You CAN have a serious story with cute art. It’s a legit thing.
But when the NPC in the opening dies with the same “your character explodes into feathers” animation as your main character, it’s…a bit hard to take seriously?
Also god I really just do not like Milla at all, I too am glad to see someone is like “why are you here?”.
Well the game takes place in like, a few Chinese-styled environments so it’s not really random Chinese. So yes, aesthetic choice. I can’t read Chinese or I’d tell you if it’s random or not.
The creator of the characters is of Chinese descent, Ziyo Ling. But the creator of the game is not, I’m pretty sure he’s European.
I’m not massively keen on the fact she has basically rank bugger-all influence on the events of the game and is seemingly just there to be cute, but the way she’s designed as an actual playable platform game character is inspired.
She’s a super cool character to play as but narratively she’s completely unnecessary.
Like it’s not just the feathers thing? It’s that (as I hitherto thought everyone and their damn chiropractor observed) the game has no fucking clue how to set tone, full stop. Lighthearted silliness, political intrigue, and gratuitous violence just sort of tag out arbitrarily with nothing to connect them or make them feel like they’re part of the same world even. It’s jarring. To top it off they’re all a little on the ham-handed side, which is why the funny parts work the best; that can handle a little ham.
Contrast with something like Tales From The Borderlands, which does a really good job of setting tone. The characters are developed well enough that they can carry both a scene where they fight an entire action sequence with finger guns and the “bad guys” fall over because they’re good sports, and where a major character sacrifices themselves to save their friends. And this is an entire series that can use gratuitous violence to pretty solid effect. The writers know how to let you process, sometimes help you process, while the story transitions into a different emotional state, and they know when being jarring will work (it’s not inherently bad, it’s another tool in the toolbox).
The feather thing would actually work, in a funnier game, or even just a funnier scene, as a gag on the game mechanics being diegetic or whatever the word is. But in this scene, with the tone this scene has set, it feels like self-censorship. Like they were feeling hinky about the part where a defenseless old man got brutally murdered and tried to soften the blow. And that really doesn’t make sense. Remember my apocalyptic hints about future plot points? Those are times when Strife and the rest of the team did not shy away from gratuitous brutality. It’s really uncomfortable. What’s different about those times than the times we’ve already seen?
This game needed editors so badly.
It’s worth noting that Patrick Seymour is actually Irish American; if you listen to his demo reel and other professional work, the accent you’ll hear there is pretty flatly “American.” It’s my guess that the plain accent is learned, and, that, at the time of recording FP, his grasp on it would occasionally slip.
So what you’re saying is that they nailed the Sonic aesthetic, then?
Horf horf hurf harf horf yes. Yes I am saying actually that.
Yeah I’ll admit it, it was an easy joke on my part. To talk about it seriously…I do actually agree, this game does not have any idea on what it wants to BE? Does it want to be a jokey fun platforming game that reminds us of our old fun or lack thereof with the Genesis, or does it want to actually have this deep story? It’s stuck between worlds and as a result accomplishes basically neither.
I mean the actual platforming fun game bit is pretty good and quite successful at what it tries to do.
The platforming video game is fun and the impact of the story upon it is more-or-less null. While the terrible cutscenes may hurt a first-time playthrough, it’s very easy to extract the game from that presentation completely (see: classic mode) with no problem, so the two really aren’t as linked as you seem to be suggesting.
There is that. The fact that you don’t NEED the story is a big plus, all things considered.
We, uh, struggle to make fun of the video game.
Yo so now that the next video’s out can I just say I’m really mad that everyone ignored my great “fixed the dog” joke? I didn’t even plan that going into that spiel, it just happened.
Jade Creek is a good level, and the story gets some much-needed momentum.
I stand by it.
F’real though some of the enemies make me think of Mega Man? You can’t just charge in and kick the shit out of them, you need to think about what you’re doing and plan your angle of attack.
This would seem more reasonable if the combat abilities didn’t invite charging in and kicking the shit out of them.
Doesn’t just invite it, it actively mechanically incentivises you to do this via an extremely arcane and totally undocumented anywhere in game set of gameplay mechanics/variables that I will not explain now because it’s fucking complicated and I will have ample time to discuss it later.
But what I am saying is that the game is literally designed for that. It totally wants you to do that.
and just gonna take a moment to reply to a kind post in the Recommendation Thread because I thought it’d be gauche to reply to it there, but I still wanted to reply. Maybe this is itself gauche, I don’t care.
Thank you! Seriously, that’s really nice. But also this is slightly hilarious because the videos you see are a result of me deliberately trying to play as simplistically as I can. Stick with us, I will blow your fucking mind later on.
Honestly, and this is probably just me, but I’m not usually as impressed by speedrunning as I am by thorough, well-paced demonstration of the game. I’m sure this game has a ludicrously high skill ceiling, though, and having a baseline of “normal” gameplay to compare with the speedrun will make it all the more impressive, so I’m definitely looking forward to when you get to that part as well.
Plot.
In the spirit of opposite day, this video features both criticisms of a boss fight and (backhanded) praises of a cutscene!
I actually kinda like the tonal whiplash this game goes through. It feels very genuine(???) and unique.
That’s my bad opinion for the day.
Never mind tonal whiplash. I just really want to know how they got all the way to release and never had a discussion about including a scene where a 14-year-old girl gets brutally, graphically tortured that didn’t end “yeah totals.”
Like, in a game/movie/whatever that was explicitly meant to be graphic and disturbing that would be considered in poor taste. This game, for clarity, is not.
Naturally it’s the Freedom Planet fandom’s favorite scene.
Side note: subtle, unaddressed worldbuilding can be real real good, but this game didn’t do such a good job at it.
Pangu Lagoon is a rad level though I agree.