Picking up from yesterday, it's very obvious that the Faith builds in Demon's Souls are built for a single purpose: co-op play. Outside of healing, the vast majority of miracles matter little in PvE, with the exception of its one offensive spell, God's Wrath. Even that, though, is somewhat situational-- there aren't many instances where a wide area of effect spell is worth the MP drain and the vulnerable time it takes to cast vs. the damage it can cause. In confine spaces like the occasional PvP fight club, though, it can be a real asset, I suppose.
But yesterday's discussion started off with things about the game the I normally forget, not the merits (or sometimes lack thereof) of the pious-minded. And, if we're being both honest and objective about Demon's Souls, is that the game looks like shit. It always has.
2009 was the year of Uncharted 2. It was the year of Modern Warfare and Assassin's Creed II and InFAMOUS and Borderlands. It was a year where the PlayStation 3's real muscle was being unlocked by talented developers. These devs were also well-funded, something From Software could never claim regardless of its long history and connection with the Sony brand. Demon's Souls was a game made on a fairly middle-of-the-road budget, and it shows. Character models looks cheap up close and have strange anatomy. Textures look flat to the point that areas in and out of the normal play field can be hard to discern. The frame rate, on- or offline, can sink in a handful of specific areas, especially if you're running through them too quickly for the game to load. You could say that the game has a distinct art direction, but even that's a stretch, if we're being even handed. There are knights with armor. Sometimes there are dragons. That's about as far as it goes.
Miyazaki and the team at FromSoft knew how to work with less to produce the emotions they wanted from the player, though. The feeling of dread from not knowing what was around the corner. The satisfaction of sneaking up behind an enemy and planting your sword in their back. The frustration of dying again, and it being a death you could have avoided. If they couldn't get the job done with graphics, then, they knowingly used the next best thing: sound.
The sound design and direction in the Souls games aren't cited enough for their importance. Each game is basically silent, the key ingredient to some of the best horror movies for imposing a sense of tension upon the viewer. For an interactive medium like games, though, the stakes for this tension are much higher. Not knowing if a ghost is under your bed in the dead of night is terrifying. Getting killed by what might be under your bed, though, is not a feeling that can easily translated to the viewer. In the scope of a film, there would be nowhere else to go with that character; they're dead. In games, the drip of water in a catacomb will start the screw turning. The laughing of an unseen threat around you only ratchets that up. The loud slicing sound that finally rings through your speakers when you are killed by a phantom catching you unaware illicits an actual feeling of loss; loss for the progress you made in the level, or the dropped souls that you may not be able to recover. In more ways that many of its peers, Demon's Souls was a horror game. It expected the player to learn from their mistakes and to drive careful, thoughtful progression, but it taught by fear. It wanted you to think that the boogeyman was in your room at night, and you could only hear him move.
The game felt weighty and dramatic when the music finally did sweep in, though. Again, if we're speaking objectively, the orchestral score sounds distinctly low budget. This was before the bell-toned sweep and ominous choirs of the conspicuously better-funded Dark Souls games. But when the soundtrack did kick into gear for a boss fight, or when the low-tempo drone of the Nexus background music changed into foreboding single organ past the halfway point of the game, you knew that you were in the shit. When I was teaching, my instructors and team teachers used to tell me that no matter how angry or disappointed I was in my class that I should only raise my voice when I meant it, when something was seriously wrong. When I finally did, though, those kids would know that something was definitely, horribly awry. Demon's Souls feels like that. The music is sparsely littered in to the game for maximum effect, and that effect is to amplify your dread.
The latter FromSoft games keep to this philosophy, a decision I applaud. But it's a subtle decision, really, and one that doesn't --by design-- jump right out at you. It's easy to forget, then, what's not ever there to begin with. Other games that have tried to ape the formula (Lords of the Fallen is an easy example) have a constant din of orchestral score, which sounds obvious and out of place. It never thought to jettison that, never realizing that the Souls games, for all of their sense of doom, can take their Ico influence to heart and design by subtraction.
We're close to halfway through the month, now, and no co-op so far. I'm going to have to try to be more active with it if I'm going to have anything of real substance to say outside of my past memories.
But we'll talk about that tomorrow.
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