Messages

1

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 19, 2011, 11:01:59 am »

Personally, I tend to avoid trying to argue what "art" constitutes for the simple fact that a lot of the time "art" tends to be used as an excuse pompous work. In the sense that something is horrible, unpleasant and ghastly, "but that's exactly what art is! It's supposed to make you think and see the world in a new light, to wake you up to the futility of existence!" It's probably not very profound of me to say this, but screw that nonsense! So long as I have the choice to pick the works I'm exposed to, I will pick not those which are the "most art" but rather those which are the most entertaining and pleasant. A lot of the time, people infer "true art" to be the sort of work which takes away my choice to not view it by forcing a message down my throat whether I like it or not in a concentrated attempt to "change" me. Whether this is art or not isn't really relevant in light of the fact that I don't want to view this kind of thing, nor indeed pay money for it. And if I happen to have already paid for it before discovering that's what it is, then I might be slightly upset.

I've taken a lot of things from Aquaria - ideas, emotions, fond memories... But all of that has been taken from the game sans the ending. Whether it's art or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether it's precedented or not, I plain and simple do not like it, and feel that the overall story is weaker for having a downer ending for lack of a sequel, whereas it could have been vastly STRONGER with a conclusive one.

2

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 17, 2011, 12:29:29 pm »

If you're suggesting that those intermediate details don't matter because the game always ends the same way, I'd argue that's tantamount to saying people's lives don't matter because everybody dies eventually. Now that's depressing. (:

I am, actually, and yes, it IS depressing. But at least when reliving the stories of the great men and women of history, be that in film, book or game, those tend to end with at least something accomplished above and beyond that man or woman's own lifetime, something which has significance past their death. Something, more specifically, that has an impact I can trace all the way up through history to something that I immediately care about. What that means is I stick to people with largely heroic stories in history and avoid the tragic ones. Eaxmple:

The WW2 "Convoy of Sailors," the epic adventure of a German navy landing team whose vessel was destroyed while they were on shore securing a British outpost near Australia, who proceeded to sail a rotten tall ship into Africa to Africa and embark on an epic journey across the desert to reach back to their own front lines over the course of around a year. It's an amazing story of courage, perseverance, ingenuity and personal strength, something which can serve as an inspirational story for so many. It ends with their triumphant return to the fatherland as heroes, showered in flowers the entire way. If you end the story there, it's a feel-good tale. If you extend the story just a little further, most of these soldiers are sent back to the front lines and wind up dead within weeks. What, really, was the point of their entire epic journey if they ended up as cannon fodder in the end anyway? As Yahtzee says about Modern Warfare 2: "Would it have honestly made a difference if I'd died 10 seconds earlier?" when recounting his experience in retrying a really tough fight only to succeed and die as part of a cutscene anyway.

I realise that Aquaria is an interactive experience, but it is an interactive experience bookended by non-interactive mandatory plot points. Yes, you can engage in sequence-breaking and other types of unintended behaviour, but that's the sort of meta-game I abhor. The game's creators had a certain experience in mind for me to go through, and I'd like to stick as close to that as I can, with "interactivity" taking place only where a rigid course of action isn't predefined. For instance, Aquaria REALLY seems to want me to go to Mythalas as soon as I hit the Open Waters. There's a fallen statue, my path to the deeper Open Waters is blocked by currents and the game essentially funnels me into the entrance to the city. Only I don't have to go in there, and me being the kind of gamer I am, I try to do EVERYTHING ELSE I have access to before reaching a plot point and advancing a story, partly because I'm used to losing access to old content and partly so I can be as overpowered as possible for the actual gameplay.

But Aquaria still has a rigid story, one that I cannot see past. Yes, it has some interactivity, but that only extends to its setting. The story itself is not interactive, not even faux-interactive like your typical Mass Effect game where events are still carved in stone but the game pretends like you have a choice anyway. Or, actually, I have a better example - Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. If you play the game normally, you get the "bad" ending: The Prince kills Kyleena and is freed from his curse, but still alone. If you find all the secrets, you get the Water Sword, and you get to fight the Dahaka, the REAL villain, and then the Prince and Kyleena return together. THAT is a choice, and THAT determines the ending. Aquaria doesn't even have that. If you fail to find all the lost memories, you don't get a different ending, you just get half of the same ending.

This, really, comes down to personal opinion. I'm not saying that you're wrong or that Aquaria is terrible for it. Again, I love the game. But to me, story supersedes gameplay and setting. I've never been interested in being given just a world to sort of exist in like practically every MMO ever made seems to approach things. I'm highly unlikely to take much away from such an experience. That's largely why I can't stand Hayao Miyazaki movies. I want a consistent plot which ends in a culmination climax where all plot threads are resolved. If a sequel is necessary, then that sequel can start off of resolution, rather than taking one story and snapping it into two parts over your knee. "The experience" of Aquaria, such as it is, is amazing, and I really have Alec to thank more than anyone else for the AMAZING musical score that moves me even to this day. But I can't take the experience alone out of the entire package, because if I want to re-experience it, it comes packed with the cooking and the combat and the plot and the graphics (not as much a fan, really) and all of that. I want to like the ENTIRE package, the ENTIRE game, and without a worthwhile climax, that leaves me down right at the end, right at the point where I should be at my ultimate high.

I LOVE Aquaria all the way through, right up until the end. But instead of thinking "That was great! That was awesome! I want to do it again!" I'm left thinking "Man that was depressing. Yeah, I want to have some time before I do that again. And I'm not really sure I want to go through that another time." When a game is over, I want to end it excited over how good it is and anxious to do it all over again, not down and depressed. That's what I mean when I say the ending takes away from the experience - the final fight against "the god" ends on such a high note, and the happy portion of the ending makes it even higher. I couldn't be more excited about the game. And then as the final scene unfolds, my excitement tanks almost all the way down, undoing almost everything good I had to say about it. THAT is my source of disappointment.

One thing I would like to suggest considering: You say that the secret ending bothers you because Mia has taken away everything Naija accomplished. But what, then, of Lucien? As we see in the same ending -- and as is also made clear by the final voiceover in the regular ending -- the framework for the entire story is that Lucien is reliving Naija's memories. In other words, Naija has succeeded in reconnecting with her son and passing on the story, despite Mia's attempt to seal her away. While it certainly does not qualify a classic fairytale ending (and I imagine we could spend an entire thread debating the merits and demerits of fairytale endings), I also think that viewing it as a purely negative ending is a somewhat selective analysis.

I would agree with you if a sequel to Aquaria existed. If the son's story were inextricably tied to Naija's fate in such a way that his story could not happen without her losing her memories, then I would be far, far more forgiving. I can live with a negative plot twist or ten if that is integral to the positive plot twists later down the line. But a sequel doesn't exist, and from the looks of it never will. To be honest, I consider it incredibly bad taste to end a story on a "TO BE CONTINUED" screen if you're not sure you'll ever get around to making a sequel to continue it. That's not to say sequels should be banned, but you can ALWAYS end a story on a firm conclusion between the acts of the greater epic. There's always room to put in a calm moment with no real open threads if one cared to do this. What Aquaria does isn't so much not striking such a pause between acts, it does the complete opposite of telling the very beginning of the NEXT act in the current one, and this is such blatant sequel baiting it ain't even funny, especially knowing that a sequel will never be.

FEAR games do the same thing. FEAR ended on a cliffhanger, but I could kind of excuse it as the game didn't have much of a story anyway. But then FEAR 2 HAD a story, and it ended on not just A cliffhanger, but essentially THE SAME cliffhanger as the prequel. And now I hear about FEAR 3 being developed, and if that ends on a cliffhanger sequel bait I'm going to kill people.

I have no real problem with Aquaria ending on Naija just telling her story, leaving us with the impression that she was telling it to us - the players. Then when Aquaria 2 starts or whatever that may be called, we refresh players on the events of the prequel then open on Mia's mind-wipe and immediately drop the player in control of the son. THAT would have given us one complete story with a clear hook open for a sequel, and even the depressing points of that story would have been mitigated for the most part.

---

Really - a sequel would fix everything

3

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 15, 2011, 04:05:00 pm »

Yes, life can bite you in the tail, but this was way over the top.  Nothing in the slow and leisurely build up of the successes and growth of Naija in skills and character during the game prepared one for this ending.  Basically, my outrage is because it's too much like real life, where anything horrible can happen at any time, anywhere, out of the clear blue.  I was going into the game looking for an escape from real life, and instead got sucker punched.  That's not why I play computer games, or read escapist literature; I have enough emotional downers listening to the daily news.  And I do realize that it is my own personality flaw in being unable to keep an emotional distance.

And then there's this. There are a couple of TVtropes articles that are relevant to the topic, namely: the crapsack word and the notion that true art is angsty. I don't want to spend much time discussing them, but things I say may be relevant to those.

Like FrancesF, I too reach for games (and books and movies and stories in general) as an escape from a real life that is less than perfect and less than ideal. I reach for games, specifically, because they allow me to have a hand in helping a character I care about through tough times and bringing said character to an ending which justifies the trials and tribulations along the way. I do this as a way to experience the happy happy joy joy feeling that the world actually is a fair and honest place, that if you're a really nice person and really try hard enough, then good things will happen to you. I have no need and no interest in stories that show me that, no, this isn't true. The world is a terrible place where bad guys win and get away with their crimes scot free while good guys try as hard as they can but in the end meet a brutal, violent end anyway that just serves to remind me that "nice guys finish last." I have had the dubious honour of seeing some of the Internet's more disturbing fetishes, including the messed-up depressing stuff some people seem to really enjoy, and I've honestly had enough darkness and unhappiness to last me a lifetime.

There's a notion about art that dictates true art is only true when it affects us somehow, and then there's the notion that the only way for a person to be really affected is for that person to be taken out of his comfort zone in such a strong way for his personality to be affected. That same notion sees "feel good" stories as inert objects with no real value, because they don't really do anything to change people, but just serve to give them even more justification to never change. I imagine that might have been true of "art" when it was seen as something out of reach for the common folk, something you had to be an artist not just to produce but also to appreciate. I consider these times past, myself, as these days I tend to pay for my art choose what to pay for. As such, I choose what I consider art, regardless of what the general consensus is. And in general, I don't appreciate artwork that attempts to change me as a person, as such artwork assumes to know the world better than I do, and that's not a safe assumption to make on the part of any artist, arrogance being what it is.

A few years ago, a friend of mine insisted that we go see that "Fast Food Nation" movie about the evils of the fast food industry as told through a McDonald's stand-in straw man corporation. She was thrilled with the movie because of how it beat me over the head with "the ugly truth" and how it was "sticking it to the man." I felt the movie insulted my intelligence by presenting me with a one-sided argument constructed from malicious arguments and abandoned any pretence of a good story for the sake of clear and biassed propaganda. Much of history's recognise artwork is like that. Even when it's not commissioned by kings to forward whatever message they were after, it's drawn up by artists who had something to tell me, whether I was interested in hearing or not. This tends to have the unfortunate downside of making the hidden message depressing and unpleasant more often than not, for the simple fact that people rarely feel the need to go out of their way to encode a GOOD message. Most of us don't really feel contemplative when we are happy, we only start to question the world when we're upset.

Personally, I find the greatest enjoyment in positive art and positive storytelling in particular. I most enjoy those stories that take their time to make me feel good not just about myself, but about their own narrative. Yes, sometimes a story needs to use unpleasant elements to achieve this, but the best kind of story I like would use all of its elements to build up for one large, final resolution that puts everything in place, that provides final catharsis, that puts an end to the drama and reassures me that everything up to this point was worth it and everything had a point. I see storytelling like a puzzle - each piece may not be very powerful individually, but when it all clicks in top place right there at the very end, that is when the real beauty shines through. Aquaria, unfortunately, really doesn't have that, because the happy ending gets reversed by the "real" ending, leaving me questioning what would have been different if I had never fired the game up at all. Sure, the world of Aquaria would be under the thumb of a different monster, but it would still be under the thumb of A monster. Sure, Naija would not have had all those wonderful memories and character growth, but she doesn't have those by the end anyway. Sure, the son wouldn't exist, but he's not part of the story anyway, not without a sequel.

The story is simultaneously depressing and unfinished, and I'm honestly starting to have a really hard time justifying reliving it, even as much as I like the story minus one element.

4

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 15, 2011, 03:40:21 pm »

While I'll accept that a happy ending lets people go away from the game feeling happy (tautology though that may be), I think that by placing as much emphasis as you do on the story of Aquaria, you're actually missing the point of the game. The story is an important aspect of the game, certainly, but it is still only one piece of the entire experience. As you yourself noted, Aquaria has a way of drawing you in and grabbing you tight -- I'd argue that's because the experience as a whole is so compelling. The environment created by the artwork, music, and story is only part of that experience; the rest comes from the player. As the player, you make the decisions on where Naija goes; you decide whether to proceed into the darkness or turn back, whether to risk a dangerous encounter or play it safe. That interactivity, that active participation in the world of Aquaria is, I think, just as significant a part of Aquaria's appeal as the environment itself. (That's also probably why the downer ending didn't leave me feeling empty or disappointed, as frustrating as it was to watch: I still had the experience of playing through the game, of traversing the world of Aquaria, and no unexpected plot twist can take that away.)

I disagree. We call games an interactive medium, but our interaction is largely controlled by the game developer. While I may control Naija in the very strictest of senses, I don't control Naija in the broader sense of determining her faith or deciding on her character. The game's plot is written for me, and come hell or high water, I have to stick to it, because following the plot is the only way to progress. If my choice is between following a plot point or shutting the game down, then this is not a choice at all. In the meta-game sense, I always have the choice to shut down any game and make up any ending to it at that point that I desire. I have an option to shut down Half-Life 2: Episode 2 at the lift ride down to the chopper before the Advisors arrive and instead claim that things really happened differently and named characters didn't die. But at this point, I may as well abandon the game entirely and write my own story. Which I have, and which I have for this precise reason, a lot of the time. In fact, going back over my writings, I find I have one particular story of self-discovery and personal growth that is eerily similar to the spirit of Aquaria, which I hadn't realised at the time of writing it.

I could console myself with what I've taken away from the experience, and Aquaria certainly has a lot to give. Its atmosphere, its character growth, its introspective, first-person narrative, its placid environment... But what disappoints me is that I want to take bits and pieces of the game, yet not the game as a whole. The linchpin to the entire experience - the resolution which tells me how much of my experience was actually meaningful - is missing. It leaves the experience feeling not just incomplete, but inconsequential, as well. Mia is only interested in Naija's growth as a powerhouse and in her abilities. But power and abilities are not at the centre of the story as I see it. Personal discovery and maturity is, and this is the part of Naija that gets completely brushed aside with the mind-wipe. I can take bits and pieces of the story in much the same way as I can sell a car for parts, but the more I replay Aquaria, the less inclined I am to sit behind the wheel and go for a joyride. I tend to leave at least a year's worth of gap between replays, so I tend to forget most things, but this last playthrough, the ending was always hovering over my head, constantly reminding me that none of what I was doing mattered. Yes, I can take the different ideas and craft them into my own stories, but what I want is to enjoy THIS story, and the ending plain and simple prevents me.

There are only a scant few games which constitute an actual interactive experience. Off the top of my head, I can only name City of Heroes, the super-hero MMO. That game allows you to name your own character, pick your own appearance, write your own story and play that story out, mostly unimpeded by a game which gives you mostly just a setting with storylines in it that you can pick and choose to experience as they relate to the character you are building. This is the kind of game where I can take "the story" and change it, ignore it or take little bits of it from here and there, because I would be telling my own story, not following in the footsteps of a story carved in stone. Aquaria isn't really like that. It's a great game, it's very open-world, it has lots of exploration and its sequence of events is non-linear. But its protagonist, antagonist, supporting characters, beginning and end are set. I like the experience of playing the game, yes, but I wouldn't be playing this game JUST for the experience were there an absence of plot and story. Without those, Aquaria would be Capsized, and this game failed to move me.

I don't want to come off like I'm picking a fight here. I love the game and I love how it's put together, but I really do feel that that ending does a lot to ruin my own, personal experience.

5

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 13, 2011, 12:29:32 pm »

I want to bring up "the Don Bluth principle," as the Nostalgia Critic calls it, as it is quite relevant to the subject of happy endings, cliffhangers and such. Basically, the principle is that, as long as you have a happy ending crowning your story, you can usually afford to make it VERY dark, and yet still get people to leave satisfied, with the bonus that your story has been far more emotional than it would have been if you'd had to be reserved. The happy ending is both an atonement for depressing plot points, as well as credit to actually introduce these into a story, and Aquaria has a few.

The reason I bring this up is that is to highlight an important question anyone making a story should ALWAYS have an answer for: "Where are you going with this?" When you break a story down into its component parts, you end up with lots of snippets and anecdotes, and you'll notice that very few of those are actually interesting on their own, and many are outright unpleasant. It is the story they form when structured together into a coherent narrative that we want to sit through, and as such every element in this story has to contribute something good, and every element's negative effects need to be counteracted by another. A dark, depressing plot point is unpleasant to sit through, but if at the end of a story I look back on it and think "Man, that was nasty, but it made for a compelling story in the end!" then the unpleasantness has been worth it for its narrative value.

One of my greatest failures as a writer was when I started a story in an incredibly dark manner and kept making it darker with the intention of turning it around and contrasting the darkness with redemption. The net result is my readers balked and refused to read until the good parts, and I had to literally beg and reassure them that I really WAS going somewhere with this, it wasn't just nasty for nasty's sake. You NEVER want your audience to get to this state. Ever. I don't care if this is dark story with a dark ending taking place in a world half empty. If you lose your audience half-way through, you have failed.

Of course, the above paragraph doesn't apply to Aquaria, as that game's sheer amazing quality makes it not just easy to stick to the end, but actually kind of hard to stop I managed to devote over 20 hours to it over the span of 3 days, and that... Can't be good for my health. But it was so worth it!

Back to the subject of endings: If you don't end your story on a positive, conclusive ending, you just take so much away from what may have otherwise been a very solid piece. When a story ends in such a way that I end up questioning what the point of it all was if the heroine was used, abused and... Well, let's not go there. But the point is - why did I just sink 20 hours into a story if none of it amounted to anything I wanted to see? All of the hardship, all of the torment, all of the pain, all of the effort, the emotions, the tribulations, and for what? So that Mia can hit the reset button and essentially yoink the entire game from under me. A sequel featuring the son could have set it all straight, rescued Naija, returned her memories and made all of those experiences and emotions mean something, but such doesn't exist and likely never will. So I return to the central question: Where were you going with this?

Yes, it's true that we can make our own sequels via mods, but there's a very serious problem with that: None of it is canon. And I don't say this to come off like a snob, but when everyone can make up anything he wishes and none of the details are ever set in stone, that just ends up taking so much out of the experience. A fan sequel is to an author sequel what talking about a movie on an Internet forum is to actually watching a sequel to the movie. When Half-Life was still young, I saw a zillion "sequels" to it, none official, none consistent with each other, none as good as the actual Half-Life 2, for example. What the actual author creates carries with it a kind of prestige that fan-made sequels can never have. That, and fans lack the amazing voice actress for Naija, not to mention that an actual sequel would need to involve new mechanics, as the To Be Continued screen suggests. Fan-made sequels are, at best, a "next best thing."

To end, I want to give a specific example of a series that manages to tie up all of its narrative, both the good and the bad and even the "reset button" mechanic, into a an ending so satisfying that I honestly don't want to see it continued past that point: the Prince of Persia trilogy Sands of Time -> Warrior Within -> The Two Thrones. The first game teaches us that one can simply undo his mistakes like none of it mattered, but even then the prince emerges wiser for his experiences and seeks to prevent the future that caused a disaster. The second game teaches us that we can't undo what we have done, and no matter how many times you reset time, something will go wrong, but in the end, the prince settles for the best possible outcome. The third game teaches us that you have to stop trying to fix your mistakes and instead accept the consequences of your actions, both bringing us full circle to the beginning AND finds a way to finally put its defining mechanic - time travel - to rest via character development. All plot threads are closed, all character traits explored, all villains defeated, and the timing and precision of the final few words simply make everything click into place. This is a story which becomes one seamless whole at the end, where every bit of it is necessary, both the good and the bad and even the horrible writing at times. Everything is necessary, everything has a point, everything serves a purpose, and everything works towards bringing a MASSIVE wave of closure right at the end. The actual story isn't all that amazing, but the way it ends makes up for any flaws it may have had, because even those flaws feel like they contributed.

I really, REALLY hate to be critical of Aquaria, especially about its writing. I love this game. It's one of my all-time favourites, and it's probably one of the best things I've paid money for in my life. However, after replaying it yet again, I'm still left with a mix of happiness and disappointment at that alternate ending. I'm sorry.

6

Gameplay / Re: What is this pill-shaped crawling thing?

« on: May 12, 2011, 08:10:21 pm »

Defeating the pill-shaped thing with briar thorns proved to be remarkably easy. I didn't count the number of hits the thing took, but it took me no longer than five minutes to kill it. The trick is to position briar thorns at the concave sections of its rock, so that it takes hit from the same thorn for longer. Hitting the pill-shaped thing on the convex sections is pretty difficult, as the briars spread out and it only takes a couple of hits before moving on, as opposed to the 5-10 it takes from a concave section.

What it drops is either a Divine Soup or a Royal Soup, I couldn't tell which from the picture and had both in my inventory at the time, so it could be either. It's not a unique drop, however, as I'd gotten one before, though I can't tell you from where. It's rare, at any rate, and a recipe you get FAR later in the game normally.

Guess that's one mystery solved

7

General / Re: Thoughts and Reflections

« on: May 12, 2011, 11:46:16 am »

Naija's reaction and response was completely in line with her character.  While I've read a few complaints about it, I also think it was pretty realistic.  The times that Naija reflected on her past and what it might have been were romantic/idealistic.  Clearly she was expecting her mother to be some wonderful person.  The complete 180 from expectations was a shocker.  People shouting "I would have killed her right away" likely aren't considering the emotions that they would realistically feel.  (That, or they have a very terrible relationship with their own parents, or they have an emotional disorder that is hopefully being treated.)

Or we are not very forgiving of of people who use us, force us to do things against our will, steal our memories and threaten to hurt the ones we love. All Naija knows about her "mother" comes from her own fantasies and imagination. The only love and bond she has is with an illusion. If the illusion had proven to be true when she met her real mother, then great! If, however, the illusion proved to hide a hideous monster in all but shape - which it did - then it would, as a point of fact, be within Naija's character to oppose her, fight her and if necessary hill her. At the end of the story, she is no longer the lost, wide-eyed child just taking in the world around her. She has a son and a lover to protect, and they are the people she has grown to love over time. I would fully expect her devotion to them to be the instinctive first reaction.

As a point of fact, I find instances where love for an idealised lost parent trumps love for real people in the here and now to be disappointing and tasteless, serving only to destroy the apparent mental strength and presence of a character, one who has thus-far spent the majority of the story fighting tooth and nail to gain that mental strength and presence and build herself as a character the hard way. Luckily, Naija's run-in with Mia doesn't seem to go to Naija's expectations and I don't recall anything in that scene to suggest that she was in any way complicit in Mia's plan for Muahahaha. She was paralysed and mind-wiped, and in effect victimised, so one would expect the sequel which would never be to revolve around her son going on a quest to restore his mother to her true self.

Unlike the original poster here, I'm not a fan of sad/downer endings. All it does is serve to take a lot of the weight off a story and essentially rob it of the sort of closure which could otherwise serve to capstone the experience. I have endless words of praise for Aquaria, but "the ending" is the one thing that I will always hold against the game, unless and until that sequel gets made, which it won't.

Mia is also shown to be different from Naija.  She was created directly from the Creator, so it's quite believable that she has some god-like powers, herself.  Maybe Naija has them (or is capable of them), maybe not - but hey, it's fiction, right?  Just go with it.

Everything the Creator made was gods, so there's no reason to believe that Mia is anything BUT another god with great and weird powers, up to and including mind control. Then again, Naija has out-and-out KILLED enough gods to make Kratos green with envy, so it's still disappointing.

So quick to judge!   I could certainly envision scenarios where I'd feel sympathy for Mia.

Were her story in the actual game anything more than fairly standard demonisation to put Soul Reaver's Elder God to shame, I would agree. A theoretical sequel could easily indulge in giving Mia an extensive backstory explaining why she became such a horrible, repugnant person, and perhaps make us feel sorry for her, and see her actions as, if not justifiable, then at least understandable. Having her do something to redeem herself in said sequel would go a long way. As contained within THIS game, however, Mia is the ultimate showstopper and the architect of one of the most disappointing downer endings I've seen, if only because I love the rest of the game SO MUCH. And there's also the fact that I'm not the sort of person to try and excuse the actions of bad people without significant justification, and such just doesn't exist anywhere in the game's narrative.

8

General / Re: Core reason you like Aquaria

« on: May 12, 2011, 11:19:55 am »

I find Aquaria to be a wonderful case study in both game design and storytelling, and to say that it's good just because it's a "fun game" does a disservice the the sheer amount of love and work that went into this game. I've always felt that a good game is more than just a fun way to kill a few hours (or days, as the case may be). On the contrary, a good game should inspire us to think and inspire us to create. This is kind of the effect Aquaria has had on me, at least. I'm not ashamed in saying that this game more than any other helped shape how I see games and stories in general, as well as how I write.

To me, Aquaria's greatness comes down to two things more than all others: Music and Storytelling.

Music: Here's a thought experiment for you - shut down your speakers and play the game for a while. Just five minutes of gameplay should be enough to drive the point home. Take the music and sound away from the game and Aquaria is... Kind of mediocre, and much less touching. Music has a great impact on people. When music is matched up against the appropriate visuals and gameplay, it can take a fun experience and turn it into a truly magical one. The verse is central to the world of Aquaria in more ways than one might think. It not only made and animated the world in-fiction. It shapes our experiences as we explore it, it gives life to the visuals, it gives depth to the experiences and it gives weight to the memories we keep from them. Aquaria is - no pun intended - incredibly immersive, but it goes beyond that. It is also visceral. Some games try to make us care about their characters on an intellectual level, telling us why we should sympathise. Aquaria does not. It very rarely tells us anything. It makes us care on a much deeper level of feeling. Any game which can elicit an emotional response out of a player for nothing in particular is a true work of art. The music of Aquaria guides us, it puts us square in the emotion of the moment, and the story and settings work at a MASSIVE advantage because of that.

Story: I've said it before - Aquaria has very little actual narrative. The game has predominantly a single character who serves as protagonist and narrator, and the story consists of a literal handful of isolated plot points. However, that doesn't make it sparse or shallow. On the contrary, Aquaria's story is incredibly deep (again, no pun intended) and elaborate, as so much of it is told through the environment. At its core, Aquaria is not a story about events, it's a story about feelings. The plot follows not what happened, but rather what Naija felt on her journey. In her own words, we are experiencing her memories through her eyes. This isn't a story about a protagonist defeating an antagonist, or even a protagonist surviving in the wild. It is a story of a young woman coming to terms with who and she is, as well as with the world around her, at first finding it both fascinating and frightening, at first searching for purpose and meaning, but eventually settling in the comfort of familiarity, opting instead to define her own purpose instead of seeking to fulfil her creator's designs. And considering "the creators" is... Well, spoilers, anyway. Considering that, choosing to be her own being was probably the wise choice, all told.

But the story goes beyond just that. Naija is fascinating as a character, as well. She is constantly walking the line between truth and dream, as is the entire world of Aquaria. She is always somewhere between a sentient, contemplative creature asking questions and a feral beast just following her instincts and urges. Is her quest to find her creator one of sentence, or one of instinct, after all? As we see Naija exploring the world of Aquaria, what we are actually seeing is Naija exploring herself. With ever new experience she meets, she grows and evolves as a person. Having treasure collection as part of the game is an apt metaphor for the treasure collection of experiences. As Naija builds her home cave up from a hole in a rock, so we see her build up her personality from that of an apathetic sea creature just interested in survival into a real person. It's actually amazing how fluent this transformation is. When first we see Naija, she is confused, possessed by urges she doesn't understand, just following her instincts and exploring the massive new world that opens up to her, never making any real decisions or having any real goals. "Lost to the waves," as it were. But in time, we see Naija change into a person comfortable and familiar with her world, who shows initiative, chooses to face danger, chooses to make a stand and charts her own faith. For how light the story is on narrative, it's amazing how good it is.

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To me, music and story are what make Aquaria great above and beyond all else. And if you need an example of why that is, you need look no further than Capsized, an indie game that looks like Aquaria if you see the trailers, but which is completely different in feel and, in my opinion, at least, not nearly as good.

9

Gameplay / Re: Is it possible to get to the lower Rukh nest?

« on: May 12, 2011, 10:31:09 am »

After wasting an unjustifiably long time jumping on thorn pillars, I finally figured out how the direction you can jump is determined. Naija will always try to jump away from the CENTRE of the briar thing, that is the middle of the pillar, and the angle you can launch off is determined from that. If you land on the part nearest the wall, you will almost be restricted to jumping straight towards the wall because you're jumping away from the middle. My problem was I was somehow goofing and ending up landing on almost the tip of the thing, and from the tip you can really only jump away from the wall almost entirely. It turns out the sweet spot is just inside of the middle, as this gives you full range of jumping angles towards the wall while still allowing you to jump almost straight up. If you can land that, you can then make a HUGE jump up. I managed to climp to the top of the world above the Rukh nest that way and realised you could actually cling to the nothingness above

I tried climbing the sheer wall on the other side, but that didn't work since my timing wasn't very good and my patience was running out AND there was nothing to be gained from doing so anyway. I still don't know how one is supposed to snag the extra two Rukh eggs that are under a massive overhang and over another equally nasty overhang below. I can't drop into them from above even with briar things because the top overhang is too large, and would be too large even if I could shoot plants to their ledge, and I can't climb from below because their nesting ground extends so far off the cliff face. There's actually another place I was trying to get, but I can't describe it well enough. I'll need a screenshot to demonstrate, which I can't get right now.

10

Gameplay / Re: What is this pill-shaped crawling thing?

« on: May 12, 2011, 10:13:12 am »

Something just occurred to me - wall-crawling enemies seem especially vulnerable to the thorn things that the Nature form can shoot at walls. They either bump into the thorns continuously and take damage all over again, or they walk through the thorns and take a lot of damage really fast. Would using thorns be a faster way to kill this thing?

11

Gameplay / Re: What is this pill-shaped crawling thing?

« on: May 12, 2011, 12:51:19 am »

I see. Well, it's not worth killing, then, if it takes this much work. I'm not a completionist, so I can survive not killing a pill-shaped crawling thing

Thank you.

12

Gameplay / Re: Is it possible to get to the lower Rukh nest?

« on: May 11, 2011, 09:50:48 pm »

After reading this thread, I tried using the Nature form's "briar" things as jumping platforms, but it really doesn't work. They look like they're reasonably flat to me, but when Naija lands on one of these, she always lands at a very awkward angle and usually refuses to jump towards the wall that the thing is planted in. I've already established that the Rukh egg that's at the top of the water bubbles over the Turtle Cave is impossible to get by a straight jump from the top-most bubble (or at least I have no idea how to do that), so the only thing I have left to try is climbing with plants, but that doesn't work, either. Is there some trick to this?

13

Gameplay / Re: Aquaria second part

« on: May 11, 2011, 09:22:49 pm »

I wonder if it would have worked better if it just ended without the "To Be Continued"?  For me when I saw the end I just thought "Oh, so we'll see what happens in the sequel" rather than "Oh god oh god oh god oh god what's going to happen to my Naija?  ".  I don't know a lick about story telling or game making, but I can't help but wonder if I would have gotten that feeling from a textless ending.

Yes, I'm aware that this is kind of an old post, but the forum doesn't seem to move very fast so I hope it's OK if I respond to it.

For me, this is more or less the case - I'd have been much, much happier with a self-contained story which didn't end on a veritable cliffhanger. Sure, leaving the door open for a sequel is never a bad idea in case you decide to make one (as there are few things worse than cramming in a sequel to a game that didn't leave room for one), but I feel it takes a lot out of a story if you end a game on a "To be continued..." in all but a direct statement to that effect, especially when you're not sure if you'll actually make a sequel that concludes the story. It leaves the narrative without a solid sense of closure, and while it does build up enthusiasm for the next game in the series, it hurts when there is no next game at all. To draw a parallel, I loved Advent Rising and I loved the story it told, but the game seems to have bombed on the market, so the creators lost the rights and the story is left hanging with "There is still so much more to tell." Well, there is if you actually tell it.

That's not to say I dislike Aquaria. Far from it. This is still one of my all-time favourite games, easily blowing AAA 50 Euro titles out of the water (if you'll pardon the pun) easily. To this day, Aquaria has by far the best atmosphere out of any game I've played, and that's across the board of themes, from aerie serenity to light-hearted jubilation to heart-pounding action to blood-curdling horror and beyond. In fact, for a game that's this light on narrative and features predominantly a single character and a single voice, what's accomplished by atmosphere, MUSIC and the few but well-placed lines trumps Hollywood's fat wordy dramas every day. And the ending isn't a let-down - far from it, it is a major high-point... For gameplay that doesn't come. Were this a plot point in the middle of the game, I would have been so excited to keep playing and find out what happens afterwards. As it is, it gets me excited for nothing, and that kind of sours the mood right at the end.

It's true that we're usually sad to see most amazing adventures end, and it's normal that we'd want to delay that end and prolong the adventure. But a good climax to a good story should make us WANT to see it end, not because we want it to be over, but rather because we care about the resolution more than we care about the status quo. To that effect, if the game had simply ended with: "And we lived happily ever after. Well, until our next adventure began, but that's another story for another time" I would have quite literally no complaints about Aquaria. It would have left the door wide open for a sequel and gotten me interested in seeing it, but it wouldn't have taken away from everything that was achieved in the story. And right now, it kind of does.

And, yes, I'm ever so slightly invested in the game's story Every time I replay Aquaria, I'm reminded of all the things I liked about it, and all the things it has inspired me to write. It's a good story, and I would have liked for it to have been given a conclusive ending.

14

Gameplay / What is this pill-shaped crawling thing?

« on: May 11, 2011, 09:05:55 pm »

In all the times I've played Aquaria, I could never figure out what one specific creature is. It's a little crawling thing that looks like half a capsule and doesn't seem to have any legs. It spends all of its time crawling around a loop of rock in the transition area between the Kelp Forest and the Open Waters, and doesn't attack in any way, other than hurting if you touch it. It takes damage, but I've shot and bit it a lot, and it won't die. Is there something special about it?

Pictures included. The thing looks something like this:



Does this creature have any purpose whatsoever, or should I consider it just part of the terrain?

15

Modding / Re: Modding Guide

« on: March 23, 2010, 02:16:34 pm »

Right. I apologise for muddying the waters, as it were. It's just that education and work responsibilities have taken me through half a dozen programming languages (some more involved than others), to the point where I can't help but see things as "Ah, so this is like that in this language, but that's like the other thing in that other language." I've actually spent the most time on C++ and Java of all the languages I know, which is why I tend to see most things in an object-oriented context, whether that context actually exists or not. That's kind of why I say I need some time to wrap my head around Lua itself and the setup of the functions as defined.

For what it's worth, I'm GLAD I don't have to deal with object-oriented programming in C++. Work with pointers there is just opaque. But that just means that I know practically nothing coming in, since I'm starting with preconceived notions which seem to either be wrong or not apply as I think they should, and it will take me a while to work it out. I do appreciate the help with this, and your patience. At first glance, it looks like too much to learn with what free time I have, but I don't know. I just might end up going for it. After all, there's no telling when I might need to know Lua in the future. This is the second time it's come up for me so far, after all. (Just between you and me, I'm not a fan of the Pascal-style block definition with "END" tags. I much preferred curly brackets.)

So, yeah. Looking through the system definitions is probably my priority for the moment. I did miss that link with all the functions, so that will be a good place to start.