Not the yellow guys. They're aight.
Hate is borne from love they say, or something to that avail, because both demand the utmost extremes of emotion to be reached. Thus I suppose it only figures that I absolutely love boss fights in video games and am so glad that they're coming back into the mainstream lately. I live for those moments of mortal showdown between the protagonist and some powerful, towering foe which stretches every wit and sinew to trade blows with. I love the climatic nature of the events, the emotions, the thrills, the highpoints and the low. Standing across the deck of a burning ship and ripping off perfectly fine suits before Shibusawa, drawing guns inside of a snow-white field of stagnant water lilys against The Boss, and stepping into the Kiln, watching the Soul of Cinder slowly rise amidst a sea of discarded burnt-up swords from a thousand battles fought; these are the moments that steal my heart away time and time again. A perfect boss fight, in set-up alone, can be unforgettable tournaments of one on one. But we're not here to talk about things that I love, now are we, so let's discuss how games often manage to bottle it and burn my wings in anguish. Time after time.
Minions. Why? I've just fist fought my way through the streets of Kamarucho, snuck across a Russian forest crawling with soviet hit squads and bested Lords with the strength to relight the world; I expect on the other end for my foe to have the common courtesy of facing me like a man; instead of hiding beneath the coattails of swarms-worth of brainless anklebiters that I've already stepped on hoards of in order to get here in the first place. It's demeaning. What enjoyment do I get out of taking a break between each expertly dodged move to go "Oh whoops, the mobs are getting rowdy again, better take a quick time out"? Why should anyone have to deal with their clash of the titans moment being interrupted by an errant skeleton who's trying to remember how to cast a basic fireball? "Excuse me, Skeleton-mage-man, but I'm right in the middle of something right now. This huge climax of tension and narrative drive that the world designers and storytellers have been weaving throughout my last stretch of gameplay, could you sod off and let me enjoy that now?" Is that being too direct? Not enough?
A boss is a very special milestone to reach, and it should be an exciting affair as well. Oftentimes they precede important story revelations or an impressive tract of land that's about to open up to you. Rarely does a boss not come without a reward, even if it's just relief of having duelled and won the day. Thus there's almost a sacredbond between these moments and players; an unspoken rule that things are about to get tough but you can mange through the struggle by learning your enemy, maybe through several attempts, and exploiting those weakness. The game has saw fit to challenge our resolve, and thus we meet it with all our vigour and intrigue. Something new, exciting and unexpected lurks just beyond that foggate and I'm going to be the one to figure it out! Only for it to turn out to be a swarm of nobodies who sit on you whilst their boss does the dirty work. Does anyone else come away feeling cheap after such fights? Like they were used and tossed out the next morning without so much as a cup of coffee? 'Cause that, win or lose, is me. Utterly unamused.
In my eyes this spawns the same sort of dissatisfaction that those feel who complain whenever a boss is simply just a scaled up version of an enemy you fought in the level beforehand. (I mean it's not that lazy, mind you, but it feels that way to me.) I expect new experiences, new movesets and new tension, such to the point where I'll even rate boss fights with unique boss minions in them over those that recycle the level's mob trash, because at least then I know that these are enemies geared to be in this fight. Otherwise it almost always turns into an inelegant mess of a battle where attention is drawn away by a back-up troop who all engage in their own tactics instead of supporting their boss, because that's just how they designed at a base level. So I switch target, loss focus, get bum rushed, die, rinse and repeat. And it's almost never with a smile on my face.
Dark Souls, bless that franchise, understands this fully, and even in the battles that are occupied by mobs the boss in them is designed in such a manner where they would be useless without the mobs. Imagine battling the Deacons of the Deep without the hoards: the fight would be even more trivial then it already kind of is. I just don't see why, when you already have a tough-as-nails headlining act, they need to have the audience rush the matt for backup. Okay, that's not true, I do kind of understand the logic. Some of the reasoning doesn't escape like I wish this practice would. I say that because, at a base level, good design does dictate that the challenges and tribulations of a level should reinforce the skills that you need to use as the game becomes more difficult. Thus I can kind of see the logic behind populating boss fights with identical enemies to the level you just bested as though to say "Look, you fought these guys before so you should be familiar with them!" But I'd call this a case where the forest is wholly missed for the tress.
Now there's obviously a angle to be addressed here of design and balancing that I am sort of knowingly bulldozing over to make a point. That's because I think the expectations of a boss battle are fundamentally different what what is sought out of level-filling mob trash. When trudging through levels, I expect a diverse smattering of enemies who feel intelligently placed enough to give the area life and stretch gameplay across the area I'm playing in. They don't necessarily have to feel like they were crafted for the halls I'm fighting down because I expect these guys and their AI to meet me in a variety of locations over my gaming adventure. Level trash needs to be adaptable, a little indistinct and be designed to be fought time and time again without being boring. And I'll imagine you're already starting to see the comparison I'm about to make. Boss enemies are, ideally, meant to be as synonymous with their arenas as they are with their gameplay. (Remember how I noted each boss' location when I gave examples earlier?) Their size, attacks, speed, design: everything should be crafted to compliment the location within which you fight them, whether that is to hinder your struggles or aid them. These aren't enemies you could just pick up and place across the game, they have their space and it's a space made for them. So isn't it galling, then, for the mob trash to invade that space? Doesn't it speak to an inherent disrespect of the sacred boss arena?
But of course, there has to be an example of a climatic boss fight which does exactly this but does so without such complaints from me, and the example which comes most readily to mind right now is that of the Dragon Age Origins finale. (Spoilers. Duh.) At the end of that game you're tasked with duelling a huge dragon atop a burning city whilst hoards of Darkspawn do their best to rearrange your face. Now this is by no means the first dragon you've met in your journeys (his breath does unique damage but that's about it) so you know these guys can hold a fight on their own. But you're being assaulted by other enemies as well in a manner that doesn't feel ridiculous, and here's why. Firstly, you're not alone during this fight and this is supposed to resemble a large scale conflict, so the trash makes sense. Secondly, they're intelligently spawned so that you're not drowned in them. Thirdly, only the simplest of enemy types spawn so that you don't have to deal with complex strategies that draw attention from the main fight. And lastly; because the game is a tactical RPG in which you can take the time to pause the action, take a step back and unravel each new complication as it heads your way. That's why this sort of mobbing can work in games like X-Com too; it's fits the genre.
Of course, at the end of the day if you'd ask me which I'd rather have, trash filled boss arenas or no boss fights at all, I'd have to err towards the former, but that doesn't mean I'll stop suing for fundamental improvement to how such encounters are designed. Great boss fights can make or break a game's legacy and I think that in today's age, with as many brilliant examples of tight boss design as we have, there's not really an excuse for such clear, at least to me, missteps. Maybe I'm the one being regressive and there's some brilliant execution of this very issue of mine that blows away every single bit of my criticism. But I haven't played it yet and, given the breadth of games I have played, I can rather confidentially say that it's probably the exception and not the rule.
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