Babylon Fell

 And it won't to get up.

The world loves itself an underdog story about a scrappy little something-who-could who defied the odds, spat in the fact of those who stood dubious and went on to secure itself as one of the true greats of history. It's a invigorating archetype for a story, isn't it? A moral tale of struggle and triumph that teaches us all that it doesn't matter how overwhelming the odds against us, how unbelievable our chances in the face of insurmountable adversity, at the end of the day hard work and grit will always win the day. Because we want to believe that, don't we? That hardwork is the cure-all for all the troubles of the world. But reality isn't ever quite like the morality stories, now is it? It's unfair, it's ruthless, it's belittling, and the at the end of the day it's utterly meaningless. No grand morality lesson to be taught, no overarching force of 'destiny' guiding us towards the path that 'works out in the end'. That is why this is not an underdog story; this is a reality story. It's the story of a game called 'Babylon's Fall'.

Babylon's Fall spawned out of a development studio renowned for it's incredible highs and pitiable lows. One day Platinum Games would but out a modern masterpiece with the near peerless 'Nier' games, and then they'd throw up a 'Legend of Korra' game into their barf bucket before rolling back over and trying to sleep through the hang over. I don't think I could name another company with the range of ultimate good and ultimate trash on either end of a single scale. That's some true 'Anime protagonist' levels of moral imbalance. Such that when the director of 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence', one of those studio masterpieces I alluded to, is pursing his next lead project after years in the background, no one could predict whether this would be another slam dunk or a total gutterball. (I'm mixing my metaphors, but in a way that's what Platinum Games is; a confused metaphor.)

I have no doubt that, given total autonomy, Babylon's Fall could have been another weird and wild success story from Platinum games; but autonomy is a rare prize. Instead, Square Enix, Platinum's pay masters, were desperate to try and secure that Live Service that could be their cash cow just as Epic Games' Fortnite was for them and Activision's Destiny and COD Warzone was for them, and so on and so forth. So for some inane reason, Platinum, a company known for developing stellar single player action games, was recruited to slap up a state-of-the-art multiplayer cooperative Live Service that would rope players into an endless loop of buying cosmetics to chase expensive gear forever in that loop of power creep which is poisoning modern game design. Something which even the greats and practised in this genre type have trouble nailing a lot of time. Square wanted Platinum to just summon that, out of thin air. And we wonder why Square Enix is failing lately...

What resulted was a game that slipped quickly out of everyone's mind the second it was revealed, each time it was revealed. Every industry show people came away with the exact same impressions. "Well that looked boring, Oh Platinum Games is making it? Well it might be good then." Hardly singing endorsements. But then the game dropped and everything sort of shifted. People who thought this was going to be an inoffensive and forgettable slasher were treated to an exceptionally forgettable and all-around boring action game. One with a hilariously ugly art style, dull world, pathetically thin gameplay loop, surprisingly floaty combat, non-existent level design and terrible voice work. The inconsistent and unpredictable phantom of Platinum Games had struck again; Babylon's Fall was a undeniable downright disaster. 

And unlike some of the other big disasters of recent memory, your Diablo Immortals and Saints Row Reboots, this one didn't have a recognisable brand name for clueless fans to desperately latch onto under the lie that the game is really good and everyone else in the world hates it for it's genius. The game had no fans, it was making no fans, and thus it's slip into obscurity was all but guaranteed. What seemed absolutely insane was the amount of effort that Square and Platinum Games were dedicating to the project despite knowing how poorly the thing initially performed in sales. The game was averaging less than 10 players on Steam and for one period barely a month after launch had only 1 confirmed player on Steam. And this is an online game, remember; people couldn't play the thing without being connected to the internet and thus logging their activity on Steam charts. It was just that unpopular. 

Yet still the company came out to promise they would update the thing, and even launched a cosmetic cross-over event with Nier Automata of all properties! To think that masterpiece of a franchise shared the same screen-space as Babylon's Fall is... unconscionable. But the appeal seems to have been short lived, as now here we are, in the same year that the game released in, receiving the news that Square Enix are preparing to pull the plug on the service before it reaches it's third 'season'. Yes, after killing off all their western studios and declaring they have no idea how to make a profit for a western audience, Square are also killing off their Japanese Live Services and just hoping investors don't take the small leap to realising this means Square just simply don't know how to make profitable franchises full stop. Babylon's Fall is another predictable failure in a string of failures for a company that has lost touch with their consumers.

Babylon's Fall is still going to pick itself up for a final tour before being put out to pasture, the team are going to extend Season 2 and then pretty much just redo Season 2 again but call it 'The Final Season'; all whilst delivering your typical "We did everything we wanted to do" statement that makes consumers so tired of the dishonest line of communication between developers and players. They'll never admit when things are falling apart, which means they'll never be able to receive that key developer-player feedback to learn how to adapt in ways that might make their supposedly community-dependant game work well within the community. Of course, on the other side of that sword; had they actually listened to the consensus of the committee, this idea would have been struck down in it's infancy and replaced with a sequel to MGR or something...

Babylon's Fall is a lesson in failing to read the room and delivering on a promise that nobody wanted. Even if this game hadn't been total garbage to play, the sheer fact that it was a Live Service aimed at an audience who were reared on single player action games meant that this game was never going to hit the numbers it needed to be a success. Perhaps it will also be a lesson to Square Enix that they really need to go back to funding the sorts of games that their players go back to buy entry after entry, rather than desperately trying to remix everything into a Live Service mega franchise so they can secure their immortal meal ticket for the next ten years. Its a sad and transparent gambit from them that has sunk game after game and will continue to do so unless someone slaps Square Enix in the face and teaches them that they can't be the Activision foil they're so desperate to be. The failure of Avengers wasn't total enough to do that to them, but perhaps the annihilation of Babylon's Fall is that wake-up call they've been waiting for... and dreading.

How to handle failure

 Babylon stirring?

We all experience it at some point in our lives, a crushing slip and humiliating fall from grace which strikes hot across the face and leaves a lingering, searing, reminder that we were not worthy. Little stings as bad as failure, because when things are done ostensibly right, and we invest the effort, and push ourselves towards an end that doesn't ultimately work out, suddenly everything you've donated and sacrificed feels like a huge waste of time. No magical 'Chris Martin' is going to fly down from the stars to guide us home and fix us, all we have is ourselves and our embarrassment to show for a gainless venture. And if you allow it to, that wound can fester, and ingrain, and someday even go so far as to scar the soul. Which is why we always want to pick ourselves up and try to make the best of a bad thing.

But what do you do when you've got nothing to work with? I've had this thought ever since I looked at the recent colossal video game failures that have been blasted all across the industry because despite myself I feel bad for them. Sure, most of the time a bad AAA game comes and endures all the hatred and ridicule only to make half of Gibraltar's GDP and rock back home with pay raises all around. Typically it doesn't matter how badly you do for some in this industry, because once you've reached a certain size, as a COD MW3 achievement once aptly stated, you become 'Too big to fail'. But somehow, against the laws of nature, two big games from massive producers haven't enjoyed that immunity to consequence, and it's become more than a little pitiful.

I already mentioned Battlefield 2042 recently, and the fact that it's failure has been so resounding that just a few months after launch this once-legendary multiplayer franchise is seeing less than 1000 concurrent players on PC. But you must acknowledge how bad this is for DICE and EA. Battlefield games are not a case of yearly releases, so that one huge failure will last until the next financial year and then be swiftly forgotten. These games take time, and that's usually why they come out so polished and content rich, winning the hearts of fans who love this distinct style of military shooter even when the overall quality is as questionable as it has been these past few entries. Battlefield V came out in 2018, and 2021's Battlefield 2042 is the next follow up. If 2042 dries up it's player base before month six; that's 2.5 years of silence until the next game during which DICE is going to be tearing out it's hair to keep their antsy bosses at EA from chewing on their limbs in mad hunger. (I don't think EA would ever destroy DICE; they rely on them too much. But you know EA prime are going to be sweating out DICE for this humongous screw up of a game.)

Now what if I told you there's an even more embarrassing failure out there? One so pathetic it makes me cringe to even think about, and one which was actually published by Square Enix, developed by Platinum Games, and directed by Kenji Saito, the man who directed Metal Gear Rising: Revengence? No, clearly I'm not talking about 'Stranger giving Paradise a reach-around in the empty parking lot of a Burger King at 3am', that game has it's defenders who just love mediocrity for some reason; this is about Babylon's Fall. The little live service that couldn't. Couldn't nail a decent art style. Couldn't sell a remotely interesting premise. Couldn't keep a player base. Both TheGamer and Tech Rader (neither site links to the other, so I can't be sure who spotted this first. And I don't believe both sites just happened to have an alert set-up for Steam Chart) reported that on April 13th the player base was less than 10 people. For an online game. That is... stunning. 

And to be clear: I'm not saying that Babylon Fall doesn't deserve it! The game is, by all accounts, a joyless, soulless, messy water-finger painting nightmare, chock full of bad voice acting, terrible world building and a smear of Vaseline to make a muddy art style look undecipherable. And to round it all out, contrary to what one might expect given the development talents here; gameplay loop is dull too! Funnelling players through mostly identical levels with slow-paced combat and a combat complexity that demands a mastery no one can be bothered to stick around long enough to attain. Right now the game is sitting at a 'Mostly Negative' rating on Steam, because some people out there have this 'pity gland' which switches on in the face of absolute crap and forces them to stand up for a mess that doesn't deserve it. Try to recall this was sold at full triple A price with a painfully optimistic cosmetic store stitched onto the package.

How do you come back from lows like that? Battlefield devs are treating their game like a summer project, making incremental improvements piece by piece at such a slow rate that we should have a decently playable game here to coincide with the release of Battlefield 8. What hope does Babylon's Fall have in the face of its own, greater, woes? Coming from a property that no one has nostalgia for, struggling to break more than 200 players on it's best day? Well preppy pop songs off the latest Kidz Bop album will tell you that the first step is to "Never give up"; and indeed, Square Enix is married to the idea of sticking with this, capsized and already-sunk, ship. "There are no plans to reduce the scale of development." They affirmed on that most prestigious of platforms, Twitter. And indeed, if anything these guys appear to be blindly charging ahead with development for a game with less players than an on-pitch Football team on it's bad days. That's dedication, I guess.

Platinum Games launched this game with their planned content for the second season already completed and were about-gleeful to announce the start of their feverish work on the third season. This week has marked the start of a crossover event between this and one of my favourite Platinum Games of all time; Nier Automata (that one hurt to read) all they need to do now is beg Konami to allow them to do a crossover with MGR next and I would be buying the damn thing tomorrow! (Make Senator Armstrong a player skin; you know how much money it would make you!) And the question I have coming out all this is, will it work? I mean we're looking at a colossal failure that seemingly has no chance of grossing anything near enough to so much as break-even with development, but Square is funding the team to truck along regardless, is this all it takes? Is the solution to dealing with failure- simply forget about it until the failure becomes success?

In many ways that sort of obstinate brutalism is an ideology I ascribe to myself already; wherein I push at a medium I've no real talent for and just keep at it until I'm confident enough to either pretend I'm decent, or actually can't stop anymore. So maybe it's my own bias, but somehow I find that approach admirable. Sure, Anthem stuck around for too long and ended up costing everyone undue time on a project that was never going to go anywhere, but maybe Square will be the little studio that could. (Not so little studio, to be fair.) Platinum are crowd-sourcing solutions, so it really does lie in their hands to change things around. You know, presuming they actually take the advice of people who are turned off from the game and are offering ideas to win them over, rather than the nebulous braying of the self-hypnotised lobotomites who are trying to peddle this slop as an undiscovered gem of the industry. So how does one handle failure when they're a modern games company? Ignore it, apparently. 

Babylon is lost

 Elden Ring at home:

It's a strange phenomena that sometimes, inexplicably, you can just smell a disaster coming from a mile away. Like watching the songbirds and small mammals quickly vacate the area before a hurricane, or seeing that trailing swirl of death-feeder vultures overhead; there's something about a doomed project that stinks for a mile and which everyone can detect. Even if you can't explain why, you still know it. It's human nature to respond to subtle indicators, and to detect and be repulsed by danger and disappointment. Thus I don't think a single person really sat down and bubbled with excitement, rubbing their hands in anticipation for the release of 'Babylon's Fall', regardless of the accomplished talent helming the project. Platinum Games, and the absolutely huge publisher bankrolling the whole thing, Square Enix. You can't even pretend you didn't know the thing existed, because Square dragged it around to all the trade shows like a Dance-Mom trucking around LA determined to break their kid into an acting gig. But no one ever took the bait onto the decrepit, three-wheeled hype wagon that Square were pawing off-price tickets for; even an unmarked, tinted-window, hype-white-van would have been more appealing.

And I was in the mood for some Platinum Games action, more so than I typically am at any given time, because as you can see from my recent lineup- I just got done playing through and reviewing an incredible title from their library: 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence'. A true gem bobbing above a sea of tepid middle of the road stocking-stuffer action titles, elevated by truly great writing, over-the-top performances and another neatly slick and stylish combat system from those Platinum veterans. Because they are talented developers; really talented. And they don't typically mess around with average titles, no they put out extremes; it's either the best of the best or a chore upon every waking sense of the body, there is no in-between. Which has encouraged me to develop the 'leap-frog theory' wherein I say it's highly likely that immediately after putting out a good game, Platinum Games must deliver a bad one for the sake of cosmic balance. How does Babylon's Fall factor into that equation? Well, barring some mobile titles which I don't factor into my event chain, the last proper console release from Platinum Games was the rather well received 'Astral Chain'- oh... guess that doesn't bode well, does it?

Indeed, much like it's many lukewarm gameplay tease trailers over the years have implied; Babylon's Fall is a bad game. But worse than that: It's a boring one. A game with no discernible purpose, identity, unique points of interest, initial depth, narrative intrigue or even any unashamed sexual gratification. (All 3DS shovelware titles knew that if you couldn't make a good game, you could just through some huge Anime boobs with ridiculous physics in a prefab map of Akihabara and call it a day. But Babylon's Fall couldn't even manage that.) First impressions don't lie and today it seems they proved more reliable than a card-carrying wiccan Soothsayer; cause sometimes if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, than it's probably a duck. Or some sort of man in a duck shaped outfit, according to world-renowned duck-expert Adrian 'Vigilante' Chase.

I covered this game in the past, and in that little rant perhaps the only positive I had to relay was that I thought the ingame combat looked good. But in hindsight, looking at the finished product, I may have to even revoke that; because in comparison to their own back catalogue these animations are stiff. But at least the combat has animations, because the same could not be said for the cutscenes; good lord the cutscenes! These pre-made artesian narrative-containing nuggets are, quite frankly, all total trash. They're stiff to the point of rigor-mortis, badly choreographed, sometimes feature poor sound mixing, and have the inexplicable trait you see out of some strangled budget Japanese games wherein the style of the cinematic changes drastically on the whim of the wind. The smarter games will hide this with thematic consistency, so that certain breeds of cutscene feature the lower budget approach so you develop a rough expectation of what to expect out of each cutscene you encounter. Babylon's Fall is not one of the clever ones. You can expect to be totally blindsided at random by cinematics that feature an equivalent level of movement to the 1966 Captain America animated show. (I am not exaggerating. Some scenes are genuinely comparable to that, paper-clip budget, show.) 

And that's just the gameplay itself. (I say just as though that's not the single most important part of a game.) Square Enix made the 'inspired?' move of trying to 'Agent 47 garrotte wire' the already-on-life support marketing efforts by revealing very early on that this was going to be a Live Service game. Yes, to put the half-digested cherry on top of this termite-filled rotten sand-cake, (ew, made myself gag a little with that one) Square Enix wanted to pull the ol' 'half finish the game and try to trap enough curious fans with greedy MTX schemes in hopes that they can personally bankroll the rest of development' trick. For some insane reason that sort of announcement never seems to go down well with people. And so it was, that a game which was already looking rougher than a Saturday night in Blackpool, managed to turn-off anyone gullible enough to even view it as a charity case. (Oh to have the traitorous Square Enix marketing team backing you up, all the while trying to shoot you in the rear.)

Now to be totally fair to the absolute troopers who were sent early review codes for Babylon's Fall; some people have stuck this mess out for the long haul. The rest of us just sniffed the trial gameplay and nope-ed right the hell out of there like Vergil from his parental responsibilities, but for some unfortunate souls out there it is quite literally their job to stare slackjawed at a game with the chromatic palette of a mud landslide. (At least they're getting paid for their suffering. No doubt that's one full paycheck for every eye vessel that burst itself in protest rather than enduring this sleepfest.) They mostly report that, incredibly, there is some progress to the challenge and even a little bit of depth in the game if you hate yourself enough to stick out the game for around about thirty hours. I doubt it's nearly enough depth to make the time spent feel even vaguely worthwhile; but there's the silver lining for your overcast day.

Square really isn't cementing the best of track records with their Live Service initiative, now are they? First they helmed a decent game with a seemingly unbreakable franchise behind it, only to ruin the whole thing with a business model that most critics agree is directly hurt by it's Live Service elements, in their Avengers game. Now they're beating a limping, sickly horse with Babylon's Fall. Both times all they wanted to do was magnify the profits of these otherwise singleplayer games with recurrent revenue buttons so they can subsist off the lifeblood of desperate hooked up fans like human batteries out of The Matrix. Is that so much to ask? Now these two financial bombs, (And seeing that Babylon's Fall is struggling to top 1000 concurrent players on Steam sort of indicates that this title is indeed, a bomb) makes it all the less likely that Square will ever deign go down this route in the future. Same with Platinum Games, who also flirted with swearing a deal to the same Milton-esque demon in their own statements.

 

All of this is a prelude to say: stop trying to make live services a thing, because you're just embarrassing yourself and the industry more and more with each attempt. Or better yet, at least try to make sure your game can't be classified as phycological torture in breach of international human rights laws before you tack your life-blood sucking hooks onto the product. Or even better than better; don't try and release your paper-weight action slasher game within the same week as freakin' Elden Ring; are you serious? Babylon's Fall is what happens when all cylinders are misfiring at the same time so that gameplay, writing, marketing, and basic common sense simultaneously break down to create that imperfect storm of 'bleurgh.' My only wish was that this total spew-of-a-game was more entertainingly bad so I didn't have to rely on a hundred similes in order to get through this blog without my brain rotting from lack of oxygen. So in short: 5/5 stars, best game ever, pick it up today!

Babylon's Fall

 Is this the scheduled bad game?

There's a supposed formula, or more appropriately a curse, when it comes to Platinum Game's titles. (One which doesn't hold up to even the slightest scrutiny, by there it is.) Essentially people like to say that the quality craftsmanship behind their talented games sort of does a leapfrog, one year it's a bad game, the next year it's a good game. (Except, obviously, not sequential years because that would be a simply insane level of output on the studio's part. I mean, they at least took 2018 off) One release might be the heavily undercooked Legend of Korra video game, cause of many heartbroken Avatar fans over the world, whilst the next would be Bayonetta 2, a classic sequel to a classic slasher. Some other year you'll get the almost iconically terrible 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan', which somehow managed to take something as simple and well documented as an action-combat title and make it boring. (I don't know how you manage that.) Of course, then that game would immediately be followed up by a literal masterpiece in 'Nier: Automata'. So is there something to the Platinum curse?

Of course not. The Wonderful 101 was rather well received by all outlets and that game was sandwiched between the aforementioned Bayonetta 2 and 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence.' (Which, for the record, absolutely slaps) But we like to conjure up these folk lore tales and weave 'curses' because it sounds more exciting and feeds into our desires for some supernatural in our mundane lives. I get it, sure I'll bite. But then, wasn't the very last game to come out of Platinum's doors the lauded remaster of 'Nier Replicant'? Well... I guess we're in for a stinker in this next game... Except no again, because technically that remaster was handled by Toylogic, Platinum Games proper were far too busy for any of that nonsense. Yet still, it paints a air of foreboding around the new Babylon Fall that was recently shown off during the E3 conference for Square Enix, and even if that 'curse' I just debunked is nothing more than ill-informed guesswork, all the writing is on the wall for this next game to be a miss.

Now let me assure that I love Platinum Games at their best, to the point of absolute adoration. I will argue till I'm blue in the face that Automata was robbed of the widespread recognition it deserved because of a relatively mundane and trite android-story competitor in 'Detroit: Become Human'. 'Metal Gear Rising: Revengence' makes me tingle just to think about, and pray that somehow Konami gives them the MG licence if Kojima's definitely never getting it back. These Platinum guys are like urban heroes of game design to me- so if their latest title has even me throwing up my hands and going "Woah there, buddy, I've think you've had a little too much to drink and should really rethink this whole doomed venture" Then maybe we all need to sit and have a talk because seriously, what are these guys thinking?

Well, I know what they're thinking. It's the same thing that every company thinks when they latch onto this most lamentable of trends. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself; what is this Babylon's Fall anyway? Well that was the question that many were asking when they saw this rather vague teaser reveal all the way back in 2019. It was just another curious little hack and slash game, but being fronted by a studio renowned for being the Hack-n-Slash guys. This title would feature a high fantasy drape over it's world and seep it's world with an almost Souls-ian colour palette. It received decent interest but didn't have people frothing out of the mouth for the next two years until a proper reveal like Elden Ring did. Well this E3 trailer actually lines up as an extended version of that trailer from all those years back, but it has a rather suspicious dislike ratio on their official Youtube upload. What is the problem? Several fold, actually, but it starts thusly; this game is a live service.

Alas, all the robins have fallen out of the trees, the fairies have lost their wings and the princes have turned to frogs; Platinum games have fallen into the Live service trap! Why god, why? I think that we, as a society, have moved past given the live service model of game delivery the benefit of the doubt by now, because at this point anything resembling success and a solid game in this genre is rarer than a two-horned unicorn with wings that can do the Hustle. We know this dance so well now; the developers will put out a weak title that pales in comparison to the other blockbusters they're known for, they'll beg players to stick around and keep paying money whilst the game is buffed out, basically treating fans like a secondary investment stream, only to pull all developers onto making actual games except for a skeleton crew that can hardly keep the servers online, let alone get around to adding new content. The game will struggle, less and less people will play it, and two months after launch you'll be looking at a multiplayer-only game with an average player count of less than a thousand. At which point the only question is how long they want to drag this decaying carcass behind them before doing the humane thing and cutting it off, pronouncing the thing ultimately dead.

There, I just pulled that synopsis out of my crystal ball for you and saved you having to invest yourself in this sorry affair to see it for yourself. But railing against the actually cursed business model is one, arguably beside the point, approach; what about the game itself, what does that hold? Visual disappointment, oddly. I'm not sure what it is about some accomplished developers coming out this E3 and showing us trailers that look fit to be rendered on a PS3, let alone a PS5; I mean what is this? The art of the game is slightly, almost imperceptibly, stylised; but it really doesn't save a game that just looks boring. Look, not every title needs to be Bluepoint's Demon Souls, I know that, but surely you can spare a bit of processing power towards rendering some better textures, maybe some atmospheric particulates, definitely some better animation.

Can I- Can I talk about the animation? It's going to be a rant, but I need to. In-combat slashing looks great, same standard of quality that Platinum has been hitting for over a decade now, I've got not gripes there. But there are a couple of shots of cutscene action and it looks so clunky I can't stand it! Well, that is to say it looks as clunky as you'd expect any other developer attacking a cutscene sword fight to put out. But this is Platinum, their cutscene fights are Legendary! This- This was an embarrassment. And thrown atop of the mundane scenes of online players chipping away at some bargain bin-looking boss enemy or platforming over basic frog-hop lava pits, (and maybe I'm feeding the bias here) but it just looks bad. There's none of that Platinum heart we love, I don't even find Babylon's Fall's world exciting, I just want Scalebound. (How did that reveal trailer look better rendered than this modern game does?)

For a new IP, Babylon's Fall is doing a wonderful job of putting everyone off before the home stretch has even begun, making this as yet another Square Enix product that hardly seems worthy of the studio's doors. Those guys are renowned for some of the most creative looking designs outside of FromSoftware's offices and yet they deliver something so soulless that even Platinum diehards like myself are left retching. I wish it made more sense to me, because then I'd at least be able to swallow the fact that this low-effort cash grab is yet another series that Deus Ex is being sidelined for. (Why do you hate my money so much Square Enix? I'll give it to you if you'll just make a Deus Ex game!) I'm going to cut myself off before this blog descends into something it's not, so in wrap up I'll say: Babylon's Fall, looks like generic trash, everyone involved is capable of leagues better and they belittle themselves with this whole project. And with that, Adieu.