Wednesday, 12 August 2009
the savior of those on earth
Replaying Lufia 2 currently. It’s one of the rare few RPGs that have the bonus dungeon early in the game, instead of right before the final battle.
That always bugged me. You slog through the entire game with crap stuff, then gind mindlessly at the secret dungeon to get cool stuff, but you only get to use all that bling in the last few fights. What use is an epic weapon when you only get to wield it at the final 1% of the game?
Of course, getting Cool Shit ™ too early on can be balancing to the point of game-breaking, but that’s another story. After all if your game was balanced well a bunch of powerups should be merely “nice boosters” instead of “omghax”. In games with linear item progressions (wood sword -> iron sword -> gold sword) of course you’ll overpower the player but then again that’s your own freaking fault for sticking slavishly to decades-old RPG tradition. It’s not just about the damage, god damn it. That’s the problem with you young people, you don’t fucking think.
“B-b-but DPS!”. Bullshit. This is why your games sink into the sea of anonymity along with the bajillions of other no-name bargain-bin titles. The problem with damage-oriented games is you kill creativity by making everything else unimportant. Why cast boosts / buffs / debuffs when enemies die in 1-2 rounds? Exactly. This is also a failing in Lufia 2 btw, so even though I do like that game it still cheeses me off that many things can simply be dismissed as useless even though in theory they should enjoy good situational uses.
Btw the title of this blog is in reference to a song that only gets a brief showing in the game before another track replaces it. This song is fucking epic. I mean Hiraga Saito charging into certain death one-man-army style against an army of 7 million kind of epic. This is the kind of music that plays when the spotlight unexpectedly falls on the surprise hero, who nobody takes any notice of before. The hero who’s just one of the few minor characters in the party, the one nobody pays attention to because he doesn’t act like a dick, the one who always does the menial jobs because the other heroes are too busy being drama queens in center stage, the one who always gets stuck with the blame because he never complains when the party needs a convenient scapegoat for their hare-brained scheme of the day, the one who never fails to let the brat / tag-along / guest take the last available room at the inn and sleeps in the ditch outside because nobody cared to take a recount of the increased party size, the one who always suffers in silence and volunteers to do all the dangerous diversions because the main heroes are more important to the plot, the one who actually has the worst of it all but nobody notices because he’s not the focus of the story, the one who gets left behind to face the authorities while the heroes make their umpteenth escape, the one who bankrupts his small inheritance helping the party entertain other factions because we need their political strength, the one who loses it all for the sake of helping the main heroes.
This is the kind of music that’s seared into your brain when you consider this unsung hero as he makes his final stand against overwhelming odds. Left behind to garrison a side path while the main heroes forge forward along the obvious route, this guy discovers that they’ve been suckered and that the main party is only facing a token force – while the real army moves to strike at the flank… the flank that he’s been left to protect. What to do? It’s too late to call for reinforcements. To fall back would allow the enemy to flank the armies of the forces of good and destroy them. The only responsible thing to do then would be to send the tiny garrison away to spread the word of warning to as many friendly forces as possible, while he remains behind to prevent the enemy from overrunning the single lone fortress standing between victory and defeat.
Imagine this song playing as our valiant hero prepares to meet the enemy, knowing that it will be the last thing he can do for the heroes, the only people who ever believed in him and called him friend. He turns the fortress into a deathtrap and collapses the exits, then marches forward to fulfill his final duty. Imagine this song playing as he marches resolutely forward to meet the enemy, even as his brain rebels, remembering all the pain, the shame, and the humiliation he endured growing up as an unwanted war orphan. The only thing keeping him moving forward is loyalty – loyalty to the only people who ever cared and who in turn earned his eternal gratitude. Gratitude that he is going to pay for with his very life.
He has lived gladly in the shadow of his heroic companions, lending them his quiet strength, and now that very strength will both work for and against him. He has enough reserves to give the enemy a very nasty surprise – he will actually take on the entire fucking army and carve huge bloody swathes through them. This also guarantees that they will not be content to simply crush this lone insect that blocks their way, that they will capture him and take him apart slowly piece by painful piece, and since they count necromancers and demons among their number he knows death will not end his torment. They will simply chain his soul, bind it with their unholy magicks, and raise him and kill him again and again and again.
This is the kind of fucking epic music that unnamed heroes like that deserve. The goddamn main heroes don’t do everything on their own, dammit. Everyone plays a part. This is my woefully inadequate tribute to the underdogs whom nobody pays attention to, who deserve some fucking respect for all they’ve gone through, all the sacrifices they made.
