(I might as well promote the stuff I'm watching since I am Watching A Lot All The Time)

[yvannairie]

(TBH I could get so much material just talking about the amount of YT I consume a day but I'm bad at getting my thoughts down as they're happening.)

I watched Thought Slime's video about how to YouTube> and it reminded me that oh hey, I had a video idea once upon a time, about gamefeel in the Sengoku Basara games, and while I'm no longer sure if I want to make the video (I'd probably get someone other than me to read it, at least, my voice dysphoria is very very bad these days) I would still be really interested in writing said video.

I guess this is a fertile time for the topic to come up too since Errant Signal recently did a video... not exactly criticising the concept but rather questioning what the practical value of gamefeel is in a critique, so I feel like I have something to actually add to the conversation, seeing as the thesis for this probably-not-actually-gonna-go-ahead project would be that gamefeel in Basara doesn't just create the feelgood feedback loop that makes musou games so satisfying.

No, I'd actually argue that the biggest significance gamefeel has in Basara is in the characterisation. Once you stop going through the game button mashing your way through encounters, every playable character starts developing a play rhythm that is based on things like DPS, combo length and reach, all of which are communicated through the gamefeel (i.e. no "stats" for these things exist, but rather they come about as consequences of things like animation length, attack attributes, movement speed and health and damage distribution). In a game with fairly little substantive writing, that play rhythm ends up doing a lot of the work of getting people engaged with and into certain characters, which results in their prominence and also how their play styles develop as the series goes on.

Legit, my pet theory about the Basara games is that since Masamune maintains his status as the meal ticket of the series, his gameplay has been getting more generic to keep him accessible to as many players as possible, while other characters are lifted to fit niches that Masamune could previously be described to fit, and about how certain Fandom-Preferred Characterisations are based on the gameplay characterisation of someone, not the Actual Text of the games. I also have a bunch of Wild Mass Guessing about the relative unpopularity of certain characters, and why they're being largely ignored in the extended materials surrounding the games.

Mostly, I'd just love to articulate some of my reads on certain characters (most notably some of my favourite characters who get lowkey shafted by the fandom) because a lot of them are based on contrasting their gameplay to someone with a lot more textually defined characterisation and pulling a "and what can we learn from this?" I'd love to talk about Keiji, in particular, especially why Keiji fell out of the main character roster (and why the same happened to Yukimura, in favour of Mitsunari snagging the spot from under him) and about how Fuuma's entire character is carried by the way he plays.

I also think that this aspect of gameplay characterisation is why Basara (and a few other games, Overwatch being one that comes to mind) handles the Character Glut a bit better than a lot of other anime properties with a million zillion characters, and why that is actually a bit of a problem for the series. Hell, if I could find someone who's very into fighting games (where this is, like, a huge part of why anyone plays what character), a lot of this could be written out into a more generic form about, maybe even up to the point of creating some sort of a theory of ludic analysis when it comes to characterisation.

I'm honestly in luck that a lot of this stuff has already sort of been articulated by Extra Frames in their excellent Overwatch & FP animation video and considering how many videos about gamefeel have been coming out, there's a good chance that by the time a lot of this has finally coalesced into script-level writing, someone will have already done a lot of the "generic" writing and a framework for ludic character analysis exists already.

This is a project that has been percolating since... oof, 2016 maybe? I love Sengoku Basara, but it's a series that definitely goes into hibernation between releases, and after the releases of SB4 Sumeragi and SB: Sanada Yukimura Den so close to each other, there was a definitive feeling of being burnt out on Basara things even among my Basara friends (although I did eventually play SYD and thought it was really fucking awesome and also had some pretty interesting gameplay characterisation going on despite the slightly mangled production) so I'm not exactly in a rush. The next time a Basara game or an actually good anime comes out, I'll probably return to this. Hell, I finally have a PS4, and I haven't even bought The One Obligatory Basara Game I Need To Own for it yet :'D

A lot of this stuff, I keep coming back to. A2 is my favourite character in Nier: Automata partially because her gameplay just gels the best with her characterisation, Transformers Devastation got me into G1 proper and solidified Wheeljack as my favourite character largely thanks to gameplay variation... Horizon: Zero Dawn did a bunch of interesting things with gameplay to make the player feel more connected to Aloy as a character and got away with thinner writing as a result, and those are just the three latest examples that come to mind. I mentioned fighting games -- I've been watching a ton of DBFZ and I bet if I could get my hands on it, I'd have a lot of these same things to say about it.

But, oh well. I guess that's another project on the "currently only able to write about my writing, not actually write it" list, let alone produce into a video. At least I'm still thinking about it :D

Comments

[feotakahari]

Let’s say a game is patched to even out the character tiers. One character has a slightly shorter punch animation, another does slightly less damage with grabs, and so on. Does this constitute a subtle change in characterization?

[yvannairie]

I mean, as absurd as it sounds... yes? Play rhythm is something that is formed over tens, even hundreds of hours of play, and changing the timing and reach of attacks will eventually lead to zoning/positioning changes (say, a shorter punch leads players of that character to be more in their opponents face when they're being aggressive, a less effective grab can lead to it being used as a counter/set-up move rather than a primary DPS move) which will eventually on some level affect how that character is experienced as an opponent. Are they aggressive or are they passive? Do they rely on quick reflexes, counters, or do they aim towards dominating the fight? How do these things play into the characterisation communicated by their visual/audio design?

One of the reasons I'd love to be able to discuss this in depth with fighting game players is because fighting games include a whole extra layer of player-to-player interactions. When it's just me, playing against a preprogrammed opponent, I'm the only one interpreting the situation, and reinforcing my discoveries through trying to optimise the play style that feels "right" for that character. If I'm playing against another person, and they're playing a character in a way I'm not expecting, can that be interpreted as them playing "OOC"? And if they are successful, what does that mean for the characterisation?

[feotakahari]

Since you talked about Overwatch: https://kotaku.com/an-overwatch-pro-is-turning-the-games-zen-monk-into-a-v-1823925643

[yvannairie]

Yep!! That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about, that's some super interesting interplay of player creativity and intended characterisation. The words the writer applies to JJonak's playstyle could create some interesting reads when applied to Zenyatta himself.

That was a very interesting read, thank you.