I’ve been trudging through this draft at a laggardly pace. I’ve come to realize that I work better when there’s an external deadline, without one I meander and find it difficult to sit down and just hammer out the words. Apparently, this isn’t unique to me and is a common problem for other writers.

I remember when I wrote the Boneman forever ago (pre-pandemic), I sold it on a pitch to Abaddon Books via an open call for submission. I had a little over 60ish days to write a 30k novella. I managed to do the initial draft in the first half, and then spent the second half revising. Pushed by an actual deadline, I felt motivated and engaged in a way that I’ve not been able to replicate with self-imposed deadlines.

And that’s how I find myself pining for deadlines. For an external entity to be prodding me along at a brisker pace. But this is likely part of the process too, figuring out how to just get it done on your own. Like many others have said, there’s a certain point when you have to just get your butt in the chair and write.

I’m still making progress on my sci-fi novel. I’m in the last 10% or so of the story, but lately I’ve been noodling with worldbuilding elements. Since the story and world have started to solidify, I’ve been going back and realigning things to make it all fit together. I might also be stalling.

I have a good sense of what the ending will be, but am at tangle where I’m not sure how to get the characters from Point A to Point B. So, I’ve been gnawing on this knot while focusing on secondary—and in some cases, tertiary—worldbuilding. The solution might be acknowledging that this isn’t actually the last 10%, but is more like that last 20-ish percent. We’ll get there though. Just hunker down and put one word after another.

I absolutely love the first Darkest Dungeon, so I was excited to dive into the sequel, Darkest Dungeon 2. It takes a fascinating approach of keeping the gameplay and tone familiar, but changing the core structure of how you progress.

A dreamlike story world

In the first game, we were firmly cemented in reality. Our goal was to build up our ancestor’s hamlet and level up a team of heroes to eventually face the Darkest Dungeon. In DD2, we’re thrust into a dreamlike world, where reality has been broken apart, and what’s real or unreal is unclear.

This tone translates into the new gameplay structure. Instead of sending a team from our ever-growing roster into dungeons, we now create a team from all available heroes to send them on expedition runs. An expedition run has us take our chosen heroes, and try to reach the Darkest Dungeon, fighting through a rotation of uniquely themed regions each time. If we fail, we restart and attempt again. Success unlocks the next act, new regions, and a different final boss. There are five acts in total, with names like Denial and Resentment.

Our heroes feel like lost souls, being forced to face their personal tragedies over and over. Embarking into the same regions that have all collapsed into decay and chaos. Whereas the first game had us battling external threats, Darkest Dungeon 2 pits us against our own failures.

Plot and conflict, lost in the chaos

Darkest Dungeon 2’s story is told through short snippets of narration delivered before each of our expedition runs. Since its expected that players will be retrying acts a few times—as is typical of a roguelike—subsequent expedition runs will show a new bit of narration. It comes together to fill out the story slowly over time.

So far, I’m on Act 4 of 5. What I’ve gleaned from my experience is that DD2 emphasizes the meta narrative. The themes of failure driven by personal ego are layered throughout the game. It’s also found in the little bits of backstory we get while visiting the various regions. But I found that emphasizing the overarching themes of failure in an abstract, or implied way, takes away from the narrative’s potential impact. I would’ve liked to see more specificity that drew direct lines between the regions, their bosses, and the in-game characters.

In DD1, its revealed to us that each dungeon became a dangerous location because of the ancestor’s actions. We are tasked with repairing the remnants of his tragedies, and in the process they became our tragedies. There’s a direct connection between a character’s actions—the ancestor—and the consequence of those actions, which has us trying to repair the hamlet and fend of macabre beasts. This is missing in DD2, instead the goal is focused entirely on the overarching need to reach the Darkest Dungeon and defeat the final bosses. But the region bosses seem to have no connection to any of the characters, and as of act 4, we haven’t gotten any clear insight into how they became so nightmarish.

I would have liked to see more specificity laced throughout the regions, drawing connections between them and our heroes failings, as a way to reaffirm the game’s overarching narrative. I think this is especially true since we spend the bulk of our time in the regions, they’re the locations we’re visiting over and over. Right now, they feel narratively disparate. Loosely connected, but not quite, to the game’s main themes.

Back to the crossroads

Even though I have some complaints about the story, I’m still knee deep in Darkest Dungeon 2 and thoroughly enjoying it. I love the art style and music. The way they’ve updated the graphics to 3D while keeping the tone of the original art is phenomenal. I’m probably going to go do some expedition runs right now, and keeping working towards getting to the end of act 5.

If you enjoyed the original Darkest Dungeon, or similar games like Star Renegades, then I would definitely encourage you to try Darkest Dungeon 2.

I recently tried Breath of Death 7, a parody game filled with references to retro JRPGs. It had great music and visual design. Unfortunately, I overall didn’t enjoy it. It did get me thinking about random encounters, and the difference between difficulty and the frequency of battles.

Random encounters are one of those features that, despite being nostalgic, are an archaic mechanic. Even in the SNES era with Chrono Trigger, games were drifting away from surprise battles that popped out of nowhere. Random encounters did linger for a couple console generations, but now they are mostly found in games trying to tap into nostalgia.

I noticed that my frustration with random encounters is not consistent. Some games I find to be slog, while other I thoroughly enjoy. This made me stew on what the difference is, and why is it in certain games I become engaged with the random battles, but in others I become frustrated. I don’t have an ironclad answer, but I think I’ve gotten close to parsing it out.

High encounter rates

I’ve started to really dislike high encounter rates. They create a frustrating sense of interruption. Recently, I started to wonder why. A RPGs combat is one of its main features. So why would more fights tip over into annoyance? I think it’s dependent on the difficulty of each fight and how much time you spend popping in and out of battle.

If the fights are difficult, and a battle is triggered once every few steps, then the dungeon turns into a slog. Having to intently focus on each fight while making minimal progress doesn’t feel satisfying. Often, our goal in a dungeon is to reach the end, constant interruptions every few steps impedes our progress. It doesn’t feel like solving a puzzle, but instead like wading through mud.

Making the encounters easy doesn’t change much either. In those instances, the player is likely to button mash their way through fights. It’s not engaging to have auto-battle turned on for an entire dungeon, with the only interesting encounter being the boss.

The longer, more maze-like, and puzzle dense a dungeon is, the more a high encounter rate becomes infuriating. If we’re trying to find our way through a maze, or backtrack to solve a puzzle, constant surprise battles at a high encounter rate become a hindrance. If surviving battles is a tertiary goal, then their inclusion takes away from our primary and secondary goals—in this case solving the puzzles and getting to the end of a dungeon. An example of this is Final Fantasy II, which had long maze-like dungeons, but with an encounter rate so high it made navigating each map a pain. There’s a reason common sentiment is to avoid the original release and instead play the pixel remaster, which allows you to turn off encounters.

Later entries in the series caught on to this. In Final Fantasy X, there are no random battles in any of the trials, which were areas dedicated to solving a series of puzzles. If there had been, I guarantee it would’ve become a recurring complaint from players.

Low encounter rates

I prefer low encounter rates. They make each battle more impactful, and allow you to engage in the mechanics of the fight without the pace feeling bogged down. Final Fantasy IX is a good example of this. In FF9, you’re likely to only have one or two battles per screen. Often, there are no encounters over multiple screens as you navigate the environment. This gives you freedom to explore, with the fights being more engaging because of their infrequency.

And there are whole segments of FF9 where the random battles are turned off, instead opting for planned encounters. These integrate with the narrative far better, usually having enemies deliver dialogue or take an action before initiating the battle. This gives extra context, adds to the sense of verisimilitude between gameplay and story world, and creates build-up that excites us to partake in a story moment via the game’s battle system. It’s a far better and more immersive way to engage players in combat.

Why I didn't like Breath of Death

Breath of Death has great visuals and music. I also like the combo system, where certain abilities increase your combo modifier, the higher the modifier the more damage finisher attacks do. It’s a simple and clever way to get the player to use all their abilities instead of defaulting to the biggest damage ones.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the game, and ended up not finishing it. The most frustrating part for me was the dungeon designs and high encounter rate. The dungeons are long and maze-like, with winding corridors broken up with little bits of impassable debris that you have to zig-zag around. While trying to navigate these long dungeons, the player is bombarded with constant battles at a far too high frequency. This turns dungeons into a frustrating experience of constant interruptions while trying to find where the exit is.

It's made worse by the fluctuating difficulty of each fight. Some fights you can button mash through, others you have to stop and pay attention or you’ll die. And dying boots you back to your last save. Since there’s no autosaves, not remembering to save regularly could mean you lose a large chunk of progress.

The high encounter rate mixed with long, maze-like dungeons created an unenjoyable experience for me. It felt like a slog grinding through so many fights while searching for the dungeon’s exit, doubly so with the fluctuating difficulty of battles.

There’s a “Fight!” option in the menu that lets you initiate a battle whenever you want. Each dungeon has a set number of encounters, about a few dozen. You can park next to a HP/MP replenishing save point and grind through all the dungeon’s battles. This ends all battles and lets you roam the dungeon freely. I wasn’t keen to sit in one spot and grind out fights, and the option to do so seems like a band-aid solution to larger problem. I’d much rather have the encounter rate lowered, so each fight could still be difficult but not feel like a constant hindrance while trying to navigate the labyrinthine dungeons.

Just recently, the creators released a remade version, Breath of Death VII: The Beginning: Reanimated. This new remake has updated visuals, music, and quality of life changes. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like an impressive revamp of the original. Despite my frustration with Breath of Death, I’m very interested in trying this reanimated version.

Conclusion

I have a lot of nostalgia for the format of retro JRPGs, including random encounters. But, I can’t deny that it’s an archaic design choice that modern games have drifted away from entirely. Opting instead for planned encounters or having enemies visible on the map, which I think is better overall.

When random encounters are present, I think the best mix is to have a low encounter rate with higher difficulty. This means that each fight can feel more impactful and force players to use all their abilities. Less, more engaging fights means dungeons shouldn’t feel like a slog, hitting the right mix of forward progress and challenge.

I really enjoyed Dawn of War 2 and its expansions, especially how it streamlined RTS mechanics and introduced RPG style loot and upgrades. This made me curious to try out the first in the series. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was surprised to find a robust—though straightforward—narrative campaign. So much so, that it made me retroactively disappointed in DoW2’ story campaign. This disappointment was cemented when I finally played DoW2: Retribution, which I’ll talk about at the end of this newsletter.

Dawn of War, a surprisingly robust narrative campaign

I was really surprised by Dawn of War’s story campaign. I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting much. But the narrative is engaging, with a protagonist whose internal conflict drives the story forward. There are also cutscenes before and after every mission that help to build up and progress the story. It might seem trivial, but compared to DoW2’s lackluster mission briefings, DoW’s cutscenes, voice acting, and interesting main character really put into perspective what was lacking in DoW2.

Even DoW’s mission briefings are written like a captain’s log, helping to do the double duty of further defining the protagonist and communicate worldbuilding elements.

Dawn of War’s story has some twists, buttressed by a heaping dollop of paranoia. The expected infighting and suspicion typical of the imperium is at play, and it ties into our MCs past, coming together to make an engaging narrative.

I enjoyed it overall, but couldn’t get over my frustration that these elements were lacking in Dawn of War 2. I think it was a huge mistake for DoW2 to have a nameless protagonist. There are benefits to having a player-insert, but in this case DoW2 lost far more than it gained.

Streamlined RTS

Where Dawn of War 2 leaned more toward a squad-based RPG, the original Dawn of War leans toward traditional RTS gameplay. DoW is much similar to something like Warcraft 3, but still streamlined. The resources are capture points, which I really preferred. I didn’t miss chopping down trees. I also found building up a base and getting elite units to be pretty quick.

Having the resources be capture points and getting a fully upgraded base quickly encourages you to push forward. The capture points create an interesting tug-of-war dynamic, as the enemies are trying to steal them from you.

Although, in the last quarter of the game, I found myself getting burnt out. Many of the missions are similar, and by that point most of your units have been unlocked. The maps started to feel repetitive (outside of a couple interesting scenarios), and towards the end I started to miss DoW2’s upgrades and loot. Maybe a couple of the longer missions could have been reduced, or had more mission variety.

Overall, I still enjoyed it. It’s incredibly satisfying to have a swarm of space marines and dreadnoughts wade into an enemy base.

DoW 2: Retribution, more options aren't always better

I wrote about Dawn of War 2 and Chaos Rising previously, I enjoyed both and wanted to try DoW2’s final expansion, Retribution.

DoW2: Retribution still has the squad-based gameplay, but introduces a variety of units that you can summon from control points. This creates a nice mix of traditional RTS unit management, and squad-based RPG gameplay. Out of both games, the core of the gameplay in Retribution might be my favourite.

Unfortunately, it’s marred by the bizarre choice to have six copy/pasted campaigns. There are six factions you can choose from, and each of their campaigns is the literal, exact same. Same maps, mission objectives, and the overarching story of each is relatively samey with only a few lines of dialogue to differentiate it.

This was such a huge letdown. I would have much preferred two or three unique smaller campaigns that were interconnected, instead of more factions with the exact same missions. The only thing that changes are the units you control and a few lines of dialogue. Even then, much of the dialogue is variations of “destroy the tower,” but with a different accent. Even worse, some of the characters in your squad don’t even have voice overs or any dialogue whatsoever, like the Commissar in the Imperial Guard campaign. And a handful of missions toward the end of the Imperial Guard campaign don’t even have mission briefing text. This is absurd.

The only campaign that is fleshed out, and clearly the canon one, is the space marines. If you’re going to play Retribution, then I’d recommend just playing the space marine campaign, and maybe trying a few missions of another faction to test out their units. Otherwise, I do not recommend trying to play through multiple campaigns. I did the Space Marine, Imperial Guard, Ork, and a quarter of the Eldar before tapping out.

I cannot stress how much of a letdown these campaigns were. I don’t understand why they chose to have six repetitive campaigns. More options aren’t always better.

Conclusion

Despite my issues with DoW2: Retribution’s single player campaign, I still really enjoy the gameplay. But, the original DoW’s story mode put into perspective how much the sequel flubbed its narrative campaigns. I think it was a huge mistake to replace a named character with a player-insert, the story lost so much personality, and our squad members were not engaging enough to compensate.

Still, halfway through DoW I found myself missing DoW2’s more RPG adjacent mechanics. If I could mix the original Dawn of War narrative campaign with DoW2’s squad-based gameplay, then I think that would be my ideal Dawn of War game.

Despite its missteps, I’ve become a fan of the series. I’m looking forward to playing DoW’s subsequent expansions, and then Dawn of War 3. I’ll share my thoughts here, subscribe so you don’t miss out.

This year is when I tried to hunker down and get back to finishing my sci-fi novel. I dropped it for several months, so I had to go back and reread it along with working through the old worldbuilding for it. Interestingly, I drifted away from some of the core ideas in the original draft. This led to me changing characters and figuring out reworks for the story’s universe. I like the direction it’s going in, but those reworks didn’t necessarily translate into an increased word count. Right now, the draft is at about 65k words. My goal is 90k, and I should be able to hit it without having to smudge any corners.

My end goal with this novel is to shop it around to hopefully get an agent. I feel pretty confident about it, but I still need to finish the damn thing before anything else. Hopefully I’ll be able to start submitting it next year. Stay tuned to this newsletter for updates.

Speaking of this newsletter, I’ve been consistently posting a new Hello Void on the first of every month for the last few months. I’ve enjoyed writing about games, and using it as an excuse to play older games I’ve been curious about but never got around to. I especially like going back to the 2000s era where there’s a bunch of interesting 3D games, I’ve become oddly partial to those blocky polygon models. Expect more of that in the future, with of course some newer games thrown in.

Short stories have always been my weak spot, but I’m going to give them another try. I’d written them off as something I’m not good at, and maybe they just aren’t a narrative form I connect with, but I’m still going to try writing a few and shopping them around to venues. I’m working out the rough idea for two fantasy stories right now. I’ll update this space if they manage to see the light of day.

Recommended Reads

Here are a few newsletters and books I’ve read recently and really enjoyed.

“What Hawk the Slayer Got Right,” by Alec Worley. This a great dive into a movie that I’ve always wanted to watch. It’s from an era that I find fascinating, and Alec Worley explores the history surrounding it in an incredibly engaging way.

Combat in fantasy series, by Danie Ware. I really enjoyed Danie Ware’s Judge Anderson and Sisters of Battle stories, I’ve been a fan ever since. Recently they’ve been sharing advice on writing combat in SFF. Check out Combat in Fantasy, Part One, and Combat in Fantasy, Part Two, for some great insight.

Unconquerable Sun, by Kate Elliot. This has been on my TBR for a while, and I finally got to sit down and dive into it. It’s a phenomenal sci-fi story with both space battles and political intrigue. It follows Sun, a princess navigating conspiracies and backstabbing, all while intent on proving herself capable to inherit a throne.

Fight, Magic, Items: The History of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the Rise of Japanese RPGs in the West, by Aidan Moher. It’s no secret that JRPGs are one of my favourite genres. I grew up with them, and think a lot of my love for fantasy and sci-fi came from games like Final Fantasy, long before I started reading SFF books. Fight, Magic, Items digs into the history of the genre and shines a light on the people who made these cultural touchstones. If you have even a passing interest in the history of JRPGs, then I highly recommend this book.

I hope everyone has a good holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

-Matt

An important caveat about the original worldbuilding series, but also with anything that orbits writing advice:

This series was about the things that I've learned, or am learning, about worldbuilding. It's me trying to level up my craft, and documenting the process. These posts represent my personal approach to worldbuilding, and the way I do it might not be right for you. I'm not an authority on writing, and so everything in these posts should be taken with not only a grain of salt, but a heaping bucket of saline.

Worldbuilding, Internal Logic

Can the manticore bite through steel? Does the dragon’s fire melt stone? What happens when someone gets hit with those mage fireballs? Any piece of fiction that has fantastical, sci-fi, superhero, or any variation of those elements needs to have consistent internal logic. It’s the thing that keeps us, the audience, rooted in the world even though Strongman is swinging a bus like a baseball bat. 

I see internal logic as the rules of your world. If you have a fireball flinging mage, then the damage of their fireballs should be consistent. That way the reader knows that when the fireball hits a wooden shield it’ll char it, but if it hits a steel shield it won’t do any damage. Things like that, that remain consistent throughout the story, are what help keep the reader immersed in the world. If the fireball doesn’t do anything to a wooden shield, but turns a steel one into a pile of molten goop, that takes me out of the story because it doesn’t seem to make sense without an added explanation. If later in the story the fireball turns a wooden beam to ash, then I’ll start to think the writer doesn’t have any internal rules that govern the mage’s fireballs, making it hard for me to get into the story because it feels like there’s no consistency.

I’m using things mostly associated with fantasy as examples, but this really applies to any kind of story. It can be extended to all kinds of things in a whole variety of genres, from character traits, to tools, sci-fi gadgets, or even laws and the consistency with which they’re enforced. When any kind of “rule” is introduced to your world, you should stick to the general parameters of that “rule” throughout the story.

Rules could be things like:

The fireball cannot melt metal

The comm-link requires wifi access

The yeti needs to eat, like, a *lot* of food daily 

And so on. The rules can be loose, or more like guidelines that can be bent this way or that, but in general there should be some consistency to their implementation. Maybe the mage fireballs can only melt metal if their being cast by an elder mage. That would be a good way to bend the rule, or add an addendum to it. 

And I prefer to know the limitations of these abilities or powers. It makes it easier to build the world around them, to know how they would act in most scenarios. It feels like you’ve laid out your tools, and now it’s just a matter of how you want to use them.

Does it hold up?

I think the idea outlined here is solid enough. I will say that the bounds of how magic works in your world can be bent and molded however you want. How stringently you want to adhere to consistency might also change whether you have a soft or hard magic system. Although, I’d ere on the side of caution with letting a soft magic system be an excuse for excessive leniency. I think there should still be limits understood by your readers. If vaguely understood magic keeps solving problems, then the conflicts presented to your characters will feel lackluster and their solutions unsatisfying.

Anyway, I’m still learning. So take this all with a grain salt.

If you enjoyed this post, then subscribe. You can also check out my archive to see the other topics I write about (it’s a lot of RPGs).

I’ve always been interested in the WH40k universe, but never really dove into it. Lately, I’ve been engaging with it way more. Not only did I replay SM1, but I also decided to play through Dawn of War 2. That, alongside watching lore videos and ogling Ork miniatures, I’m pretty sure the Warhammer universe has its hooks in me.

Something that struck me about both games though, is how each is streamlined in their own way. Making both Space Marine and Dawn of War 2 good entry points into the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Space Marine

Brutal, and to the point

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is a straightforward experience filled with brutal action. It drops you onto a planet with a single mission, evacuate a titan as the world succumbs to an Ork WAAAGH!

You then proceed to eviscerate Orks with chainswords, thunder hammers, meltaguns, and the classic bolter. It’s a satisfying experience to fend off hordes of enemies, and the pacing never edged into dull. There isn’t an upgrade tree, but the game managed to keep things unique by slowly introducing new weapons throughout the experience. Meaning there’s always something new around the corner. Combine that with the temporary jump pack upgrade sprinkled throughout key moments, and it keeps combat engaging.

It was refreshing to play something that’s straightforward. Space Marine nails its core gameplay, creating a satisfying experience that can be repeated over and over. It doesn’t need superfluous mechanics or mini games, if anything that would likely mire the pacing. We drop into an Ork horde and get to let loose. The guns feel impactful, the melee weapons visceral, all coming together for an adrenaline-fueled bloodbath.

One of the ways Space Marine facilitates this is with executions. There’s no cover system here, instead you’re encouraged to get in the thick of it and lay waste with melee attacks. This provides opportunities for you to initiate context sensitive executions, which when performed regenerates your health. This is a brilliant way to encourage an aggressive playstyle, as you benefit from taking risks. It’s also incredibly satisfying to land executions, making you feel like a rampaging juggernaut.

I think Space Marine is a phenomenal game. Its satisfying, brutal, and straightforward. This is the second time I’ve played through it, and I doubt it’ll be the last. I also think it’s a good introduction to the world of Warhammer 40,000, as it gives a good foundation of the tone, and a few of the galactic actors. It doesn’t infodump an overwhelming amount of information, nor does it rely on an expectation of you already being knee-deep in WH40k lore. All that said, I definitely recommend it.

Give us an Ork game

Listen, I can’t be the only one that wants this. I know there are a smattering of other Ork games, but I think we need one in the style of Space Marine. Let us control a Nob or Warboss and go ham on the Astra Militarum. Space Marines might be the most popular faction, but our Ork boyz need some time in the spotlight.

At this point, I’m just trying to will this into reality. I’m sure there’s an audience for an action oriented Ork game. Give us an excuse to WAAAGH!

Dawn of War 2

RTS, but not really

Dawn of War 2 has been in my steam library for years. I’ve bounced off it twice before, for whatever reason I just wasn’t connecting with it. But this time around, it got its hooks in me. Maybe because I’d been going deep into lore videos and genuinely engaging with the world of Warhammer 40,000.

DOW2 is structured like an RTS, but doesn’t quite play like the ones I’m familiar with. The biggest difference is a lack of base building, DOW2 is squad based. Instead of hunkering down to harvest trees and gold, your squad drops into a map and goes straight for the objective.

At first, I found this jarring. I was used to the base building of Warcraft and StarCraft, but this squad-based gameplay ended up being much faster and more engaging. Each one of your squads, led by a named Space Marine of the Blood Ravens, has unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. There’s a scouting squad that can go invisible and plant explosives, one that’s melee based with jump packs so they can get in and out quick to be disruptive, and so on. Each of your Space Marines has a talent tree, and can change loadouts with new weapons, armors, and accessories. All of this makes DOW2 more akin to an RPG than a traditional RTS.

Each mission feels more like loading into a dungeon, with a faster pace than hunkering down and building a base. My only complaint is that in the original campaign it’s not always clear what weapon types are effective against which enemy types. But the subsequent expansion, Chaos Rising, improved this by providing more info in the mission briefing. I also think Chaos Rising is where DOW2 really shines, as the missions are paced better, and structured in such a way that really forces you to take advantages of your squads’ strengths.

I’m glad I gave Dawn of War 2 another try. This time around I’m really enjoying it, and much like Space Marine, find it to be an engaging and straightforward experience that prioritizes intense action. DOW2 also doubles as a good entry point into WH40k. Overall, I’d highly recommend it, just don’t expect a typical base building RTS.

Conclusion

Both Space Marine and Dawn of War 2 streamline their respective genres into a satisfying laser focused experience. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with each, and plan on trying out the other two Dawn of War games. I’m also looking forward to eventually getting to play Space Marine 2, when I finally upgrade my CPU. Hopefully by then we’ll finally have an Ork game in the style of Space Marine, WAAAGH!

Final Fantasy II is the one entry in the series that is rarely talked about. It always seemed that when listing oldschool FFs, you could find people who had good things to say about one, three, and everything after. But FF2 was oft skipped. I didn’t give it much thought until recently, when I started to become curious. It’s the only game that I knew nothing about. I had no concept of FF2’s characters, villain, abilities, anything.

Most online sentiment for FF2 is not very positive. Particularly for the original release, which was apparently brutal. But, the pixel remaster fixes all that and makes the game far more playable. So, I finally gave FF2 a try.

Too many random encounters

This is agony. The encounter rate is atrocious. It’s way too high, every few steps triggers a fight, making exploring dungeons a chore. The fights themselves are also really easy and straightforward, to the point that I played nearly the whole game on auto-battle. I wasn’t engaged with the combat, just auto-attacking through everything. With such a high encounter rate, I can’t imagine what it would be like if each fight was difficult. I probably would have tapped out and not finished the game.

The high encounter rate makes the pace of the dungeons grueling. Each dungeon is built like a maze, with multiple floors of winding corridors and dead ends. The exit to the next floor isn’t clearly marked, and is usually hidden behind a door. The game loves to fill dungeons with empty rooms, that means you’ll be going in and out of doors with little to no reward, butting up against dead end hallways, and doing it all while the high encounter rate bogs down the whole experience. This makes dungeons a frustrating grind, which is unfortunate considering there isn’t much else to the game other than its dungeons.

Thankfully, the pixel remaster gives you tools to mitigate this. You can turn encounters on and off with the press of a button. And, there is a boost option in the configuration menu that allows you to apply experience multipliers, so you can level up faster by doing less fights. I still find it frustrating that I have to go noodle in the options menus, and turn off combat—a core feature of the game—to enjoy it. I’d much prefer having the encounter rate reduced overall, with more exp from each fight, so we could just play the game from beginning to end without any hinderances. They could’ve added a classic mode for those who wanted to play through a grinder like the original release.

Flat characters

I didn’t find the main cast interesting at all. There’s not much to them, nothing interesting is revealed about their past, and their relationships with the other characters are sterile at best. This is true for almost all the NPCs in the game, from the princess who gives you your early quests, to the final villain. There’s no substance to any of them.

The rotation of guest characters doesn’t fare much better. They all fall into the same category, uninteresting and flat. The only intriguing thing about guest characters are their interesting visual designs, but that only goes so far. Even then, they lack a sense of uniqueness in combat, since each character has the same moveset and spells. Unless you keep the guests with their original weapons, like the dragoon with a spear, there isn’t much that differentiates them. They don’t even get special abilities like jump, steal, chakra, or any of the other Final Fantasy staples. All this makes the guests feel like just another unit, easily replaced with a blank soldier rather than a named character.

Proto-Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II has many of the hallmarks that would become the norm for the series, like guest characters and character deaths. But, being an early entry in the series, none of it is fleshed out yet. The characters and villains are loosely tied together, but not in a way with any meaningful depth. The guest characters feel shallow, and the deaths are often lacklustre (except one that I thought was well done). All in all, FF2 very much feels like a proto-Final Fantasy. An early version filled with all the narrative beats that would become standout moments in the following games. The characters and story arc even feel like an early version of Final Fantasy IV, like FF2 was the rough draft to FF4’s final edit.

Conclusion

I thinks it’s fascinating from a historical perspective, but on its own I can’t say it’s a good game. I would not recommend playing it, especially if you don’t already have an interest in the history of the series or that of JRPGs. If you do play it, I’d suggest making shameless use of the experience multipliers in the boost menu, and turning encounters off whenever they start to annoy you.

The boost multipliers and toggle for encounters help a lot, but I still find it frustrating that I have to turn off a core aspect of the game. The most fun I had was when encounters were off and I was only fighting monsters from chests and bosses. Which made me wish they’d modified the encounter rate and experience by default, and then gave players some kind of classic option for those that want the grind.

Despite all that, Final Fantasy II grew on me in the end. This is clearly an important part of Final Fantasy’s foundation, one that future FFs would build off of. Even if I can’t wholeheartedly recommend FF2, I’m still glad to have experienced it.

Darkest Dungeon is the best game I’ve played that doesn’t have a plot, and yet has a story. It’s a peculiar distinction to make, but it’s the only way I can think to describe how Darkest Dungeon’s narrative and themes are laced throughout every aspect of the game, without having a point A to point B plot.

Darkest Dungeon is layered in a gothic Lovecraftian aesthetic. You find yourself pitted against tentacled horrors and warped pigmen. The whole game has an oppressive feel, bearing down on you with inescapable hopelessness. It’s phenomenal. This is all communicated with an amazing mix of art and sound that comes together to create a vivid experience.

The final knot that hold the whole experience together, is the ancestor’s voice over.

Conflict and Tragedy

The ancestor’s voice over narrates the entire game, from combat, to the Hamlet (the game’s hub town), and all the little pieces of exposition we’re fed over the course of the game. It’s a low, pained tone that haunts us as we try and clean up the ancestor’s failings.

Darkest Dungeon is inextricably tied to the ancestor’s actions. We see the remnants of his dark rituals, grotesque experiments, and disregard for the townsfolk who were his charge. Each dungeon, each boss, and every broken thing about the Hamlet is the ancestor’s fault.

This is where conflict and tragedy intersect, rooted throughout the game’s design. Each boss is tied to the ancestor’s actions. When you enter a boss dungeon, the ancestor narrates a snippet of that boss’s history. They are always created by the ancestor. A problem that was the result of his greed. And you are there to clean up, throwing body after body at horrors to fix his mess.

In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings...

—Ancestor

The ancestor starts in a position of power. A leader of vague title to the surrounding town. He’s wealthy and wants for nothing. But then his greed and selfish fascination with the Darkest Dungeon drives him to more extreme actions, until his end (this is all shown in the opening cutscene). Which is when the player, as the descendant, enters a derelict and broken Hamlet.

The ancestor starts as a powerful leader, but we enter after the tragedy, when he has already brought himself low and expired from this world. The ruins of the Hamlet, the dangers of the dungeons, are all that’s left of him. And it is all failure.

The minute to minute gameplay is laced with this subtext. Every raised undead and grotesquely summoned monster is reinforcing the ancestors actions. He may be gone, but his failings haunt us. The player is partaking in the tragedy, at the very tail end of it, by throwing heroes into the fray. And our frustration, either when a leveled up hero dies, or we run out of gold, its all part of the hopelessness that hangs over the Hamlet. All initiated by the ancestor. His actions still affecting us.

Plot vs Story

I wouldn’t say Darkest Dungeon has a plot. It may be possible to very loosely apply the boss encounters and build-up to the final dungeon on a plotline, but that feels like a stretch. Really, the game is about grinding out levels while partaking in the gothic fantasy atmosphere. But there is still a story.

The discussion of what plot versus story is can get convoluted, it depends on who you ask. In this context, I separate plot as being the story beats that make the backbone of a narrative. Hero leaves town, meets mentor, encounters villain, climbs Mt. Doom, etc. But lacks all the characterization, worldbuilding, and atmosphere that makes a story complete. The two are so intertwined that is makes sense to not break them apart outside of noodly conversation around narrative.

For games though, the way stories are presented can be very different than other media. Darkest Dungeon might not have the player following a clear route through a plotline, but it’s still enmeshed in story. The narrative permeates every aspect of gameplay. Heroes permadeath frustrates us, makes us angry or hopeless, even feeling like we wasted our time. The background sounds, especially when the torch is at 0%, evoke horrors just beyond our sight. And all of this, the reason we’re sending heroes to die in nightmare wrought landscapes, is because of the ancestor’s actions.

The game design is the narrative. Grinding levels is part of the conflict, a result of the ancestor’s tragedy. One the player strives to push against, despite the consequences of our predecessor’s actions constantly bearing down on us. Each dungeon run has narrative conflict rooted in its foundation, and supports the ancestor’s tragedy. The narrative and game design are so expertly interwoven that it creates an amazing experience. There’s no part of Darkest Dungeon that feels out of place.

If you can’t tell, I’ve been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon lately. I went through the same stages many players do, where at first I got incredibly frustrated, considered dropping it, but then ended up hooked. It’s a peculiar game that can shift from infuriating to comforting once you learn the tactics to deal with each enemy type. But I was particularly struck by how the narrative is tied to the gameplay, it really is phenomenal.

If you haven’t tried it, and you like the sound of a turn-based rogue-like, then I highly recommend Darkest Dungeon.

I’ve been in a slump recently. Dragging my feet across all metrics, staring at manuscripts, books to-read, blinking cursors on blank pages. I lost it, the urge to keep going, keep writing. Putting one word down, and then the next, seemed so insurmountable. One brick at a time, build that wall.

I think there’s only so many failures most people can take before it grinds them down. The threshold is different for everyone, but there’s a threshold nonetheless. I was confident I’d hit it. Tired of trudging through the muck, knee deep and going nowhere.

And then I ran into this twitter thread, from an account I’d barely ever heard of. For some reason, it flipped a switch. Wtf was I doing? Agonizing over whether my work was good or bad, if it would fit this market or that. I’d lost the plot, started comparing myself to other writers, convinced there was nowhere to go but down.

Fuck it. Make art. Make bad art. Make shit, and then make shit again and again. And when you’re done, start over and make more shit. Just keep making.

I guess sometimes we really do need to hear it from someone else. To see there are others going through the same thing you are. We’re all trudging through the muck together, it doesn’t benefit anyone—least of all yourself—to stop. Keep moving forward, keep making, inch by inch. We’ll build that wall, make some shit, then do it again.

Anyway, I’m probably self-publishing another novella early next year. So subscribe or whatever if you want to know when it happens.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up For a Vast Future. I saw it recommended in a Quartet Kickstarter email, and picked it up on a whim. Advertised as a compact, Gameboy inspired RPG, I couldn’t help but give it a try.

A Vast Apocalypse

For a Vast Future takes place in a beautifully crafted apocalyptic world. You start out as Chel, an orphan who spends her days looking for scrap, until she encounters a cyborg who can’t remember his origins. Promising to help him, and maybe get some loot on the way, the two set out, kicking off the story.

The worldbuilding is fantastic, creating a world scarred by corrupt governments and a desperate war. But to really dig into it, you have to read the optional logs that can be found on bookshelves and interactable computers. Each is short and to the point, but they do an amazing job of laying out the context of the world, revealing the intricacies of the apocalyptic war and the experimental tech that grew out of it.

There are some weaknesses though. I’d describe the game as having a strong plot, but weak story. We move through the twists and turns at a fast clip, and it’s a satisfying pace. But there’s a lack to the character interactions and their role in the story that makes it feel plot driven, but not character driven. It’s a letdown, but not a dealbreaker. And the gameplay more than makes up for it.

Ammo, scrap, and wargear

Combat is turn-based and works around a simple but elegant ammo system, where each character has access to the same pool of ammo types. There’s basic, burn, ice, shock, which are some of the traditional damage types. Then there’s the interesting ones like delay (move enemies’ next turn further back on the timeline), vampire (absorb hp), desperate (deal more damage at low health), and so on. There's also an EXPLODE damage type. Which I find both hilarious and awesome.

Enemies can have strengths and weaknesses, where certain damage types deal more or less damage. The difference between a strength and weakness is significant, so it’s incentivized to try and exploit weaknesses to keep battles from turning into a slog. Especially after the first quarter of the game, because spamming attacks with basic ammo starts to do much less damage.

Then there’s wargear, which is stuff like first aid kits, grenades, and items that invoke a temporary weakness, like the oil can making enemies weak to burn damage. To my surprise, the simplicity of all this together made it so that I would be regularly using wargear, as it’s extremely effective, especially when you upgrade a character’s dexterity stat (it increases wargear’s damage).

In most games I tend to ignore damage items, but in For a Vast Future I used them constantly. It was made more fun since you can craft wargear with scrap. So if you need more grenades or tasers, you can get it from a junk-o-tron as long as you have the requisite scrap. And you get a ton of scrap, I never found myself wanting for basic items.

All of this works together in a simple yet satisfying system. Defeating enemies by using their weaknesses, getting a bunch of ammo and scrap after each battle, then stopping at a junk-o-tron to craft more wargear to defeat more enemies. I found it to be a lot of fun. There’s an elegance to the simplicity of its design.

Do I recommend it?

Yes.

The only letdown are the characters, who I wish we’d gotten more time with to fully flesh them out. Otherwise, fun combat with a straightforward ammo and crafting system, a fascinating apocalyptic world, and a compact 10 hour playtime make this an easy recommendation. For a Vast Future is a lot of fun and I recommend it to anyone looking for an old school RPG experience.

Check it out on Steam.

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My novellas, Moon Breaker and The Horned Scarab, are both on sale for 50% off via Smashword’s 2022 End of Year Ebook Sale. And it’s not just my ebooks, there are tons of titles in a whole variety of genres on sale. If you like indie books, or are looking for something new and weird, then now’s a great time to peruse Smashword’s catalogue.

You can find all the ebooks enrolled in the sale here.

Moon Breaker

Koll doesn't want to be a leader, and he doesn't want to be like his father. But he's too afraid to change, to speak.

His cowardice may destroy his home.

Koll must hunt a Stone Eater, claim its hide, and become his tribe’s Moonwarden. Can he overcome the beast’s terrifying power, or will he never see his home again?

Nala hates tradition, hates the way it binds her people and roots them to the ground. When her brother, Koll, leaves, she's left alone and isolated amid burgeoning lies.

No one will listen.

A mysterious death leads Nala to uncover long buried secrets. Her trust has been misplaced, and the people of her tribe aren't what they seem. The truth will bring justice to her people, but might tear her family apart.

Grab a copy of Moon Breaker here.

The Horned Scarab

Arn knows better than to get embroiled with the city's crime lords, but when a monk turns up dead and a panicked old friend fears for his life, Arn has no choice but to set things right. He'll get dragged deep into Ghorad-Gha's underbelly, where the biggest, baddest crime boss reigns, The Horned Scarab.

Ghorad-Gha, once magnificent city of clay and bronze, crumbles. Those prosperous few burden the shoulders of the downtrodden. In a city of forgotten glory, the lawless thrive.

Grab a copy of The Horned Scarab here.

Keep an eye out for the next issue of my newsletter, where we’ll get back to video game shenanigans. This time with a Gameboy inspired RPG.

And I’m participating!! You can get 50% off both ebooks of The Horned Scarab and Moon Breaker. The discount codes are automatically applied to all enrolled ebooks, so all you have to do is purchase them via Smashwords. AND! The great thing about Smashwords is you get DRM-free files, so you can load these ebooks onto whatever your preferred device is.

You’ll have to login or create an account in order to checkout, but once you have an account all your purchased works will remain available for re-download.

Check out The Horned Scarab

Check out Moon Breaker

Thanks for reading!

I can’t remember if I played Chrono Trigger on the SNES, but I’m certain I played the PS1 port. I have vivid memories of those animated cutscenes and how much they felt like clips from a cartoon series.

I enjoyed Chrono Trigger when I first played it, but it didn’t leave an impression on me like Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy IX did. I’ve seen it espoused to be as close to near-perfect a game can get. I’d assumed a lot of that love was driven by nostalgia. I wanted to replay it to see for myself. Could it really be that good? I expected to enjoy playing it, expected it to be good, great even. But perfect? That’s a bold claim.

A COMPACT 20hr RUNTIME

I had forgotten how compact these retro SNES JRPGs were. Chrono Trigger’s runtime is a compact twenty or so hours. It kicks off at a fast clip and doesn’t let up, with a nonstop string of reveals, twists, and world changing events. There’s no excess in any of the storytelling.

We never linger in one area for too long. The player is in and out of dungeons without any meandering, and even the towns are devoid of the usual need to run-around and talk to everybody. The only buildings we get access to are the important ones, entering inns, shops, and homes of prominent NPCs directly from the world map.

It sounds odd to call twenty hours compact, but that’s how playing Chrono Trigger feels. It gets its hooks in early and pulls you along with ease. Like the video game equivalent of a page-turner.

ACTIVE TIME BATTLES ARE HECTIC BUT REWARDING

The consensus that I often see online is that static turn-based battles are superior to Active Time Battles. The argument being that static turn-based systems allow for more strategy. I used to fall into this category too, but after replaying Chrono Trigger, I’ve developed a new appreciation for ATBs.

ATBs can be hectic and feel nerve-wracking, but that can be part of the fun. It’s also apparent that you’re meant to be able to weather a few extra hits while you’re choosing abilities. This works great at ramping up tension in fights and makes each decision feel urgent.

Recently I replayed Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IX. Both have ATBs that feel cumbersome in regular fights, not moving along fast enough and making these basic encounters drag on. Conversely, both really shine in boss fights, where the extra time is needed to adjust to big hits and stay alive. This makes FF4’s and FF9’s combat feel off-balance, with regular fights being burdensome but boss fights being thrilling and intense. Chrono Trigger doesn’t have this off-balance feel, the regular fights are quick and snappy, while the boss fights are still intense and nerve-wracking, but not so much so that they ever feel unbeatable or unfair. This is why Chrono Trigger turned me around on ATBs, it hits the right balance across all its encounters.

SKIP THE LOST SANCTUM

The Lost Sanctum is a side area that was added to the DS port and then carried over to the Steam port (I think it’s in the mobile version too). It’s dull, repetitive, and just not worth your time.

In The Lost Sanctum you hop through a time portal to find a peaceful reptite village. These reptites give you a handful of fetch quests spanning two eras. That means not only are you running around uninteresting dungeons, but you’re leaving and re-entering the Lost Sanctum over and over in different time periods to run around these uninteresting dungeons.

If you look up anything about it online, you’ll immediately find people complaining about running up and down a mountain. Said mountain is a criss-cross path of rope bridges that spans multiple screens, and the fetch quests have you running up and down it like twelve times, back and forth through different time periods.

The reptite village is bland brown cave walls, with holes that are meant to be “houses” (which you can’t enter), and one table and chair plunked in the corner. All the other villages in Chrono Trigger are on the world map, the only buildings you can enter are the important ones, usually with a packed lived-in (and often cozy) interior design. We don’t need the whole village, we know it’s there, just give us the important buildings. The reptite village doesn’t benefit from having a wide open, empty expanse of a cave system that’s devoid of personality. Just plop us in the tavern and leave the exterior village to our imagination.

It's dull, tedious, and uninteresting. The Lost Sanctum seems to miss the point of what makes Chrono Trigger such a compact and tightly woven experience. Skip it.

STILL LOVABLE 25 YEARS LATER

I don’t have to espouse how great the story is, chances are if you’re reading this you’re already familiar with it. Suffice to say, the story holds up. With lovable characters and a plethora of time hopping storylines, it’s an absolute joyous romp from beginning to end. I get it now, Chrono Trigger really is near-perfect.

If you haven’t played Chrono Trigger, go play it. It’s a phenomenal experience and well worth your time.

Whoa! This looks different. Still simple and straightforward, but attached to the left. What the heck is going on? Well, I’ve switched from Substack to Buttondown. One of Buttondown’s selling points is its barebones simplicity, though maybe some might find that simplicity to be a detriment. I’ve come around to really liking it, and hope you don’t find the change too jarring.

Anyway, hello friends, and welcome to Hello Void issue 3. Right off the bat we get existential with Is Anybody out There, followed by a musical interlude, and ending with Insert Text.

Is Anybody out There?

_{Photo by NASA on Unsplash}

I’ve been flip-flopping a lot on what I want to do with this whole writing thing. Some days I have the urge to dropout of publishing and instead just upload everything I write to an anonymous blog. It would definitely cause me less existential dread.

And yet I keep going, probably because I’m stubborn.

The few works I’ve lobbed out into the universe haven’t made a splash. Add onto that how I find it hard to see a path toward getting a novel (or another novella) published. I end up asking myself if this is self-imposed stress that I could shed.

Writers write. Don’t fixate on things you can’t control. Finish the damn book.

It’s a mantra that’s gotten a dull edge over time. I don’t know how long stubbornness can propel me forward. And my spite reserves were never particularly robust. Pretty soon I’m going to be hovering through the void without any means of propulsion, alone yet acutely aware of all the other millions trying to dogpaddle toward the same goal. I’ll cheer when someone reaches their goal, but that won’t stop me drifting away from mine.

One bit of solace is knowing that not only have other writers gone through this as well, but they found a way through to the other side. It’s heartening to know that there is a path forward, even if I can’t see it.

I don’t have an insightful or declarative way to end this segment. I’ve just been stewing on this idea for awhile now. There are a lot of days when I get to the knife’s edge of tapping out. Thankfully, I’ve still got some stubbornness reserves.

Interlude

I absolutely adore this cover of “I'm Outta Love” by Hannah Boulton and Rabea Massaad, alongside a bunch of talented folks. All around mesmerizing (and vastly different from the original), I’ve been listening to it on repeat ever since I first heard it.

Insert Text

Okay, listen. This issue ended up being a little ramshackle. And, full disclosure, I couldn’t think of a segment to put here. Instead, we’re going miscellaneous, I’m hoping no one out in the endless net will take umbrage. Next issue—if all goes well—I plan to do a double feature talking about my replays of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV. I just finished both and didn’t want to rush it for this issue, hence its ramshackle nature.

This year the Writing Excuses podcast has been doing a series of master classes. One of which is about poetry (eps 16.11–16.18) with Amal El-Mohtar—who has her very own and very good newsletter that you should check out. I’ve dabbled in poetry before, but have never been very good at it. It’s been extremely enlightening (all the master classes and their teachers have been!), and given me a newfound respect for poetry and its power. One of the exercises was to write three haikus. Which I did. Two of them aren’t very good, but there is one I like. I’ve shared it below and hope you dig it.

Superhero

Flying through the sky.
Hope on the horizon, give,
love, and never stop.

This was inspired by my frustration with current media trends of making Superman knockoffs that are bloody and violent. I’ve found myself wishing for a hopeful Superman. I hadn’t expected it to manifest in an impromptu poetry exercise, but I guess that’s the value of working within constraints. It forces you to give your ideas a shape.

Signing Off

Thus concludes Hello Void issue 3, and the first issue sent out via Buttondown! You can view the Buttondown archive here, and as always I maintain an archive on my website at matthewmarchitto.com/hello-void

If you’d like to find me around the web, you can follow me via Twitter, tumblr, Instagram, and Goodreads.

Or check out my website, matthewmarchitto.com, where you’ll find links to all my work and more.

Thanks for reading!

Banner Photo by Patrick Carr on Unsplash

I’ve always had an affinity for peculiar games that folks seem to have forgotten. Whether due to questionable quality or because they just didn’t hit the right cultural notes to become part of our modern lexicon. If you’ve followed me on twitter for awhile, you might have seen me bring up Dragon Valor for PS1. It’s always been one of those games that I have deeply fond memories of, but is also, by all metrics, mediocre. Whenever I bring it up, I seem to be the only one who’s ever heard of it. And everybody looks at me weird when I show them the totally rad intro for disc one.

Though well reviewed when they released, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and Rygar: The Legendary Adventure both occupy that same realm. Games that nobody seems to have heard off outside of a few dedicated audiences. And both were games I remember playing over and over, absolutely loving.

I love these oddball games, peculiar and off the beaten path. Made with passion but oft forgotten. So, when I saw Rise of the Argonauts sitting in my Steam library, I decided to give it a try. I played it when it first released, and have mixed memories of the experience. But maybe, after a second look, RotA might turn out to be one of those hidden gems. Oft forgotten.

SPOILER WARNING: From here onward are SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE GAME. You have been warned.

The Setup

We start out in the palace of our main character, Jason king of Iolcus. Jason is getting married to Alceme in a juddering, poorly compressed cutscene filled with jaggies that aren’t present in-game. It’s not a great introduction, and doesn’t help that stilted, wooden character models mime going through a wedding ritual. But assassins have infiltrated the palace, and before Alceme even gets to utter her first line of dialogue, she’s shot with an arrow through the heart.

We learn that the assassins are Blacktongues, a murderous cult devoted to Hecate. Later it’s revealed that Alceme was part of some poorly explained prophecy dictating that she would be the downfall of the Blacktongues, which is why they attacked her. It’s not really made clear what exactly that prophecy was, but it’s implied to be self-fulfilling on the part of the Blacktongues, since in killing Alceme they start Jason on his quest that ultimately results in their own destruction.

So Alceme dies, and Jason pledges to bring her back to life. With the help of the gods, he sets out on a quest to get the Golden Fleece, which has the power to revive her.

Right off the bat, this smacks of reducing Alceme to a prop to fuel Jason’s motivations. Though her death and revival is the anchor that tethers the narrative, we never get any insight into her character. The closest we get are a few flashbacks that show snippets of her and Jason’s budding relationship through the years, which is nice, but even these are optional. I only found them because I like to explore the nooks and crannies of levels, otherwise it’s extremely easy to miss these extra scenes.

Stab, talk, and stab again

Rise of the Argonauts is an action RPG. The combat plays like a hack n’ slash, you have two attack buttons, a wounding attack (weak attack), and an execution attack (strong attack). Along with a block, a shield bash, a dodge roll, and a couple special abilities, you set to work slicing, crushing, and stabbing enemies with reckless abandon.

There isn’t much finesse to the combat. Jason has access to three weapons and a shield, and each is associated with a god. The mace (Ares) is slow but strong and deals more damage to shields. The sword (Hermes) is quick but weak, with long combo strings. And the spear (Athena) has the strongest execution attack, but doesn’t do much damage to shields. Finally, we have the shield (Apollo), which has a shield bash that can stagger enemies.

There’s some strategy built into these weapons, using the mace to break shields, the spear to do precise damage, or the sword for a series of quick attacks. But I often resorted to spamming attacks, becoming frustrated from enemies constantly blocking with their shields, and just trying to brute force my way through encounters. A lot of the combat’s satisfying feel is carried on the back of the execution attacks. When an enemy is near death, hitting them with an execution attack will initiate an animation with a slow down effect. It’s undeniably satisfying to see Jason chop a dude in half amid a spray of blood while the world goes into slomo for three seconds.

Pictured: Nessus, centaur traitor, and his tamed spectral beast. There aren’t a lot of enemy types and many of them have similar patterns. But there are some creative boss fights that require more strategy than spamming attacks.

It seems like shields were meant to be a big component of the game. Jason’s shield gets its own upgrade tree assigned to Apollo, and in a super interesting design choice, Jason’s shield is always blocking. This means if you’re standing still, not pressing any buttons, and an enemy attacks Jason from the side holding his shield, the shield will still block the attack. This is true for enemies as well, and gives the impression we’re meant to try and duck and weave around attacks to hit opponents exposed sides. But the combat is so spammy, and encounters often throw a dozen or more enemies at you at once, that this just becomes unfeasible. It’s an interesting idea that ends up feeling like a gimmick because there’s no room to build effective strategy around it.

I mentioned that the shield has its own upgrade tree assigned to Apollo, each of Jason’s weapons has a dedicate upgrade tree assigned to their respective god. So Ares’ upgrade tree focuses on beefing up mace attacks, Hermes enhances sword attacks, and Athena’s improves spear attacks. Each also provides additional benefits and some magical abilities that do things like increase your damage, heal yourself and party members, leave a decoy after you dodge, and so on.

The way RotA approaches leveling up is pretty unique. The game eschews experience points, instead relying on the player dedicating “deeds” to one of the gods. Think of deeds like achievements, kill ten enemies for the first time, you get a deed and can dedicate it to a god. This also includes advancing in the story, recruiting Argonauts, and doing side quests. Dedicate enough deeds to a god and you get an aspect point, which can be used to purchase an upgrade. Rinse and repeat. It’s a clever way to make leveling up feel more involved and thematically appropriate to the fantastical Greece setting.

In-between all this stabbing and upgrading are long sections focused on dialogue. I think this is really the part of the game that’s hit or miss for a lot of players. These dialogue sections often feel drawn out and involve running back and forth in a town or village to talk to people. The dialogue itself is kept short and concise, there only being a few instances with long bits of exposition. Where the drag comes in is the need to run back and forth in a town, talking to the same handful of people over and over.

RotA uses a Mass Effect style dialogue wheel, but each line of dialogue is associated with one of the four gods presiding over Jason’s quest. Ares’ options are more aggressive, impatient, and to the point. Athena’s prioritize law, honor, and duty. Hermes’ are laissez faire, invoking a more carefree attitude. And Apollo’s are the all-around Good Dude answers, prioritizing respect for the individual. These options help make it feel like you’re influencing Jason’s personality as you play, but they’re more like you’re filling in the edges of an already predefined character. Unlike Mass Effect, options are never gated off or hidden behind upgrades, so it’s not like you’re creating a good or bad character, like might be expected in games with morality systems. Jason is Jason, despite what you pick.

Another reason players might bounce off the dialogue is the illusion of choice. In multiple scenarios RotA makes it seem like the player can affect the outcome with different dialogue choices, but all scenarios play out in a samey fashion. As far as I can tell, dialogue choices might net you some extra bits of equipment, otherwise the story will progress the same for everyone.

But! The branching dialogue does have one material benefit, when you choose an option associated with a god, it’s equivalent to dedicating deeds to that god. Which will get you more aspect points to spend on upgrades. So rest assured, running around talking to people will make you better at stabbing them later.

Self-contained stories amid a larger whole

To get the Golden Fleece, Jason will have to find three descendants of the gods and bring them to the Oracle at Delphi. Each of these descendants are on one of three islands, and are themed around their respective gods, Ares, Hermes, and Athena.

You can choose to visit these three islands in any order, and what happens in one doesn’t affect the narrative of the others. The only difference being that you might have a different Argonaut companion, but this only affects a few offhand lines of dialogue.

Each of these three islands has a self-contained story directly related to one of the descendants you’re trying to recruit, and each is interesting and varied in their own way. The overarching narrative is relatively barebones, its these individual narratives that hook the player and carry us along.

Mycenae is the standout of the three. Homeland to Alceme, and seat of king Lycomedes, her father. When Jason lands he is greeted with a cold and disdainful atmosphere, the citizens refusing to talk to him and in some cases even jeer at you. The entirety of Mycenae blames Jason for Alceme’s death. Lycomedes refuses to hear reason, and condemns Jason to the arena as punishment for his supposed crime.

The Mycenae plot is a great example of the story’s potential, playing on all the emotional strings setup in the opening. Jason has to confront his own guilt while butting up against Lycomedes, who is using Jason as a scapegoat to preserve his own sense of power and control. It has all the ingredients to come together into a crescendo, but doesn’t hit the mark. Instead, the Jason/Lycomedes narrative peters out and we spend the rest of our time on Mycenae trying to uncover a conspiracy.

Saria, another of the three islands that you visit, gets close to this as well. But in this case, it doesn’t rely on Jason’s history with Alceme, instead revolving around Atalanta and her relationship with her adoptive centaur clan. There’s a monster loose in the jungle, and it’s killing centaurs who venture outside of their village. This means they can’t hunt, causing their food stores to dwindle. Turns out there’s a traitor in their midst somehow tied to the beast. As you try and solve the mystery, centaurs start becoming accused, causing anti-human sentiment to bubble to the surface, directed at both Jason and Atalanta.

This push and pull is the strongest introduction to one of the Argonauts, making Atalanta the most fleshed out member. Showing us Atalanta’s need to cement her place among the centaurs while also reconciling their differences is the most in-depth we get with any of the Argonauts.

Both these narratives stand out because their character-first, and it’s why the Kythra plot is the weakest. One of the three islands you visit, it has you meandering around a temple village trying to uncover a mystery with no real hook to keep the player invested.

None of these storylines ever truly shine. They each have strong setups, a variety of building blocks arrayed in the right order, but they don’t quiet fit right. And it’s the almost that’s such a letdown. So much in RotA is almost there. The pieces fit together, but they aren’t flush.

The Argonauts

The Argonauts proper, these aren’t the descendants you’re recruiting for their blood. These are the characters who will fight alongside you, wading into battle shoulder to shoulder with Jason. By the end of the game you’ll have four Argonauts to choose from—Hercules, Achilles, Atalanta, and Pan—and they’re all insufferably likable.

The Argonauts fight alongside you in combat, and accompany you as you run around towns talking to people. You can have two Argonauts in your team, alongside Jason. But whoever you choose doesn’t have a major impact on the story. They only add one-liners and a bit of extra dialogue, and that’s it. The only time the Argonauts are integral to the narrative’s forward progress are during Atalanta’s plot on Saria, for which she is a mandatory character, and the arena plot with Achilles. Otherwise, they’re just along for the ride.

Pan is a mandatory character for the Kythra plot, but all he does is provide exposition and then summon some barriers during a boss fight. So even though he’s mandatory, he could be easily edited out of the story and it’d progress as normal. It doesn’t do much to expand his character, nor does he feel integral to the Kythra plot.

The player has no control over the Argonauts, they act on their own. Atalanta firing off volleys of arrows, Achilles rushing in whirling his spear in an arc, Hercules bearhugging goons to death, and Pan firing off globules of vibrantly coloured magic. This isn’t uncommon, Mass Effect and Kingdom Hearts both have similar party systems, where your teammates act on their own.

But it feels particularly disjointed in Rise of the Argonauts because you don’t have access to the Argonauts equipment or abilities. There’s no way for you to upgrade them, change accessories, or have any influence over their abilities whatsoever. Not only does this create distance between the player and the Argonauts, but it means when Pan starts firing off green energy blasts that leave a glowing circle on the ground…I don’t know what is happening?

There’s no way for me to tell what any of the Argonauts’ abilities do, which makes it impossible to strategize. I just have to assume everything is damage and acknowledge that there is going to be no coordination. Particularly frustrating because Jason gets upgrades that slow down or stun enemies, breaks shields more effectively, heals allies, and/or gives temporary buffs to damage and defense when certain conditions are met (like taking a large amount of damage in a short period of time).

If the Argonauts have access to similar abilities, I don’t know it. Because all we get to see is a flurry of special effects with no clear indication of what’s happening. Which is why I have to assume it’s all just damage, which sucks. The combat would have been elevated by giving the player influence over the Argonauts abilities, loadouts, even just some way to pick and choose passive traits.

Hercules and what could have been

The motivation behind why each Argonaut joins your crew is nebulous at best. Hercules and Atalanta have the most well-defined reasoning for joining Jason’s crew. Hercules because he’s a long-time friend of Jason’s and is devoted to helping him on his quest to revive Alceme, and Atalanta because she and Jason develop a deep respect and kinship after going through the Saria conspiracy together. But Achilles joins because shrugs adventure and glory. And Pan joins because shrugs adventure and stories.

I don’t think every character in Jason’s party needs or needed to have an ironclad reason for joining the Argonauts. But when this is coupled with the fact that the Argonauts have little effect on the overall story, and that the player can’t even customize their abilities in any way, it starts to feel like they’re just there. Along for the ride and nothing else.

Which brings us to Hercules. Long-time friend of Jason, there in the beginning and there in the end. We start the game with Hercules by our side, he stands as witness to Alceme’s assassination and is the first to charge into the fray alongside Jason.

And it’s why Hercules is the biggest letdown. He must have the least amount of dialogue out of all the Argonauts, and his shared past with Jason is barely touched on. Hercules could have been the standout of Rise of the Argonauts, the most memorable and beloved character. Devoted to Jason, but not unafraid to ask him hard questions. After a member of the Argo dies, Hercules asks Jason if it’s still worth it, if people dying in the pursuit of Alceme’s revival make it an immoral quest.

Jason doesn’t have a good answer, no grander justification other than he’s set his mind to it and won’t back down. Still, Hercules sticks around.

The bond between Hercules and Jason could have been something really special, the lynchpin which the Argonauts revolve. Instead, we get a lovable brute whose influence doesn’t extend past one-liners and bearhugging enemies. When it comes to missed potential, Hercules is the most egregious example.

Lack of body diversity

From left to right (excluding Jason): Atalanta, Medea, and Medusa.

Hercules, massive, hulking, wading into battle, grabbing mercenaries one in each hand. Achilles, tall and lean, leaps amid the fray in a whirlwind of spear strikes. Pan, hooved, long horns upon his head, casts spell after spell against a charging minotaur. Jason, thewed and stocky, raising his shield against a flurry of blows. The men all get an interesting range of body types, from Hercules hulking form to Achilles tall and lean frame.

Atalanta, quick and agile, wielding her bow with expert precision, is thin with an hourglass waist. Medea, a sorceress you recruit early on who offers insight and advice, is thin with an hourglass waist. Medusa, one of the three descendants you are searching for, is…thin with an hourglass waist. Alceme too, is thin with an hourglass waist. All the women look so similar that I wouldn’t be surprised if they use the exact same base model, just altering the clothing, hair, and tattoos.

As I’m editing this I realized I’d forgotten that the centaurs in the game are all male. Though there’s a line of dialogue that alludes to female centaurs existing, they apparently just haven’t arrived yet?

This has always been a problem in games, but going back into the 00s is revealing just how bad it was. I like to think we’re moving past this now, though admittedly it feels like progress has only been made these last few years.

Folks of all shapes and sizes deserve to see themselves in games, as heroes and villains and monsters. It’s particularly jarring to see this now, when just these past several weeks the internet became (rightfully) enamored with Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, featured in this story trailer.

Glitches, stuttering, and crashes

Sometimes the camera would whip around to the left or right, making Jason barrel into a wall. If I took too many screenshots, the game would crash. Jason had a tendency to get stuck on corners that were a foot away from him. And the Argonauts just love standing in narrow doorways, blocking your path until you nudge them out of the way. All while there are constant framerate dips, particularly in areas with a lot of NPCs.

And there was one boss fight that glitched and became unbeatable, so I had to close and restart the game. And another boss fight where, for who knows why, whenever Jason blocked an attack his arms would shoot five feet into the air and twirl around like elastic bands.

There’s just a lot of little things that all start to add up.

On top of that is the fact the game has zero graphics options on PC, other than a resolution option. Which left me with diving into my graphics card’s control panel to try and tweak the performance, it didn’t do much.

I know it’s a twelve year old game, and there should be an expectation for it to be rough around the edges, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a certain level of stability. These compounding technical issues make it harder to enjoy the good in a game that’s already mired in letdowns.

Do I recommend it?

No.

There is a lot of potential here, but Rise of the Argonauts doesn't fully realize it. I like the fantasy version of ancient Greece, and their willingness to altar Greek myth. But spammy combat, long stretches of running back and forth to speak with NPCs, technical issues, and an overall sense that the game was stapled together in a rush keep me from being able to recommend it. The likable Argonauts, cool aesthetics, and moments when the combat clicks aren't enough to elevate Rise of the Argonauts to a must play. Though I do genuinely think RotA deserves either a sequel or spiritual successor that can truly take the good elements and refine them. There’s amazing potential here, it just needs a second chance.

This piece originally appeared in my newsletter, Hello Void. You can subscribe here.

When I started writing this there was a big stuck boat, and because I move at a snail’s pace, the big stuck boat is no longer stuck. Now it’s just a big boat that was stuck. But at least the big stuck boat before it was a big not-stuck boat brought us all together to commiserate over the absurd simplicity of a big boat being stuck.

Anyway, hello friends and welcome to issue #2 of Hello Void. This one is structured a bit different, instead of having one big segment and a couple smaller ones, this is comprised of a variety of shorter segments.

Contents:

• The Case for Linearity and Playdead’s INSIDE

• Interlude

• On Newsletters and Moving On

• Read Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

• Play More Demos: Lunark and The Last Spell

• Signing Off

The Case for Linearity and Playdead’s INSIDE

I’ve always liked linear games. I want to be swept up on an adventure that’ll show me all the sights, to know that the experience from point A to point B has been fine tuned. Linearity isn’t a bad thing, but when I see it come up in conversation, it’s often with a negative connotation.

Linearity can create powerful and evocation experiences, all centered around the idea of knowing exactly where the player will be and limiting the scope with which they can react. And Playdead’s INSIDE is the perfect example of this.

In Playdead’s INSIDE the game slows the player down when it needs them to slow down, or speeds them up when it needs them to speed up. At no point during this does it feel like control is being removed from the player. Each nail-biting jump is manufactured, a pre-designed outcome that feels to players like an organic result of their input.

Simplicity is used as a mechanism to limit the scope of a player’s reaction. You can jump, move left and right, and interact with objects. That’s it. So when a monster starts chasing you, you can only go left or right, and the game knows it. This is how it limits the scope of players’ reactions, and because of these limits the game can squeeze the margin for error tighter and tighter but with precision. At no point does it feel unfair, or like you’re under leveled, or wandered into the wrong area. More often than not, you’ll make the jump on your first try. But it’ll feel like you almost didn’t. And that’s the point.

For now, we’re just talking about running and jumping, but you can apply the benefits of knowing when and where a player will be to a whole host of scenarios. From combat to narrative sequences, even upgrades and levelling up.

I’m not sure how this could be recreated in non-linear games. Looking at open world games as an example, their popular for their sandbox nature, but can also devolve in to meandering collectathons and repetitive tasks. The only way to recreate that sense of precision is to plug the player into isolated locations that can then impose linearity on their progression. But leaning too heavily on these dungeon-like levels can make the sandbox feel redundant, like it’s really just a hub world to traverse on your way to the next mission.

It’s why I enjoy linear games so much. There’s no meandering, no wayward wandering. The experience is focused and fine tuned. I like to be led along, and to know the sights will be exactly where they need to be.

Interlude

Violet Orlandi is a musician whose been making covers on YouTube for years now. She’s overall awesome and gives all her covers a dark, horror tinge. A little while ago she released her first original song, “Creatures,” with her band She Won’t Live.

I absolutely love this song, and have been listening to it on repeat nonstop.

On Newsletters and Moving On

It recently came to light that Substack has been engaging in scummy business practices via their Pro program. You can read more about the situation here and here.

So, this is going to be the last issue of Hello Void sent out via Substack. For me, it’s ultimately not a big deal. I have a small handful of subscribers and no paid subs. But I 100% understand why others who have improved their circumstances and rely on paid subs for their livelihoods would be hesitant to make the jump.

Where will Hello Void go? I’m not sure. I’m leaning toward Revue, it’s the most convenient and easy to use option for me, but there are a few hurdles to getting it setup. For the time being Hello Void will live on my blog, and I’ll continue to post issues there during this interstitial phase. (Does this mean it’s not even a newsletter anymore? An e-zine? Just weirdly formatted blog posts? Who knows.) Hello Void will likely be in limbo as I figure things out, but the (admittedly small) archive can be found at matthewmarchitto.com/hello-void

I hope you’ll still pop by to see what’s up! Until then, keep an eye on your inboxes for Hello Void’s return 👀

Read Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

I adore Ring Shout. This is a must read, it’s equal parts horror and hope. Filled with surprises, evocative imagery, and unflinching truth. I highly, highly recommend checking it out.

Bookshop / Barnes and Noble / Amazon / Goodreads

Play More Demos: Lunark and The Last Spell

Do you remember demo disks? I had this one filled with tiles, each tile a demo for a different game. I’m ashamed to admit I can’t remember what all the games were, but I do remember one of the secret games. Another kid in my elementary school had the same demo disk, and he told me that if you put in a special input, you could get the tiles to flip. Supposedly, there was a secret demo hidden behind them.

So I ran home and tried it. Lo and behold, he was right! That’s why out of all the demos on that disk, I can only vividly remember one, Fighting Force. It was like I’d just unlocked a hidden treasure. I replayed that demo constantly, cherishing it, my own clandestine polygons that only a few (probably lots of) people knew about. Looking back, it’s a unique experience from a time when cheat codes weren’t readily available and games were filled with little easter eggs that weren’t easily discoverable.

All this to say, I like demos. I wish they were commonplace these days. They’re a great way to let players try a game out first, and with some clever design can also be used to hook players, almost like the opening line of a novel.

As such, I’d like to highlight a couple demos for games I’m excited about. Check them out, download the demos, and let me know what you think.

Lunark

I backed Lunark’s Kickstarter, and have been eagerly awaiting its release ever since. Now there’s a demo you can download via Steam to give the game a try for yourself.

Lunark is a sidescroller adventure game in the vein of Out of this World. The combat is slower with a precise methodical feel to it. But once you get the hang of it, navigating the world and dodging enemies becomes extremely satisfying. Lunark is set in a beautiful sci-fi world that is filled with vibrant colours, accompanied by awesome music, and brought together with meticulous rotoscoped animations. I definitely think this is a game to keep your eye on.

The Last Spell

The moment you load up The Last Spell, it hits you with the tone of the game. A sea of zombies all looking to a singular figure brandishing a staff aloft, a town on fire, and heavy metal playing in the background.

The Last Spell is a turn-based tactics rogue-lite. You have a limited amount of days to build defences, upgrade your heroes (assuming they stay alive), and fight oncoming waves of a zombie horde. Your goal is to protect the mages in the center of the village trying to cast the last spell that will banish all the undead.

Each day plays out in three phases. Phase one is where you upgrade buildings which provide a variety of benefits. Phase two is when you build defences, walls, barricades, and so on. And the final phase is nightfall, this is when the zombie horde swarms your town.

Combat plays out on a grid, alternating between the heroes’ turn and the zombie horde’s turn. There’s a plethora of abilities for your heroes to use, and many of them are AOE based, emphasising mass horde squelching efficiency.

The Last Spell is in early access, and the demo is the alpha version of the game. As such, it’s missing some features, particularly the meta progression which will let you carry over resource into a new run. It also throws you right into the action with very little explanation of what all the stats and abilities do. But still, it’s an absolutely fun experience and made me excited to see where the devs take the game. You can download the alpha demo now via steam.

Signing Off

Thus concludes Hello Void issue 2. I think I prefer these shorter segments, its easier for me to put together and offers more variety. But let me know what you think, do you prefer longer single topic issues or this mixed bag of subjects?

If you’d like to find me around the web, you can visit my Twitter, or check out my website, matthewmarchitto.com, where you’ll find links to all my work and more.

Thanks for reading!

—

Banner Photo by Patrick Carr on Unsplash

Hello friends, and welcome to my renamed newsletter, Hello Void! Aptly named to encompass its miscellaneous nature, and the fact that I’m basically talking to myself. Hello Void will go out once a month (give or take) and encompass a variety of topics, but will have a notable focus on video games.

I plan for each issue to be separated into a handful of segments. The first will be what I think of as the main feature, this will be the longest and meatiest part of the newsletter. Followed by an interlude where I share a piece of media, new or old. And then finishing off with one or two shorter segments.

Today’s issue consists of three segments. The main feature is Rise of the Argonauts and Lost Potential, followed by a musical interlude, and finishing with What am I working on?

Rise of the Argonauts and Lost Potential

I’ve always had an affinity for peculiar games that folks seem to have forgotten. Whether due to questionable quality or because they just didn’t hit the right cultural notes to become part of our modern lexicon. If you’ve followed me on twitter for awhile, you might have seen me bring up Dragon Valor for PS1. It’s always been one of those games that I have deeply fond memories of, but is also, by all metrics, mediocre. Whenever I bring it up, I seem to be the only one who’s ever heard of it. And everybody looks at me weird when I show them the totally rad intro for disc one.

Though well reviewed when they released, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and Rygar: The Legendary Adventure both occupy that same realm. Games that nobody seems to have heard off outside of a few dedicated audiences. And both were games I remember playing over and over, absolutely loving.

I love these oddball games, peculiar and off the beaten path. Made with passion but oft forgotten. So, when I saw Rise of the Argonauts sitting in my Steam library, I decided to give it a try. I played it when it first released, and have mixed memories of the experience. But maybe, after a second look, RotA might turn out to be one of those hidden gems. Oft forgotten.

SPOILER WARNING: From here onward are SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE GAME. You have been warned.

The Setup

We start out in the palace of our main character, Jason king of Iolcus. Jason is getting married to Alceme in a juddering, poorly compressed cutscene filled with jaggies that aren’t present in-game. It’s not a great introduction, and doesn’t help that stilted, wooden character models mime going through a wedding ritual. But assassins have infiltrated the palace, and before Alceme even gets to utter her first line of dialogue, she’s shot with an arrow through the heart.

We learn that the assassins are Blacktongues, a murderous cult devoted to Hecate. Later it’s revealed that Alceme was part of some poorly explained prophecy dictating that she would be the downfall of the Blacktongues, which is why they attacked her. It’s not really made clear what exactly that prophecy was, but it’s implied to be self-fulfilling on the part of the Blacktongues, since in killing Alceme they start Jason on his quest that ultimately results in their own destruction.

So Alceme dies, and Jason pledges to bring her back to life. With the help of the gods, he sets out on a quest to get the Golden Fleece, which has the power to revive her.

Right off the bat, this smacks of reducing Alceme to a prop to fuel Jason’s motivations. Though her death and revival is the anchor that tethers the narrative, we never get any insight into her character. The closest we get are a few flashbacks that show snippets of her and Jason’s budding relationship through the years, which is nice, but even these are optional. I only found them because I like to explore the nooks and crannies of levels, otherwise it’s extremely easy to miss these extra scenes.

Stab, talk, and stab again

Rise of the Argonauts is an action RPG. The combat plays like a hack n’ slash, you have two attack buttons, a wounding attack (weak attack), and an execution attack (strong attack). Along with a block, a shield bash, a dodge roll, and a couple special abilities, you set to work slicing, crushing, and stabbing enemies with reckless abandon.

There isn’t much finesse to the combat. Jason has access to three weapons and a shield, and each is associated with a god. The mace (Ares) is slow but strong and deals more damage to shields. The sword (Hermes) is quick but weak, with long combo strings. And the spear (Athena) has the strongest execution attack, but doesn’t do much damage to shields. Finally, we have the shield (Apollo), which has a shield bash that can stagger enemies.

There’s some strategy built into these weapons, using the mace to break shields, the spear to do precise damage, or the sword for a series of quick attacks. But I often resorted to spamming attacks, becoming frustrated from enemies constantly blocking with their shields, and just trying to brute force my way through encounters. A lot of the combat’s satisfying feel is carried on the back of the execution attacks. When an enemy is near death, hitting them with an execution attack will initiate an animation with a slow down effect. It’s undeniably satisfying to see Jason chop a dude in half amid a spray of blood while the world goes into slomo for three seconds.

It seems like shields were meant to be a big component of the game. Jason’s shield gets its own upgrade tree assigned to Apollo, and in a super interesting design choice, Jason’s shield is always blocking. This means if you’re standing still, not pressing any buttons, and an enemy attacks Jason from the side holding his shield, the shield will still block the attack. This is true for enemies as well, and gives the impression we’re meant to try and duck and weave around attacks to hit opponents exposed sides. But the combat is so spammy, and encounters often throw a dozen or more enemies at you at once, that this just becomes unfeasible. It’s an interesting idea that ends up feeling like a gimmick because there’s no room to build effective strategy around it.

I mentioned that the shield has its own upgrade tree assigned to Apollo, each of Jason’s weapons has a dedicate upgrade tree assigned to their respective god. So Ares’ upgrade tree focuses on beefing up mace attacks, Hermes enhances sword attacks, and Athena’s improves spear attacks. Each also provides additional benefits and some magical abilities that do things like increase your damage, heal yourself and party members, leave a decoy after you dodge, and so on.

The way RotA approaches leveling up is pretty unique. The game eschews experience points, instead relying on the player dedicating “deeds” to one of the gods. Think of deeds like achievements, kill ten enemies for the first time, you get a deed and can dedicate it to a god. This also includes advancing in the story, recruiting Argonauts, and doing side quests. Dedicate enough deeds to a god and you get an aspect point, which can be used to purchase an upgrade. Rinse and repeat. It’s a clever way to make leveling up feel more involved and thematically appropriate to the fantastical Greece setting.

In-between all this stabbing and upgrading are long sections focused on dialogue. I think this is really the part of the game that’s hit or miss for a lot of players. These dialogue sections often feel drawn out and involve running back and forth in a town or village to talk to people. The dialogue itself is kept short and concise, there only being a few instances with long bits of exposition. Where the drag comes in is the need to run back and forth in a town, talking to the same handful of people over and over.

RotA uses a Mass Effect style dialogue wheel, but each line of dialogue is associated with one of the four gods presiding over Jason’s quest. Ares’ options are more aggressive, impatient, and to the point. Athena’s prioritize law, honor, and duty. Hermes’ are laissez faire, invoking a more carefree attitude. And Apollo’s are the all-around Good Dude answers, prioritizing respect for the individual. These options help make it feel like you’re influencing Jason’s personality as you play, but they’re more like you’re filling in the edges of an already predefined character. Unlike Mass Effect, options are never gated off or hidden behind upgrades, so it’s not like you’re creating a good or bad character, like might be expected in games with morality systems. Jason is Jason, despite what you pick.

Another reason players might bounce off the dialogue is the illusion of choice. In multiple scenarios RotA makes it seem like the player can affect the outcome with different dialogue choices, but all scenarios play out in a samey fashion. As far as I can tell, dialogue choices might net you some extra bits of equipment, otherwise the story will progress the same for everyone.

But! The branching dialogue does have one material benefit, when you choose an option associated with a god, it’s equivalent to dedicating deeds to that god. Which will get you more aspect points to spend on upgrades. So rest assured, running around talking to people will make you better at stabbing them later.

Self-contained stories amid a larger whole

To get the Golden Fleece, Jason will have to find three descendants of the gods and bring them to the Oracle at Delphi. Each of these descendants are on one of three islands, and are themed around their respective gods, Ares, Hermes, and Athena.

You can choose to visit these three islands in any order, and what happens in one doesn’t affect the narrative of the others. The only difference being that you might have a different Argonaut companion, but this only affects a few offhand lines of dialogue.

Each of these three islands has a self-contained story directly related to one of the descendants you’re trying to recruit, and each is interesting and varied in their own way. The overarching narrative is relatively barebones, its these individual narratives that hook the player and carry us along.

Mycenae is the standout of the three. Homeland to Alceme, and seat of king Lycomedes, her father. When Jason lands he is greeted with a cold and disdainful atmosphere, the citizens refusing to talk to him and in some cases even jeer at you. The entirety of Mycenae blames Jason for Alceme’s death. Lycomedes refuses to hear reason, and condemns Jason to the arena as punishment for his supposed crime.

The Mycenae plot is a great example of the story’s potential, playing on all the emotional strings setup in the opening. Jason has to confront his own guilt while butting up against Lycomedes, who is using Jason as a scapegoat to preserve his own sense of power and control. It has all the ingredients to come together into a crescendo, but doesn’t hit the mark. Instead, the Jason/Lycomedes narrative peters out and we spend the rest of our time on Mycenae trying to uncover a conspiracy.

Saria, another of the three islands that you visit, gets close to this as well. But in this case, it doesn’t rely on Jason’s history with Alceme, instead revolving around Atalanta and her relationship with her adoptive centaur clan. There’s a monster loose in the jungle, and it’s killing centaurs who venture outside of their village. This means they can’t hunt, causing their food stores to dwindle. Turns out there’s a traitor in their midst somehow tied to the beast. As you try and solve the mystery, centaurs start becoming accused, causing anti-human sentiment to bubble to the surface, directed at both Jason and Atalanta.

This push and pull is the strongest introduction to one of the Argonauts, making Atalanta the most fleshed out member. Showing us Atalanta’s need to cement her place among the centaurs while also reconciling their differences is the most in-depth we get with any of the Argonauts.

Both these narratives stand out because their character-first, and it’s why the Kythra plot is the weakest. One of the three islands you visit, it has you meandering around a temple village trying to uncover a mystery with no real hook to keep the player invested.

None of these storylines ever truly shine. They each have strong setups, a variety of building blocks arrayed in the right order, but they don’t quiet fit right. And it’s the almost that’s such a letdown. So much in RotA is almost there. The pieces fit together, but they aren’t flush.

The Argonauts

The Argonauts proper, these aren’t the descendants you’re recruiting for their blood. These are the characters who will fight alongside you, wading into battle shoulder to shoulder with Jason. By the end of the game you’ll have four Argonauts to choose from—Hercules, Achilles, Atalanta, and Pan—and they’re all insufferably likable.

The Argonauts fight alongside you in combat, and accompany you as you run around towns talking to people. You can have two Argonauts in your team, alongside Jason. But whoever you choose doesn’t have a major impact on the story. They only add one-liners and a bit of extra dialogue, and that’s it. The only time the Argonauts are integral to the narrative’s forward progress are during Atalanta’s plot on Saria, for which she is a mandatory character, and the arena plot with Achilles. Otherwise, they’re just along for the ride.

The player has no control over the Argonauts, they act on their own. Atalanta firing off volleys of arrows, Achilles rushing in whirling his spear in an arc, Hercules bearhugging goons to death, and Pan firing off globules of vibrantly coloured magic. This isn’t uncommon, Mass Effect and Kingdom Hearts both have similar party systems, where your teammates act on their own.

But it feels particularly disjointed in Rise of the Argonauts because you don’t have access to the Argonauts equipment or abilities. There’s no way for you to upgrade them, change accessories, or have any influence over their abilities whatsoever. Not only does this create distance between the player and the Argonauts, but it means when Pan starts firing off green energy blasts that leave a glowing circle on the ground…I don’t know what is happening?

There’s no way for me to tell what any of the Argonauts’ abilities do, which makes it impossible to strategize. I just have to assume everything is damage and acknowledge that there is going to be no coordination. Particularly frustrating because Jason gets upgrades that slow down or stun enemies, breaks shields more effectively, heals allies, and/or gives temporary buffs to damage and defense when certain conditions are met (like taking a large amount of damage in a short period of time).

If the Argonauts have access to similar abilities, I don’t know it. Because all we get to see is a flurry of special effects with no clear indication of what’s happening. Which is why I have to assume it’s all just damage, which sucks. The combat would have been elevated by giving the player influence over the Argonauts abilities, loadouts, even just some way to pick and choose passive traits.

Hercules and what could have been

The motivation behind why each Argonaut joins your crew is nebulous at best. Hercules and Atalanta have the most well-defined reasoning for joining Jason’s crew. Hercules because he’s a long-time friend of Jason’s and is devoted to helping him on his quest to revive Alceme, and Atalanta because she and Jason develop a deep respect and kinship after going through the Saria conspiracy together. But Achilles joins because *shrugs* adventure and glory. And Pan joins because *shrugs* adventure and stories.

I don’t think every character in Jason’s party needs or needed to have an ironclad reason for joining the Argonauts. But when this is coupled with the fact that the Argonauts have little effect on the overall story, and that the player can’t even customize their abilities in any way, it starts to feel like they’re just there. Along for the ride and nothing else.

Which brings us to Hercules. Long-time friend of Jason, there in the beginning and there in the end. We start the game with Hercules by our side, he stands as witness to Alceme’s assassination and is the first to charge into the fray alongside Jason.

And it’s why Hercules is the biggest letdown. He must have the least amount of dialogue out of all the Argonauts, and his shared past with Jason is barely touched on. Hercules could have been the standout of Rise of the Argonauts, the most memorable and beloved character. Devoted to Jason, but not unafraid to ask him hard questions. After a member of the Argo dies, Hercules asks Jason if it’s still worth it, if people dying in the pursuit of Alceme’s revival make it an immoral quest.

Jason doesn’t have a good answer, no grander justification other than he’s set his mind to it and won’t back down. Still, Hercules sticks around.

The bond between Hercules and Jason could have been something really special, the lynchpin which the Argonauts revolve. Instead, we get a lovable brute whose influence doesn’t extend past one-liners and bearhugging enemies. When it comes to missed potential, Hercules is the most egregious example.

Lack of body diversity

Hercules, massive, hulking, wading into battle, grabbing mercenaries one in each hand. Achilles, tall and lean, leaps amid the fray in a whirlwind of spear strikes. Pan, hooved, long horns upon his head, casts spell after spell against a charging minotaur. Jason, thewed and stocky, raising his shield against a flurry of blows. The men all get an interesting range of body types, from Hercules hulking form to Achilles tall and lean frame.

Atalanta, quick and agile, wielding her bow with expert precision, is thin with an hourglass waist. Medea, a sorceress you recruit early on who offers insight and advice, is thin with an hourglass waist. Medusa, one of the three descendants you are searching for, is…thin with an hourglass waist. Alceme too, is thin with an hourglass waist. All the women look so similar that I wouldn’t be surprised if they use the exact same base model, just altering the clothing, hair, and tattoos.

This has always been a problem in games, but going back into the 00s is revealing just how bad it was. I like to think we’re moving past this now, though admittedly it feels like progress has only been made these last few years.

Folks of all shapes and sizes deserve to see themselves in games, as heroes and villains and monsters. It’s particularly jarring to see this now, when just these past several weeks the internet became (rightfully) enamored with Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village, featured in this story trailer.

Glitches, stuttering, and crashes

Sometimes the camera would whip around to the left or right, making Jason barrel into a wall. If I took too many screenshots, the game would crash. Jason had a tendency to get stuck on corners that were a foot away from him. And the Argonauts just love standing in narrow doorways, blocking your path until you nudge them out of the way. All while there are constant framerate dips, particularly in areas with a lot of NPCs.

And there was one boss fight that glitched and became unbeatable, so I had to close and restart the game. And another boss fight where, for who knows why, whenever Jason blocked an attack his arms would shoot five feet into the air and twirl around like elastic bands.

There’s just a lot of little things that all start to add up.

On top of that is the fact the game has zero graphics options on PC, other than a resolution option. Which left me with diving into my graphics card’s control panel to try and tweak the performance, it didn’t do much.

I know it’s a twelve year old game, and there should be an expectation for it to be rough around the edges, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a certain level of stability. These compounding technical issues make it harder to enjoy the good in a game that’s already mired in letdowns.

Do I recommend it?

No.

There is a lot of potential here, but Rise of the Argonauts doesn't fully realize it. I like the fantasy version of ancient Greece, and their willingness to altar Greek myth. But spammy combat, long stretches of running back and forth to speak with NPCs, technical issues, and an overall sense that the game was stapled together in a rush keep me from being able to recommend it. The likable Argonauts, cool aesthetics, and moments when the combat clicks aren't enough to elevate Rise of the Argonauts to a must play. Though I do genuinely think RotA deserves either a sequel or spiritual successor that can truly take the good elements and refine them. There’s amazing potential here, it just needs a second chance.

Interlude

With the well-deserved popularity of Hades, I thought a fitting interlude for today's issue of Hello Void would be a look to the past with a song from Bastion, Supergiant Games’ first game. I can't believe Bastion came out nine years ago. But clearly, Supergiant started out strong, and I hope they'll keep going strong into the future. Speaking of, I've got to do a couple more Hades runs.

What am I Working On?

I’ve been noodling on a few things, none likely to be finished anytime soon. I’ve been writing a sci-fi novel since forever (okay, only like a year and a bit), and it’s been slow going. It started out as galactic barbarians wreaking havoc but may have turned into a found family story. I’ve also got a couple comic scripts I keep eyeballing, but haven’t found the motivation to dive into them, mostly because the path towards actually putting them out into the world is fraught and likely expensive.

But what I really wanted to talk about is a novella I’ve been revising. I started it in 2018, trunked it in 2020, and have recently un-trunked it to give it a second look. It’s a bizarre interdimensional fantasy book that treats the in-world magic with absolute shameless abandon. I’d been so caught up on the idea of magic systems for so long, that I ended up needing to write something that went in the totally opposite direction. The result is a story with no concrete magic systems, monster that leap through dimensions, friendly gorgons, and a hero who (sorta) can’t die.

It's weird and chaotic and I love it. But I don’t know if it’s a fit for any of the current markets, though I guess what I really mean is I don’t know if it’s good.

I have a fondness for novellas, these little stories that are books but not novels. Long enough to really get into a story, though short enough that they’re not a huge time commitment. Novellas seem to be having a small resurgence, with Tor.com routinely putting out amazing books, and just recently Rebellion Publishing announced its new novella line, Solaris Satellites (which looks awesome and shoutout to the all Canadian lineup!).

Placing a novella is still tricky, despite this new resurgence. Being unagented means I have to rely on the few markets open to unsolicited submission. It’s hard trying to find a home for any kind of story, from short stories to novels. Wading through listings and desperately trying to swim up the slush feels like a herculean task. In the past there haven’t been a lot of open submission calls for novellas, maybe a few a year with short submission windows. Which gets narrowed down further if your book doesn’t fit the publisher’s market/genre.

But maybe this is changing. The past few years Tor.com has been intent on kicking down the door and thrusting novellas into our to-be-read piles. Rebellion Publishing has also been regularly putting out novellas via their Solaris and Abaddon Books imprints (*cough* you can read The Boneman in Three Stories About Ghosts *cough*), alongside a handful of small presses that have been publishing amazing stuff. And just recently both Tor Nightfire and Uncanny Magazine announced novella submissions will be open later in the year.

Hopefully this will start a trend of more publishers opening up for unagented novella submissions. I adore these little not-novels and want to see more of them out in the world.

Signing Off

Thus concludes Hello Void issue #1. I think it’s fitting for the first issue to focus on a peculiar game that’s only intriguing to a niche of a niche. I don’t know why I have such oddball interests, but I hope you’ve gotten some value out of this newsletter and will stick around for the next issue.

If you’d like to find me around the web, you can visit my Twitter, or check out my website, matthewmarchitto.com, where you’ll find links to all my work.

And if you haven’t already, please do consider subscribing. That way you’ll get the next issue of Hello Void directly in your inbox.

Thanks for reading!

Banner Photo by Patrick Carr on Unsplash

Sea of Stars is a turn-based RPG from Sabotage Studio, a Québec based indie developer. Their Kickstarter smashed through its original goal, accruing a total of $1,628,126 CAD.

The early demo released on August 20, 2020, and will be open to backers until September 20, 2020. It follows two Solstice Warriors, Valere and Zale, as they search for [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] (this is actually used in the demo) who has presumably been taken by the game’s villain, the Fleshmancer.

Shades of the Past

Sea of Stars is heavily influenced by retro JRPGs, but the most notable influence is Chrono Trigger. Sea of Stars features beautiful hand-drawn sprites, vibrant backgrounds that are filled with life, and an overall style that will feel familiar to fans of old school RPGs. Maybe most notable, no separate battle screens. All combat happens directly on the dungeon map.

And there are team attacks, which will also be familiar to Chrono Trigger fans. These allow Valere and Zale to combine their abilities to make them stronger. Team attacks work differently from Chrono Trigger’s Double Techs. They use Assist Points, which are gained by breaking enemy ‘spell locks.’ Spell locks require you to hit an enemy with specific damage types (lunar, solar, physical, etc.) before the counter reaches zero. If successful, then the spell is interrupted and you gain an Assist Point.

Linking team attacks and Assist Points to spell locks is a great way to add an extra challenge to combat, and I really loved trying to plan out my attacks so I could break spell locks before their counter reached zero.

It’s one of the ways the folks at Sabotage are taking from the old but adding the new. The game’s aesthetics, sound, visuals, and story all feel reminiscent of retro games many of us love. But they aren’t beholden to any of it, there might be glimpses of JRPGs like Chrono Trigger, but there’s a whole lot of new innovative ideas in Sea of Stars that shine all on their own.

Elegant Simplicity

Sea of Stars also features ‘timed hits,’ similar to Super Mario RPG. When making an attack, you can press the A button (or X button on a Dualshock-style controller) just as the attack is about to hit, and do bonus damage. When enemies attack you, pressing the A button just before the attack lands will reduce the damage.

This also applies to special abilities, where getting the timed hit just right will increase its damage or boost an ability’s healing. The special abilities are especially fun though. Valere’s Moonerang is a great example, when she tosses it out, it’ll bounce off enemies and back to her. Press the timed hit just as it touches Valere and she’ll launch it back at the enemy. It’ll go on for as long as you can get the timed hits right, gaining speed with each strike, becoming an extremely fun form of pain volleyball.

I love how all this is mapped to one button. It makes it simple and straightforward, it’s easy to pick up exactly what you have to do for each attack and ability. Once you understand there are timed hits, the learning curve for each new attack type is quick.

I think of a few games that had Super Mario RPG’s style of timed hits, but tried to build upon what it started. Games like Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, and The Legend of Dragoon. TLoD had combos for its basic attacks, which had the player hitting a variety of inputs at the right time. But these always felt like quick-time events, and could sometimes be more frustrating than satisfying. Paper Mario: TTYD had a whole range of inputs, everything from swirling the analog stick, to pressing the Z button along with the shoulder buttons, to full-on mini games in the middle of combat.

These were all fun at the time, but looking back I think they’d frustrate me now. Paring it down to the simplest, most straightforward form is an elegant solution that still allows for a lot of variance in combat.

And when combat in Sea of Stars gets rolling, everything clicks into place. Going from trying to get the timed hits right, to blocking multiple attacks one after another, to planning out your special abilities to break spell locks. It falls into a rhythm that’s both challenging and satisfying. I had the most fun in battles where the enemies would fling everything they had at you, forcing you to use every tool at your disposal.

But Gimme A Minute

Sea of Stars uses turn-based combat and doesn’t use an Active Time Battle system. A subset of turn-based combat, ATBs make a game’s flow entirely different. They became common among a lot of old school RPGs (Chrono Trigger used it as well), and lasted into the PlayStation 1 era. I’ve always preferred turned-based combat without ATBs, even though some of my fondest memories are of Final Fantasy games that use it (more on that in a future blog post 👀).

ATBs definitely instill a sense of urgency in combat, but don’t think Sea of Stars can’t match it just because you can take a second to think. When you’re trying to figure out if you can break a spell lock before the counter runs out, while also trying to get the timed hits right to both defend from incoming attacks and do more damage, the combat naturally creates tension without the need for ATBs.

All in All

Sea of Stars is looking amazing. The early demo is a lot of fun and already has a ton of polish. The game is expected to release in two years, and I can only imagine the things the folks at Sabotage Studio will do to truly elevate the experience. This is definitely a game you should keep your eye on.

Interested in reading more about retro gaming?

Then I’d suggest checking out Aidan Moher’s work (Twitter). He just recently released “Timeless: A history of Chrono Trigger,” a monumental deep dive into the history of Chrono Trigger and the people that made it. I highly, highly, recommend it.

Check it out!! The Horned Scarab has a brand new cover!

It was designed by the immensely skilled Skyla Dawn Cameron (Twitter / website). I love how it came together. And if you get the paperback there are these nifty scarab images for the headers and scene breaks.

I’d had plans to make this first arc of the Investigative Privateers a trilogy, with the hope to continue writing more arcs beyond that. But the book sold pretty abysmally, and I couldn’t justify putting more money into sequels. Despite the free price tag on most self-publishing platforms, it’s an expensive endeavour. I’m hoping this cover will breathe new life into The Horned Scarab, so I can finally finish the dang trilogy.

BUY IT FROM:

AMAZON US (UK/AU/CA) · BARNES & NOBLE · KOBO · SCRIBD ·

BOOKSHOP · APPLE · SMASHWORDS

And you can add the new cover edition on Goodreads too.