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nullset2 · 4 years

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Modern Japanese Action Game Design

I'm currently playing through Platinum Games's Nier:Automata (which, by the way, it's a fucking masterpiece holy shit I love you Yoko Taro) and I can't avoid but notice a trend in the Gaming industry and the AA/AAA games it's produced as of late and I wanted to talk about them here.

First, I reiterate, I'm in love with that game. It has layers upon layers upon layers of depth. Of meaning. Its characters, its gameplay design, the lore, the world, the numbers, Mason! What do they mean!?!?!?, HOT DAMN! I love it... it may actually be a better Death Stranding than Death Stranding ever was (by the way, Kojima, you cheeky dude! I can see that you played Nier Automata and you got inspired by it ;)!) --AND it has a cute robot babe!.

(Say it with me: CUTE! ROBOT! BABE!)

Not to say that this is something inherently bad by all; you know what Ebert said, on the subject of everything being a repetition of something else: it's not about the "what", it's about the how, in storytelling.

How many stories in total does humanity have in its aquis? Like, for real, when you actually boil them down to the archetypes? You got the hero's journey, rags to riches, comedies, tragedies... all other stories are just permutations of these, aren't they? What matters is the values with which each of them are presented to you --I can watch Snow White 10,000 times, if there's a new, cool directoy behind it every time, right?

But anyway.

Since FROM SOFTWARE's Demon's Souls (yes, with an apostrophe) came out and souls-likes became popular, I think it set a trend and we've entered a new era for the Japanese action game and I wanted to discuss their aspects in this article, briefly. Cue the game journo saying it's the Dark Souls of...!. Yadda Yadda, right?

Japanese action games since Demon's Souls have the following elements, in my opinion:

Strong emphasis in Single Player design

This, I actually really like! Because, as much as multiplayer-only games are great, sometimes you need a fucking break. I want to be immersed in a Creator's vision of the World. I want to be told a great story. I want games that will still be amazing to play --not to mention, actually playable-- 20 years from now. I want to see speedrun communities form around new games.

The Single Player game must not die!

An element of pseudo-"permadeath".

Modern games use "permadeath" with small benefits, borrowing from rouguelikes, to engross the player. There's more at stake if losing to an enemy means that you lose all of your progress (even if this is superficial, like in Nier, where losing means that you have to collect your previous items and Experienve Points from your old body). It is usually rather easy to restore your previous condition, so the game implements this as a "minor penalty" to the player for not understanding its mechanics instead of a full blown game over.

Focus on hard, unforgiving enemies

Which leads me to the next point. It is very common that Japanese games have several different OHKOs, or enemies that can spawn on you unpredictably and without warning, which can work as a very ~bullshit~ succint way of setting up player expectation and direction/conveyance for the game. Don't go that way if there's a horde of skeletons waiting to fuck you up in one hit, until you're stong enough to bear it, capice?

Uncancellable animations that leave you open for long periods of time and for which you have to plan ahead

Which means that the player has to not be a superman who can take tons of bullets on a whim. Movement has to be slow and demand attention from the player. Triggering the right or wrong movement can make or break the current run. You have to be mindful of your stamina/estus flask/Mana at all times and plan ahead. The game demands dedication from its players and asks them upfront to learn its mechanics and play by its rules.

Hybrid, Internet-powered "multiplayer" features

Let's not forget that people do want Online games, but maybe... let's not do what everyone else is doing! Dark Souls' Signs and invasions, Death Stranding's Structures, Signs and Likes. You can drop a poem when you die in Nier, for the enjoyment of everyone! Wow! Emergent play is the name of the game.

Can I just mention tangentially, by the way that Nintendo actually implemented the memetic "Green Demon" stuff in Super Mario Maker 2? Japanese game designers are well aware of the Internet, my dudes.

Open world design with few, if ANY, instructions as to where to go

This one is very important and --as I'll elaborate about in a bit--, I think this was created as a direct response to modern game trends. Players want to feel like the game respects their intelligence and is not just a covert Rollercoaster ride of a single player game, of which, all of us have already played a ton of in the PS2 era. Allow people to discover the game world on their own terms, at their own pace, however they see fit. If they can sequence break --great! Allow them to do so, makes for cooler speedruns anyway, and keeps people talking about your game more, right?

"Environmental Storytelling"

And since players want to take charge and take things into their own hands, present the story in small nuggets scattered through the game world. Make them connect the dots and go online to talk about it instead of subjecting them to 80 hours of cinematics that try way too fucking hard to play like a Hollywood movie but end up feeling like cheesy deviantart fanfiction written by a 16 year old (Kojima games, for example). Make them go on message boards and talk to other players about it.

Progressive uncovering of the game world by "chunks", usually triggered by visiting a landmark or completing a mission

(This is totally borrowed from Assassin's Creed, by the way)

Focus on big, bombastic enemy design that cover the whole screen

You gotta showcase your tech at some point! Let people see how far games have come since Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo!

Fun mechanics for traversal, emphasizing engagement with the player inherent to the movement itself

Finally, make movement interesting in some way. Give the players a really cool car, make every step be physically simulated in painstaking detail, let them ride their shield like a snowboard down a mountain or let them glide beautifully down sand dunes. There's probably something very Zen and phillosophical in the middle of all these instances of great movement in games.

My thesis is that the Japanese industry started developing games like these in direct reaction to the American game industry and its production values. Games that exhibit traits of the previous at least in a couple ways: Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Xenoblade, Zelda Breath of The Wild, Final Fantasy XV, Nier, Death Stranding, Sekiro, Bloodborne, et. al.

It's not that American (British? European?) games are bad, I love GTA and Red Dead and I got Fallout in the backburner. I have heard tons of great things about the Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher series. I am totally going to play Cyberpunk 2077 and Sleeping Dogs and Saints Row got me curious. Supposedly Just Cause is the best shit ever. I can appreciate very deeply narrative games, like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us and new experimental ideas like The Order (not very hot about that one).

But as of late and as I grow older, I get the feeling those games have been made more for the aesthetic value of it rather than the game design value, to put it some way, and to be blunt about it, American games are optimized for easy play. Don't think I'm being pedantic. On the contrary, variety is the spice of life, my friend.

Western games have a different strategy for design. They fill hours for the sake of filling hours with cinematics and exponential expansion of its game world rather than to seeking engrossment from the player in the form of, deep, highly skillful games to play.

The reason why this happens, is that now more than ever, the American game sees single-player as a nuisance, or a boring obligation at best --perhaps, merely a way to present a tutorial for newbies, to get them into the Multiplayer ASAP (where the real $$$$$$$$$ lies). Therefore, you shouldn't hold the player back or keep them in the SP for very long. You should make it so the players derive enjoyment from the game from its flow, its fast succession of change, and from the formation of online communities rather than from intricacy.

When you actually want intricacy, you give players................... fucking crafting. Just copy Minecraft, fuck it. Just add a skill tree and a million random classes to make players feel like they're progressing by filling up bars. Trying to appeal to everyone's internal MMO gamer.

And the ultimate concretion of the previous: most games let you skip entire sections if you wish.

Tired of retrying a certain section in Red Dead? Just hit SKIP. Booyah! No obligation, no demands from the game.

Case study: Red Dead Redemption plays itself.

Hahahaha.

Rockstar has used the same loop in all of their open world games for the last 20 years. Every single fucking GTA mission to have ever been releasedfollows the same structure: you drive around to a spot in the game world, watch a cutscene, then drive to another fucking point on the game map while listening to characters blab, watch another cutscene, go through a shooter/stealth section, then watch another cutsccene, and you're done. Wash rinse repeat.

And I think someone sort of confronted them and told them the truth, that nobody really likes just driving around and doing nothing else but listening to rants, if you just want to watch the story unfold. Might as well just "cut to the (literal) chase", right? Or might as well just start shifting GTA into an always-online game at this point, right? (Which they've done kind of majestically with GTA:O btw).

And what was their answer?

"How about... when you start a mission, um... just hit X button to go into "Cinematic Mode". Voila! You don't have to drive anymore!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow! Just take in the sights! And remember you can skip the game if you want! Just watch the cutscenes! Please play GTA:O please!"

Most other games have variations of this. A "super easy" mode that just emphasizes the storytelling experience.

Some Japanese games do this too, though (particularly Nintendo games). Maybe it's just a sign of the times, of gamers being old enough that they have families and responsibilities to attend to, and whose time should be respected by the video game.

In conclusion, this is definitely a trend to watch. Souls-likes have definitely become influential like no other, for the better. Great games they are. I get the feeling that this is the anthithesis to the "game that plays by itself". It's like they wanted to "come of age" and deliver robust games like their counterparts in america were, but they'll be damned if they lose the soul. The soul which gave us Famicom games. The soul of the arcade game, if you may, with several degrees of derivation, adapted for a new era.

#works #games #video games #game design

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