There's a metric of 'success' and 'failure' that the whole world operates off, a balancing act of extremes, heights and calamitous pits. In some cultures that metric can be a mountain range soaring and diving over the years in an ever-unravelling panoramic tapestry; and down here in England it tends to something more of a one-way plane. You're either going up or you're going down and ain't nothing going to change that trajectory once it's set. But what if I were to tell you there's a tiny bit more nuance within the ranges of the successful and the unfortunate than just 'red' or 'green'. There are degrees, there are distinctions. And a masterpiece may not necessarily be a success, nor is a success automatically a masterpiece. Would you ask me to elaborate? I sure hope so because... that's what I'm going to do. That elaboration thing. Got it? Cool. Please read.
We've all got our games that we love for the success that they are. Playing Fallout 4 during that first year of release was a total blast of genuine decent first person combat, a fresh wasteland wonderland to tear into little pieces and a seemingly endless barrage of side-game content to keep me preoccupied until the star blinked out. There are people currently throwing their weight behind Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League and declaring that their favourite game of the year. And many of the Call of Duty games earn barrels of players in their first few months being alive. Such are the marks of success', to some degree. But what do all of these examples have in common that stops them just short of being true masterpieces? Think on it for a bit, we'll circle around later.
Masterpieces rank among the types of games that must be recognised, regardless of your affinity towards them or not. Fallout New Vegas will forever be called upon as a paragon of it's genre type, Deus Ex is considered one of the best games of all time, Diablo 2 has never gone a year without being mentioned within the game design space, Devil May Cry 3 is a touchstone for action gaming as a whole. These are the sorts of products that almost stand out in their defiance, and though their comparison up against the previous examples could be construed as being 'unfair', you only perceive such under the acknowledgement that the games I'm talking about are in a league of their own. And I suspect these examples might greater illustrate the point I'm angling towards.
Out of every Star Wars game ever released, there is only one that I would consider an actual masterpiece, and breaking it down will unveil the etymology I employ behind that specific designation. The Force Unleashed was a well received title that dropped in the era of Shonen anime becoming popular in the west, which was indeed one of the inspirations behind it's conceptualisation. Nowadays it seems a bit dated and self indulgent, particularly the once-cool, now stupid-looking scene where the protagonist pulls a Star Destroyer out of space with his mastery of the Force alone. The Fallen Order series is a breakdown of the formula and setting that only really works because of the ground work laid by the Souls genre of games and general boredom with the core aspects of the Skywalker narrative- so squeaking out more story from the spaces between still holds some vague interest. (Just check out all of the latest Disney Star Wars shows.) Knights of the Old Republic, on the otherhand, relies largely on itself.
I mean it is a Star Wars game, obviously, and benefits from that brand- but the game is not largely beloved for it's connection to that larger franchise. Indeed, KOTOR does a lot of things to distance itself from Star Wars in all manner except for thematic. It abandons the core story, forsakes all memorable characters and setting and throws itself squarely into the realm of an original cast in a new time period with a thematic resemblance to the universe we know but distinct elements. It tells a new narrative, familiar but with twists far removed from anything core Star Wars could pull off, and it introduces a deceptively approachable but surprisingly complex Dnd style gameplay system backing it all up. It is a masterpiece not because it came at the right time and borrowed the right elements, but because it soared on it's own impressive merits.
What makes a success an increasingly rare and applauded worthy instance in todays age is the near inscrutable fact that they need to be timely. Video games capture the moment's zeitgeist and weaponizes that to their distinct advantage; which means they have to be the right kind of en vogue from the moment that they drop. As games are becoming more bloated and requiring longer development times- that starts to become increasingly rare. Just look at this year alone- two live Services coming out years after that genre-type has been deemed horrendously overstuffed. They might have been timely when production began, but now they're relics. What could have been success two years ago are now remnants of a brushed over past. Failures for their timing alone.
But when a success today could have been a failure yesterday, can that really be put on the same sort of pedestal as something that is timeless and pervasive? Can the industry trend setters, who forged their own path and laid bricks in their respective wake, be as well loved as those that followed alongside the beaten path and found similar plaudits? And does the difference between one and the other even matter in a world where either can be as successful as the other? Afterall incredibly influential games sometimes get brushed into the background despite all that they achieve- just look at Vanquish's slide mechanic that every third/first person game with a half decent moveset either uses or has a worse version of! Where's that game's remaster?
So if we're going to try and put labels where none should probably exist, we can pretty safely give the title of 'Success' to games that are timely and that of 'Masterpiece' to games that are timeless- with the added knowledge that neither is mutually exclusive from the other. There's a reason why my Nintendo Switch is loaded up with a whole bunch of Nintendo only exclusives and Kotor 1&2 and Baldur's Gate 1&2. Some ideas shine beyond the dim of age. They'll still be people discovering those games decades from now and remarking on their role in the shaping of entertainment even in the time when everyone is digitally hooked up to their total-immersion VR pleasure domes that are really just the cucoon milking eggs from prophetic sci-fi case study 'Skynut'- mark my words.
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