This is the fourth post I’ve made to this blog. As much as I’d like to pretend I’m already reaching the audience of my dreams, it’s about three people reading right now- four of which are my family members that haven’t touched a video game since the original PAC-Man arcade cabinet that my grandmother was actually addicted to.
(No, seriously. That’s… apparently real.)
That makes today’s endeavor even more idiotic, frankly, because even if I had an enormous audience most of them would have no idea what I was talking about if I mentioned Vanillaware. I’d expect their best guesses to be “you had a stroke on the way to the Carvel that’s near the Home Depot” and “you’re not having a stroke, but the Carvel has somehow fused into the Home Depot.” Those are fair guesses, honestly, but obviously all incorrect. Nay, Vanillaware is a studio. And not just any studio… a studio that makes video games.
Riveting, I know. But wanna know a little secret? There’s more.
Back in 2020, I’d never heard the name Vanillaware before. You could have mentioned the names of some of their earlier works, like Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown, and they might have scratched at the edge of my memory- like I’d heard of them once in the distant past- but hearing of something is not the same as actually understanding literally anything about it.
…I’ve got genuine decision paralysis over what right-wing moral panic or racist dogwhistle to put here in order to emphasize that point. DEI? Sure, DEI.
But then, some online friends started mentioning something odd. In all the talks of our Game of the Year 2020, something called 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim was coming up. My first reaction was that of any sane individual- that these were very suspicious words, strung together in suspicious format. Should I drop my guard, these words would most likely steal my wallet or con me in some way. Thus, with guard raised I pressed forward and asked, “What is that?” and was greeted with screenshots beyond my wildest expectations.
It seemed to be this contemporary science fiction setting, blending modern environments with technology and threats beyond mankind’s ability to create. And such a thing is hardly creative or original on its own, but it was the visuals that hooked me. The game could be paused at any moment and look like a watercolor painting come to life. Splotchy paint textures littered the environments, creating foliage and manmade structures alike. Every frame truly looked like a painting, in ways I’d never seen before. I was, and always will be, in the market for new forms of artistic expression in my games, so I looked up the game on YouTube and watched the opening minutes be played to get some kind of impression.
…the mental experience of the opening minutes of 13 Sentinels is what proved to me that I did have a stroke inside that Carvel Home Depot all along. It’s akin to walking into the movie theater two hours late, getting blasted with secondhand weed smoke at a lethal concentration upon opening the door, only to realize you walked into the wrong movie and you were absolutely not mentally prepared for a Christopher Nolan film right now. It throws you into the end of the very, very, very, very, VERY complicated story headfirst while passing out scant details to intrigue you, only making one thing clear: there’s monsters attacking the city in an indiscriminate force of destruction, a small force of teens pilot enormous robots that are the only means of fighting them off. The kids are on the virtuous side of a vicious fight… probably… and it’s going to be brutal. The mentions of people coming from the future, the shameless name-dropping of five characters when only three are in the scene and you don’t know who ANY OF THEM ARE YET, the implications of someone’s memories returning and that being some possibility long ruled out, it’s intentionally confusing.
And boy, did that kind of storytelling kick me like a horse and make me ask for more.
13 Sentinels is, while not my favorite video game or my favorite story ever told or anything like that, the single most impressive achievement I’ve ever witnessed in storytelling. It’s structured like a jigsaw puzzle- you can play as any of the thirteen protagonists, each grappling with their own stories, and see how they become involved in this enormous mess. Every last bit, presented in any order you choose to experience it, feeds everyone down the inevitable path towards that final battle the game opens on. The strategy combat of the game takes place during that final battle, always showing you that point of convergence you’re working backwards towards. The mysteries build, solve themselves to make way for new mysteries, and compound into one enormous whole.
A content creator I follow once did a livestream with his community after finishing the game, intending to casually run through the entire timeline of events to get the whole story straight once and for all. That recorded livestream is ten hours long, and every question raised has good answers. That about sums it up right there.
I was obsessed from the word go, the claws sunk deep before I knew what hit me. The game took seven years for the writing alone, and I’ve never seen results so plainly on the screen.
But what of the rest of the package? The character writing, the gameplay itself, the apparent ethos of Vanillaware’s work and the existential kinship I hold with them that served as the reason I’m writing all this to begin with?!
Well, I suppose I like to learn from the best- and pray I’ve baited the hook well enough to keep you excited for more.
Cheers,
from The CrystalPunk
(He, whose stomach yearns for further pasta)