Elden Ringers

 

Tom Clancy's Tom Clancy

I generally don't consider it a good sign when the name of an author is in a bigger font than the title of the book.  To me it implies a degree of arrogance on the publisher's part.  As if they are trying to say "the specifics of the story are irrelevant because the writer can do no wrong."  While I'm sure there are fans out there that will claim their favorite novelist is perfect, in my own experience even the best authors have written some stinkers.  In Tom Clancy's case, it's a little bit weird.  Of the thirty-six novels written by him, half were published after his death.  In fact, only about a dozen Tom Clancy books were actually written by none-other-than Tom Clancy himself.  The rest were co-authored or ghostwritten by other people with Clancy sometimes providing little more than a plot outline or tacit approval.  Obviously, after his death in 2013 any creative input he provided came to an end...and yet the "Tom Clancy" brand continues.  Before becoming a novelist, Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman...and it shows.  The kind of "insurance" buyers are getting in this case though is a perceived guarantee that they will receive an espionage-thriller with the technical aspects researched in detail.  As always, this is a blog about video games so let me cover that too.

As far as I can tell, Tom Clancy's contributions to the world of video games really began with Tom Clancy's SSN.  Released in 1996 as a (then) modern day sub-sim, players control a Los Angeles-class attack submarine across 15 missions in a limited war between the USA and China.  The game featured quite a bit of FMV, but the actual sim aspect of the game was fairly simple.  A tie-in novel of the same name was also published, but suffers from perfunctory prose...possibly because it was co-written by Martin H. Greenburg.  This sort of thing begs the question, "what (if any) contributions did Tom Clancy make to his games?"  

About the same time SSN came out Clancy co-founded Red Storm Entertainment (which later became a subsidiary of Ubisoft).  In the years since then more than forty games have be released with the "Tom Clancy" label.  The single most famous one is probably Rainbow Six, but it only marked the beginning of one franchise.  There are more; such as Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and most recently The Division.  Going back to Rainbow Six for a moment, the series starter was an adaptation of a novel bearing the same name.  Some of the scenarios in the game are taken from the book.  Even so, the game fleshes out the content quite a bit by adding more variety (as well as a slightly different ending).  True to the Clancy spirt of meticulous detail, the game allows for precise planning and execution right down to the assigned equipment and actions for each individual agent.  In a time when FPS games mostly consisted of run-and-gun DOOM clones this was innovative stuff and marked the emergence of tactical shooters into the mainstream market.  While this might sound like Clancy made major contributions to the game, it's important to note that the concept of a black ops FPS had been in the works at Red Storm Entertainment before he began writing the Rainbow Six novel.  This leads me to believe that his label was more akin to "Tony Hawk" or "John Madden" than "Sid Meier."

In truth, I think Tom Clancy struggled to find proper antagonists for his stories once the U.S.S.R. collapsed and the Cold War ended.  He would return to that time period in some of his works, but for his stories set in the present day he had America doing battle against terrorists, drug lords and Japan...yes, you read that third one correctly.  To say Clancy jumped the shark with his novel "Debt of Honor" would be an understatement...particularly with Jack Ryan turning into a Gary Stu by not only becoming the President, but the best one in United States history.  Personally, I can't quite figure out why anyone would read "Hunt for the Red October" when they could just read "Blind Man's Bluff" and get the real story with better characterization to boot.   If you want a sci-fi version of Tom Clancy there are those too...John Lumpkin being the first example that comes to mind.  Most of all though why read "Rainbow Six" when you can play the far more entertaining game? 

Not Better or Worse, Just Different

See that mountain
You can...well...let's just move on...

Having finished Elden Ring, I decided to go back and take a look at some of the older Souls series games to see how they compared.  It was an interesting experience, but the title that caught my attention the most was the PS5 remake of Demon's Souls.  In particular, Bluepoint Games had the unenviable job of trying to update this PS2 classic into a modern action-RPG.  For the most part, they succeeded.  However, I do find myself mystified by what they chose to change and what they decided to leave as is.

Take, for example, the Dragon God boss battle.  It was overly simple even by the standards of the day.  For whatever reason though it was left unchanged.  I can't help but feel like this was a missed opportunity.  A more egregious example is the shattered Archstone.  Originally cut content that was intended to be added later in the form of DLC, From Software ultimately decided to simply move on to Dark Souls instead.  Some of the level geometry and even a few foes that would have resided there were discovered thanks to the tireless effort of data miners.  It's odd that Bluepoint did try to make there own version of this area considering it was partially finished.  

Of course, the reason is because they didn't want to take creative risks...except they kind of did.  In some cases they were well implemented, such as with alterations made to certain items and multiplayer.  In other cases though, I'm not sure why they decided to make changes.  For example, the line of dialogue "Art thou done?" was replaced with "Art though finished?"  Other lines of spoken dialogue were dropped completely in the remake.  Due to audio quality issues, all voice acting had to be re-recorded and for the most part it's just as good or even better than the original.  Particularly when it comes to Patches..."Trusty Patches"..."the Hyena", "the Spider", "the Unbreakable", "the Untethered"...or if you want to go way back "Patch the Good Luck".  On the other hand King Allant and the Maiden-in-Black are noticeably less impressive.  Overall, I do like the addition of facial animations.  When it comes to From Software titles, even Elden Ring is still lacking in that regard.

Despite these criticism, I have to praise Bluepoint for being receptive to feedback and making changes accordingly.  The Flamelurker boss underwent some visual alterations after fans pointed out that the new design seemed a bit generic.  I also noticed a few tweaks made after the reveal trailer, but before the final release, with the express aim of making the color tone and oppressive gloom match more closely with original game.  Still, much like Capcom's Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, I feel like they just missed the mark in terms of greatness.  

Bro, Do You Even Battle?

Speaking as someone who studied probability and statistics back in college, random number generator mechanics are not a great fit for video games.  In theory, it sounds good.  In reality though, it's unrealistic.  Perhaps the best way to illustrate my point is with a little game called Battle Brothers.

If you've played Darkest Dungeon or XCOM, then you're intimately familiar with RNG...except not really.  Those two games use pseudo-random number generation in that failures are artificially boosted on subsequent attempts.  The more you fail the more likely you are to succeed later on.  True RNG means you can legitimately fail a 99 percent success rate ten times in a row or have an enemy score a 5 percent chance-to-hit a dozen consecutive times.  The previous results have no bearing on the next one.  Only when the results are examined on a massive scale (say thousands, or tens-of-thousands of iterations, do averages start to consistently pan out).  Within the context of a single battle though, that doesn't necessarily manifest itself.  In fact, this is why a lot of table-top war games use a pair of six-sided dice for everything (the bell shaped curve of die results make things more predictable and consistent). What true RNG really means is even in a fight where the odds are totally even, it's not uncommon for one side to completely slaughter the other purely based on the luck of the draw/roll.  It's not very true to life.  People adapt quickly when lives are at risk, and if they are met with failure they will often change their approach on the fly with each subsequent attempt until they hit on a more successful method.  Ironically, Battle Brothers has this factor baked into the game design (but requires the player to go out of their way to access it).  I guess you could consider it an anti-frustration feature, but the game has a number of other game design choices that start to grate over time.  

Random events are one such example.  Run into a friendly stray dog?  It bites the finger of your best warrior.  Participating in a tournament?  Now your bannerman has permeant brain damage.  Why are contracts so wildly inconsistent in terms of payout and challenge despite having a rating system?  As for the enemy themselves, I've never fought a cripple despite having many under my command...unless you count constantly respawning undead to be a disability.  The lack of transparency is another hindrance to enjoyment in that players never get to peak behind the curtain.  How much fatigue has that enemy knight built up?  What was the injury that enemy just received?  Why do merchants only give me a tiny fraction of the value any given loot is worth, but then immediately turn around and mark up the price by ten-fold the moment it is sold to them?  I guess the correct answer here is gameplay balance...but honestly if that's the solution then maybe the developers need to go back to the drawing board and re-envision certain fundamental mechanics.  It's a shame that Battle Brothers suffers from these issues.  The basic loop of accepting a contract, completing the mission, and collecting a reward is solid.  The AI is smart and employs a variety of thematically appropriate tactics.  It's just that the process is tailor-made to prioritize frustrating parts over fun stuff.  Really, the entire experience is summed up rather well in its visual style.  I know why the characters are represented as busts, but it doesn't look great.  Why not go with something more visually pleasing like the pixel art of Stoneshard?  Actually, never mind...that's another game that seems to think difficult means tedious rather than challenging. 

Dog-headed Soldiers

I recently ran into a particular character in Elden Ring and his appearance brought up some old memories from the distant past.  Specifically, there is this reoccurring theme of RPG characters who have a dog heads.  It's not especially common, nor am I talking about full-on anthropomorphism.  To illustrate what I'm talking about let's look at three examples.

Blaidd the Half-Wolf is...well...tall for one thing.  Starting with Bloodborne, it has been pretty typical for From Software games to have NPCs and enemies that stand a good head-and-shoulders above the player.  Blaidd, on the other hand, is about twice the height of the player.  Even so, that is not his most outstanding trait.  Rather than stature it is his head that is the most striking feature about the character.  He also has a small pair of tusks which is perhaps a subtle nod toward the cursed prince from the fairytale "Beauty and the Beast."  In an interesting bit of trivia, his name is actually the Welsh word for "wolf" and he is supposedly Ranni's step-brother.  Considering that she has a human head but four arms, I can't even begin to imagine what the family tree must look like.

Ridley is one of many characters found in Suikoden II.  For all intents and purposes he looks like a human with the head of a dog.  In-game he is one of a race of demi-humans called "kobolds."  Kobolds, for those who are unfamiliar, are little mischievous sprites from Germanic folklore.  However, when first edition Dungeons and Dragons came out they were reimagined as a small, weak and numerous foe to throw at first-level adventures.  Appearance-wise the looked reptilian with canine-shaped heads.  In more recent editions of Dungeons and Dragons they have basically taken on the form of diminutive dragon-kin, but I guess a Japanese artist working at Konami back in the day looked at the artwork and thought they were dog-headed people.  There are a few other examples from the series aside from Ridley - "Gau", "Gon," and "Gen-gen."

Lastly is Captain Saladin from King's Quest VI.  Unlike the previous two examples (in which the exact breed of dog head represented on the character is a bit vague), Saladin is definitely sporting the head of a collie (which gives him a rather regal looking appearance).  Also unlike the previous two examples, Saladin has a bushy tail and leads a unit of royal "guard dogs" that look like either basset hounds or pugs.  In the context of the game Captain Saladin and his men aren't the sharpest, but are very loyal to the crown.  In fact, this theme of loyalty (a trait often associated with dogs) applies to all three examples.  What's more all three of these dog-headed soldiers experience a betrayal of sorts during the course of their respective stories.  I won't go into details because doing so would inevitably lead to spoilers, but needless to say I think there is a reoccurring theme happening here.

On a final note, I always wondered how any of these characters are able to speak.  Normally dogs lack the ability to communicate verbally beyond barks, howls and yelps.  Although, as anyone who has been around a Siberian husky can attest, they can sometimes yowl in ways that almost sounds like words.  I also find myself wondering if everything looks black-and-white for them...do they have an enhanced sense of smell or hearing?  When they get hot do they start panting or do they sweat?  I gets kind of funny the more you think about it...