My Descent Into NieR, via Drakengard

Hark, and hear my story of how I fell through layer after layer of accidental discoveries and landed on a marshmallowy bed of NieR-y goodness. I suppose I should say that some of the video links are quite … gory. Oh and as always, spoilers. In this blog post I will be concentrating on exploring Drakengard, as it inevitably became how I arrived at being interested in NieR. When I eventually came to NieR itself, I quickly realised that it will need its own blog post as opposed to being briefly mentioned in this one!

 

 

Prince Caim. Image: Giantbomb

(First, hello! I had a small break from writing while I was sorting out some other stuff. But here is a thing that I have written! With my fingers no less! …Maybe a bit of brain too. Watch out for it there.)

Like a lot of people I expect, I was aware of the NieR series existing, but hadn’t played it myself. This seems to happen a lot with me! Conversing with other games fanatics about it would often lead them to informing me how amazing it was, and increasingly so since NieR: Automata was released in 2017.

So it’s a Japanese action/RPG with a lot of fans. There are a fair few other games like that, I would say. No, they protested. It’s really good.

I have this in mind when I notice Automata has been on sale at a really reasonable price recently. I still don’t buy it, though. Then a little bit of time passes and I find myself needing to put a video on in the background while I sort out some admin stuff. Okay YouTube, do your worst.

Drakengard

I end up watching a playthrough by BuffMaister on YouTube of an oddball fantasy game developed by Cavia, and released in 2003/4 called Drakengard (or Drag-On Dragoon in Japan). It caught my eye because it looked a bit like the Dynasty Warriors games (Hyrule Warriors if you prefer), but with quite an intriguingly dark story that became increasingly so the more I watched. And you can control a FLYING DRAGON!

Taking place in a vaguely Medieval setting, it was about an ex-prince, called Caim, who loved killing (great?), but also wanted to save his sister Furiae (who happens to be the mortal form of a goddess, no big deal) from being killed by the evil Empire (standard!). He gets mortally wounded, and the only way he can live is to enter into a pact with a human-hating dragon called Angelus (who is also almost dead, conveniently), so their souls can merge and they can both live. Now he’s a psychopathic murderer with a psychic link to a dragon! The downside is, in exchange for the pact, he gives up his voice. For shame.

But making a pact with a dragon is so cool! Image: Giantbomb

So they fly throughout the lands together failing to protect Furiae or any of the magic seals they need to protect, and collecting other weirdoes along the way who have all also entered pacts with supernatural creatures, exchanging something in return. A brief list: A baby-eating elf called Arioch (who gave up her womb), a paedophile priest called Leonard (gave up his sight), a little boy called Seere whose entire village was murdered (gives up growing older… Can I also reiterate that he is traveling with a psychopath, a child eater and a paedophile), and a tattooed monk/zombie impersonator called Verdelet, who has no pact but comes along for the ride because he wants to protect the goddess. Why not.

Verdelet. I don’t remember him actually doing anything useful. Image: Giantbomb

A Dark Turn…Or Four

Stuff happens, and then the player can get one of five endings labeled A-E, depending on what they do during the game and how many times they’ve played. In short, Ending A is quite unsurprising for a fantasy game; Angelus sacrifices herself to save everyone. A bit sad, but okay as far as finales go.

For those who decide to play again in the hopes of getting a better ending, Ending B is pretty alarming, as Furiae transforms into some kind of terrifying goddess monster and upon defeat is joined by countless others like her, who ultimately kill all of humanity.

Ending C sees Angelus become all-powerful; she breaks the pact she has with Caim, who gets his voice back. She then engages him in battle, and is killed. The world is overtaken by a million dragons, and Caim, being all excited about killing, runs out to meet them with his sword. That’s it. That’s the ending.

Then things get…weird. And I definitely start feeling like I’m falling down a rabbit hole.

Ending D is…well, it’s this:

I’ve been brainfucked, I think. And then for those who still can’t get enough, they can go on to get the final ending, Ending E:

Yes, the final boss is a rhythm game. Admittedly put in as a bit of a joke by the creators, Ending E is not quite as absolutely batploppy insane as Ending D in my opinion, but I’m unsure if that’s because I’ve already been desensitised to the weird by this point.

Want to know something else? As it turns out, Ending E is canon for the story of NieR. A little loosely, as I have since discovered, but the events that transpire where the giant monster falls between dimensions to end up in Tokyo, is destroyed and crumbles to dust, are what kick off the events at the beginning of NieR: Repicant/Gestalt.

Oh come on, I thought. I choose to watch some obscure game, which just so happened to REALLY CONVOLUTEDLY link to NieR? There must be some algorithms going on somewhere here.

And then, of course, I had to continue on to see what all this NieR business is all about. But I think I’ll save that for another post! I’ll just say that I am glad I…experienced…Drakengard first. Ever since I watched the playthrough above, my thoughts keep returning to different aspects of it, especially the controversial ones, and more and more I’m seeing it as a piece of art. It makes me think vaguely of the work of Goya and also a little of Dante’s Inferno. Hence the “art game” tag on this post! More than that though, it’s just so absolutely weird and worth witnessing.

The image of Angelus impaled on top of Tokyo Tower will haunt me for the rest of my days.

Tales of Symphonia has Reinvigorated My Love of Animé

*There are some spoilers below pertaining to the general story/structure of Tales of Symphonia and screenshots of the game, however I don’t go into any in-depth specifics and definitely don’t give away the ending!*

Ahh, Tales of Symphonia.

You eluded me for so long, being stuck on my list-of-game-series-I-knew-about-and-would-probably-like-but-never-got-into (I’m also looking at you, Persona). I played about half of Tales of Phantasia several years ago but never finished it and never revisited.

But then Christmas 2017 came…and I was gifted a copy of Tales of Symphonia on Steam. I could avoid it no more, clearly.

In fact, it wasn’t going to be on my gaming agenda for quite some time, but then along came a few days before the Shadow of the Colossus remake was released and I wanted to play something but didn’t feel like playing Monster Hunter. I know, I thought. I’ll have a little go at Symphonia. Just a little go. Then when SOTC is out I’ll play that. I probably won’t even get that into Symphonia.

Well, one thing led to another, and…let’s just say Shadow of the Colossus is on hold for now. Sorry, Wander.

Something which is making Tales of Symphonia stand out in particular from other games for me is the integration of these sort-of animé kind-of cutscenes within the gameplay.

Often you’ll be wandering around in the overworld (or dungeon, or town), and then an icon will flash up in the bottom left of the screen telling you to push a certain button, or there’ll be a funny flashy light thing you can walk into. Then you’ll be treated to a little animated conversation between your party members, which could last from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. They could discuss anything—from how bad one of your party smells, to food, to philosophy.

These conversations, or “skits” as I believe they’re referred to, serve to build a bond between the characters and the player, by demonstrating the forging of relationships between the characters themselves. Their individual personalities manifest in how they interact with each other; how they express their beliefs, weaknesses, humour, and affection (or disdain) for each other, for example. Over a long period of time, and many skits, you feel as though you know each individual intimately.

The way Tales of Symphonia unravels is similar to an animé, in my opinion. Aside from the obvious art style, the structure of the narrative uses a lot of the same devices.

It starts off small; you have a a small handful of seemingly stereotypical characters that you are introduced to (the brave but not-very-smart Lloyd, the clever but naïve Genis, the sweet but klutzy Colette). It then builds on this quickly, introducing you to more characters and advanced concepts, and the fact that one of them, being the Chosen One, must go on a perilous journey to save the world from destruction! So, standard animé really.

Each segment of the game is split into “tales”, each being very digestible fragments of story that build up over a long time into a cohesive whole; much like episodes of a series that eventually conclude in a finale. Some of them relate more directly to the overall arc that the story is building, and some serve more as “filler”, to allow you to obtain valuable items, learn more about the world, or get to know the characters more deeply.

At least for me, I have found the journey to be more important than the outcome in Symphonia. The interaction between the characters, and how they learn about the world along the way is very reminiscent of the slice of life genre common amongst manga and animé, which are very much about experiencing the journey along the way as opposed to the ultimate conclusion of the story threads.

Symphonia isn’t slice of life specifically, as it does have an overall story arc and keeps actively building towards it, but it does appear to employ storytelling techniques from the genre—especially during the more “filler”-type tales— in order to engage us as the audience with the world and characters in such a way that we become very attached. This aids greatly in investing the player emotionally during the trials and tribulations presented during the more “main story arc”-type tales.

Naturally, I became very nostalgic for animé series whilst playing Tales of Symphonia. I hadn’t watched any series for quite a few years, and then all of a sudden I broke and watched Cowboy Bebop. Then the floodgates were opened and I started watching Gin no Saji (Silver Spoon). Both of these are pretty slice of life-y, and have definitely helped to scratch the animé itch!

As to whether I’ll stop with these, though, is a Tale yet to be told.

Note: Between starting and finishing writing this I managed to complete Tales of Symphonia, and I need to say that it was a very satifying, fuzzly ending which I’d highly recommend if you’ve managed not to play it so far. It is a long game, but definitely worth it, even just for the journey along the way. Oh, and also entirely my personal opinion, but I completely and totally preferred to switch the voices over to Japanese in this instance.

The best room in the entire game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Games I Grew Up With That Weren’t Mario — Dragon 32

Firstly, Happy New Year!  Now that’s out of the way, let me introduce this post:

I have to make a confession: I didn’t grow up playing the Mario series.  I never had a NES, SNES or N64. I was aware that Mario existed, but never touched one of the games until I was encouraged to try Super Mario Sunshine around my friend’s house at the tender age of 15.  But still, I never developed a love of Mario that so many other people foster, probably due to not having developed a nostalgia for the series at an early age.

Despite my futile, Mario-less bringing up, I managed to develop nostalgia for many other games which I was exposed to, and I have a feeling in researching these I’m going to discover some are even more weird and obscure than I was aware of.

I’ll try to keep them in chronological order, so not necessarily in the order I played them.  This time around, I’ll be looking at games on the first computer we had in my family, the Dragon 32! And as we only had two games for it, this should be easy peasy:

 

Chuckie Egg (1983 / A&F Software)

 

Genre: Arcade, but a platformer (in the purest sense).

Players: 1 or 2, but you take turns as opposed to playing cooperatively.

Plot (from what I remember): You are a farmer. You must climb around each barn collecting eggs before time runs out, without being touched by the (I’m assuming) chickens or falling to your death. Sometimes, the caged chicken at the top of the screen gets loose and flies around, which is terrifying.

Hen-House Harry (from the ZX Spectrum version)

Factoids from the internet: The farmer is called Hen-House Harry. The red triangles you can pick up are piles of birdseed and momentarily stop the timer. The caged chicken is actually a duck, and only gets out once you complete the game once.  There are eight levels in total, but to “complete” the game you must play through them all five times (at increasing difficulty due to the duck getting involved and the speed increasing), plus a bonus level.

Nostalgia: The first game I ever played (at around the age of 4), so despite its mediocrity I remember it dearly. As we had the Dragon 32 version as opposed to the ZX Spectrum, the background was an extremely bright acid green colour. And the game ran off of a cassette tape, which you had to put into a cassette player, then connect to the Dragon. Ah, memories.

 

Mysterious space game (198x / Unknown)

Now, I cannot for the life of me find anything that looks like what I remember from this game, and I have no idea what it was called so I drew a marvelous Microsoft Paint replica of what I remember. DISCLAIMER: May not be entirely accurate:

Genre: Arcade racer, possibly shooter but maybe not

Players: 1–2, unsure as to whether it was co-op

Plot: You are the pilot of either a pink(?) or blue spaceship, flying very fast through white caverns of increasingly jagged stalactites and stalagmites.

Nostalgia: I wish I could remember the name of this, because I enjoyed it more than Chuckie Egg if I’m honest! If I ever manage to find any references to it I’ll update. The closest thing I could find online was Starfighter, but it isn’t the same.

Special thanks to The Dragon Archive!