4cr Plays – Nostalgia

Nostalgia begins with an interesting concept, proposing that the player should actually begin playing the game as soon as possible after pressing the start button. There’s a brief, and action-filled sequence, which sets the major events into motion, and then the player takes over – aided by an interface that’s familiar to anyone who’s ever touched an RPG in the past, and as welcoming to newcomers as it ever was for the rest of us.

The game is not possessed of any delusions, wearing its intentions on its sleeve as it were, which works entirely in favor of the player. And, as the title implies, Nostalgia takes a trip through the wealth of RPGs preceding it, taking many ideas about the genre, and earnestly putting some of the best ideas into your hand, while never demanding that players study a system of tedious complexity or take the game with them to their next philosophy class for dissection. Odd then, that a game that doesn’t require the Tsars of educated gaming to appreciate it has so much to offer.

This likely sounds a little overly simplistic so far, but simple only factors into the ease with which I can say just how utterly refreshing the experience is.

Nostalgia begins with a cliffhanger, which seems fitting since the protagonist’s father is several shades of Indiana Jones. The famed explorer disappears during the rescue of a mysterious girl, and upon receiving the news, his son, Edward Brown immediately decides to set off in search of his dad. What struck me during this setup are the objections of Edward’s mother, who is hesitant at first, but quickly accepts the decision after Edward points out that there is no one else for the job. There are very few text boxes exchanged between the two characters before the game begins.

That description potentially makes the game sound glib and hollow, but I’m going to argue that it’s a refinement here, or at least a sharp focus on what is most relevant to the player, which doesn’t sacrifice as much as some might at first imagine. The game manages to cut out the fat, all the fluff and filler built up within the genre over the years. This includes all the intense angst, brooding, and excessive existential banter that spawns boxes and boxes of meaningless text, all in the belief that this adds humanity to characters and offers a more compelling narrative. In short, all the pursuits that have increasingly lost sight of what made me play RPGs to being with.

WARNING – The following paragraph contains gratuitous generalizations -

I’m not implying that games shouldn’t take themselves seriously – that would defeat plenty of fancy words I’ve already written. But characterization within modern RPGs has followed a path that is losing players. I wouldn’t have a cup of coffee with someone who brooded and moaned and questioned life half as much as the typical RPG character today, so why would I proceed to form any attachment to them over the course of 60-100 hours? And it’s been suffocating the RPG genre, giving rise to open world content not necessarily because it’s a better design choice, but because players just want to be left the hell alone to play a game. That doesn’t mean guidance is bad. My parents like to offer guidance, and I can still love them without wanting to be nattered at all the time.

So what Nostalgia offers instead is a return to basics, with classically archetypal characters of the genre that don’t lack personality, but also don’t overshadow the entirety of the game by attempting to directly define it with their experience. And this is important, because it allows the player to have an experience of their own without an explicitly enforced sense of meaning – the most pointless of all endeavors, because as we all know, you cannot imply meaning. The player is still free to form all the attachment they desire – they can even hold a party conference anytime with the press of a button.

So there’s the big idea rolling over in my head while I played. Designers can’t force significance on players, because emotional connections and responses are a naturally occurring phenomenon that can’t be anticipated or artificially created. Other genres are free to take note of that idea as well.

It’s certainly a bitch that you can’t force authorial intent, but that’s the way it is. Experiences grab at everyone differently, and a little appreciation of that idea goes a long way. All anyone can do is tell a good story and allow the player as much freedom within that world as possible. But let’s be clear about one thing, because I’m not suggesting that we abandon characterization, I’m just asking that it not be vomited all over me.

Nostalgia makes me nostalgic for freedom. The freedom to make choices about why I accomplish tasks, or the simple pleasure I take in flying an airship around the world map while listening to the oldies station and remembering the good old days. But this isn’t solely about falling down a memory hole. The airship, for instance, is far more than a toy used to save wearing out your character’s shoes.

Edward inherits his father’s airship, The Maverick, which quickly becomes a significant member within the party. Rather than simply serving as a portable home, like Final Fantasy VII’s Highwind, The Maverick offers an additional layer of battles, engaging players in random attacks with monsters, pirates, and rogue airships while traveling between destinations. Additionally, flying at different altitudes results in varying levels of difficulty.

It’s necessary to fly higher to pass over mountainous terrain, and amusing that it became a small game for me at first, as I’d pass over mountains and quickly drop down to a lower altitude again to avoid the first few difficult encounters. The game generally has a generous learning curve until this point. There is a sense that random battles may not have been the best solution for combat in the skies, but it doesn’t ruin the ride by any means.

Instead of using the airship as a single character that acts like a tank in the skies, every character in the party serves a specific role aboard the ship, whether handling the guns, cannons, or the giant blade mounted on the bow. This allows for attacks that range from firing traditional ammo, using magic, or ramming opponents in acts of desperation. It also means that repairing the airship becomes necessary, as with any character – the ship is also prone to catching fire, so keep a supply of extinguishers handy. Docking at major cities around the world allows players to purchase upgrades and parts that level the ship up for increasingly difficult battles in new regions.

The role of the airship also makes the time spent with characters in traditional scenarios more important. Leveling up characters will lead to them gaining skills, which require AP earned in battle to upgrade, making them more effective and less draining on MP. And this leads to casting spells with the mage, issuing more powerful attacks, and gaining defensive and offensive capabilities in both the skies and more familiar dungeons.

The order of battle is listed turn for turn, which encourages players to pay closer attention, focusing attacks on enemies with the next nearest turn and using skills to quicken party members turns in battle. And there are many skills that make surviving airship battles easier, by raising the power of attacks as well as evasive and defensive capabilities.

If Nostalgia is well paced – and it is – it’s because the game largely allows the player to set that pace. Obviously we always have that power via our ability to turn the game on and off, but here it stems from the variety of tasks players can undertake, while still traveling through a classic story of evil cartoon villains and the outlandish scenarios RPGs have gotten away from over time. The story is coated with a Victorian Era charm, and real world locations such as London, Cairo, Russia, and so on. The game continually invites the player into conflicts that offer a sufficient means of leveling up through consistent battles, but never drag on long enough to lose sight of the overall plot and leave the player wandering through dungeons for days on end. There’s always that cliffhanger sensibility to keep the plot moving forward, extending the game just when it seems to be heading toward some resolution.

Before setting off on his search, Edward must join the Adventurer’s Association, which ranks the player’s status and offers sidequests that generally involve helping people find things or otherwise solving problems around the globe in exchange for fame and treasure. And while this extends the gameplay, it can’t escape leaving a fetch-quest taste in the mouth. Accepting these assignments doesn’t derail the primary plot however, and is tracked in the player’s explorer book, allowing the opportunity to accomplish many when the player happens to be in the neighborhood anyway. Still, because the airship allows the player to reach locations so quickly, these assignments are ideal for bite-sized portable gaming that doesn’t drag the fuller game down for the offering.

What I found far more interesting was the world treasures, which are secrets hidden around the globe that require players to discover potential locations by talking to inhabitants across the various cities. The first one is handed over as an example, but the rest necessitate listening to people for clues. It’s a small concept, but it offers a real incentive for interacting with inhabitants. It’s also a bonus, meant to lead to gadgets, which can be analyzed at the Adventurer’s Association and turned into items that help increase stats and offer new combat abilities.

This just about wraps up my thoughts on the game at present, praising a game that doesn’t charge over new ground, but rather takes a look at the foundation we’re already standing on. Perhaps it’s time for me to retire when my enthusiasm for a title owes a great deal to my assumption that the development team didn’t have their heads wedged up their asses. Certainly that’s not a talking point fit for the back of the box, at least from a marketing standpoint. But if you play enough of the titles hitting shelves today, maybe you’d agree that it is. I’m not going to derail into debating how pervasive it is, or how distracted games seem to be from being games.

Simply put, sometimes I just want to hear a good story, with events that offer me a real sense of having required my interaction in order to occur. It’s nice feeling like games still need me to play them, and Nostalgia hit that note with the simple fundamentals that made the genre worth developing. It isn’t entirely a case of just remembering what was great with rose-colored glasses on, and the game certainly plays it safe from a traditionalist standpoint, but it has certainly left me content and semi-nostalgic with SNES flavored memories.