Flames of the Witcher

 

Like many out there, I have a very insular view of the Witcher as a franchise. I know the thing from it's games and only that. Just as book fans typically stick only to the games, and show fans are ostracized by all the other sectors of the franchise. It's a particularly strange and somewhat ineffective way to run a multimedia franchise, but when literally no facet of the franchise is willing to shake hands with the other what are you going to do? The Witcher games at least try to take the books that had released at the time into account to as full of a degree as they feasibly can, being an RPG video game. The show... wasn't so much interested in even doing that and really... well, the Netflix series kind of looked at the profitable franchise and figured they could puppeteer that corpse into their own thing with a bit of work. Several years later, some odd casting choices and one horrendous PR disaster later- and the series is being cut short.

It is very necessary to remind everyone that no matter how they like to frame it, The Witcher is absolutely not living up to the vision that the showrunners had for it. They like to pretend that they are ending the show and it isn't being cancelled, despite the drop-off of ratings and reviews they got throughout their previous season, alongside the nightmare storm PR they have drummed up consistently. And they also want everyone to forget the 7 season plan the team initially had in place. And those seven seasons were the actual working plan- it's not like the Resident Evil series where the showrunner casually threw up the idea of 20 seasons before farting out a disaster piece of the ages- The Witcher had ambition. For all that ambition ended up amount to...

It seems almost callous to chalk all this fallen potential up to the casting, and subsequent firing, of one man- but if the shoe fits- then it must be said that axing Henry Cavill was probably the death knell for this already struggling brand. After seasons of muddled themes, distorted plot points and straight butchered character arcs- through it all people who actually liked the series could enjoy a solid performance from the one man who perfectly encapsulated his character and seemed more invested in getting the story right than anyone in the writers room. As one of the only Witcher fans in the world who both liked the games and read the books: (Shock of shocks!) the man should have probably been brought on as an executive producer. Instead he was driven from the show and with him went any hope the show would eventually become something worthy of the source material.

Source Material is such a strangely feared concept in the modern scene of adaptations whereupon every adaptor seems so eager to veer off and do their own thing atop the bare bones of the original plan that often times I'm left wondering why it is these creators were 'drawn' to the property to being with! Surely a 'fan' would respect and want to preserve what was so special about the thing they are adapting, rather than just roll over it with their own twisted facsimile of the original. Oftentimes it feels as though perhaps what had drawn them was the 'fandom' rather than the product itself. That 'love', so to speak, which could be opportunistically siphoned off their direction with enough surreptitious reconstructions. That is the only explanation I can fathom for some of the disasters that paint the modern world of TV and film.

So The Witcher is burning down at Netflix, and through the flames we are going to be fed two more series as the franchise chokes on itself and goes out with a whimper. In that time I'll be honest- the idea of recasting your core lead character does intrigue me for how seamlessly they will attempt to pull it off. I mean sure, thanks to the rank incompetence of the writing staff, Geralt's key position as an moral observer judging the worst of the world with an objective eye is practically eliminated in favour of him being dumb strong man with sword- but the white haired badass was still the most recognisable character on the show. Straight up sticking a new handsome actor in his britches is sure to cause some undeniable friction I can't help but be curious at.

Compare this to the world of Fallout for a second. There is an adaptation that didn't just get the look and feel of the original property nearly down pat- (I think there are some tonal issues personally, but if Josh Sawyer himself doesn't see them I'll confess to perhaps being my own kind of misguided in that regard.) but built upon the foundations of the games in order to tell it's own story. It's own, largely derivative, story. Fans love it, critics seem enamoured, and now everyone is scrambling to claim credit for making the show what it is and the franchise too. Witcher, on the otherhand, feels like it's been discarded by the video game community, despite the fact that the brand's international success can be placed pretty much solely on the shoulders of that game series, whether the creator wants to admit it or not!

I do feel bad for the Witcher, because it was actually on of the better properties to suffer this disgrace. Resident Evil was never going to be a strand-out TV show even if it were placed in the hands of competent creatives, but The Witcher actually had that potential. I'm not sure if I'd go so far as to give it the cliche title of 'The next Game of Thrones', given that the scale of The Witcher is inherently personal whereas GOT was telling the story of an era; but it could have been it's own special little gift to fantasy TV storytelling instead of what it ended up being- an increasingly low-effort exercise in pointless excess living up to neither the games nor the books.  

Ubisoft and the value question

 

At this point I have a problem, clearly. At this point I'm pretty much a K-Pop stan except replace the love for hatred. But in my defence, the target of my disdain has been responsible for wasting copious amounts of my passion for this hobby as well as actively has a part in ruining the outward perception of this industry. (I would even say they've negatively influence the direction of the industry a couple of times.) So I'd say the ire is a bit justified on my end. Ubisoft- the Canadian boogey men, are entering something of a threat phase for me once again as they tackle a property I inexplicably still care about. Star Wars Series do nothing for me anymore, I can't be bothered to watch any after Andor. (At least I gave up on their high.) Their movies haven't interested my since The Force Awakens, and I doubt that will change anytime soon. The games, however, I've always loved the games.

In many ways my greatest ties to the Star Wars world has been through the interactive mediums through fantastic projects like 'Dark Forces', wish fulfilment like 'Jedi Knight Academy', anime wackiness like 'Force Unleashed'- there has never been a shortage of diversity present in this world. Thus it was with something of a stark astonishment I realised there hasn't really been anything implicitly 'Ubisoft coded' in this franchise up until now. You know what I mean: Checklist open worlds where you run from map marker to map marker across a world you'll become increasingly desensitised to as every gameplay mechanic reinforced your detachment to it has a breathing world. A ramshackle narrative stitched together from missions that would count as side quests under any actual high achieving studio in similar work. Ugly and rampant single player cosmetic monetisation.

Which is why I am not the least bit shocked that the new Ubisoft Massive developed Star Wars Outlaws game seems to be doing everything it can to reinforce the 'Ubisoft formula' in all the most obvious and least risky ways. (Which is what art is all about right, being predictable and safe?) But that's neither here nor there, what I want to discuss is something of the interesting rhetoric that has been drummed up around the game's interesting form of nickel-and-diming some of those sweet exorbitant pre-order bucks out of the audience. We've got the three days early access- the Han Solo outfit- (Jedi Survivor literally already offered that exact same cosmetic. Ubisoft can't even grift creatively!) And the exclusive pre-order quest with Jabba the Hutt. Nostalgia baiting at it's most prime.

Now apparently there was some confusion about whether or not this meant that all interactions with Jabba the Hutt were DLC exclusive, which they are not it turns out, but the community team coined a very interesting topic of discussions as they tried to waive away the significance of this issue. Quite simply, people were upset that key content was being withheld behind a $30 upcharge edition of the game for which the team assured- this content is not massive, nor is it key- so people don't need to get so worked up about missing out and just playing the base game. But then- if we are to assume that is true then the question should really be- how can the value proposition of the content on offer not be considered woefully inadequate?

Think about the Catch-22 they've built for themselves here. By the very existence of these special editions that come package with the season pass bundle, the team have infused a supposed value on that content. The extra 30-50 bucks they demand is their assertion of how valuable that extra content is, which means that cutting through the low-effort cosmetics on offer and pathetic early access crap- they believe their extra missions to be worth about $30. This includes the season pass for content they haven't detailed or developed yet- that's pretty much just a promise they'll make something decent, which after Assassin's Creed Valhalla's groan worthy DLC slate- that absolutely cannot be taken for granted. If we are to take that all at face value, then Ubisoft are plucking content about half as valuable as the base game itself and locking that away behind an upcharge.

But here's the likely reality behind it- it's all smoke and mirrors! The Jabba mission which they've thrown onto the season pass, Ubisoft content development history would insist that such a mission is actually a limp five minute distraction the team hardly thought more than two seconds about during development, which was cut out for how inconsequential it was and given a retroactive price tag. I speak with suppositions, no doubt- but borne from having experienced every major Ubisoft release ever- that is the kind of content they play with. Which would mean the company has unwitting admitted to the fact they overcharge for their content and play off the alure of exclusivity to peddle throw-away cut content at painful prices.

Value is such a tricky thing with the games industry, as everyone wants to believe themselves the highest value product on the market right now, whereas in truth the market decides value of each product by their participation with it. Suicide Squad kills the Justice League will insist it is worth the $70 price tag on the box, but when they have to slash that price in half within the first two months in order to make any sort of decent sales- it would seem the market has decided their game ain't worth half that price tag. Baldur's Gate 3 hasn't gone on sale since before it fully released- thus the market is pretty happy stating that game is absolutely worth it's full RRP. (Which is $60 by the way. Yeah, Suicide Squad thought it was more valuable than Baldur's Gate... ain't that a trip!)

Comparison is the thief of joy, so they say- but when finance is involved I consider comparison to be the highest art of discourse, for the ethereal art of value is but a shadow puppet play in the face of solid competition. As games insist on driving up their prices, ramping up microtransactions and even angling towards subscription access models if you're Ubisoft, (They're just the actual worst living people in the industry, what can I say?) the steel cogs of comparison turn against more and more- sternly judging the colour of their character. I applaud to see the weak and unimpressive churned within the guts and spat out on the otherside- and the very moment Ubisoft's caustic, yet ever tested, 'broad market appeal' withers enough to be subject to that 'comparison machine' is the exact moment we'll see an empire crushed into kibble within the space of a single console generation.

Tarkov's 'Unheard' of heel switch

 

Escape from Tarkov is something of a success story. A hardcore shooter which popularised extraction gameplay, mixing the thrill of being in danger of losing gear from the map that you are trying to extract with the bloodlust of limited life competitive combat, and played upon the 'Russian ruins' aesthetic of the dormant S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise. The game was conceived as a quick fund raising vehicle for the next serious project the team wanted to work on, but ended up blowing up to such an unreal degree that the little fundraiser ended up being promoted to being the team's core-most project. (Or should I call that an 'unheard' of degree? I'm getting ahead of myself...) Nowadays Tarkov is considered one of the few really successful hardcore competitive games on the market and treated with the indie sensibilities that the team probably no longer align with given how wide they have grown.

Theirs was a game considered fondly for a while, and those on the outside of the community filed it away in the back of our minds as one of those games that made it. But what if I told you all that was a smokescreen? And that Tarkov has been pushing the buttons of it's community bit by bit over the years to the point where they genuinely thought they could get away with a €300 game mode without it spreading into a public relations incident? Well then, we'd have to take a look at everything happening with the 'Unheard' edition from the broken promises to the insane asking price to what I think isn't being discussed enough- how insane of a height this company is setting itself to fall off of. All over the space of like- three days! (The devil be coming for folk quick these days!)

So to start with the basics- Tarkov is getting a PVE mode! I know- wonder of wonders! Imagine what one can accomplish with a mode based around PVE, why- I can just dream about what such a remix could have achieved for other PVP central franchises like Overwatch! (Sad, broken, dreams) And how does one access such a mode? Well that is exclusive to people who purchase the Unheard edition of Tarkov retailing for that aforementioned abominable price. But that isn't all they get! There's also a backup radio to call friends into games, and a token which renders certain enemies passive if you cross a certain reputation marker with the right faction. Essentially it's your basic pay-to-win stuff, I'm not sure how common this is within the Tarkov space but seeing as how none of those others doodads where the topic of backlash from within the community- I assume they're used to those sorts of gameplay effecting MTX. What they are less happy about, however, is backtracking and lies.

You see, Tarkov has sold extraordinary priced packs before chock-full with grand promises about what they give players access to. We could go through and critique the ethics of each balance switch-up, for the purposes of this drama all we need is to examine is the now-defunct Edge of Darkness pack. This $145 pack claimed to give players, along other goodies, access to all future DLC that would release for the game. A claim which ran up afoul of the fact that the only way to access this upcoming PVE mode would be the $250 Unheard of edition mode. That is- well, it's breach of promises. (Perhaps even contract depending on how seriously we take marketing descriptions.) Tarkov's excuse to try and get away with this? "Uh... the new mode isn't DLC guys!"

Oh yeah, they tried to get into the semantics argument! You see- they consider DLC to be a very specific type of content and a game mode to be another kind entirely. By their reasoning- the PVE, which bear in mind is considered so substantial it is provided exclusively in a several hundred dollar valued pack, does not constitute enough to be consider downloadable content. Which is rather stark, when you think about it. So what, is this considered a whole new game? Or is it considered less than a DLC? Because the former would imply a new executable, and the latter would imply they are overcharging for their content. What is this catch-22 that Tarkov has locked themselves within?

And then, of course, we have the petty stuff. Discord channels have been silenced by those afraid of being called out by their own community, Tarkov's Twitter handlers directly attacked another extraction genre-title who made some subtle jabs their way by calling them a 'rip off'. It's been an absolute mess. All whilst I stand in shock and ask the question that no one seems to be asking: what in gods name is so special about this PVE mode that it's worth $250? No, really! We're talking about a PVE mode tacked onto the side of a PVP shooter, a decent PVP shooter by all reckonings, but a shooter nonetheless. Typical wisdom would insist such content would be a bit of a messy bending of systems and mechanics to fit a purpose they weren't created to serve. You can find fully polished campaign shooters for $60. What has Tarkov got up it's sleeve worthy of a 400% mark up over everything else on the market?

What this smells like to me is rank exploitation of their most devoted fans. This is a game that is a hobby for a great many out there, one of those forever games that people stick staunchly to and come back to time and time again. Tarkov has thus been infested by that same loathsome corporate bug that insists- "Heh! We provide so many hours of entertainment to these people and yet we charge the same as other games out there! Some people come back to our game year after year when they only play through the latest AAA game once! Why don't we charge the equivalent of 4 triple AAA games, then? Isn't that fair?" A hilariously short-sighted 'utopia' of meritocracy that these cretins really don't want to get into. Start charging by the hour and be overwhelmed by how high our standards soar. Mild server issues that kick us off the game for a couple of hours will be lawsuit fodder for breach of contract. You want that smoke? No? Then how about you sit back down!

In the new day Tarkov's developers are performing the backtrack I honestly did not expect out of them. Typically I assume situations like these are grand publicity stunts, but the extent to which these developers ceded their general goodwill in full view of everyone- this would be the worst publicity campaign ever- if it truly was. Now the PVE mode which they explicitly stated would be inaccessible to everyone who didn't buy the pack- that's coming to everyone for free... in about six months time. Now the pack is giving people six months 'early access', which is... honestly a lot better. Let the idiots waste their money on that crap, I don't care. It's just a shame they had to drag their own name through a circus of mud to get to this basically reasonable policy change that any rational mind would have led out the gate with. Marketing- where competence goes to die. 

Rebellious Moon

 There are no do-good evil-fighters, only celestial bodies.

Hark, doth mine mortal ears deceive? Else be it true that dear Snyder, of the Zachary house, hath conjured with his labours his ownst copiee of the Star Wars? Ist true, one should be beholden to insist, how 'Rebel Moon' carries vast shades reminiscent of many a lament property within her make. Star Wars for one, Warhammer 40k for another, onest might even detect some rogue splash of Battlestar Galactica shouldst they delve some layer deeper. Truly thou hast brought the very culmination of their influence, mild and wild, unto a most potent broth. Whomst could forsee how such a concoction wouldst last in a world of forever sequels and forever franchises? What new nugget of brilliance hast the house of Zachary to offer the belated and beleaguered realm of action fiction, which ist had not before? Well hark well, friends, I hast the answer!

Boredom. That is what Zach thought our worlds of Sci-Fi were so desperately missing in his grand journey to ruin quite literally every last piece of goodwill he had amongst that ever shrinking portion of the world with their frontal cortex's mostly intact. Zach sat down and though- "Yeah, all these high flying sci-fi movies with their incredibly evocative and tangible worlds, strong and pervasive narrative themes that reflect deeply in the personalities and actions of the core cast? What a waste of effort! Effort- that could be going into exposition!" I truly believe that Snyder genuinely does not understand the point of storytelling from a basic level, and yet fell into the position of 'writer director' by basic merit of the 'fail upwards' society that the already successful enjoy over in the states.

I say this because that is the only real explanation I can stomach to explain how one takes the story of The Seven Samurai, a story told countless times in every medium, from movie to comics to books, (I'll bet there's a game or two that mimics it too) and utterly screws it up. It ain't that hard to do! We're talking a story about gathering a group of colourful characters with unique talents that come together to save a small community struggling under the boot of oppression. That's as basic as basic gets. Yet not only does the Zack manage to make this last 4 hours, but he fundamentally misses the mark on every single marker of this story that he possibly could. It is as though he set out to make a movie that purposefully mocked the very idea of a Seven Samurai setup, only he forgot the sarcasm to make it all stick.

Zack is enamoured by the spectacle of 'style'. He wants to be behind the scenes crafting this expansive and visually arresting world, whilst being in front of the charge setting up the piece for iconic scenes fuelled on the richness of that built world. It's a very specific art to master which he absolutely cannot get to grips with. All of the first movie is wasted telling us about how great and cool the various stragglers are who lump themselves with Cora (The only person who's name I remember) in her quest to find some rebels that might help them fight off 'The Imperium'. These stragglers seem to exist only as words of exposition, because in person they are drab, personality drained, occasionally barking, background clutter. No one interacts with anyone else in a way that highlights their traits or desires, it's all as sterile as a doctors ward.

Bring us in to the substance of narrative, birthing and growing characters, and you'll stump Zach blind. All he can do is write backstories that are spoken with perfect bluntness, as though reading the bio-section of your own top trump card, as within those overbloated narratives we're supposed to independently derive passions, goals, relationships, struggles and ultimately their lessons too. When the sword woman reveals that her family was killed, we see that as a perfect excuse to set up her coming to grow close with the people of the village as a surrogate. Instead, one of the kids tries to bug her with a bit of wheat once. They're best friends now, she thinks of this kid as her new son. Would you believe me if I told you that was the single most developed relationship these two movies present? Cora and her brainless boytoy are so pathetically underexplored I cannot even tell you a single character trait about either one that these characters could have been attracted to in theory, let alone what actually makes them a decent couple!

Action, Zack's one forte, is smothered under his ridiculous obsession with getting the 'trailer shot', which feels like his intention behind every scene. He's so desperate to get that one crazy moment where the hero is writhing in the midst of battle, slaying their foes whilst chaos reins around them in a highlight of their whirlwind frenzy, that this becomes every shot. Every character is launching themselves out of cover in every scene, standing right in the middle of a hail of laser fire that doesn't even land close to them, as they charge the ranks like children on a playground. You'd think our heroes were actually invisible for the way they never seem to be in actual, or even potential, danger of being shot at any time ever. They lay under the tanks, begging to be shot, and all the carnage would sail above them hitting... well... nothing actually. It's amazing how few good guys we see in any actual danger ever. I can remember maybe two or three villager deaths. We don't even see that many background extras being blasted. So what are the Imperium dunces aiming at, if not the heroes? Are they trying to off Zack in order to escape this movie? That might be it...

And can you believe I've touched on all that without even bringing up slow-mo yet? I never really thought something so trivial could be used as such a crutch for dynamic pacing- but here we are. Zack actually thinks the way you slow down a scene is by literally slowing down the footage. I know it's been memed to death but that mockery comes from a point of reason! He throws slow-mo on footage of grain being chucked around, on water being drawn out of faucets, of a man throwing a handful of dirt as he trips over, of a man jogging in the moments before a climatic jump. It seems almost insane to have to point out that such a technique is designed to highlight moments of excitement, drawing out moments and stretching that tension ever more thin before the bow snap of the payoff. He simply doesn't understand what tension is and how Slow-mo effects it. At all. And that is his one trick. He's not a one-trick pony. He is a no trick pony. Zack Snyder is an actual class clown who accidentally fell into a position of tortured regard! He is a hack.

But I will say this for the man- he is entertainingly awful. There are so many directors out there who put out movies that are frankly unwatchable, but the bare basics of movie making are not lost on the man. He can frame a great shot, construct a visually arresting scene and direct a fine looking sequence or two. The man is a cinematographer and very much should have stayed as such, but some moron told him he would make a half decent director and here we are! If only he could write just a little bit better, his movies could be a bit more memorable too. Still, Rebel Moon did manage to score the Netflix top box office awards so who knows- maybe we'll get our 'trilogy of six movies' following the world's most boringly cool-looking sci-fi series. I actually morbidly hope we do. 

Don't forget to tip!

Dupont would be proud.

Mike Ybarra is a bit of a scapegoat. He was dragged into his role as leader of Blizzard following a sexual abuse scandal that left the position as toxic, and then he was thrown out of the role when Microsoft took over as an example of the change that would be coming to the brand. Now that would be a pretty significant position to hold, a shining example to stick in one's CV, had it not followed that whole 'sexual abuse scandal' that I just mentioned. (Bit of a red flag, that.) As it happens the man was a stop gap between the Blizzard that had to be doused for it's PR and the Blizzard that was incoming because the Blizzard deal was being cooked up for an age and a half before he even swore the oath. (They have an oath of office at Blizzard, right?) But do not get me wrong, despite his relatively brief tenure, my man has quite a few achievements under his belt!

Why, he marched into the office and demanded he needed to see everyone's pearly teeth in person else he just couldn't quite get in the 'working mood'- or at least that's what I can assume would be the logic behind a 'return to office' order... for a technology company. (It just isn't the same unless you're typing on our keyboards!) He scrapped the annual profit-sharing bonuses that the company had run on for years, essentially meaning that when the company had achieved well because one department excelled, everyone would benefit- and he did a bunch of other little stuff like downplaying the importance of QA teams and other stuff that actual developers who make the products consider antithetical to a healthy environment. The dude was a Looney Tunes character brought into a role that had an expiration date upon signing, scrambling to try and make enough changes to stick on his over-inflated CV so he brag about all the nonsensical changes he made and how much of a 'trend setter' he was!

Mike's a moron, basically. Which is why it should come as no surprise to anyone that the man, enjoying his time out of the big seat for now, spouted cringe on main when it came to single player games. Yeah, that thing which Blizzard doesn't do anymore because they can't figure out how to squeeze it for every cent it's worth, single player games? Mike is playing them now. (To be fair, Blizzard never really made any Single Player games, it's just that the reason behind that these days is a bit different to how it used to be.) And Mike is using the internet's dirty dumping ground, known as Twitter, (or some other name I can't remember) to tell us all about his further revolutionary ideas which, much like the actual policies he affected as a CEO, clearly did not churn around his little walnut of a brain for longer than it took him to evacuate his bowels that morning.

"I thought about this idea for a while..." he claimed, likely referring to the particularly stubborn 'log' he struggled to shake off just an hour previously. "When I beat a game, there are some that just leave me in awe of how amazing the experience was. At the end of the game, (Unnecessary comma alert) I've often thought "I wish I could give these folks another $10 or $20 because it was worth more than my initial $70 and they didn't try to nickel and dime me every second." Now barring the severe irony of the man talking about being 'Nickel and Dimed' when he was CEO for the release of bloody Diablo 4- is my man seriously advocating for tipping game developers? Because that is either an insanely naïve idea formed by a severely delusional idealist or... no, actually I won't give the benefit of the doubt- that's all it is. Naïve.

Now to be clear, this man is not talking about indie games on Itch.io- (as you can likely deduce from the $70 comment) because obviously those games already have a tipping feature, built into the service. He's talking your mega games, your Red Dead Redemption 2, your Baldur's Gate 3, your Horizon Zero Dawns. He thinks these are the kinds of games that simply demand much more than that painful '$70' price tag, which is already raising a debate on 'value proposition' lately- why? Because he wants to pay more, damn it! And the developers deserve a bit more of a kick-back! You mean... that they deserve... Bonuses? You think people should be rewarded for success with bonuses, Mike Ybarra- famous scrapper of bonuses? I wonder why he didn't use the common term 'bonus' and instead conjured up some bizarre 'tipping' concept. I wonder...

But lets' throw our heads into 'La La' land for a second, ignore the waltzing Ryan Gosling and pretend this was a real thing people could do. Why in the hell would you ever think that extra money would see developers? What has happened since games shot up to $70? Where has that extra $10 gone? To the sacking of half the AAA industry, whilst profits shoot up for the suits! So where do you think your tip money would go? Right into those same pockets. See- that's why this whole 'please give us more RRP for our poor hungry developers' is a bunch of absolute barnacle paste! When you're talking about multi-million dollar studios who are balancing whole empires in their balance sheets- you have to realise that the only barrier to developers being paid solid wages, are the companies themselves. There's no lack of money flying around the industry, there's a lack of standards on whom gets paid what. Unless we're talking about implementing some sort of 'royalties' system but- let's be honest, Mike didn't think this through- of course he never considered 'royalties'.

All this is without taking into account that Mike Ybarra is actually talking about reward games with more than the above full-price standard for the sheer magnanimity of not 'Nickle and Diming' us. My man has such low esteem for the consumer caste that he thinks we should wheel out the parades and circuses every time developers doesn't go to the nth degree to clog up their games with endless Microtransactions, bloat out progression to encourage time skipper packs, lock day-one content behind ludicrously over priced special editions and... well, do everything that Ubisoft does. He basically wants to Pavlov the game's industry for not becoming more like Ubisoft. That's kind of like the bare minimum, Mike. I thought your generation was supposed to be so far removed from the 'participation trophy' mentality! Turns out that's because your more into the 'You've made it out of bed, here's my credit card details' meta!

Tipping comes with a strange change of the dynamic between consumer and product, and just like every single 'revision' to that relationship I've ever read over the course of the past year- no one really thinks past the basic implementation of their insanely short sighted idea. I read one Metro contributor propose every game being free-to-play for the first few hours with people paying access to the content they want to play, thus circumventing the exorbitant buy in prices. Totally ignoring how that would influence all game design to front end the most explosive content to try and trick people into investing for the back half of lazier stuff. (Which is already a quiet meta worming it's way through design.) Or the whole 'pay per hour you play' model I heard brought up, which would totally assassinate all slower paced games which encourage you to enjoy the journey and see the sights such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Mike Ybarra kind of slides neatly into that cadre of clueless 'ideas guy' people who throw around half-baked shoot-for-the-fences concepts without putting any of the gears upstairs to work trying to think their ideas through. Thank god he's no longer a CEO and those ideas no longer have a human cost!

Mediums and consumers

 

With the success of Fallout signalling another vector through which the mediums of gaming and television have harmoniously conjoined, of course this has become an inexplicable weapon wielded to denigrate the integrity of video games as a medium because the more walls we put up between people the better, I guess. I am referring in part to a particularly frustrating Metro Contributor who recent opined on how Fallout as a TV show is the way that the story should have always been told, and actually the world of Fallout has been underserved being a purely video game franchise all these years. Why? Because video games are inherently poor mediums through which to tell stories thanks to their defining traits of size and length and game-ability. Another clouded perspective born from the 'I have trouble understanding/interacting with this thing therefore this thing is bad' prep school for the deterioration of modern essaying. 

It is annoying that these are still the ideas that float around from those so staunchly married to traditional media that any slightly different method for storytelling, whether it be another culture's take on storytelling, or through another medium altogether, is immediately rejected as a threat. Video games that embrace open worlds effectively, such as Bethesda in their Fallout games, use that size to foster something that traditional TV struggles to- a rich and complete world to interact with. That is Bethesda's key defining trait which they bring to all their franchises- breathing worlds propped up with cultures and factions and vastly distinct ideologies conflicting across a grand tapestry through which the main story is presented. Fallout has become so very iconic because of Bethesda's hand in realising this world so utterly and fully- in a way that didn't quite exist as starkly until Fallout 3's big open Wasteland. A show can only ever present one curated journey, relying on allusions which depend entirely on the skills of the writers to be coherent. It's what makes a world like Fallout's seem vast, whilst a similar post-apocalypse like 'Into the Badlands' rang increasingly hollow as the show went on.

As for length- it's often brought up how the lengths of stories can influence their impact and potency, which meandering narratives sometimes drag out. It's almost a cliché of a modern entertainment critique to lackadaisically throw out a 'this could have been cut down' during a review, which I personally think has contributed to a culture of ever-rushing modern media that never permits it's stories and characters a chance to breath. But that's neither here nor there, video games are long by their design and as demonstrated by The Last of Us, you don't always need all that time in order to tell a story like this. So does that mean every video game hopelessly stretched out basic narratives in a manner that makes them worse? Of course not, novels exist- dum dum! This is a fallacy of ignorance defying the fact that the nature of the medium fundamentally changes the stories that are being told as well as the way that we tell them.

To keep this on Fallout, the story of these games are the stories of their respective regions and how they came to ruin. The main character's journey is more of an incidental familiar hook in there, what makes Fallout is the environmental landscape upon which the story of a society rising from the ashes is written. The lights of New Vegas glittering beyond the scrap wall perimeter surrounded by disparate crime ridden slums- a richly painted steel-trap lure around which the very themes of every story New Vegas portrays is personified. Esoteric storytelling makes up the bulk of open world video games, and even the more linear narrative based stories know how to take advantage of their time to open up the scope of their stories to present side narratives and conflicting story threads. Bad and prolonged video game stories stick out like a sore thumb- and they are exemplified by Ubisoft! (I should start charging a cameo fee for those guys for how often they guest star in these blogs!)

A big point of contention is on the fact that games cannot focus on telling their stories when they're busy trying to be games. Which is a bit of a closed door way of looking at literally any medium in the world. That's like someone saying that a movie cannot possibly focus on telling stories because they're always so focused with shooting pretty videos. No- obviously that isn't the case. Those shots are, ideally, designed to aid the story telling method- that's kind of why we refer to these vectors as 'mediums'. They are tools through which a story is shown- if you are so adverse to none traditional storytelling then you'll probably be forced to stick with campfire tales, because that is as pure as it gets with storytelling! But if we're going to really look at the storytelling of video games with a thoughtful eye, then you need to acknowledge the bare basics of what interactive audience participations achieves. 

Immersion is merely the end goal, the glittering emerald at the end of the special stage, the transformative aspect of interaction is participation. I'll never forget the famous 'Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons' (spoilers for that game incoming) wherein you control two brothers puzzle solving across a dangerous and fantastical world. One analog stick controls the younger brother, one controls the older. Most puzzles involve cleverly positioning both brothers to push heavy objects or balance appropriate weights- we're talking those kinds of puzzles.  In the late stages of the game the brothers find themselves in a spot of bother with a deceptive spider girl and, long story short, the older brother dies. The younger still has to make his way back home, but he's not strong enough to push his way through the challenges that remain. Until, with enough force, the player makes the choice to use both sticks to push for him. Symbolising the young boy summoning the strengths his older brother left him with to push past his own shortcomings and represent how some part of the boy lives on now, even if just a shadow of his will distilled into strength. Tell me that ain't storytelling.

Now I will admit, there is a tendency for many video games to default to the same realms of storytelling. The vast majority of video games are inherently violent, and whilst I hold no personal moral qualms regarding that, that does limit the range of stories that can be told through the gaming medium. The indie space typically permits more experimental games where you can get other experiences, Stardew Valley is one of my favourites that revolves around the rigors of quiet village living and farm management- but then is that really all that different from the movie industry? Certainly, action is more prevalent in the higher tiers of gaming than in movie making, but does that really make it less valid of an artform?

It seems that no matter how mainstream video games become, how recognised their potential for storytelling is, still we have to fight for validation at that most basic of levels- against the brick wall of tradition behind which the world cowers. Always we'll be seen with a different lens compared to the rest of the world thanks to a gulch of comprehension that absolutely no one is willing to try and cross because the status quo is comfortable. I hate the inherently laziness of the average consumer, but I would hate it a lot less if they didn't use their ignorance as a soapbox atop which to espouse their superior tastes and discerning eye. Makes it real difficult to just sit back and enjoy things like this, doesn't it?

Dead space is dead- and so is survival horror?

 

There was a name in survival horror that ran supreme among the stars for it's inception. Who's legacy was felt on the genre for console generations to come so keenly is spawned sequels, a spiritual successor and, finally, a remake. That game is also renowned within my head as one of the only survival horror games with a mildly clever title despite the fact they stuck a 'dead' in there. Dead Space. (Not as clever as 'State of Decay', but I don't think there's any real argument about which is the more influential franchise there. Maybe SOD spent all their creative budget in the marketing room.) Who else could inherit the very lofty conceptual of the alien franchise and spin them off in their own direction to create a product very clearly in reverence of, but still entirely distinct to, Ridley Scott's arthouse classic?

Dead Space would actually go on to follow something of the trajectory of the Alien franchise as well, boasting a sequel that leaned more heavily into the action elements and lost the deadly horror somewhere along the way, a threequel that totally undermined the key aspects of the original and fell apart as a result- and that was the entire franchise they never made any more, shut up. (See- perfect fits for one another!) We all kind of hoped that 'Callisto Protocol' would be Dead Space pretty much note-for-note, and the developers kind of leaned into that for their promotion, only for the gameplay to kind of veer in it's own direction that a lot of players weren't prepared for. (Melee combat above ranged combat is a big departure!) Which is probably why the Dead Space Remake was so rushed toward.

We all wanted to see more of this world and if that world just happened to be wrapped up in an excellent revival of the original- who are we to argue? I'll admit to being absolutely wrong about my gut feelings on the Remake when I first provided my impressions. Knowing the studio and sensing the corporate stink on the thing, I expected a sequel to completely lose the heart of the original in a lame attempt to shoot up the graphics and slap a weak remake for everyone to sigh and deal with. But then, I also expected Callisto to be the break-out star survival horror darling- so I guess my reads were on the moon they were so far off course! As it turned out, Dead Space Remake was an absolutely brilliant revival that took what worked in the original and reimagined it to the fullest extent of what the original would have been had it got the same care and love with 2023's resources.

And the Remake managed to win it's fight against the naysayers- wining critical aplomb, award nominations and respect... although, according to third party reports- not sales. I can't exactly claim to be a paragon of the beaten here myself, because I actually didn't buy the game either- I was gifted it by EA for a bit of QA work I did for them but... was everyone else given it too? Surely with all the positive coverage, the endless recommendations- the masses would have come piling through the doors- except they didn't. And now Dead Space has the dreaded mark of 'underperformed' under it's portfolio title- seemingly utterly inexplicably. I will confess to being something in the realm of shocked, with no real logical explanation to offer unless... I dunno, maybe people saw the name and thought they'd already played it? (I'm swinging wild here, I haven't the foggiest!)

Perhaps one of the most grim portents I've seen rise out of this anomaly is the assertion that it reinforces the apparent death of the genre appeal that is Survival Horror- and when you weight it up with the environment that might kind of check out a bit. Survival Horror games were something of a staple around the time of the original Dead Space franchise but now- they pretty much dominate the indie scene, and even then in their lowest common denominator forms. The most notable recent survival horror game was Alone in the Dark, which was an average game by all metrics but nothing to the scale of what Dead Space was going for. So perhaps they were trying to tap into a market that was already somewhat exhausted at the time of release?

Of course, the kneejerk reaction would be to slap me around the chops and remind me of the massive other Survival Horror game that released around about this time last year- Resident Evil 4. But to that I have to ask... is that game really 'Survival Horror'? Part of what made the original such a standout in it's franchise, which the Remake certainly went to ape, was the fact that Resident Evil 4 abandoned a lot of the vulnerability and drawn out tension that makes the Survival Horror genre... well... horrific. Resident Evil 4 leans into the action, with explosive set-pieces, ever changing environments, flashy takedowns and an all around bad-ass protagonist who never really feels like he's at the mercy of the elements around him- he's too cool for that. All of which invoke a different kind of game, and would attract a different kind of audience to the Dead Space crowd.

Whatever the case, this means there really is no reason to continue the Dead Space remake franchise like many expected and definitely hoped for, considering Dead Space 2 is widely considered the franchise's zenith. Reports had been made claiming that Dead Space 2 remake existed in some form of consideration before being cancelled, and others have come out to say that the game never even entered a state of serious consideration whatsoever. Either way Motive, the studio in question, seems to be moving on to their own thing whilst Dead Space has been put back up on the high shelf by the kid in the cowboy hat as he remarks how "I don't want to play with you anymore!"

It is quite in keeping with EA to make decisions that undermine the actual good thing people are praising them for. They couldn't even release two good singleplayer Star Wars games with no microtransactions without making sure the latter title would have a flaming turd of a PC port. But in this regard, I guess there really is no brainer to killing off the potential of what could have been a real bright spark in the single player space. Dead Space is an excellent Remake that proved me, and all the other doubters, horrendously wrong- and yet it wasn't rewarded for it's success like we are told will happen in a quality based industry. Maybe this is an example that Mike Ybarra was right, and we should all be tipping our Game Developers our life savings- (Nope, that's a story for another day...)

Judgement Review

Eyes like these can't see much. Can't tell an innocent man from a murderer.

As I came around to 'Like a Dragon: Ishin', I decided that if I wanted to speed up my journey to the front of the franchise, I would need to double us- thus was born the plan to play and review Ishin alongside this, Judgement- a game of quite some significance within the franchise. As 'Yakuza: Like a Dragon' indicated the series moving into RPGs going forward, Judgement was born to affirm the existence of action combat games into the near future, carrying on the direct legacy of Yakuza 6 but born in a different narrative body with a totally new protagonist. That of Takuya Yagami- detective on the mean streets of Kamaurcho. Little did I know that the murder mystery of Judgement would bear a curious mirror of the murder investigation that spurs on much of Ishin's plotline. Curious parallels, that. Totally accidental. (I wonder if I'll find similar parity with my next double-up: Lost Judgement and Like a Dragon: Gaiden.)

Placing us on the otheside of the law for the first time in this series, I'll admit to feeling slight trepidatious as to how RGG would handle a detective story- would they play it safe and rely on cliches? Would they make it too similar narratively to the Yakuza games to the point where the perspective change was made redundant? I should know better than now to hold concern over RGG's writing chops, fool that I am. For Judgement deftly tells a genuinely enthralling serial killer mystery wrapped with excellently interwoven character stakes that marry the drama of being at a knife's edge with the swelling rise of confronting your past and finding strength in your own most shameful failings. I come out and say it right away, I was enamoured with Judgement's plot from start to finish.

From the get-go the premise lays it on strong by presenting Yagami as relatively fresh-faced lawyer who won a case against the state. A little bit of real world trivia as to why this is such a big deal- Japan famously holds a 99% conviction rate. They don't hull you into the courtroom unless they've already got your ass fitted out for a jumpsuit. For Yagami to serve as one of the few, on a murder trial no less, lets you know exactly what you're dealing with when it comes to our protagonist. A defiant of the odds who pursues his vision of the truth relentlessly- even when all the world seems against him. And like any good story, this reflects cleanly in the adventure to come. Of course as any great drama goes, Yagami's victory soon turns into his greatest shame after an incident that shatters his self-belief and causes him to hang-up practicing law altogether in order to go off the beaten path and become a detective with his Ex-Yakuza friend, Kaito.

It's important to note that even when pried from the Yakuza main brand, Judgement is still intrinsically linked with the world that RGG spent decades spelling out throughout the franchise. Yagami's adoptive father is head of a third-tier family of the Tojo Clan, the dealings of the Yakuza are relevant throughout the plot. What we're really getting out of Judgement that is unique from a narrative point is both the view of a largely law-driven protagonist who believes in the sanctity of the justice system, and the fact that we're in the hands of a 'human' again. Which is to say, Kiryu is famously described as being not human. The things he does, beating up 100 thugs by himself in Yakuza 5, taking a leadpipe to the head and not flinching in Yakuza 6- they're inhuman feats of lunacy. Yagami, on the otherhand, actually suffers a concussion for the first time in this entire franchise. He often has to fight large crowds with his friends at his side, he runs away when outgunned. Yagami feels mortal, which reintroduces long lost dramatic tension to the danger in the story.

There's an endearing quality to Takuya's performance that is based in his somewhat aloof and charismatic carefree attitude I find somewhat reminiscent of one of my favourite RGG protagonists- Akiyama. The man is never without a sarcastic comment to bring down the tension, and his parenthesis comments he throws in now and then never fail to get a smile out of me. However Tak comes wrapped up with this earnest passion which flares up in the appropriate moments that can just be electric to watch- for those moments when you see the blazing conviction and feel not just his determination but also his humanity underneath. I think that was what made Nishikiyama's iconic Yakuza 0 speech a never-failing tear jerker, beyond the helplessness was the real human relatability of feeling lost and hollowed- that doesn't always have the chance to flare up with Tak, who naturally guards that otherwise fragile side of himself with a quip and hand-wave, but in those moments it does it connects like a gut punch. Genuinely fabulous!

The Detective's Kamurocho

Judgement feels like it has something to prove right off the bat, boasting ambitious cinematic angles of charred crime scenes and flashback narratives that simultaneously portray and link the investigation of 'The Mole' and the investigation of the case three years previously that marked such a turning point in Yagami's life. For the tale it tells of Tak's personal and outward redemption I would actually mark this as fundamentally better written and more investigative than 'LA Noire', Rockstar's own take on switching up to the otherside of the law to tell a story of deep flaws and grit. (Although I have a soft spot for both games, naturally.) 

Tak also boasts a noir-style narration of events where he'll have an internal comment on his observations as people talk, which range from actual insight to literally just stating the obvious as though you can't see it. This tool of bringing the player into his mind is ideal for selling for vision of being the detective who scours crime scenes for corroborating clues, compares characteristics to identify perps, tails people through the bustling streets and even leads the odd chase or two. RGG committed fully to the detective fantasy and it slides into the gameplay formula with a commendable smoothness. Of course, paying attention actually has some vague value within the game too, with investigations potentially revealing extra information that can unlock optional boosts to stats, or incorrect dialogue choices even rarely leading to otherwise avoidable fights.

Being not a street thug for the first time in the franchise, Takuya tends to try and minimise the damage he causes during combat. He'll still kick around enemies like ragdolls, but in the rare instance he nearly kicks a guy off a building, he'll rush to save him. A stark contrast to Kiryu who, you might remember in Yakuza 0, double drop kicks a guy out of a third floor toilet window and just assumes the guy survived it. This new approach also means Tak doesn't pick up a lot of the dropped weapons throughout the game, like knives and guns, and those he can pick up are usually tied to newly animated debilitating heat actions, rather than the old one where protagonists would literally try to carve people's head's in with crowbars and then claim moral superiority in the next scene.

Combat

In a return to action combat, Yagami plays much like Kiryu does with a basic set of combos spruced up by Heat Actions- Tak's form of combat is a sort of self-taught martial arts that focuses on fluidity and agility, allowing some of his action scenes to come across as a more exaggerated Jackie Chan movie. Tak also boast two distinct combat styles to switch between with various utilities. Tiger style is designed to focus on single targets whilst Crane is ostensibly designed for groups, although personally I found Tiger to mostly be what you use when you want to take a target down and Crane being the back-up for those times when you're surrounded and need to buy some room. Although Crane has this strangely sluggish activation window for it's basic combos that make it functionally useless in dire moments of being completely surrounded, essentially nullifying it's best use case. I mostly used Tiger throughout most of the game, consequently. 

New to this game, and hammering home that 'Tak is actually mortal' point is the Mortal Wounds system, which provides an extra kick to enemies charge-up special attacks which knocks off chunks of your full health in a semi-permanent manner. Essentially it's some kind of 'light wear and tear' system which necessitates Tak taking off time to visit a doctor here and there. Unfortunately that doctor charges and arm and a leg in the early game meaning that until you secure a decent revenue stream (of which this game has very few) or you'll do what I do and sail along several chapters with half your health bar blocked off. Honestly, sometimes it's better to just literally stand there and die when you catch a mortal wound rather than drag that around for the next ten hours of playtime.

Side cases

Just as with Akiyama in Yakuza 4, RGG wanted to really sell the daily life of a Kamurocho investigator, which means Tak's side stories are all about performing some detective work for his clients in all kinds of seemingly straightforward tasks that blossom into memorable adventures all of their own- just like in Yakuza. Maybe you'll start off by following a spouse someone suspects to be cheating, actually a lot of these stories start with that, only to find yourself wrapped up in a investigation of a love scam, or a third party blackmail or anything other than the most boring expected path. RGG never go for the obvious, and that's what makes their side quests the most entertaining in the industry!

Some of the most memorable standouts including the repeating exploration into the various perverts of the city that hound the streets in supervillain style get-ups and personas. Then there's the book publisher that needs you to solve quirky little logic puzzles in order to secure a lucrative publishing deal. Oh, and I can't forget the entire K-drama style tale of crime family legacy based around the wellbeing of a single cat. (That one leads to mid-air drone combat!) There's not a single iota of quality dropped in the wackiness of side content and it's great to see RGG at the top of their game once again, making you question literally who could come up with this stuff after every new wild diatribe.

Friends in need

New to Judgement, and adapted from the original Ishin, is the 'Friends' system- wherein Yagami will make friends with the people across the world that he investigates cases for and just meets randomly on the street. They can be just cashiers at the local convivence store, or celebrity chefs hanging outside one of their own restaurants for some reason. Yagami can interact with and build a steady rapport with them to the benefit of maxing out and becoming decent friends with them- perhaps narratively representing Tak reaching back out to a world which he largely shut himself off from those three years past. Although what exactly makes him start being friends with the entirety of Kamurocho now is anyone's guess. Most all friends carry a unique story you learn about them, and some even provide small benefits if you max out your rapport.

Some benefits are as little as dropping a few materials your way when you meet them, which can used in the new 'Extracts' power-up system that one friend presents you, and others will just greet you as you pass them on the street, filling up your Heat gauge. (Which is actually called 'EX' in this game but it functions exactly the same as Heat so we're just calling it Heat.) Some friends might even pledge to come to your aid in combat, and will show up during dynamic open world encounters to pledge their strength to you- which is quite the boon considering the actually huge gangs of thugs the game chucks your way in the latter hours of the game.

Around town

Of course, Judgement comes with own version of Kamurocho packed with new side activities to bring the world alive in that manner that just comes expected with RGG games these days. These range from courting various girlfriends through their dedicated storylines, dragging them across town to kill time and grow closer, to just playing House of the Dead. Oh yeah, they developed their very own House of the Dead clone and put it into this game as an arcade activity because at this point, why not? The only omission which strikes at my soul- Tak doesn't get to go to Karaoke. Maybe the big name actor who plays him was too self-conscious to embarrass himself in the recording booth- either way we missed out on a potential new slate of RGG karaoke classics. So sad.

The Prestige

As the mystery ticks on towards it's apex and the threads start to unravel, Judgement transitions to a position very familiar to Yakuza 7 players- positioning the protagonist in a place of absolute powerlessness in the face of their opponent. Typically not the direction that cat-and-mouse style noir stories end up veering, but great fodder for final act priority shifts. RGG are always skilled at taking traditionally non-exciting topics and transforming them into lynchpin matters of life and death, and Judgement's Alzheimer's Medication 'AD-9' is no exception; providing a impressively terrestrial and real-world framework to present something as surreal as a modern day serial killer who goes around collecting their victims eyes. (Hence the Japanese version of the game's name: 'Judge-Eyes'.) 

The final act is a intense and solid execution of every kind of action you want from a story like this, courtroom drama, emotional confrontations, race-against-the-clock moments and even a good old fist fight or eight. They even, much to my shock and surprise, managed to avoid doing the modern RGG thing of piling seven endings on top of one another before and after the credits to belabour the same point incessantly. (I finished Ishin first, so maybe I still had the extra ten minutes of story after the final fight of that game still sore in my brain.) I love a good book-end on character growth, and though Judgement might not surprise in that regard it does satisfy, to such a degree I wonder how it's sequel would carry that momentum going forward.

Amon

Last and very least I need to discuss this game's Amon, because of course they brought back the series-stable finale superboss. I think he's worth mentioning because Shin Amon might be one of the franchise's worst. Amon has always been an exercise in presenting the least balanced, most bull, frustrating boss fight that the team could come up with- but even I was blown away by the fact that this Amon has an opening move in his first phase where he takes your phone. Your only means of pausing and accessing your inventory? He takes that. And unlike when similar mechanics are introduced in Kingdom Hearts fights, you can't get that back! You have to finish that fight without being able to eat any of the healing items in the already limited inventory menu, and without being able to take a breather by pausing for a few seconds. All of that is without mentioning his second phase, an impromptu game of 'match the colour with your style' rounded out by a finale phase of 'switch quickly to the opposite style in order to break my damage shield but be prepared to switch back immediately because the stage is full of stun-locking beams that will lock and instantly kill you for being in a the wrong style for a second too long. Well done boss-developing team, you've outdone yourself and I hate you for it.

Summary

Judgement is mix of the familiar we love about RGG's Like a Dragon games mixed in with some fresh new twists which distinguish this spin-off franchise as something just unique enough to stand on it's own legs. It revives a otherwise long-lost human fragility to the characters and world that heightens the stakes when lives are actually placed on the line, and provides the standing leg from which to deliver heartfelt passionate performances that the game carves out the odd scene or two for at it's most climatic moments. It feels like a refresh button on the Like a Dragon formula just before it started to grow stale, and for effective detective gameplay placed atop the gripping narrative, I knock in an extra notch to the grade bringing my review score up to an A Grade. Of course with a recommendation for Like a Dragon fans, as well as a rogue encouragement for 'LA Noire' fans who were sad that game never got a sequel or sparked any game development trend. Judgement may feel different to the style of game that was going for, but there's a certain heart to it's systems that are undeniably reminiscent. I think you'll like what you play.

'Like a Dragon: Ishin' Review

History can't have two Sakamoto Ryomas.

'Like a Dragon: Ishin' marks the point where Yakuza was no more and the RGG franchise finally became the Like a Dragon series of games- just in time for the franchise to move away from being purely about Japan's Mafia. And it's also somewhat symbolic, given how the original stood as the final step on the original trajectory of the series, as a solely Japan-focused collection of games, before turning back and becoming the global phenom it is today. 'Yakuza: Ishin' was never given an English Translation, and fans assumed it never would as poor sales in the West seemed to indicate Yakuza had been totally forgotten. It was sometime after this game when one last effort was made for a simultaneous Western/Eastern release with full quality translations, almost as is to prove to themselves there was no point of trying any further. That follow up game would be Yakuza 0- and the rest was history.

With Ishin we are brought back to that turning point, remastered and re-released as part of the 'Like a Dragon brand' to bring all fans up to speed finally, after all this time. And for my part, it is a great release finally being up to see the game that birthed a song I knew only from a fanmade translation from a very dedicated Youtube channel for years. (Samurai Ondo- Majima's true masterpiece!) I held a lot of expectations coming around to 'the Samurai Yakuza' game, and in typical fashion for these games what I experienced was nothing like what I thought I would. It's safe to say that Ishin pretty much slapped me around, as a man who thought himself more than familiar enough with this franchise to breeze through another on his journey to series parity; but was it a slapping for the better or worse of my time with the game? Let's find that out together.

'Like a Dragon: Ishin' is a peculiar proposition, framing itself as a fictionalised historical effort borrowing actors and character models from across the wide series of Yakuza games and 'recasting' them, as it were, as famed historical characters. Kiryu Kazama, our beloved protagonist, is now Sakamoto Ryoma. Majima is Okita Soji, and Ryoma's sworn brother Takechi Hanpeita is predictably played by Nishikiya- wait, no? Takechi is played by Shibusawa? The most scheming of three villains of Yakuza 0? That's... an interesting choice. A fun little note you'll find is that whilst these characters and their respective actors are playing totally different people within the narrative, their personalities and abstract narrative roles are never too far away from their originals. Kiryu is every bit the incorruptible force of nature of Ryoma, Soji is a violent killing-machine with a madman's glee. Even with the recasting that 'Like a Dragon: Ishin' got over the original 'Yakuza: Ishin'; that philosophy stays true, so familiarity with the series, whilst not essential, provides some intrinsic idea of what you can expect from each character. (Which does not exactly speak wonder about Ryoma's burgeoning relationship with his sworn brother, huh.) 

Of all the times throughout the Samurai era of Japan that could have been chosen, Ishin picks a particularly interesting and not often adapted time- the coming of the outside world. Just as Red Dead Redemption revels around portraying the last gasps of the Wild West, Ishin settles itself in a period of great upheaval and change as the isolationist Japan is forcibly opened up to world of gunpowder and foreign might, which some might go so far as to call the end of the Samurai age. This is the aura that clings over the core of the central narrative, as the future of country is split between warring ideologies, as well as much of the sidestories, wherein radical xenophobia often clashes with progressive co-mingling with the new world. There's little point in dancing about it- RGG do an excellent job scaling up their dramatic narrative chops to the shifting futures of an entire nation- they make this 'historical epic' stuff look easy!

Gameplay

Given the time period, Ishin obviously does away with the series staple hand-to-hand styles that we've all come to know and love over the years... for the most part, there's still a basic brawler style. (It's just useless now.) Ishin marks the long awaited return of the 4 combat styles which we haven't seen since Kiwami 1- and I for one have yearned for that combat diversity ever since! Now we have the Swordsman for classic single-target katana duelling, Gunman for ranged dominance, Brawler for it's one crowd control ability and an entire slate of largely useless combos and Wild Dancer, for a sword-gun hybrid crowd slashing moveset that frankly feels insane to wield. And with that is rebirthed my interest in actually learning the intricacies of combat.

Of course, it's not as though newcomers to Ishin can get away with not learning each style inside and out! Ishin might just contain the most challenging combat the franchise has had to date, and I mean actual challenge this time, not that Yakuza 3 ever-blocking garbage which makes that game near unplayable. For the first time in a long time- players can't just spam the attack button and watch enemies collapse. There's a lot slower combat chops, parrying is not available from the start and even by the endgame you never really unlock any traditional parry options you might expect from a sword-based game. There's more of a balance to gameplay, reading which enemy is going to attack, dodging and knowing the right combo to best take advantage of the enemies blunder- before retreating to blocks and weaves for the next opportunity. Some have certainly found the challenge to be detrimental to the experience, but I found a uniquely extrinsic charm to mastering the more tactical challenge to combat, rather than just learning what combos look the best as I typically do with these games.

All of this leads into the new levelling system which, to be honest, is a bit complex for a Yakuza game. All styles level up separately, necessitating you to switch and train each separately, but you also have an 'overall' level to take account of too. Every time you level up a style you unlock a point that can spent in a radial skill tree full with new moves or significant damage/health boosts- but when you level up your overall level you unlock a 'training' point which can be spent in any style. However that training point can be swapped out for a more permanent 'style' point later, freeing up that training point to be spent elsewhere- which might be necessary given that there are only 25 style points per style and much closer to about 40-50 skills per style. Does that sound confusing? It is. But it does nail that feeling of progression which felt a little lost when the franchise stuck closer to 'auto levelling' from 3-5. I also much prefer it to the 'notches' system of Kiwami 2 and 6. (Maybe because it's close to 0's system. I am a 0 simp- confirmed.)

Going Feudal

It's important to note that Ishin is more of a Remaster than a Remake, in that it recreates the original game in substance with additions or revisions made atop of that. As such, much of the clunkiness in design of the original game has been carried over to this version practically untouched. The inelegant tutorial force-feeding you basic world interactions? It's there. The stifling claustrophobia of Tosa's world design, with buildings that inexplicably require a loading screen to enter. Hobbling about at a snails pace when damaged to a critical pace (modern games have made the hobble less cripplingly slow) and the fact that your health doesn't get reset to full if you die during a fight. If you enter a fight with no health, your retry will retain that deficit. Hell, the cutscene before each fight has been revived! Most of these could have been easily brushed past with the new engine, as demonstrated by every game released around this one- but I suppose when you're committed to faithfulness that includes all the warts and jagged edges.

I would be remiss not to note that despite these headaches and hang-ups, the Dragon engine does look absolutely gorgeous rendering pre-restoration Japan. The richness of character model skin in closeups, the refraction of godrays breaking over the rooftops, there is a richness to his world that imbues a visual warmness to feudal Japan. I actually really love the way the Dragon Engine compliments this world space, which is funny because I find modern Kamarucho a bit too glaring sometimes, with all the neon pulsing. This might just be the best looking Like a Dragon game I've played, and I'm not just saying that because we get to see Kiryu's naked buttcheaks in a sauna wrestling match. But... well... I'm not going to pretend like that isn't a contributing factor either!

Having a totally new city of Kyo to explore is a rare treat in the Like a Dragon world, providing us a host of totally new streets to become intimately familiar with as well as host of new world activities to keep us preoccupied. You can bet on Chicken races to score the big bucks, partake in cannon ball slicing, battle your way through the arena, (in probably it's most challenging iteration yet) learn to dance in the style of the Geisha, go fishing, partake in a horribly time ravishing farming minigame, play about with the cooking-mama style cooking minigame and of course, go Karaoke with the friends you make throughout the story. And there is much besides because of course, Like a Dragon is a dream-title for minigame lovers, as it always has been.

New to my eyes is the 'Friends' system, which is funny considering I was playing this title alongside Judgement which also features a 'Friends' system. Essentially you'll connect with people across Kyo that demand simple tasks of you, such as giving them a vegetable you've grown in your farm, in exchange for a bit of their 'friendship' bar filling. It seems like something of a prototype to the version coined in Judgement, and certainly the scale of how long it takes to max out some of these friendships veers straight into the realms of tedium- but it does create a sense of community with those you come across. Unfortunately, a lot of these characters are decidedly one-note, and so once again I remember the community of much smaller towns such as the cast of 'Yakuza 6' much more clearly and fondly. Still, it was interesting idea.

Coming to Kyo

The dramatic events which carry Ryoma around the shifting sands of Japan's most powerful are delightfully simple yet evocative. A revenge tale mixed with a murder mystery mixed with a spy thriller, where Ryoma spends much of his time under a false name surrounded by the members of the Shinsengumi, a elite team of ruthless mercenaries who famously spent much of their years chasing down an activist called 'Sakamoto Ryoma', creating a delightful aura of tension for much of the early story. RGG really are at their best when their characters are surrounded by others who allegiances are largely unclear, which becomes increasingly difficult to achieve in the core games as Kiryu comes to know literally all the most righteous people across Japan, so literally any new face in the story is inevitably destined to be the bad guy at some point. (Seriously, any new Tojo Clan face after Yakuza 2 is a 'surprise' villain in the final act.) It's great to see them play around with trust, again!

Of course, as you might have picked up on, names and identity are key themes for Ishin as well as the larger question of 'legacy' which hangs over the entire world like a knife when the future of the Japanese world is in the balance. Deciphering what is behind a name, what it means to reinvent oneself and even to live under a pseudonym- and the validity of the life lived therein, are all addressed and laid bare for the viewer to digest in that delightful Japanese manner of story writing. These near primordial ideals laid bare at the heart of the narrative help raise the narrative into something of an epic- even before you start rubbing shoulders with the literal lords of the land. All helping cement one of the most powerful stories RGG has ever told.  

Crafting

If there is one step that I think Ishin takes which verges on going too far into it's genre type, it was the Blacksmithing trees because wow- that was straight overwhelming. All your equipment in the game, swords, guns and armour (and special weapons which I never used because they don't contributed to any of the skill trees EXP) are splayed out in a tree of successive power for which you can collect materials and transform one blade into another and so and so forth. These weapons scale wildly in power and costs as you go along the tree, with some endgame blades practically trivialising combat for the cost of 100-200 Ryo- (Which is about four to five hours straight of grinding the farming minigame, for context.) and a slew of resources so rare you might just be farming the new dungeons for a week before you get enough 'Dragon Eyes' to power that sword to it's fullest.

There's even a 'slotting' feature right out of an ARPG, where you can earn exceedingly rare boost tokens (or dismantle much more common dropped equipment which contain the token you're looking for already slotted) and slot those boosts into your preferred equipment for a small fee, as well as a frankly inexplicable chance of failure. With how difficult it is to get these tokens in the first place, I really don't think there should be a 'failure' chance. (Particularly one that seems to pre-roll it's results so you have to really work to pull off a save scum.) Oh, and there's a system for upgrading the colour rarity of your swords in order to boost their base damage as well as the number of slots they have. If literally any other game got hold of these systems they would be microtransaction hellholes- under RGG they're just a eye-bulging amount content nicely asking for your heavy time investment.

General Cards

A somewhat new addition to Ishin are the battle cards which sit at the bottom corner of your screen at all times. Whilst they were around in the original, they existed purely for the dungeon diving metagame- here they've been expanded out to encompass nearly the entire game, and as such the whole world has been scaled around them. (So if you plan on playing some of the higher difficulties, it's pretty important to understand the things.) Battle cards are recruitable squad-mates that you can assign to each one of your styles in order to give them a small collection of passive stat boosts and potentially battle-changing active powers. For example, you may have a card that gives you a boost to attack charge speed, which you assign to your Swordman style, and when you activate that card you'll have an extreme 3 times damage boost for a brief few seconds.

Where these cards get somewhat controversial across the community is with some of the more... shall we say... ostentatious character cards with the sillier powers. You'll get a pet tiger which can summoned out of nowhere to do damage in a frankly too long animation, or maybe a card literally featuring Youtuber CohhCarnage that allows you to fire laser beams out of your hands. The most eye popping for me being the Nyanners card. Yes, the Vtuber Nyanners. It calls the lifeforce out of surrounding enemies in the form of little 2D cat heads that fly into you. In an otherwise grounded Samurai fiction-historical setting- these can be a little jarring. Personally I already know this as a franchise where protagonists glow blue and perform inhuman feats of violence that somehow never cause casualties, so I can reconcile this in my head; but I don't discredit those who think these abilities in particular go a little too far in breaking immersion.

Also, this is a strange one, a lot of the cards are broken. Ishin is already one of the least documented Like a Dragon games so good luck finding any feedback on your problems online, but from my testing there are quite a few fundamental design issues that have never been fixed. For one, when you unlock 'special moves' they can, maybe only for some, be accessed with the same trigger as the cards- meaning they'll be times you want to activate the card where you'll instead activate the frankly useless special abilities instead- typically opening you up for enemy punishment. And then some of the passives just don't work. It's hard to judge for some of the more background boosts like the 'increase charge speed', how do you even judge something like that? But the one which provides continuous healing based on how many sword cards are in your deck? Yeah, that broke in real time for me. When I first equipped that card it healed me three times for a mere 30 health and then never again for the rest of my playthrough. I think this system might have been a tad rushed.

Dungeons

As mercenaries for the Shinsengumi, it falls under the player's purview to sometimes... do their job. And in Ishin that comes in the way of the repackaged 'Bouncer Missions' from Kiwami 2, this time known as 'Dungeons'. These instance missions play out like 'missions' in 'Final Fantasy: Crisis Core' or 'Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker' or any of those other Japanese games which make you suspect that the concept 'quantity over quality' floated about production once or twice. You charge through a gauntlet of encounters, topped off by a boss, and earn random loot from a pool listed on the mission screen. Slowly unlocking more encounters, in the same tile-sets, against slightly tougher enemies, and so on and so forth. At the very least, thanks to Ishin's genuinely difficult combat, it's a bit less utterly mind numbing than the 200 bouncer missions of Kiwami 2- but I wouldn't call it 'top tier content' either.

You really have to sink hours into this mode alone before actually interesting bosses start showing up near the tail-end of the Dungeons mission tree. Fights here are challenging, demanding decent gear, build consideration, resource planning and perhaps a bit of heat-action scumming too. You'll probably need to invest in the several style trainers for each individual style that exist throughout the game, because Ishin is a game made by madmen who kept throwing in content atop content. These are some of my favourite fight throughout the game that really push you to the brink without collapsing into the typical nonsensical degeneracy of an Amon fight. (I actually skipped Amon for this game, because I didn't even want to conceive how painful it would be. Also I couldn't be bothered to grind city quests to unlock him.) It's just a shame that you have to dedicate so much to get here, along with the fact that most of these quests award a total pittance by that stage in the game. 5 Ryo per 10-15 minute dungeon? I might as well just grind farming!

Shaping a Nation

The late game is stuffed with some of the most bizarre and epic moments I've ever experienced in an RGG title, alongside some of the most frustrating. Ryoma's naivety, inherited from his face-sake Kiryu, is headache inducing when he needs to be told of the same revelation five times from five different sources before he takes it as gospel. (Maybe it's because I was playing Judgement starring an actually competent detective at the same time, it just made all this meandering especially annoying.) But I love all the ways in which the team told the story of the Meji Restoration, without losing their trademark insane narrative twists tucked in there. (Showing off Takechi posing for that famous Sakamoto Ryoma photo that's even on his wiki page was a stroke of genius.) There are even some straight confusing moments for which no one has any explanation. Why does Takechi severely age for one scene and then go back to normal for the rest of the game? It plays out like that in the original too, for seemingly no comprehensible reason.

Also, it must be said that the fan-service of bringing so many iconic series faces together is really satisfying. Mine being a supremely important character vindicates those who fell in love with the man purely for his story and not because he performs shirtless pushups in most of his scenes. Kondo being Adachi is... genuinely hilarious to me for reasons I can't quite explain. (I guess seeing Adachi in a position of respect is so antithetical it's funny.) And most importantly, having Ryoma's love interest Oryo have her face changed to be Yuki is just perfect. Yuki is the character who always seemed like she would make a genuine partner for Kiryu if only it were meant to be. (which of course it couldn't be, given she was created for the prequel and added into the remakes of the original two games.) Finally bringing them together in this mash-up cross-over affair is supremely sweet in a manner I did not quite expect from the scary mob-game makers at RGG.

Most historical fictional tales tend to get lost nearer the end as they have to bow to the wake of genuine historical change, which in reality usually veers out of grasp of the handful of historical figures prominently featured. This would have been the case with Ishin too had they not done such an excellent job affixing a personal revenge/vindication plot atop the real world story- thus even making the arguably redundant final confrontation feel as climatic as it should. Plus, I should add points to the team for finding a giant tower atop which to host the finale in lieu of Millennium Tower- although I wouldn't have batted an eye if a portal opened up and warped us atop that building just for the finale, for future reference RGG. That finale was epic, and a worthy successor (or predecessor, as the case my be) to the brilliant Shibusawa showdown at the end of Yakuza 0 which I still hold as one the franchise's key defining moments. Although Ryoma does go on a bit in front of the Jingu stand-in at the end. (Started getting 'Metal Gear Solid 2' flashbacks for a bit there!)

Music

This marks one of those games worthy of a mention for it's musical contribution, not least of all because of the remixes of classic franchise tracks to woodwind instruments to fit the setting. I immediately flipped out and downloaded Katsura's theme when I realised it was literally just Akiyama's 'Affected Fight' given woodwinds and a hip-hop edge. Incredible! It's just a shame we don't get a 'Receive and Bite You' remix. Also, my hearing may be off but I'm pretty sure 'Pledge of Demon', which makes a triumphant return to the soundtrack, is literally completely unchanged from the original. I was listening out but I think the team literally just lifted it. Which I'm not complaining about mind, that original track is a banger- I just... thought they were doing something different with this soundtrack, you know?

Summary

'Like a Dragon: Ishin' is a peculiar game, carrying all of the shine and polish of modern Yakuza whilst held back by some of the design shortcomings of the original which it follows far too closely. Some of the gameplay changes are not implemented quite as well as they could be, and there is definitely a vastly distinct challenge wall here that series fans are in no way prepared for. However as the original Ishin was such a great game- that excellence rubs off on this 'Remake/Remaster'. Personally I actually love the idea of recasting everyone to reflect modern Yakuza whilst retaining some of the older classics and giving them updated models. (I know there are diehard Mine fans who did a backflip when they saw him brought to Dragon Engine glory.) Ishin is absolutely packed with content, some of it conceived with genuinely impressive depth- such as the crafting and levelling trees.

Ryoma's tale is one of the most impressive interwoven historical fiction I've been privy to across all gaming, sacrificing practically nothing from the personal stakes or the historical events to bring both into the limelight- and performances are typically top tier for the franchise- even as the game copies the original scene for scene for some reason. I do think that as a remake Ishin could have tried a lot more to smooth over the cracks of the original, but the package delivered is still solid enough to stand with the high quality bar that the Like a Dragon franchise has become emblematic of in recent years. Of course I recommend this game, with the warning to not approach it like your typical Yakuza title, and slap my happy A Grade atop the title for good measure. Yet another spectacular Samurai era game to throw atop the pile of Sekiro and Nioh and 'I hear' Rise of the Ronin and Ghost of Tsushima, reinforcing how well this era fits in the world of gaming. Can't wait for Assassin's Creed Red to come and break that streak!