigations you also discover exactly what it was that led to Bahamut's imprisonment inside the artificial moon, and why he's so full of rage and resentment towards humanity.
Since "Answers" is a song so closely tied to this storyline, it's fitting that it should be the accompaniment for its final conclusion. And it's used beautifully throughout the fight, too, beginning with the mournful baritone lyrics speaking of suffering and pain, moving through the gentler, sweeter female lyrics that speak of "the land's light of justice" and walking free before eventually culminating in the gloriously thick-sounding choral finale. The music isn't just played straight through, though; the simple, sparse baritone singing is used in the fight's first phase, the female lyrics come in in the second phase as you start having to deal with Bahamut's minions as well as the dragon god himself, and the explosion of passion that is the finale comes as Bahamut Prime begins casting his ultimate attack Teraflare: a devastating blast of flaming energy that, assuming you survive, signals the beginning of the end.
Final Fantasy XIV uses music spectacularly well throughout to help with its storytelling. Each of the story's main confrontations are accompanied by their own unique theme tunes, many of which have relevant lyrics. The presentation of the game's absolutely, positively, definitely final battle (until Heavensward, obviously) is no exception to this, and I'm very excited to hear what Soken and his team come up with to accompany our new adventures.
It's now 1am, though, and since I've had like three hours sleep, I think it's probably time I caught up a bit.
