2nd Op By

Walter Kim 7.5 RATING

For a game whose very title comes from the Japanese word for fairy tale, whose advertisements (in magazines and on the back of the box) tout a story steeped in Japanese mythology, and whose every visual and aural nook and cranny scream divine inspiration from just that source, can someone please tell me why Otogi's narrative completely fails to make me care?

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely loved playing Otogi from start to finish. Aside from the minor camera issues Gene noted, Otogi is a mechanical masterpiece, a brilliant synthesis of gameplay concepts taken from action games old and new. There's a combo system that's been a staple of action games since Golden Axe, aerial combat and dashing maneuvers a la Gunvalkyrie, and a constantly depleting health that replenishes when you defeat foes, as in Shinobi. Even Magic Carpet, a videogame that pioneered large-scale environment deformation, can be considered something of an inspiration here. Raikoh wields a destructive power so awesome, he makes even The Hulk grow, well, green with envy. The game's environments are eerily, pristinely beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoyed smashing each and every one into a million little pieces. It's like crack.

Nevertheless, in an age where videogames are beginning to realize their artistic potential, Otogi has to be held accountable for sucking all the drama out of its source material. This is the only major point on which I disagree with Gene's review. For the story, sadly, is unobtrusive and incomprehensible to the point of nihilism, serving as nothing more than a cheap excuse for the wonderful atmosphere, character and stage design.

The instruction manual—the instruction manual, mind you—tells me more about Raikoh than I'd ever find out by playing the game. And there's some great stuff in it, too. Raikoh, "the last member of a clan that was charged with delivering the final deathblow to end a person's life," apparently had some moral qualms with his day job. He was even ordered by the Court to end his father's life, but he refused and ran away instead. And when the Great Seal collapsed, releasing a darkness that ravaged the land, he nearly died, but the Princess saved him and held him "in a state between life and death." Thus begins Otogi, where the player, as Raikoh, is empowered by the Princess to fight back the darkness, thereby restoring honor to himself and his clan.

Sounds terrific, right? Unfortunately it's as if the developers completely forgot this cool backstory when they set out to make the game. Aside from the tidbit that Raikoh belongs to "a clan that presides over the death of men" and has "brought much death to the world," thus creating a need to redeem himself, there's practically no exposition about him (or anybody else, for that matter) in the game. A few philosophical musings are sprinkled in for effect, but go nowhere meaningful. The most glaring oversights of all have the developers missing a perfect opportunity to explore Raikoh's past (and hence, his guilt) when they send him tumbling through his memories, and worse, completely failing to address Raikoh's redemption at the end of the game! My experience as hero of the fairy tale as videogame leaves me wondering if all fairy tale heroes act as mindlessly as I did in Otogi, caring more for the thrills of destruction than the land I've been called forth to save, or even my moral standing in relation to it.

If the developer's goal for a videogame is to get people to play it, then From Software has more than done its job. The great mechanics effectively motivate the player to press onward. But if videogames are to achieve artistic integrity (especially videogames with a story to tell), then developers are going to have to face the problem of contextually motivating the player. In other words, my reasons for performing any given action in a game should roughly correspond to the reasons I would have were I actually in the situation portrayed, living the videogame character's life. A failure to provide contextual motivation, unless sufficiently justified, is a failure to achieve the videogame's true potential as a dramatic art form. This failure isn't just Otogi's, but one continually perpetuated throughout the industry. How can developers tackle this problem?

They could start by taking a good look at Metal Gear Solid. Here's a game that showcases a deft understanding of the uses of empathy. In one sequence of the game, the player's character, Solid Snake, is pitted against Meryl Silverburgh, her mind under the control of a supernatural freak. There's no way to stop her except physically, and the game provides a wide variety of ways to do this. Snake can shoot her, for instance, or take her down with punches and kicks. But the gentlest way is to simply restrain her by the neck, stopping the blood flow and making her unconscious. The brilliance of the game lies in the way it makes the player himself care about Meryl, so that by the time he has to face her, he'll choose the gentlest route of his own free will, not because of some arbitrary gameplay restriction or even because it's fun. The narrative has imparted meaning to the gameplay, thus allowing it to transcend the stigma of the videogame as an amusing (or gratuitous) diversion.

Otogi manages to be a beautiful and fun game that simultaneously disgraces the genre it's named after. Here's hoping the sequel will be more ambitious.

Public Opinion

Brad Gallaway 4.0 Rating

After playing Otogi, I thought Gene's review was far too forgiving of the game's technical problems. Frankly speaking, the atrociously feculent lock-on system is totally, utterly broken and makes group encounters ten times harder and more chaotic than they need to be. When fighting more than two or three enemies at a time, the AI consistently picks targets you couldn't care less about while letting your true quarry mock you from afar. There were also many, many times when I couldn't tell what was going on during play because of the numerous special effects clogging up the screen. Replaying levels after multiple defeats drove me crazy, not because they were particularly tough areas, but because I simply could not get a decent view. These unforgivable difficulties in screen management should have been addressed long before the game went retail.

Walter's points about the lack of story and character development are spot-on, and I completely agree. While Raikoh himself has nice design, it goes to waste due to his total lack of personality. The story is equally blank, with almost nothing to engage my brain or keep my interest.

Taking into account the artificial time limit imposed by the draining magic meter, the sterile narrative and the godawful lock-on system, Otogi strikes me as a game that could have been great, but just isn't. Being bored and frustrated is not my idea of a good time.

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