21 Reviews liked by guimachiavelli


El inevitable destino de una decisión artística equivocada, llevada a su extremo más ridículo. Donde Heavy Rain se presentaba como una propuesta de género con toques interactivos (que acababa disparándose su propio pie de pura incompetencia) Beyond se viste desde el principio como una Obra Seria que quiere hablar de Temas Serios ¿Qué Temas Serios? Elige ¡Los tenemos todos!

Bajo la montaña de chistes fáciles y derribos a su persona que David Cage (merecidamente) recibe, el señor y su equipo poseen una sensibilidad pulpera que tengo que admitir que me atrae. Heavy Rain supo mostrar, aunque fuera a ratos, ese talento del señor de Gruttola para recoger un género casposo y pasarlo por un par de pinceladas estilísticas. Un Night Shaymalan de mercadillo, podríamos decir. Pero ese potencial nunca se verá cumplido porque, incluso en sus mejores momentos (Fahrenheit, Omikron, una escena específica en Beyond) le puede el complejo y se ve obligado a disfrazar de oro lo que no pasa de pirita.

Aunque se trata de un estilo de juego denostado, el modelo de la "cinemática interactiva" ha dado muchas cosas buenas a lo largo del tiempo (pienso en Until Dawn como caso reciente y, mucho más atrás, me vienen a la cabeza los juegos de Tex Murphy y el grandioso Phantasmagoria 2) y su condición de género acomplejado es más culpa de quienes lo utilizan que del modelo en sí. Juegos como Beyond, con toda su pretensión de contar una historia madura repleta de tópicos de sensibilidad intelectualoide (la pobreza, los conflictos militares africanos, la marginación de los nativos americanos) acaba haciendo más mal que bien.

2013 fue una mierda de año entre esto, Last of Us y Bioshock Infinite. Vaya manera más patética de cerrar el ciclo de consolas de entonces y vaya presagio siniestro del que vendría después.

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The inevitable fate of a wrong-headed artistic path, taken to its horrible extreme. Whereas Heavy Rain presented itself as genre fare with some interactive elements (that crumbles out of sheer incompetence) Beyond: Two Souls wants to be immediately seen as a Serious Work that wants to talk about Serious Issue. What Serious Issues? Take your pick, we've got them all!

Underneath the mountain of easy jokes and dunks that David Cage (deservedly) receives, the man and his team possess a pulp sensibility that appeals to me at times. Heavy Rain was able to showcase, albeit briefly, Mr. Gruttola's talent for picking up a well-trod genre and elevate it with his particular touch. A second banana Night Shaymalan, we could say. But that potential will never be fulfilled because, even in his best moments (Fahrenheit, Omikron, a specific scene in Beyond) he is overcome by an inferiority complex and tries to reach highs that will never be reached.

Although this form of gameplay is generally mocked, the "interactive cutscene" model has made plenty of good things over the years (I'm thinking Until Dawn as a recent example, and the Tex Murphy games and Phantasmagoria 2 as earlier ones). The fact that it's so condescended today is more the fault of its participants than about the model itself. Games like Beyond, with its dedication towards telling a mature story with plenty of high-minded liberal topics (poverty, the Sudanese military conflict, the marginalization of Native Americans) ends up doing more harm than good.

Man, between this, The Last of Us and Bioshock: Infinite, 2013 was a really shitty year. What a pathetic way to cap on a whole generation of consoles, and what a sinister omen for what the next one would be about

Qué juego tan sencillo con una ejecución tan brillante! Si algo demuestra sin lugar a dudas juegos como Overboard! es que, si tienes una buena idea, es mejor confinarla a un espacio controlado y dejar que reluzca por sus propios méritos.

Más que un ejemplo de genialidad o de brillantez creativa, Overboard! es un ejemplo claro de que la elegancia prima sobre la abundancia. Como simulador de asesinato en el que se nos invita a adoptar el papel de la más villana más villana del lugar, el juego explorar los recovecos del escenario en una clave que se siente a ratos humorística, a otros sorprendentemente seria, pero siempre manteniendo una liviandad sobre sí mismo. Cuando algo rebosa tanta confianza, es normal que luzca tan bien.

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Such a simple game with such a brilliant execution. If there's one thing titles like Overboard! prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's that having a good idea is not enough if you don't confine it into a controlled space and let it shine by its own merits.

More than as an example of genius or creative brilliance, Overboard! is a clear example of elegance trumping abundance. As a murder simulator in which we're invited to take on the role of the most villainous villainess ever, the game explores the nooks and crannies of the setting in a way that feels at times humorous, at others quite serious, but keeping it light about itself. If you exude so much confidence, it's only natural that you'll look good.

El juego más moralmente asqueroso que se ha hecho jamás. Trampa para incautos, adormecedor para perezosos, aturdidor para inquietos. Un dragón con piel de cordero que quiere hacernos creer que el videojuego nunca se bastará por sí solo.

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The most morally repugnant game ever made. A trap for the unwary, numbing for those who are lazy, stupefying for those who want to change things. A dragon disguised in a cute lamb's skin that wants to make us believe videogames will never be good enough.

Un viaje por el mundo en el que el turismo adopta fórmulas artísticas. Como viajeres, nos dejamos llevar por las eventualidades de cada lugar, recogemos las anécdotas y conformamos nuestra historia. Como exploradores, nos animamos a indagar los recovecos de cada nación. Y como testigues, nos involucramos (o nos involucran) en las historias de los demás. Inkle consigue traer el espíritu optimista y en no pocas ocasiones crítico de Julio Verne al presente, y lo hace a través de la promesa de un mundo mejor.

Habiendo dicho eso, esta obra es el tipo que se disfruta mejor cuando se lee a ratos, dejándola respirar, y no intentando agotarla desde el principio. Donde Sorcery! ofrece libertad total de exploración, 80 Days impone ritmos. Y si no te acostumbras a ellos, corres el riesgo de que la obra te agote a tí.

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A journey around the world in which tourism and sightseeing become performance art. As travelers, we carry ourselves away by the stories, anecdotes and shapings of each place. As explorers, we unravel the literal nooks and crannies of every nation. And as witnesses, we inmerse ourselves (or get inmersed) in the stories of others. Inkle manages to bring the optimistic and often critical spirit of Jules Verne into the present, and does so through the promise of a better world.

Having said that, this game is the kind that is best enjoyed when played sporadically and not trying to exhaust it from the beginning. Where Sorcery! offers total freedom, 80 Days imposes rhythms. And if you don't get used to them, you run the risk of it exhausting you.

Bajo la inestabilidad de este programa se encuentra una de las mejores adaptaciones que he visto de la experiencia arqueológica al videojuego. Con una premisa interesante, un mundo amplio y fascinante, y unos personajes atrayentes y complejos, Heaven's Vault te sumerge en la experiencia de deducción, especulación y, en última instancia, incertidumbre que implica la labor historiográfica. Es posible que esta inestabilidad se sienta como un error de diseño para alguien acostumbrade a la cuidadosa experiencia turistificada de Chants of Sennaar, pero para mí, es ese no saber, ese tener que asumir que tu traducción es correcta y tener que volver a ella una y otra vez para ver si no te has alejado, es la clave de todo. Este juego ofrece un apoyo similar al que Paradise Killer ofrecía con Lady Love Dies y su capacidad de deducción, en el sentido de que Aliya y Six siempre estarán ahí para decirte cuando algo se está traduciendo correctamente. Pero hay una diferencia importante entre servirte de apoyo, y construir un mundo en torno a un lenguaje que acaba sintiéndose demasiado artificial.

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Underneath the jankiness of this program lies one of the best adaptations I've seen of the archaeological experience in a video game. With an interesting premise, a complex and fascinating world, and engaging and complicated characters, Heaven's Vault immerses in a session of deduction, speculation, and the uncertainty that historiographical work entails. It's possible that this instability might feel like a design flaw to someone used to the carefully turistic experience of Chants of Sennaar, but for me, it's that not knowing, that having to assume that your translations are correct, and having to go back to them again to see you haven't wronged too much, is the key to it all. This game offers something similar to what Paradise Killer did with Lady Love Dies and her deductional powers, in that Aliya and Six will always be there to tell you when something is translating correctly. But there's an important difference between supporting you, and building a world around a language that feels way too artificial for its own good.

¿Cómo de irónico es que, tras más de 10 años intentando crear un estilo propio, Uncharted acabó su andadura pareciéndose a Tomb Raider más que los Tomb Raider de ahora?

Al margen de esta take, no hay mucho que decir de Lost Legacy que no se aplicara ya en Thief's End. El estilo de juego está más pulido que nunca, y la capacidad de saltar entre modo sigilo y modo acción se siente completamente implementada. Por desgracia, tu Chloe Frazer parece más susceptible que nunca a ir por donde no quieres que vaya. Una consecuencia inevitable de hacer tus juegos más "realistas", pero no más interactivos. El ritmo de juego, aunque un poco comprimido para mi gusto, mantiene una intensidad correcta todo el tiempo, y sus puntos álgidos parecen la conclusión más lógica de lo que Naughty Dog venía haciendo, a nivel de mapeado, desde Last of Us. El hecho de que se haga corto tal vez sea un punto a su favor.

No tengo mucho que decir con respecto a la historia. Como ya pasara con Uncharted 4, hay mucha promesa de profundidad temática, pero muy poca exploración genuina. Lost Legacy se sale con la suya un poco porque cuenta con personajes ya establecidos para contar su historia, pero me cuesta imaginarme a nadie sintiendo nada por Chloe y Nadine si no las conocieran de antemano. Sin ese soporte, lo único que tienes es una historia de acción competente con vagas aspiraciones a relato de empoderamiento femenino de etiqueta.

Con todo, se siente que hemos llegado al final de un camino aquí. Mi más sincera enhorabuena a Naughty Dog por alcánzar el cénit de su aspiración artística: parecer una película de Marvel.

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How ironic is it that, after more than 10 years of trying to create its own style, Uncharted ended up resembling more Tomb Raider than Tomb Raider today?

Aside from this take, there's not much to say about Lost Legacy that doesn't apply to Thief's End. The gameplay is more polished than ever, and the ability to jump between stealth and action mode feels fully streamlined. Unfortunately, Chloe Frazer is very susceptible to getting where you never want to, a sad consequence of making your games more "realistic" but not more interactive. The pacing of the game, while a bit too compressed for my taste, maintains its intensity throughout, and its climaxes seem like logical endpoints to what Naughty Dog had been doing, map-wise, since Last of Us. The fact that it's short is perhaps a point in its favor also.

I don't have much to say about the story. As with U4, there's a promise of thematic exploration, but very little of it. Lost Legacy gets away with it by using already established characters, but I have a hard time imagining anyone feeling anything for Chloe and Nadine if they didn't know them beforehand. Without that, all you have is a competent action story with vague aspirations of female empowerment.

Despite that, it's truly like we reached the end of a road here. My sincere congratulations to Naughty Dog for reaching the zenith of their artistic aspiration: looking like a Marvel movie.

Como reflejo de cierto tipo de historias que autores como Makoto Shinkai y Naoko Yamada han puesto de moda, The Kids we Were es un aporte exitoso, que tampoco original, de la ola de obras nostálgicas recientes que están tratando de recuperarle la vitalidad a la generación de la Década Perdida. Principalmente, tratan de hacerlo haciendo que se pregunten cosas como: ¿Han tratado de mantener la ilusión de su infancias? ¿Han perdido algo en su viaje a la madurez? ¿Qué deberían cambiar, si quisieran volver a tenerla? The Kids we Were tantea con las líneas más severas de este género y navega temáticas y situaciones duras, parecidas al trabajo de Yuro Somino, pero no se atreve a aterrizar esas conclusiones. Una lectura amable defenderá esta decisión diciendo que GAGEX no quiere terminar su juego de 6 horas con una nota amarga, e invita a que interpretes la heroica sección final como una escapada al lago, como Tim Burton y su final imaginado de Big Fish. Hasta donde sé, puedo decir que me alegra que hayamos llegado a un punto en el que el turismo japonés nostálgico ha podido volverse un poco más mordiente y atrevido que algo como Nostalgic Train (que espero que podamos dejar atrás para siempre). Pero incluso una mirada irónica y despegada como ésta sigue insistiendo en las mismas consignas una y otra vez desde 2007 con 5 Centímetros por Segundo. Creo que ha llegado la hora de que este género avance en sus tesis.

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Reflecting on a certain type of story that authors like Makoto Shinkai and Naoko Yamada have made fashionable, The Kids We Were is a successful, if not original, contribution to the wave of recent nostalgic works that try to re-instill some sense of wonder on the Lost Decade generation, mainly by making them ponder about things like: Have they tried to maintain the illusion of their childhood? Have they lost something in their journey to maturity? What should they change, if they wanted to recover it? The Kids we Were tinkers with the more severe lines of this genre and navigates tough themes and situations that are similar to works from authors like Yuro Somino, but does not dare to land near their conclusions. A kind interpretation of this will argue this decision by saying that GAGEX doesn't want to end its 6-hour romp on a sour note, and invites you to interpret the heroic finale as a somewhat dreamlike ending, a la Tim Burton in Big Fish. As far as I can tell, I'm glad we've reached a point where nostalgic Japanese tourism has been able to become a bit more biting and daring than something like Nostalgic Train (which I hope we can finally put behind). But even a wry, detached look like this still harps on the same slogans since 2007's 5 Centimeters Per Second. I think it's time for the genre to move on.

What can I say, I’ve always been a sucker for the Diablo series and I guess I’ll always will be. I can’t stand the hating left and right, just go play something else and leave me the fuck alone, with headphones on, some weird ass jazz music and the zen of mindlessly killing monsters for that one shot to your build.
Is the game perfect? Of course not. Does it have a lot of things it can improve on? Of course it does. Is it still addictive af and devoured me basically from launch till now: yes it did. It’s one of the best foundations of a live service game in recent years and it has far more potential for longevity as d3 had. And for everyone who’s constantly trying to (obviously) compare it to POE - why? POE is still around and it’s good, so go play it. It however has 10 years of intense developing and community feedback under its belt, so it’d be a shame if it wasn’t more refined and with more content than d4 at launch. Anyway,
I’m not mindlessly defending blizzard here, I do think they deserve most of the scrutiny, but saying d4 is not a good game I just can’t understand. It’s exactly what it wants to be and exactly what I want it to be. I’m not sure I’ll be spending as much time in season 1, because first of all, I’m like 200hrs deep in 1,5 months and I need to play some other games and secondly, the recent patch as preparation seems to be kinda shit. So I’ll wait it out for a while and then go in when they revised some of their decisions (which obviously they will, look at all the hate).

Diablo 4 came at a perfect time, I kicked it off with a classic lan party, which is tradition in the family and I was able to spend a lot of time with it recently. I love most about this game and I’m looking forward to how it will develop over the years.

While Harmony of Dissonance holds a special place for me because it refined the SotN formula so well, I'll concede that Aria of Sorrow is probably the best put-together title of Igarashi's Advance trilogy. Basically every element that was already in previous titles has been systematized to its fullest, with an equipment system that incentivizes repetition and exploration while at the same time offering you a map that is incredibly easy to navigate.

If anything, this is the main thing that, to me, makes AoS less attractive for me. It all feels so curated, so carefully selected, that it doesn't allow for breath in the same way that the more chaotic HoD allowed. As for the story itself, I think it works fine providing closure to the whole Belmont/Dracula arc, but you can't escape the fact that this is set after a mysterious apocalyptic event that has never been told in any form as of today. That doesn't make this title less interesting, but it does make it incomplete somewhat.

El último título oficial de la saga de Nathan Drake y el último juego de Naughty Dog antes de que entrara en la Era de Druckman y se volviera aún más pretencioso, inseguro de sí mismo y explotador, es también el título de Uncharted que se me ha hecho menos cuesta arriba. Claro que eso tampoco quiere decir que tenga muchas cosas buenas que decir sobre él. Desde el principio ha sido obvio que los juegos de esta saga aspiraban a recrear, en clave estética que no jugable, los altos vuelos de una película de aventuras y la grandiosidad del cine épico de Hollywood. Por el camino, seguramente, se esperaba que esta aproximación artística también crearía la misma profundidad filosófica o espiritual que una obra como En Busca del Arca Perdida o La Última Cruzada lograron alcanzar. Pero como siempre, lo que esta manera de imitar de forma tan servil ha demostrado una y otra vez desde principios de siglo es que, si te posiciones desde el principio como une artista endeuade a las tradiciones de otros medios, los resultados nunca traerán nada mejor que En Busca del Templo Maldito o La Calavera de Cristal.

El equipo guionista hace esfuerzos titánicos para que la fórmula funcione, y tal vez por eso esta historia me resulte la menos cargante de las tres (aunque me descubro echando de menos la simpleza del primer Uncharted, mucho más cercano a los Tomb Raider que mira tan por encima del hombro). Pero por el camino, el diseño de niveles se ha rendido por completo al formato de pasillos emperifollados a los que la franquicia siempre iba apuntando desde el principio. La relativa variedad que ofrecen los encuentros-arena queda siempre subordinada a la secuencia de acción más óptima: destruye siempre a los tanques, luego a los francotiradores, luego a los tipos con armadura y si acaso ya te vas encargando del resto a tu ritmo. El modo sigilo que aportará tanto dinamismo a The Last of Us aún es un proyecto a medio hacer. Y las secuencias de salto, como viene siendo habitual, son poco más que un ejercicio de saber a dónde apunta la cámara y saltar hacia allí. Lo único que nos queda por juzgar (más allá del extremadamente simple sistema de combate cuerpo a cuerpo) son las largas secuencias andando en las que el juego nos invita a adoptar un ritmo más lento, o pensar la solución a un puzzle, o dejarnos llevarnos por la historia. Y como ya he dado a entender antes, el esfuerzo es admirable en más de un aspecto, pero el impacto de estos caminos de baldosas amarillas queda en entredicho cuando cualquier actuación de carne y hueso aporta más energía que estas agotadas voces de doblaje y estos risibles conjuntos de polígonos animados.

Escribiré sobre esto de forma más fría, pero creo que mi principal observación de estos juegos, por lo menos ahora, es que son extremadamente anti-jugadore. En ningún momento dejé de sentirme como si estuviera interfiriendo el drama de instituto de une profesore de teatro, y aunque participar está bien, siempre acabé con un agujero en el estómago y, por qué no admitirlo, con un poquito de rencor por no haberme dejado improvisar.

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The last title of the Nathan Drake trilogy, and the last Naughty Dog game before it entered the Druckman Era and became more pretentious, self-conscious and exploitative than ever, it's also the Uncharted title that I've found to be the least tedious to finish. Of course, that's doesn't mean I have many good things to say about it. It's been always obvious that these games have aspired from the beginning to reach the same highs, at least aesthetically, of adventure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and epic movies like Lawrence of Arabia. It does feel like they hoped that by copying the surface elements of these movies they would be able, somehow, to reach the philosophical or spiritual depth that a work like The Last Crusade managed to achieve. But as always, what this slavishly imitative approach has proven time and again since the turn of the century is that, if you deliberately put yourself below the artistic heights of other media, you'll be only be able to achieve medioucre results that won't be that much better from Temple of Doom or The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The writers here have made a herculean effort trying to make this work, though, and perhaps that's why I find this game to have the least annoying story of them all- though more and more I'm finding myself longing for the simplicity and Tomb Raider-esque approach that the first Uncharted took, despite obviously trying to distance from them. But along the way, however, the level design of the game has completely surrendered to the stripped down corridors format that they seemingly wanted to fall into. The variety offered by arena encounters is always resolved through the same sequence: always begin with the tanks, then the snipers, then the armored guys, and eventually you'll take care of the rest. The stealth mode that will bring so much dynamism to The Last of Us is still half-baked here. And the jump sequences, as usual, are little more than an exercise in knowing where the camera is pointing at and jumping there. The only thing left for us to judge (beyond the extremely simple melee combat system) are the long walking sequences in which the game invites us to slower our pace, or solving a puzzle, or ponder about the story. And as I've implied before, the effort is admirable on its own, but the impact of these yellow-bricked roads is undermined when any flesh-and-blood performance brings more energy than these exhausted voice-overs and laughable polygons.

I'll write about this more coldly, but I think my main contention with these games now is that they are extremely anti-player. At no point did I ever stop feeling like I was inside a teacher's high school theater project, and while participating was fine, I ended up confused and a little bit upset that they didn't let me improvise a little along the performance.

Este juego es fascinante. Es como si cada cosa que existe en él hubiera sido tomada por una criatura alienígena y extremadamente horny que descubrió a la Humanidad a través de capítulos viejos de Law & Order. A su manera, eso también lo hace en uno de los juegos más divertidos que se han hecho nunca (la paradoja Death Note).

Si queréis desmontar la teoría de Sid Meier de que los juegos consisten en "decisiones interesantes" y nada más, enseñad este juego en la clase y observad cómo se apaga la luz en los ojos de tus alumnes.

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This game is fascinating. It's as if every decision taken had been made by an extremely horny alien that learned about Humanity through reruns of Law & Order. In its way, this is one of the funniest games ever made thanks to that (the Death Note paradox).

If you want to disprove Sid Meier's theory that games are about "interesting decisions" and nothing more, show this game to your students and watch the light slowly fading from their eyes.

This review contains spoilers

Cw: Discussions of real-life genocide
This “review” contains heavy spoilers up to and including EW Level 83 but nothing beyond that. It’s also not really a review as much as it is an in-depth analysis of a small part of the game. If you want to know my opinion on the game, read my other review.

I’m German. The nation-state that claims sovereignty over the territory I live in is a direct successor to the Greater German Reich, more commonly known as Nazi Germany, one of (if not the) most oppressive and genocidal nations to ever exist.
From a pretty young age, I’ve been taught about the history of the Nazis. Their crimes, how they came into power, how universal their hold on the German population was. But there is one thing you’re not really taught about in German schools: What happened after the Nazis?

Denazification was a set of policies by the Allied and Soviet forces that aimed to free Austria and Germany from all influences of national socialism. The most famous part of this were the Nuremberg trials, but the largest parts were getting rid of government officials with Nazi sympathies, a ban on Nazi writings and symbols, that sort of stuff. If you see a German street named after a person who lived in the 20th century, there’s a very high chance it was called the Hitler or Goebbels street until 1945.
Denazification was only a partial success. National socialism was everywhere for 12 years, it was deeply ingrained into every part of German society. Getting rid of it entirely would have been a lot of work. And also, the Germans didn’t really like this, and the cold war was more important now and everyone wanted Germany as an ally.

I mentioned earlier that I was taught about the history of the Nazis. My grandparents weren’t. They grew up in a period where people were too ashamed of what happened to talk to their children about it. I barely know what my great-grandparents did, but I don’t really need to be told either (except for one of my great-grandfathers, he was a young engineer in east Prussia when the Red Army came and recruited him to keep their Distillery repaired, and he learned a great recipe for Pelmeni there that my family still uses).
And I wasn’t really taught everything either. I was taught about the Holocaust against the Jewish people, but the genocide against Romani, disabled, and queer people barely got mentioned. Of course this is in part because the amount of people murdered in each of those groups doesn’t even come close to the amount of Jewish people murdered and I’m not trying to accuse any of my teachers of anything, but it’s also worth mentioning that those three groups still face legal discrimination today (not saying there’s no discrimination against Jewish people of course).
Every now and then there are stories about nation socialist police group chats or soldiers, and nobody is really all that surprised. Last month, a group of Reichsbürger, members of an ideology that refuses to acknowledge that the German Reich is no longer legitimate, were raided for planning a coup. Among them were members of the 4th strongest political party in Germany right now. This barely changed anything about their poll results.

What happened after the Nazis? They're still everywhere.


Garlemald is not a 1 to 1 analogy of any real empire, and I appreciate that a lot, it makes the worldbuilding a lot more interesting. It does, however, have obvious influences. The Roman empire is the obvious main one, but so is fascism. While it doesn’t always politically fit the definition of fascism, the aesthetic inspiration should be obvious to everyone.
I think the writers didn’t really know what to do with Garlemald after the end of the Stormblood Main Scenario. You had already won 2 pretty spectacular victories over the empire, but it’s a massive empire and it doesn’t just disappear from that. But in patch 4.2 we are introduced to the Popularis, a faction of pacifists that want to stop the empire’s conquest. While it turns out that the leader of the group you met was a fraud and a traitor, the Popularis themselves are shown to be genuine. Their leader, Maxima, even defects from the Empire to help you.
But the Popularis never achieve anything. There’s lines here and there about Empire leadership trying to get rid of them but for the most part they’re irrelevant for the story from now on.
Then we find out that the Empire is just a tool. It wasn’t created by the Garlean Solus Galvus to bring peace and security to his people (which, to be clear, would obviously still not justify an empire) but by the Ascian Emet-Selch, as a tool to hasten the return of his god Zodiark. The Empire’s goal of bringing peace and stability is the opposite of why it exists. It exists to destabilize the world so that more calamities can happen. That’s why “Solus” hadn’t chosen an heir. The ensuing civil war was a feature, not a bug.
But the new emperor is different! Varis isn’t an Ascian and he fully believes in the empire’s stated goal of bringing peace to the world (which, to reiterate, absolutely still makes him a villain). Or so one might be tempted to think. There is a cutscene in I think 4.5 where Varis talks to the various alliance readers and basically tells them “Yes, I also hate the Ascians, but the way to defeat them is to do exactly what they want”. I didn’t mention this in my Stormblood review because it didn’t feel relevant at the time but looking back it really shows that the empire’s role as a plot device supersedes any development that could be happening there.
Throughout 5.0 the Empire exists mainly to threaten the release of Black Rose and then at the end, Zenos (who came back for SOME FUCKING REASON) kills his father, the Emperor. There would be no winners in the coming civil war, in part thanks to Fandaniel’s meddling, but in part also because Empires can not last forever. By the time Endwalker starts, the nation of Garlemald is no more.

After figuring out a way to deal with the tower of the Telophoroi that have been popping up all over the world, the Ilsabard Contingent gets sent out to what used to be the capital of the Garlean Empire. They have two goals there: Deal with the Tower of Babil, which seems to be a central piece in the Telophoroi’s plans, and
Help the people of Garlemald.

As I hopefully made very clear in the opening of this text, dealing with the survivors of a nation with violent, racist, authoritarian, and imperialist ideals is incredibly difficult. I personally do not know how to do it. And I don’t think a Final Fantasy game is the right medium to explore a question like this.
I mentioned that after 12 years, national socialism had ingrained itself into every part of German society. The Garlean Empire existed for over 60 years. When you arrive there to help the starving and freezing Garleans, they despise you.
At first, you try to help a small group of civilians. They make it very clear that they do not trust you and that they do not want the help of a savage like you. At some point, one of them attacks Alphinaud, one of your closest friends, and yet the game never asks, “do these people deserve our help?”. It instead asks, “Are we like invaders for doing this”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of radical hope and redemption, but at the same time, I’m a queer person. If a person that has declared their hatred for me and suddenly they need help, I’m not going to put myself in a vulnerable position to help them on the off chance that me helping them changes their mind and they suddenly don’t want to kill me anymore. And yet the game forced me to do exactly that. And don’t try to justify this by saying that FFXIV has always been about helping or seeing the good in everyone or something like that, we’ve been killing Garlean soldiers since ARR.
The story of “helping” these people ends with one of them hating you so much that she runs away from you and dies. Good riddance. The game frames this as a sad thing, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I shed no tears for the people who tried to kill my friends.
After that, you run into a Garlean soldier who tried to steal food from you. He tells you that his legion is still around so you get sent with him to negotiate getting them some help, because apparently we’re so much into helping now, we’ll even help armies that are at war with us. It goes about as well as you might have predicted. Alphinaud and Alisaie get taken hostage and their Legatus talks to you about how your dream of peace through harmony and multiculturalism can never be achieved and how everyone needs to be united under Garlemald to achieve peace. Even with the capital in ruins and his soldiers freezing around him, he still believes in the lies of the Empire.
Eventually there is a fight that breaks out between this legion and your allies, a fight that ends as soon as the legion learns that they are literally the very last remaining people fighting for Garlemald. Now it has finally sunk in that they’re not going to win. Their leader kills himself (which the game frames as tragic LMAO) and the others get your help. Not because they ask for it, or acknowledge their weakness or anything like that, but because they’re too weak to resist anymore. In the end, you despite everything, you don’t win because you were more kind. You won because you were more powerful.
I haven’t done any patch content yet so apologies if this gets brought up there, but nothing that happened in the MSQ addressed how the Garleans will move on past the empire. All it did was show just how deeply ingrained the empire’s ideology is everywhere. And then it just expects you to move on from that, go and save the world.
What will Garlemald look like in 80 years? Will the people there wonder what their grandparents were doing during the days of the Empire? Will there be people arguing over whether the Garleans have done “enough apologizing” and need to get back to being proud of their heritage? Will there even be any apologizing? There certainly wasn’t from Japan.
This part of the MSQ opens a massive can of worms, then refuses to deal with that and tells you to move on. Nobody would have complained if the can of worms just hadn’t been brought up at all. I haven’t even gotten into the awful and frankly pointless body swap thing that happens immediately after this because it doesn’t really belong to this (that’s how pointless and out of place it is) but combining it with this awful and surface-level exploration of what to do with the survivors of an authoritarian state makes this my least favourite stretch of all of Final Fantasy XIV.

Last month I saw a reddit post pointing out that the soldiers at the Garlean consulate in Thavnair still call you a savage after beating Endwalker. People thought this was a funny example of them not updating NPC dialogue to reflect changes in the world, but I disagreed. Why wouldn’t they call you a savage anymore? It’s pretty obvious they still consider you to be one.

This review contains spoilers

"why should we help the disadvantaged without trying to get some amount of profit out of it?" is a genuine thing that is pondered in this expansion with no repercussions and i would have been less mad if stormblood wasn't so boring

at least the dungeons and trials were badass

I know that it might be part of the aesthetic but come on, couldn't instant-kill pits and spikes have been left in the old-school retro era? It ruins an otherwise amazing and beautiful-looking platformer.

En 2020, jugué por primera vez a este juego bajo una espesa nube de expectativas: era un juego triple A, pero uno que dirigía sus esfuerzos a contar una historia que trascendía las limitaciones a las que los juegos categorizados con ese descriptivo se suele estereotipar; era un juego violento (como cualquier triple A), pero su violencia existía para explorar una faceta de la naturaleza humana; era un juego de padres protegiendo a hijas adoptadas, el tipo de historia que había aprendido a odiar tras Bioshock Infinite, pero era la mejor historia posible de un padre protegiendo a su hija adoptiva.

Cuando lo jugué, se me hizo corto, pero su DLC me dio esperanzas de que tal vez esto era el principio de algo mejor, de un mundo en el que los triple A por fin se utilizaban para algo más que ofrecer violencia y gratificación instantánea. Pero al cabo de poco tuvimos la segunda parte, que regresaba al principio de todo y lo volvía a repetir, y me di cuenta de algo: The Last of Us no puede ofrecerte nada más que promesas de un juego mejor. Puede prometerte una explicación de por qué recrea la violencia con tanto primor, pero nunca te la dará; puede que te jure que tratará de contarte la mejor historia posible, pero siempre te dejará en un punto y aparte; y puede que te insista una y otra vez en que es un triple A "bueno", de los que "valen la pena" jugar. Pero lo único que puede hacer para valerse por sí mismo es compararse con la literal escoria del medio. Porque no es capaz de hacer nada por sí mismo.

The Last of Us es una franquicia vacía, hecha por gente sin espíritu artístico alguno, y que fiel a su programa comercial de venderse una y otra vez a jugadores nuevos, sabe muy bien prometerte cosas pero nunca te las va a dar porque sabe, en el fondo, que no puede dártelas. Y, en el fondo, es porque no sabe hacerlo.

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In 2020, I played this game with a mountain of expectations: it was a triple-A game, but one that directed its efforts towards a genuinely moving story that trascended its moniker; it was a violent game, but its violence existed to explore facets of human nature; it was a game about fathers protecting daughters, the kind of story that I'd learned to hate since Bioshock Infinite, but it was the best possible story of its kind.

When I finished it, it fell short, but its DLC gave me hope that maybe this was the beginning of something better, of the moment when triple-As were finally beginning to be used to tell something better. But not long after, we got the second part, and that game went back to the beginning and repeated everything as if nothing had happened. Then it dawned on me: The Last of Us can promise you a better game, but that's about it. It can promise you better uses of its violence, but it won't be able to; it swears that it's trying to tell you the best story it can, but won't be able to finish it; and it may insist over and over that it is a "good" triple A, the one that is "worth" playing. But the only thing it can do to defend its position is by comparing itself with the worst games ever. Because that's the bar it set out to pass, and nothing more.

The Last of Us is a nothing franchise, made by people without artistic spirit, and faithful to its capitalistic project of selling itself over and over again to new players. It knows very well how to promise you things but will never give them to you because, deep down, it knows it can deliver.