The Green Hill Zone is one of several hilly areas with one of the most unusual configurations I’ve ever seen.  It looks less like an open plain and more like a natural roller coaster.  There are long stretches that go downhill, with the upward inclines much further down the line, by which point anyone wishing to travel quickly would have reached an incredible velocity, causing minimal deceleration.  Adding to the chaos, there are flips, jumps, and loops put in everywhere, along with powerful springboards that can launch anyone into the sky and come in two varieties: red and yellow.  Of the two, the red are more powerful by far.  I’ve been told that the sentient animals love to race through here, and as far as I can tell, the formations are completely natural, aside from the springboards, of course.  As dangerous as it is, this area is unparalleled in enjoyment for those who love traveling at breakneck speeds.

Long after my time there, I had a dream that Green Hill Zone wasn’t quite so green, but an indescribable combination of gold and flaming orange.  The brown checkerboard dirt wasn’t colored any differently, but the blazing grass and palm fronds gave it the illusion of being a lighter color.  The stems and leaves of the large flowers were this color as well, and their purple petals stretched and spun in the sunlight just as ardently as ever.  The golden, spinning rings were much more yellow, which met the new aesthetic quite well.  Even the totem poles’ faces had adopted this new palette.

I headed forth, running as fast as I could, while still taking in the scenery, much more attentively than usual.  I noticed – possibly for the first time – a plant that resembled the agave, except crystalline and, of course, flaming orange.  The first one that I noticed was near some levitating chunks of ground – complete with grass on top – that floated up and down, providing transportation to the higher levels of the hills.  I stopped when I reached a rope bridge to admire the massive body of water all around, as well as the shimmering waterfall in the distance.  Further out, there were lots of mountains, which cryptically seemed to have no vegetation.  Noticing this for the first time, I realized that I’d never been out that way.  After a moment, I continued down the track.

Eventually, I reached a solid wall with a yellow spring in front of it.  I leapt upon the spring, which sent me skyward.  I landed upon a land spur, which began to crumble beneath me, so I quickly dove into a tunnel.  I entered a bit too hastily, which caused me to tumble down a long, winding shaft, and when I emerged, I was still rolling much faster than I’d have liked, but was laughing hysterically nonetheless, much as when my pet shoved me down a flight of stairs for her own amusement.  I was fortunate enough not to have crashed into a wall and broken my neck.  I mischeivous spark caught fire in my mind, and I’d decided to run full tilt through this area.

Through the land I ran as fast as I could; my silver hair whipping about in the gale force winds created by my speed.  It was such a thrill, almost as though I were flying, despite remaining earthbound.  A massive loop unfolded before me, and I’d decided to charge right into it.  Just before colliding with the sharp vertical slope, I had one of those “what am I doing!?” moments; if you’ve ever taken someone up on a dare as a child, then you know exactly what I mean.  I hit the wall, ran up it, along the ceiling, and down and around the other side; the feeling was incredible.  I kept screaming through the plains, laughing as I went, but suddenly, I had to stop; there was a massive waterfall right in front of me!  I was too late; as my heels rent hunks of grass and sod from their resting place, I slid ever closer to the powerful cascade, eventually crashing right into it.  Standing up, soaked to the bone, I’d realized that it was time to slow down.

Having had my fun, I moved on – a bit more carefully now, no matter how tempting it was to give my hair a natural blow-drying – until I encountered a large boulder.  I’d seen dozens of these when I was awake, but their shimmering periwinkle color was so much easier to notice now in contrast to the golden orange all about.  Just on the other side, there was a caramel-colored orb floating in the air.  Attached to it were several links of chain to which a platform made of a few planks, which swung back and forth like a pendulum, was attached.  I leapt upon it, riding it to the other side; having learned a valuable lesson when I was very young, I quickly leapt to solid ground to avoid motion sickness.

After a time, I reached a solid wall that had a strange appearance to it.  I had the option of using springs to ascend the cliffs, but I knew another way.  I attacked the wall, smashing through the softer dirt and creating a tunnel to the other side.  I tumbled through another small tunnel, which spat me across a chasm with sharp spikes at the bottom.  As I rolled forth, I panicked and dug my heels into the ground, successfully this time.  I’d stopped just before touching a red spring, which would’ve thrown me backward to my grizzly death.  As I pushed on, I passed a lamppost, the head of which spun and turned from blue to red as I passed, and I ran at a consistent speed to keep safe from the next obstacle: a long, rotating pole with thorns in a spiral pattern.  The trick is to run inside of the curve in order to avoid stepping upon the sharp spines.  Soon afterwards, I reached two small floating platforms in an open area.  I climbed onto one, sat down, and admired the view as it gradually faded in my waking moments.

Sometimes, we have much more courage in dreams than we do when we’re awake.  It’s that dulled sense of inhibition and the unfiltered wild thoughts bombarding it that make even the most suicidal of stunts seem like a good idea.  These are not necessarily bad ideas, however; they allow us to experiment with things we ordinarily would not in a relatively consequence free environment.  These might lead to new explorations within our own mind or even translate to new-found valor in real life.  The irony, of course, is that doing so when you’re aware that it’s a dream causes no such revelation; when you’re aware of your situation, then you have control over the details, potentially changing the results of your actions.  Paradoxically, it is the illusion that teaches the most real of our lessons.

These weren’t your typical thorny shrubs; within them were little worlds of their own.  You’d not likely guess it, but these areas are among the coziest I’ve ever seen in all of my adventures.  When you’re up there, nestled within the thorns, and there are countless wonders to explore.  Not many would expect this because we’re so much larger than the thorny shrubs that we encounter in this world, and having made my way into the middle of one as a child, it was difficult for me to appreciate the microcosm amongst all of the pain and blood.  Given that it is very difficult to shrink yourself down, finding a much larger version is the way to go to discover the world within.

Today, I’m not going to talk about the lovely green wonderland in the sky, though; that is a story for another time.  No, today, I’m going to talk about a similar area that was colored quite differently.  There’s a long stretch of brambles high above even the castle atop the towering island known as Screech’s Sprint.  The area got its name from a a darkly-colored bird known as Screech, who liked to race through the area.  It is said that he shows up every evening around sunset.

I arrived at such a time; the thick brown vines twisted and wound far in the distance among the clouds as the sky turned a soft purple.  The vines upon which I stood, which had planks upon them to prevent my injury, were thick and brown with a hint of orange, almost like a very dark rust.  Lighter brown bunches of leaves grew from them as well, and the thorns themselves were a subtle yellow, almost like slightly overripe bananas.  Occasionally, you’d encounter small plants that looked like bunches of grapes, but upside down and green; I believe that they were native to the island.  Completely enchanted by this old favorite in a new color, I began my journey.

I had to move quickly in order to leap over the large gaps in the planks, some of which were rather deep, coupling the threat of a deadly fall with that of the already deadly impalement.  Eventually, I reached a wall of brambles higher than myself.  With a careful and powerful leap, I managed to clear it, though I had little time to think; certain death was just beneath me, and all that there was to save me was a few vines.  I grabbed onto one for dear life and made my way across the rest of them, wishing that I’d had the opportunity to look before I’d leapt.  There were several more of these little traps, leaving my continued survival up to my reflexes.  The next one had a horizontal rope, across which I slid, terminating in a drop down to a set of planks.

I ran along these planks just a bit longer until I reached a dead end with a single vine leading straight upward.  I quickly climbed to the top, past another bramble wall.  Luckily, reaching the top had granted me a much better vantage point, so I was able to see where it was that I could safely land.  I leapt across some of the largest gaps in the area, finally landing in front of an impossibly long stretch of thorny death.  I stood there for what seemed like hours, trying to figure out where to go from here.  I sat down for a short rest and lost track of time.

After a while, I stood up, and my hair felt a bit lighter; it was floating!  It was then that I noticed the strong updraft coming from right in front of me.  I leaned into it and it supported my weight almost perfectly.  I just let myself go and I was flying!  Oh, the wind embracing my body; the thrill of weightlessness; it was like a dream come true.  I flew around wildly for a while before deciding to continue my journey.  It was then that I ran into a dark figure; it was Screech himself.

He took off ahead of me, and I playfully gave chase.  There was no logical reason for it; I was just caught up in the moment.  We zipped around corners, through tight corridors, and everywhere else along this natural race track.  I’d lost any sense of danger by the time we’d entered the labyrinthine part of the race.  There were S-shaped curves, multiple pathways, and impossible shortcuts, one of which I’d risked a bit too recklessly, scratching my cheek.  Even the minor blood loss wasn’t enough to bring any sense of sobriety to me; I was far too intoxicated by the thrill of it all!

We continued on, heading through a wide zigzag, which turned out to be effectively much tighter than it had looked, due to the incredible speed at which we were traveling.  I continued this dangerous slalom comprised almost entirely of perpendicular turns until I saw the end: a wall of brambles descending from the ceiling that was too low to avoid!  I panicked, descending as quickly as I possibly could.  The last thing that I remember is a face full of planks headed in my direction.  I blacked out for what seemed like an instant, awakening not far from where I’d thought myself to be, lying face down.  I sat up, wondering what had happened.  Was it all just another dream?  An itch upon my cheek began, suggesting otherwise.

Any grizzled old warrior can be an explorer, but to be an adventurer takes something special.  You can see every planet in each of twelve galaxies and still be nothing more than a mere explorer.  An adventurer is someone who has adventures, and that means approaching each experience as something special.  Where an explorer might just see a set of obstacles, an adventurer sees something far more grand.  It just foes to show that the old saying holds true: outlook is everything.  As you grow older, you can become cynical and bitter, and people might think you to be a witty, world-weary traveler, but wouldn’t it be much more rewarding to still enjoy life?  Never lose your childlike sense of wonder, my friend.

This particular dream was my favorite, and was among the first of them.  The colors were nothing short of stunning in almost every place I visited.  Not only the colors of the land, but also the colors that the robotic inhabitants had adopted were a glorious new shade.  The part of the dream of which I’d like to tell you today takes place in the mechanical factory.  The strange thing about it is that it’s vaguely reminiscent of a memory or another dream I have – I cannot remember which it was – of a trip to a neon-lit ice cream parlor.

My entry dropped me into a bold-colored wonderland.  The walls, floor, and ceiling were of a dark color between blue and cyan, almost like the spectral opposite of orange.  The columns with their candy-striped grooves were also this color.  Looking into the distance, gears, pistons, and shafts of a gorgeous shade of purple pumped and turned in the darkness.  The gray conveyor belts had flashing arrows of dark magenta to indicate their direction, and the belt itself was colored two shades of coral.  The way the colors played together created a lovely dark palette.

This new configuration was very dangerous, however; flying leaps of incredible precision were required to travel through without falling to a grizzly death in the powerful machine parts below.  Nevertheless, I continued on, eventually reaching an old nemesis from the factory in the real world.  There are these long chains with spiked compactors on their ends, which drop from the ceiling when the motion sensors detect something near them.  It is a rather efficient way to design such a thing, but very dangerous should someone need to go inside for maintenance.  These were now clad in an indescribable bronze-like color, which – while it stood out against the other colors – went aesthetically well with everything else.

As I pressed on – despite my own peril – little else in the way of new elements came my way.  Nonetheless, I was impressed simply by the configuration of everything.  There was something just a bit cozy about the tight corridors with the compactors.  The way that belts led into a deep pit underneath another belt just struck me, not that I could stand upon it and admire the scene for very long.  In fact, the many corridors were all broken by vertical shafts of one sort or another.  I pondered their purpose, as nothing seemed to be falling through them.

At the end of the last corridor, the area opened up a bit.  There was now a vast expanse of conveyor belts suspended over a deep chasm.  At the end of this particular expanse was a dropoff into an area with layers of conveyors.  Below this new room was an area that seemed to be a thematic repetition of the beginning of the factory.  I knew better, though; this was the intense marathon before the control chamber, just as it had appeared in the real world.  Putting my skills to the test, I charged through it as quickly as I could, impressing myself as I accomplished my goal.  In the corridor just before the control chamber, the walls had a very pretty purple zigzag pattern upon them.  The chamber itself partially had this design, as well, though parts of it were open and showing machinery.

This was an area that particularly haunted me when I’d awoken.  I paused to think about it, and realized that this dream wasn’t all that different from the real world counterpart.  That’s the thing about dreams: people find them so strange that they’re unable to see how normal they can also be.  Because all of your thoughts are flooding vaguely into the specific one that has become the focus, it is the differences that become readily apparent.  It is likely because most dreams are not recurring that one cannot spend enough time with it to notice the similarities to its real-world counterpart.  It would make sense that such similarities would exist, too; after all, our dreams are based upon the experiences we’ve had when we were awake.

+ Object editor can potentially keep the series’ novelty alive
+ Improved production values all around

The Bad:
- Core gameplay is wearing thin
- Editor interface is restrictive and awkward
- Open world structure is oversimplified and unnecessary
- Several unforgiveable feature omissions

The history of Scribblenauts is a rocky one. The series has gone from being a behemoth of media hype, to an utterly disappointing initial release, to an inspiring sequel success story, and finally, with Scribblenauts Unlimited, to a zombified IP that developer 5th Cell can’t figure out what to do with. Oh, and there’s an iPhone game in there somewhere that nobody cares about.

On the surface, the games are extremely similar. Every one of them is about summoning an entire dictionary’s worth of objects to solve the pathologically mundane problems of the world around you. Or, more likely, they’re about messing around with as many mythological creatures, household objects and personified abstract concepts as you like. This seemingly impossible task has always been impressively accomplished thanks to the game’s simplistic graphical, AI, and movement styles, but each game has had different ways of going about it. The original involved ill-conceived “action” levels and a horrible stylus-only control scheme. The sequel focused on clever, multi-step puzzles and the novel inclusion of adjectives. Unlimited’s big conceits are an object editor and an open world structure…and it screws up both pretty badly.

The object editor was, of course, a natural fit for the series, combining Scribblenauts’ “write anything” philosophy with the “draw anything” philosophy of Drawn to Life, 5th Cell’s other notable property. In theory, it would have created something truly unlimited, unbound by the inevitable restrictions of copyright laws and ESRB ratings. And while it kind of still does that, the creative process is put through the agonizing wringers of a clunky interface, limited behavioural controls, and some really bizarre design decisions.

“Because I Can”: The Game.

For instance, you’re required to select a base object for your creation, from which your creation will inherit behaviour and hit boxes, and which you can modify to suit your needs. Fair enough…until you realize that you can’t remove a base object’s torso, change its hit boxes at all (even after removing limbs), or equip it with clothes within the object editor. So if you, say, want a character to wear a different shirt, you need to start the creation from scratch with a different base object. Obviously this was designed to keep the animation engine from imploding, but couldn’t that have just been accomplished by labelling objects as specific body parts? And just to make the process as frustrating as possible, you can’t test base objects beforehand, because there’s no preview for either appearance or behaviour.

And that’s just the “really bizarre design decisions” part. The editor also suffers from an interface that is both overly simple and overly uncooperative. Just to name a few problems: objects must be resized equally in horizontal and vertical directions, nothing can be moved or rotated using exact values, and the hit boxes used for colouring and selecting objects are completely broken. Finally, while the list of behaviours a created object can have is impressive, the inability to apply reactions to specific objects outside of broad categories is a huge missed opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong, people are making some great stuff with the object editor, and if you can remember what you’ve downloaded, they can make for some novel puzzle solutions. Personally, I was able to make a reasonable facsimile of Tim from Braid, complete with the ability to create a nuclear explosion whenever he examines star-related things (go play Braid to get the joke…better yet, just go play Braid, it’s a much more worthwhile puzzle-platformer). But those ten seconds of novelty were not worth the disproportionate amount of time I spent struggling with the object editor, especially not when vastly superior creation tool/game hybrids like Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, or Spore exist.

This is the best part of the game. There, I just saved you thirty bucks.

But enough about the object editor. What about the core gameplay? Well, the simple answer is that if you’ve never played a Scribblenauts game before, you’ll have a great time. Summoning a lion to duke it out with a cyborg is as much fun as it sounds, and doing so while flying around with a pair of wings, 3D glasses and a chainsaw in hand has a certain audacious charm to it. Additionally, by its very nature, the series has always been a gold mine of easter eggs and references, and Unlimited continues that tradition with clever allusions to everything from Wallace and Gromit to Dodgeball, and a variety of silly internet memes as summonable objects.

However, if you have played a Scribblenauts game before, the experience will be oddly lifeless. The obvious reason for this is that the series’ formula doesn’t really lend itself to sequels; once you’ve been given the ability to summon everything, where do you go from there? Anyone who really enjoyed the previous Scribblenauts will probably have exhausted their vocabulary of entertaining summons, and this game doesn’t have the significant technical improvements and dictionary tweaks the first sequel had to keep things interesting.

But the worst contributor to the game’s rapid loss of momentum is the open world structure, which just reeks of a publishing executive who realized that open world games are popular without understanding what makes them good. I get the thought process: if it’s fun to summon Cthulhu, it must be even more fun to summon Cthulhu in the middle of a populated city, right? But in practice, all it did was replace the smart, controlled puzzles of the previous game with a thousand tiny, simple, unsatisfying ones. The game gives you the ability to highlight which characters have problems to solve, but all it does is highlight the problems with this kind of structure: everything between the puzzles is a waste of space.

Despite the title, object editor, and larger levels, Unlimited feels significantly smaller than its predecessors. Previous Scribblenauts games allowed you to replay old puzzles using different solutions for more rewards, which forced you to flex your vocabulary and come up with the most absurdly entertaining solutions for each one. It was the perfect system; the standard solution could be reached with casual play, but squeezing every reward out of a puzzle required creativity and concentration. Unlimited has completely removed this wonderful system in favour of making each puzzle solution as broad and bland as possible.

Going through Unlimited‘s huge levels feels more like a checklist than a game.

But the most glaring omission is the absence of a level editor. Yeah, you read that right. The game that’s all about the ability to summon and edit any object, theoretically allowing the player to create anything…doesn’t have a level editor. It gets better: both Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts had level editors, yet Unlimited doesn’t. And the real kicker? If you summon a “level editor”, it will create a computer…with a screen showing the old level editor. Considering the game already isn’t doing much to stand out from its predecessors, and some developer went out of their way to say, “Yes, we did used to have this very robust and theme-complimenting feature”, this omission is lazy if you’re feeling charitable, and insulting if you’re not.

About the only other “feature” advertised about Scribblenauts Unlimited are its improved production values that take advantage of the hardware of platforms other than the DS. And to its credit, they are noticeably improved. The series’ art style has never had a strong sense of identity, but the grainy graphical quality of the early games has been cleaned up nicely, so while not exactly memorable, the graphics are pretty enough to look at. The improved technology seemingly influenced the audio design as well, as the music now has more variety, atmosphere, and overall cleanliness to it. And finally, while I’m not a fan of the level design from a gameplay point of view, I have to admit it’s neat to see how many environment-related puzzle opportunities they were able to stuff into each area.

As a standalone game, Scribblenauts Unlimited is a charming but flawed novelty. As part of its franchise, it’s a cheap, narrow-minded stalling tactic. The Scribblenauts experience could have been conveyed with three games: one to introduce the concept, one to polish it, and one to provide the tools for perpetuity. Unlimited could have completed that trifecta, but the tools it provides are so inadequate, and the actual game attached to them is so misguided and stale that it looks like we’ll have to wait for at least iteration number five before we finally get truly unlimited Scribblenauts.

Score: 3/10

I have actually seen this world, and while most of the stories are true, those weaving the myths here on Earth got a few things wrong.  Ragnarok did eventually occur, but due to an unforseen turn of events, reborn!  After Ragnarok, a dimensional rift known as the Seraphic Gate was opened.  This was the portal to another world of high technology, and likely a society that had intended for Ragnarok to destroy Midgard et al. in order to clear a path for their colonization.  I’d decided to wear a silly-looking disguise, braid my hair, and dive in to explore.

I first endered a pale, gilded corridor with quadratic etchings everywhere.  In fact, everything was quadratic in shape, almost as if designed by a machine.  Much of it seemed to be comprised of cubes with similar markings.  There were sets of two pillars – one from the ceiling and one from the floor – reaching out to each other with rays of blue energy streaming between them and a silvery-blue crystal suspended therein.  The wall had an intricate pattern – some kind of insignia – embossed onto it, but there were cracks in it, through which I could see something beyond.  Everything was black except for several bright green symbols floating through it; was I in some sort of computer program?  Passing through the bunch of crystals before me – which emitted a bright light when I neared them – I headed through the door.

I was in a corridor with the same features as the previous room, most of which were larger in here.  Once I made it through, I was in a larger chamber with floating platforms.  All around the chamber were the same suspended crystals, except that these had been bisected, inverted, and put back together, forming a sort of crude hourglass shape.  There were more cracks through which I could see the black void with what I’d assumed to be coding, and still pondered whether it was some sort of display or whether I was in a virtual world; I couldn’t quite figure it out.  After navigating a very long sequence of chambers, I reached a small room with a giant glowing blue sphere.  My curiosity got the better of me, and I approached.  When I got close enough, it emitted black rays of energy and I was pulled into its center.

Still screaming for my life – assuming I’d have had my atoms travel through it single file, broken down for nuclear fusion fodder, or that I’d meet some other horrific fate – I emerged in an area that was similar, except for its coloration.  Everything had a reddish hue to it, including the sphere behind me, which was evidently a warp point.  This purple version of the blue orb looked even more menacing than its counterpart.  After a moment, I left the room and continued onward.  I came out into an incredibly tall room with more powerful versions of the blue rays holding the crystals in midair.  A few enormous chains could be seen in the distance, as well as what appeared to be circuit boards in the other direction.  These circuit boards were what was visible through the cracks, rather than the customary void.  Much of this area’s layout was similar to that of the pale gilded area; a fact that I noticed when I entered another large chamber with floating platforms.  The void was once again visible, but now pink hourglasses emitting a very bright light hung high on the walls.  I headed back and forth through a vertical zigzag until I reached a series of platforms separated by thinner chains.  I decided to shimmy across, stopping at the various platforms along the way.  One of them was shaped like a massive jewel that had been cut for an elaborate ring.  I eventually encountered a new sight: another split pillar, but instead of blue rays and a crystal, its inside contained a black pillar with green coding running through it; perhaps they were all displays, after all.  Finally, I reached another warp point and entered it.

I arrived in a third area, this one clad in green, which was the strongest of the colors so far; it was far more than just a hue.  The sphere behind me was tinted a lovely shade of cyan by this new coloration; did the material of which this place was built have some sort of interaction with the energy?  It wasn’t long before I found a floor plate with a black and green shape emblazoned upon its center.  I pondered its nature for a moment before continuing on through the most labyrinthine area yet.  The green area was enormous and filled with warp points, which caused me to become lost and wander its chambers and corridors for hours before I had any idea of where I was going.  Sooner or later, I got my bearings and headed up a long shaft, through a large chamber, and into another warp point.

When I reached this final area, I was in awe of its stark beauty.  Everything was silvery, but darker, almost like pewter or lead.  It was like some sort of lovely monochrome wonderland, spot colored with blue.  This area also had a lot of warp points, but it was small and tightly packed, so easy it was to navigate.  In fact, I was able to get through it without the use of a single teleporter.  It may have even been smaller than the first area, allowing me to reach the deepest part in mere minutes.  It was here that I beheld quite a sight: an altar with a treasure chest surrounded by two large crystals.  I had no idea what could’ve been inside, but I was quite certain that it was something not meant for my hands, and so I turned back and headed out.

There has been a lot of talk about civilizations far more advanced than our own.  Some of them have even been theorized to exist in our own world, but in a parallel universe.  What hasn’t been discussed, however, is the tunnel – so to speak – that connects the two.  Some may suggest it to be a long, winding tube of light, and that would make sense for a natural corridor.  What if, however, the advanced civilization were to attempt to build a tunnel of their own between realities?  Barring the mechanics of it all, how would it look?  How large would it have to be?  Would creatures from both universes start appearing on different half-planes of existence within it and begin hybridizing with each other’s DNA?  It is a concept so far beyond our own understanding that even trying to use any sort of logical reasoning on such a thing would sound like nothing short of madness.

Please do know that the following spoiler tag is not intended as an excuse to geek out over the ending as a form of catharsis. Following my part 1, I still wish to address several components of the game – not just its story – however in doing so I find that certain story elements, themes, and actions are required to complete my thoughts.

What I do hope you’ll gain from this portion of the review is an appreciation of how the game reveals its story between the combat, the unique ways in which the game toys with our gamer-grown suspensions of disbelief and logic, and how it makes us question the very way we critique a game based on proven design concepts.

**As has been foretold, there will be spoilers. This prophecy shall be fulfilled**

Storm before the Calm

I assume most reviewers are also in the habit of this, but when I play a game I intend on reviewing (and if the game warrants it), I take notes. When something I like happens, I make a positive note. When I come across something I think is wrong, or should’ve been handled differently, I add a negative note. I have a lot of negative notes about Bioshock Infinite. So do a lot of people, it seems, despite the overall review scores remaining so indisputably high. At certain points during my playthrough, I became angry over how things were progressing, and had the game continued on like it was in Finkton (featuring an uninspiring wave of room assaults), this review could have been wildly different.

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to call out a few of those negative notes here:

• Shop docks at certain times of the day; cool! Linear game is linear
• Searching is getting repetitive
• “must be magnetized!”
• Oh, these people like John Wilkes Booth; they must be the bad guys!
• Vigors do same thing: stun/hurt. Needs more interactivity with world to differentiate
• No drawbacks to opening tears, can always open more
• Elizabeth is super clippy
• Do I need surround sound to figure out where these enemies are yelling from?
• Stop turning my head to look at stuff.
• Searching is getting repetitive
• Comstock – character or caricature?
• Exactly how much of this is going to be explained away by time travel and multiverses?
• Number of times vigors aided in exploration: 2

Really any number of those criticisms should dock Infinite a few points, and taken together they depict flaws in virtually all measurable characteristics of the game, barring music (which we’ll get to in a bit); characterization, combat, graphics, exploration, story – nothing comes across as perfect.

Now some of these I still rate harshly, as I feel they could have been implemented or bettered with no real consequence to the overall message of the game. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pickups, excessive looting is only valuable towards exploration when the game world isn’t enticing to explore on its own; which in most cases the world of Columbia doesn’t need it – I’m not interested in the corpse at the back of the transport ship because of his bullets; I’m interested in the way he’s positioned implying that he committed suicide. And I love the spectacle each of the vigors bring to the table, but when that spectacle is devoid of meaningful separation from the rest in certain situations (which I see as inattention to level design, not inventory), they just become another throwaway combat tool in a game already overflowing with them.

Other criticisms I had diminished over time with greater understanding; chief among them my complaints about the game’s treatment of racism. Story be damned, the game does a pretty poor job at relaying any sort of complexities or subtleties of racism; it’s simply there in all of its bombastic glory (African, Asian, Irish, Jewish, and Native American prejudices are all portrayed as simple caricatures within the collective populace). Equally annoying is the middle-ground underpinnings of the Vox Populi rebellion, ultimately attempting to dismiss both sides of the coin as equally terrible. They’re not equally terrible. Racism is racism; it’s ok to dig your feet in there.

Subtle!

This all may be true, but on the other hand, racism isn’t really what the story of Bioshock Infinite is all about; it’s merely part of the setting. Likewise, Comstock isn’t as understandable or psychosomatically inclined as Andrew Ryan for he doesn’t have to be; he is merely a means to an answer. Bioshock Infinite is ultimately the journey of a man and a girl as they attempt to correct an error across infinite space; an error they both played a part in – it’s their story; not Comstock vs Fitzroy, and the racial implications over the game’s morality are more or less a red herring.

I’ll discuss some more of the game’s choices in a bit, but for now, let’s look at your very first one; your decision to throw a ball, either at an interracial couple, or at the announcer (Whom I think is Fink, but I’m not sure…memorable characters, right?). Now, if you think that this choice was a simple racism check to see if the person holding the controller was a heartless bigot thinking “Finally, a game that lets me be me!” I’d encourage you to think a bit deeper. Everyone (fingers crossed) will recognize that the announcer (or perhaps not throwing at all) is the morally correct choice, however the decision itself is far more jarring than if the event were scripted; not only casting a shadow over the sunny utopia you’d just trudged through, but immediately prompting you to participate in their violent belief structure.

Alternatively, some players will debate throwing the ball at the couple for different motivations; either the logical “to see what happens” trump card, or perhaps debating the benefits of blending in with the masses to not set off any alarms. If you’re thinking like that, you’re thinking like a gamer, and that’s where Infinite shows its true beauty.

The False Shepherd

In a game of prophecy, fulfillment, and predetermination, it should be noted that Bioshock Infinite behaves in a manner that is ridiculously cognizant of how we, the gaming community, play video games, and what we expect from them. It knows how to appropriate information, and disseminate situational awareness unto the player in ways we don’t fully understand, but still accept, only for that acceptance to be later called back into question in brilliant ways.

The decision to throw at the couple is one that has more “gamer logic” behind it than moral logic, thinking not about how right or wrong it is, but what will benefit the player if that outcome is chosen. The decisions in Bioshock, after all (to save or harvest the Little Sisters), had benefits on both sides along with their immediate moral implications. By prompting a choice even though one option is heavily favored on moral grounds, Infinite pulls back the curtain to show us that gamers are effectively betting on the house to provide for them an outcome stemming from either choice (in this case, I believe it’s whether the couple provides you with a gear piece in Battleship Bay, but that’s beside the point).

Well this escalated quickly

The rest of the game’s decision points yield similar experiences. Stop the man behind the counter or get stabbed; the only change will be Booker’s hand. Kill Slate or save him; he’d just turn up catatonic later if you did (heh, a clean Slate). That leaves the bird and the cage, but we’ll get to that one later. Point being, that there is no dramatic outcome beyond these decisions doesn’t just push the game’s own narrative of constants, variables, and a predetermined outcome, it’s a step that’s contradictory to how we as the gaming community value the choices we make, and for my money that’s a step in the right direction.

The mentality of choices within video games is reward driven as standard, with players not focused on the decision at hand, but focused on their end goal. Morality within these choices is an illusion (a real “False Shepherd” if you will) with questions like “What will get me the best equipment?,” or “How do I reach the alternate ending?” as the driving forces in discourse behind choices. In deemphasizing the rewards, we can approach the moral choices as exactly that; choices that pull us directly into the narrative to make, and ones that speak to our own morality.

Seeds of the Prophet

Of course, decision points are not the only way the game plays with the player. Irrational has constructed a masterful example of how effective foreshadowing can be towards emphasizing a twist, even against a readied audience.

For another example, let’s talk about the music in the game (which is positively gorgeous, since I haven’t mentioned that yet).

Here’s a question: When you came across a barbershop quartet singing the Beach Boys “God Only Knows;” what did you think? If you were like me, you teared up first, marveling at the 4-part harmony, but I mean after that. You most likely continued on, taking yourself back to the world of 1912, and writing the event off as a “non-canon” inclusion from the developer. Games are known for easter eggs and little 4th wall breaks from time to time (to be honest, they’re pushing towards requirement at this point), and the quartet’s appearance emits little more than a playful “what’s this doing here?” in response.

References with purpose

I don’t think anybody expected it to matter. It’s not a secret or easter egg. It’s not even non-canon. We later find out that this was by no means a 4th wall break, and that the dimensional tears were being utilized by Albert Fink who in turn was plagiarizing songs from the future. This was not simply “The Music of Tomorrow… Today” courtesy of Ken Levine and Irrational; it had meaningful ties to the events of the game. Suddenly the fantastic renditions of “Tainted Love,” “God Only Knows,” “Fortunate Son,” “Shiny Happy People,” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” get an even greater boost in value on top of their already enjoyable presence; what a beautiful way to toy with the player’s understanding!

The same can be said for the Luteces. One can discern by their 2nd or 3rd encounter that there’s definitely something beyond normal with them, although soon after their appearances can either be written off as a mediocre video game plot device, or possessing some sort of lazy justification like “they’re ghosts” or something similarly unremarkable (although not wildly inaccurate). As gamers, we’re so accepting of their recurring nature, as we ultimately see it all the time, and have grown accustomed to devaluing its awkwardness, so when we receive the ultimate reveal that not only is their apparitional behavior justified by the story’s logic, but they are in fact representative of the narrative’s final destination, its reveal is compounded. Infinite was (perhaps unfairly) put in the difficult position of delivering a twist to an audience eagerly waiting for one, and by changing the rules to be oriented around player intuition as opposed to the narrative itself, Irrational succeeded.

That’s not to diminish the work that went into the game’s more focused narrative plot twists; I feel they were just expected to be there. The team still does an impressive job at foreshadowing the eventual conclusion, with enough confidence in their writing skills to even offer end-game spoilers within the first 5 minutes of play.

3rd floor of the lighthouse, the ending is blown.

Irrational can so effectively hide their spoilers as they are relayed with dual meanings, using misleading context clues to distance themselves from their more secretive implications. For another example, we can look at the first tear we see Elizabeth open up. Did you see that you were looking into the future? Likely; but did you realize you were looking into an alternate reality as well? The tear Elizabeth opens up is into the 1980’s, but a few things are amiss; for one, “La Revaunche du Jedi” was the planned title of Star Wars: Episode VI before Lucas changed “Revenge” to “Return.” We also hear an original clip of the Tears for Fears song, even though it came out two years after Jedi hit theaters. It’s not an inaccuracy as some are claiming; it’s an alternate reality! Within 2 scenes of Elizabeth on camera, we’ve already seen that she can’t just peer into the future, but she can for all possible futures, and yet by the time we encounter Chen Lin’s beaten corpse we don’t feel as though we’re treading on pre-established concepts. Such is the construction of Bioshock Infinite, where Irrational can go as far as to sneak in a Star Wars reference and still be contributing to their overall message.

Deconstructing the Ludonarrative

The ludonarrative refers to a game’s narrative elements that are controlled by the player. As video games are a medium that is at times both passive and interactive, a ludonarrative is ultimately unavoidable and can either be coupled with the game’s fixed narrative (the narrative being fully controlled by the developers), or more often than not, placed in opposition to it.

“Ludonarrative dissonance” was a term used to describe the latter, coined by then-Ubisoft employee Clint Hocking in response to a narrative conflict within the original Bioshock. While the story’s fixed narrative places Jack in opposition to Andrew Ryan’s model of Randian self interests, the gameplay decisions made throughout the story are well aligned with the objectivism Ryan preaches. While not a dealbreaking experience in any sense, the notion of ludonarrative dissonance was certainly one of the most interesting criticisms levied against the original, and it seems as though Irrational may have taken that criticism to heart.

In terms of the overall narrative, I do not feel as though ludonarrative dissonance is present in Bioshock Infinite, and that is because Irrational has pulled apart the components of what feeds the ludonarrative, and has interspliced the ludonarrative across the video game as a whole with its own fixed narrative in mind.

As mentioned in Part 1, Columbia is a world driven by fatalism; the mindset of the populace driven by the guiding voice of the prophet. This extends to Booker and Elizabeth’s journey as well, for no matter how much they may try to fight it, their path is set on a linear track to the narrative’s final outcome. This does get a bit cloudy considering their actionable goals at one point are essentially a fight against their own fated narratives as well, however with the intervention of Old Elizabeth, the other Bookers and Elizabeths wandering the lighthouses, and the implied finality of the game’s ending regarding Comstock (which can be understood as a correction to a variable, not a removal of a constant), we can understand the game’s narrative as possessing a predetermined success.

The ludic contract is ultimately very similar; navigating the game, changing any number of given variables along the way (collecting as much or as little as desired, choice of weapons and vigors, minor decision points), but still reaching a pre-defined end. No choices you make during the game will lead to an alternate ending. In fact, in many cases, the player is even prompted without choice at all, further forcing adherence to the game’s final destination. Booker will take the baptism to gain entry to Columbia, he will flip the coin, he will take the letter from Old Elizabeth, and in a manner that openly mocks the player for their lack of options, he will give over his daughter to Robert. For both the story and the gameplay, no subset of variables will ever amount to a change in a constant.

This is not to say, however, that the applied use of fatalism is a lazy justification of having only one ending, or that choices, and even the prompts without choices, don’t matter along the way. Many writers have already pointed to the Lutece coin flip as an accurate foreshadowing of the major themes of the game; showcasing the idea of constants and variables from a narrative perspective with the Lutece’s inability to break fatalism (each of those chalk notches is a past Booker), and from a gameplay perspective in Booker’s limited choice in the matter (all he does is press to flip).

I like these odds

The scene doesn’t end in value there, however, as some players may have also discovered. In actuality, the scene isn’t just demonstrating a constant; it demonstrates a variable as well. While players have no choice in the matter, Booker may in fact say Heads or Tails. The coin is the constant, while Booker’s choice is the variable, only existent in the programming to demonstrate that a variable may exist alongside predetermined outcomes. It aligns with the narrative, but why would Irrational only limit this discovery to those who play the game multiple times (thereby witnessing Booker say both heads and tails)? I would suggest it’s because the ludonarrative has moved beyond the confines of the story itself, taking into account all aspects of interaction players may have over the game, including the act of playing and replaying the game. For such a simple variable, it possesses a great deal of value for the industry as a whole in understanding how  linear narrative exposition can be achieved through choice, even when choice is seemingly absent at first glance (in this case, the “choice” was the player choosing to replay; their own test against the game’s fatalism under an alternate set of variables).

Equally (if not moreso) impressive is the choice between Elizabeth’s bird and cage pendants, and its effects over the larger story. As with each of the other choices, this choice does not alter the course of the game, nor should it; to force a different outcome based on such a trivial decision would be ridiculous. As with the game’s music and secrets, rationalizations towards the choice at face value are reflective of dual implications that later present themselves more thoroughly within the narrative (at first blush it would appear the bird should be free of the cage, but in context of the story, the bird is the oppressor, and the CAGE controls the bird!). And as with the ludonarrative, its lack of consequence towards fatalism does not render it devoid of meaning, for in the context of the narrative, the act of choosing a pendent takes on a new significance; not one focused on a particular outcome, but of the choice itself. It’s not what choice you made, but that a choice was made that is important.

While there’s no escape from drowning at the hands of the Elizabeths, you may have noticed during that scene each of them did not have their pendant on. A few scenes prior, you may have noticed rowing up to the lighthouse that the Elizabeth you were with had on the wrong pendant, indicating that it was not the same Elizabeth you’ve been running around with all this time. While the pendant does not offer any game-altering scenarios, it does further the game’s narrative by providing a subtle visualization that the infinite worlds are beginning to merge together to form that one final fate.

By forcing players to choose a pendant, the game bestows a variable on the game’s Elizabeth players are invested in, allowing the player to notice if and when that variable has changed (and in her final moments, being dissolved completely). The “reward” for the player’s interaction is one that is to be observed, benefitting the player within the narrative, rather than the gameplay, for in accordance with the game’s established themes, they are two sides of the same coin.

Conclusion, part 2

It is worth acknowledging again that Infinite is beyond universal praise; it’s debatable qualities and flaws each becoming one critic’s blank page to another’s King Lear. In my own opinion, while not being a perfect game, or even necessarily a top tier performer within its own genre of games in terms of gameplay alone, Bioshock Infinite offers a type of innovation that few games can present beyond mere mechanical achievements; it offers a shift in methodology towards how both passive and interactive experiences within a game can be melded together to each further the same goal. At the same time, Infinite provides some key alternate viewpoints to common industry standards in terms of rewarding the player; valuing knowledge and integration of self more than tangible upgrades. It also demonstrates first-hand the practice of treating every component of the final product (no matter how small) as possessing a purpose that can be somehow tied back to its overall message, as opposed to playground insertions of developer fancy.

It achieves all this, but at the same time, it does not force the player to reconcile these acts, nor outright call them to the player’s attention. Infinite treats the player with a commanding amount of respect to discover all it entails on their own, despite the game’s unnecessary compulsion to twist the player’s head every now and then. Overall, the game concedes that although many gamers will reach the game’s end, not all will have arrived in the same way, again drawing parallels to the events of the game itself.

For better or for worse, Bioshock Infinite offers several alternatives to criticisms levied against many games today, delivering artistic curiosity on a grand scale that poses many questions to players and industry professionals alike. What does the player gain by being in control of a scene? Is such level of control expected, and for what motive? How does violence fit into the bigger picture? Can choice exist within linear circumstances? Infinite provides several answers, although not all may prove agreeable, and none completely overcome the game’s own inherent shortcomings in other areas. Even so, the game offers an experience that is absolutely worth having, both for its intrinsic value and its inspirational metacommentary. While many gamers will move on, either enjoying or detesting Infinite for a variety of valid reasons, I feel that Infinite’s methods of feeding its own narrative will fuel much discourse from developers, publishers, and enthusiasts for years to come.

Whether you are interested in visual novels or not will determine how this list will work for you. If you are an avid visual novel player/reader, this list will be very familiar to you, they are all well-known and widely praised. But if you have read only one or two, or a few, or none, then this list may be comprised of ten games you have never heard of. Some of these games contain adult themes, some of them are hardcore. If you do not read eroge by principle, you might not play some of them.

Anyway, if you have not played these games, especially the top 4, you are missing out. These games are all great experiences, and I am sure you will enjoy them. But why? Let us talk about that in each entry.

#10: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

SFW? Yes.

I have a feeling that this would be the game that everyone would go “FAIL WHY IS NOT ON THE LIST MY HEART IS BROKEN REAG” if I had ultimately decided to leave it out. And I seriously did contemplate leaving it out, not because it is not an amazing game. It is. But… is it horror? Really? I was not scared, furthermore, I’m not sure what was supposed to scare me. Am I too jaded? Have I desensitized myself to something which is present in this game? Anyway, everyone seems to consider this game real scary so I submit to the opinion of the majority.

999 is a 2009 game developed by Chunsoft. It seems to be the inspiration behind Herman Cain’s presidential campaign. Really? You didn’t get that joke? That joke is soooo 2012. Anyway, it tells the story of nine people (or persons) kidnapped by someone called zero (it’s also a number, get it? GET IT?) and they are abandoned on a ship and they have nine hours to escape or the ship will sink. They have to solve zero’s puzzles and reach the door number nine to escape.

This game is amazing because of the character interactions. Each of them has a distinct personality, and convincing background, and a game of suspicions begins, but they have to work together in spite of this suspicion. It is a very interesting look at the psychology of the characters, and therefore a very compelling story.

But I still don’t know what is scary about it.

#9: School Days HQ

SFW? No. You can play it in a way that it is, but come on…. you won’t.

A 2005 PC game developed by 0verflow which was also later ported into PS2 and PSP. You are Makoto Ito, a high school student who is a child of a divorce and lives with his unseen mother and may become the love interest of various high school students who are also in the school.

The reason that I have put this on # 9 is that I had problem deciding if it was really horror or not. It could not be a horror story at all, because if you make all the correct choices along the way, you may not see any of the horrific things. But make terrible choices – and I promise you, you will make terrible choices if you’re on your first playthrough without a walkthrough – you will end up with the bad endings, which are very infamously gory and violent and the game does become quite scary and dark. And I suggest you do so – it is not a nice experience if you’re the type who identify with the main character too much, but if you want a good story, the dark path is much more rewarding.

This game is interesting because the choices matter much more than many other VNs. While in many other VNs the choices make no change at all, or you can pursue a relationship with all the girls in a single playthrough, here each choice changes the dynamic of the whole game and affects other characters too, and therefore makes the end result quite unpredictable. It’s also prettier and more animation-like than most other VNs. It is overall an interesting experience that I recommend to everyone.

#8: Corpse Party

SFW? Yes.

This 1996 game is a dojin soft, which means an independent, usually nonprofit Japanese game. A “circle” called Team GrisGris developed this game with RPG maker for PC-9800. The story takes place in an school called Kisaragi Academy. There’s a closed school in the campus called Heavenly Host in which a series of murders took place some years ago. One day, the students of Kisaragi perform a ritual which transforms them into an alternate reality into the Heavenly Host school, and now they are haunted by the ghosts there. It is now your job to navigate and survive. The game has been also remade and released for PC in 2008, PSP in 2010, and iOS in 2012. There has also been an anime adaptation.

This game takes credit for starting it all. It is the first indie horror game. There are many great indie horror games out there, and this game broke new grounds for them. Its anime-style graphics and intricate plot, the fact that you have to replay the game many times to get all the endings, you might abruptly face game overs, all and all built up a lot of ground for the genre of visual novels as a whole, and horror visual novel especially imitates this game a lot. There is no doubt that this game will go down in history as a major factor in the horror genre and video games as a whole.

It also stands up the test of time and it’s really scary and fun, and also innovative even to this day, and you will enjoy it as much as those who enjoyed it back then. Sure, it might not be a masterpiece of characterizations and philosophical themes, but it is fun and entertaining as hell, so why not play it?

#7: Umineko no Naku Koro ni

SFW? Yes.

The name actually means When the Seagulls Cry but in English it is named Umineko: When They Cry. It is actually a series of stories and this is the third installment. It was developed by 07th Expansion for PC in 2007. There has been various manga and a 26-episode anime adaptations of the series. It has sold a lot and it is critically well received.

Eighteen people are trapped on a secluded island in a mansion. Murders ensue. Now they you have to investigate and determine whether these murders are natural or supernatural.

What I love about this game is the fact that it’s Gothic. My love of the horror genre is actually rooted in my fascination with the Gothic novel as a teenager, with novels such as The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, and the queen of them all, Anne Radcliffe. And everything that there is to love about these novels is present here. Dark, mysterious mansion? Check. Over the top characters who are not deep but fascinating nevertheless – vulnerable damsels in distress, hilariously villainous villains? Check! Looming sense of danger? Check! A creepy mystery with unknown origins? Check! How can people not love this genre – and by extension, this game?

Also, this game is similar to another famous novel – And then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which is, in my humble opinion, her best one.

#6: Divi-Dead

SFW? Nope.

This 1998 game developed by C’s Ware is another game with historical significance. Its English translation helped spark interest for the genre in the west. The story of yet another poorly-supervised horny student, one with a poor health record (that’s also popular in the genre). Ranmaru Hibikiya is his uncle’s spy in a school, and although he is skeptical about the investigations, but soon he is trapped in a series of supernatural events and mysteries that just get ugly.

Divid-Dead is not a flawless game. While some of the hentai scenes are integral to the part, some are just there to be there. The pacing is not balanced – some parts are boring [oh forgive me SSpecter!] because nothing happens and you have to labor through useless dialogues. Then the game suddenly becomes violent and scary and then suddenly a light-hearted porn scene.

But you still should play it because the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. That is, if you are a plot-junkey like I am. The plot is a labyrinth, and it gets more and more confusing, mysterious, and scary the further the game goes. People constantly acquire new personalities and change loyalties, every clue leads to multiple new mysteries, every answer brings up new questions. It’s a rubic cube of questions. And you have to play the game multiple times to understand the story fully.

#5: Gore Screaming Show

SFW? Not at all. Not even a single bit.

With a name which sounds like a Death Metal album by the Cannibal Corpse, you know what to expect from a game with that name and sure as hell it doesn’t disappoint. Developed by Black Cyc, this game also involves a student (Kyouji Jinno), who is also parentless (they are abroad) (you better get used to unsupervised high school libertines if you want to get into VNs), and also goes out of his way to woo the delicate race, but the game is not a high school dating sim because soon the elements of occultism and detective stories enter the frame, and he becomes the investigator of myths surrounding a monster who kills women on the forest on the behalf of his creepy aunt.

So, is this game violent? It is. Is there rape, murder, gore, and many other horrific events, there is. Is the violence over the top? It is. Is the sex gratuitous and disgusting? It sure as hell is. Then should you play it if you are not a psychopath? You should. The story is extremely compelling. It is so suspenseful, so engaging, that you are glued to your chair before the screen and you have nightmares every night. The game doesn’t let you go. The mystery is so horrifying that you just have to – simply have to – go on and find out the answer. The twists are all meaningful, and there is a great theme of loyalty and friendship undercurrent as well. The characters are real people. This game is not a needlessly violent festival of rape, it is a great story.

However, if you are the type who cannot stand the high levels of violent material and disturbing sexual imagery, stir clear of this game, but you’re missing out.

#4: Theresia

SFW? Yes.

A 2008 game eveloped by WorkJam and released exclusively for the DS. A fictional country ruled by a military dictatorship is at war. It follows the story of two protagonists who try to uncover their past. You start as a girl with amnesia who has to solve puzzles. The central mood of the game is mystery and ambiguity, and that is the driving motivation for you to play it, to unweave the mystery little by little with patience and trial and error.

This game is psychological, its story is mature and creepy. Maybe no other DS game (including 999) is so creepy and scary. It is also one of the few games that utilizes the full potential of the dual screen feature of DS. One screen shows a computer-generated image with a pretty good graphic (for DS) and the other a pretty hand drawn picture, and you can always see the map and then the writings and dialogues. It’s the most convenient way to play a VN.

The horror of this game is the embodiment of a mature and artistic attitude towards horror. There is no over the top violence (it is violent thought), no scare jumps, nothing. The game is actually quite slow. The horror creeps in from the atmosphere, the sensation of loss and confusion, the compelling mystery at the core, which build up to make you feel like an alien in a hostile world. It is psychological in the true sense of the word – it targets your weak spots as a human and builds its monument of fear there.

Do yourself a favor and do not miss this amazing, enigmatic experience.

#3: Shikkoku no Sharnoth: What a Beautiful Tomorrow

SFW? No.

A 2008 game developed by Liar-soft, a sequel to other “What a Beautiful” games. Fans of the series might chew my head off but I like this one more than Inganock- WAY more. Anyway, you are Mary Clarissa Christie, a girl in London in 1905, she suddenly develops a case of heterochromia – one of her blue eyes turn yellow. She begins to see visions and you have to uncover a mystery.

The plot of this game is incredibly complex. Not only there is a complex puzzle yo have to unweave patiently, that you have to repeat the game again and again, but there is more. A great immersive atmosphere, which leaves you in a state of awe and sublime in every step, enriched by steampunk and fantasy elements, a rich mythology behind the game, and its highly allusive nature. Like every other literary masterpiece, every line and word can be analyzed.

There are also some minigames! You have to survive by escaping from monsters in a turned based game. So it’s not all reading!

This game is truly avant-garde. You need patience and effort to understand it – but it’s worth it.

#2: Saya no Uta

SFW? No.

Literally meaning “Saya’s Song”, written by Gen Urobuchi and developed by Nitroplus and released in 2003. Fuminori Sakisaka, a medical student, receives a brain damage in a car accident and he develops a case of agnosia (copy/pasted from Wikipedia: ” a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.”) But it’s not the normal agnosia, as he perceives everything through a warped veil. The world appears to him like hell, with a black sky, fleshy buildings, and gory streets, and he perceives other humans as monsters. But then he meets Saya, a girl who looks human and beautiful in this grotesque world. He wants to stay with her in her quest to look for her father, and she agrees. They embark on a quest together.

You have to be able to tolerate much to go through this game. This includes the grotesque imagery, shocking and frankly disturbing sadistic sex scenes, unsettling music and sound, and the psychological burden of playing through one of the cruelest and scary games and stories of all time.

But then again, this is horror at its best. The gradual death of humanity, the way that the atmospheric mercilessness of the story numbs you and instills a psychological fear that will stay with you. “Fatigue” is usually an emotion not brought up in a compliment to a game – but if the works of art are supposed to let us experience all there is to humanity, from the darkest to the lightest, Saya no Uta will wear you down and weaken you, and that is why it’s great.

This is an experience of madness – a bleak, nihilistic look at human nature. In writing it is reminiscent of the cruelty Marquis de Sade, in visuals, of surrealist horror. If you are not weak, it is one of the best journeys through the madness you can find.

#1: Kara no Shoujo

SFW? No.

Developed by Innocent Grey in 2008, this game puts you in the shoes of Reiji Tokisaka. He was a police officer but he quit in a series of grotesque murders which took the life of his beloved fiance, and became a private eye. Now his old friend and colleague recruits his help to investigate a new series of murders similar to the old ones. At the same time, Toko Kuchiki, a high school student who studies at the same school that the murders take place in, asks Reiji to find her “true self”. The events of the past and present become entangled in more than one disturbing ways.

This game is more than its complex and intricate plot. Sure, the abundance of choices will make you play through the game many times and get stuck at moments many times before making the correct choices advancing through the plot. But in spite of that ultimately the plot and the central puzzle are not as complex as games like Divi-Dead or What a Beautiful Tomorrow. The central mystery is gripping and intense and certainly very scary, but there’s more to this game. Sure, the scepter of the serial murders is very scary, and you follow the story with gripping fear, but that’s not what makes this game great.

Behind the veil of blood, gore, a series of rather unnecessary porn scenes and some necessary ones, this game is an incredibly human story of grief, loss, and identity. Richly allusive, deeply symbolic, at its core it tells the story of husbands mourning their wives, wives mourning their husbands, children mourning their parents, people asking who they are and what is their place in a cruel and unloving world, trying to define themselves, trying to find their “true self”, sometimes willing to go to incredible violent lengths – sometimes gone mad. It is a story of unfulfilled dreams and unrealized dreams.

Toko Kuchiki remains one of the best written characters of all time, as she is all that there is to a typical character of horror detective story but more- much more- she is vulnerable and strong. Reiji is not a simple detective and perv, he is a human who filters the world through incredibly human eyes, and whether it’s his stoic sister, or the grieving inn-keeper, we discover that each of these characters are human, they are like us, and their condition shows the tragedy of humanity. As the game ends, as we approach the climax, it is not the depth of horror or excitement that the game takes us to, like normal horror detective stories strive to, it is the depth of sorrow, and empathy.

This is why I select this game as number one. I am a great fan of the works that take us into the darkest and the least desirable realms of our psyche, and Saya no Uto is such a game. But nothing beats a great paradox in art: behind the curtain of blood and gore and mindless porn, beyond all the murders and disturbing imagery, Kara no Shoujo is an incredibly humane game- with nothing but love for the embattled and unfortunate entity that is human.

Conclusion

Many people believe that VNs are inferior to books and games. They are not books and they are not games. They are an unfortunate hybrid without identity, a mindless gore and porn festival for juvenile people without conscience or human decency. If you suffer from such prejudices, you harm no one but yourself. The truth is, although the main body of VNs might be just that (and in what art isn’t? 90% of movies, books, and mainstream games are crap too), VN as a new, yet uncensored media provides opportunities for real artists to venture into the grounds and make experiments that would be impossible in any other market.

Each Wingly city is heavily saturated in a single color.  Kadessa is orange, Zenebatos is a yellowish-green color, Mayfil is a dark green, and Aglis is purple.  Since each of the cities serves a completely different purpose, it stands to reason that this is because the technology is different and simply gives off a different color of light.  It could also very well be that the Winglies did this to help differentiate the cities from each other; they were a very practical people.  They were so practical, in fact, that they even sought to find utility in their own emotions.  The main project at Aglis was to turn one’s courage into a powerful weapon.

I arrived via a teleporter, and the room in which I landed was filled with incredible technology.  It was mostly purple, with energy flowing through the floor.  There was a large green disc in the center with intricate patterns, which served as the teleportation pad.  There were large red hemispheres embedded within the walls, as well.  I’ve been in some very hi-tech areas before, and can usually figure out the basic function of most everything I see – even if I could never replicate it – but I was able to identify exactly two components of this room: a telepad and a door; I used the latter.  I came out onto a bridge with a round joint where it changed direction.  The pattern upon the joint had several radii running through it with some quadratic patterns within it; the design looked very familiar, but I could not place it.  There was a shimmering body of water far beneath me and a bridge leading into the distance.  The only non-purple thing in sight was a green telepad with three claw-like appendages sticking out from its circumference.  The edges of this bridge were of a grayish metal painted by the purple light glowing all around it, and had a few formations that looked like they’d served a purpose at one time.  I headed down the bridge.

I came out into the city proper, staring in awe at the vastness of Aglis.  Large structures – many of them resembling sea creatures – sprung up all around me.  As I stared up at what must have been the main city, I noticed that there was a ceiling of water above me.  It was then that I realized that I was in an artificial air pocket, no doubt maintained by the technology here.  Dams are easy to make – just build a wall – but to create something that can interminably hold the water above something as large as an entire city was one of the most unbelievable uses of technology I have ever seen.  Even more incredible was another one of those clawed telepads on a road high above me with an eternal purple waterfall without a source; water was above me, below me, and falling right in front of me, and yet I was completely dry.

Getting myself back on track, I stepped onto the telepad in front of me, which took me to another.  This one was on a very short road that terminated in another telepad, which I took to the next road.  This continued for quite some time, and I was rather impressed that, having had my molecules deconstructed and reconstructed so many times, I didn’t rematerialize with a misplaced eyeball or something of the like.  I headed down the road a little bit and groaned; there was a massive labyrinth of small roads covered in telepads, rather than one long road.  While the brilliance of the Winglies was evident in all of their architecture, their arrogance was even clearer, at least in Aglis.  Surely, this shift from practicality to frivolity was the cause of their downfall.  I was quite relieved to reach a room that was different from this.

The room was a bit more bluish than the rest of Aglis, but the floor sported similar patterns.  There were a couple of large machines sporting domes at their zeniths to be seen in here.  They must have been used in the manufacture of some kind of unnatural material, though everything here was so far beyond my level of understanding that I could be way off.  I headed through only to enter yet another mess of roads and telepads.  Sure, they were pretty, but they weren’t marked in any way that I could understand, so I had to go through what should’ve been a simple path by using trial and error.  There weren’t all that many, so it might not have been so bad, but my spatial reasoning skills are terrible, so I had a lot of trouble figuring out just where it was that I had landed each time I warped.  At long last, I’d reached a door, and so I entered it.

I was in a round chamber with a round hole in its center.  Light was pouring down into this hole, and I pondered its purpose.  I imagine that it must have had something to do with the nautulis-like machines along the edges, which had openings that glowed red.  I headed through the other doorway to find – much to my chagrin – yet another path of teleporters.  This area looked a bit like a sewer, because it had many grates  and machines that looked like they might be for processing liquid.  Struggling through yet again, I reached another chamber, feeling a bit dizzy.  This one was small in walking area, but many machines hung in the distance, and I wondered if this might’ve been where the Psychadelic Bomb was created.  The Psychadelic Bomb was the aforementioned weapon forged by people’s courage.  I know that it was manufactured in Aglis – and only one was ever made – but whether it was in this chamber or not remains uncertain.  I headed into the next area.

Another set of roads and teleporters!?  This was maddening!  They weren’t even trying anymore; it was just a bunch of aimless strips with telepads slapped thoughtlessly upon them!  In the distance, I saw only more of the same.  I begrudgingly started my long, tedious journey, trying to get near the enchanting blue dome I saw up ahead.  I got lost trying to find one that led somewhere relevant, and so I kept trying telepads in the hopes that I’d get lucky.  I hadn’t been feeling well for the last few minutes, and the headache that I’d been ignoring was only getting worse.  At this point, I was merely trying to get out of this accursed place.  On my way to a telepad, I dropped to my knees, unable to go any further.  I tried to get up, but all that I could do was tremble, sweat, and vomit over the side.  After a few minutes of this, I collapsed and slowly began to lose consciousness.  I have flashes of memories of small robots carrying me out of the city, and when I awoke, I was on a beach somewhere.  Perhaps the Winglies hadn’t calibrated the teleporters to the anatomical structure of other species, or I might’ve overused them, but I’ve no doubts that those accursedly prolific devices were to blame.

Technology is a curious thing.  We fantasize about what it might be a century from now, but when we get there, it’s never as we’d imagined.  We’ve long fantasized about flying cars existing in a time that passed by us over a decade ago, and yet we’ve seen no such things.  Instead, we have a device that can make video phone calls, give directions to any location, play games, create documents, and even serve as a makeshift flashlight or alarm clock, and it fits in the palm of your hand!  Our wildest aspirations never seem to be fulfilled, and yet we see new devices that are beyond anything that we could possible have imagined even thirty years ago, both practical and impractical.  Where will it take us next?

Another more recent institution within the great state of Massachusetts is Irrational Games; subsidiary of 2K Games, and creators of Bioshock Infinite. Actually… they’re about 3 blocks away from my house, so unless anyone notes otherwise this will effectively be the closest review of Infinite available by proximity to the game’s origins. That’s not really relevant; I just find it funny.

Whether convenient to my own narrative or not, Bioshock Infinite actually shares a lot in common with the battles of Lexington and Concord; they are both deeply rooted in American history, they were by no means perfectly executed, they each were the result of a plan a long time in coming (good lord, delayed 3 times?), and each are representative of change to their surrounding circumstances; both mechanically and symbolically to similar effect.

To avoid unwanted spoilers, I’ve decided to break this review in two; this part will be written for those that have and have not yet experienced the game. To save you some confusion at the outset; while not without its own flaws, I adore Bioshock Infinite, and encourage anyone out there to give it a try, even if it falls in a genre you don’t always care to play through. The rest of this article will try to help tell you why I believe that on a mechanical/thematic level.

Part 2 is of course an unapologetic spoiler-fest where concepts in part 1 are expanded on, focusing heavily on story, meaning, and key inclusions along the journey. Would you kindly avoid it until you’ve played the game?

With that out of the way, let’s begin!

A City Upon Above a Hill

It may be a bit too early to dive into religion just yet, but it’s helpful to note the phrase “city on a hill” originates from the parables of salt and light (two concepts also familiar to Infinite‘s story) as part of the Gospel of Matthew, referring in many ways to an ideal governing state. Well, technically Jesus (by way of Matthew) meant something else, but that hasn’t stopped the term from appearing in American politics; the earliest use coming from Governor John Winthrop (a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) in his 1630 sermon “A Model of Christian Charity” in reference to Boston. It is this same principle that fuels the floating city of Columbia (named after the female version of Uncle Sam), albeit to an extreme; a beacon of light to shine over the world, designed to spread American exceptionalism and morality across the globe.

Columbia  is in many ways the “Anti-Rapture” (Rapture being the location of the first Bioshock); a setting not just physically divided (one floating among the clouds, with the other at the bottom of the sea), but founded on opposing ideologies to form a perfect society. Whereas Rapture was the product of Laissez-faire economics and opportunism, Columbia is principled by entitlement and fatalism (… and yes, that also means that like Boston’s Puritans, they’re a bunch of racists). Where Rapture was built to hide itself away from the world, Columbia was originally constructed with outward expansion in mind. It’s fascinating to observe the intricate details that separate the foundations of these two settings, almost as equally as it is to observe that looming behind their ideals awaits a similar outcome. Of course, another thing Columbia has going is it’s also a lot prettier.

Take a guess at who has the larger statue…Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, or Comstock?

Columbia is about as vibrant as any FPS will ever get; a geometrical marvel to observe with gorgeous splashes of color and cheerful adornments in every direction. The game world is constantly moving, even when you are not; with people walking the streets, conversations you can overhear starting in mid-sentence, disconnected buildings bobbing to and fro in the air, and docking at locations on schedule (although time is more or less an illusion in the game; you’re free to take as much or as little time as you’d like without any nasty side effects). While Rapture has already fallen to its dystopian state, Columbia offers a fully functioning civilization filled with shiny happy people (it’s somewhat refreshing that not everyone you meet wants to kill you) that make the surreal setting of the clouds seem almost obtainable; maybe a go at being a little less super-racist, but under the right settings, it might actually work out… provided we can muster the science to “figure out the floating city bit,” as Booker puts it.

The spectacle of Columbia is one that never grows tiresome either, as its scenery offers welcome changes from area to area. Your campaign through Columbia will bring your through several larger areas, each with their own aesthetic designs, color schemes, and brightness filters unique to that location; and while you will only be journeying through each of these areas once, they are no less memorable for the experiences they provide.

Red…is the price of liberty

Of course, the game is by no means roses and sunshine alone. The bright colors of Infinite are not always put to happy use; the game is also vividly grotesque during times of combat, as our own Ali Nazifpour has previously mentioned. Blood splatters everywhere, necks will snap, heads will explode, bodies will char, bits of flesh will be torn by ravenous birds… the game is gorgeously violent. The Bioshock series has always at some level dealt with the concept of extremism, to the point where I personally wonder if its focus on violence has become simply another avenue to exploit its extremist tendencies outside of the story and setting.

One really can’t get too far in a video game review without talking about game play, although in terms of praises, this may be Infinite‘s weakest link, while still being a net positive overall. The game frequently jumps between tranquil exploration and frantic combat, which is beneficial to a degree (it helps the player to take in the beauty of their surroundings after all), although for a large portion of the middle most every room you visit will require you clear out enemies before you can wander some more (a plus for some, a minus for others).

Combat I view as improved over the original Bioshock, shifting priorities to better focus on combo and choice-based tactics as opposed to the duck and cover standard of many other FPS games. While both Bioshock games feature guns and “magical” attacks (Bioshock‘s plasmids, and Infinite‘s vigors), they each value one over the other. Bioshock lets you hold on to every weapon type at once while needing to approach stationary machines to swap out plasmids. Infinite, on the other hand, allows you to hold on to each of your vigors (and on the PC they’re even readily interchangeable!), while limiting your weapons to your melee ‘skyhook’ (which is capable of some truly brutal kills), and two available weapon slots.

I’m a full advocate of Bucking Bronco, btw

I may in fact be in the minority here, but I’m actually in favor of the 2-weapon approach. I’d mentioned this earlier in a comment I made towards Gunstar Heroes, but I find value in providing an umbrella set of options to the player, but at the same time applying limitations to those options so to not burden the player in making strategic planning overly complex when the situation doesn’t necessarily call for it. Infinite maintains 13 different weapon types. Having all 13 of those weapons on hand can result in unnecessary pauses mid-battle; cycling through to pick a weapon of choice, seeing where you have the most ammo to spare, and then moving into a position that would benefit that weapon. Since none of the weapons really prove advantageous over others in any given situation, I think the limit is safely applied so that the urgency of the situation isn’t decreased, allowing the player to jump right in with the weapons they’ve grown most comfortable with. Vigors, on the other hand, I can see the benefit to keeping them on-hand at all times, as not only are they more entertaining to fire off than bullets, but there are also enemies immune to certain vigors (don’t use Devils Kiss on a Fireman, for example), they can be combined with other vigors for some inventive mischief, and vigors come with situational benefits as well (if you see soldiers standing in a puddle for example, hitting them with Shock Jockey will fry them).

Those same situational benefits extend to the rail system (where you can use your skyhook to hop onto a speedy track to either continue fighting, escape so your shield can charge back up, or make fantastic airborne melee strikes on unwitting enemies below), and Elizabeth’s “Tears” (which pull in other-dimensional objects that alter the battlefield, like cover spots, weapon/health stations, and robotic allies). Both of these inclusions offer some creative solutions to fighting outside the standard running and gunning, however they (along with incorporating a more dynamic need to change vigors) are somewhat underdeveloped in their overall use. The roller-coaster railways are terrific fun, and a welcome treat especially, however their presence doesn’t come up in the level design as much as I would’ve liked; just as there aren’t as many gasoline puddles, or water puddles, or electrical conduits in so many scenarios to make environmental use of the vigors as one would hope. These are all nice touches to help separate Infinite from standard FPS play, however that they all can be pretty effectively avoided (except perhaps on 1999 mode) still will likely leave many to resort to the duck & cover tactics the genre already employs so well.

This theme of underutilized functionality also spills over to enemy design (In particular the final uses of the Songbird and Boys of Silence come off as somewhat of a let-down, and I feel Handymen should’ve appeared more often), as well as to the non-combat exploration aspects of the game, where vigors only interact with the world in rare occasions (as opposed to the frequent machine hacking, rubble clearing, ice melting and more found in Rapture). The linear progression of the game limits much of the exploration to the immediate area through lockpicking, as well as slight backtracking to overcome several obstacles (locked chests, cyphers, secret switches). The game does not incorporate many puzzles into its game play, but one might also question whether or not the end product would be better off if they were present considering the mysterious “puzzle” of Columbia is far more interesting than any contrived lock & key mechanisms.

Really this may sound negative, but in reality many of these quibbles can be overlooked, as the end result is entirely serviceable, and still quite fun in most cases. In fact, it could be argued that many of these drawbacks I mention are in place to give the game its biggest chance at success. In an era where blood and guns take up the lion’s share of the games industry, incorporating them in Infinite may have given the game the freedom it needed to carve out its own complex narrative without great concern for its plausible market share. In structuring the game to provide tastes of so many ideas, players interested in experimenting will find an exciting set of tools to wreak havoc in a variety of exciting ways, while those that never fully diverge from a core FPS experience will be competent/invested enough to continue through the game, allowing it to maintain its strong focus on the game’s impressive narrative and major characters.

Voice of the people

Those characters are ultimately the glue that hold the experience together, and without them Infinite‘s floating city would simply come crashing down. With equal praises to writing, rendering, and voice acting, every character is wonderfully brought to life with emotive expressions, outstanding dialogue, and detailed backstories that are slowly expanded upon through in-game actions, and the aforementioned voxophone recordings (replaces Bioshock‘s audio diaries). Elizabeth is a triumph for video game characters, the Lutece twins are a whimsical mystery whenever they make an appearance, and Comstock is a man players will love to hate. Even Booker, who could’ve easily come off as the typical brooding gun-toting protagonist (or hell, an entirely silent protagonist like in Bioshock), comes off as endearing and likable. While I initially had my doubts about his mutterings, I immediately turned pro-Booker as soon as he learned what a voxophone was, saying “Just so we’re clear, I’m not paying for this.”

No really, thank God Elizabeth wasn’t a game-long escort mission

While there are other rewards with tangible benefits to the player scattered throughout Columbia (gear augmentations, ammo, money, infusions), it’s the voxophones that prove the most enjoyable to find, as they each reveal a tiny bit more insight into the greater mystery at hand. This devaluation of physical aid for expositional material is truly remarkable for how successful it becomes; far greater than the effect of the audio diaries prior. Of course, like Bioshock people may question Infinite‘s mode of storytelling, suggesting it may be better served as a movie, however this notion perhaps overemphasizes the game’s narrative (which is admittedly fantastic) without considering how so much is ultimately expanded on through interactive progression and discovery within the world at the hands of the player. Everyone has a stake in offering a deeper understanding of Columbia, from faction leaders like Fitzroy and Comstock, to a simple chef at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant, and such a feat wouldn’t be achievable in quite the same way in other mediums. Through your own interaction with the world, you really come to understand how the many citizens of Columbia live their lives, and under what morality.

Tear it all down

Morality really is a key theme in Bioshock Infinite despite that it doesn’t factor too much into the game play. Sure, morality is a key plot point within Columbia, in the founder’s attempts to protect the city’s “purity,” or in the reciprocal hatred feuling the Vox Populi rebellion, but these are just quality story beats. More importantly, morality is a concept that will impact the player in a few large ways before the game ends.

Much like Telltale’s Walking Dead from last year, Infinite is proof that morality in video games is one that is learning to evolve past its punishment/reward-based origins. A morality system typically includes a series of choices, the darker ones typically yielding a more profitable gain at the cost of your characters virtues, and good behavior likely rewarded with an alternate ending; such was also the case for Bioshock, where the player is confronted with the rather black and white decision to either save or harvest the little sisters. There is no alternate ending for Bioshock Infinite, and there are really only 3 decision points Booker is confronted with, each of which will not significantly alter the experience. They do, in fact have meaning, of which I will be addressing in Part 2, however it can be known that the outcome will remain the same.

Sure there are factions, but your own morality is not so clear cut.

Moreso than your actions, morality is something to react to when Infinite chooses to present it. Your first moral decision is (hopefully) obvious, making the less likely choice only attempted by those who would want to see what happens if they went along with it (likely on their second playthrough, no less). Perhaps both may be justifiable due to unforeseen complications, however that does not make the initial testing of one’s morality any less meaningful. Infinite proves that you don’t need a follow-up scene to be told that you had the right reaction to a decision; the important function was that you had a reaction, and a powerful one at that. Infinite offers such a subtle deconstruction of conventional morality in a video game while at the same time achieving its desired effect better than a bit of gold, or a special piece of gear ever could!

Conclusion

Bioshock Infinite is proof positive that an artistically-inclined video game experience doesn’t need to be limited to art-house games along the sidelines, and that games can still put their AAA-budgets to good use. Bioshock Infinite is not just a good game because it looks pretty, or has a neat plot twist, or incorporates some novel approaches to combat; it’s good because it does all that and more, weaving a narrative that builds with every step and action, not only foreshadowing its inevitable conclusion (oh, we’ll talk a lot more about the game’s extensive foreshadowing in part 2), but also by feeding off of the player expectations to think otherwise. Many of Infinite’s concepts will trade their meanings, defying not only their setting, and the series’ past, but their implications for video games as a whole, becoming as introspective as they are revolutionary in the process.

While the M rating is most assuredly accurate, Bioshock Infinite‘s story is truly one to behold for anyone wanting a compelling narrative, and the game itself isn’t too bad either. That’s it for Part 1 of my review, please be sure to check back on part 2 once you’ve completed the game, where I’ll be discussing story spoilers, creative exposition and fulfillment, and how one little pendant managed to change absolutely everything!

]]> http://www.gamingsymmetry.com/bioshock-infinite-review-part-1/feed/ 0 http://www.gamingsymmetry.com/black-omen-chrono-trigger/ http://www.gamingsymmetry.com/black-omen-chrono-trigger/#comments Mon, 15 Apr 2013 04:00:39 +0000 Alice Kojiro http://www.gamingsymmetry.com/?p=6629 You may remember the ruined world I visited in which time travel was actually possible.  Well, it just so happens that I was able to witness one of the events leading up to its destruction.  Due to an odd change in events, a massive, high-technology fortress went from the bottom of the ocean to floating in the sky, remaining there for millennia.  This structure was created in an era long forgotten to those alive today, who have vastly inferior technology.  Not understanding this mysterious monolith, the residents of the world gave it a name befitting its ominous nature: The Black Omen.

The Black Omen is truly a technological marvel.  It was crafted largely by a force that the world’s inhabitants call magic.  As you already know, I have a problem with the term, magic; “magic” is merely a name that humans give to a force they do not understand, whether it be technology or control over a natural force.  In this case, it is the latter; when the structure was built, the privileged humans wielded this force, enabling them to control fire, water, and even electricity without technology of any kind.  So, while The Black Omen has the same problem as The Mana Fortress – forces of nature are often ill-controlled by human technology – it at least interfaces with the humans that created it, resulting in slightly greater efficiency.

After flying through the air, I landed upon the deck, which was a narrow walkway with very intricate patterns upon it.  These patterns had a geometric shape – in this case, a square rotated forty-five degrees – with rays shining from them at many different angles.  I would later discover this to be a recurring motif throughout the fortress.  I entered through the main door and was in a massive labyrinth of corridors.  I was completely overwhelmed by how immense the whole thing was, so I stuck to the bland, steel elevated walkway, rather than leaping to the many doorways that lined the walls.  Further along this walkway, I looked over the edge to see all of the high technology powering it all.  There were so many components that I couldn’t even describe them all; the most noteworthy were long, orange poles that seemed to bring energy to every part of the fortress.  At the end of the walkway was a door leading into an area with solid ground.  The floors were of an indeterminate dark color, but had a differently-colored walkway trimmed in golden orange with many intricate patterns upon it.  Massive pillars with strange designs stood tall, and large glowing panels decorated the walls; the color of the energy in this place seemed to be an evening shade of orange.  I eventually reached a room with a round pedestal emitting a similarly orange pillar of light; I stepped into it, only to be transported to another area.

I stepped out of this new room into a massive elevator shaft that was bronze and purple; I’d never seen such a combination, but it worked quite well.  Touching the sparkling of the two devices resembling mutant trackballs, I caused the platform to rocket me to the next level at a dizzying speed; my low blood pressure already tends to make me dizzy when riding elevators, and this certainly didn’t help!  After regaining my composure – and my equilibrium – I moved forward, eventually reaching an area that was quite blue.  The floors were very dark blue with lighter blue intricate designs tracing over them.  A powerful light emitted from the chasm below, brightening everything near it.  Looking up, I saw the high-tech walls, covered with machines in the same bronze and purple color scheme as the elevator shaft, with a floor accompanying it; for some reason, the floor had geometrically-shapen holes in it, and tiny pink lights pulsated rhythmically within the walls.  I moved along the edge until I reached a doorway with a round, flashing green light above it, with torches of the same green in their flames burning along the wall.  I headed inside, walking along a large blue floor, eventually coming to a pair of statues.  Their bronze forms were those of beautiful kneeling maidens with long hair, cupping cyan spheres between their hands.  Just ahead, the powerful light shone through another chasm, the edge of which I followed until I reached another area with similar statues.  This one also had a statue of some kind of wild-haired demihuman with wings and talons crafted in a gray material with yellow-green stripes, its countenance made foreboding by its dark navy eyes.

Traveling further through this large blue area, I found another teleporter, this one hidden in a nondescript floor tile.  As a green light transported me to somewhere else, I pondered what might be happening to my spiritual form when my physical one was being repeatedly deconstructed and reassembled.  I came to what appeared to be some sort of ceremonial chamber, and another statue greeted me, this one of a gargoyle-like creature with piercing eyes.  It was then that I realized that none of the statues were constructed to actually face anyone walking through the chamber, whether they were perpendicular – like the demihuman – or diagonal, like the others.  I headed through an important-looking doorway onto a large dais with intricate floor patterns arranged in an octagonal pattern.  I could not discern their purpose, but I felt a very strange presence in this room, and not just from the powerful light emanating from below.  I quickly stepped through to the next room, not wanting to find its source, the loud clacking of my shoes making me all the more nervous as I hurried along; high heels were certainly not an appropriate choice of footwear for this adventure.

Eventually, I reached another bland walkway, this time leading me to a door that seemed to have a great amount of energy behind it.  Stepping inside, I saw cyan pillars of light emanating from round discs that appeared to be floating in the air.  Inside each one, I felt the life force of a live – yet dormant – human; they must have been stasis chambers of some sort.  Passing all six of them, I eventually wound up outside, at the very zenith of the structure!  I stood atop The Black Omen and stared at the world below, as well as the red moon above.  The intricate machinery seemed to buzz with eldritch energies beneath me, and I simply stood there, unsure at that very moment of whether I should be admiring the beauty of nature or technology.

What is it to be a deity?  To some, it means creating life and matter.  To others, it means controlling nature in a way not able to be understood by those less advanced.  You may have considered this notion already, but would those living thousands of years before us – using tools made of stone – not consider today’s people to be gods?  Today, humans control fire and electricity with devices small enough to fit in the palm of their hands; something as simple to us as a lighter might be considered magic to a less advanced society.  However, to many of us, someone with technology far more advanced than our own would merely be considered “futuristic”.  So what is it that makes this so different a distinction?  It is the very understanding of knowledge; that humans understand the gap allows them to also understand that such a gap might exist between them and potential others, even if arrogance prevents them from considering such a possibility until empirical evidence is presented to them.  In the same way, the people of the world of The Black Omen being able to control the forces of nature with their life force might seem like gods to you.  Can you honestly tell me that if you were to see someone create a sphere of lightning in the palm of his or her hand that you would not be mystified that he or she could do such a thing without the use of technology?  Would you perhaps even go so far as to call it magic?  These are all things that you are likely to encounter in your adventures, but are you really ready to experience them?  Only time will tell.