Furi: Punchy, Memorable, and Drenched in Character

Furi is the kind of fast, punchy action I love, because it wants to use its fast, punchy action for a good
purpose. Most other games will look at enemy design, dialogue, and attacks from a strictly gameplay
point of view. "What's the most engaging to play?" is the driving question, and usually the safest and
smartest question to ask. These kind of games often look to make their mechanics the most "artistic" 
and most fleshed out, and that's a good choice.

What if, however, a game asked "what's the most engaging to interact with"? What makes the best 
scene, not just best to play. Well, Furi. This small game uses its mechanics to make the bosses you 
fight memorable, unique, and full of character. While it may sacrifice a bit of gameplay depth, Furi sticks 
to its guns and plays with consistent ideas and mechanics to make characters out of each obstacle.

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So let's start by asking the question: what are these mechanics?

1. Projectiles. Bosses in Furi will utilize energy-like shots, in the same vein as an arcade shoot-em'-up. 
They might be small, they might be large, they might be impossible to destroy, they might give health 
pickups. But they all have them.

2. AOE attacks. Energy waves, blasts, cones, you name them. They're basically just areas of the 
battlefield that will become unsafe to touch for a while. 

3. Melee. Most bosses will get up close and personal at some point or another. They'll go for direct 
attacks, to be parried, or short range AOE, which must be dodged.

Those are the three standard types of attacks, which is why we're going to start with how bosses will
bring their own mechanics to it. Every boss in Furi will use the three above methods of pain. 
However. Bosses will bring their own unique scenarios very often, and breaking from the standard
leaves an impression.

Take The Burst. She'll start the first three phases of her fight by running away, staying invisible, and 
shooting at you with a sniper rifle. That kills you in one hit. This gives the impression of a very
dangerous, elusive person that prefers to hide in the shadows, and takes great pleasure in it. This is
further emphasized by her low health bar when you do catch up to her. She's not fighting you head on
unless she has to (unlike every other boss) and that difference fleshes out what kind of a person
and fighter she is.

Or The Strap, who has maybe my favourite fakeout in the game. She'll run away, and you'll be left alone for
a good chunk of a minute. It's quiet. Unnerving. You wonder if something's gone wrong. Then, all of a 
sudden, she'll jump out and you have to fend her off with a quick time event. No other boss leaves you 
alone for so long, and no other boss catches you off guard like this. I was laughing at how inventive this 
was for the rest of the fight, and it certainly serves to show her feral, crafty, and uncontrollable nature.

Furi is never content to just ask "what's the most interesting in gameplay". I'd argue that being left alone
for about 30 seconds isn't the most engaging thing. But it leaves an impact, an impression, a character
in your head, and this philosophy of shines through in the rest of the game, even in the standard 
mechanics. 

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Look at The Scale, who has slow and meandering attacks, that will also mess with your vision if you're 
hit. It's toxic. Debilitates you. Makes you panic. This is a character who wants to slowly kill you and 
torture you, and it's not just shown in what he says.  

Or, perhaps The Line, who has a first phase with reflecting shields, that send projectiles at you when you 
shoot them. And later, he'll freeze time, including your bullets if you shoot, and you can then take 
damage if you run into them. He is making you your own worst enemy, and almost feels as though he's
trying to teach you that. 

And finally, maybe my favourite boss, The Hand. He has a shield to reflect your projectiles. He'll move as
quick or as slowly as he pleases. He's got oddly timed melee attacks designed to make you parry too 
quick. And halfway through the fight he changes his fighting style completely. This is a crafty, trained,
motivated, and deadly warrior who fights using everything he's got. That leaves an impression.

This is how the game operates, and it's really really great at it. After I finished every fight, I was able to
say "they were a vicious sadist" or "they were a crafty strategist" and I knew that, not because I'd been
told, but because I'd played through their personalities and characters. I had fought and killed people 
and creatures with past lives, current wants, personal reasons and motivations. And that is... well, I
think it's pretty neat!

This isn't to say every game should strive for this. Furi sacrifices some raw depth because it sticks so
closely to the core 3 mechanics I mentioned earlier. It's not a combat system on the level of Bayonetta 
or Devil May Cry. Some bosses end up being not as satisfying to play because of their dedication to
character-infused attacks (curse you, The Line). 

But by and large, this game isn't trying to be the deepest, or most consistently well designed to play. It's 
trying to get you to engage with the world through gameplay. And though it stumbles once or twice, this 
is a driving force of design I want to see more of. Furi is a great showing. 
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(Addenum: You might have seen me rail against games that shame you or limit you for choosing easier
difficulties, and Furi does just this. While I'll go a tad easier on the devs since I'm pretty sure the 
difficulty was a consideration for the story and world design to a certain extent, this is still wholly
unacceptable and completely exclusionary to people with limited time or accessibility issues. Tell us
the difficulty will enhance it, advise people to play on "normal" if you want, but for god's sake, don't lock
off progression or achievements for it. This is a major mark against the game and I don't want to let this
go unsaid, even if I think the rest of the game is brilliant.)

The Understanding of Night in the Woods

So… I finally played Night in the Woods.

You should go and play Night in the Woods before reading this, really. And perhaps a mild content 

warning if descriptions of mental illness will distress you.

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Mae hit really damn close to home for me. Like, almost uncomfortably close to home. I could talk about 

so much in this game. It just understands shit about life, and people, you know? But I want to… maybe 

get personal for a minute, and talk about Mae, or more specifically, Mae and mental health.

I’ve always been prone to dissociation (Detachment from your surroundings and emotions). Probably 

since I was fairly young, although I never realized what it was until much later in life. Hell, I do still go 

through episodes of it sometimes. Everything stops feeling real around you, and there’s just nothing to 

be done about it besides act or let it ride out. It’s always been a part of me, and honestly, likely always 

will in some way or another.

What I’m trying to say here is that this game understands it in a way, well, I’ve never seen any work do 

before.

Night in the Woods understands the detachment and isolation it brings. It’s nigh impossible for Mae to 

talk about this with people until she’s almost killed. You go the entire game not really understanding 

why she left college, why she’s having these nightmares, why she seems sociable and caring and at 

the same time standoffish and a loner. This stuff is hard to talk about. It’s embarrassing. It makes you 

vulnerable and exposed to discuss it. I’ve sat alone in bed many times wondering “what if people think 

I’m weird”, “what if they hate me”. Mae can’t articulate it. She’s afraid to. That’s an all too common 

occurrence, and the game understands this and carefully writes about it.

Night in the Woods understands the emotion this brings. Anger is a predominant one. Mae gets pissed 

off at people, pissed off at society, pissed off at herself. Why don’t people understand, why has the 

world as large thrown her to the side, why the fuck can’t she ask for help? It’s not fair, and it never was

fair. How are you supposed to explain this to people with no reference point? How are you supposed to 

expose yourself to a society that has kicked you while you’re down? How are you supposed to own up 

to your own mistakes without spiraling downwards?  It doesn’t always have answers for this. These 

are often questions simply bemoaning how terrible the world is towards people like Mae, like me, like 

so many people I know. Sometimes it all breaks, and Mae is left simply crying. Sometimes, she’s out 

of emotion to give. These are real and raw things that happen. And the greatest good in this game isn’t 

some solution to it all. It’s people that listen, and get it, and give you a shoulder to cry on and vent at.

And, well, to wrap it up: the game understands what these experiences are like. The one line that 

made me realize “no, this is real”, was Mae describing everything as “just shapes”. The world falls 

away. All sense of placement and what you think is steady and real falls away. Maybe the world turns 

into shapes and colours, for Mae. Maybe the world will start to feel like a toy set, or a stage in a play, 

where everything is a prop that doesn’t matter, for me. And what the hell are you supposed to do when 

your very emotions stop feeling real? Get some control, maybe. Maybe start kicking walls, throwing 

things. Try to speak but you can’t. Run away from any conversations, they all feel so fake anyway. 

Small things like a statue become terrifying. Maybe even be violent. Stop caring about the well being of 

your own body and hurt yourself. Beat the hell out of some kid with a baseball bat. Who cares. None of 

this matters to your head anymore. All that matters is control, trying to feel real, and survival.

...Night in the Woods understands this. It understands what it’s like to go through this. It knows how it 

looks to others, it knows how it feels in your head, it knows how hard it all is. Night in the Woods god 

damn gets it. It’s so rare that I ever see a work that approaches knowing what it’s like. It knows it’s not 

fair. It knows the impossibility of it all. And yet it also offers hope, a look into what can be, what we can 

work for. It’s filled with understanding, friendship, and love.

I’m glad I played Night in the Woods.

Persona in the information age

I am so glad to see a game that tackles the information age in such a head on way. Besides Persona 5, the only game in recent memory that uses this a lot is Watch Dogs 2, and even then that’s mainly just a way to call your experience points a “follower count”.

Spoiler warning

Persona 5 doesn’t do much with it to influence the gameplay, but when I realized it was gonna impact the story, I almost squealed. A very long RPG is the perfect medium to see how information spreads day by day, and how public opinion changes. And to see how your actions influence what the public is saying, and how your group reacts to that, is simply one of the best parts of the game’s story.

It is absolutely drenched in public opinion. You walk down the street and you hear public chatter about whatever news is on their minds. Gossip and rumors abound when you’re in school. Sometimes at the end or start of the day the game will cut to more public whispers. And finally, you’ve always got the Phantom Thieves popularity bar down in the right corner, with messages from users on their opinion of you.

Before I go any further, this is excellent worldbuilding by itself! I honestly wouldn’t care if this was all there was. It makes the world feel alive and breathing, it tells you what others think, it gives even a basic walk down the street to buy some medicine a worldbuilding experience. Simply going about your day is how the game builds character for the city, and it’s brilliant. There’s no need for exposition on the world when you get it every few seconds naturally.

However, there’s more to it than that. Besides just being good worldbuilding, it’s also integrated into the story quite well. The slow climb at the start making your fights seem important yet unknown. Your skyrocketing popularity that almost proves to be your group’s undoing. We see a fantastic showing of how public opinions swings almost overnight after you’re framed for murder.

People react realistically to it too. It ends up being a great source of character development and understanding. Ryuji, for example, lets a lot of it go to his head. He wants to be a source of hope for people, and have their exploits be shown and appreciated by all. But through that, he understands that this sort of world is very volatile, and public opinion swings like mad.

This is all, well, very realistic? It’s one of the main reasons why Persona 5 is so grounded, because we live that world of information every day. It’s refreshing to see a game not strictly about communication tackle it so head on, because this is a part of life nowadays that affects everything. It leads to one of the most realized worlds I’ve experienced in a game, and I really do hope that it leads to more games set in a more modern world. It’s a brilliant tool for storytelling.

Persona 3 and death

Persona 3 is really damn mature, for a game about a bunch of high schoolers. The entire game is bathed in this serious tone that slowly reveals itself as you peel away the happy-go-lucky cover the first part of the game shows. It's a slow burn, right until the game punches you in the gut and rips the entire facade apart.

Let's talk about death and Persona 3.

SPOILERS BELOW

So death is a really really hard thing to do in media. I don't care if you're writing a book, a movie, a T.V. show, whatever, I will not blame the writers behind it if they mess up a death scene and aftermath. It's reallllly hard to balance story pacing and realistic and appropriate reactions to death. Death in real life is complicated, messy, follows absolutely no script, and hits often randomly. And the way people react to and deal with death is often at odds with good story writing practices. How are you supposed to translate something so random into the neat, tight pacing of a good story?

I'm not here to diss other writers, however. I just wanna focus on what Persona 3 does right. It's already got a fantastic idea for a plot, but what really propels the game story forwards is how it does death. There are 3 major deaths that get explored: Shinjiro, Mitsuru's father, and Chidori. They each fundamentally alter the plot and the characters in them, and more importantly, they make an impact on the player as well.

A lot of that comes down to how unexpected they are. The game format is perfectly suited to this, and the writers took full advantage of it. Daily life in Persona is predictable for the first few months. Wake up, go to school, hang out with friends, Tartarus. You fall into a routine, only broken up by full moon operations and the occasional event. It's comfortable, working as a team and being a student.

So it makes it all the more shocking when things suddenly take a turn for the tragic on October 4th. When Ken and Shinji are missing for the operation, you know something's up.And that something ends with Shinj dead. It's a shocking swerve for the plot, and it hits suddenly and hard. Every single event and operation has ended in success thus far, and to suddenly take a hit this hard is really stunning.

The same can be said of the other deaths. Mitsuru's father's death comes on the day you celebrate your supposed victory. All of a sudden, you've been betrayed by Ikutski, and he and Mitsuru's father lie dead. As for chidori, her death suddenly comes between full moons. Most major events have either been well telegraphed or come around a full moon, so to suddenly have a major death partway through the month is throwing a curveball.

The most interesting part about Persona 3 and death, however, is that the deaths are not the focus. Surprisingly, the game sees fit to examine how death impacts the characters, and not the world around them. Shinji's a thug. Chidori's an unknown person with no home. Mitsuru's father's impact is only felt in far off business areas. So we're left to examine how the characters understand, see, react to, and deal with the deaths of people they know and care about.

Each reaction is real and varied. Ken blames himself, and feels like with Shinji gone, he doesn't have anything left to live for. In many ways, Ken is actually responsible for the death, and from that he tries to take full responsibility, eating him up inside. Hell, in the immediate aftermath, everyone worries about Ken committing suicide, because it has become quite clear by this point that all that was motivating him in life was his mother's killer.

By the same token, Mitsuru is shaken up completely and utterly by her father's death. His death is so much more than the loss of a loved one to her. It's symbolic of her mission the past few months being a lie. It tears a hole in her plans for the future and rips away her clear goals and motivations.

And poor, poor Junpei. His entire life he'd been searching for a concrete thing to do, something to wholly enjoy and be good at. Forming a relationship with Chidori gave him a spark and brought some light to his doubts.And when she is torn away from him, he is completely and utterly crushed. This is a loss hitting so hard that Junpei almost shuts down and just hides in his room.

And there's something to how each character moves past or comes to terms with deaths. Sometimes, it's a gut wrenching process that a character doesn't even fully recover from. Junpei is broken in a big way after Chidori, and while ultimately he does pull through, his personality has become more determined, more angry, and less happy. Mitsuru becomes resolute and focused. Ken perhaps doesn't change, but uses Shinji's death and the circumstances around it to find a new purpose in life.

Notably, we also get to see how death can simply strengthen. I haven't mentioned Akihiko much, and that's because Shinji's death strengthens his resolve that was already there. He's sad, yes, you can visibly hear anguish in his voice the day after. But he knows what he needs to do, and one day of crying is all he truly needs to come to terms with it.

This is all a lot of varied stuff, and that is absolutely what makes Persona 3 fantastic at dealing with death. Everyone reacts in and understandable and realistic way. Some people never move past it. Some people move past it right away. Everyone mourns differently. Mitsuru throws herself into work. Junpei locks himself away. Ken seeks isolation and contemplation. It's not enough for the game to just say "oh they're sad" and try to carry the shock value of a death. There are real character repercussions to each and every death in this game.

Because in the end, that's what Persona 3 is about. Loss. The sadness of loss, how we deal with loss, and perhaps what we gain from it. It gives real weight to what death means. And in doing so, in pushing past the idea of death simply being sad, it gives shape to a beautifully written series of tragic events. Persona 3 does death right.