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Jan. 3rd, 2011 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unijClearly, the most important entry I can make to ring in the new year is a rant about what I believe to be a poorly-written video game.
Now, let me start off by saying that Dark Dawn isn't necessarily a bad game. It just had a lot to live up to, with two of the best fantasy RPGs of the last generation as its predecessors. And it did not live up to that. I mean, it still had what made the Golden Sun games great: a simple, stylish battle system, some neat puzzles, and a whole lot of Djinn. But it really fell behind in something that, one could argue, may be the most important thing of a game: the plot. I won't say that the original two games had a great plot. They were fairly simplistic in goals and yet often way too long-winded in cutscenes to explain things we never really needed or cared to hear. This is turned way past eleven in Dark Dawn, to the point where I had to sigh every time a cutscene started because I knew someone was about to say something unbelievably stupid.
In the two games, you had a simple, easy-to-understand goal that carried you through them both: go to the lighthouses. There are four of them, they need to be protected/they need to be lit, depending on which of the games you were in. There were a lot of roundabout ways you had to accomplish your tasks, a lot of sidequests that had you meet people and made you get a bit distracted, but you always knew what this goal was and that's what guided you throughout. It was clear.
But we didn't have that in Dark Dawn. For 80% of the game, your goal appears to be....getting a feather. Go get this feather. There's a landslide, you have to go the long way to get the feather. You have to activate this machine to get the feather. You have to activate this other machine to get into a cave to get an ability that will help you along the way to get the feather. Along the way you meet people and find out about events going on, but none of them seem as important or relevant: there are a lot of long-standing wars and nations and all sorts of things being done, but none of them are really all that connected to you, yet for some reason the characters feel like they have to get involved. Sure, this was something that existed in the last games, but here it just feels like even more of a strain. All we want is to find a giant stone bird and pluck the fucker, why should we pay attention to anything else going on? It's not like we're trying to do anything huge like bring Alchemy back to the land.
In fact, I think that's one huge issue; a large portion of dialogue is spent talking about Encyclopedia entries of things the characters know about, but we don't. Reading an encyclopedia isn't interesting. I don't care how well-built your world is. I don't want to have to go flipping through a book to follow what you're talking about. I don't want politics in my fantasy RPG. I don't care if the beast-people are led by some moron who likes to spell 'emperor' wrong.
But regardless of any of this, the characters disagree and think it's very important that they involve themselves with everyone else, despite having no actual reason to actually work alongside this kid who doesn't help fight and has actually been very rude all along and has even impeded progress by being a dick and eavesdropping all because his sister is kidnapped, but hey, let's help the whiny bastard out because... well that's what the plot says to do. And then to make sure we HAVE to go save his sister, we also promise to save this other guy who's kept in the same place as her. (Though, Eoleo is awesome and the only character I cared about, so I guess I'm not too broken up about that.) So once we've FINALLY gotten this fucking feather, we get taunted by the bad guys about activating some special machine that we KNOW is a bad thing and were TOLD not to mess with, but wow we are just so curious now that the guys we KNOW ARE BAD GUYS have mentioned it and oh right also we have to go get his sister and Eoleo.
But oh no! The castle door is blocked! Clearly the only way in to save those guys is to go in through the caves underneath--but oh no again! That means we'll be tempted by the evil mysterious machine! Don't worry though, we said we wouldn't activate it--OH FUCK WHY DID WE BRING ALONG THAT DOUCHEY LITTLE FUCKER AGAIN, of course, of COURSE he decides to activate it because I GUESS it's the only way to save his sister or some shit, but hey--look at that--activating the big evil machine of mysterious evil badness was a BAD FUCKING IDEA AND NOW THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE DEAD INCLUDING YOUR MENTOR, GOOD FUCKING JOB KID.
Now this last chunk of the game we finally get our goddamn real plot, though at first we don't even know what to DO because Kraden WON'T TELL US FOR SOME FUCKING REASON, and basically the whole thing is just trying to make up for OUR OWN GODDAMN STUPID-ASS MISTAKE. So we go, we crawl some dungeons, get some gear, go to some mystical places, finally get to the last part of the game, where we shut off the eclipse and HOORAY EVERYTHING IS BETTER except who-knows-how-many people are dead, but at least the town of furries haven't figured out it's your fault and give you a big hero's goodbye!
Then the credits roll and we get a nice view of what the plot of the game probably SHOULD have been about but we'll have to wait until the fucking sequel to deal with that bullshit. AWESOME.
Did I mention there's a random twenty or so lines of dialogue unrelated to any goddamn thing spent talking about Kraden's goddamn messenger pigeon
To recap: I didn't hate this game. I hated the supremely forced Idiot Plot and the tedious dialogue. I enjoyed it a lot when everyone shut up though!
Now, let me start off by saying that Dark Dawn isn't necessarily a bad game. It just had a lot to live up to, with two of the best fantasy RPGs of the last generation as its predecessors. And it did not live up to that. I mean, it still had what made the Golden Sun games great: a simple, stylish battle system, some neat puzzles, and a whole lot of Djinn. But it really fell behind in something that, one could argue, may be the most important thing of a game: the plot. I won't say that the original two games had a great plot. They were fairly simplistic in goals and yet often way too long-winded in cutscenes to explain things we never really needed or cared to hear. This is turned way past eleven in Dark Dawn, to the point where I had to sigh every time a cutscene started because I knew someone was about to say something unbelievably stupid.
In the two games, you had a simple, easy-to-understand goal that carried you through them both: go to the lighthouses. There are four of them, they need to be protected/they need to be lit, depending on which of the games you were in. There were a lot of roundabout ways you had to accomplish your tasks, a lot of sidequests that had you meet people and made you get a bit distracted, but you always knew what this goal was and that's what guided you throughout. It was clear.
But we didn't have that in Dark Dawn. For 80% of the game, your goal appears to be....getting a feather. Go get this feather. There's a landslide, you have to go the long way to get the feather. You have to activate this machine to get the feather. You have to activate this other machine to get into a cave to get an ability that will help you along the way to get the feather. Along the way you meet people and find out about events going on, but none of them seem as important or relevant: there are a lot of long-standing wars and nations and all sorts of things being done, but none of them are really all that connected to you, yet for some reason the characters feel like they have to get involved. Sure, this was something that existed in the last games, but here it just feels like even more of a strain. All we want is to find a giant stone bird and pluck the fucker, why should we pay attention to anything else going on? It's not like we're trying to do anything huge like bring Alchemy back to the land.
In fact, I think that's one huge issue; a large portion of dialogue is spent talking about Encyclopedia entries of things the characters know about, but we don't. Reading an encyclopedia isn't interesting. I don't care how well-built your world is. I don't want to have to go flipping through a book to follow what you're talking about. I don't want politics in my fantasy RPG. I don't care if the beast-people are led by some moron who likes to spell 'emperor' wrong.
But regardless of any of this, the characters disagree and think it's very important that they involve themselves with everyone else, despite having no actual reason to actually work alongside this kid who doesn't help fight and has actually been very rude all along and has even impeded progress by being a dick and eavesdropping all because his sister is kidnapped, but hey, let's help the whiny bastard out because... well that's what the plot says to do. And then to make sure we HAVE to go save his sister, we also promise to save this other guy who's kept in the same place as her. (Though, Eoleo is awesome and the only character I cared about, so I guess I'm not too broken up about that.) So once we've FINALLY gotten this fucking feather, we get taunted by the bad guys about activating some special machine that we KNOW is a bad thing and were TOLD not to mess with, but wow we are just so curious now that the guys we KNOW ARE BAD GUYS have mentioned it and oh right also we have to go get his sister and Eoleo.
But oh no! The castle door is blocked! Clearly the only way in to save those guys is to go in through the caves underneath--but oh no again! That means we'll be tempted by the evil mysterious machine! Don't worry though, we said we wouldn't activate it--OH FUCK WHY DID WE BRING ALONG THAT DOUCHEY LITTLE FUCKER AGAIN, of course, of COURSE he decides to activate it because I GUESS it's the only way to save his sister or some shit, but hey--look at that--activating the big evil machine of mysterious evil badness was a BAD FUCKING IDEA AND NOW THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ARE DEAD INCLUDING YOUR MENTOR, GOOD FUCKING JOB KID.
Now this last chunk of the game we finally get our goddamn real plot, though at first we don't even know what to DO because Kraden WON'T TELL US FOR SOME FUCKING REASON, and basically the whole thing is just trying to make up for OUR OWN GODDAMN STUPID-ASS MISTAKE. So we go, we crawl some dungeons, get some gear, go to some mystical places, finally get to the last part of the game, where we shut off the eclipse and HOORAY EVERYTHING IS BETTER except who-knows-how-many people are dead, but at least the town of furries haven't figured out it's your fault and give you a big hero's goodbye!
Then the credits roll and we get a nice view of what the plot of the game probably SHOULD have been about but we'll have to wait until the fucking sequel to deal with that bullshit. AWESOME.
Did I mention there's a random twenty or so lines of dialogue unrelated to any goddamn thing spent talking about Kraden's goddamn messenger pigeon
To recap: I didn't hate this game. I hated the supremely forced Idiot Plot and the tedious dialogue. I enjoyed it a lot when everyone shut up though!
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-04 04:55 pm (UTC)There's also a bunch of stuff that the game doesn't really tell you about even with the encyclopedia, like what the purpose of attack factor is or how you can discover rusted and worn weapons in the shallows while you're sailing, or what the shallows even are. Plus the amount of Gone Forevers doesn't really sit well with me; I bought a guide so I wouldn't miss any and I still forgot about Haures, which means I'm going to have to play through again, damn it. I also find the postgame lacking, and I don't like that there's no Teleport spell.
Still, it's probably the best DS RPG I've played in recent memory. If there are any ridiculously puzzle-laden action games or RPGs I should be playing that are better than Golden Sun, please tell me. :(
no subject
Date: 2011-01-04 06:08 pm (UTC)The stuff in the shallows was something from TLA, if I remember correctly, and I think makes an okay bonus for paying attention, but I sure dunno what the attack factor is. Those Gone Forevers definitely cheesed me off a little--I missed out on Huares and Zagan.
Well, I hear Radiant Historia is coming out soon, that has potential.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-04 08:43 pm (UTC)Radiant Historia, you say? ...Oh, a grid-based battle system with time travel as a plot device and a piano-based original soundtrack. Well, I guess I know what I'm picking up next.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-05 12:02 am (UTC)Also I hear if you preorder it they give you the soundtrack =|b