God Eater is determined to hide it's depth behind unassuming facades. In all respects too, even the story seems to be trying it's best to not live up to it's potential. But I feel it succeeds despite it's best efforts to handicap itself, so long as you're like me and are willing and able to look past the problems.
Yes, technically the screenshots are from God Eater 2, but they are (supposedly)VERY similar and everything in them is in Resurrection, so they still apply. Leave me alone.
Most character creators let you choose a voice these days. You're probably used to being able to select from 20-30 packs of grunts and pain noises. But God Eater takes that a step further, for some reason. Your choice also determines your character's personality in battle. If you've played any Xenoblade game you know what to expect from the soundscape, though it's less about shouting dramatic skill names and more one-liners in response to various conditions. And your selected grunt-pack is what determines your own character's contributions to this. I ended up sounding like a lazier Juri Han, with an odd number of anti-innuendos in my one-liners.
I love this feature. On paper it might seem counter to the idea of a "blank slate" character, but a "blank slate" is a whole lot more boring than everyone making games seems to think they are. There's no potential to surprise you, and you just end up feeling like a disembodied observer to the plot rather than anyone of importance. Giving your character 1 of 20 odd voices rather than 1 of 20 odd grunting packs adds a whole lot more to your immersion in, and engagement with, the story.
So it's a bit of a shame that it only really makes a difference in battle. Outside of your hunts, you'll be stood silently watching everyone else engaging with a story. Well, not entirely, God Eater still does more with you as a "blank slate" protagonist than most games do, especially in the second half of it's story, but nonetheless the story feels leadened by the rigid structure of the game. It's a prime example of the problem most famously highlighted by Rhianna Pratchett, who spoke of it in regards to her work on the Tomb Raider reboot, noting that it was difficult to write a story when every scene had to end in a combat encounter.
See, games don't HAVE to have this problem, but nonetheless it occurs because one side of the game is clearly overshadowing the other. In both New Tomb Raider and God Eater the game sets the structure and the story is forced to work around that, often to it's detriment. God Eater sets some clear restraints that the story visibly struggles against, like your custom protagonist without a voice needing something to do, and every mission having to end with you back in the hub. And it's not a bad story either, with a unique setting and threat, and an entertaining cast of main and side characters. it really picks up in the second half, mainly because of the few times it forces some breathing room from it's shackles. Your character starts to take initiative, demonstrates a personality. They even speak in cutscenes, in the voice you chose no less. But it never quite takes centre stage when it needs to, and while the writing has it's highlights, it's not enough to make up for it's shortcomings.
But while the story might not live up to it's potential, God Eater still packs a punch in the right places. The art design is stellar, with monsters making use of the genius lore point that the Aragami (The Bad Things) take on forms similar to what they consume, resulting in a variety of cool and sometimes disturbing designs. And hunting the beasts is a satisfying affair, with some wonderful touches in the control scheme that show off how you can make which button does what interesting.
Your weapons of choice are God Arcs, which come in a variety of Anime flavours such as Big Sword, Bigger Sword, Hammer, Scythe and so on, with the ability to switch to ranged form with a similarly sized armoury to choose from. But their defining feature in battle is that they are essentially living creatures, capable of forming themselves into giant mouths with witch to devour enemies, alive or dead. And using these forms requires holding down the right shoulder button and pressing Y in different contexts. This coupled with the way each attack works is a genius work of design, making this unleashed form of the God Arcs feel uncontrollable, that you have to physically wrangle them into doing what you want. You'll often lose a lot of control of your character when using these moves, sending you careening off in one direction or holding you in place while they happen. It may seem small, but it does so much without you even really noticing it.
Weapon upgrading it basically nicked entirely from Monster Hunter, as is the basic structure, but beyond that God Eater is quite firmly it's own thing. It even has some, admittedly quite rough, ways around the common problems of MH, like the fact that mission descriptions will almost always tell you the weaknesses of the monsters in question, so no having to look up the wiki for a monster every time you want to fight one. And grinding materials is made easier by the addition of tickets that you can trade in for any material you might be missing. It's not perfect, it's got an unusual tier system which means you'll still have to revisit old missions and grind as before, but you accumulate a decent number just by playing normally, and even if you do end up grinding the fact that you get these tickets as well cuts a chunk out of unnecessary repetition.
So yeah, God Eater Resurrection. Great stuff, definitely going to play more of it before I move on to the sequel. I know a lot of the stuff from 2 was retroactively plugged into Resurrection for the PC release, like weapons and the insane and amazing bullet editor, but it'll still be interesting to see if 2 improves on the formula much. Even if it doesn't I can really see the potential for if they ever do make God Eater 3. Preferably on a non-portable so we can get some properly amazing effectors for biting chunks out of Aragami during battle.
Next week, who knows. I've got an idea for a Mind Games thing about card games I thought about while playing Duelyst, but who knows what I'll be playing over the week. Well, probably more God Eater and Endless Legend, which I'm back into, but I've written about them now, so yeah.
Yes, technically the screenshots are from God Eater 2, but they are (supposedly)VERY similar and everything in them is in Resurrection, so they still apply. Leave me alone.
Most character creators let you choose a voice these days. You're probably used to being able to select from 20-30 packs of grunts and pain noises. But God Eater takes that a step further, for some reason. Your choice also determines your character's personality in battle. If you've played any Xenoblade game you know what to expect from the soundscape, though it's less about shouting dramatic skill names and more one-liners in response to various conditions. And your selected grunt-pack is what determines your own character's contributions to this. I ended up sounding like a lazier Juri Han, with an odd number of anti-innuendos in my one-liners.
I love this feature. On paper it might seem counter to the idea of a "blank slate" character, but a "blank slate" is a whole lot more boring than everyone making games seems to think they are. There's no potential to surprise you, and you just end up feeling like a disembodied observer to the plot rather than anyone of importance. Giving your character 1 of 20 odd voices rather than 1 of 20 odd grunting packs adds a whole lot more to your immersion in, and engagement with, the story.
So it's a bit of a shame that it only really makes a difference in battle. Outside of your hunts, you'll be stood silently watching everyone else engaging with a story. Well, not entirely, God Eater still does more with you as a "blank slate" protagonist than most games do, especially in the second half of it's story, but nonetheless the story feels leadened by the rigid structure of the game. It's a prime example of the problem most famously highlighted by Rhianna Pratchett, who spoke of it in regards to her work on the Tomb Raider reboot, noting that it was difficult to write a story when every scene had to end in a combat encounter.
See, games don't HAVE to have this problem, but nonetheless it occurs because one side of the game is clearly overshadowing the other. In both New Tomb Raider and God Eater the game sets the structure and the story is forced to work around that, often to it's detriment. God Eater sets some clear restraints that the story visibly struggles against, like your custom protagonist without a voice needing something to do, and every mission having to end with you back in the hub. And it's not a bad story either, with a unique setting and threat, and an entertaining cast of main and side characters. it really picks up in the second half, mainly because of the few times it forces some breathing room from it's shackles. Your character starts to take initiative, demonstrates a personality. They even speak in cutscenes, in the voice you chose no less. But it never quite takes centre stage when it needs to, and while the writing has it's highlights, it's not enough to make up for it's shortcomings.
Your weapons of choice are God Arcs, which come in a variety of Anime flavours such as Big Sword, Bigger Sword, Hammer, Scythe and so on, with the ability to switch to ranged form with a similarly sized armoury to choose from. But their defining feature in battle is that they are essentially living creatures, capable of forming themselves into giant mouths with witch to devour enemies, alive or dead. And using these forms requires holding down the right shoulder button and pressing Y in different contexts. This coupled with the way each attack works is a genius work of design, making this unleashed form of the God Arcs feel uncontrollable, that you have to physically wrangle them into doing what you want. You'll often lose a lot of control of your character when using these moves, sending you careening off in one direction or holding you in place while they happen. It may seem small, but it does so much without you even really noticing it.
Weapon upgrading it basically nicked entirely from Monster Hunter, as is the basic structure, but beyond that God Eater is quite firmly it's own thing. It even has some, admittedly quite rough, ways around the common problems of MH, like the fact that mission descriptions will almost always tell you the weaknesses of the monsters in question, so no having to look up the wiki for a monster every time you want to fight one. And grinding materials is made easier by the addition of tickets that you can trade in for any material you might be missing. It's not perfect, it's got an unusual tier system which means you'll still have to revisit old missions and grind as before, but you accumulate a decent number just by playing normally, and even if you do end up grinding the fact that you get these tickets as well cuts a chunk out of unnecessary repetition.
So yeah, God Eater Resurrection. Great stuff, definitely going to play more of it before I move on to the sequel. I know a lot of the stuff from 2 was retroactively plugged into Resurrection for the PC release, like weapons and the insane and amazing bullet editor, but it'll still be interesting to see if 2 improves on the formula much. Even if it doesn't I can really see the potential for if they ever do make God Eater 3. Preferably on a non-portable so we can get some properly amazing effectors for biting chunks out of Aragami during battle.
Next week, who knows. I've got an idea for a Mind Games thing about card games I thought about while playing Duelyst, but who knows what I'll be playing over the week. Well, probably more God Eater and Endless Legend, which I'm back into, but I've written about them now, so yeah.
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