Not counting The Moosies, the last time I sat down and wrote a blog about a game was...September. About that Avengers game. And even counting The Moosies, it's still been a couple months. On the whole I am glad I moved to only writing about games that really make me compelled to write about them, but part of me does miss the potpourri "here's everything I played over the last month, even if I only have a paragraph to say about it" blogs.

So, here's a mix of the two. I have some scattered thoughts about Kentucky Route Zero and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (games I finally got around to playing this year), but not really enough about either for a dedicated blog. I'm going to try not to go too deep on spoiling stuff, especially for 13 Sentinels since that game is basically all story (and it sure does have A LOT of it), but there's some specific character stuff in 13 Sentinels that I will touch on when I get there. But fear not, I always make sure to use the handy spoiler hiding tech on Giant Bomb to do just that. Really though, just to be clear, if you haven't played 13 Sentinels, do that. It's pretty great!

Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero, though? Well, I'm a bit more mixed on that one. In some ways, I do quite like a lot of what it does. It often has an incredible since of mood, and atmosphere. A mood of the slow miserable decay of the world around us, yet despite that people are still doing all they can to keep going. Keep some sense of normalcy in their lives, even if their lives appear extremely abnormal. That mood is one of the most relatable things I've encountered in a game in some time.

KRZ is obviously about Kentucky, but so much of what this game is about broadly could apply to anywhere in the US, and probably to many more places across the world. It's so easy to look at the state of the world, at so many people struggling to get by, at so much basic infrastructure just decaying and withering away around us, at so much just crumbling so slowly that we don't even notice it on a day by day basis. It's usually not until it's too late, and we can't ignore it any more.

More specifically, KRZ goes into things like coal mining, inescapable debts, and at the end the sudden unpredictable impact of natural disasters. Which that last one isn't quite the same thing as slow decay, but even though I played this game back in January, writing about it now it's hard not to think about it in relation to the recent stuff in Texas. How hard so many people were hit because of decaying systems built with the barest minimum of regulations, so much broke all at once, and the power companies could just hike up the prices to astronomical levels, thus putting people deeper into debt, and...

And that's just one example, these sorts of things are probably only going to keep happening with increasing frequency as time goes on. Thanks to climate change, and so much decay, our modern global society just dangles by a strand of decrepit infrastructure...

Thankfully KRZ isn't all misery and decay, it also has a pretty good sense of humor when it wants to. Kind of a weird, dry humor. My favorite bit in the whole game (comedic or otherwise) is in the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces (a great space in itself that gave me strong Bureau of Control vibes). There's an elevator in the back, which lists what all of the five floors are, and Floor 3 is just listed as "Bears." Naturally I had to go there first, and I don't know what I was expecting, but when that elevator opened, there was just a whole bunch of bears in an office. Just sitting and standing around, not really doing anything. Their heads turned to look at the main characters, and I just laughed. It's a great, silly little bit.

But the thing is, even after giving myself a lot of time to think about it, I'm not sure if I actually liked Kentucky Route Zero as a whole. Certainly some moments, and characters I did. The pair of traveling musician androids, Junebug and Johnny I liked so much I felt a bit inspired to write my own story about traveling androids. Didn't get around to it, because this blog is the first thing I've actually written since the start of the year, but it's one of those ideas that'll stick around in the back of my head until I do something with it. There's a lot of those there, to be totally frank.

There's just something about KRZ though, that I can't quite put my finger on, but I found a lot of it...kinda boring. It has a lot of weird, quirky stuff, moments where it feels like it's perfectly channeling things like The Twilight Zone, but then stuff where it just slows to a crawl. Moments where characters that only show up once just start talking on, and on, and on forever, and I found myself skipping a fair amount of dialog in the last couple Acts. And I'm almost never the sort of person that skips dialog, unless it's the thousandth time I've heard that blacksmith in Dragon's Dogma talk about "masterworks all." That sort of thing.

And maybe that's intentional, traveling along, meeting people, and some of them just telling you what might as well be their whole life story because it's been so long since they had someone new to talk to. Even though you don't really care what they have to say, because you'll never see this person again, you just keep listening, even if you're not really listening.

There's other stuff too, like the music. I love the weird, otherworldly sort of ominous stuff, but I just really don't like folk music. And that's fine, but there's moments in the game where the moment just fell completely flat because all I could think about was how much I hated the music. Like at the end, there's a part where they start singing a real church-y sounding song that just made me feel uncomfortable, as opposed to whatever the actual vibe was supposed to be.

I will say though, the part where Junebug sings in that bar was a good moment. That's the one song with actual vocals that worked for me.

So, as advertised, those are some scattered thoughts about Kentucky Route Zero. In some ways it really clicked with me, in others it didn't. I can't say I liked it, but I do think it's a game more people should play. It feels in touch with where the world is at in a lot of ways, that make me think it might only become more relevant as time goes on. It makes that slow decay feel real in a way that I can't think of any other game doing.

Also, there's a dog, an old hound dog, and one of the first things in the game is deciding their name. There's two preset options (plus one for not giving them a name, if you're a monster), and one of the preset options is Homer. AKA the name that I already use for every in game pet/horse/sidekick that I get. I greatly appreciate that they did this, clearly just for me. The first Trophy I got in KRZ was for giving Homer some jerky, which delighted me.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.

This is a really tricky one to write about. On the one hand, there's so much going on in the story, or more accurately stories of this game that I could write something half as long as the game itself trying to unravel and properly go over it all. Obviously I'm not going to do that. But without talking about the actual story and characters, there's not really much to write about in the game. I think it's a great science fiction story, and I really liked a lot of the characters, but nothing about it felt thematically resonant in the way that KRZ did. If there's any sort of broader theme or message to the game (other than a generic work together to overcome great odds sort of thing), it went over my head.

The tactical strategy part of the game hasn't got anything interesting going on, and while the story part of the game almost veers into adventure game puzzling...it never quite gets there. Early on I thought the game might go fully into that sort of thing, but instead it's more akin to just picking which scenes you want to see first. Part of me wishes the game went in that direction, but considering how frustrating actual old adventure games tend to be when not using a guide, this was probably the better route.

So here's what I'm going to do about this write-up. First, focus on what I think is the most impressive part of the game, and then second, take a deeper dive into one part of the game that I have some conflicted thoughts on. Namely the game's handling of queer characters. Yup, that's me being extremely on my bullshit, as usual.

But first what impressed me. 13 Sentinels has what may be the most ambitiously told story I've experienced...ever? It's 13 different stories, with 13 different protagonists, and yet they all intertwine into a coherent, and great whole And large swathes of it are told nonlinearly, with the player being able to choose which characters to focus on, when to switch between them, etc. As a writer myself, and one who seems to always fall back into science fiction, even just writing one coherent narrative can be difficult, especially if you want to make it compelling. Telling stories from a handful of different perspectives if harder still, but 13?! That's just absurd! It's downright absurd, and I almost can't believe they pulled it off.

Yet they did, and it's both a coherent narrative, and one that kept me hooked pretty much the whole way through. I don't love the ending, not because it's bad so much as just a bit too sappy. But that's just personal taste. I just can't emphasize enough how impressed I am with the ambition of this game's storytelling, and how well it works on just about every level. I really liked most of the characters, the various stories are compelling on their own, weave in and out of each other in fun ways, and I've never experienced a story with so many twists, turns, and revelations. Seriously this game has so many reveals that would be the single big, huge climactic plot twist in almost anything else. It's just amazing that they pulled it off.

Mostly, at least. I do think the game gets a little caught up on the "teen drama" side of things. Which is fair, given all the protagonists are teens. But sometimes the "do they like me," "I don't have feelings for you (but secretly I do, actually)," stuff can be a little much. Maybe part of it is that since the game jumps between so many different characters, that none of them get the same level of development that they could have if the game was solely focused on one protagonist. The game does rely heavily on archetypes and tropes to lay the foundation for these characters, and some of them don't really get a ton of character development.

Will say though, for anyone who has yet to play the game, or only just started, don't hesitate to go look at stuff in the codex to remind yourself of what's going on, and what happened already. I know I had to sometimes to keep everything straight. Part of the problem with the fairly nonlinear design of the story, and the sheer quantity of threads is that it's tough to keep them all straight. I think part of that may have been on me for jumping around so much between characters, rather than trying to focus on specific ones, and get them as far as I could. Sometimes I just was really interested in what someone else was doing, because again, it's all interesting!

I think that's about all I can reasonably say about the game's story and structure without actually getting into plot synopsis and spoiler territory. Thus, time to get to the second big thing of 13 Sentinels that I wanted to write about, its handling of queer characters. This I really can't get into without spoiling anything, but the first chunk of it is just light stuff from the prologue. Later though, there is some stuff from the literal ending of the game, but that'll be well protected in a SPOILER ZONE.

Before I get to any of that though, I want to be clear that I don't think the game has any malice or ill intent toward queer people. I know there are long discussions to be had about intent, "death of the author," etc, but I do think that intent matters to some extent. For example, I know Persona 5 Royal was my game of the year last year (which I stand by, still), but that's a game that in the brief appearances that queer people have, it's just as bad stereotypes for the sake of bad jokes.

13 Sentinels isn't that, I don't think, but I still have some criticisms. And now, onto the light spoilers from the prologue (whited out for your spoiler safety).

It's mostly a very cisgender/hetero game, but there is one character definitely outside of that, Tsukasa Okino. He (the game uses he/him pronouns for Okino, so I will too here, though if I had written this game I wouldn't have), after traveling back in time to the 1940s, disguised himself as a girl named Kiriko Douji. I know I said the game uses he/him for Okino, but in the times when people thought he was a girl in the 40s, they use she/her for Okino, but, well, this is when it gets a little complicated.

The first time Okino pops up (in Kiriko mode), is during Hijiyama's prologue (still in the 40s), and around that same time Sekigahara makes some flippant response about Okino not really being a girl. This gave me a really bad feeling that the game was going to do something bad with that character and be a lot of "guy in a dress" style "jokes," but not long after it went in a different direction. After accidentally traveling 40 years into the future (again, this is all prologue stuff), Hijiyama eventually runs into Okino again. Okino in this time seems to dress and present differently seemingly based solely on the situation and mood, and says the line, "some binaries work for me, and others don't."

Now, that line to me, a queer person who is nonbinary, feels like something a cisgender writer wrote while trying to get the idea that Okino is nonbinary through, but talking around it in a way that I don't think most actual people ever would. It's one of those things where some writers just feel afraid of outright saying the thing, meanwhile most of the queer people I know will just say "im gay" at the drop of the hat, even if they're bi, pan, etc. Anyway, nitpicking the writing aside, this left me really intrigued about the handling of Okino, and Hijiyama's relationship with Okino, considering that Hijiyama very clearly has a crush on Okino, despite his wanting to deny it because Okino "is a man."

As a quick aside, I should add that I have no idea how the english localization does or doesn't differ from the original Japanese, but one off lines like the "binaries" one do make me wonder. Again, I know zero Japanese, and played with the english voice acting (which I really liked), so that's all I have to go on.

But given the nature of this game, and it taking a long while to get access to Hijiyama's storyline again after his prologue, that was kinda put on the back burner. Both Hijiyama and Okino occasionally pop into and out of other characters' stories, but it was a while before getting back into how the two of them felt about each other. And I also feel like I should mention, there is at least one other time in the game when another character makes a snide "you're still dressing like that" comment to Okino, in a way that felt kinda mean to me. Especially considering the time period the character is from, where I would think people dressing outside traditional gender binaries would be more accepted.

Anyway, I said earlier that this game spends a lot of time on teen drama "do they like me or don't they" stuff, and there's a fair amount of that here. Hijiyama being jealous of Okino, trying to deny he's jealous because he's in denial about his attraction to Okino. And that's stuff fine, if a bit cliché, but the problem is I don't think their relationship has any sort of satisfying conclusion to its arc. But to get into that, I kinda have to get into end game stuff, so I guess don't read on if you haven't finished the game. Really though, play 13 Sentinels, it's great, on the whole, anyway.

So the whole ending of the game is a lot of, "here's what happened to these characters." It's not quite full on Animal House "John Belushi became a senator" stuff, but it's a lot of scenes of characters talking about how they got married, had kids, etc. It's sappy, it's cheesy, but it's fine. And I don't know that this game having a tragic ending with the characters all dead or miserable would have been great either, so like I said, it's fine.

Then it gets to Hijiyama, Okino, and Tamao Kurabe. That third one being a character that appeared so rarely throughout the game that I frequently forgot she even was a character. She was originally (well, as originally as anything is in this game's timeline(s)) back in the 1940s with Hijiyama and the others of that time, and I think implied to have been the character Hijiyama was dating, or romantically interested in at the time? Anyway, in the epilogue scene, Okino shows up, keeps making comments about Hijiyama and Tamao being on a date, before another Tamao shows up (this game has so much going on that it sounds like nonsense when I write it out like this), and then Okino and Hijiyama leave together, maybe on a date?

Okay, so my point is, all these other characters in this "five years later" sequence have hooked up, started families, etc. But Hijiyama and Okino still haven't figured out what's going on between them? I just feel like that's something they could have, and should have figured out in those five years, and I would have been a lot happier to see them as a happy queer couple than still going through this whole song and dance.

I'm also still not entirely sure what to make of Okino's gender situation. Which, to be clear, I think it's fine and even good for fiction to leave you unsure about characters' genders, but that doesn't mean it still can't leave me thinking about it. For a good chunk of the game, I thought that maybe Okino was a trans man, and that was perhaps why he was disguised as a lady back in the 1940s (not that that's an amazing theory, but it was a thing that went through my head). But then in this whole epilogue bit, Okino doesn't outright say he changed his genitals (through the whole simulated world thing), but he might as well have. In context being to presumably go along with the dress, longer hair, and maybe better fit with what Hijiyama would find attractive?

I mean, obviously I have nothing against people using digital worlds to change their bodies, I would in a heartbeat for myself if that was a thing. It's just the whole context of this scene feels weird, especially considering Hijiyama and Okino's relationship in the year 2188. Or, rather, the relationship of 2188 Hijiyama and Okino. In that time, the two of them were in a romantic relationship, and Hijiyama even says that he loves Okino. Like people do when they're romantically involved. Of course 2188 was the doomed version of humanity where everyone dies, so none of them got to live happily ever after.

The thing that I most wish the game did was make Okino a playable character too. Both to have more time to go in depth about his gender stuff, and just to explore him as a character beyond that. I think even outside gender stuff, he's certainly a more interesting and likable character than that prick Gouto. Just to pick one of the playable characters out of a hat. But also I do think it would have been cool if the game took the time to actually explore than side of Okino, and particularly to do so from his point of view.

Anyway, that's a lot of scattered mishmash thoughts. To try to make them into something coherent, I feel like in a game that has 13 different playable characters, only having one of them be (maybe) queer (unless a one off comment of Iori getting flustered around Yuki is meant to count as Iori being bi), is in itself frustrating. Then having the only definitely queer character (Okino) kinda have this inconsistent handling of that stuff, and his relationship with Hijiyama is the ONLY one that doesn't concretely end with them hooking up, despite everyone else having that made pretty clear (including side characters that in at least one case I think one of them was a scumbag who deserved worse than he got (Tetsuya Ida)), is disappointing.

Part of me wants to say that this is what I get for having such exacting standards, and for expecting more than I know realistically I'm going to get from these things, but then I just go back to that same things I always think. I don't think it's unreasonable that a game with 13 protagonists that more of them could've been queer. Not in the year 2020! And I don't think it's unreasonable to have wanted what's in there to have been a bit more direct, especially in the end.

Oh well.

Please, don't get me wrong, I still think 13 Sentinels is a great game. It's a game that I'd recommend just about anyone play. If you enjoy science fiction, just broadly, you'll almost certainly like what's going on in this game's story. Your love of the characters will probably depend on how into or not into you are with anime-esque tropes, but I still think there's more than enough going on in the plot to keep people's interest beyond the interpersonal character stuff. Which again, I mostly liked!

Particularly, I want to mention Natsuno, who so much reminded me of me as a kid. Her love and obsession with UFOs and aliens is one hundred percent how I felt back as a kid. Maybe a bit younger than her when I was at the peak of it, but honestly, if I had found a (probably) alien robot friend at her age, I'd have fallen right back into it too.

So, that's it. Bit scattershot, but overall I think I made some coherent points about those two games. Both I think are generally worth playing, but definitely a much stronger recommendation for 13 Sentinels.

Dunno when I'll write again. It'll probably be months, if I'm being honest. I haven't yet played Persona 5 Strikers, but I know I will. Doubt I'll have much to say about it, considering what I've heard, but who knows!

Briefly, for other stuff, I started Ashen the other day, which is a neat indie Dark Souls-y game. Great sense of mood, interesting world, and that more than makes up for the combat feeling like a derivative of Dark Souls, but not hitting the mark nearly as well as what it's copying. And speaking of hitting marks, between the release of Hitman 3, and my rewatching the old videos of Brad and Dan bumbling their way through Hitman 1, I decided to give the world of assassination another chance, and bought Hitman 2. It was on sale, so...we'll see! Didn't love the first one, but who knows!

Still no PS5, and unless I just happen to get lucky on a PS Direct queue, probably going to stay that way for a while yet...

As always, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my thoughts. I've had a really hard time bringing myself to write anything at all the last couple months, but I'm glad I got this out there, even if it's a bit messy. Or a lot messy.