There’s a reason most RPG cutscenes look so donkus, even today. Not without a genre shift, resource injection, or cutscene de-escelation. Not that there isn’t a good story there, but that the story is way too big to fit comfortably in an indie package and get really attached to. And at some point you just have to ask- are we going to be able to tell a story that’s as gripping and exciting as our gameplay? Does the story enhance the gameplay, like in a narrative or RPG game? Is the enhancement worth the time? And let me be clear- this isn’t because I think the devs did a bad job.īut indie games are stretched thin, so creating content, especially cutscene and effects heavy narrative content that can’t be reused, is super time consuming. There are now half of your game sections that are about the narrative… but the narrative is short, raises more questions than answers, incomplete, and doesn’t give you time to get attached to most of the characters. Narrative and RPG games have a lot more room to play with long story segments, because story is part of the core value proposition for these genres. They’re choosing not to so they can focus their energy on the most fun part of the game. Nintendo has no problems writing funny Mario RPG’s as any fan of Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario will tell you. There’s a reason why these Nintendo games have such basic stories.
Even if you improve the story, so long as that story takes up more time you’ll find that your players will be having less fun on average simply because the story isn’t as good as the platforming segment, and now you’ve blown it out and made it more important. Taking the quick “princess is kidnapped” story and replacing it with something epic- maybe from a JRPG or from something more western like Horizon Zero Dawn, wouldn’t result in a better game.Īnd the reason is simple- the core gameplay of a Mario game is about the platforming. For example, if you clone a game but improve the story, the game is objectively better. There’s a bit of a myth in gaming that games are the sum of their parts.
Tons of resources went into the writing and the cutscenes, many of which are lovingly animated, that I think might have been better served by being poured into the core gameplay loop. The whole game is only a few hours long, and you probably spend at least half of that time navigating through dialogue. Generally speaking though, even though I liked the story I felt like its’ focus was ultimately a detriment to the final game.
You can also choose to wait out a timer and reply with silence. There’s a narrative system that allows you to pursue different dialogue paths, but you can also “get to the point” by spam pressing all the initial “rude” prompts. There’s also a cool cyberpunk story, and for an indie it’s actually pretty well written. The gameplay is twitchy and the concept is kind of anime as fuck, and when it works it works. It’s definitely a stylish game, and fits in quite well with other games published by Devolver, but I think it was likely held back a bit by its’ own ambition.įor those who don’t know, Katana Zero is an action game where you play as a time controlling samurai who has to kill every enemy in an area before proceeding to the next room. I waited before writing this post to fully digest what I actually thought of the game.
Almost two weeks ago I had the pleasure of playing through Katana Zero while conked out on my second shot.
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