Roleplaying as Geralt: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) and the fantasy of its open world

Intro

The Witcher 3 is the best open world game I’ve ever played. What’s funny is the reasons that make it great have almost nothing to do with the open world itself, but rather how the strongest parts of the game clash with the scale of the open world. This tension is everywhere. Geralt himself is a great example of it. A witcher travels from town to town, looking at notice boards to find work slaying monsters. Often the rewards for such a dangerous task are meagre, and the townsfolk treat Witchers with suspicion or outright malice. These contracts, treasure hunts and all manner of sidequests are in opposition to the larger conflict of Geralt searching for his adoptive daughter Ciri. Even that small scale of a man searching for his daughter is juxtaposed against the threat the Wild Hunt pose to the world itself. They wish to use Ciri’s power for an invasion, and as if they weren’t a large enough threat on their own, the cataclysmic event known as The White Frost is the reason they had to flee their own world, and are causing havoc in the first place. Despite an attempt to stay small, and enjoy his life in relative peace, Geralt finds himself getting dragged into conflicts much larger than himself, and due to the open world nature of The Witcher 3, the player finds themselves in this same situation.

This is why I’ve read about so many people leaving The Witcher 3 in the middle of a playthrough. It becomes too overwhelming. Yes the writing is strong, the characters are fun, and the world looks beautiful as the player rides through it on Roach, but choice paralysis sets in. Which sidequest do I attempt next? What about the notice board in that town over there? Do I want to complete the armour set I’m working on? Do I want to uncover the question marks on the map near my location, or do I want to put blinders on and just plough through the main story? You’re kidding right? In the end it may be easier to just find some other way to spend one’s time. I admit if I wasn’t playing this for a video, it might have been like many other large RPGs I’ve played in the past. For whatever reason I stop playing it, I leave for a week or two, I come back to it one day, I forget how it controls and what was happening in the story, and then it feels like I need to start over or move onto another game... so I move onto another game.

So the question is, besides playing through Witcher 3 for a video, what kept me going? Simply put, Geralt. This is a game where the player character is the foundation. The core of the game, and the glue that holds it together. In the tutorial at Kaer Morhen, we see Geralt act as lover to Yennifer, son to Vezemir, and Father to Ciri. These familial connections humanise him. The core conflict of the game (Geralt searching for his daughter) is easily understood motivation. Despite the complications of the plot and how big the stakes end up becoming (the literal end of the world), Geralt is just trying to help those he cares for. And they say a Witcher’s mutagens strip away their emotion. Similarly on this small scale, each quest in the game is Witcher 3 in microcosm, often utilising dialogue, witcher senses, some preparation if the player desires it, combat, and often things not being as simple as they seemed when the quest began.

The routine of the gameplay loop

Starting off, the overwhelming nature of the open world is tapered. White Orchard is a smaller area where completing every sidequest and uncovering each question mark seems manageable alongside the main conflict of hunting down and slaying a Griffin (which is a rather modest quest in and of itself). This is why I enjoyed the final piece of DLC, Blood & Wine so much. It was much larger than White Orchard, but it too seemed self contained and manageable compared to the vast landscapes of the main game. I didn’t start reading the notice boards until about halfway through my playthrough, and the amount of question marks that littered the landscape was dizzying. I’m not a completionist by nature, but even I felt the urge to clear out as many as I could, especially on the way to other quests (or when I needed cash, since no matter what happened in the game, I always felt short on money, which helped reinforce the fantasy of playing as a Witcher).

And that’s why each quest feels generally the same. Being a Witcher is a trade. Geralt is a professional monster slayer. Some monsters we come across are rare, or in the investigation phase of each quest, it could be any number of creatures responsible, but by and large, each day is just like the last. Even the most dangerous work can become routine, but routine can be calming, and it’s the ‘quest to quest’, ‘question mark to question mark’, or ‘contract to contract’ nature of The Witcher 3 that helps stave off the anxiety about the sheer vastness of the open world on offer. The small and familiar helps ground us in the face of the large and unknown. Once the player leaves White Orchard, they’re familiar with pretty much everything the game has to throw at them. All that remains are the twists and turns of all the narratives. The short one-offs, the multi-stage sidequests, and the main story. All are given a similar level of care, and influence each other, so it ends up being the writing itself that is the guiding force for the player during their time in this world. At least it was for me.

The Witcher 3 as an RPG

I want to take some time here to talk about The Witcher 3 as a roleplaying game. Genre definitions are a contentious topic, especially when it comes to what constitutes or does not constitute an RPG. It’s been argued that The Witcher 3 is more of a third person action game than an RPG, and the open world design of it does lean more towards an Assassin’s Creed than a Baldur’s Gate, but at least according to how I define an RPG, the Witcher 3 definitely qualifies. My definition is simple. Does the character gain experience as they play which results in levelling up? Then it’s an RPG, but over the last decade, even my definition has been put through the wringer as more games add level up progression systems to keep players engaged. Witcher 3’s level up and progression systems are cumbersome to me because Geralt only has enough room to equip 12 enhancements with mutagen modifiers in the base game, so no matter how many different skills the player puts points into, they have to pick and choose their build. I much prefer a linear sort of levelling, where the overall power of the character strengthens as the game goes on (or the choices when levelling create a cumulative effect). This is somewhat handled by the Diablo 3-esque gear system, where the player is constantly equipping new swords and armour with stat increases (and augmented with runes), but I imagine most players didn’t pay this system too much attention, instead just choosing to upgrade one of the Witcher armour sets at the appropriate levels.

But that term roleplaying, that’s one of the reasons why genre definitions for RPGs in particular are messy. In most games, the player is playing a role, whether that be an omniscient overseer or the character they’re controlling. The characters can be a blank slate, or already well defined, and that’s the case here with Geralt. One reason the writing is so strong, is that Geralt and all his friends and colleagues are well defined, and well written. This seems to fly in the face of the fact that players are presented with narrative choices to allow them agency, but we can’t make Geralt go against his own nature. What we can do is choose the shade or flavour of Geralt we want to play. This means no matter how benevolent or selfish the player wants to be, the choices are only going to reflect that so far. This adds to the believability of Geralt as a character, and the fantasy of playing a Witcher. Keeping the player grounded in a character that isn’t the most important person in the world helps sell this Witcher fantasy, and the scope of the open world reinforces it. The open world itself is also a fantasy because roaming the landscape in the service of completing the checklist of question marks is the least interesting aspect of the game.

What matters most

Before writing this video I went back and watched the videos I made on The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (you should check them out too). I wanted to see if what I loved about those games was in any way similar to what I love about The Witcher 3, and if the open world helps or hinders what that is. It may sound cliche, but the most important aspects of those games to me were the narrative choices, and the choices that really mattered to me are those that felt the most meaningful to Geralt. Out of all the political intrigue of the first game, the most meaningful choice is whether to send Alvin to Triss or Shani. In The Witcher 2, (well it’s funny because that video was all about choices, I had no idea what else to write about), the most important choice from that game was with Letho at the end. In both games, it wasn’t the political factions and the fate of the world that mattered, but Geralt’s relationships with those around him.

The Witcher 3 is very much the same. Even with the Wild Hunt and the White Frost, what matters the most to Geralt is Ciri. I think this is exemplified by mentioning that one of the quests with the greatest impact to the world (assassinating Mad King Radovid) is a sidequest that can be ignored. The heaviest emotional moments are when Geralt first finds Ciri, the aftermath of the battle of Kaer Morhen, and the ending of the game when I wasn’t sure what happened to Ciri after she went to stop the White Frost. Even in Blood & Wine, I cared more about Geralt’s friendship to Regis then I did about Detlaff or Anna Henrietta, and the best part of Hearts of Stone is the Wedding, when Olgeird’s brother Vlodimir possesses Geralt for the evening, and you get to see how he interacts with Shani and the rest of the wedding guests.

The ending of Witcher 3 is influenced by what kind of a father figure Geralt is to Ciri, but the triggers themselves seem inconsequential while playing through the game. The greatest example of this is in Blood & Wine. When rescuing Syanna from her fairy tale prison, you can purchase Syanna’s childhood ribbon off a little girl. I thought it was a nice gesture for a character who had a rough upbringing that led to some terrible choices. Little did I know that the ribbon would save her life and lead to the death of Detlaff (who I wanted to save as well). Once again the small cascades into the big, and the most important decisions are all related to how Geralt relates to those around him. The roleplaying on offer is whether the player is resentful for how Geralt is treated with suspicion, whether they decide to just perform their duty as a Witcher and ignore everything else, or whether they treat those around them with kindness and empathy.

Why the open world is important

So it’s not to say that the open world doesn’t matter, but there’s a push and pull between small and large at play in The Witcher 3, a balancing act so deft that it works. It’s the moment to moment that’s the most important. Travelling along the roads at sunrise with Roach, taking up a new contract in a small town. Helping the people who need it, and the satisfaction of a job well done alongside their gratitude. Having a goal in mind, and helping those closest to Geralt, but always the larger world, and its larger implications looming in the distance. The player cannot help but be aware of them, and then be dragged into their vortex. It’s very similar to how a lot of self-help literature advises that the true source of peace and contentment is the ability to live in the present moment, but the difficulty of this “simple advice” is that we can’t help seeing not only the bigger picture of everything terrible going on in the world, but the suffering that could be in our own future every step along the way. It can be overwhelming and debilitate our ability to take action or interface with the world at large, and that’s definitely what’s happened to some with The Witcher 3.

The scope of the open world can be too much. It can be difficult to just focus on the current quest when you are aware of 20 other quests that need completing, let alone all the question marks on the map, and all the unexplored towns (their yellow notice boards mocking you everytime you open up the map screen). I want to say that if you can just focus on Geralt and the immediate goal in front of you at any given time, you’ll get into a rhythm of enjoying the moment while systematically making your way through the open world, but if it was that easy to be in the moment, I wouldn’t be making this comparison. To take it further, we never know what tiny interaction is going to cascade through the world and have the potential to reshape the planet. We could be the butterfly flapping its wings that causes the hurricane on the other side of the globe at any moment and we would never know it. Geralt at least has the knowledge that he’s dealing with dangerous people and forces, and he has the skills to help him survive anything that gets thrown his way, but he still has no idea how his choices are going to play out. The best he can do is the best we can do. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and to be there for those we care about. Being able to control someone with that knowledge and power as they make their way through an overwhelming and dangerous world may be able to give us some perspective in our own lives. It at least shows that if we just focus on what’s in front of us and make choices to the best of our ability, we can make it through, and hopefully do some good along the way. The Witcher 3’s success is due to its small scale of Geralt, his job as a Witcher, and those he forges relationships with, but without the juxtaposition of the large open world and its seismic events our own relationship with the game would not be as strong. Thanks for watching.

Questions, thank yous, and what’s next

But what are your thoughts? Did you find the open world of The Witcher 3 a positive or a negative? How did your choices shape who Geralt is? What are your thoughts about The Witcher 3 as a roleplaying game? I’d love to hear all about it down in the comments. As usual, many of the ideas that led to this video were from the writing of others. Critical Distance helped with their Witcher 3 compilation. It, and all the pieces of writing and video that shaped what this ended up becoming are linked in the description. So, what’s next? Well we’re staying in the RPG genre, kind of (hey, there’s levelling up so it counts). I’m going to be playing the closest thing we’ll probably get to a new Castlevania game, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I hope you join me for that one. Thank you for your time and interest. If you enjoyed this video, I’d appreciate a like, a comment, or sharing it with your friends, and as always, I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.

Dave Recommends: Super Mega Baseball 3 (2020)

I was never an athletic child, but I have fond memories playing Little League Baseball. So much so that as I grew into an adult, I relied on those memories as my sole opinion about the sport. I would tell people that "it's a game that I had fun playing, but I found it boring otherwise". I don't know how true this is, but it felt like a smart thing to say. I did enjoy my time playing Baseball as a child,  but I've never really given it the time of day as an adult. I've never really given Baseball videogames the time of day either.

Oh I've played RBI Baseball on the NES, Baseball Stars on the Neo-geo, and have fond memories of Super Baseball Simulator 1000 on the SNES (which had cyborg players and special moves for both pitcher and batter), but like Little League, that's before I reached adulthood. Super Mega Baseball 3 is the first Baseball videogame I've played since becoming an adult. I should mention that my preference for sports videogames has always leaned away from simulation. I like when the realism is sanded off. I already mentioned Super Baseball Simulator 1000, and it wouldn't surprise anyone to know I spent hours playing both NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, and I love those games dearly. Super Mega Baseball 3 made me think I would like it from its first moments due to its cast of cartoon character players.

It seems like such a small detail. It seems like it shouldn't matter at all, but for some reason having the teams in Super Mega Baseball 3 contain both male and female players struck a positive chord with me. It added a dimension to the game, an extra joy alongside the tension in the showdown between pitcher and batter. As I got a couple games under my belt, I started caring about the player gradings, to see whether or not I should use special pitches or simply try for a tricky fastball. I started learning the ridiculous names of not only my own team, but when specific players of the opposing team came up to bat I would say to myself "Ah, you return. I know how to deal with you", and then I would swear as they hit a line drive and got on base after I fucked up the controls and failed the dive to catch the ball. I feel like as I played through a season or a franchise, or even if I made my own team, I would become more strongly attached to these misfits with each successive game.

And while the characters are cartoony, the controls are easy to learn, and the game is sufficiently arcadey enough for my liking, I feel like there's a lot more complexity beneath the surface. I think the game is far from a baseball simulation, but I could feel the gulf between what I was doing with the game, and what high level play would be, either against the computer on a higher difficulty, or against a human opponent. I wonder if I would be able to work out the more complex plays and nuances of play on my own, or if I'd have to go searching for tips among the game's community. Both options feel like they're worth pursuing.

The reason I'm recommending Super Mega Baseball 3 is it got me to care about the sport of Baseball again. If you enjoy the arcadey side of sports videogames, or are a lapsed Baseball fan, I think there's something here for you. I've only hit one home run in the game so far, but it was as euphoric a moment as any I can remember in a videogame over the last year. I mean for once the joy of hitting the ball wasn't replaced with the crushing disappointment of it landing in an outfielder's mitt. The highs and lows of Super Mega Baseball 3 in a microcosm.

Planescape: Torment (1999) is asking the wrong question

You tell em Dracula. You know, Dracule has a point. Yeah, I didn’t just reference Symphony of the Night because it’s fun, but because there’s a tenuous link to Planescape: Torment which is what I want to talk about today. Like The Nameless One, Dracula is immortal. He’s lived countless lives, and through his time has amassed a lot of knowledge and power. As his nature is evil, he’s also done a lot of harm. How long does one have to live before one starts to forget what they’ve done in the past? Does Dracula remember each atrocity and triumph, and if not, how far back does his memory go? In Planescape: Torment, The Nameless One wakes up on a slab in the mortuary with amnesia. Throughout the game we learn who this character is. How he has lived maybe even longer than Dracula, and all the good and bad he has done in that time. We run into characters who know The Nameless One from a past incarnation, and treat him as though he was that same person, or if they are aware of his nature, they tread cautiously wondering who The Nameless One is this time around. It’s only near the end of the game that we learn from Ravel Puzzlewell the exact nature of The Nameless One, and the question at the heart of the game is asked, “What can change the nature of a man?”

The Nameless One has lived many lives, and done many things within those lifetimes. In some lifetimes he has been lawful good, in others chaotic evil, and every alignment in between. It seems that The Nameless One has lived as many different types of lives as there are planes in the Planescape setting. Everytime he dies, he loses his memory so upon waking and circumstance, he gets the chance to be someone else. Ravel asks “what can change the nature of a man?” because she is the one who originally separated The Nameless One from his mortality. She wonders what can cause the same man to walk so many different paths, and if the change is due to any one power in the multiverse. She desires The Nameless One’s answer to this question, and when people talk about Planescape: Torment, it is this question that is given the most weight. It’s certainly an interesting question, at least philosophically. Do you believe we are capable of change, and if so, are any of the answers available sufficient enough to satisfy you? They’re certainly enough to satisfy Ravel, because she isn’t really interested in the truth, she just wants to know what The Nameless One believes.

Now the title of this video may lead you to believe that I don’t think this is the right question, and I don’t, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think this is a good question. I think it’s a very important question. I think so because of the revelation of who The Nameless One is and how this question magnificently undercuts the player’s actions up to this point. Most players (myself included) will be playing the game in a morally good manner. We’ll be completing quests for random people who need help, and we’ll be polite while talking to everyone, especially our party members. It’s not that the urge to do bad isn’t there. Planescape: Torment allows the player to indulge in evil if they so wish. You can be mean, spiteful, ruthless, callous towards the feelings and lives of others, and you can even choose to kill those who follow you to increase your own power. I believe most players will try and be a good person. While this game is more nuanced in its morality than say Mass Effect, the revelation that a very low percentage of players chose the renegade path in that game does not surprise me. I truly believe that most of us are trying to be the best we know how to be, and that’s reflected in how we play characters in role playing games. It can be fun to let loose and be nasty in a virtual setting every once in a while, but it does make me feel uncomfortable. The point is that for the majority of Planescape: Torment the player has been playing a good person. There have been instances where we learn that the past incarnations were different, but it isn’t until Ravel that we learn just how bad The Nameless One’s past is. That’s why the question has weight. If we’re so bad, why are we playing a good character now? What can change the nature of a man?

At the very end of the game we come across 3 past incarnations of The Nameless One. 4 if we count The Nameless One’s mortality, but we’ll talk about him a little later. There’s the good incarnation, the original. He lived a life of power, and was responsible for so heinous an act that he sought out Ravel so he could escape his fate in the lower planes upon his death. There’s the paranoid incarnation, who upon waking up, finding his body covered with scars, and seeing the ghost of Deionarra lost his mind, and spent his lifetimes causing untold chaos, undoing a lot of the clues previous incarnations had left for his future selves. Finally there’s the practical incarnation, and what a bastard this one is. All of the torment your companions have gone through, the awful acts The Nameless One learns about himself throughout the game, this was the doing of the practical incarnation. Practical indeed. Through the game, the player can choose to run parallel to the personalities of these three, but I think most players by following their own path will be different to all of them. This is where the question that Ravel poses rings hollow for me. The Nameless One has changed a lot in his countless lives, but if he loses his memory upon each death, is he really changing at all?

It’s a question of semantics, but I think it’s an important one. If The Nameless One loses his memory upon each death, is he responsible for the actions of his previous selves? It’s not as simple as being a blank slate. The scars are still on his body, and the consequences of his past actions are still out there in the world. The question then becomes when does The Nameless One start becoming responsible for the actions of his past selves? When he remembers? When he merges with his mortality, or was he always responsible, and being ignorant of his past is no excuse? I just don’t see how The Nameless One could change his nature without choosing to change his nature. I think forgetting who you are and becoming someone else is entirely different.

So why does Ravel ask what can change the nature of a man? I think she asks this question for herself. The Nameless One understands that Ravel only cared about his answer, and that’s because Ravel only cares about him. She is in love with him, or at least the incarnation that first came to her asking to be removed from his mortality. To accomplish this task, the good incarnation used flattery. He spoke the words Ravel longed to hear, as can the player during this encounter with her. Ravel knows the words are honeyed lies but she wants to believe they’re real. She wants to believe The Nameless One can love her. I think that’s why she asks the question. If The Nameless One’s nature can change, then perhaps he can change into someone who loves her for real. Perhaps realising that he cannot is one of the reasons she chooses to die by his hand no matter how the conversation plays out.

But the game doesn’t end there. The Nameless One still has to find out who he is, and in doing so we might find an answer to the questions about responsibility posed before. The final location of the game is the Fortress of Regret, a sanctuary made into a home of The Transcendent One, The Nameless One’s mortality made manifest. The Transcendent One has been going around killing everyone who can point The Nameless One in his direction, either through sending out shadows (the ghosts of the innocents who have to die so The Nameless One can live again), or by doing the deed himself. There are many ways to end this encounter with The Transcendent one. The one I chose was by threatening annihilation. Earlier in the game I had a blacksmith make a weapon that could even kill an immortal. The Nameless One threatens The Transcendent One with suicide. Despite being torn from each other, the two share a link, and if one were to disappear, the other would follow. This forces The Transcendent One to merge with The Nameless One, but there is an option for The Nameless One to use the weapon on himself. This is after merging with the other incarnations, so perhaps at this point, annihilation is a fitting end for the character.

I am glad I decided to merge. While I think annihilation is more fitting for The Nameless One, all of his companions would stay dead if I were to take that option. Upon merging with his mortality, The Nameless One remembers everything. He uses his magic to bring all his companions back to life. They are allowed to move on. Now being whole, The Nameless One has to answer for his lifetimes of torment by fighting in the Blood War. This is a punishment he is at peace with. Now, it seems that even after merging with his previous incarnations and understanding some of the horrors he had wrought throughout lifetimes, the true scope of The Nameless One’s knowledge and power did not manifest until he was reunited with his mortality. It wasn’t until the final merging, that The Nameless One was held accountable for his actions, despite all the torment inflicted by the practical and paranoid incarnations. But was he a different being once he had merged with these previous incarnations?

What I’m getting at is that from my perspective, the only thing that changes the nature of this man is memory. By not knowing his past he is free to pursue a new present and future for good or for ill. It does get a bit thorny when you bring The Transcendent One into it, and if you think of it as The Nameless One’s soul, and/or the source of his true power. Funnily enough, back when Ravel asks the infamous question, “memory” is not a possible answer. Maybe because it seems so binary. You either know your past, or you don’t. That’s why so many memories in the game are akin to levelling up, and the biggest experience boost is when The Nameless One finally discovers his own name. It’s only when this jigsaw of identity is complete, that everyone is able to move onto something new.

But what are your thoughts? What do you think can change the nature of a man? Do you think The Nameless One should be held responsible for his past? How do you view The Transcendent One? I’d love to hear all about it down in the comments. Last time I said I bet there’d be a lot of great writing on Planescape: Torment and boy was I right. Links to all of the great pieces of work that helped inform this video are in the description. So, what’s next? Well it’s time to tackle a behemoth. It’s one of the first games I made an impressions video out of in 2016, and I’ve been looking forward to playing it ever since. That’s right, it’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I’m finally doing it. Now as you might imagine, it’s going to take me a while just to play through it, let alone make a video, but rest assured, I’ll be working to complete it as fast as I can. If you enjoyed this video, I would love anything you can do to get it in front of more eyeballs. Thanks for watching, and I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.

The Futility of Playing Prince of Persia

Prince of Persia (2008) starts off like a tale out of Arabian Nights. A rogue wanders the desert, loses himself in a sandstorm and falls into a story. A princess is being chased by palace guards, her father having made a pact with a dark god, and the rogue decides to help the girl by bringing life back to the desolate land. Then we play the game and come to the ending. Spoilers from here on out.

Elika has been using her lifeforce to heal the fertile grounds. The final healing, the one that takes place after the final boss fight, it kills her, but this is not the end of the game. In videogames, we always save the girl, so it's no surprise that the player is still in control of the Prince as he carries Elika’s body out of the temple. Each of the four sprawling areas of the game are now represented by 4 trees, and the player has to take his sword to each of them. It’s up to us to undo everything we’ve spent the entire game accomplishing, leading to an ending where Elika and the Prince are running from the unleashed dark god Ahriman. Sure if you’re playing the game on console, there’s DLC to right this wrong, but as a PC player playing the original release, having to end the game exactly where it started made me wonder why I spent all those hours playing it. This video’s purpose is to explore whether or not there was any actual point in playing Prince of Persia, and why. Enjoy.

Elika

You know that saying that the destination is not the point, it’s the journey that matters? For most games I would agree. The joy of them comes in the act of playing. Often a strong or even satisfying ending feels like a bonus. That such endings seem to be rare we’ll overlook. It can be overlooked because the act of playing the game itself is the memorable and enjoyable part of the experience. I did not find that to be the case with Prince of Persia. I think that’s why I was so mad when the game kept going after the initial credits. “Wait, I’ve beaten the final boss and saved the day, and you want me to play more of this? Ugh.” So why am I so down on the gameplay? Why did I find the act of playing Prince of Persia so tedious and frustrating? A good place to start is Elika and her utility to the player.

Move over Elizabeth, move over Ellie, because Elika was the birth of the unobtrusive helpful AI companion (why do they all have names that start with E?). If the player wants to, they can talk to Elika to learn more about the areas they’re exploring, but that’s something I rarely did. During platforming, pressing the Elika button will engage a double jump, and during combat the same button will fling Elika into the foe as a magic attack. Her most important role however is savior. Prince of Persia has no lives. If the player fails a platforming challenge or gets outclassed in a fight, rather than dying and having to suffer through a loading screen, Elika reaches out her hand and rescues the Prince. Within seconds we’re either back at the last piece of solid ground, or back in the fight, the enemy having regained a chunk of their health. It’s Elika’s ability to rescue the Prince that I feel is at the heart of the problems plaguing Prince of Persia, and it’s likely not for the reasons you think.

Inconsistency

My biggest problem with Prince of Persia is the inconsistency of the platforming. Let’s start with the double jump. Sometimes it’s obvious that the upcoming gap is too wide for the Prince to jump across and that the Elika button needs to be pressed. More often than not, I would only know a gap was too wide because the screen started to grey, letting me know that if I didn’t press that button immediately Elika would reach out her hand and I’d have to try again. Next let’s talk about the blobs. Part way through the game, blobs are introduced as a platforming obstacle. They crawl up and down the wall, the idea being to wall run around them when they’re out of the way. The issue is that by this point, the game is throwing large platforming sequences at the player. Often the player will have to circumvent the blobs on multiple occasions during a sequence, and the blobs at the end won’t be visible when the player chooses to start the run. I can line up my wall-run to avoid the blobs at the start, but by the time I get to the final wall-run, there’s no way to avoid the blobs and I get sent back to the beginning. Also, depending on where the player hits the wall to start a wall-run, the wall might run out before the animation is finished, or you finish too early, and it’s time for Elika to rescue the Prince once more.

I think rather than finetuning the platforming and level design to account for these inconsistencies, the fact that the player couldn’t die, that if they fell an animation would play and Elika would save them, was used as a band-aid to cover up the problem. I failed a lot during my time with Prince of Persia. I saw that Elika animation again and again. I swore more during the 10 hour runtime of Prince of Persia than the 37 hours I spent playing Dark Souls. There was a clear distinction too. It was very obvious when I was at fault. During these instances when the animation played, I knew what I had done wrong and I prepared to try again. Most of the time however, I felt the game was at fault. That’s when the swears would come out. After a string of such failures (often related to the blobs) I would blurt out “Just tell me what you want me to do.” Yes there’s no loading screens, and being rescued by Elika only takes a couple of seconds, but when the player feels that the game is at fault for wasting those couple of seconds, not only does that time add up, but the player’s enjoyment and tolerance built up from the parts that do work is ground down, and that was my experience.

Rhythm and Flow

Now the main criticism against the deathless mechanic has been it removes the stakes from the game. Never mind that we’re still having ridiculous arguments about difficulty in games in 2021, but back in 2008, the idea that a game would remove death altogether felt different, and many were not happy about it. They felt that it removed all tension from the game. It removed any stakes, and it removed the challenge because there was no penalty for failure. Now this removal of challenge I kind of agree with, but that’s because the game has an open world nature, so there’s no steady progression of difficulty. It’s all kind of flat. Anyway, would it surprise you that my thoughts about why the deathless mechanic is a bad idea come at it from the other side? I’ve mentioned that the deathless mechanic feels like a band-aid, but what it’s covering up is also going against the aims of the developers.

In an interview with Joystiq (hey remember Joystiq?) Prince of Persia producer Ben Mattes had this to say. “In many ways, we actually consider Prince of Persia to be a rhythm game in its platforming sequences, because when it works well, you get into the same sort of Zen-like state when you're platforming that you have in Guitar Hero. The world just shuts down and it just washes over you; you're completely lost in the experience. You're not picking out things like, "I have to press 'A' to do this," or "I have to press 'B' to do that" – just like you're not thinking, "I have to use this finger to hit the green key." Anyone who's played Guitar Hero for a couple of weeks ... they're not even thinking anymore about what their fingers are doing.” Now does this sense of rhythm and flow, and not having to think about your next button press sound like the experience of the game I’ve painted so far? No. Elika is supposed to be part of that. Did you just fall down? Well get back up and return to that non-thinking state. Be the platforming. Unfortunately instead, the lack of death is covering up a lack of platforming polish. When the platforming is inconsistent, and the inconsistency is in part because it’s so easy to just try again, needless to say the times I fell into this flow state Mattes describes were few and far between.

The Best Moment

Having mentioned that I thought an escalation of challenge was lacking due to the open world nature of the game, it may not surprise you to discover that the one time I felt both a sense of challenge and a sense of flow was during the final battle with Ahriman. The battle has long sequences of platforming. There was tension, there was reading the landscape in front of me and there was a thrill with wondering if I could get through the encounter unscathed. In this fight, I feel I experienced the game the way it was meant to be. I saw the game at its best, and it’s a shame that it only happened during the final boss. I was about to leave the game happy, not only because of what I had just played through but because I found the revelation that Elika had been using her life to revitalise the fertile grounds genuinely shocking. I thought it bold. Right at the end, the game course corrected and I felt like all the frustration I experienced to get to this point was worth it… and then I had to undo it all.

Destroying the four trees to bring Elika back to life contained more frustration with the game’s platforming inconsistency, but I also felt anger that the game was making me do this. You can argue that I could have walked away during the credits, but if there’s still game to play, I’m going to play it. It’s like those games that make the player commit horrific violence and then chastise them for it. It rings hollow. I resented Prince of Persia for not ending on its strongest moment, and undercutting everything that I had struggled to accomplish. Prince of Persia fought me every step of the way and with its final moments metaphorically flipped me the bird. I don’t care if there’s a DLC epilogue. After this experience, I wouldn’t want to play it. This is why I think playing Prince of Persia was ultimately a futile experience.

Questions, thank yous, and what’s next

But what are your thoughts? Did you enjoy your time with Prince of Persia? What do you think of the deathless mechanic? Did you play the Epilogue DLC, and if so, did it change your view of the game? I’d love to hear all about it down in the comments. Well that was fun. I often don’t play games I dislike all the way through, but it can be a positive. It helps strengthen my critical muscles to find out what wasn’t working for me. I hope you enjoyed it. There were a few pieces of criticism that helped inform my view on the game and links to them are in the description. That’s another critique down, and not long after the last one. Wow. Unfortunately I don’t think the turnaround for the next critique will be as speedy. I’m playing Planescape: Torment. It’s about time. I’ve wanted to play through it for years, and I bet there’s a lot of great criticism already written on it too. I hope you stick around for that one. I have a feeling it’s going to be good. If you enjoyed this video I’d appreciate anything you can do that helps get it in front of more eyeballs. Thanks for watching, and I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.

The Tension of Exploring Dark Souls

Intro

In Dark Souls the environment is everything. It’s the secret to the game’s success. Its interconnected world, the tension and reward of exploration, and yes, even its famed difficulty. To demonstrate, let me relay to you the story of how I dealt with the Black Knights throughout my playthrough. I have attempted to play Dark Souls a couple times over the years, and have had little success in defeating the first knight in the Undead Burg. You meet him down a cramped hallway. The easiest way to deal with most enemies early on is to circle around them and attempt a backstab. This first encounter provides no opportunity. The second encounter is little better, being a tiny circular rampart at the top of a staircase. I avoided both knights. The first one I defeated was in the Darkroot Basin. Yes the cliffside I fought him on isn’t that spacious, but it was enough room. I was able to backstab and the knight fell. That’s why I found the Darkroot knight easier than the one guarding the player’s cell in the Undead Asylum. To come out of these tight encounters unscathed the player has to be confident in their ability to parry, and I was too scared to learn until I reached Anor Londo.

It’s not that Anor Londo is cramped like those first encounters. There’s plenty of room to circle around the knights and backstab, but there’s so many knights, and it felt like to get through the area with as little headache as possible, I would need to learn to parry. I did so. Not gracefully, and even towards the end of the game, I would still feel a tightness in my shoulders before hitting the button, but when I hit the parry successfully, I gained confidence to try again, and I think I got pretty decent at it. At the Kiln of the First Flame, the final area, the player is given a wide open space to fight the knights on the path to Gwyn. Because of Gwyn’s susceptibility to parrying, it’s in the player’s best interest to practise it on the knights despite the room given to circle strafe around them. But what about enemies that can’t be parried? How does the environment affect them? Well, what makes the Taurus and Capra demons so difficult when first encountered are the cramped environments they reside in. When the player comes across these fools out in the open, aside from the sheer amount of them, they’re far less imposing.

So is the only reason the knights and demons are difficult related to the environment the player first encounters them in? I think so. In my story I mentioned the tighter spaces forcing me to learn to parry. In my Demon’s Souls impressions from a few years back, I talked about how the blue-eye knight in the tutorial forced me to learn how to parry, and I think the placement of the Black Knights in the Undead Burg are there for a similar reason. The problem is that removed from the tutorial, the thought of parrying these imposing figures when the player has little confidence in their skills is too much to ask. Part of the difficulty of Dark Souls is that it explains so little to the player. It drops them in Lordran, tells them the bare minimum they need to get going, and then doesn’t even say “good luck”. What I’m interested in exploring in this video is just what is it about Dark Souls that keeps players going? To tug on that thread of the difficulty being related to its environment and see where it leads, and finally to address the notoriety of the game’s difficulty, and how that relates to its fandom. Let’s begin by talking about Lordran.

Exploring new spaces

I like exploring new spaces. It’s why so much of my channel is videos where I play new games for a short amount of time. I am compelled by novelty. Its why exploration is my favourite thing about videogames, and Lordran excels in facilitating exploration. How it does so is fascinating because I think it’s at the heart of why so many people bounce off the game, and yet also at the heart of why those that persevere regard Dark Souls as one of their favourite gaming experiences. Exploration in Dark Souls is oppressive. As a new player, anything can kill you if you’re not careful. As an experienced player, this is true as well, but less likely due to the player’s knowledge and the confidence that knowledge provides. If a new player explores too much when they reach Firelink Shrine, they might find themselves in the Graveyard or down in the New Londo Ruins where they’ll be unceremoniously destroyed. If they don’t give up after those deaths and find their way to the Undead Burg, two lessons will have been imparted by this slaughter. 1) exploring will lead to exciting treasure, and 2) if you don’t explore cautiously, you’re going to die.

But it’s not just the treasure itself that’s exciting. It’s the offshoots that lead to the treasure. I remember in Bioshock Infinite when I found out I could press a button to have an arrow show me which way was the path the game wanted me to take, I would push it, and I would then run in the opposite direction. I feel the fog gates in Dark Souls are a little like that. I’d come across one and think to myself, “Did I fully explore this area yet? What about that offshoot back there? Let’s check that out.” While the treasure is exciting, the player has to really desire the spoils if they’re going to access them, as they’re often guarded by tougher enemies, making the act of exploration itself special. When the player doesn’t know what’s around the next corner. When they haven’t yet made a mental map of the area they’re exploring, when everything is new. That’s when I was having the most fun with the game. Coming across a bonfire, or opening a shortcut is a huge rush, but only because it cements a further understanding of the area. The player is filling in their mental map. That’s why crossing a fog door is terrifying. It’s a further venturing into the unknown, but it’s exhilarating because it’s an opportunity to update the player’s understanding of the game’s environment. And if it’s a boss, well defeating it will result in forward progress, and like in Demon’s Souls, progress is the most important treasure of all.

Lordran doesn’t care about you

Another element that makes exploration so tense is how the game regards the player. Lordran is a dead world. Enemies have gone hollow, hanging around where they spent their lives, attacking anyone who comes near. Territorial monsters have taken over, and the gods, who made this world what it is, are shambling around as husks of their former selves. In other games, the player would be the righteous hero, valiantly restoring order by disposing of those who keep the world oppressed, but the goal of the player on their first playthrough of Dark Souls is to rekindle the flame, a sacrifice to keep this world alive a little longer... if alive is even a good word for what Lordran has become. No matter what choice the player makes though, it’s futile. Lordran is not changed. It resets. All the killing, the soul collectiong, the levelling up, it ultimately doesn’t matter. The player may retain their skills and equipment, but the world is how it was before they arrived. Lordran doesn’t care about the player. The world is openly hostile to them. Even the characters you talk to can lose their humanity and attack the player on sight. When we play Dark Souls, when we engage in the joy of exploration, in search of treasure and adventure, we are trespassing. The denizens of Lordran treat us like an intruder. I think that’s why I felt a lack of accomplishment when I finally defeated a boss that was giving me a lot of trouble.

Earlier I stated the importance of progress in Dark Souls. I learned the lesson in Demon’s Souls that while losing souls out in the world never feels good, it’s ultimately not that big a deal considering the amount a player receives when they defeat a boss. Sure I might get an extra level, or the ability to buy some more titanite, but since the bosses usually act as a capstone for the exploration of an area, the large soul reward signals that the area has been bested. It’s a finality, signalling the end of successful exploration until the process begins anew. With that being said, and combined with the accomplishment that is supposed to accompany defeating a tough foe, why did beating a boss never make me happy? At the most I was relieved that I had broken through the wall that stood in my way, but the accomplishment was dampened by the knowledge that behind the wall I just broke through stood another wall. A thicker wall. Sure there’s a reprieve where I get to engage in the joy of exploration before reaching each new wall, but that I would eventually reach a new wall always loomed in my mind.

The purpose of Dark Souls

These feelings I have run in opposition to the purpose of Dark Souls. The game’s director Hidetaka Miyazaki has gone on record stating that the difficulty of Dark Souls is not an end in itself. The difficulty is not the point. The purpose of the game’s difficulty is to allow the player a feeling of accomplishment when they persevere and eventually overcome the game’s challenges. It’s meant to facilitate a moment of catharsis in the player. “Sure I might have thrown myself at the meat grinder of Manus almost a dozen times, but you know what? I eventually won. I feel great! What’s next?” I feel like that’s the thought process that Miyazaki wants the player to experience. My experience is more along the lines of “I threw myself at Manus almost a dozen times, and it’s over. I finally fucking beat the fucker. Holy shit, now I can move onto Gwyn. The game’s almost fucking over. Hooray!” Needless to say the bosses never gave me that feeling of accomplishment that Miyazaki talked about and that so many other players seem to experience, so of course I started questioning why that is.

I think there are a few reasons. Firstly is one of the reasons I was praising not too long ago, that Lordran doesn’t care about the player. That the player feels like an intruder. Most of the enemies, including the bosses are undead. They’re attacking out of reflex. They’ve lost their minds. Where is the triumph when it feels like most boss fights have ended with me putting my opponent out of their misery? It’s like how everyone always brings up the fight with Sif. How sad it is that the poor dog starts limping near the end of the battle. That Sif doesn’t want to kill the player (especially if you rescue it in Oolacile), but they’re duty bound to, to try and stop what happened to their master from happening to anyone else. Delving into the backstories of the characters in Dark Souls reveals similar sad tales, but they’re not all communicated as well as Sif. Miyazaki in the Design Works interview states that he wanted to convey the sense of pain and torment in the design of the boss Ceaseless Discharge, but most players saw little more than a flaming giant. Similarly, the general tone of the game was never one of power fantasy and triumph for me. I saw a deadly world of beauty and sadness. It feels like the reasons I found Lordran so enthralling to explore worked against any sense of accomplishment I felt after defeating the bosses. It makes me wonder if I’m even the target audience for the game.

Miyazaki said that the game’s difficulty is meant to impart a great sense of accomplishment. If that’s the case, then what kind of player is Dark Souls best suited towards? I would say the type of player that sees overcoming a difficult challenge as a badge of honour. They feel that triumph when they overcome the bosses of Dark Souls, and then can use that feeling to propel themselves forward. I think it’s this internal motivation of overcoming challenge that leads some to look for external validations by boasting about their accomplishments. After all, what good is the feeling of overcoming a great challenge if you have no one to share it with? But we’re passing over an unanswered question as we move from Dark Souls’ famed difficulty into discussing its intended audience. Is Dark Souls actually that difficult? Does it warrant the praise of an audience who is seeking to overcome its challenges for these badges of honour? I would say no.

It’s a strange assertion to make too. I got stuck on many of the bosses. I felt frustration. Some of the bosses caused me to not want to play the game for days at a time. Dark Souls certainly felt difficult as I was playing it, but I think that’s mainly because like I said before, Dark Souls doesn’t explain itself to the player. Working out what the game wanted from me required experimentation, a willingness to explore, or to check online for a solution. A lot of the games’ lessons I had already learned in Demon’s Souls and from my previous attempt at Dark Souls back in 2014, but now having completed the game, I couldn’t tell you how to craft a good weapon, how the magic system works, or what happened to most of the folks hanging around Firelink Shrine. Sure I reached the game’s credits, but I don’t feel like I gained a mastery or understanding over the game itself, and because of that, I feel like I might have wasted my time.

Perseverance and time

In an impressions video of Dark Souls 3 I talked about difficulty being an internal factor rather than an external factor. The difficulty of Dark Souls isn’t in the game itself but rather in how the player responds to the game. Perseverance and time. For a player to continue to play this game, they have to have the perseverance to continue to keep pushing ahead after repeated failure. They have to dedicate the time to keep coming back to Lordran in order to maintain that push. How much time are you willing to spend to overcome a challenge in a videogame? I’ve talked before how each player has to have that conversation with themselves for each game they attempt, because some games won’t be worth the time commitment in order to be able to push through the game’s barriers. Even then, depending on how obtuse the game is or how much fun the player is having will determine if they come back each time they turn the game off. Dark Souls was difficult to keep returning to, especially when I was stuck on a boss and I didn’t have any of the exploration I adored so much to placate me as I repeatedly threw myself into the meat grinder. If I hadn’t chosen to write a critique on the game, I honestly believe I would have never beaten it. I would have given up. To me, Dark Souls was not worth the time commitment, and I think that’s why I found it to be such a difficult game.

And this is me as a player using all the tricks at my disposal to get through it (well, except magic. I played a magic user in Demon’s Souls, and wanted to tackle Dark Souls with a melee build for a different perspective). I gotta tell you though. There were so many times that I thought about restarting my playthrough with a Pyromancer and following a guide through the rest of the game. Anyways, I’m saying this because when I was stuck on bosses, I used summoning, I looked up tactics online, and if a weapon, shield, or ring could give me an advantage, I’d take that advantage, and still, I found the game difficult. Now let’s move back to the community. Watching others play the game, it’s remarkable how many self-imposed rules these players abide by. They don’t summon, they don’t use magic, they don’t use items. Some challenge themselves by not healing during boss encounters. This feels like a continuation of the idea that overcoming the challenge of Dark Souls is meant to be taken as a badge of honour. If the game as is no longer presents a sufficient level of difficulty to overcome, why not up the ante? It’s like those players that spice up their Zelda runs by collecting as few heart containers as possible.

Scratching that itch

So let’s return to the start of the critique when I told my tale of learning to parry. Defeating Gwyn by parrying his attacks was insultingly simple. After the pain and frustration of pushing through the DLC content, the final boss was less final than I would have liked. I appreciated that Gwyn was not as hard as Manus (because fuck that), but the end of the game felt anti-climactic. Perhaps that’s why when the credits rolled and I found the game restarting in the Undead Asylum, I decided to at least play the tutorial. Maybe I could defeat the Asylum Demon when it first jumped down from the rooftops. I did. It felt great. I flew to Firelink and left the game there, for now. Just like after I completed Demon’s Souls, the pull to return to Dark Souls is strong. Not just to do another loop of the game with my character in New Game Plus, but to follow that guide with the Pyromancer, to see what I missed, and to have a feeling of conquering the game, because even with how easy I found Gwyn, There’s an itch left that I haven’t been able to scratch.

Part of that itch is the design itself. Dark Souls always restarts. It becomes exponentially tougher in New Game Plus each time through. The player is never the most powerful being in Lordran. It makes me feel like I always have unfinished business. There’s always a new challenge waiting for me, and alongside that new challenge is the same enjoyment of exploration that captivated me the first time through. I think that’s why other players impose these restrictions on themselves. Even if the base game holds little challenge for them, they’re still drawn to the world, and they find ways to make it worth their while. If beating Ornstein & Smough no longer warrants a badge of honour, beating them with no summons, or with an underlevelled weapon might do the trick. Remember that difficulty is just perseverance and time. If a player can justify the time to themselves, then they should feel that sense of accomplishment Miyazaki was wanting to instill, no matter the challenge.

So while I didn’t enjoy my time in Dark Souls, I’m glad I was able to play through it. I think at the end of this project, I have a better understanding of the type of player this game was made for. I’m not that type of player, but even I experienced sprinklings of their motivation. My favourite moments in Dark Souls were exploring Lordran. Not knowing what was around each new corner, and the tension and thrill that came with discovering what lay at the end of each new path. It’s also where I experienced frustration as cramped boss arenas and blind corners made many fights more infuriating than I wanted them to be. For good or ill, it’s the layout of Lordran, far beyond its interconnectedness that lies at the heart of Dark Souls. Where the enemies are placed, where the treasure is placed, and what is beyond each fog door. It’s this layout that keeps those that love the game coming back, and its what can frustrate new players enough to never load up the game again. I think it can also convert the former to the latter given enough time and perseverance. Funny that.

Questions, thank yous, and what’s next

Now I’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the difficulty of Dark Souls? Do you agree or disagree with my conclusion that it’s the world the keeps people away while also pulling experienced players back? What is the most memorable experience of your time in Lordran? I’d love to hear all about it down in the comments. This video took some time to research. As you can imagine, a lot has been written on the Souls series over the years, and I’d like to thank Critical Distance for archiving some of the best articles, vidoes, and essays in their critical compilation of the game. It helped me out a lot. Links to the compilation and to all the works that informed my understanding of Dark Souls are in the description. And there we go. Dark Souls done. I’m changing gears for the next critique. I’ve always wanted to play through Prince of Persia. The 2008 reboot. The one with the cel shading. So I’m going to do that and write a critique on it. Hopefully that won’t take as long to come out. We’ll see. For everyone still watching, thank you for your interest and your patience, and I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.