Plot, not Setting

It's time to talk about my favorite writing pitfall! Yay! And no, I don't mean favorite to talk about, I mean favorite to fall victim to.

As you should know already...

I'm going to assume that you people know what plot and setting are in terms of writing. I'll still reiterate it here, just for the sake of being on equal terms.

Plot: In general, the plot is the what. What happens, what's at stake? What the fudgesicle are you two doing in my closet? Plot is what the audience invests in.

Setting: In contrast to that, the setting is our where. Where, in this case, is not necessarily a place. Where encompasses time and deviations from reality as well. I think the Relativity Theory should cover some of that.

Then what's the deal?

I'll highlight a sentence from the above definitions again.

Plot is what the audience invests in.

Plot is our important thing, but what are we going to do with the setting? This isn't such a big deal if you're in Anytown, USA. People should know that already. But what do you do if you're in space colony 15 alpha? There's a whole new setting that you can't just ignore, mostly because you most likely made it up on your own. And it has all these spiffy details you want others to know about. Who needs plot when you have space lasers? Well, your story does, because, uhm... I tried. You need that red string and the personal ties to make your reader care. But that doesn't mean you should leave out the part with the space lasers. They're still awesome.

Setting Stability

Wait, weren't you just talking about how we need plot? Well, yes, but the stability of the setting says a lot about how we get our plot in there, instead of tacking it onto it.

Stable settings: In stable settings, nothing really happens. When you hear the fire sirens, it's probably a kitten on a tree. If you want it grittier, you're in a dystopian future where people just live on their dystopian lives. Still, if a zombie staggers into town, it's probably just Tuesday again. As is, nothing's going on, so your characters need to do something. Maybe they go out and have adventures, plan on doing stuff, suddenly, a new guy's in town or the zombies learned to breakdance and challenge everyone to a battle.

Unstable settings: What do you think? Yes, this is the exact opposite. Things are going on. Disaster warnings, revolutions, war... (except for the western front, where all's quiet). Unstable settings are more dynamic and may have the occasional plot pop up on their own, some of which might even pop up in your story.

Once more, I'm going back to the game I used as an example a few times already. In the release notes, the developer stated that he wanted to step away from Save The World plots. Instead, he wanted to create a world that was in no need of saving, and wanted to make you want to change it. So there was a stable setting and characters that, in the end, would bring on change. Right? Right? Err, no. First, "change," in that scenario, pretty much equaled "saving." Second, no. This setting has never been stable. Things had started escalating with the event that kicked a) off the actual game and b) the protagonist in his man parts. From then on, things had been escalating on a large scale, and in the end you had a big bad who wanted to, you guessed it, take over the world. I'm calling the setting unstable because all these events were caused by things outside the hero party. They were on a large scale. The protagonists might have influenced things, but that escalation would have happened anyways.

Uh, where was I?

Setting As A Plot

Ah, yes, there's my point. What the developer did there, even if he thought he'd avoid it, was to create a Setting As A Plot. That means exactly what it says here, namely that the setting basically is the plot. For that, you need, of course, an unstable setting, which already throws plots at you.

This principle is full of pitfalls, though. You can't just throw random characters at your plot and force them to become involved. They still need reasons to do all these things. If Earth was suddenly invaded by aliens, I'm sure that not everyone would instantly grab a gun and shoot them to chunky salsa. On the other hand, you have to be careful to have your characters stay proactive. No one wants to read about a protagonist that just has things happen to them. Also, as I said before, you don't need to use all the plots your setting throws at you. Use them as B plots, or just have them cross paths with the main story from time to time.

But...

I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not telling you how to write your story, how to create your system or that you should include space lasers at any cost. I'm just telling you what I stumbled across, and what I'm thinking of it. Personally speaking, I'm better at creating settings than at creating plots, but I've eyed both things hard enough to have an opinion on them. An uneducated one, but have you looked at the blog name lately? If you're looking for me, I'm most likely not in my tomato-safe bunker.

Plot vs. World

If you want to put games on sliding scales of x vs. y, one of these is definitely the Plot vs. World one. On one end, there's the sort of game that's almost like an interactive movie. There's not really anything to explore, and you have your plot in front of your eyes. On the other end, there's your sandbox, designed to let you do stuff. Plot may or may not be involved.

The Wide Wide World

I'll start with open world and sandbox games. There, the focus is on, as said, stuff to do. Plotless sandbox games, like Minecraft, don't really give you any goal. (I'm not counting the End, since that's basically just a vague goal and, honestly, you're in it for the blocks anyways.) And you know what, that's fine. Because the stuff you can do is fun on its own. It may not be fun forever, but it's fun for a while. But that's the far end of the scale. What do you do if you want your game to have a plot that's more than "you're here now, do stuff" or something like that?

Plot: the Game

Let's go to the other end of the scale. I don't have an actual, first hand experience example for this, but I'll just throw in To The Moon. This is plot. It's, in fact, an interactive movie made in RMXP. And it sells. Why? Go buy it, go watch an LP, go listen to the music. It conveys a story, and it conveys it well. But what do you do if you wander away from that end of the scale? You include gameplay, you numbnut! That's what a game does. Or does it?

The Middle Ground

In both paragraphs above I asked how one could move away from one side of this scale towards the middle. The reason why I didn't answer the first question in a snappy retort? Because adding plot to an open world is, in my opinion, harder than adding some world to a plot. Because in the latter case, you still have your red string. You can fork off a path, have it go through somewhere else and then go back. The sandbox is just that. Sand, sand and even more sand. Where do you start? Where do you go? And, the most important question...

Where's the damn plot?

So you have your game. You start out fairly simple, introduce your heroes and, maybe, your villains. You do some stuff, and then, bam, hello world! Now, in good open world games, you still have your red string, but don't need to follow it (which can lead to a bunch of other problems). In less than good open world games, you might end up with your string unraveling. Then you stand in that world and... have to look for the plot.

My king, my king, the front yard's on fire! I'll look at that in a week.
Now let's assume that we still have our red string to follow. Who tells us that we need to do so? No one, it's an open world game. We can do whatever the hell we want. That works for plots like traveling the world. It makes less sense if there's something really urgent going on. Like, to pick up my favorite example game, the big bad literally being on his way to the thing that lets him take over the world. This is not the time to catch up on your sidequests, but since this is an open world game, you can do so. If you couldn't, a part of you would be pissed off since you have stuff you want to do.

So much dilemma...

Open world yes, open world no, open world shoe. There's no one way to solve these problems. But what you do need to decide is what is more important to you. Do you want to tell a story, or provide the player with a world to explore? Can you tell this story through the world, or is it hinged on the characters? Do you really need to travel the world? Why would you want to visit a remote mountain village? There's many questions to ask yourself, but in the end you'll (hopefully) know where you want to go.

EFFORT!

Now that the dilemmas are checked off my imaginary list, there's some things to think about. Namely, what your effort goes into. I'm very tempted to use a tree (data structure) analogy, but that's not layman friendly. I'll go with a tree (plant) analogy instead.

Plot: Plot games are poplar-shaped. They don't branch out particularly widely, but they grow high. Boy do they grow high up. You'll have to put effort into tiny details that, at first glance, seem like they'll fly right over the players' heads. If you look closer, every one of these details adds to the whole thing. Simple gestures and speech patterns make characters unique without giving them a gazillion belts and hair that makes Saiyans look reasonable. Since you don't grow particularly wide, you can put more attention to other details, too. You don't have much world, so you'd better make it awesome.

World: World games are... uh, pretty much every other tree ever. They're not particularly high, compared to poplars, but they are wide. They've got a high amount of branches that easily grow wild, cross each other and do wonky stuff. Of course, I'm not telling you to leave out details. Of course you need good characters here too, but not every NPC in every backwater village needs to be a unique snowflake. Unless you're an absolute perfectionist/mad, you can copypaste character designs across the world. No one will care if two guys have the same hairstyle. No one will care if something looks similar somewhere else, unless it's too unique. There's a line, and it differs from game to game, but in general, you need to think on a larger scale. Look at our world. Look at the cultural differences. You need something to make the whole world worth visiting, and I'm not talking about copypaste dungeons. Little details, in this case, are already larger in scale. Give your villages traditions. Give them myths. Give them designs that are different enough to tell them apart, but similar enough to tell that this is still the same world.

The bottom line is that, in the end, restricting the player's access to the world doesn't mean less effort. It just means that you have to put more effort into the accessible part. This is one of these things that really just boils down to what you want to do with your game. Don't try to turn it into something it just can't be.

Stakes

After a stray piece of inspiration hit me, I decided to talk about stakes this time.

Steaks? Yay!

Nope, not these. I'm glad I can make random Asian...ish food without burning off my taste buds.Now, stakes can mean two things. There's A) the things you impale vampires with and B) the things that are at stake. I'm talking about B, unless it's in the context of vampires, where the presence of A can easily lead to B. The stakes are, in a nutshell, what matters in a story.

Why should I care?

You should care about stakes because they are what make you care about the story. And by story, in the context of this post, I mean anything that's a plot. I'm talking books, comics, games, movies... all that has a story, and that story has to have stakes.

Stake Facts

Stakes are, first and foremost, things that matter. They are where excrements go down or hit the fan. They are the reason why you stick to the story. But you can't just throw something at your audience, tell them that that's your stakes and expect them to actually be invested. There a few big things that make your stakes interesting.

It's personal.
That's, in my opinion, the most important thing. Your story's stakes should have a connection to the protagonist. Before you point me to any of these rescue the world/country/universe stories and tell me how they work despite the goal being unpersonal or how these stakes are personal because the protagonist lives in the world/country/universe... stop. That's not how it works. Now, think of any recent catastrophe. Sure, it sucks. You might find what happened to be abhorrent, sad and even terrifying. But still, it's something that happened somewhere. Now what if, say, your best friend/significant other was involved in said catastrophe. Suddenly, you care for it on a whole new level. Because it just got personal.
I have a great example here, and that's Batman. Gotham is a craphole. But if you asked little Bruce Wayne about it, he'd say that his parents are rich and can afford the security to live there. Then his parents were killed by a random goon. That's when Gotham's criminals became a personal issue to him and he became Batman. Even though his motivation, and ultimately the thing at stake, is safety in Gotham, he has a personal connection to it.

Who cares?
Now we have personal stakes, but why should I care about Bruce Wayne's problems if I don't care about Bruce Wayne? That's the second important thing. The audience needs to care about the character who's got things at stake. I know I might just be abusing this word horribly, but I'm going to call this character the stakeholder. If you want the audience to be invested in your stakes and, thus, your story, you need to make them be invested in your stakeholder. Writing compelling characters is, however, not the topic of this post.
Here's the part where I'll pull the second comic book character out of my hat. Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man. His backstory has definitely got the personal stakes down. The reason I'm listing it here instead of up there with Batman is that Tony Stark was designed to be a bit of a douchebag. Look at this fantastically awesome review by Linkara *cough* for more information. He may be a rich douchebag, but we still care for him, and we care for his story and what's at stake for him.

Stake Special: Interactive Stories

Interactive stories, aka game plots, act a bit differently in the game of stakes. The reason is just that: They're interactive. Let's assume you care about the stakeholder and their stakes. In a non-interactive story you now follow them as they fight for their stakes. In an interactive story, you are them as they fight for their stakes. That means that there's one more thing the audience needs to care for, and that's the stakeholder's environment. Why would you want to save the world if you, the player, don't care for it? Sure, Bruce Wayne cared about his parents, but why should you? They're not yours. Or, a better example, the often-used doomed hometown. You spend what, five minutes in that town, then go out to do stuff and when you return, everybody's dead. Sad music plays, rain falls, the stakeholder breaks down in the dirt and bawls their eyes out. You, the player, just sit there and wonder why the hell you should care about these people you didn't know. And that's the point. As soon as the story becomes interactive, the audience becomes a stakeholder. This, in turn, leads to the aforementioned most important thing: The stakes need to be personal to the stakeholder. Making these stakes personal to the audience is another topic, which I won't talk about here, because this post is going to be long enough as it is.

And now?

Stakes need to be important, yet personal. Designing them is easier than making them believable, and getting high stakes that aren't too detached from the characters takes work. On the other hand, low stakes might not be stakes at all. If your romance plot is happy and perfect, then maybe it shouldn't be the focus, but rather a background thing that runs along.

Inspirational credits go to the Query Shark. Chew away, Ms. Shark. Chew away.

In-Game Tutorials

After a while, just rambling about things I have an opinion got boring. I'll now also ramble about things with the intent to teach you something! ...hey, where did all of you go?

Why Tutorials?

There's so many things you can get wrong when you put tutorials into your game. Actually, this kind of segues into my last post. I covered the Kitchen Sink Design aspect of that game pretty well, but there were other things it did wrong. One of them was the tutorials. Oh god, the tutorials. They were everywhere, mandatory and didn't teach me anything I wouldn't have been able to figure out on my own.

Tutorial Fallacies

This is going to be another post where I list things. These things might sound incredibly matter-of-factually to you, but they're way too present in games.

Press WASD to walk
Exactly what it says on the tin. For some reason, games decide to explain to you how the most basic controls work. Okay, the worst offenders here are RPG Maker games. Come on. We all know that we use space to confirm, Esc to cancel and the arrow keys to walk. "But what about the people who're not familiar with the engine?" If you wanted to ask this now, I'm glaring at you through the internet. Hard. People aren't stupid. If you have a game with keyboard controls, what are you going to try first? Either WASD or the arrow keys. Even Esc/Space (or Enter) are kind of self-explaining, since all over the operating system itself, these are used to confirm or cancel things. So, again, these are the things that are going to come to mind first, and even if not, the player can try around and find the action key on their own. People aren't stupid!

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this tutorial!
This one is more of a placement fallacy than a content fallacy. Sure, you might have some ultra-awesome game mechanics to show to the player. So you hand them out at the beginning. All of them. And expect the player to get all that and remember it until it's actually brought up. Spoiler: Most won't, because at the moment of the tutorial, that information is completely irrelevant. The human brain is wired to ignore things that are irrelevant and not necessary for survival (of the player character). Bring the information up when it's necessary and when the element is actually first used.

Remember the time I pushed that crate? It was totally awesome!
So you have your gameplay element the player won't easily grasp without a tutorial, you introduce it at the time it's first used, and then this happens:

Bob and George stand in front of a bunch of crates.
Bob: "Hey, look! Crates!"
George: "I can push them, you know? Because I'm strong."
Bob: "Cool! But can you pull them?"
George: "No." *sad*
Bob: "But I can, because I'm... reverse strong. Yeah!"

So our characters, in the middle of the action, paused in front of a bunch of crates to discuss their crate-pulling abilities. While in-universe tutorials are awesome, you have to be careful. If this came up as part of a cutscene, it would be okay. But if it comes up during gameplay, a piece of dialogue like this stops the game dead in its tracks so that the characters can explain their abilities. Again: People aren't stupid! If you need to explain it because you're using a key that hasn't been used before, give the player a blurb that says tells them what key it is. Don't stop the gameplay for something like this.

But What Should I do Then?

The tutorial fallacies I brought up are most often removed by removing the tutorial itself. But sometimes, you may want a tutorial to explain a mechanic that might be unconventional. See the nonstandard key example. Sometimes you need to explain.

In-Universe vs. The Blurb
In general, there's two categories of tutorials. Those that are explained by the characters and those that aren't. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. One of the most important things about in-universe tutorials is that the characters know about things. So either you need to wrap the mechanics into a nice flavor or you break the fourth wall and risk having a guy with a purdy hat fall onto your head.
Fourth-Wall-Breakers I remember are, for example, the kid in Link's Awakening that told you how to save. It then proclaimed that it didn't know what saving was because it was only a kid. Also, an example that takes it further, is the toad in the beginning of Super Mario RPG that warns a goomba that Mario knows about timed hits. Even further goes Mario party, where, in one part, Bowser Jr., while explaining the rules for a game, clarifies that A is, in fact, the green button.
But for everyone of these, there's at least a ton where it's not as amusing/self-aware/generally well-done. I suggest to stay consistent with the way things are explained. You don't need an in-game explanation for every button you press. But if your character's health is literally measured in hit points,  you'd better tell me how that works, and you'd better have a good explanation.

MAKE IT STAHP!!1
Tutorials for outstanding features that really need to be explained are, for many players, only needed for the first time. Every time after that, especially if the controls and inner workings are memorable (very good thing), it's only annoying. For these kinds of tutorials, unless they're really woven into the game, as explained above, you should have an option to turn them off. A good example for that was the (sadly canceled) German RPG Maker game Velsarbor. While you started with an overpowered character that just plowed through the enemies like a warm knife through butter, the real gameplay started with two ordinary dudes. From then on, you had explanations for whenever a new gameplay element was introduced. These infoblurbs could be turned off, so those who, after the first two or so blurbs, noticed that they'd get it anyways, wouldn't be bothered by it any more. Those who needed the tutorials could keep them.

Now bring me an idiot
The best way to find out if your tutorials work well is to have them tested by different people. The important thing is that you get people of various skill levels. An experienced gamer will react differently to someone who doesn't regularly play games of the genre. I refer to tests with the latter kind of person as idiot tests. These tests are done to make sure that the most ignorant person would understand your tutorial and act on it. Also, just because it's called idiot test that doesn't mean that the tester shouldn't try playing the game. For random button-mashing, see Fuzzing.

The Bottom Line

Tutorials are not necessarily evil, but they need a lot of thought. They should be appropriate for both beginners and experienced players, and should not be annoying to either one. There's many ways to incorporate them in the game universe, but this isn't always necessary and often difficult to pull off. But the bottom line to said bottom line is:

People aren't stupid!

Encourage the players to try things out on their own and you'll find that you might not need as many tutorials as you thought you would. Now, click inside the textbox underneath this article, type in your opinion on this article and click the publish button. In case you're viewing this on the main page, click the article title first.

Kitchen Sink Design

No, I'm not talking about how to design kitchen sinks. If you're here because of that, you've got the wrong blog. I'm talking about game design and how more ideas don't make for a better game.
This is one of these posts where I'm going to use a specific example, but won't use its name. Mostly because you people out there in the world a) have never heard of it or b) recognize it from the things I say about it.

Why are you doing this again?

I'm a hobby game designer and have spent a fair amount of time thinking about what makes a game good, fun and playable. I don't want to bash the game I'll be talking about here, or its creator. I'll just use it as an example of why Kitchen Sink Design is bad.

What's Kitchen Sink Design anyways?

Ever heard of the phrase everything but the kitchen sink? Kitchen Sink Design is, surprise, when you apply this to game design.  What I'll do here is that I'll pick apart the countless features/gimmicks/details the example game has and point out if/why they could have been cut and what makes them clash with the rest.

The Game¹⁾

The Game itself is set in a dystopian future where the vast majority of the world is either dead or crawling with demons. A chosen few people get to live in the last safe havens, while the rest has to live on the outside world, fighting for their lives everyday. You get to play as one of these outside worlders, and things get really complicated and Final Fantasy like. But keep in mind, this is a dystopian future where everything is grim, gritty and crawling with demons.

Features, Features, Features

Combat

Combat is handled in a turn-based system, with up to three party members and, from what I saw so far, five enemies. Each character is limited to nine actions they can choose from, three of which are passive, such as item usage, fleeing or defending themselves. Additionally, there's a time limit for entering these commands, as shown by a bar at the bottom of the screen.
Another core part of combat is the elemental system. There's six elements (the classic four plus light and darkness), and each starts off at a certain percentage, depending on the terrain. This percentage value runs from 0 to 200 and defines how effective your skill is. Whenever you use a skill with an element, its element gets stronger, while the opposite element gets weaker. There's also items that influence these values.
Oh, and somewhere along the way each character gets a limit break (aka you get a bar that fills whenever the character's hit and lets them use the skill when it's full).
...and sometimes, when you use a very effective attack or make a critical hit, you'll get a bonus on the percentage to get loot, experience points and health/ability point regeneration.

What I don't like about it
Complexity: Read this and try to make sense of it. Sure, you will, but it isn't really intuitive.
Balancing: This runs hand in hand with complexity, because the more things you throw into a system, the harder it is to balance it properly.
Exploitability: Once you do figure it out, you realize that all you need to do is spam the current area's very effective attack and wait for the boni to stack up. That way you can easily level up in an area that's designed for a lower level. Oh, and did I mention that you can buy these bonuses at the churches?
Input: I didn't mention this before, but the input runs via the number keys. No, you can't use your numpad. The whole rest of the game is controlled via arrow keys and Esc/Space.

What were they thinking?
I kind of get what the developer was going for. Combat should be strategic and different from all that other stuff out there, hence the elemental influence and the number keys. I appreciate the idea, but this is not going to work.
I have nothing against elemental weaknesses, but the way they are implemented here is too easy to exploit. The same goes for the bonuses. I like the idea that the player is rewarded when they use a strong element, but as it is now, the player is essentially rewarded for grinding. I doubt this was intended.
Another thing that really rubs me the wrong way is the input. Sure, it's different, and it might have sounded like a good idea, but what this method of input does is rip me out of the flow because I need to reposition my hands on the keyboard. What's wrong with choosing attacks from a list, especially if that list is only nine elements long? And what's with that bar at the bottom? Stress + different method of input = mistype.
In general, this combat system gives up balancing and usability in favor of being innovative. And despite that, it feels like an ordinary turn-based combat system where I need to move my hand across the keyboard.

Quests

Throughout the game, the party takes up quests from the government, represented by guys in black cowls and red sunglasses (SYMBOLISM!!!1!1). These quests are listed in a quest log and can, upon completion, be handed in at every government post across the world. With each quest you complete, you get points that let you level up in rank and eventually buy better equipment.

What I don't like about it
These quests split up in "kill target demon" and "collect resources."
The first kind usually means that you have to go back to an area you already visited and kill something. Something that, before you took up that quest, wasn't even there, despite them saying that it was roaming the area for a while. The worst of these quests goes as far: A village has been attacked by spiders and you should go and find their nest. Said nest is a cave in the forest you had to cross in order to reach the village. I went into said cave. The only thing I found were a few webs and an item. As soon as I get the quest, there's two ginormous spiders in there. This is their nest. They should have been there before. GAH!
The resource quests aren't much better. Most of them require some kind of loot you get from the demons, which I get. But most of them also require you to get a certain weapon, or other items that can be bought at the shop a few houses away. What are they paying you for, cowl guys? Oh, and of course you barely get enough money for the quests.
Special mention goes to one of the most requested item in the whole quest system: Crystals. The base crystals can be bought at the shop, but for most quests you have to fuse them. Because you don't get recipes, you end up wasting half of them before you find out how to make the crystals they need.

What were they thinking?
Again, I see where the developer came from. Quests are nice. Still, the variety of quests isn't particularly great. That makes the fact that you actually have to do them worse. Because if you don't do the quests, you don't get your equipment. I see that this was supposed to be another reward system, but it comes off the other way round. While it's useful that you can buy weaker versions of these items (for quests, again), you can just as well go to an earlier city. You have a quick travel world map, so where's the problem? This feature, too, feels like it's there to make the game innovative.

Leveling up

Leveling up is a bit different in this game. Instead of reaching a new level at a set point of experience points, you get nine elements to level up (the six real elements, two kinds of physical attack and defense). With a certain amount of levels in certain elements, you can unlock new skills. Additionally, every element rises stats differently.

What I don't like about it
Actually, this isn't that bad. It's still trying too hard with what it does. While you do see what level you need for skills to unlock, you don't see what these skills actually do. I get that this system is supposed to give you the chance of diversifying your characters, but there's a few problems with this.
1. Your party changes: You have a maximum amount of six characters, and you'll never know who will leave or join after the next cutscene. Good luck without your healer, or without the guy who's got the death ray that will help you kill the next enemy. Unless you overlevel massively, you can't get all the elements to a feasible level.
2. Different enemies have different weaknesses: You'd think that, in order to get through, three of your characters (mind you, six is the maximum party size) should know an AoE attack of that type. Then comes the next area and your AoE of that type is useless. So you can't really level up until you see what your next enemy is like.

What were they thinking?
Actually, the idea for this is good. Yes, this is a feature that does not clog up the system, it's just not implemented that well.

Arena

Somewhere on the second continent, there's an arena where you can fight against enemies. You earn points, and depending on how far you get, you can buy equipment you don't get anywhere else.

What I don't like about it
It's a pure gameplay element, with next to no roots in the world itself. Thing is, an arena would make sense in this world. The world sucks, and people need to be entertained. But the way the game handles this is just... ugh. This feature is well-thought out, but doesn't fit into this game.
1. The characters are on an urgent mission. There's no time to go into an arena and beat shit up when the big bad is on his way to take over the world. (No, literally.)
2. The enemies make no sense. Sure, there are the basic ones you can scoop up somewhere, but can someone please explain me how a government-controlled one of a kind mecha spider gets into that arena? Also, if you're overleveled enough, these fights are ginormous spoilers, as there are countless boss fights among them.
3. The mechanics make no sense. I'll take the mecha spider as an example. In the story, when you get to fight against it, the strategy is to destroy its legs. With each leg, it crashes onto the ground and takes damage. But in the arena, you have to fight all parts of a boss in order to defeat it. This leads to hilarious fights like a bunch of legs that do nothing, or just the body that's lying there and deathlasering you or, one of the most failsome examples: A pair of tentacles without the kraken head to support them. Not to mention the fact that the arena is filled with sand, so it's tentacles sticking out of the ground.
I have nothing against arenas in general, or this particular one (except for the enemy choice), but it doesn't fit into this game. The fact that it's playable doesn't fit into this game.

What were they thinking?
"My game needs an arena! Arenas are cool!" I'll say it again. An arena makes sense in this setting, the fact that it's playable does not.

Mini Games

At several occasions, the game switches into mini game mode. You get to collect stars and balls, which give you points, which in turn give you items.

Why I don't like it (!)
I should remind you that this is a dystopian future where the vast majority of the world is dead and the rest is crawling with demons. This is not the right place for a mini game where you collect stars and balls. One moment I'm walking through the snow, followed by ice wolves, when, suddenly, there's this rumbling sound. That comes from an avalanche. That's right behind me. Cue the timer and point-giving objects everywhere! The only thing that could ruin the mood more is this.
But hey, this is not the most inappropriate mini-game you get. There's still the Torture Resistance Mini-Game. And I am completely serious. This exists.

What were they thinking?
This time, I don't get it. These mini-games make no sense. They completely ruin any mood/immersion because they're not even trying to be in-universe. And for the Torture Resistance Mini-Game: What the hell, developer?!

The Point

Most features in this list boiled down to the rule of cool. They didn't really add anything to the game, except for mass. Most of them might also have sounded better in theory. But fact is that, just because something might sound interesting, that doesn't meant hat it will add anything solid. Having many ideas is good, but you should be able to discard some of them. Otherwise you end up with everything but the kitchen sink in your game, and that's never good.


¹⁾You just lost it.