Beyond: Two Souls

With the launch of Detroit: Become Human (personally I would have titled a game about androids set in Detroit "Detroid" but whatever) and a resurgence of the regular mockery David Cage games have to endure on social media, I thought it might be time to finally check out Beyond: Two Souls on that Quantic Dream PS4 collection I once bought. With already having tried out Heavy Rain a couple of years earlier, I was preparing for the absolute worst but to my surprise I discovered a story that was at least interesting enough to allow me to slog through the terribly odd (and oddly terrible) game design decisions. As such I want to talk a bit about narrative games and how I feel Quantic Dream does them wrong. I doubt I'll be saying anything that hasn't been properly discussed yet but playing through the entirety of Beyond has left me with a fair few frustrations to shed, so this will mostly be a long rant.

Some Thoughts on
Beyond: Two Souls

Personally I'm not really interested in getting Detroit: Become Human anytime soon for several reasons. Part of it might be motivated by somewhat recent accusations of a toxic work environment at Quantic Dream, or the fact that it was revealed there's a detailed nude model of Ellen Page in Beyond: Two Souls despite her not having agreed to it (seriously, why is that even in the final product?), but actually in truth it's simply because I've done what David Cage himself suggested and judged him by his work, which as it turns out really does not appeal to me all that much.

My short time with Heavy Rain annoyed me. Years after release I was already spoiled on the identity of the Origami Killer so I didn't have as much eagerness to see that particular mystery through to the end anyway, but my hopes for an enjoyable experience were already tanked when the message 'Hold R2 to walk. Use the LEFT STICK to change direction' appeared on screen. That is something I would expect to see on the PlayStation 1, not in a game released in 2010.

Then the game expected me to go through the main character's morning routine that included him brushing his teeth by forcing me to shake the controller and shaving him which had me moving the right stick at a precise speed otherwise I would have to do it all over again. Then I was supposed to explore a house I could barely navigate, had to witness doors that hinged in places where doors aren't supposed to hinge, and was continuously bothered by button prompts for the most mundane tasks imaginable. That combined with a rather unappealing art direction, unconvincing voice acting and character models that fell hard into the uncanny valley for me made it so I soon turned the game off and I haven't looked back since. Supposedly the story is really good though but because of the unwieldy nature of the gameplay I doubt I will find out first hand.

Beyond: Two Souls managed to grab me more than Heavy Rain did however. The art design was more appealing, the setup of controlling both a girl and a ghost tethered to her was rather original, and the non-linear story-telling raised enough questions that I actually wanted to know what was going on and what would happen next. The game does look great and the stellar acting of both Ellen Page (Jodie Holmes) and Willem Dafoe (Nathan Dawkins) goes a long way in balancing out the game's lesser aspects. Surprisingly I actually liked some of it. However that just meant if Beyond: Two Souls were a B movie or TV series it would probably be a decent one, unfortunately its state as a video game is what drags it down.

In general my problem with Quantic Dream's design philosophy is that it feels like they believe they are pushing the boundaries of game design, while actually they are implementing gameplay that has already been judged as horribly dated and unwieldy. Beyond: Two Souls only takes minimal advantage of the gaming medium because at its core it is overly concerned with being a movie, and so rather than being a bold step forwards, it feels like a spiritual successor to Dragon's Lair (1983). Rather than allowing the player to interact with the game world, it feels the game plays by itself and simply punishes you for not responding to it the way it wants you to (and is so surprisingly lenient with mistakes you might be forgiven for doubting your input matters at all). David Cage explains (rather infamously by now) that he feels game overs in narrative games are a failure of the game designer, and so his games implement alternative story paths that go around what would otherwise be a game over state.
While this sounds nice in theory, in practice it means a player who is at least somewhat invested in doing well is robbed of the ability to hone their skills, as the ability to retry scenes has also been removed. If you are lucky you can exit the game before the next save point and hope the previous save point wasn't too long ago, otherwise you just have to live with it. 

Life is Strange (2015)

I feel Life is Strange (2015) solved the problem of a narrative game without game overs much more elegant than Beyond: Two Souls did. At the start our protagonist Max Caulfield discovers during a traumatic moment that she has rewind powers with which she can turn back time for a few moments and so allow the player to experiment with how conversations will go or get out of harm's way when it should be necessary (when an action occurs that should harm Max, time simply slows down and turns the screen grey to allow the player to revert back). The player can't get stuck into a corner because we can simply rewind ourselves out of any situation again. Unfortunately where Life is Strange messed up is by making the rewind power an attribute of the main character that she herself is aware of rather than simply a player option, meaning it was unavailable when we took control of Chloe Price in the prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017), so Chloe also had to live with her decisions but at least she didn't have to wrestle with button prompts and motion controls to brush her teeth.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999)

However I fear the inability to redo scenes to your liking isn't so much an unfortunate limitation of the way Beyond is set up, but instead an intentional design choice on David Cage's part, since the opening of Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999, also simply known as The Nomad Soul), Quantic Dream's first title, makes clear: 'There's no saving and going back if you get into trouble. You are entering a real world. If you make mistakes, you'll just have to accept the consequences'. Again this is stuff that sounds cool on a design document and might have even been an impressive selling point in 1999 because we didn't know any better, but some of us want the option to experiment with the game world. Of course we don't have to be aware of the long-term consequences of our decisions but it seems rather counter-productive to remove failstates by simply having the game continue with an obvious failstate still active whether we want to or not. Having to put up with situations we know little about yet being forced to make decisions on them we can't reverse is what we already have to do in our day-to-day lives and it being a horrible experience is why a few of us find solace in video games in the first place. It is especially troublesome in Beyond because the non-linear storytelling means we are making decisions independently of how Jodie Holmes might feel about the situation, simply because we have no clue of how we got to that point in her life. For most of the game's runtime we are controlling a protagonist where it has been made nearly impossible for us to actually play the role of said protagonist.

Specific Chapters

After the tutorial chapter where a young Jodie is being tested on her control with Aiden, the next chapter drops us several years later in a CIA operation in a Saudi Arabian embassy where an adult Jodie has to copy certain documents with the threat of torture should she be discovered. From a narrative perspective it might have been an interesting setup for the story to get us wondering about how Jodie's life went to bring us to this point. The problem however is that since we aren't actually watching a movie or a TV show but are instead given control of a situation we know absolutely nothing about. We aren't actually told what we are supposed to do until we stumble upon button prompts that allow us to proceed. Jodie Holmes was presumably briefed on mission parameters, but we as players don't have any context for why we are here. Mercifully this game without game overs doesn't allow us to make a fatal mistake, but that doesn't protect it from the massive narrative dissonance where we have to take control of a situation where we don't even know what the game expects us to do. So unless you accidentally stumble upon the next prompt, you could be stuck here for a while. From a control perspective here is also where we discover the awkward mapping of the right control stick controlling both the camera and triggering the environmental prompts. After finishing the game this chapter also feels like it barely fits in Jodie's story. Since nothing seems to connect back with this chapter I am at a loss over the entire point of it. I suppose it introduces Ryan but we learn so little about him and he disappears for so long it barely matters.

 "So you want me to just trade in my car for a Jetta just because
you flunked out of every private school I ever sent you to?"

The Party is a rather infamous chapter. In an attempt to let her have a bit of a normal life, a 14-year old Jodie is attending a birthday party for the daughter of one of Nathan Dawkins' colleagues. While I didn't hate the chapter that much as it did give me a bit of room to mess around, it does have two major flaws that annoyed me. The first is that the teenagers act completely unnatural just for the sake of having a bad ending, and the second is the inevitability of that inconsequential bad ending.
Jodie is presented as shy and introverted, not helped by the fact that she doesn't actually know anyone at the party, but aside from a few bitchy comments from the other teenagers, they at least somewhat try to be nice to her. That all changes when, of all things, the birthday girl doesn't like Jodie's gift (a rare book of poems by Edgar Allan Poe). Suddenly all these kids, who are at the very least aware that Jodie has supernatural powers (and possibly even demonstrated them just a few moments earlier depending on player choice), decide to torment her and lock her up ... over a birthday gift. One girl gives birthday girl a thong, but somehow a book is offensive enough for Jodie to be mercilessly bullied, burned, called a slut and locked below the stairs.

This chapter stands rather disconnected from the rest of the narrative, so the fact that the only real choice we have is whether or not to take revenge on the teens with Aiden is disappointing. Here is where the developers could have stretched their legs in terms of having multiple paths in a self-contained story but instead the chapter simply has us wasting time interacting with the environment until the inevitable bad ending. Why not make it possible for the party to go well? Weirder still is that the player can choose to ignore Aiden entirely and not take revenge with him, meaning the chapter is not even particularly relevant in Jodie's recollection of having had to live with him.

Then came the chapter detailing Jodie's CIA training. One tutorial would explain that during action sequences, time will slow down and you will have to finish Jodie's moves by following her direction on screen by moving the right stick in that direction. Fair enough, I've played enough Karateka to prepare me for stuff like this. However it soon turns out the game wants to remain being overly cinematic even when a good sense of direction is vital for completing these segments properly, so the camera circles Jodie, objects or particles obscure her from view and her movements aren't always clear or straightforward to begin with. The result is that without actual guidance these action segments more often than not devolve into a pure guessing game.
Rather mind-blowing is that this chapter also includes a tutorial on cover shooting gameplay with stealth sections. Partially it feels odd because they will only really be relevant for one other chapter in the entire game, but primarily because Quantic Dream apparently thought it was a good idea to include gameplay that has been refined over the last ten years in actual shooter genres and include it in a clunky quick time event narrative game. This is a game where walking through a simple door takes several tries, and now it expects to hold up in any way compared to a cover shooter?

"Ryan is great"

The Dinner. Oh boy, The Dinner. Jodie invites Ryan Clayton to dinner at her new apartment to the annoyance of Aiden, who is suddenly very possessive of Jodie. As the player we then have to prepare for the date while Aiden does everything he can to sabotage it. It's decently fun to explore Jodie's apartment while getting ready and you have a fair amount of freedom to decide how the date is going to play out (minus a bit of emotional scarring carried over from earlier chapters). However there's a glaring flaw with the entire setup: we as the player have been given no reason at all to like Ryan. At the start of the chapter Jodie launches into an angry monologue to Aiden about how she's allowed to have a relationship with however she wants, how great Ryan is and how she thinks she is falling for him, but from our perspective the only information on Ryan is the previous chapter at an earlier point of Jodie's life where he forces her to abandon the only people she loves to join the CIA while being absolutely heartless about it. This being literally about five minutes ago makes it feel like Jodie did not really develop genuine affection for Ryan but rather that she's developed a case of Stockholm Syndrome where she's now declaring her feelings for an abuser.

Ryan literally 5 minutes earlier

Should we still remember his sparse appearances early in the game, we might remember him from The Embassy chapter I mentioned earlier where we could find him talking about how his CIA job forces him to have limited empathy so he wouldn't really care should Jodie be captured and tortured. So essentially we are now forced into a dating scenario where we are given very little motivation for it to go well outside of Jodie's insistence that Ryan is great. That disconnect between our feelings on Ryan and Jodie's feelings for Ryan while still being expected to help Jodie is immersion-breaking to say the least. Personally I tried to sabotage the date without making it too obvious, so I just dressed casually, ordered pizza and refused to kiss Ryan. (I was rewarded with a scene of Jodie breaking down crying, so go me...)

Ryan only becomes a little bit likable in the final few chapters of the game where he has sort of a redemption arc (after a chapter where he also becomes so much worse) but that only means we might gain (emphasis on might) a little respect for Ryan when it's already way too late for the chapters where developing that relationship actually matters. What's even worse is that a relationship with him is essentially unavoidable. So even if you do everything to turn him down at every opportunity, he will still be there declaring his love for Jodie and kissing her in the final chapter. Romance is also an aspect I feel Life is Strange does better because even just a kiss between romantic options requires the player to have at least worked in the direction of said romance. Chloe Price does not appreciate being ignored in favor of other characters. Meanwhile Jodie Holmes can't seem to meet a guy (if he's handsome) without getting an option to immediately kiss him.

Navajo had some strange implications in that the Navajo people were apparently performing magic rituals that summoned demonic Infraworld entities into our world, and in general it suffered from the same problems as the rest of the game (including one especially annoying action sequence that is also tied to a trophy), but from a narrative perspective the build-up made the mystery engaging, the developing relationship between Jodie and the family felt natural (aside from yet another opportunity to kiss a guy we've just met and who was being a dick to us the majority of the time), the characters themselves were mostly likable and the desert setting makes for a nice break from the rest of the game and was enhanced by a great soundtrack, so I would say I actually like the Navajo chapter and wish more chapters were like it. However it was also home to a handful of glaring flaws.

On the PlayStation 4 version at least, the chapter endings have these percentages that show the amount of players who took specific paths. It's here you often learn about possible "paths" that the game prior didn't give you a clue was even an option (I replayed the Navajo chapter twice because of it, although that specific spoiler choice should have been obvious in retrospect). One of the best examples of awkward design choices here is that apparently there was a bike hidden on the farm that we could repair, but which was evidently so out of the way that only 8% of people found it (I only did because the second time I knew to look out for it). That also wouldn't be that much of a problem, except at the end of the chapter you are given the bike anyway regardless of whether or not you fixed it (if not you get it because the brothers fixed it). It might seem like a small detail but this was one of the major times during my playthrough when I realized my choices really didn't matter, and that's probably also the reason why David Cage doesn't want players to replay his game more than once, because a second run brutally lifts the illusion that the game was giving you agency in the first place.
For trophy purposes I replayed the Hunted chapter where I was supposed to get captured and escape three times, so on the train section I ignored all button prompts and refused to do any of the action scenes and still Jodie was dodging objects, opening doors and fighting policemen effectively (although with a short red flash supposedly to indicate failure). Jodie ran two entire cars until finally there was the single button prompt that was apparently relevant and I got captured. Out of curiosity during a motorbike chase I purposely stopped and found out the police simply stop chasing you. These sequences made me realize that much of Beyond: Two Souls's runtime does the equivalent of handing you an unplugged controller so you can pretend you are playing a video game. It felt like Beyond resented my involvement at all.

Dating your superior officer while on a mission. That's fine.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Beyond: Two Souls is a would-be decent TV series or B movie that was forcefully pushed into the mold of a big budget video game. Everything considered, I can't say I truly hated the game because the performances of Ellen Page and William Dafoe are great (though Dafoe feels a bit misused) and go a long way to make otherwise cliche or awkward scenes enjoyable. The game is thus surprisingly a rather effective vehicle to push Ellen Page. The story is interesting enough to get the player moving forward, but as a video game it ends up a mess of questionable, dated or otherwise frustrating design choices. That frustration is only exacerbated as the developer apparently insists these questionable design choices are actually deliberate and supposedly aimed at moving game design forward. So with that in mind, I am inclined to skip Detroit: Become Human.

Castlevania 64: The Castle of Hell

Castlevania for the Nintendo 64 (commonly known as "Castlevania 64") has in recent times gained the reputation as being somewhat of a black sheep in the Castlevania series. Even official sources flip-flop on whether it still counts as part of the official Castlevania timeline (when Konami still cared about Castlevania anyway). Nevertheless it's one of my favorite games. Yes, it suffers a bit from being an early Nintendo 64 title, and the Nintendo 64 controller doesn't help the game much, but still (a lot of control issues would have been solved if it were just rereleased for Virtual Console).

Important note: this is supposed to be an analysis, not a review. Therefore I will not mind bringing up spoilers if they are relevant. Proceed with caution if you have yet to play this game and do not want to be spoiled.

The Castle of Hell
Castlevania 64 (1999)

0. Personal History

1. Story and Setting 

2. Main Characters

3. Level Select: Stage 3 Villa

4. Castlevania, Vampires and Dualism

5. Links & References

0. Personal History

Back in 1999 I didn't know anything about Castlevania, but it looked interesting and I was convinced to buy it after the store clerk mentioned it was "like Zelda" (which confused me after playing it, but in retrospect he probably just meant that the franchise has been around for about as long and has been similarly acclaimed). At first I didn't like it all that much, mainly because I was 11 and I had just bought my first horror title, but very soon I came to adore the creepy atmosphere, the interesting characters, the epic music that typifies Castlevania and yes, even the gameplay (although as I said, playing it on the actual N64 makes it a struggle against the controller).

I also chose it as the subject for a Nintendo 64 retexture project, which is unfinished but still available at http://c64project.blogspot.be/

1. Story and Setting

The story takes place in Wallachia, Transylvania in 1852. Dracula has awoken after a century of being locked away (later releases such as Order of Ecclesia (18??) and Circle of the Moon (1830) would reduce it to mere decades). Two heroes descended from the legendary Belmont and Belnades clans take it on themselves to once again rid the world of Dracula's influence.

The Castlevania series functions as an extended universe to Bram Stoker's novel Dracula ¹, which makes its 1852 setting especially interesting as it is a mere 40 years before the count's return in the novel. Unfortunately there's very little to connect this particular game to the novel, except perhaps the Belmont clan having a reduced presence this century due to being split up into clans with different surnames. In that way Reinhardt Schneider might make it more digestible to have the novel's Quincy Morris be part of the Belmont lineage.

Some anachronisms exist within the setting, the most goofy of which is the giant skeleton boss of the first stage being accompanied by two smaller skeletons riding on motorcycles. Certain areas of the Castle Center and the Tower of Science itself reveal Dracula to have access to advanced science for the time period, which doesn't seem all that out of place considering his vast powers and connection to demonic forces.

Also there must be something odd in Wallachia's water anyway because four of the major characters, including Dracula himself, have blue hair.

2. Main Characters

The Character Select screen

We have the option of 2 playable protagonists: Reinhardt Schneider, a descendant of the Belmont clan who dedicated themselves to defeating Dracula, and Carrie Fernandez, a descendant of the witch Sypha Belnades (In Japan they have the same surname) from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.
Most of the game is the same no matter which character you pick, except they'll interact differently with certain characters, they'll have a different personal nemesis and 3 of the 10 stages will differ (Reinhardt will visit Tunnel, Duel Tower and Tower of Execution, while Carrie visits Underground Waterway, Tower of Science and Tower of Sorcery).

On the gameplay front I found Reinhardt and his whip rather boring and I never got too far with him. Carrie and her homing magic bullet make combat more manageable, as you can properly focus on evading enemy attacks rather than struggle to aim your whip. Because of that my perspective of the game is heavily skewed towards it being Carrie's game rather than Reinhardt's.

An interesting difference between these two heroes are their attitudes in how they go about their quest. Reinhardt, despite being the classic hero archetype, has clear doubts about his ability to live up to the legacy of his Belmont ancestors. Meanwhile 12-year old Carrie storms Dracula's castle with the full conviction that she has the power to destroy Dracula. This is even reflected in their quotes as the game starts up (and their only pieces of voiced dialogue):  

"Courage, don't leave me."

- Reinhardt Schneider

"Whatever awaits, I have no regrets!"

- Carrie Fernandez

Only a few simple words, but they nevertheless reveal a great deal about their respective speaker. Reinhardt is clearly having doubts about himself, which are feelings Carrie doesn't share. In Carrie's quest it becomes a recurring theme in her dialogue to reflect her absolute conviction that she's powerful enough to defeat Dracula. She even mocks her nemesis for being a mere pawn to delay Carrie from reaching the Count.

Their difference in personality is also reflected in the challenges they face. On top of merely having to deal with the general quest of having to kill the resurrected Dracula, at the various points where their respective storylines differ, the villains start playing on our protagonists' personal doubts and fears. Reinhardt, doubting his ability to live up to his ancestors' legacy, is presented with a damsel in distress whom he can't possibly save. His personal demon is presented in the form of Dracula's right hand and series regular Death. Carrie, having had to deal with losing her family, is forced to put a vampirized relative out of her misery (a cousin, but originally supposed to be Sypha Belnades herself). And while Carrie has lost her loving stepmother who died protecting her, her personal demon comes in the form Actrise, a woman who sacrificed her own child for eternal beauty.

3. Level Select: Stage 3 Villa

It would take far too much effort to analyze all the stages in detail, so for now I'll stick to just one. By far the  best remembered level for most people (including me) is the Villa. After the approach through the Forest of Silence and breaching the Castle Wall, players are immediately attacked by a series of Cerberus enemies (3 headed dogs, some of which can breathe fire) that guard the gates to the Villa. Once inside those gates, you are greeted with nothing but the serene sound of the fountain in the middle of the front garden with the face of the villa behind it  (the outside is supposedly based on the château of Azay-le-Rideau). Before a moment of peace can set in however, you'll soon realize the garden is in fact a graveyard holding the former inhabitants: the Oldrey family. Though a minor nuisance, it turns out their ghosts aren't particularly fond of intruders.

11-year old me says 'eeep'

Once inside you find yourself inside a hall that looks suspiciously similar to the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil 1. Before you manage to explore anything, a man-sized creature crawls across the walls and jumps right in front of you, revealing the first of the game's many vampires (Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness reveals this one to be Master J.A. Oldrey himself, who has been haunting his residence for 8 years). This was my first experience with a horror game as a child, and this scene left the biggest impression. Every time I played the game after, I dreaded this particular moment. The vampires in this game just look absolutely terrifying.

The previous stages weren't entirely linear, but this one changes things up by requiring exploration and figuring things out based on characters giving clues. Combined with the setting itself, I think it's fairly safe to say the game designers did indeed take notes from Resident Evil. On top of that there's a surprising amount of detail spent on making this place actually feel like a luxurious, though haunted by vampires and demons, villa. The walls are lined with art, including portraits of previous residents and the furniture is surprisingly elaborate for a Nintendo 64 game

This stage introduces us to most of the game's important characters: fellow vampire hunter Charlie Vincent, the noble vampire Rosa, the village child Malus and the demon salesman Renon. All of whom are interesting in their own right.

Charlie Vincent is likely the first non-enemy character you encounter in the entire game (outside of being briefly taunted by Dracula himself at the Castle Wall). He appears unexpectedly when you open a door in the bedroom, waving a cross ² in your face to determine whether you are one of Dracula's henchmen or not.
He is presented as the self-professed expert vampire hunter who to us comes across as being in way over his head. We are the descendants of the Belmont/Belnades clan after all while this guy is an unknown. He carries around a stake and multiple crosses (including a giant one on his back), so while obviously being prepared, he comes across as rather foolish. This image is not helped by his general look (although with an added mustache) and name 'Charlie Vincent' calling to mind Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall's character) from Fright Night, who is an actor who plays a fictional legendary vampire hunter but freaks out when confronted with actual vampires. It thus comes as a surprise when later it turns out he is in fact instrumental in revealing the true identity of Dracula (in the good ending at least, which can be triggered by spending less than 4 in-game days reaching the Castle Keep).

Following Vincent's clue of spotting a young woman at dawn, you can, at dawn, encounter Rosa who has allegedly come to water the garden's "white" roses. Something is clearly wrong here because the roses are obviously red. Then it turns out the water from her watering pot is actually blood, and there was apparently so much of it that it stained all the white roses red.

Surprise! Rosa is one of the villa's vampires. Unlike any of the other vampires however, she's not at all hostile to the player character and surprisingly compassionate. She urges the player character to leave the castle, but decides to help out when they declare they can't do so until Dracula has been stopped. In Carrie's story, this is the only time we ever encounter her. In Reinhardt's story however, she's a recurring character and becomes his love interest. There we learn that Rosa has managed to maintain her human soul despite being turned. Nevertheless Death uses her as a pawn against Reinhardt and thus she turns into a tragic villain we have to fight as a boss at the end of the Castle Center (the aforementioned damsel in distress Reinhardt can't save).

I mean their similarity is too uncanny
to be a coincidence, right?

Descending down the stair that lead to the maze garden, you find a mysterious scroll on the ground. A man who introduces himself as a demon named Renon (who for some reason bears a striking resemblance to French actor Jean Reno) appears and explains to us that he sells useful items to adventurers such as us because "one needs gold even in hell these days". He's the game's store who can be summoned from scrolls such as the one you've just found.
The one detail he neglects to mention however is that the small print in the contract specifies that spending more than 30,000 gold in his store means he gets to claim your soul as well, meaning abuse of his services punishes you by adding an extra boss in the Castle Keep before you get to face Dracula.

Then comes the maze garden itself, which quickly becomes the most intense part of the game. After wandering around for a bit, you encounter a child abducted from the village named Malus.

After a short introduction where he fails to remember what exactly happened to him to end up in this horrible place, you are suddenly attacked by two stone dogs you may remember as the statues in front of the maze. As Malus runs away in panic and the dogs give chase, you come face to face with the gardener: a giant Frankenstein's monster with a chainsaw for a right arm. Worse of all, he's invincible and can only be temporarily delayed, never defeated. The only thing you can do is try to keep up with Malus while you have to dodge all three enemies at once. Then the little bugger crawls under a hedge too low for us, forcing us to backtrack to find a way around and likely having to directly dodge the gardener coming right for us.

Malus having escaped, there's only one thing left to do: head towards the stage's dual bosses in the crypt. At first the crypt seems empty. Once you investigate the empty coffin at its opposite side, suddenly a corpse drops from the ceiling. Master Oldrey, the vampire we encountered at the start of the stage, was enjoying his meal and has now decided to make you his main dish. He's not all that much harder than previous vampires, he just has more health, dodges a lot quicker and can fire projectiles at you. Once you defeat him however, his previous victim has had enough time to turn herself.

Master Oldrey and his most recent victim

4. Castlevania, Vampires and Dualism

Castlevania as a series based on Bram Stoker's vampire Dracula inherently introduces Christian elements and imagery into the game world, superficial as they may be. Traditionally it is thought vampires do not cast a reflection because they lack a soul. Indeed in the Villa stage we have a cutscene where a seemingly ordinary, though clearly deranged, villager is revealed to be a vampire in disguise because he doesn't appear in a nearby mirror. It's even a rather effective jump-scare, even though we can see it coming from miles away.

We also have several characters, especially demonic villains who are likely authorities on the subject, who comment on souls and the harvesting thereof. Like a lot of vampire fiction, Castlevania thus maintains a view of the mind-body that is dualistic in nature.
Dualism is essentially the idea that there's a difference between the mind and the brain, or the soul and our bodies. It is an idea closely associated with René Descartes (1596-1650), who believed the mind has a two-way relationship with the body through the pineal gland in the brain, but has since fallen out of style, largely because it is essentially the 'God did it' of neurobiology and thus a scientific stopping point of investigation. Finding an explanation of what consciousness is and how it came about is to this day an enormous mindscrew (excuse the pun), but it is a fairly safe assumption that 'we' aren't a metaphorical homunculus operating a body from inside the brain (or, a metaphysical player operating a real world player character).

Phineas Gage

An often-cited example that cast doubt over dualism is the case of Phineas Gage (1823-1860), an American railroad construction foreman who because of an accident in 1848 had a large iron rod driven through his skull, destroying parts of his brain. Gage amazingly survived but his personality and behavior saw drastic changes. This is of course odd if the self is immaterial to the brain. It should be noted however that the body of facts regarding the "American Crowbar Case" is surprisingly slim for one so noteworthy in neurology. Later evidence (such as the pictures of him discovered in 2009 and 2010) revealed that Gage's sudden personality change did in fact level out and he recovered his social abilities later in life (which on the surface to me sounds like he makes an amazing example of neuroplasticity in action).

Back to Castlevania. The existence of Rosa makes things interesting. Here we have a vampire who has somehow maintained her human soul despite having been turned. This raises a couple of questions. Would she appear in a mirror despite being a vampire? What gives the other scheming and articulate vampires their intelligence? Perhaps the lesser enemies are simply driven by basal desires while Dracula's inner circle consists of turned humans who like Rosa have their souls intact but who simply were just that evil. Carrie's nemesis Actrise murdering 100 children, including her own, to attain his favor certainly makes a case for that possibility. Where this doesn't hold up is with Master J.A. Oldrey in the Legacy of Darkness version of the game, who was described by his wife as a good man before he was turned into a decidedly evil vampire but who retains his intelligence.
What then of the count himself? In the usual Castlevania game, he is merely resurrected after having been slain by the previous Belmont. This game however has it as an actual plot twist that he hasn't been resurrected, but has been outright reincarnated ³. On the duality scale, clearly he must still have his soul intact (though warped due to the events of Lament of Innocence and Symphony of the Night) if he is subjected to reincarnation.

In this game it is actually possible for the player characters themselves to be turned into vampires. One of the tactics enemy vampires will employ is that they will try to get close in order to suck Reinhardt or Carrie's blood. If not fought off rapidly enough, their status will change from 'Good' to 'Vamp'. This status effect will disable the character's main attack and unless cured by an item known as 'Purifying', at the stroke of midnight the character will turn into a vampire themselves (unless bitten less than an hour before midnight, then you are afforded an extra day). At this point the screen goes black and the player is booted to the Game Over screen. In a meta sense, you could argue this means the player is the character's "soul" and the process of turning into a vampire severs that connection. Without our moral guidance, Reinhardt or Carrie are now just mindless monsters themselves.

But that's getting a bit too deep into a goofy horror game about blue-haired anime vampires. 

1. Quincy Morris from Bram Stoker's Dracula is stated in the Castlevania games to be a relative of the Belmont clan. His son (John Morris) and grandson (Jonathan Morris) are playable characters in Bloodlines and Portrait of Ruin respectively.
2. I wrote this entire paragraph with "crucifix" in place of "cross" before I learned it's technically only a crucifix when it consists of a cross and a corpus (the body of Jesus Christ). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix)
3. He is reincarnated again as Soma Cruz in the games Aria of Sorrow (2003) and Dawn of Sorrow (2005), perhaps one of the reasons why Castlevania 64 has a dubious place in the timeline, as it rather conflicts with the nature of reincarnation in those games.

5. Links & References

http://castlevania.wikia.com
Dennett, Daniel - Consciousness Explained (1991)
Doidge, Norman - The Brain That Changes Itself (2007)
Kaku, Michio - The Future of the Mind (2014)

Images from:
Castlevania, Konami (1999)
Wikimedia Commons

The Abduction of Zelda

I start off most of these with a restatement of my stance on the subject and I still think it's worth repeating: I want more and 'stronger' female protagonists. Where I differ from the vast majority of modern critics arguing for the same thing is that I think their methods are counterproductive and hostile. By always focusing on the negative, you can accidentally end up exacerbating it. They'll defend this by saying they're just highlighting sexism. Exactly, one highlights something because one considers it most important and that's not always a good thing. Furthermore this causes confusion with the artists on what the public really wants (since they only get feedback on what they don't want while all the good stuff is ignored) and hostility from the fans who do like certain things that are being argued against (and this being art and entertainment, the morality of anything done to fictional characters is largely irrelevant anyway).

Therefore I think we should be focusing on the positives. Highlight what we think should be in the public zeitgeist so we as a collective start thinking positively about these characters rather than just keeping them locked into a cycle of stereotypes and negativity. Current media critics do little more than make the entire conversation an annoying bore while they actively train themselves to be offended at everything (and then they suddenly wonder why they never noticed how everything was so offensive before).
This post can also serve as an addendum to my earlier post The Ordeal of Queen Zelda, which attempts to look at Princess Zelda, as portrayed in Ocarina of Time, in function of the monomyth.

The Abduction of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

One thing I see brought up occasionally is people scratching their heads at the kidnapping of Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and how the scene supposedly makes no sense. Worse are the weird ones who imply (if not outright state) that Zelda, after years of masquerading as Sheik, only gets kidnapped because she revealed herself as a woman, rather than the blatantly obvious fact that she revealed herself to be the princess (at that moment probably even the uncrowned queen) of the land Ganondorf is trying to take over, as well as the wielder of a part of the ancient 3 Goddess'-powered artifact he spent the entire game and the rest of the series assembling.

Tvtropes is just weird about it.

"Badass Decay: Zelda was hit with this the moment she was kidnapped by Ganondorf after revealing herself to Link, for no explained reason; especially if you take account that she spent seven years as a Sheikah warrior."

- Tvtropes TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime YMMV

That just doesn't make any sense. What do you mean, no explained reason? She was blindsided and got magically locked in crystal by one of the most powerful sorcerers in the land. It doesn't seem all that unreasonable for her to require a bit of help at that point.

There's one thing to keep in mind. Zelda's kidnapping is overstated (as it usually is). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a roughly 30 hour game going by my last playthrough (likely a lot longer for a new player. How Long To Beat has it between 26.5 to 38.5 hours depending on playstyle).

Princess Zelda is the mastermind behind everything happening on the good side for about 29 hours of those, which is also a full 7 years in-game, and only gets kidnapped right before the final battle with Ganondorf, after which she's also the one to imprison him for 100's of years until the events of Wind Waker (Link only weakens Ganondorf enough so Zelda's magic can overpower him). For the remainder of the game she's both the one guiding Link (first as Hyrule's princess, then from the shadows as the mysterious Sheikah warrior unimaginatively named 'Sheik') and being a hero behind the scenes in her own right (as mentioned by the Zora princess Ruto, who was helped by Sheik when Zora's Domain froze over).

Firstly, the reason why Zelda gets kidnapped so sudden is very simple. It's established early on that Ganondorf was watching Link as he progressed through the game (merely implied by the nightmare Link has when he first pulls the Master Sword from its pedestal, if indeed a nightmare at all, and outright stated when Link defeats Ganondorf's phantom in the Forest Temple). Since Ganondorf needs both Link and Zelda to complete the Triforce, we can fairly safely assume he didn't intervene directly with Link's quest because he wanted to lure Zelda out in the open, heck he explicitly says this when he finally captures Zelda. Losing the temples is only a minor setback if it means gaining the entire Triforce. 

Secondly, why did he capture Zelda instead of Link, or why only Zelda and not both of them? Well he is still underestimating Link and says as much by claiming everything he did was merely the result of Link somehow having the Triforce of Courage. He simply doesn't take this kid from the forest seriously. Furthermore, by virtue of being Courage he knows Link will immediately come to face him anyway.

Heck, had Sheik not intercepted Link when he first walked out of the Temple of Time during his adult years, he might have gone to face Ganon right then and there and likely lost (maybe that's where the Failed Hero timeline according to Hyrule Historia came from: Zelda herself might have gone back in time to prevent Link from facing Ganon too early, thus causing the second split).
Zelda on the other hand is Wisdom. She knows better than to foolishly run into danger head-on and instead calculates her approach. Indeed when she knew she couldn't go up against Ganondorf, she hid for 7 years and undermined his rule from the shadows. This attitude is symbolically reflected in Zelda's frequent use of bows, especially later in the series: She prefers to strike from a distance. Unfortunately she slipped up by revealing herself to Link.

"I knew you would appear if I let this kid wander around!"

Conclusion

In short, Ganondorf took Zelda seriously as a threat, unlike Link who he found merely amusing. Zelda had to be removed from the game while he thought he could just toy with this boy from the forest. That is why Ganondorf kidnapped Zelda rather than Link.

Links and References

How Long To Beat: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia
Vicsor's Opinion - The Ordeal of Queen Zelda

My 2016 in Gaming

Right, so I don't have the habit of being all that up-to-date on the most recent games, partially because I feel the "buy on release" attitude is somewhat responsible for the pre-order bonus madness that keeps getting further out of hand, but mostly because being like 2 years behind is simply more friendly on my wallet. Basically doing some "Best of 2016" is out of the question because I haven't played enough from 2016. Instead I'm just going over a couple (I intended 5 but I wanted both Tomb Raiders) of the more memorable stuff I played and actually bloody finished during this horrible, horrible year. In chronological order.

(Allowing myself to recycle some of my Tweets about these games from the previous year and expand on them. Win.)

My 2016 in Gaming
From someone perpetually years behind on pop culture.

1. Resident Evil Zero HD Remaster

Released: Jan 19, 2016
Played: Jan, 2016

Resident Evil Zero (2002) for the GameCube was actually the first Resident Evil game I ever played. As such I have some pretty fond memories of it but I never actually finished it. I decided to remedy that with the HD Remaster that was released early 2016. For a lot of longtime fans Zero was the point when the classic Resident Evil gameplay style was becoming old and tired, a problem I didn't really have since I barely played any of the others (I think I stopped halfway Jill's story in Resident Evil: Deadly Silence and the only other similar game I played was Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare). Most of my knowledge of Resident Evil's storyline actually comes from the Chronicles games on Wii and spending too much time on the Resident Evil wikia.

The new models are nice but they seem less expressive.

I'd say if you liked Resident Evil Zero (or want to play it at all), the HD Remaster is a good version of it. Plus it has quite a few more costumes (some unfortunately are locked behind DLC) that you can switch at any time, unlike the original where you first had to finish the game and could then only change them during the train segment. They even included an extra mode after the main game where you play the game as Albert Wesker and evil Rebecca Chambers.

Resident Evil Zero's premise always struck me as being just an inch away from being a romance/erotic novel set during the downfall of society. It's like "she's an inexperienced member of an elite police unit trapped in the zombie apocalypse with a dangerous criminal who also happens to be a total hunk". Unfortunately the interesting character dynamic of police member Rebecca Chambers and convicted murderer Billy Coen having to team up is undermined by the fact that after the first 15 minutes it becomes obvious Coen is a decent guy and shown to be innocent long before the game is even halfway done (hence, on top of the game now being 14 years old, I don't consider this much of a spoiler).

2. Final Fantasy X HD Remaster

Released: May 15, 2015
Played: April, 2016

Back in April I bought a PS4 (like a week before the new models would get announced, because of course) with the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster. I had already finished the story of FFX twice years ago on PS2, but this time I wanted to go in with the purpose of finally beating those Dark Aeons in the post-game that always gave me so much trouble.

Ultimately I ended up not just beating all the Dark Aeons, but also dodging the 200 lightning bolts required to complete Lulu's Celestial Weapon, completing the Chocobo race challenges, defeating all the post-game bosses, completing the sphere grid for every character and getting the platinum trophy. So that worked out better than I expected.

One thing I liked about Final Fantasy X where a lot of the other more recent Final Fantasies lost me is that Tidus is himself a stranger in the world of Spira. This allows the player to be eased into the world rather than us having to endure a massive plot dump like in XII or XIII.
However doing it like this also opened the story up to a situation where the entire party looks like massive dicks in how they treated Tidus when the big plot twist of Yuna's eventual fate is revealed. "We weren't keeping it a secret, it was just too hard to say"? You mean that at no point during your journey you could just take Tidus aside for a minute and explain to him what was going on? Instead you gave him massive amounts of guilt over what a jerk he unintentionally was. Nice.

I also realized how impossible it is to explain the story of Final Fantasy X to someone not familiar with the series. My best attempt boiled down to: "So this girl has to sacrifice herself to save the world from a huge monster who is the father of a guy who doesn't really exist. So a dude who is actually dead goes to a city that's not real to get the guy because his monster dad no longer wants to destroy stuff".
Alternatively: "A bunch of deities and resurrected dead guys think religion is stupid and poof a guy into existence to prove that point".

I also wrote this guide on how to fill up your Blitzball team with female members if you're into that: Vicsor's Opinion: Guide: Final Fantasy X - A Female Blitzball Team

3. Life Is Strange

Released: Jan 22, 2016
Played: April, 2016

Life Is Strange is a game I didn't expect like, but I bought it anyway because it was fairly cheap and I still wanted to support Dontnod Entertainment (I loved Remember Me despite its rough edges). Turns out I actually did end up liking it once I actually started playing. Unfortunately the final episode being largely cut-and-pasted from the earlier episodes and a limited payoff of all your choices made during the game hinder it somewhat, but it was still a powerful experience with a gameplay style that I hope modern adventure games take notice of (except more puzzles please).

Chloe Price, to whom the concept of self-preservation
is completely alien

Unlike a lot of fans I didn't feel that much of a connection with Chloe Price though. A lot of Chloe's problems just stem from very poor choices on her part. Most of the time the friendship between Max and Chloe seemed toxic at best, at times even abusive towards Max. A lot of choices involving Chloe usually boiled down to a choice between 'Do the right thing and piss off Chloe' or 'Do the wrong thing to appease Chloe'. Instead of this deep connection, it felt more like I was weighing the collective good against the anti-social whims of a troubled teenager who could fly into rage at the drop of a hat. I did feel a strong connection to Max herself though, who I really wanted to hug for going through this hell of a week. Yeah, if you know about the endings, you can guess which one I went with...

No amount of context can save this terrible, terrible line.

Some of the dialogue gets viciously mocked on social media, and true enough there's quite a bit of cringe-worthy slang in the way these people talk. Overall most of it isn't that bad in context though and the characters themselves mock each other for it enough that it becomes a bit of a running joke. Except Max commenting on plasma and the delicacy thereof, that line cannot possibly be salvaged. Second was dropping "I swear to dog" in dead serious conversation in episode 3. 

I also wrote something about Victoria Chase's character: Vicsor's Opinion: Life Is Strange - Victoria Chase

4-1. Tomb Raider 2013 - Definitive Edition

Released: Jan 31, 2014
Played: Aug, 2016

I always had mixed feelings about the most recent Tomb Raider reboot. On its own it was a pretty good game but it never clicked as being worthy of the title "Tomb Raider", which made it jarring for me because the game insisted on flashing a Tomb Raider logo on screen every 5 seconds. However because I had recently picked up archery as a hobby and Not!Lara's main weapon is a bow, I decided to give the game another chance with its Definitive version on PS4.

Turned out I was pleasantly surprised. The game itself was still the same of course, but an update to Not!Lara's character model at least meant she now resembled someone I could buy as being an inexperienced Lara Croft. That actually made a world of difference for me. Also to mitigate the visual effects the torture porn nature of the game has on Lara, I stuck her in the competitive archery suit for the duration of the game which meant all those horrible cuts and bruises she accumulates are gone.

So yes, my experience with the Tomb Raider reboot went from being annoyed with it a few years back to it being massively improved simply because the character model now actually made me believe I was playing as a version of Lara Croft.

4-2. Rise of the Tomb Raider

Released: Oct 11, 2016
Played: Nov, 2016

I liked Rise of the Tomb Raider from the start because, unlike its predecessor, it didn't feel as ashamed to be Tomb Raider and actually made an effort to reintroduce elements from the Tomb Raider lore. The previous game drastically altered Lara Croft's backstory by removing the plane crash in the Himalayas (which I feel would be like removing Bruce Wayne's parents getting shot in the alley from his backstory). In this game it turns out there was a plane crash in the Himalayas, it's just that Lara's mother was on it rather than she herself, which motivated Richard Croft's obsession with myths of eternal life, which in turn motivated Lara.
We learn this information in the reintroduction of Croft Manor, whereas the previous game didn't even want to acknowledge Lara's nobility. Croft Manor is also filled to the brim with references to the previous games, even implying Lara will at some point be searching for Tomb Raider II's Temple of Xian. Now if in the next game it turns out Jacqueline Natla is responsible for Trinity, that would be absolutely fantastic.

There were still quite a few things I didn't like that much though. The writing of the Tomb Raider reboots is kinda odd. Their stories aren't necessarily all that straightforward, but the plot twists they use are cliches themselves, meaning you can easily predict where the story is going whenever a new plot element is introduced.
Then there's the RPG-like upgrade system for both Lara's skillset and her weapons, which doesn't really seem to matter all that much since basic headshots are completely lethal from the beginning and helmets aren't that difficult to overcome anyway. Also I'm still missing some of the more advanced acrobatics that exited the series after Tomb Raider Underworld.
Still, I feel Rise of the Tomb Raider redeemed the reboot series. Especially since the 20th Anniversary Edition included a bunch of costumes from the Core Design games (oddly missing is Legend era Lara though).

I also had way too much fun shooting bottles out of the sky with the bow.

It's technically an achievement but you can easily do it with a shotgun. I just learned to do it with the bow because that way it actually felt like an achievement. That sure was an hour of my life well spent!

5. Year Walk

Released: March 6, 2014
Played: Dec, 2016

I actually played and finished Year Walk just a few days ago on Christmas eve after the family dinner and before going to bed, which seemed appropriate since Christmas was historically one of the times a year when year walking took place. I mainly just got it because I wanted to know what the deal was with the horse in a suit that was featured in the promotional screenshots. Turns out there was actually an interesting experience behind the weird horse.

Yes, this. What is up with this?

Year Walk is a pretty short game that can easily be finished in like a single evening (I'm at 3.6 hours for 100% completion). Now it's already a very atmospheric puzzle game by itself, but the ending and alternate reality game-like post game is what pushes it over the edge into being a memorable experience (since it's also a big deal, I won't spoil it here). Basically while you are playing the game itself, the story takes a backseat and is only given proper context in the secret ending. Just be sure to keep a notebook on hand because the puzzles actually require some thought and expect you to be paying attention.


Anyway, those are some of the more memorable games I actually finished during the last year. Now if you'd like to hear my opinions on games actually released in 2016 that weren't rereleases, I will see you again in about 2 to 5 years!