Has this ever happened to you?

You’re playing a game, and one of the characters says something that just makes you go: “Pff, they would never say it like that.”

So what is that? That feeling that something’s not quite right. Being convinced that we know just how this figment of someone else’s imagination would’ve reacted to a particular situation.

I must’ve been around six years old when I managed to make my dad angry with just a few words.

He told me to do some basic task, probably something like putting plates on the table, and I excitedly retorted: “Ah, give me a break!”

The thing is, at the time I didn’t know what that turn of phrase even meant. I had heard a character say it in a movie and it just sounded like a cool thing to say.

Now, “give me a break” is not a thing a six-year-old would normally say. And so my dad found the source of this phrase following a brief cross-examination.

Unsurprisingly, television privileges were revoked until further notice.

That was probably the first time I realized that there are different rules for children and adults when it comes to choosing their words.

In that movie,* the adult character said “give me a break” to a kid, and it was considered acceptable. But when I said it to my dad, it didn’t go down so well.

Of course, adults and children have different speech patterns, as well as different standards for what’s acceptable. Parents will routinely tell their small children not to say words that they themselves use on a daily basis.

This realization that, as a kid, I and the adults in my life spoke differently would grow into a lifelong obsession.

When people speak, I’m not just interested in what they say, but how they say it. It’s not that I care about how appropriate they are, but I believe that their choice of words by itself can convey a lot of meaning.

Many people assume that how you think dictates how you speak, but the reverse is just as true, if not more. Maybe it’s why we’re so obsessed with how our children speak - if their language is bad, maybe that has a negative effect on their thoughts and their behavior going forward?

This fascination I have with the way people speak has had a big influence on my life. For one, it probably nudged me towards linguistics and literature when the time had come to pick an academic path.

But it also continues to have an impact on my daily life, specifically when consuming any form of fiction.

When I was a teenager, my mother watched a lot of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show that’s a true smorgasbord of curious fictional dialogue. Some lines are snappy, while others can be awkward, misplaced, artificial or delightfully ridiculous.

Often, when the detectives in that show were interviewing a child, it made me roll my eyes and say things like “a child would never say that.” This was always in response to a young child having said something that was too poignant, too profound or too witty. Something, perhaps, like “Ah, give me a break.”

It’s the most noticeable with children, because children have a particular, often more limited way of expressing themselves, yet in fiction their dialogue is nearly always written by adults. And since most of the audience also consists of adults, it tends to go unnoticed.

Even people who don’t share my fixation on language will take notice when something feels too off, though.

In SVU, the character Fin Tutuola (Ice-T) is often used by the writers to give exposition on lesser known topics. He explains things to the audience, but these explanations are woven into his conversations with other detectives as not to break the fourth wall. However, the intention of the writers to spell things out to dim-witted viewers is often hidden so poorly that none of the dialogue feels natural.

You’ve probably seen the memes.

“The kids are calling it razzle-dazzle. They sniff diesel generators because they think it’ll give ‘em a high.”

Video games being a relatively young medium, they too have often struggled with giving us dialogue that feels natural. That feels like something those characters would actually say.

In Heavy Rain, private investigator Scott Shelby sees a man force his way into a woman’s hotel room, and as her desperate screams can already be heard down the hallway, Shelby calmly states:

“Sounds like the hotel room’s gettin’ rearranged, and not in a good way...”

In the moment, this line feels ridiculous because it contains zero sense of urgency, and a real person would not stop to make a bad quip to themselves a few seconds before trying to save a woman’s life and possibly risking their own. As such, it feels off.

But again, what does ‘off’ mean?

Here, you could use the term ‘realistic.’ Indeed, it is not realistic that a regular person would react like that in such a high-stakes situation.

However, ‘realistic’ comes with its own set of problems.

When characters in Mass Effect talk about Faster Than Light travel, advanced spaceships and highly intelligent synthetic lifeforms, such dialogue is - strictly speaking - unrealistic because this kind of technology does not exist in the real world. Yet it doesn’t feel off.

Hence why we have to resort to a more academic term: verisimilitude.

Within literature and storytelling, verisimilitude refers to realism as it pertains to a certain context. So while FTL travel in Mass Effect is unrealistic because it doesn’t actually exist, it is verisimilar because this technology does exist within that fictional universe; its origins are explained in the game, and those are consistent with the sci-fi setting.

Here we can easily draw a line between something that doesn’t exist in the real world, yet does in a fictional one, but I would like to go further and apply the concept to the nature of dialogue itself.

Verisimilar dialogue is dialogue that corresponds to that character’s state of mind - to their specific reality within a fictional world.

Someone in a life-or-death struggle probably wouldn’t be inclined to make casual remarks that make light of the situation, so this in itself would not be verisimilar.

Still, the context matters too: if that character has been established to be a superhero, then maybe their supreme, unnatural levels of confidence would make such observations more likely and therefore verisimilar.

It’s a quality that morphs depending on the context, and once you start paying attention to this aspect of the writing, it can transform the way you look at fiction in general.

I can notice myself that the more dialogue-heavy a game is, the more I actively pay attention to the verisimilitude of the dialogue. Perhaps not even consciously, but instinctively.

It’s why, as I stated in my previous article, I am one of the relatively few people who prefers Life is Strange: Before the Storm to the original game it’s a prequel to.

In the original, I could often ‘hear’ the writers speak through the dialogue, breaking the illusion as I sensed the emanating cultural dissonance.** Before the Storm’s dialogue, meanwhile, felt more grounded and in line with what its characters would actually say.

Sure, protagonist Chloe Price could oftentimes be cringy, edgy or plain unreasonable, but in that game she’s a 16-year-old wearing studded armbands. How was she - realistically - not going to be all of those things?

Point being, dialogue being verisimilar doesn’t mean that it has to sound sophisticated or aesthetically pleasing. This quality depends entirely on the context of who utters it and in what situation.

It’s not just story-driven games that benefit from having verisimilar dialogue. In fact, the writers of any game that has dialogue should at least be aware of this quality, even when they then choose to ignore it.

I mention games in particular, not just because that’s where my personal interest lies, but also because video game dialogue, more than any other medium, has a natural inclination to not be verisimilar.

This is due to video games being full of dialogue that serves an ulterior goal:

• In a tutorial level, a character might explain to you how the gameplay works while desperately trying to maintain the illusion that these are in-universe instructions.

• In many open world games, conversations often take place when travelling toward a mission. Such dialogue will last just long enough to cover the travel time and liven up what would otherwise be a boring drive.

• In some games, there is not much room for dialogue at all, since it may hurt the flow of the gameplay. Hence, the writing may feel like it was tweaked for efficiency rather than a natural flow.

Fortunately, my argument is not that all video game dialogue has to be verisimilar. Sometimes, the best option is to just tell the player to press A to jump, and any attempt to conceal that within an in-universe training program will likely feel contrived and clumsy.

It can even be a stylistic choice to break verisimilitude.

A character such Principal Wells in the aforementioned Before the Storm uses unnaturally formal, technical language that sounds like it’d come from the Terms & Conditions of a software license rather than the mouth of an actual person. Still, this works as an expository tool, as it emphasizes the distance between this character and his students. This is what a principal sounded like to us when we were in high school.

Indeed, while the dialogue here isn’t verisimilar, it serves a clear purpose that verisimilitude by itself could not have achieved.

There are entire literary genres where verisimilitude is not a relevant quality. In Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), the characters talk with a precision and eloquence that is never found in spoken language. This is a choice, because the characters are used as vessels for commentary on several moral, philosophical and theological issues, rather than fleshed-out, lifelike people with their own agency.

Whether they speak with the cadence of a normal person was never relevant to the author or this work.

So ultimately, my wish is merely for more writers to consciously think about why a character chooses a particular set of words to say something.

It’s the very simple question of would a real person in this situation actually say this?

But also, does it matter that they would?

If the purpose of the dialogue is to draw the player further into the illusion of an authentic, living world, verisimilitude is a useful quality to have.

To be sure, writing dialogue that is conscious of such questions is not easy. It requires one to have a deep psychological understanding of the character(s), of their socio-cultural background and of the lore that drives the universe they inhabit.

Even by itself, writing down words that are only supposed to be spoken can be an arduous process. I once had to write doctor-patient conversations for a language training software program, and despite my best efforts, I still have to cringe a bit every time I hear them.

Still, the more dialogue a game has, the more beneficial it will be to consider verisimilitude in spite of any other challenges.

Verisimilitude is also a good concept to be aware of when playing games.

Sure, it may be an obscure academic term, but it can help explain why an interaction between two characters felt off. Or why an interaction left such a deep impression on you.

This is important because the continued improvement of writing in video games does not just rely on writers honing their craft, but also on players who can point out what does and does not work, and are able to articulate why.

If nothing else, if your kid is being a bit too much of a smart-ass for their age, just tell them they’re not being verisimilar and send them to their room.

It’ll be a learning moment.

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Notes:
*This anecdote happened to me in its entirety. But since I spoke Dutch at home, the phrase was also in Dutch. The exact phrase was: ‘doe me een lol,’ whose literal translation is closer to ‘humor me,’ however in practice it has the same dismissive tone and intended meaning as ‘give me a break.’ The movie was a Dutch dub of Free Willy, and I don’t know whether such a phrase appears at all in the English original, so I didn’t want to mention it in the article itself. I did want to specify all of this lest I come across as one of those people who just makes up convenient anecdotes that just so happen to underline a bigger point.

**I didn’t elaborate on this for the sake of brevity, but I do want to give some context to those who are interested. Also, even though it’s a giant diversion from my actual point, I’ve been looking to include this somewhere since I’ve never seen anyone else point it out over the past 11 years.

While the original Life is Strange is a fascinating game that I love a lot, the dialogue could oftentimes pull me out of the experience. I’m not even talking about famous examples such as the overuse of “hella” or the infamous line “ready for the moshpit, shaka brah,” because those are pretty defensible in their own right.

In the game, Max will often make observations in which she gratuitously namedrops photographers, painters and other artists in her own internal monologue. This happens consistently throughout the game and I have always interpreted this as a remnant of the developer team being French. LiS was written by a French studio but then adjusted for American culture since the story is set in Oregon. These adjustments included things like parking spaces in the game needing to be bigger and replacing kisses between platonic friends with hugs.

The constant high-cultural signalling of Max strikes me as having flown under the radar during this process. In France - especially in intellectual/academic circles - it is customary to signal your perceived ‘good taste’ as a mark of social prestige.

I’ve had a lot of Southern-European and American friends over the course of my life, and my French and Spanish friends would engage in this cultural signalling pretty routinely while Americans would only bring up such topics if the context demanded it, if they even did so at all. So when Max was throwing around names in Life is Strange, it felt instead like one of the writers trying to flex their academic prowess to me through her. Hence, cultural dissonance.

Life is Strange, isn’t that the game with all the hipsters and teenage girls talking about their feelings?

Okay, that might not be the most elegant way to put it, but it’s not entirely wrong either.

The first Life is Strange game was released in episodic form across 2015. Well before the last of its five episodes was released, the hype had caught on.

A wise man once said that the most exciting games to get into are the ones that come out of nowhere and are awesome. That description certainly befits the original Life is Strange.

It’s not like narrative-driven games centered around player choice hadn’t been done before, and Life is Strange certainly wasn’t a perfect execution of the concept. Yet, with its high school setting and a knack for nostalgia that bordered on the melodramatic, the game had that x-factor which allowed it to become somewhat of a cultural sensation.

With its critical and financial success, Life is Strange became destined to grow into a franchise. Much has happened since then.

Now, in 2026, we are celebrating the release of Life is Strange: Reunion. A celebration that however comes with little fanfare, since it is likely that Reunion will be the last game in the series.

For reasons I will get into soon, Life is Strange’s expansion into a franchise hasn’t always been smooth sailing, to a point where - much like the game that started it all - Life is Strange: Reunion too felt like it came out of nowhere.

But is it awesome?

In order to answer that question and give the proper context to my views on Reunion, I will need to go deep. Like, full series retrospective deep. Don’t worry - we’ll get to the thorough review of the game itself, as promised in the title. But leading up to that I’ll need to take quite a bit of space to show you the long road that led to Reunion.

The purpose of this approach is to help you understand why Life is Strange has become an impactful series, yet was long plagued by the implications of its initial success. It is nigh impossible to discuss Reunion without first seeing where it fits into that equation. Only within that context can we fully appreciate what the game is and isn’t.

In choosing this structure, I hope to give those who haven’t played these games some much-needed context, while those of you who have will get a better idea of what I value in these games, since this can at times be highly subjective.

This might also be the last time I get the opportunity to write about a new Life is Strange release, so I want to answer the series’ presumed swan song with the eulogy it deserves.

(If you want some company on this journey, a while ago I made a LiS-inspired playlist, downloadable here.)

Back to Arcadia Bay - How we got here

Life is Strange: Reunion is named such because it reunites the main characters from the first Life is Strange game (henceforth referred to as Life is Strange 1): Max Caulfield and Chloe Price.

So to understand their role in Reunion, we have to go back to their debut from over a decade ago.

To summarize, in Life is Strange 1 we were introduced to protagonist Max as she reconnects with her old childhood friend Chloe. They join forces to solve the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Chloe’s friend and implied lover, Rachel Amber. In doing so, they make use of Max’s newfound power to rewind time, which of course comes with its own slew of moral questions and unforeseen consequences.

Given the success of Life is Strange 1 and the enduring popularity of both Max and Chloe, it might seem odd that it took us 11 years and four other installments to see them side-by-side again. But there is a good reason.

Life is Strange 1 ended with a major player choice. Playing as Max, you had the option to save your close friend Chloe, which came at the cost of letting a huge storm ravage the entire town of Arcadia Bay, killing many of its inhabitants. The alternative was the inverse of this dilemma: save the town, but let Chloe die. Bae or Bay, as it became known.

Obviously, a direct sequel would have to address the first game’s conclusion, essentially forcing the writers to canonize one of the endings. A move that would likely have pissed off all the players who went with the other option.

It was exactly this problem that would come back to haunt the series throughout much of its existence.

While Life is Strange was intended to be an anthology franchise, focusing on a different cast and setting with each installment, the success of the first game exposed the risk of that vision.

Clearly, the writers had struck gold with their setting - the mystical Oregon town of Arcadia Bay - as well as the characters who inhabited it. Max and Chloe became the subjects of much fan art and fan fiction, and even many of the secondary characters have their own sets of dedicated fans to this very day.

For the developers of the game, French studio Dontnod, to try and create an equally enchanting setting and collection of characters would be like trying to make lightning strike in the same place twice.

Even so, Dontnod made it clear on multiple occasions that, for as far as they were concerned, the story of Max and Chloe had run its course after Life is Strange 1. They had no desire to revisit these characters, commercially tempting though it may have been.

Still, we would soon see more of the characters - Chloe in particular.

In spite of Dontnod’s intentions, publisher Square Enix (which owns the rights to the IP) was able to delay the inevitable by tasking a Colorado studio called Deck Nine with the creation of a prequel, featuring the same setting and many of the same characters.

This prequel would become 2017’s Before the Storm and featured a 16-year-old Chloe Price as the protagonist, whom we follow during her tumultuous first days hanging out with the enigmatic Rachel Amber.

Initially, Before the Storm was met with suspicion. Rachel Amber was clearly not intended to be an actual character in the original game. Hence, this prequel was seen as an attempt to double dip in a setting that was always meant to be a one-off.

Blatant fan service, in the eyes of some.

Justified though such concerns may have been, Before the Storm proved both a sincere and successful tribute to the beloved setting, and to Chloe and Rachel in particular.

Its success was informed by Deck Nine’s ability to identify what had made Life is Strange 1 so unforgettable. It wasn’t the mystery, nor the superpower or the spectacle of the storm.

The essence of Life is Strange was and always would be the cosmic bond between two kindred spirits.

In Life is Strange 1, Max and Chloe.

In Before the Storm, Chloe and Rachel.

Though in both games, the conspiratorial intrigue and implications of the supernatural were both necessary to drive forth the plot and underline its more philosophical tones, they were - at least in my view - never quite the point.

It’s the very reason people latched onto these characters from the start. You’d either had a friendship that reminded you of them, or you wished you did.

Playing these games felt like being a part of these characters’ world. They tapped into this very basic desire that people have - to make a connection that matters.

A mundane notion at first glance. Though ultimately, nothing is quite as enchanting, magical powers be damned.

Sadly, this lesson would be forgotten over time.

Road out of Oregon

After the Arcadia Bay arc seemed to have nothing more to give, the series moved on in multiple directions.

Across 2018 and 2019, Dontnod followed through with their anthology vision and delivered Life is Strange 2, creating a whole new cast and opting for a road trip format rather than sticking to a single setting.

Before the Storm developers Deck Nine got their shot at a new game with True Colors, released in 2021. This installment also featured a new setting, but its idyllic Colorado town Haven Springs seemed like a more conscious effort to recapture that ethereal spark of Arcadia Bay.

That Square Enix essentially pulled a Sonic 2 and let two different studios work out their own follow-up to the original Life is Strange arc was already an omen. An indication that the series was indeed condemned to an identity crisis following its eviction from Arcadia Bay.

Curiously enough, the most defining aspects of these respective successors also laid bare their weaknesses.

Life is Strange 2 is almost an antithesis to the original Life is Strange, not only getting rid of the cozy setting that everyone had grown to love, but refusing to replace it with anything, courtesy of its road trip format. The result is mixed, with the game asking players to reinvest emotionally from scratch, but crucially offering just novelty and variation where series’ fans were desperate for something more stable to latch onto.

With its picturesque setting, True Colors did offer some solace in that regard. However, with Haven Springs drawing such clear inspiration from what had made Arcadia Bay so beloved, it also facilitated direct comparison. And Haven Springs just wasn’t quite the Oregon fishing town’s equal.

The release of these two games put us in an interesting position. True to Dontnod’s original vision, Life is Strange had branched out into a proper series that told a different story each time. Both Life is Strange 2 and True Colors accrued dedicated fans, but neither managed to replicate the impact of the game that had given the series its name.

It should be noted that these games can still be considered successes in their own right. They built upon what was already there and delivered products that had more ambition, higher production value and a more ‘AAA’ feel than the first game. (Deck Nine’s mocap work in particular has always been insane.)

This just goes to show that even two solid follow-ups were not quite enough to collectively charm us quite like the original saga had.

Had either Life is Strange 2 or True Colors matched or even eclipsed the success of the original, any discussion about a possible new story with Max or Chloe would likely have fizzled out.

But since neither did, that door remained open in the minds of many. What if?

In fact, if leaks are to be believed - and that is a big if, mind you - the reason Dontnod would go on to disassociate from the Life is Strange IP following their second game was that very question.

It is said that Square Enix tried to get them to make more games about Max and/or Chloe, and the French studio simply wasn’t interested.

If true, it would explain why the next installment, 2024’s Double Exposure, was a Deck Nine production that finally brought back Max Caulfield as the protagonist.

It almost felt like a reboot - an attempt return to the glory days.

Indeed, there was a bit of magic to seeing Max again, all grown up now as a photography teacher and artist-in-residence at Caledon, a Vermont university.

Sadly, just bringing back a beloved protagonist proved far from sufficient. While Hannah Telle reprising Max was a definite highlight, the game’s script let her down.

Double Exposure focused heavily on the supernatural powers that had been present in the series since day 1. But in addition to Max now being able to hop between two realities/timelines, the game also revealed her new best friend Safi being a shapeshifter, and featured the implication of yet more powers.

A series first, Double Exposure’s story concludes with a cliffhanger. One that promises to lean even more in a direction that, in a moment of frustration, I began to refer to as Marvel from Temu.

Not for the first time, it seemed like the latest Life is Strange game was missing an aspect of what had allowed those first games to reach into our soul.

And this time, they had missed the mark by such a margin that the future of the series seemed at stake. A dire notion, given that the talent and dedication of the people involved in making these games was never in question, and I never subscribed to the opinion that only Dontnod should make Life is Strange titles.

To me personally, though, Double Exposure was a tough pill to swallow. Even with Max’s return, the series had drifted so far from what I wanted to see, that I lost all confidence in it then and there.

Life is Strange was so special because it could make the mundane feel like magic. Instead, Double Exposure made the magical feel mundane.

Were these games really going to be just about superpowers now?

Looking back, one of the most memorable scenes of Life is Strange 1 is one where Chloe and Max simply lie on a bed listening to music. In Before the Storm, it’s Chloe and Rachel performing together in the school play. In True Colors, it’s Alex Chen singing Radiohead’s Freak by herself in her room.

If all the future had to add to this legacy was an ill-advised Avengers plot, I was out.

Reunion

And the moment I’m out, they pull me back in.

Life is Strange Reunion was announced just this January, and its major selling point was that it would bring back Chloe Price, the deuteragonist of Life is Strange 1 and the protagonist of Before the Storm.

At first, I didn’t know how to feel about this.

At no point did Double Exposure feel like it was building up to Chloe’s return. In fact, there is a strong argument to be made that one of its main narrative threads is Max moving on from Chloe.

Furthermore, Double Exposure, more than any other game in the series, assumed that it would be getting a direct sequel, leaving us with no doubt that its intended direction was the aforementioned Marvel at home ordeal.

Chloe’s only superpower, meanwhile, was talking shit.

So Chloe’s return wasn’t just unexpected, it actively clashed with what we’d been led to believe this game would be about.

It felt desperate. People rightfully didn’t like where the series was headed, so now Chloe was just thrown into the mix to keep them happy?

And yet...

Despite my skepticism, I was also intrigued.

Chloe was, without a shadow of doubt, my favorite character in the Life is Strange universe, and one of my all-time favorite video game characters.

Especially her role in Before the Storm stands out, since that game features one of the best, most accurate depictions of trauma and complicated grief in all of media.

(Lest I go on an endless tangent about this game, if you want to know more about what I’m talking about here, I can highly recommend this video on Before the Storm. In it, I explore the game’s psychology, symbolism and themes, as well as Chloe’s character, I dare say more in-depth than any other such attempt I’ve seen.)

What piqued my interest further was that Chloe would be played by Rhianna DeVries, who had also been her voice and motion cap actor in Before the Storm.

This wasn’t a given, since Chloe was originally voiced by Ashly Burch. While I respect both actors, it was Rhianna’s performance (and the writing behind it) that had resonated with me the most.

It almost felt as if this new game was aimed at me. An enticing offer meant to lower my defenses and allow the series one more chance to recapture my heart.

I’m definitely into the idea of the gaming industry tracking me - a random video game rambler from Holland - to create games that fit my specific tastes. Heavy Rain never would’ve happened, I can tell you that much.

Merriment aside, it seems probable that either Square Enix or Deck Nine (or both) saw the writing on the wall, and seeing no other refuge, they decided to give the fans what had once been sworn off so vehemently: a new Max & Chloe game.

Not a simple endeavor, given half the player base had let Chloe die at the end of Life is Strange 1, but we’ll get to that conundrum in due time.

Infernal inferno

For all the hoops that Deck Nine has to jump through to make Chloe return, the base premise of Reunion is mercifully simple.

After a business trip, our soon-to-be-famous photographer Max is on her way back to Caledon University when she receives a worrying message from her friend, astrophysicist Moses Murphy.

As she hurries back to campus, she finds that much of the university building is on fire. Try as she might to help, the fire consumes the building, with Moses and many others trapped inside and about to perish in the inferno.

In a callback to her power in Life is Strange 1, Max ‘jumps’ into a polaroid photo she took before the weekend and travels back in time, giving her and Moses a precious few days to try and prevent the fire before it happens.

This sets up the mystery that every Life is Strange game is wont to have, with the main gameplay loop consisting of collecting evidence on where the fire will start and who might become involved in causing it.

What stands out immediately is that Reunion carefully picks the more successful elements from Double Exposure and recycles them.

Caledon University and the Snapping Turtle bar return as the locations for various scenes, and a good chunk of the characters introduced in Double Exposure also return in some fashion.

Unsurprisingly, with the exception of Moses - who helps the protagonists throughout the game - these returning characters do have to settle for lesser roles in the wake of Chloe’s return.

Lest we forget - this is the reunion of Max and Chloe, the duo that started the entire Life is Strange craze to begin with.

It was this very realization that also made me feel nervous when I started playing this game. With Chloe being such an important character to me, a disappointing return would feel like a punch to the gut.

To make matters worse, apart from a short prologue, it takes like 2 hours of gameplay before Chloe truly enters the scene. This allowed tension and slight paranoia to build in my head, wondering whether her presence would indeed bring the salvation that this series so desperately needed, or it’d all be a massive letdown.

But then, Chloe arrives.

There she was, the mature version of a character whose mind I’d delved into countless times. A fictional character that felt yet so real.

It may sound strange, sad or even corny if you’ve never played these games, nor had a similar experience through another piece of fiction. But I can assure you that reuniting with a beloved real-life friend would barely have felt different than what I felt in that very moment.

It was cathartic. Like I had finally found what I was looking for in all these other Life is Strange games.

You see, it’s easy to dismiss Reunion as fan service. But it was the same complaint levied against Before the Storm, and I’ve already expressed how much I liked the way that game turned out. Hell, even Double Exposure was an attempt at fan service - it just didn’t yet dare go all the way.

I’ll fully admit it was a fear of mine in the weeks leading up to release. That this would just be some cash grab. Something wearing the skin of a Life is Strange classic but with nothing of value beneath its superficies.

But during that time, something else dawned upon me.

In all those years since leaving Arcadia Bay and playing the other Life is Strange games, my mind kept wandering back to that place and its people.

For instance, when I think of Life is Strange 2, the first scene that comes to mind is when I drove past the destroyed town of Arcadia Bay*, an otherwise inconsequential easter egg for players of the first game.

True Colors, meanwhile, prominently features Steph Gingrich, a fan favorite side character from Before the Storm. During my playthrough, I would always try to get her to talk about Arcadia Bay.

Point being, no matter how far the developers moved away from the original setting, I couldn’t get enough of it. Even the slightest reference, the mere acknowledgement that it was part of this universe: it meant everything to me.

So when I saw Chloe get out of her car, shittalk some preppy-looking kids and get kicked out of a bar before even setting one foot in the door, it hit me.

All those moments, all those tiny nuggets of information, they had all built up to this moment.

We’ve come full circle.

This didn’t mean I’d rid myself of all doubts and reservations on a whim. There were still many hours of gameplay ahead of me. I hadn’t read a single review - professional or user-generated - and I had looked up no further info as soon as I knew the base premise.

There was still plenty of room for this to fly off the rails in spectacular fashion. For it to be the same letdown that Double Exposure’s final hours had been.

But damnit, that’s a grown-up Chloe Price portrayed by Rhianna DeVries, and that’s already a win in my book.

Dual shock

Even though I was unable to fully let go of my reservations throughout most of my first playthrough, one conclusion I did draw pretty early on was that, if nothing else, Chloe’s presence was a net benefit for the moment-to-moment storytelling and gameplay.

In Reunion, both Max and Chloe are playable characters, with the game swapping control back and forth depending on the scene.

Since she reappeared in Double Exposure, Max did become more assertive, but retains her shy and introverted inclination. She therefore benefits greatly from her more confident friend being there to stick up for her when needed.

In my playthrough, I realized this when Max was talking to Chloe about her friend Safi.

Max felt bad because, in the previous scene, Safi had tried to guilt-trip Max about her powers - which she had used to prevent Safi’s death - messing with reality and creating a huge mess. When telling this to Chloe, she simply responds: “So she blamed you for bringing her back to life, and you agreed with her? That’s such bullshit.”

This sentiment closely resonated with my own feelings on the subject, but even beyond my own bias, it’s exactly this kind of down-to-earth pushback that simply would not have been on the table without Chloe.

In fact, the two playable protagonists formula works so well that I am surprised this was the first Life is Strange game to even try it.

With much of Reunion’s gameplay consisting of gathering evidence about the fire, having both Max and Chloe at their disposal as makeshift detectives grants Deck Nine double the possibilities for coming up with different investigative scenarios.

Max of course uses her time rewind powers to be very effective at extracting information from places or people without anyone knowing she was even there, whereas Chloe bluffs her way through various scenarios in order to get the info she needs.

In one of the subplots, Chloe tries to infiltrate a group of angry townsfolk who are planning a possibly violent protest at the campus. Here we get to see the full extent of Chloe’s arsenal, as she uses her charisma and turns up her ‘fuck the power’ persona in order to gain the trust of this group of - as Chloe puts it - resentful dicks.

Such a thread would simply not have been possible had it just been Max responding to our controller’s every command.

As with most Life is Strange games, though, this whole find out who’ll start the fire mystery ultimately only serves as a necessary piece of character motivation; that carrot at the end of the stick that ensures our heroes have a reason to keep pushing forward.

As befits its title, the most powerful moments in Life is Strange: Reunion happen when Chloe and Max are together. The chemistry between the two characters and their actors is tangible, to a point where you’d be forgiven for forgetting that this is the first time Hannah Telle and Rhianna DeVries star opposite each other. I certainly did.

The conversations between the two main characters cover a wide range of emotions. With them reconnecting after such a long time, there are equal parts surprise, joy, sadness and regret. These interactions are the lifeblood of the game.

Writing verisimilar dialogue tends to be the bane of video game and television writers alike, but most lines here feel natural, like you’d expect real people to react. This leads to moments like the aforementioned ‘post-Safi’ conversation between Max and Chloe, where the latter almost took the words out of my mouth.

The mystery at hand does occasionally get in the way of things when it soaks up a little too much continuous game time. But in general, the writers intersperse the sleuthing with enough Max & Chloe moments to keep scratching that decade-old itch.

Each new interaction feels like a reward in itself.

It just goes to show what Double Exposure was lacking this entire time: a strong co-star.

Both Life is Strange 1 and Before the Storm benefited from each having a secondary character that felt almost equal in importance to the respective protagonist. The interactions with these deuteragonists were the main driving force behind many of the more exciting, high-stakes scenarios featured in those games.

In retrospect, this is where subsequent Life is Strange games had struggled to replicate that almost spiritual connection. Characters like Steph (True Colors) and Safi (Double Exposure) were great in their own right, but never quite reached that ‘cosmically entwined’ level of Chloe or Rachel.

It makes one wonder why Chloe wasn’t brought back sooner.

Well, remember half the player base killing her off in Life is Strange 1?

Yeah, about that...

Don’t kill your darlings

Chloe’s return to the series can primarily be understood in the wider context of Reunion being a salvaging operation of sorts.

As discussed earlier, Double Exposure headed into a clear direction with its focus on superpowers, and even showed an active disinterest in bringing back Chloe. It’s only by fault of the game’s critical and commercial setbacks that this did not materialize further.

With its very premise, Reunion already walks back a lot of Double Exposure’s vision. Chloe is brought back, and as a consequence, other characters must make room.

This friction is sometimes tangible in the game, where some of the characters give you the feeling that they were destined for a bigger role before said course correction came into effect.

Double Exposure’s romance options, Amanda and Vinh, get to spend noticeably less time with Max regardless of whether or not you choose to carry over either romance into Reunion. Film student Diamond Washington makes no on-screen appearance at all, despite a bigger role for her being hinted at near the end of Double Exposure.

Even certain elements of the plot - such as the many references to witchery - seem like they may have been selectively cannibalized from earlier scripts or pitches where they would’ve had a more central role.

While Chloe is the biggest benefactor of these changes, her return was also the biggest walk-back of them all.

With players having had the option to let her die at the end of Life is Strange 1, a solution had to be found that would guarantee Chloe’s survival without it outright dismissing that fatal outcome as ever having been an option.

Fortunately, an opening was found in Double Exposure.

In that game’s climax, Max is seemingly faced with a choice that mirrors Bay or Bae, this time having to choose between the survival of her friend Safi or preventing the destruction of her university. However, Max refuses and instead finds a way to merge two realities together, guaranteeing the survival of both.

Reunion uses this merging of realities to also weld together the two endings of the original Life is Strange, resulting in the survival of both Bay and Bae.

At first, Max is not aware of this rather significant side-effect, so depending on your choice, she is shocked to discover that either Arcadia Bay or Chloe has survived. And of course, Chloe herself gets an existential crisis when she finds out that either her hometown’s continued existence or her entire life over the past decade has effectively been an illusion.

Is all of this a convoluted and deterministic plot twist whose sole purpose it is to make Chloe come back?

Unequivocally, yes.

But it was also a necessary move, and out of all the options on the table, it would’ve been among the more elegant ones. At the very least, the game has the guts to address this apparent paradox at length, and even manages to weave it into an interesting narrative thread involving Chloe and Safi being partially stuck in limbo.

As someone who enjoys writing, I’m well familiar with the adage of kill your darlings. And there would’ve been a time where I agreed that it was probably best to leave both Chloe and Max in the past.

Yet after once again witnessing this irresistible duo - a little older and a little wiser - it’s undeniable that they still had at least one good story left in them.

Odds are stacked against us

So, will this entire operation result in Life is Strange slipping out of niche territory and re-establishing itself as a prime franchise?

No, but that was never quite the point.

Dark clouds were already visible following the disappointing release of Double Exposure. Anyone who knows anything about the deplorable state of the video game industry will be aware that even one underperforming game can mean the end of a studio.

Indeed, Deck Nine seems to be close to the edge, with its number of employees drastically reduced in the months leading up to the release and most of the Reunion team already having dissolved. The developer’s official website still plays the Double Exposure trailer and only lists Reunion in a news article.

Sharing his release day thoughts, Reunion’s narrative lead Jonathan Zimmerman called Reunion “a game about miracles,” and implies that the very existence of the game may be the biggest miracle of them all.

Given the short development time since Double Exposure and the entire game appearing to be a massive pivot away from its original direction, the development team covered an extraordinary amount of ground before dissolving.

The result is a game that feels like it has been crafted for a specific audience. Long-time fans of the series who wanted nothing more than to go on one last adventure with the characters they grew up with.

Life is Strange: Reunion fully lives up to this goal.

Sure, the stitches of the rescue operation are still visible. Chloe is there because the narrative demands it, and Max’s powers have evolved just enough to facilitate both this comeback and the resolution of the main campus fire plot. Some characters don’t get the growth they deserve because Max and Chloe hog the stage.

All valid criticisms, but they remind me of another game.

The first Life is Strange.

In that game, didn’t Max’s powers play fast and loose with their own rules as the plot demanded it? Can we honestly say that anyone other than Chloe and Max got a modicum of their character development? Didn’t a catastrophe happen in every chapter purely because it’d keep the players hooked for the next one?

Nostalgia is a gentle force that covers up the blemishes of all the things we hold dear. Since its inception, Life is Strange has been host to convoluted stories, a lack of internally driven character growth** and things that happen in a specific way purely because plot demands them to.

There were plenty of people who, based on these grounds, dismissed Life is Strange from the very beginning. Too lame. Too cringey.

Too sincere, one could say.

But some of us saw past such blemishes and stuck around, because we realized that - as the cliché dictates - the game was more than the sum of its parts. There was just something there. A connection with the characters that felt more real than in any other game.

All you needed was a bit of goodwill and patience to see it all come together.

This makes Reunion such a fitting end to the series. Not because it is a perfect game, but because it’s every bit as honest and disarming as the game that started it all.

Conclusion

At its surface, Reunion may seem like a cash grab. An attempt to win back disillusioned fans with yet another familiar face.

But I dare say that anyone who plays this game will soon see that it’s closer to a passion project. A game willed into existence simply because the writers, actors, designers, animators and other developers felt that the fans - and even the studio itself - deserved a worthy ending.

Those who play Reunion will also see that, despite its at times Frankensteinian nature, the game feels more focused than some of its predecessors.

Perhaps it is because of that very rush to get this project out the door, that a lot of fat was trimmed and the developers were able to prioritize those parts that truly mattered.

In addition to the interactions between Chloe and Max offering some of the best scenes that the series has seen, the mystery plot is surprisingly fun in its relative simplicity.

In its challenge to figure out whodunnit, the game doesn’t throw too many curve balls at you. So as a player, you’re rewarded for simply paying attention. While none of it is rocket science, I was quite proud of myself when I had largely figured out the who and what of the mystery before it was all revealed to me.

Reunion also features some great visual and cinematic work, with Max tripping balls at a student party being just one of many highlights that’s etched into my brain after just one playthrough. Add a killer soundtrack for those immaculate vibes, and it’s actually just a good game, even divorced of the context of the entire franchise.

That said, that context does add another layer to the game.

Life is Strange: Reunion was made with the clear purpose of offering closure to the fans. The game itself is very aware of this.

The game reflects as it moves forward. Its essence restored, the circle complete, the only difference perhaps being that it’s now a game about adult women talking about their feelings.

As the credits roll, we see photos of Max and Chloe. They’re not even doing anything special in these images. Just living life. After so much suffering, loss and trauma, they have found happiness.

And with them, so have we.

When I reached this credit sequence for the first time, I could finally let my guard down. My fears hadn’t come true. The game didn’t fly off the rails in a spectacular fashion. No superheroes, no cliffhangers. Just two characters whom I love, being okay.

Up until this point, nearly every Life is Strange game had ended in a bittersweet manner. Even if you got the ‘good’ ending, there was always a catch. Something that would eat away at you every time you thought back on the game.

Not this time. The conclusion that I got was an actual happy ending with no catch. Nothing to summon that bittersweet feeling.

Nothing, except maybe one small thing.

This might the end of Life is Strange. The last story that was allowed to find its way to the fans.

It’s been real.

Closing thoughts

If somehow you read all or even part of this, thank you very much! This piece took many hours to write, redact and revise, and even though the final version is still super long, I feel like it reflects what I wanted it to be: a culmination of all my thoughts on the series. An anthology of my every observation, theory and opinion that has helped make my experience with these games into something truly unforgettable.

And if this piece somehow finds its way to anyone who’s worked on this game: thank you for going more than the extra mile to give us such a satisfying finale. Whatever happens next, ya did well.

Notes:
*This scene plays out differently depending on your final choice in Life is Strange 1.
**I had no place to elaborate on what I mean by this without massively derailing an already giant article. But just in case you are curious, what I’m referring to here is that in the Dontnod games (Life is Strange 1 and 2), character growth only happens in extreme increments as the result of anomalous external factors. For example: Character A is being vile to Character B. Character B attempts to kill herself. Character A is now instantly filled with regret and empathy. If you want to see what the opposite of this looks like, look at Chloe and to an extent her stepdad David Madsen as they are portrayed in Before the Storm. People like to dog on Deck Nine for Double Exposure, but they have always understood character development better than Dontnod, and I will die on that hill.

It’s been three months into 2026 already, and with that, three months into me posting my game-related musings here!

I reckoned that it would be fun to do something different once in a while, so every quarter I want to briefly write about the games that I didn’t get to talk about enough or at all in one of my regular articles.

So that’s why I hereby present my first big quarterly video game round-up!

Note that, while some of the games that I’m about to discuss have indeed been released in Q1 2026, that is not a prerequisite for them to make it on here: rather, this is about the games I’ve played during Q1.

I’ll start of with the games that also happen to have been released during this period, in case you were expecting something different and don’t want to leave all disappointed.

So let’s get the show going!

Pokémon Pokopia

Pokopia is the surprise hit of early 2026, becoming the highest-rated Pokémon game of all time on Metacritic and selling millions of copies across the first few days of March.

All it took for me was one gameplay demonstration of the developers showing just how deep Pokopia’s building mechanics go, and I believed the hype.

It actually took me a lot of effort to track down a physical copy, but since I did, I’ve been putting some solid hours into the game.

I’ve still barely scratched the surface, but so far I would say that Pokopia definitely lives up to the surrounding buzz. It’s cozy, cute and incredibly deep.

I hope I’m creative and dedicated enough to get the most out of the insanely profound building and landscaping options this game offers, but so far I would say that Pokopia has what it takes to be that Switch 2 system seller that Nintendo was hoping for.

Life is Strange: Reunion

And now for something completely different. If you’re reading this article on its day of publication, Life is Strange: Reunion was released only two days ago.

I’ve lost count as to how many Life is Strange games it’s been, but Reunion is significant since it promises to wrap up the arc that started with the original Life is Strange.

In that game, you play as young photographer Max Caulfield, who returns to her idyllic Oregon hometown of Arcadia Bay to attend a prestigious high school and gets wrapped up in a mystery involving her childhood friend Chloe Price.

Since then, the original Life is Strange has received a brilliant prequel in Before the Storm and a lackluster direct sequel with Double Exposure, with Reunion being slated as the end of the Arcadia Bay arc.

I already wrote quite a bit on the aforementioned prequel Before the Storm in an earlier article, and readers of that piece will know that I absolutely adore that particular installment. It still stands as a masterclass in ludonarrative storytelling: so a story that works in tandem with the gameplay rather than simply existing alongside it. There is also a lot of subtext and symbolism at play, all of which is unusually coherent for a video game.

With Double Exposure being just about the inverse - a shallow attempt at a spectacle - Reunion has me both excited and worried. Do the devs still have the magic spark?

Having played the first few hours, it’s too early to tell, but I can say that it has been surreal seeing series favorite Chloe Price return as not just a prominent character, but a co-protagonist.

To me, Chloe’s portrayal in Before the Storm remains one of the best-written characters in a video game, period.

So getting to see her live out a new phase in her life is almost like a dream come true, but I am in equal parts worried that what’s yet to follow might hurt her legacy more than it reinforces it. Given the nature of this story-driven franchise, there are a lot of narrative wrong turns left to take.

That being said, I’m cautiously optimistic so far, and you can look forward to a full report once I’ve finished the game!

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds

One of the more amusing narratives of the gaming year 2025 was who’d take the crown of the best mascot racer.

After all, it was an unusually stacked year for Mario Kart and its adepts.

The Italian plumber himself of course starred in his latest smash hit racing game, Mario Kart World.

His old foe also had a strong showing on the race track, however, with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds.

Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Kirby Air Riders provided a different spin on the kart racing subgenre, making this a three-way battle.

While Mario Kart World is, on its surface, once again an extremely solid entry into the series and even adopts an open world concept for the first time, it also faced some criticism from fans. These criticisms focused on rather specific parts of the game, such as its online track selection mechanics and the composition of the open world.

So while the new Mario Kart was a resounding success in terms of its sales, it also left some space for another game to fill that more hardcore, traditional kart racing niche.

Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is that game, offering an extremely polished and fast-paced racing experience that may not do as much to drive the genre forward, but provides that streamlined pick-up-and-play experience for people who might’ve felt a bit lost in Mario Kart World.

Many were even calling it better than Mario Kart World, but it’s always difficult to judge whether such opinions are representative of the broader sentiment or just the result of noisy online discourse.

Since the physical edition Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for Switch 2 was released on March 26, I was finally able to try it for myself.

Again, if you’re reading this article on publication day, it’s only been two days, so I can’t quite call it yet, but so far Sonic Racing: Crossworlds is promising, and I can definitely see why it has such a dedicated fanbase.

The racing experience is smooth and seems quite a bit faster than Mario Kart World. It just feels good, making for a rather addictive experience.

Having completed all the Grands Prix in the game, I’ll have to wait and see if I’ll be returning to the game as much as I have to the past few Mario Kart installments, so the jury’s still out.

So far, though, Kirby Air Riders might still secretly be my favorite mascot racer of the current era. But that’s a topic for a different article.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Speaking of the pink puffball, I’ve been playing a ton of Kirby so far this year. One might say an unhealthy amount, but we all know that Kirby reduces cortisol levels.

I already touched on the design of Kirby and the Forgotten Land before, but I just kept playing the game since then.

I’ve since completed all of the content in both the base game and the Star-Crossed World DLC, and I can say in earnest that it ranks up there as perhaps my favorite 3D platforming experience of them all.

What makes Kirby and the Forgotten Land so good is that it’s one of the few 3D platformers - perhaps even the only one - to have such a deep movement set for its protagonist.

Every copy ability comes in multiple forms and has its own, fleshed-out moveset. There is even a dodge mechanic that feels like it was ripped straight out of Dark Souls.

Of course, this is nothing new for the Kirby series, but to see it executed so well in 3D for the first time does make the experience feel novel, with certain parts feeling more like a 3D action game than a traditional platformer.

I’ve played about 20 different platformers so far this year, but I can say with confidence that Kirby and the Forgotten Land has left the biggest impression on me.

Super Mario 64

My overindulgence in platformers in 2026 came after a long break from the genre. So in addition to trying new ones, I’m also revisiting some of my favorites from days gone by, which of course has to include one of the most important games of all time: Super Mario 64.

Yes, Mario was a well-established platforming icon by the mid to late ‘80s, but Super Mario 64 from 1996 changed everything because it was the first 3D entry into the series.

While this installment wasn’t the first 3D platformer overall, it was arguably the first one that was good. And I mean really good.

Its more open-ended structure instantly became the template for 3D platformers everywhere, and indeed most of them followed to a tee. Games like Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and Gex: Enter the Gecko were almost direct copies of Super Mario 64 design-wise, whereas Spyro the Dragon, Croc and Glover gave more of a unique spin to the formula while still being influenced heavily by it.

In other words, it’s hard to imagine what the late ‘90s 3D platforming craze would’ve looked like without this one iconic game. Along with Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64 even did a lot of legwork to shape 3D open world design, as I elaborated on in an earlier article.

All that being said, is Super Mario 64 still fun today? Well, yes.

Given that it was the first 3D platformer to display this level of ambition, it comes with its fair share of quirks. Like most 3D platformers of that generation, its camera is rather atrocious, and this was released in an era when developers would still put overbearing water levels in every game to show off the technical prowess of their respective game system.

But, in spite of these sins, Super Mario 64 still feels surprisingly playable, making it not so difficult to achieve that flow state of platforming where the movement almost feels like you are dancing with the environment.

I can recommend giving this game a go if you never have, as it’ll reveal a lot about why 3D platformers are the way they are, even to this day.

Just prepare to put up with a moderate amount of crap once in a while.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

With Pokopia being the latest cozy sensation on a Nintendo console, Animal Crossing will be taking a bit of a backseat in most people’s libraries.

Personally, I still find myself checking in on my island almost daily.

I don’t really do a lot, nor is my island close to where I would present it to others with a modicum of confidence, but I just enjoy checking in on my villagers with some regularity.

Even after all this time, I find the game to be absolutely endearing.

Gex: Enter the Gecko

Also known as Gex 64, I am playing this 1998 3D platformer for the first time since... well, 1999 probably.

I spent some effort tracking down a physical edition of the Gex Trilogy collection on the Switch, as part of my recent efforts to build a comprehensive library of platforming games on my backwards compatible Switch 2.

Even if you’d never heard of Enter the Gecko, about 2-3 minutes of gameplay footage would probably be enough to date it to a high degree of accuracy.

As mentioned before, it’s one of many games that was made to cash in on the 3D platforming hype started by Super Mario 64.

As is typical of most pretenders to Mario’s throne, Gex doesn’t quite reach the quality standard set by Nintendo, with simpler level design and a camera that I distinctively remember to be atrocious even by the much lower standards of the day.

Add in a bunch of by now ancient pop culture references voiced by Dana Gould - consisting mostly of one-liners I didn’t get at the time and I don’t care for now that I do - and you have an obviously flawed experience.

Still, the movement itself is a lot better than I’d remembered, and I do have a fair bit of nostalgia for this game, so I am glad that this piece of slightly awkward platforming history is sitting on my shelf in full, playable form.

Conclusion

And that’s it for my Q1 video game wrap-up! I’ve played many more games, but I either don’t have much interesting to say about those, or so many interesting things that a fully fledged article on these games is the better option.

Be sure to let me know which game you’ve enjoyed playing the most so far this year.

Also, if you like my insights and you haven’t subscribed to my posts yet, don’t forget to do so! It’s completely free and there will be a fresh article in your mailbox every Saturday.

When you’re active in gaming communities on the internet, it’s easy to see narratives form surrounding certain titles.

Especially with established franchises, a consensus develops over time, where some installments are regarded as the pinnacle of their series while others become the designated black sheep of the family.

You’d be hard-pressed to find many people who consider Halo 4 to be the best in the series, whereas hardcore Elder Scrolls fans will not let you off easily if you have anything bad to say about Morrowind.

That’s not to say that you can’t go against the grain. Entire careers have been built around subverting the accepted opinion on games. Claim that a game everyone loves is actually not that great, or valiantly defend that one entry in a franchise that all the fans loathe, and you’re sure to attract a lot of attention.

However, in rare cases, the consensus on certain games actually does flip. Games are re-evaluated all the time, and if enough people change their mind on a specific title, its reputation may tank or soar as enough time passes and new narratives gain momentum.

The Legend of Zelda is actually a franchise where this happens all the time, and I want to look at some of the more interesting examples of paradigm shifts that happened within the Zelda fandom.

These evolving consensuses can teach us a lot about how games are sometimes ahead of their time, yearning for a more forward-thinking audience to finally be understood and appreciated. At other times, a lack of awareness about the historical context of a game may lead to revisionism, or genuine flaws may become more apparent over time.

The Zelda series is particularly suited for the analysis of this type of consensus evolution, because it’s a long-running franchise that has touched multiple generations of gamers. During this time, it has maintained a consistently high standard of quality in spite of some radical changes in design over the years.

First, let’s take a look at the ‘universal truths’ that are still upheld within the Zelda fandom to this day to get a taste of how fans evaluate their favorite series.

Well over three decades later, Zelda’s 1991 SNES entry A Link to the Past is still seen as the pinnacle of the series’ 2D era. Purely in terms of its design, it was probably the most influential entry in terms of what people would come to expect from a Zelda game’s structure.

Rather than going with the free-form go in any direction format of the original Zelda, or the side-scrolling RPG concept of its sequel, A Link to the Past introduced the more cinematic pacing that would define the series for the subsequent 20 years.

Another ‘untouchable’ in the series is Ocarina of Time. The first 3D Zelda game, it took the structure of A Link to the Past and reimagined it within a 3D space, and in doing so redefined what 3D gaming looked, felt and played like.

Ocarina of Time is still considered one of the best games of all time in general, and since every Zelda game up until Skyward Sword was built upon template, its position in the series’ legacy is wholly uncontroversial.

Earlier this month, I wrote a full article on why this game was (and is) such a big deal, so give that a read if you’d like me to go more in-depth on that.

The more we venture beyond these two beloved classics - A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time - the more division and debate we can see among the fanbase, but the interesting part is that the generally accepted outcome of these debates has shifted over time.

Starting with a classic, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has seen its reputation go through highs and lows since it was initially released in 1987-1988.*

Initially met with praise from critics and players alike, the game later turned out to be rather unusual and thus controversial for a Zelda entry.

Neither its side-scrolling perspective nor the fleshed-out RPG elements would grow out to become series mainstays, with future 2D titles favoring the first Zelda’s top-down perspective instead, and focusing on action, adventure and puzzling as the core of the gameplay experience.

This dubious ‘uniqueness’ as well as the game’s uncharacteristically punishing difficulty made Zelda II the black sheep. It became known as that Zelda game to avoid unless you were a diehard fan willing to play them all.

This reputation endured for decades, until in recent years, people rediscovered the game and began to appreciate its intricacy, challenge and contributions towards the franchise at large.

It’s an example of how retrospectives can help rehabilitate a game long after it’s been released.

An even more remarkable example of the reputation transformation of certain Zelda games is the 2002-2003 installment The Wind Waker,* released for the Nintendo Gamecube.

Only the third 3D title in the series, Wind Waker distinguished itself not by reinventing the formula but by its aesthetics. Whereas the previous 3D Zelda games had an art style that aimed for realism, Wind Waker did almost the exact opposite and had a cartoony, cel-shaded look.

If you look at present-day discourse on the game, Wind Waker appears to be quite a popular Zelda game. Many praise its art style, which has indeed aged gracefully, as well as its more open-ended world design.

At the same time, many accept that Wind Waker feels rushed in places. It shows glaring pacing issues, with entire dungeons seemingly cut late in development. Even some excessive padding in the adventure’s latter stages could not prevent it from being rather short for a Zelda game.

The interesting thing here is that this narrative is almost the inverse of what people were saying about Wind Waker initially.

You see, Wind Waker was released during the edgiest era in the history of popular culture.

Gaming was affected as well, with many Nintendo fans now being unruly teens who wanted something dark, violent and ‘mature’ from their hobby. It was the age of GTA and Halo.

During that time, Nintendo was already struggling with its image of being a company for kids. So the one-two tandem of putting out a console that resembled a purple lunchbox and a Zelda game that looked like a Saturday morning cartoon was a sobering reminder that the Japanese manufacturer, for all its brilliance, could still horribly misjudge the needs of Western markets.

It didn’t help that Nintendo had put out a teaser at Spaceworld 2000 showcasing a fight between Link and Ganondorf, using a realistic art style that felt more like an evolution of Ocarina of Time’s aesthetics.

The tonal whiplash of Wind Waker’s cuteness was simply too much for Nintendo’s maturing audience to handle, with many of them ‘converting’ to Playstation or Xbox.

I vividly remember a heated discussion with someone on Wind Waker in the year following its release, with me saying it was simply a cutesy version of Ocarina of Time, and them saying I was just angry because the game didn’t look like Ocarina of Time.

This makes it all the more interesting to me that the prime argument in favor of Wind Waker these days is its distinct and timeless art style, while most people accept that the game has some rather obvious blemishes in terms of its pacing and structure.

I guess we were both right, in our own way.

Having witnessed this perfect 180 on Wind Waker’s reputation, I view the changing narrative surrounding Skyward Sword with great interest.

Skyward Sword was released in the final stages of the Wii’s lifetime, in 2011. As a Zelda game, it was remarkable in multiple ways.

While reputed for its focus on motion controls, it was also the Zelda game that started putting more emphasis on cinematic storytelling, as well as taking more overt inspirations from Japanese culture rather than Western myth and fantasy tropes.

In terms of its design, Skyward Sword turned out to be the last mainline Zelda game to date to use what became known as the classic Zelda formula. This formula was the one introduced in A Link to the Past and refined for 3D with Ocarina of Time. It had since been the core structure of most of the subsequent Zelda games.

Rather than going for a fully open world, these Zelda games were semi-open, featuring a linear sense of progression from dungeon to dungeon, with the inbetween moments being spent in a hub world that mostly served as a setting for mini-games, restocking and general respite.

It was exactly this formula that became the focal point of criticism levied at Skyward Sword. Oft-heard complaints were that the game had become predictable and boring, playing out more or less the same as most previous entries into the Zelda series.

Of all the ways to insult Nintendo, calling them predictable is perhaps the one that hurts them the most.

And so, for the subsequent Zelda title, 2017’s Breath of the Wild, they upended the classic formula, opting instead for a completely open-ended experience that takes inspiration from both the original Legend of Zelda and industry-defining open world games such as Skyrim.

Breath of the Wild became a smash hit and the best-selling Zelda game to date. It received a direct sequel in Tears of the Kingdom, which expanded upon Breath of the Wild’s open-ended design. Series director Eiji Aonuma has since stated that this design would also form the basis for subsequent Zelda games.

It was exactly this new reality that is now inspiring the first, modest steps towards the rehabilitation of Skyward Sword. With Skyward Sword HD - a remastered edition for the Switch - still being widely available, it is likely to be the first contact point for newer players with the classic Zelda formula.

Said formula does have its drawbacks, such as the aforementioned predictability, but it also offers the advantage of having a much clearer sense of where to go next. With open world games becoming ever more abundant, more gamers have come to appreciate the fact that they don’t need to stress about where to go next, since a game like Skyward Sword just tells them.

So, over the past months, I’ve seen more and more posts on social media and in Zelda-centered communities that are treading the waters of a possible re-evaluation of Skyward Sword.

Whether these attempts will succeed remains to be seen, since it can be argued that Skyward Sword is one of the less stellar executions of the traditional formula. Even those Zelda fans desiring a more streamlined experience yet again might be better off choosing Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess as the champions of their cause.

Will Skyward Sword ever receive the adoration that befell Wind Waker so many years after its release? Only time will tell.

What stands out, though, is that the respective reputations of these high-profile games are subject to change.

So if you ever find yourself in a position where you just don’t get the hype for a certain game, or you love a game that everyone seems to dismiss, don’t be dismayed. Instead, try to build a case for it, and maybe you’ll be at the forefront of a changing narrative.

It is this type of independent thinking that defines good video game content.

After all, today’s fringe opinion might be tomorrow’s consensus.

Notes:
*The release of both Zelda II and Wind Waker varies based on regions, so exact release dates are hard to pinpoint when discussing the games and the global discourse surrounding them.

Sources for this article used were the Wikipedia pages of some of the games, merely to confirm basic data such as release dates for different regions. Part of the Wind Waker discussion was inspired by a Manley Reviews video.

Years ago, I was a part of a small group of friends from some gaming forum who occasionally played together on Steam. One day, we noticed that one of our members had logged over 1500 hours in Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Since a truck simulator is not among the flashiest of video games, this led to some light-hearted ridicule. Several others - me included - owned this game, but none of us even had a fraction of his play time.

When we asked him about this habit, he responded calmly that he considered it his therapy. This led to more ribbing. Just how many hours of therapy did this guy need?

Now, many years later, I’m still quite far away from that 1500-hour mark, but I’ve spent over 500 hours in the game’s North American counterpart, the aptly titled American Truck Simulator.

It would go a bit far for me to call this gaming habit actual therapy, but I cannot deny that, on some level, it does feel therapeutic.

And of course, I now tend to find myself on the other side of that conversation, where people are mystified as to why I’ve put so many hours into a game that just consists of driving around and making deliveries.

Well, allow me to explain.

Over the years, playing this truck simulator has allowed me to experience something rare: how powerful places and landscapes in media can be, and how they can blend together with our dearest memories and deepest sentiments.

I already touched on this in my discussion of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild, and how its ruins allowed me to interact with childhood memories in an almost tangible form.

Of course, such a concept would be a convoluted reason to simply try out a video game, and indeed my initial motivation to start playing American Truck Simulator was a lot more mundane.

If you’ve been gaming for many years, you might have figured that, not only do different games fit different moods, but your general preference also shifts as you reach new stages in your life.

When I was young, I used to enjoy games that had violence and spectacle, as well as ones that offered a substantial challenge. My desire for both of these qualities dampened as I grew older. Not just because the novelty of video game violence wore off, but because I was getting enough of a challenge from real life to lose the desire to seek it out in video games all that much.

It’s not that I started to avoid these challenges altogether. Until recently, I still did a lot of competitive, ego-driven online gaming, leading to more cortisol spikes than my doctor would be happy with.

While I do like excitement, I personally cannot enjoy a hobby if it’s all intensity with no respite. The more I played these high-stakes games, the more I started to feel the need for an antidote. A nice, calming gaming experience to wind down for the weekend.

And so, Sunday became American Truck Simulator day.

The ritual is simple. I set up my driving wheel and pedals, fire up a good podcast and/or background music, and drive through the western United States with a drink by my side. Just 1-2 hours of such activity in the evening is enough for me to wind down from the accumulated stress of work and other challenges.

So no, it’s not therapy in the sense that I’m processing all my existential troubles and becoming a better person by driving over some virtual roads, but the soothing, positive mental effect is very real.

If I had to put a quirky label on it, ASMR on wheels might be the most accurate description of this particular experience.

However, there’s much more to my experience with American Truck Simulator than a cozy, low-stress gaming experience: this was ultimately just the circumstance that allowed me to find yet more value in my exploration of the map.

American Truck Simulator takes place in a sized-down version of the United States, with the developers using geographical data and on-site reconnaissance to recreate the country’s many iconic landmarks, cityscapes and biomes.

When the game was first released in 2016, it only contained the western states of California, Nevada and Arizona. Since then, new maps have been added as DLC, with most of the west of the country now being complete and a future DLC even venturing into the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Still, no matter how much land was added to the map, I noticed that my discovery of these new zones was being halted by a peculiar factor.

I kept finding myself going back to the Pacific Northwest, consisting of the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. There was just something about this part of the country (and the game’s representation of it) that made me return there after every delivery.

There are already plenty of logical, surface-level reasons for making Cascadia my home base. This part of the map is rich with dense forests, scenic coastal roads and picturesque fishing towns.

All of those things make me happy, and cross-referencing certain areas with Google Maps confirmed that the designers did a very good job at recreating real-world locations in the game.

And yet, that explanation fails to tell the entire story.

Something about it felt magical. More magical than a truck simulator has any right to feel.

The key to wrapping my head around this was realizing that American Truck Simulator is an unwitting part of a lineage of media that has had a huge impact on me across my life.

And that mellow, nostalgic tingling I felt in my stomach every time I drove into the Pacific Northwest confirmed this game’s unlikely place in that lineage.

From what I recall, this lineage started with Stand By Me, a film adaptation of Stephen King’s novella The Body. Filmed primarily in Oregon, the movie follows a group of young children walking for two days through the state’s enchanting wilderness.

Their aim is to reach the rumored spot of the dead body of a missing child, but this is simply a plot device to justify the kids’ transformative journey.

I saw Stand By Me when I was still very young, and it had a profound impact on me.

Even when I was barely old enough to understand the deeper layers of this movie, I was in awe of the scenery. That beautiful American nature that seemed so infinitely more grand and untamed than what I was used to at home.

Stand By Me itself was about the carelessness of youth slipping through your fingers. About the fading of friendships that you thought would last a lifetime. Being still young and impressionable, the interaction between this coming-of-age theme and its almost mythical backdrop left a profound and lasting impression on me.

For the first time in my life, I experienced nostalgia - that bittersweet longing for something which no longer is. Even if I had no life experience or other references to draw on.

I was primed to experience these feelings of bittersweet longing, and I subconsciously linked them to that faraway place that seemed so beautiful yet so unknowable.

A seed was planted.

It did not take long for more media to start pushing those same buttons.

Soon after Stand By Me came The X-Files, whose early seasons were all shot in British Columbia, the Canadian extension of the Pacific Northwest. True to its supernatural themes, the show helped reinforce this mental connection between the region’s natural beauty and a mysterious aura.

Later came the first Life is Strange game and its prequel Before the Storm, both set in a fictional Oregon coastal town. At least the first game is partially inspired by Stand By Me, sharing not just its setting but also its nostalgic coming-of-age theme. And so, this experience reawakened my fascination with the region and reinforced one of my deepest media-related childhood memories.

So, how does American Truck Simulator fit into this equation?

While its more mundane nature sets it apart from the aforementioned productions, the game is able to expand on this emotional fundament.

The driving experience itself may be straightforward and lack all of the elements of mystery and storytelling that for example Stand By Me offers, but there is still something surrealistic about being able to freely explore a space that has been cultivated across different media all these years.

If all this sounds vague, perhaps the best way I can describe it is that it’s like having vivid dream featuring a beautiful location - one of those dreams where you’re sad once you wake up. Then imagine if you one day fire up a game, and that place from your dream is actually there, waiting for you to explore it.

When driving through Oregon and Washington, it’s almost like I recognize and remember all the locales, from the lonely beaches to the sleeping villages I drive by during my journeys.

And yes, these ‘memories’ are tied to fictional media, so this is ultimately just romantic projection, but this matters little for the emotional impact of it all.

At this point, it may not surprise you to learn that I am a sentimentalist.

For my entire life, I’ve been extremely sensitive to the overall atmosphere of a place. Whenever I go somewhere, my mind makes a split-second decision on whether the vibes are good or bad. And once that judgment has been cast, it’s almost impossible to change my mind.

This applies to both the real world and virtual ones.

In my daily life, I prefer to take certain routes while traveling because they simply feel better, even if this preference increases my travel time.

That same sensibility means that I’m able to enjoy a game much better if the world it presents is one I enjoy existing in. I may even keep traveling back to a certain town in a game not for gameplay reasons, but simply because it feels good to be there.

Likewise, American Truck Simulator turned into such a mentally soothing game not just because of its low-stakes gameplay objectives and overall freedom, but because it allows me inhabit a very specific comfort zone that I subconsciously created for myself from an early age.

It’s part of what makes these Sunday evening trucking sessions the ideal wind-down for me. Even if I don’t do the amount of hardcore gaming I used to, my time in the simulator still neatly counteracts much of the real-life stress I experience from time to time.

I would not quite call it therapy as that old friend did, but I do see how something as seemingly mundane as a truck simulator can occupy an emotional space for someone like me who is deeply attracted to certain landscapes and specific vibes.

As the game’s map keeps expanding into the east with each new DLC, I find myself returning to this neat little area where the vibes are just right.

Of course, many of my hours in the game are simply spent having fun as I drive and listen to a cool song or funny podcast.

But once every so often, I get a taste of that vibrant energy that used to be so abundant when I was a child. Just a hint, like a pleasant smell carried by the wind.

If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

Much has already been said in praise of Breath of the Wild. As the first 3D game in the Legend of Zelda series to be truly open world, it immediately redefined what that term even meant.

Once you break out of the confines of a small tutorial zone, you are set loose into the world, free to go and do as you please.

You can in fact run straight to the final boss in your starter gear if you are either skilled or suicidal enough, which is something that sets Breath of the Wild apart from other open world games such as Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption.

In those games, completing the game still requires you to indulge in hours and hours of story-driven quests until you get to see the credits.

Not so in Breath of the Wild, where even the story is largely optional.

In this sense, Breath of the Wild is a deconstruction of decades of game design evolution, with its strongest inspiration in fact being the very first Zelda game, which was released 40 years ago(!) and featured a similar ‘pick-any-direction’ premise.

However, today we are not going to untangle the game’s open-ended structure nor even the implications of such design for the storytelling - the latter of which has already been done thoroughly by over at Late to the LAN Party.

Rather, I want to zoom out and observe an aspect of the game’s presentation that goes unspoken. It has to do with the land of Hyrule itself and it taps into the way Breath of the Wild ties the entire series together.

Hyrule, in this game’s iteration, is presented as a sort of post-apocalyptic limbo. The premise of the game is that you wake up 100 years after the king died, and the fallen kingdom is now effectively waiting to be devoured by the evil of Calamity Ganon.

It’s exactly this fickle and foreboding stasis that makes Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule feel unlike any post-apocalyptic setting I’ve experienced before.

Sure, there are monsters roaming the land now - rather intimidating ones at that - and you can see the massive spectral shadow of Calamity Ganon circling around Hyrule Castle from almost any point in the map.

But apart from that, it is actually serene.

Hyrule, even after its fall, remains a land of unmatched beauty.

Endless rolling plains, dense forests, desert oases and unbridled rivers stretch across the land, interspersed with small settlements - tiny sparks of hope on the vast canvas of the Hyrulean wilds.

It’s a world that invites introspection as much as it does exploration, and it’s no coincidence therefore that Breath of the Wild leans more heavily than its predecessors into Eastern philosophies and aesthetics.

You traverse Hyrule mostly alone, meaning that there is no one around to attribute your success or failure to but yourself.

This also means that your journey is a deeply personal one. It goes without saying that the open-ended nature of the game makes it so that no playthrough is the same, but it operates on a much deeper level than just the sandbox game design.

I noticed this myself soon after starting my own playthrough.

Upon leaving the cave where the story begins, I was greeted with a familiar sight: the Temple of Time.

This hallowed place recurs often in Zelda games, its shape and purpose morphing with each new iteration.

In Twilight Princess it was a fully fledged dungeon, while its Tears of the Kingdom rendition would turn out to be a sacred place harkening back to the very origin of Hyrule’s royal dynasty.

Yet, this temple was different.

It wasn’t just another story location carrying that familiar name. Rather, this looked exactly like the Temple of Time I knew from Ocarina of Time.

In that game, the temple was pivotal to the events of its story, it being the location where Link finds the Master Sword and travels through time in order to defeat Ganondorf.

It’s a place that will carry weight and meaning to anyone who has played Ocarina of Time, and here it was again, standing before me, sharing that same distinct medieval cathedral design and mystical aura.

Only one thing was different: it was now a ruin. Its roof had been partially caved in and the brickwork was damaged, no doubt a result of those same catastrophic events that had led to the fall of the kingdom.

To some, it might be tempting to try and see this through the lens of timeline consistency.

For decades, a segment of the Zelda fandom has debated over how all the games in the series fit together, with Nintendo even publishing an official (yet controversial) timeline along the way.

Could the presence of this iconic building be a clue to that end?

To me, it cuts much deeper than such ruminations.

This depiction of the Temple of Time represents a memory of days gone by. The decaying ruin of a game that had defined my childhood.

On a surface level, this notion may sound depressing, but much like the game as a whole, this scene felt instead calming, reflective.

Gentle music plays, almost indistinguishable from the wind and birdsong ambiance unless you focus on it.

All is at peace here.

True, the presence of tree branches within the structure suggests that it is in the process of being reclaimed by nature, destined to disappear forever. Yet therein also resides something liberating.

In Japanese culture, there is a concept known as mono no aware, which refers to the beauty of things that are not permanent, or in a state of transience.

It’s this exact feeling - this blend of appreciation and mild sadness - that I felt when I first saw this structure appear.

This was a place that I had grown to know well during my youth, visiting it more times than I could count. But as with most things from your childhood that you return to, they never appear to be quite the same as before.

You can’t go home again, after all.

More such phantoms of the past can be found throughout Breath of the Wild.

My primary instinct when playing Breath of the Wild was therefore not to defeat the final boss and save the princess, but to go on a pilgrimage of sorts, visiting these locations and reminiscing.

I saw what remained of Lon Lon Ranch and I stood by the lonely shores of Lake Hylia, but instead of the sense of adventure those locations had once imbued me with, I just found silence. A harmonious, yet somewhat melancholic quiet.

It was this experience that helped me realize what Ocarina of Time - that iconic game from my childhood - was truly about.

Here is where I need to ask you to permit me a prolonged detour, and we will eventually circle back to what these ruins in Breath of the Wild truly represent. It will be worth the journey, I promise.

When I played Ocarina of Time as a kid, it was just an adventure game. A stellar, epic one, but at its core still a simple story about defeating an evil usurper.

The reality is that, even back then, the Temple of Time represented something greater, even if I did not know it at the time.

As a kid, my favorite place in the game was Hyrule Castle Town, a populous market square adjacent to the Temple of Time.

I loved this town because its hustle and bustle was the perfect respite from the grand adventure that awaited me every time I stepped outside its gates. Its unthreatening rowdiness filled me with a sense of safety, and I’d spend hours conversing with the townspeople and just taking in the atmosphere.

Then, as I progressed through the story, I reached the turning point of the game, where I first took the Master Sword from its pedestal in the Temple of Time and traveled seven years into the future.

It took me just one step outside the temple to realize something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The wind sang a haunting tune across the dark, suffocating air. Death Mountain loomed ominously in the back. The serenity I knew had transformed into a feeling of intense dread.

Then I stepped into my beloved Castle Town...

Gone were the people. Gone too was the laughter, the music and the shouting of tradesmen. All that remained was the howling of the wind, the screeching of crows, and the somber moans of zombies who were now the town’s sole occupants.

As I ventured out into the world beyond the castle gates, it became apparent that this cloak of darkness now covered most of the land, uprooting entire peoples and corrupting nature.

The subtext of this lurid transformation may have eluded me as a child, but when I replayed Ocarina of Time a few months ago, it struck me how much this moment reminded me of the general experience of growing up.

As you become older, things stop hitting you with the same intensity. A lot of music starts to sound formulaic and the logic of many movies begins to fall apart.

Even returning to your childhood home might make you realize that this microcosm of joy that you remember was in fact just another street in a random neighborhood.

With Ocarina of Time itself, this same sensation crept up on me from time to time.

The grandeur of Ocarina of Time’s rendition of Hyrule begins to disintegrate once you realize it is in essence just a small field with passages to the game’s several quest hubs.

Don’t get me wrong: the game still has some immaculate dungeon design and is an overall joy to play. But I have to invoke memories of my childhood to get a taste of that magic I felt when I’d originally played it.

In other words, the entire experience could at times feel eerily similar to that moment all those years ago when I first stepped out of the Temple of Time as adult Link, realizing the world I had felt so safe in no longer existed.

There is little doubt that this subtext was put there by the developers consciously.

During the events of the game, the mysterious character Sheik comments thus:

“The flow of time is always cruel. Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it. A thing that does not change with time is a memory of younger days.”

This quote shows that the writers were aware that one does not reach adulthood without losing some things along the way, but also that the potency of our most beloved childhood memories seldom fades.

The emotions we feel when we look back on such memories may also change with time. Those same memories might seem endearing, sad or triumphant at different stages in our lives.

At the very end of Ocarina of Time, Link is sent back to his original timeline in order to live out the childhood that he had missed.

In the final sequence, young Link approaches princess Zelda in Hyrule Castle. This scene is identical to the one early in the game, when you as the player are first introduced to Zelda.

Yet, this time it feels different.

Link carries with him the memory of his entire adventure. He walks with the knowledge of how the flow of time can transform all things we hold dear, to a point where we barely recognize them.

Worst of all, he has no one to share this burden with.

What was originally the conclusion to a brief and whimsical stealth section has now become the conclusion of a grueling and lonely adventure.

As the image freezes and the game’s vibrant colors turn to sepia, it dawns upon us.

Link can’t go home again. And nor can we.

Understanding this subtext is key to fully appreciating the world of Hyrule as it is presented in Breath of the Wild.

As we’ve established, the game’s terrain contains several memories from the era of Ocarina of Time. You can also find geographic references to Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword and other Zelda installments.

On the surface, these might seem like fun easter eggs or implicit lore nuggets, but they represent something far greater than that: they embody the very essence of the series.

Between all the discussion about timelines and continuity - which can be fun in their own right - we sometimes lose track of the fact that these stories are meant to be legend.

The more you try to pick apart a legend, the more mundane and less magical it will seem.

Should you compare the geography of Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule to its remaining landmarks in Breath of the Wild, you would not have to exert much effort to find a plethora of inconsistencies.

But on a meta level, the continuity between the two games is undeniable.

As time flowed so cruelly forward, Ocarina of Time and indeed many other Zelda titles became their eponymous legends. Legends whose shards we can find scattered across the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild. Vague, ambiguous and imperfectly recollected.

Yet such is the strength of any alluring legend.

And rather than having to feel sad about these fading memories, we can find comfort in the idea that, right now, we are constructing new legends on top of the crumbling ruins of our old adventures.

It’s mono no aware in its purest form.

Being a more experienced player returning to these ancient places, I keep thinking of the words of Sheik.

Indeed, the flow of time has been cruel for these locales, with many of them having been reduced to rubble and ruin.

Yet, at the same time, something beautiful resides within them. Something that doesn’t change with time.

A memory of younger days.

When I finally got my Gamecube as a kid, it came with just one game: Super Smash Bros. Melee.

A great game for sure, but it meant that, for the next couple of years, most of my allowance would be going towards building a library that’d allow me to squeeze as much fun out of this console as humanly possible.

Now, my tiny allowance meant that I couldn’t hope to afford more than one game every three or four months.

So in order to deal with this, I needed to build a library that was broad rather than deep: instead of owning six different fighting games, I wanted to cover the full spectrum of games that I enjoyed.

This approach resulted in me getting, among others, an adventure game (Star Fox Adventures), a shooting game (Medal of Honor: Frontline), a sports game (FIFA 2003) and... a racing game!

Racing games were a big deal in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, partially because they existed on the cutting edge of technology.

A satisfying racing experience required you to have a stable framerate, responsive controls and enough graphical fidelity to make environments readable. So, much like with platformers showcasing the identity and prowess of video game consoles, a good racing game was a technical feat.

For my first Christmas as a Gamecube owner, there was one game on my list. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2.

Like its many predecessors in the Need For Speed series, Hot Pursuit 2 was a classic racing game. It featured pseudo-realistic handling, flashy supercars of brands like Lamborghini and McLaren, and scenic public roads as makeshift racing tracks.

In fact, this is what most racing games from that era boiled down to. In that sense, Hot Pursuit 2 would’ve been seen as a great execution of a tried and tested formula.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, it also turned out to be one of the last racing games of its kind.

As the years went by, the racing genre started to change. The first Need For Speed game after Hot Pursuit 2, subtitled Underground, introduced customization, tuning and light story elements.

Scenic drives through American forests and across Hawaiian parkways were replaced by nighttime street racing through big cities.

At the time, these were logical additions to the genre. Customization allowed developers to add more structured progression to the game experience. They could imbue racing with this RPG-like sense of growing stronger, a process that had previously just consisted of buying progressively faster cars.

Advances in technology also allowed developers to set the racing in dense urban areas - a more challenging biome than rolling plains as far as graphical detail, lighting and framerate are concerned.

Racing games also started featuring more fleshed-out storytelling, again spurred on by developments within the industry: across the first decade of the 2000s, production budgets for games grew substantially.

Video games in general were becoming more cinematic, so why should racing games lag behind?

With the technology and trends evolving as they did in the gaming landscape, we also started seeing more and more open world racing games, where the driving was no longer restricted to a set number of laps on a sectioned-off track.

In fact, some of these ‘newer’ elements had already been catching steam since the late nineties. Midtown Madness and Rockstar’s Midnight Club series both featured open world racing, with the latter franchise’s street racing premise likely inspiring Need For Speed: Underground.

So it seemed that this is where racing games were destined to be headed. And if we look at where racing games still are today, it appears to be the logical conclusion of the genre.

Major franchises such as Need For Speed and Forza Horizon still focus on open world racing, and they feature fully fledged stories with character development, voice acting and plot twists helping to form a narrative context around every mile of racing. Progression revolves around upgrading your cars in both function and aesthetics.

Individually, these are all developments that add more context and deeper mechanics to the genre.

Yet, I can’t shake the sensation that, in chasing a more complex experience, we lost something special along the way.

Classic racing games used to be about simple and straightforward fun. And I can’t help but feel that too many bells and whistles carry the risk of detracting from that core experience.

I remember playing one of the more recent Need For Speed games and being hit constantly with cutscenes, narrative beats, and other exposition that served to contextualize an experience that, for me, never required much context to begin with.

Then there are the tracks themselves.

Open worlds can be great, and many of my favorite all-time games feature open worlds.

However, I can also concede that open worlds can be misused to avoid more meticulous level and track design.

Where Hot Pursuit 2 had a limited set of purpose-built tracks whose every corner and chicane I have memorized to this day, a game like Forza Horizon 4 offers much more variety at the cost of losing a deeper experience.

In that game, tracks are often random stretches of road cordoned off for the purpose of a singular race. Serviceable, but a far cry from the authored tracks of old.

Open world track design changes the racing experience at a fundamental level, since you’re no longer honing your skills on a particular track to get that one corner just right. Instead, you spend most of the time reacting to whatever random series of corners is thrown at you and hope you do a good enough job to bluff your way to first place.

Even the customization - again a feature I usually love in games - does little to elevate my racing experience.

Do I really need to put a decal on a Ferrari?

My point is, after Hot Pursuit 2, I never found a racing game that hit the same spot.

I don’t mean this from a nostalgic point of view, either.

To this day, I cannot find a straightforward racing game that allows me to drive expensive cars through exotic locations without the experience being marred by some sort of caveat.

Some games have come close, but each of them adds a layer of unwanted complexity that moves it away from being that classic racing experience I am still craving.

And so, the search continues.

It’s why, in building my Switch 1/2 library, I’ve yet to add a classic racing game. Of course I own Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders, which are both fantastic mascot racing games, but also fundamentally different from the type of game I’m describing.

Fortunately, there have been some promising throwback racing games coming from the indie scene.

Old School Rally does what it says on the tin and provides a PS1-era rallying experience, while Formula Legends adds a modern arcade twist to the Formula 1 games of old.

While these are both amazing titles that free themselves from much of the added fluff of modern racing games, they cover different niches than the one I’ve been describing.

The time feels right for a developer to stand up and fill a gap in the market that I never thought would be there: a good, no-nonsense racing game in the vein of classic Need for Speed.

All I want to do is drive a McLaren F1 across coastal roads at 250 mph.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one.

“Games these days just don’t seem fun anymore.”

“Does anyone else feel like Sony lost its soul?”

“Why don’t I enjoy games anymore like I used to?”

Just some examples of how people might express falling out of love with games that they used to enjoy.

It’s a natural process. Anyone with a bit of life experience knows that almost nothing will hit you quite the same if you’re an adult as opposed to when you were a kid.

Personally, I must’ve watched my Space Jam videotape dozens of times without getting bored at any point. If I liked a movie as a kid, watching it just once or twice was never an option.

Every new kind of music that made it into my little CD player seemed so new, intense and magical.

I could even stare at a Bruegel painting for hours on end, discerning new details, thinking about every brush stroke, getting lost in every shade of color.

And of course, I could be engrossed in a low-profile game like Doom 64 for months.

Point is, as children we are like sponges, absorbing all the information around us and experiencing it with a level of intensity that’s almost impossible to replicate later in life.

I feel like most of us understand this at least implicitly.

Yet when it comes to games, we tend to allow ourselves to get caught up in this sentiment of games just being bad now. Or that perhaps we just grew out of them.

Now, there’s certainly a lot of valid criticism that can be unleashed on the modern gaming landscape. Games that are broken at launch, predatory microtransactions, mandatory online for single player games, bloat, pricing and so forth.

It’s also possible that some people do simply outgrow gaming because they start pursuing different interests.

All of this is valid.

Still, the notion that games as a whole lack soul or are just worse than they used to be is one I reject.

If you do find yourself thinking gaming has lost its spark for you, I encourage you to do a little digging and see if you can find anything to reignite it.

Maybe your tastes have shifted and you just want something different from games.

For instance, as we grow older, we may be less inclined to dedicate our time to punishing games that demand our full attention for hours on end. Instead, we might choose more easygoing games that we can combine with the various real-life responsibilities that we unfortunately accrue as functioning adults.

In other cases, maybe we simply haven’t found the right game yet.

Take the platforming genre.

Until a few months ago, I was fully convinced that platformers - once my favorite category of video games - just didn’t appeal to me anymore. No drama, no hard feelings about the industry, but I was just over them.

Indeed, every platformer I’d tried as an adult had failed to grab me.

Then I tried Kirby and the Forgotten Land and I was blown away by how good it was. To me, this was a huge deal.

Ever since Super Mario Galaxy 2 came out in 2010, I had been living with the notion that that was kind of it as far as 3D platformers were concerned. I considered it the final thesis of the genre and didn’t expect anything to even come close to that level of design mastery.

Turns out, all it took was an hour or two with an unassuming pink puff ball for that idea to depart from my mind forever.

Since then, I’ve been playing a lot more platformers, such as the newer Super Mario games and Yooka-Replaylee. And the joy of analyzing these games from a design point of view while playing them gave second wind to my long-dormant obsession with the genre.

It made me wonder - could I revitalize my love for 2D platformers as well?

When it comes to sidescrolling platformers, two games that always stood out to me are Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3. I’ve literally lost count of how many times I’ve replayed either of these games, and I still revisit them with some regularity, even if it’s just to get a quick nostalgia fix from re-experiencing a couple of levels.

Every 2D platformer I tried after those two just didn’t seem to land for me quite as hard. I’ve played all of the New Super Mario Bros. games but never finished one of them because I just lost interest well before reaching the final credits.

Even the universally praised Super Mario Bros. Wonder didn’t quite do it for me, let alone any of the indie titles that passed through my hands.

I assumed that I had latched on to a couple of 2D platformers that I’d experienced early enough in life to form this childlike magical bond with, and nothing was going to come close to matching those experiences.

Then I started to look into it more deeply. After all, I still enjoy playing both Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 to this very day, so surely my love for these games is driven by a little more than just fond childhood memories.

Maybe I hadn’t burned out on the genre as much as I thought?

Over the past months, I’ve played a good number of 2D platformers in an effort to get to the bottom of this.

Part of this process was fixing the gaps in my platformer education.

I had my first real experience with the classic Sonic games and Super Mario World, and inspired by my positive experience with Forgotten Land, I started sampling the classic Kirby games.

Game by game, I started to build a profile of what I actually enjoyed about 2D platformers.

For one, I came to realize that the more I like the core moveset of the main character, the more I enjoy the game. Platforming games are all about traversing levels, and if that traversal doesn’t feel right, the whole experience falls apart.

Then there are the levels themselves. Unlike with 3D platformers, in a sidescroller I don’t need a constant flow of new, exciting ideas. I appreciate it when it happens - the latter half of Sonic 3 & Knuckles was great because of this - but it’s by no means a requirement.

Instead, I love levels that have a clear theme to them. Or a vibe, if you allow me to put it in even more ethereal terms.

Beyond their obvious nostalgic factor, Jazz Jackrabbit 2’s tight controls and Super Mario Bros. 3’s clearly defined biomes mean that I still actively enjoy these games, instead of just thinking back on them as a pleasant recollection from days gone by.

And while I found traces of these elements in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Super Mario World, it was once again Kirby who delivered a breakthrough.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe brought me the 2D platforming experience I’d been looking for ever since I became an adult.

The main reason is Kirby himself. His many copy abilities make him one of the most enjoyable characters to control in gaming as a whole, allowing for a large degree of playstyle expression - a rare commodity in the genre.

Then there’s the levels, which strike a great balance between a clear identity and - especially later in the game - a degree of otherworldliness that lifts it beyond standard biomes like forests, deserts and snow worlds.

This seemingly simple combination was enough for me to become engrossed in the experience, finishing the main game and its DLC within days, leaving me wishing for even more.

I realize that I am just describing how I enjoyed a particular game, so from that angle, my experience may not seem all that remarkable.

Still, getting such - dare I say - childlike enjoyment out of a genre I had pretty much written off? It’s as powerful an argument as any against all the ‘games are not fun anymore’ discourse that populates the internet these days.

And sure, it remains to be seen whether, in a few years time, I will speak of Return to Dreamland Deluxe with an air of veneration similar to Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3. But for now, it’s been incredible to see how I could revitalize my love for platformers in both 2D and 3D. All by simply taking some time to think about what makes me tick when it comes to video games.

There are still games out there with soul, quality, and all the things you’ve valued ever since you first held a controller.

So avoid becoming a jaded gamer and try to reverse-engineer your own tastes. Why did you enjoy games as a kid? Nostalgia is a factor, but seldom the whole story. You connected with those games for a reason.

Once you’ve figured out what that reason was, look for titles that might scratch that itch you’ve had for so long.

We may not be children anymore, but there’s a decent chance that our favorite game is still out there, waiting for us.

The Legend of Zelda’s 40th birthday is coming up, and with that comes a lot of speculation on how Nintendo might celebrate this milestone.

Nothing’s been confirmed yet, but many fans expect a new remaster to be announced at one point. If true, 1998’s Ocarina of Time seems like a logical choice.

The first 3D entry in the series was only remastered once for the 3DS handheld, so a full-blown HD edition of the game with a modern control scheme and camera would be an amazing anniversary present to the fans.

This made me wonder, though. Would younger gamers who’ve never played Ocarina of Time before, for lack of a better term, get it?

Because, a graphics overhaul or not, the design of Ocarina of Time definitely shows its age when you go back to it.

You could argue this is par for the course. If you’re into playing retro games, you’ll have developed a filter for dated graphics, antiquated gameplay and archaic design choices.

We all understand that, for instance, first-generation Playstation games didn’t have HD textures because they simply weren’t a thing back then. Or that the limitations of the seminal FPS Doom - no jumping and sprite-based enemies, just to name a couple - had to do with limitations in the hardware and not in the ambitions of the developers.

In retrospect, some of those limitations can even add to the charm of a game. Game designers can get very creative when working with a limited toolbox, and part of the enjoyment of playing older games is discovering the creative solutions that developers come up with under such circumstances.

Some modern-day developers even purposefully impose similar restrictions on themselves, not just to pay homage to the classics, but also in an attempt to replicate the inspiration that flowed so abundantly back in the day.

Yet when you play retro games after-the-fact, there is one thing that you might struggle to understand: the historical context.

A game renowned as an all-time great of its respective genre might merely seem okay to you, and that discrepancy is difficult to unravel.

Recently, I experienced this myself while playing Super Mario World.

Yes, I know, it’s scandalous to be giving Super Mario World a first proper go in the Year of our Lord 2026, but my family never owned a SNES, meaning I graduated from Super Mario Bros. 3 straight to the 3D era.

Still, I wanted to try Super Mario World because it habitually pops up near or at the top of lists ranking the best Mario games or even the best 2D platformers overall.

So, I started playing it and...

It’s okay?

Don’t get me wrong - I liked the game. It’s fun and well-designed. But I didn’t quite get why it’s potentially the best.

Then I did some research.

Back in the day, the game was lauded for such features as its much more sophisticated world map, amazing sprite work and atypical biomes.

Super Mario World also appears to be an evergreen for speedrunners, with the combination of intricate level design and Mario’s moveset allowing for a lot of skill expression.

Mind you, this knowledge didn’t improve my moment-to-moment enjoyment of the game, but it did teach me that, yeah, I probably should’ve been there in order to appreciate this classic platformer in full.

So, what does Super Mario World have to do with Ocarina of Time?

Well, this whole ordeal made me realize that my experience with Super Mario World might be very similar to those who weren’t around yet to enjoy Ocarina of Time in its heyday. And in terms of its reputation, Ocarina of Time has even more to live up to than any Mario game.

Even among other great Zelda titles, the Nintendo 64 classic Ocarina of Time is legendary. To this very day, it is the highest-rated game on Metacritic.

I’ll be the first to say that Metacritic scores aren’t everything and depend on a lot of factors other than the core quality of the game: mass appeal, cultural trends, industry standards, review methods...

Had all these things remained the same, a later Zelda title like Breath of the Wild would probably have matched Ocarina of Time’s Metacritic score.

Yet, this doesn’t mean that Ocarina of Time doesn’t deserve to still top that list over a quarter of a century later, for it is a very important game.

The problem is that you might not fully realize why if you play it now.

Sure, it still has a fascinating story, intricate dungeon design and excellent gameplay mechanics, but it may not be immediately obvious where that chart-topping ‘x factor’ resides.

Part of the issue stems from the speed at which the games industry was evolving in those days.

To this day, Twilight Princess is the Zelda game most similar to Ocarina of Time, and it released only eight years later. While it is an amazing game in its own right, the formula already felt quite dated at that point, especially when compared to other adventure games that featured an open or semi-open world.

So if you play more modern open world adventure games, you may indeed struggle to see what the big deal is about Ocarina of Time.

The thing is, 3D open world adventure games did not exist when Ocarina of Time came out. At least, not in the form that we know them today.

As I explained in my previous article about N64-era platformers, those games laid a lot of the groundwork for what we would come to know as 3D open world and/or sandbox games. They abandoned the traditional level progression system of old and replaced it with a world that encouraged non-linear exploration and discovery, following a structure similar to some of Nintendo’s 2D games on the SNES, but adding a third dimension.

While not a platformer, Ocarina of Time was a crucial step in this evolution.

Where Super Mario 64 was already a lot less linear than its predecessors, it still had clearly sectioned-off levels, within which you were free to explore. So it had open world elements that were contained within sectioned-off, individual levels that had nothing to do with each other. They were partitioned pockets of player freedom.

By contrast, the land of Hyrule in Ocarina of Time was created to feel as a coherent, interconnected world. Still featuring separate areas, but all of them fed into the world at large. Clearing a dungeon could have ramifications for how the overworld would look or behave.

That’s not to say there was no linearity at all: you would need to complete a set of tasks in a specific order to progress through the game’s main story, unlocking new areas along the way. But you were otherwise free to explore, do side quests or really just nothing at all.

By now, this description might fit half the new games coming out, but I cannot stress enough how revolutionary this felt in a 3D game back in the day.

When it was released in 1998, I played Ocarina of Time at my cousins’ house, and I was simply blown away by the very concept.

You mean to say I can just stand somewhere without being harassed by a timer or a must-clear objective to avoid an imminent game over screen?

Eventually, I would actually annoy one of my cousins by wanting to play the game without any clear goal in mind. I just wanted to explore, or even just stand still and take in the atmosphere.

At the time, I rather unceremoniously called this behavior ‘hanging around.’ But looking back, I realize that I just wanted to be in the world without any sort of mandatory objective hovering over my head at all times.

Coming to the N64 from purely level-based games such as Super Mario Bros. 3 and Doom, this sense of freedom in a game felt almost dreamlike. And it’s exactly this sensation that will be difficult to relate to if you grew up in a generation where this had been normalized to the point of tedium.

In my aforementioned article about platformers, I already brought up the fact that one of the creators of GTA III described that series’ first 3D entry, as “Zelda meets Goodfellas.” With GTA III, in its turn, heralding the popularization of the open world/sandbox design philosophy, that statement shines a light on the lasting influence that Ocarina of Time has on modern gaming, and why it was such a big deal back in the day.

There are plenty of other reasons to appreciate Ocarina of Time’s design heritage.

Similar to Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time wasn’t great because it invented things from scratch outright; rather, it took several experimental concepts, fleshed them out, and combined them into a product that then solved several game design problems at once.

Lock-on targeting (also called ‘Z-targeting’ ) already existed, but wasn’t as smoothly executed and central to the core gameplay experience as it was in Ocarina of Time.

Cinematic storytelling had been attempted before, but the way that Ocarina of Time told a story whilst resisting the urge to overexplain everything in 20-minute cutscenes felt like a breath of fresh air.

And finally, even if open world design was not pioneered nor elevated to its final form in this game, Ocarina of Time proved that such an approach could be integrated into a coherent, structured 3D game experience, telling an engaging story while respecting both the pacing and player agency.

I could explain each of these things with all the detail in the world, but ultimately, they might still seem abstract to someone who arrives at this game many years later.

In a way, Ocarina of Time suffered from its own success: every brilliant idea it had has since been adopted and refined many times over, such that going back to the game that popularized many of these trends might leave younger gamers unimpressed.

By modern standards, Ocarina of Time is fairly linear, its overworld is small and empty, and the puzzles it offers are not particularly challenging.

But just get this: the sheer magic I felt when I was first let loose on Hyrule Field, that’s a high I am still chasing when I play video games today. Very rarely do I find it again. That exact moment felt as if I could physically feel game design leap a generation forward. As if a game experience I barely dared dream of had suddenly become a reality.

When you play Ocarina of Time for the first time and you find yourself wondering what the big deal is, try to imagine that, at one point in time, every single polygon in this world felt like a revolution of itself.

Maybe then it won’t seem so puzzling that we all went crazy over this game all those years ago.

Now, let’s hope that remaster is actually on the way.

Think about the most recent gaming console you bought. Did you buy it to play a specific game? If so, what was it?

Maybe you wanted to play Gran Turismo or God of War: Ragnarök. Or perhaps you just wanted to play Elden Ring without blowing a bunch of money on a gaming PC. Personally, I bought my Switch 2 for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment.

Point is, there’s a lot of different games that help sell consoles. Racing games, first-person shooters, action-adventure titles...

Yet, had you asked someone in the ‘80s or ‘90s why they bought their gaming console of choice, the overwhelming majority of games mentioned would all belong to the same genre: platformers.

If you go back to those days and take a quick glance at the charts of the best-selling games per console, you’ll start to see that pattern emerge.

Take Nintendo. On their NES, SNES and N64 consoles, the best-selling game for each one is a mainline Super Mario game.

Sega was no different: Sonic the Hedgehog was the number 1 seller of the Genesis by a considerable margin, with its two sequels also occupying the top 5.

Even the first Playstation, not a console renowned for its iconic platformers, had two Crash Bandicoot titles in its top 10.

It’s no coincidence that these games drew people to purchase the consoles they were exclusive to. Often, they were specifically designed to do so.

In order to take on the all-mighty Nintendo in the American market, Sega needed an edgy counterpart to Mario - a platform mascot of their own, whose main job was to showcase the power of the console. Sonic was just that - a platforming hero whose games seemed, at times, designed to look great rather than feel great.

And it worked. Just as Super Mario World showed the vibrant colors of the SNES, Sonic emphasized the raw speed that the Sega Genesis console held over its competitor.

Even the Playstation had its own recognizable characters in Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Though they weren’t quite as popular on that console as Gran Turismo and Final Fantasy, they were usually the first characters that came to mind when the Playstation was being discussed on schoolyards across the globe.

Across the 2000s, the influence of platformers apparently vanished overnight. While the Mario series kept pushing the boundaries of the genre almost single-handedly, Sonic got into an identity crisis, Crash Bandicoot spiraled into years of irrelevance, and short-lived genre exemplaries such as Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman became niche.

If you look at the best-selling console games from that era, those lists are typically dominated by first-person shooters and other action-oriented games.

Within about a decade, platformers went from being the royalty of the video game industry to relative obscurity.

What caused this, you may ask?

Well, in a way, the genre became a victim of its own success. And it all started when we went from 2D to 3D...

In the middle of the 1990s, the advent of new, powerful consoles such as the Nintendo 64 and Playstation, as well as the first purpose-built gaming PCs meant that gaming hardware was finally powerful enough to enter the third dimension.

This development didn’t just make the games themselves more spectacular; they also made game design more complex.

A good part of this first generation of 3D gaming consisted of developers figuring out the basics of how to make players move around in a 3D space. Across the N64/PSX era, that was very much a work in progress. If you go back to many of those early 3D games now, they often feel clunky and unintuitive.

At the same time, three-dimensional design opened up a ton of possibilities for game development. This was all the more true for platformers.

Since first-person shooters and racing games had worked with faux-3D perspectives for years, their jump to true 3D seemed smaller.

But platformers going from fully 2D, sprite-based sidescrollers to polygonal 3D experiences? I cannot overstate how mindblowing this was to those who experienced this leap.

When I first witnessed my cousins playing Super Mario 64, it overstimulated my brain to such a degree that those first, raw images of 3D movement occupied my brain every single day for the months that followed. It was as if I had glanced into a world that I never knew could even exist.

Strictly speaking, Super Mario 64 wasn’t the first to the party. Before the 3D era truly kicked off around 1996, there had already been attempts to translate the popular platforming genre into 3D.

Alpha Waves, released all the way back in 1990, provided a rudimentary take on the concept of 3D platforming, while 1995’s Jumping Flash showcased 3D platforming in an actual game.

Though admirable on a technical level, Alpha Waves and Jumping Flash were, respectively, a tech demo and a proof-of-concept that gave us a taste of what could be, rather than fully realized blueprints for a new era of gaming.

That blueprint would finally arrive in 1996.

Super Mario 64, a launch title for the Nintendo 64, is a hallmark of Nintendo’s innovation: rather than inventing things wholesale, Nintendo will usually take a number of interesting concepts and ideas that are already out there, flesh them out, and combine them all into a complete, coherent gameplay experience.

Super Mario 64 may not have been the first 3D platformer, but it was arguably the first one that you had to play. It solved many questions that developers had struggled with for years. How do we make players move around? How do we handle the player camera? What should the levels consist of?

In letting Mario take the jump from 2D to 3D, Nintendo didn’t take the easy route either.

They could have retained the structure of Super Mario World, where the player would use a world map to go from level to level, with the main objective being to make it to the end of each stage in order to progress. In that game, levels could be revisited for some optional secret-hunting, but this was by no means a requirement.

Instead, Super Mario 64 dropped the players into levels that were large, open worlds that they were free to explore. No timer, no constraints on which direction to move into, and a large degree of freedom in how to approach each objective.

In Super Mario 64, the general goal was not to reach the end of each level. Levels didn’t even have a proper ‘end’ to begin with.

Instead, players were to complete a list of missions, usually six per level. Collect eight red coins, defeat a tough enemy, win a race, and so on. Every completed mission would earn you a star, each of which was used to unlock new levels and areas, all the way up to the final boss encounter.

This design turned out to be the formula that many 3D platformers that followed would copy and expand upon.

Particularly Rare, a British game studio closely associated with Nintendo throughout the ‘90s, would take Super Mario 64’s philosophy to new extremes.

Their 3D platforming games Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64 all had designs similar to Super Mario 64, but added to the exploration (and play time) by adding tons more collectables for the player to find.

Their distinct design structure would lead to the birth of a new term to describe these early 3D platformers: collectathons.

In retrospect, some of these collectathons may at times feel bloated with just how many things there are to do in each level. There’s even a striking resemblance with some modern games such as Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, where exploring the world feels more like juggling a dozen different shopping lists than an actual high-stakes adventure.

But back then, the very concept of being free to explore the world around you instead of being bound to rigid linearity was every bit as astonishing as the transition to 3D graphics itself.

For players who had grown up on rigid level structures with a clear beginning and end, often subject to a time limit, it was as if the reins had finally come off and we were now allowed to enjoy games on our own terms.

Across the remainder of the console generation, which lasted until the early 2000s, most successful 3D platformers would continue to borrow heavily from Super Mario 64.

Spyro the Dragon, Croc and Gex all shared some of that collectathon DNA, with levels being more open-ended than in the 2D era, revolving around collecting things rather than simply making it to the end of each level.

As mentioned, Super Mario 64 itself would end up being the best-selling game for the Nintendo 64, with other collectathon-style platformers such as Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 becoming iconic games in their own right.

At the dawn of the 21st century, platformers were still the titans of the video game industry, and there was little indication that this would change with a new generation of consoles on the way.

And yet, things did change. Seemingly overnight, platformers lost the cultural momentum they had been building up for over a decade.

It all started with Mario himself.

A new mainline game in the series was released for the Nintendo Gamecube console in 2002: Super Mario Sunshine. It proved an evolution of Super Mario 64: tighter controls, an expanded moveset, and a more consistent, tropical setting in order to set it apart aesthetically.

Sunshine largely retained the mission-based, open-ended level design of Super Mario 64, and thus remained fairly close to the collectathon formula it had helped inspire.

Still, here we could already see a toning down of the maximalism of games like Donkey Kong 64, with the actual platforming and level traversal being more emphasized over exploration for its own sake.

While still a critical and commercial success in its own right, Super Mario Sunshine failed to inspire an entire generation of platformers as its predecessor had done six years prior.

This era also saw other games that retained some of the collectathon DNA. New IPs such as Jak & Daxter and Sly Cooper gave their own twist on the platforming genre while still not fully departing from Super Mario 64’s blueprint.

Even so, it was obvious that the overall footprint of the platforming genre as a whole was starting to diminish in size the further we got into the first decade of this new century.

In fact, iconic franchises such as Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro lost most of their relevance during this era, with only some of them ever recovering from it.

There are different causes for this development, both cultural and design-related.

Starting with the cultural shift, the early 2000s were when the world got edgy. Nu metal, Eminem and Jackass went mainstream.

With games becoming more advanced, they were no longer seen as just for kids. Teenagers and adolescents growing up on Mario and Sonic still wanted to play games, but they needed more bite.

It was during this decade that we saw the emergence of franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed. Darker, more realistic games aimed at teenagers and young adults.

Hardware manufacturers and developers alike had less of a need for a platformer with a cute, family-friendly mascot to sell consoles.

This was noticeable even on Nintendo’s own Gamecube, where the most successful game was Super Smash Bros. Melee. A game that, yes, featured a bunch of those cute mascots, who then proceeded to beat the living daylights out of each other.

However, the design heritage of the collectathon platformers of the late nineties was not lost in full. It just hopped to different genres.

Notably, the early 2000s saw the breakthrough of the Grand Theft Auto series, with the release of its first 3D games - Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Vice City (2002) and San Andreas (2004).

While they might not seem related at first, these infamous action games walked on roads paved by exploration-based platformers.

With the first few GTA games being top-down, 2D crime simulators, the series’ foray into the third dimension was spearheaded by Super Mario 64 and Nintendo’s adventure game The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

It was these games that showed the world how to make navigating a 3D space enjoyable and intuitive for players, as well as proving that open-ended, non-linear gameplay had value of its own.

GTA III took this focus on player freedom in deciding what they wanted to do, and escalated it to its logical conclusion.

This influence is not speculative, either: the creators of GTA III once described the game’s core concept as “Zelda meets Goodfellas.”

With Ocarina of Time itself being an evolution of the lessons learned from Super Mario 64’s exploration-heavy design - even running on a heavily modified version of the same engine - there is clear collectathon design heritage to be found in the first 3D GTA games.

However, the dawn of open world sandbox games such as GTA also proved the undoing of the collectathon platformer. With an increasing number of games being built around near total player freedom, there was just less to get excited about in a platformer that also happened to let you freely explore its levels.

And so, the collectathon slowly died out.

By the time Nintendo wrote the next chapters in Mario’s platforming career - Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 for their new Wii console - it was clear that they realized that 3D platformers needed to be fully rethought in order to remain relevant.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010) is the antithesis to the collectathon: a tightly structured, mostly linear platformer where making it to the end of the level is once again the main objective, and where exploration is limited and largely optional. So it’s closer to Super Mario World than Super Mario 64 if we look at the core progression system.

Aided by Nintendo’s experience, Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 displayed the company’s absolute mastery over level design, making sure these more linear platforming challenges still felt nothing short of spectacular.

However, this also meant that the bar for platformers to remain relevant was incredibly high, and the genre remained a shadow of its former self throughout this era. At the very least, the collectathon subgenre appeared dead and buried at this point.

Was the platformer, then, confined to more linear design for the rest of time?

Not quite.

As always, everything that’s old will at one point become new again.

In the second half of the 2010s, Nintendo developed a penchant for open world design. It was something they had never fully committed to until that point, despite open world design having become more and more popular ever since those first few 3D GTA games.

While no platformer, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) is highly relevant, as it proved that Nintendo could get ahead of the curve seemingly on a whim, nailing and redefining open world design on their first serious attempt.

Half a year later, Super Mario: Odyssey proved that this new approach wasn’t just a one-off for Nintendo, with the game returning to the more open, exploration-based structure of Super Mario 64.

Gamers wanted open world, and Nintendo gave it to them in spades.

This trend continues to this day, with Mario Kart World (2025) being the first open-world game in that subseries and Switch 2 platformer Donkey Kong Bananza (2025) having a lot of vintage collectathon DNA to go with its novel, destruction-based gameplay.

It’s clear that Super Mario: Odyssey wasn’t the only game to draw upon the success of the exploration-based platformers of yore.

Even before Odyssey had come out, some of the creators of the old Banjo games banded together to create a spiritual successor: Yooka-Laylee. The game had issues upon launch, but its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign (in which yours truly proudly participated!) proved that there was still a demand for games like this.

Recently, a well-received remaster titled Yooka-Replaylee provided further evidence that the classic collectathon still has a fanbase.

In addition to the aforementioned Donkey Kong Bananza, classic platformer franchises such as Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot also saw some renewed interest in the form of remasters, with the latter even receiving a critically acclaimed and long-awaited reboot in 2020.

New IPs also rose to the occasion, with perhaps the best example being the Astro Bot series. Its latest entry, simply titled Astro Bot, is a homage to the entire platforming genre that won Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2024.

After a dire few years of being carried by Mario and a few indie experiments, 3D platformers seem to be on the rise again, with the crown jewel of this resurgence thus far being Kirby and the Forgotten Land.

In the pink puffball’s first ever 3D adventure, Kirby takes the constant stream of creative ideas from Super Mario Galaxy 2 and synthesizes it with light exploration elements that reward player creativity and add replay value.

So, let’s circle back to the question from the start of the article - on what game made you buy your most recent gaming console. Maybe the answer isn’t a platformer, but I’m pretty confident that you might at least have a few platformers in your collection by now.

Not bad for a genre that appeared to be on its deathbed just a little over a decade ago.

Perhaps we will never go back to the time when platformers and their mascots were the primary ‘salesmen’ of video game consoles.

But with so much to choose from, there is perhaps no better time to be a platforming enthusiast than this very moment.

Back in the early 2010s, there was a lot of discussion around whether or not video games are art.

This debate was sparked by a bold statement made by the late movie critic Roger Ebert, who claimed that video games could never be art.

Without dredging up this entire polemic from the mires of media history, Ebert’s main argument was that the objective-driven nature of video games clashed with the artist’s ability to form a singular, coherent artistic statement.

All of this sounds rather abstract, but such is the fate of an argument that hinges on something - art - that lacks a universally accepted definition with fixed parameters.

While, at the time, this debate was framed as a battle between gamers and oldheads who just ‘didn’t get it,’ as a young gamer, I actually leaned more toward Ebert’s position.

As an arts student, I frequently had to confront the notion of what ‘art’ even was. So by the time this debate was catching steam in gaming communities, I had a pretty robust definition of art that I still adhere to:

Art is the creative expression of a human (or a group of humans) that aspires to be aesthetically evocative and is able to lend us insight into the human condition and/or the world around us.

It’s by no means a perfect definition and it represents my own, subjective view on the matter, but it continues to serve me well in most cases.

By this definition, I felt that many games fell outside of my personal criteria for art. They were indeed created by humans and often aesthetically evocative, but they seldom lent me true insight into myself or the world I inhabit.

I did not agree with Ebert that video games could never be art; I just accepted that most games did something that set them apart from most art.

To be sure, this was not a statement of value. Something being art does not make it better; it just makes it different. There is a lot of bad art out there and a lot of excellent entertainment. Art is judged by different criteria than entertainment, so a great piece of entertainment might crumble under the scrutiny of artistic standards and vice versa.

Video games have always been great for keeping me entertained and helping me get my mind off things. Still, none of them had permanently altered the way I viewed the world, society, or myself.

Until they did.

Over the years, I’ve encountered multiple games that made me re-evaluate my position. The most important of which is Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Before the Storm is a 2017 game that serves as the prequel to the original Life is Strange. Like its predecessor, Before the Storm is story-focused, with the gameplay consisting mostly of limited exploration and talking to people to drive the plot forward.

As the player, you control the story’s protagonist, Chloe Price, a 16-year-old girl who is trying to find a way to cope with loss in her young life. Two years prior, her father had died in a car accident, and not long after, her best friend Max moved out of state, and contact quickly faded.

Right off the bat, Before the Storm benefits from its medium. With it being a video game, the writers are able to make you experience the emptiness in Chloe’s life in a way that would be difficult to replicate in a movie or book.

As the player, you participate in Chloe’s every argument, every doubt and every questionable decision. This helps set up the story’s premise of a young girl who must navigate a world that seems to have moved on without her.

What follows is a journey about self-acceptance, love, growing up and processing grief.

Even though, as the player, you are able to make choices during the game that alter the outcome of certain events, the main beats of the story lead to more or less the same conclusion.

Despite this, over the years, I’ve played Before the Storm from start to finish maybe 15 times already.

Every playthrough leads to new insights, and since I’ve accrued a lot of life experience in the roughly eight years since the game was released, the true meaning and relevance of the story has evolved with me.

To be more precise, the process that protagonist Chloe goes through in coming to terms with the loss of her father proved especially relatable once I’d lost my own mother.

Chloe was specifically written as going through what is sometimes referred to in psychology as a complicated grief process, which happened to align with my own situation at the time.

Suddenly, a whole new layer revealed itself, full of complex emotions, symbolism, and implicit lessons.

What makes Before the Storm all the more powerful is that its gameplay supports the story. This may seem logical, but it is often not the case.

In many games, the need for the gameplay to remain fun and engaging over longer periods comes at the cost of storytelling. Suspend disbelief becomes a must if you want to fully enjoy the story.

Think of how, in a game like Red Dead Redemption, conversations with NPCs while on horseback typically last just long enough to cover the duration of the travel sequence. Here, the dialogue clearly exists in service to the broader gameplay, a design hierarchy that touches upon Ebert’s argument back in the day.

Mind you, there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it can lead to cases where a phenomenal story has to play second fiddle to the game actually trying to be fun to play.

In some cases, gameplay and narrative can even clash, leading to what game designer Clint Hocking once dubbed ‘ludonarrative dissonance.’

Before the Storm, on the other hand, achieves a high degree of ludonarrative harmony. Gameplay is consciously used to underline the feelings of the main character, and even to misdirect the player, opening them up for the emotional impact of its major story beats.

When we zoom out, we can see that Before the Storm can teach us valuable lessons about our own emotions, or at least represent them in a way that feels meaningful.

It uses the traits of its own medium - video games - to enhance the narrative in such a way that it could not be translated into a book or a movie without losing some of its impact.

The game proves able to evolve with us, participate in our lived experiences and even provide context for what we might be going through in our lives.

What is that, if not art?

Life is Strange: Before the Storm is but one game that I’ve found to clearly meet my own criteria of what art is. This doesn’t mean that I now suddenly consider all video games art, but it does go to show that things aren’t as black or white as they were once made out to be.

The example I’ve given also doesn’t dictate that games need to be a profound, psychologically involved case study of a realistic character in order to be artistic or meaningful.

In fact, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, a game I talked about last week, takes a completely different approach, yet I consider it just as culturally and artistically profound as Before the Storm.

The bottom line is that, with video games, there is a lot more to delve into than meets the eye. Gaming is no longer restricted to winning, losing and collecting ‘points,’ if it was ever really about those things to begin with.

Uncovering the hidden genius in games is part of why I started writing these articles. And whether you want to label games as art, artisanship, or entertainment products, that choice shouldn’t prevent you from delving as deeply as you want.

Thank you for reading this article. If you crave a true deep dive into Life is Strange: Before the Storm, its psychology and its symbolism, I have made an exhaustive video on just that topic. It includes a full explanation of the story and its themes, further proving that this game holds up to serious literary analysis.

Video games as a medium were originally light on story. The action on screen would seldom be justified by more than a basic premise. Even if a game did have more robust narrative elements, they would often be relegated to the accompanying game manual booklet in order to save precious space on the cartridge.

While video games didn’t always tell riveting stories in the early days, they did need that premise to give context to what the player was doing. Whether it was rescuing a princess or stopping an alien invasion, we needed a goal to work towards, something to care about, if we were going to commit our precious time to beating a game.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since then, and we now have many games that tell deep, emotionally mature stories that cast a light on the human condition.

Still, that basic requirement of driving player motivation has not changed. A game needs to set up the events of the game in a way that retains player interest early on. Then, it needs to find a way to keep them invested.

A common way to motivate players is to reward them in a literal sense. Maybe they get a strong weapon after completing a set objective. Or they level up and see their character become more powerful. Some games even reward players with an extra cutscene or alternate ending after they complete the game in a specific way.

While these are all valid design choices, there is a deeper way of encouraging players to remain invested: by making them actually care about the game world, its characters and/or the outcome that results from the player’s own actions.

Though this may sound straightforward, it’s rather difficult to pull off. It requires developers to have a deep understanding of the ‘universe’ they’ve created and how this world and its characters may tap into the emotions of their audience.

Tricky though it may be, it can be valuable, not just for the players but for the developers themselves.

Just think about it: if you are only doing a piece of content for the reward at the end - be it a costume, an OP weapon, or a fancy title - the content itself does not necessarily have to be good.

Players might simply choose to endure said content because they want the shiny object at the finish line. When they are then successful, instead of looking back and thinking “Wow, that was fun,” they might instead go “I’m sure glad that was over.”

There is something to be said for overcoming a difficult or even frustrating piece of content being its own reward. That is certainly true for FromSoft titles like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, where improvement through failure is part of the core gameplay loop. But naturally, this does not work for every game.

Some games take a radically different approach. By making you care about its world and characters, those games can reward the player by making their actions improve that world.

A good, if imperfect example can be observed in the first Life is Strange title. In this story-driven mystery game, one of the students, Kate Marsh, gets driven to a suicide attempt, finding herself on the roof of the school after she becomes a victim of revenge porn and the vicious bullying that followed.

You play as senior student Max Caulfield, and Kate is one of your classmates. During the climactic scene, you can attempt to talk Kate out of her plan to end it all. You can achieve this by reminding her of the things she loves, her values and the people who love her.

This is where things get interesting.

Because how can you tell Kate that her sisters would not want her to go through with this if you are not aware of whether she has any siblings? How can you convince her that you care about her when you’ve been ignoring her calls?

As it turns out, your actions leading up to this moment are as important as the words you choose during the exchange itself.

If you’ve been talking to Kate throughout the first portion of the game and have shown a genuine interest in her life’s story, her values and her doubts, successfully getting Kate to abandon her tragic plan is a lot easier to achieve.

In other words, you are rewarded for actually caring about the character. And the ‘reward’ is not a fancy outfit or what have you, but the character’s very survival.

It’s a clear instance of what I’d like to call empathy-driven game design.

Not that this example is perfect. The whole exchange still feels a touch ‘gamified’, with Kate almost robotically answering ‘that makes me feel good’ whenever you pick the correct response.* Nevertheless, it’s an example of how to emotionally satisfy the player for engaging with the game world.

Once more, I stress that this is extremely difficult to pull off. The Life is Strange franchise showed how fine the margins are with True Colors.

This fourth installment in the series, produced by a different studio, sought to turn empathy into a gameplay mechanic. Protagonist Alex Chen is portrayed as being extremely sensitive to the emotions of those around her, and even able to physically absorb these feelings.

An interesting premise, especially when you start to think of it as an allegory rather than a face-value superpower, but it ultimately fell flat because this desire to care was now just another gameplay mechanic for the player to interact with, rather than something that emerged organically from their inherent interest in the characters.

Fortunately, empathy-driven game design is not exclusive to these narrative-heavy games that try to tap into the player’s sensitivity through a gripping story.

Perhaps the best example of this type of design can actually be encountered in a game that is rather light on storytelling: Kirby and the Forgotten Land.

At a surface level, this 3D platformer follows many of the genre’s conventions. You travel from level to level obtaining collectibles in order to unlock new parts of the map.

This closely mirrors classic ‘collectathon’ platformers such as Super Mario 64, where you collected stars to unlock new levels and boss levels. Or Banjo-Kazooie, where these stars were replaced by jigsaw pieces, called ‘Jiggies.’

Kirby and the Forgotten Land provides a small, but brilliant twist on this formula. Instead of collecting stars, Jiggies or other such trinkets, you save Waddle Dees, cute creatures from the Kirby universe who became trapped in the ‘forgotten land’ that you explore throughout the entire game.

Waddle Dees can be encountered in various predicaments, but they are most commonly seen and/or heard while trapped in cages. They look like they’re in distress trying to get out, calling out for you (Kirby) to come and free them.

Once you free them, you are treated to a little animation where Kirby and the Waddle Dee(s) perform a little hug or dance animation. Once you complete the level, the Waddle Dees you’ve collected will then wave goodbye to Kirby, travelling back to their home town.

This Waddle Dee town actually serves as the main hub, where Kirby can recharge and play minigames. The more Waddle Dees you save, the more alive the town becomes. Not only do various services open - such as a restaurant, a colosseum and a fishing pond - but you can also just see Waddle Dees going about their day, relaxing in the sun, having a meal or reading a book.

Since this game is centered around gathering collectibles for progress, the choice of such an emotionally legible ‘collectible’ adds another layer to the gameplay.

You see, it is not necessary to collect all Waddle Dees to complete the main game. Yet I found myself just putting in that extra bit of effort every time I heard or saw a Waddle Dee in trouble. Effort I might not have put in if these cute creatures had been replaced by stars or other inanimate objects.

Crucially, the emotional gratification you might gain from saving the Waddle Dees is then expressed through gameplay, with the hub town becoming more alive as you progress through your quest.

The more you care about this world, the more it gives back to you. That is what empathy-driven design is truly about.

In encouraging me to engage with Kirby’s various side-objectives, I saw much more of what the game had to offer, increasing its longevity while also amplifying my appreciation of the whole experience.

It is one of the reasons why Kirby and the Forgotten Land clicked with me during a time where I had started to suspect that I had grown out of enjoying platformers. Turns out, I just needed a different kind of motivation, and I found it in the form of a rotund, pink hero who heals the world around him.

Now, should every game attempt to motivate their players through carefully orchestrated emotional investment?

No, of course not.

There are more ways of keeping players hooked - clever reward systems, a natural sense of progression, an engaging gameplay loop...

Besides, not every player will be as susceptible to this type of incentivization. If you just look at a character’s cries for help as an .mp3 file playing, then odds are you won’t be persuaded to go and help them unless there’s something in it for you. And that’s fine.

One thing that does hold true is that, as a developer, you should always think about how you intend to keep your players interested, engaged and satisfied.

And if you can create a world that invites the player to care on an intrinsic level, then empathy-driven design might be worth leaning into.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to save some more Waddle Dees.

Notes:
*This analysis of the Kate Marsh rooftop scene is partially inspired by Whitelight’s great video on the entire game. Give it a watch here.

Policeman? Fireman? Astronaut?

All boring job prospects for 8-year-old me.

No, when I was a kid, I wanted to make video games. I had little to no idea of what a developer actually did on a day-to-day basis, but that didn’t stop me.

Just the idea of being able to think of worlds in my mind and then making them appear on a TV or computer screen was enough to captivate me. It seemed the closest thing to actual, real-world magic.

Sadly, my daydreaming was just that, as I never developed any affinity for coding, programming, or all of the other ‘boring’ stuff that tends to form the basis for an actual game.

Today, the closest thing to a dev credit in a game that I have is being a playtester for the indie retro first-person shooter Selaco.

Of course, being a playtester does not constitute ‘making video games’ by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t produce any of the actual content - I just caught bugs and provided gameplay feedback for the game’s first chapter.

Still, being a playtester has been a valuable experience. Not just because it allowed me to be a very small part of a game that I genuinely believe is fantastic, but also because it gave me a radically different perspective on game design.

Just consider: did you ever play a game where you thought something to the tune of: “Why didn’t the developers put in this very basic feature? It’s such a no-brainer!” That feature could be anything ranging from a minimap to a dedicated reload button to whatever it is you think that game is lacking.

I can think of countless examples of such thoughts. Why didn’t Mario Kart 64 allow me to select individual tracks to race against CPU opponents? Why does Zelda: Breath of the Wild have this weapon-breaking system that so many people seem to hate?

Above all, though, I had always wondered why games like Half-Life and F.E.A.R. had flashlights that ran out of energy after like 20-30 seconds.

There seemed to be little point to it. You turn on your flashlight, and if you keep it running long enough, it’ll be automatically switched off when it runs out of juice. It recharges in about five seconds, so what is the point of such a cumbersome mechanic?

As it turns out, Selaco also has this rechargeable flashlight. With the game openly being inspired by the aforementioned classics - Half-Life and F.E.A.R. - you’d be forgiven to conclude that the only reason Selaco has this flashlight mechanic is because those games had it too.

This wasn’t just my initial thought, but it was and sometimes still is also a commonly cited pet peeve in professional and user reviews.

And yet, there are very good reasons for the flashlight to work the way it does.

Without going into boring technical detail, turning on the flashlight is very heavy on performance in Selaco’s GZDoom engine. So while the gamey flashlight functionality led to a fair amount of complaints, allowing players to leave it on at all times would probably have led to a true avalanche of performance woes, which, from a developer point of view, are much worse.

On a more mundane note, players also tend to just forget to turn off their flashlights, and shining a bright light on everything tends to make games look worse.

This is just one example of how a seemingly obvious design goof may have a perfectly logical explanation*, but it’s far from the only one. In fact, games are full of them.

In a way, it makes me glad that I’m not an actual developer. It is true that many developers are really just gamers who like games so much that they wanted to make their own. Even still, they have to wear their ‘developer hat’ during much of this process, making choices that might be unpopular, but are required to make their product function.

Within that entire process, something like flashlight functionality is only a minor point of contention.

So what if players start demanding features that are unreasonable or impossible?

In the indie shooter landscape, an oft-heard request or even demand is for the developers to add some sort of multiplayer. Whether it’s competitive multiplayer or co-op, surely it can’t be that hard, right? The levels are already in place, the gameplay is already there... Just flick the switch and let us play with each other.

What gives?

As you might imagine, adding basic multiplayer functionality to a single-player-oriented game actually comes with a huge swathe of technical complications that balloon the amount of development time and resources needed. It’s no coincidence that, sometimes, big budget games have separate teams working on the single player and multiplayer parts.

Even without these technical hang-ups, and even if we just want to add simple co-op to a game, we are far from being in the clear.

How do we balance the game for co-op? Do we add in more enemies, or do we make the existing enemies stronger? Do we need to add more pick-ups and other resources, or do we expect players to share between them? How will enemies handle being able to pick between two targets instead of one?

The list of questions is near endless, and a good developer will have to find the right answer for every single one of them.

My time as a playtester has made me appreciate the amount of considerations that video game developers have to make every step of the way, knowing full well that unpopular choices will sometimes be necessary to keep the game functional and within budget, or to remain true to its design vision.

These days, when I see such requests, I automatically try to look at it from the devs’ point of view. What could be the reasons that they didn’t yet add this hotly requested feature?

Because odds are, even if something isn’t in a game, its dev team will already have talked about this possibility to the point of tedium.

It’s this shift in perspective that has recently caused me to feel some distance from the community of my most-played online game: The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO).

Coming up on the MMO’s 12th birthday, developer Zenimax Online Studios (ZOS) wrapped up its annual reveal stream earlier this month - an overview of the coming year’s new content and features.

This year felt different from previous years.

Where normally, we are ‘treated’ to a scripted and rather corporate talk about the new area and story that will be added to the game, this stream revealed a big list of changes to the fundamentals of the game.

Many of the proposed changes, such as those pertaining to animations, the earning of rewards and monetization, seemed promising, but the underlying tone seemed a touch... odd.

With many long-awaited features being addressed, the devs really appeared to be catering to what they think players want. This may seem like a no-brainer, but as we’ve discussed, what players want is not always feasible or logical. Doubly so for a live service game where players have competing interests and different visions for the direction the game should take.

When it comes to ESO, though, this was the logical step to take. In recent years, player numbers appear to be on a downward trend**, which is of course a bad sign for a game that’s built around hosting as many players as possible.

During the stream, the devs seemed at times almost apologetic, perhaps realizing that their communication with the player base had often been lacking in the past.

From what I could tell, the player response to the stream and the announcements made therein have generally been met with cautious optimism. While it’s still up to ZOS to walk to walk, it does feel like the future of the game is perhaps a little brighter than it seemed a month ago.

Of course, there is still cynicism aplenty. At this point in an MMO’s life cycle, the ‘jaded veteran’ archetype is almost inevitable.

It doesn’t even really matter what the devs say or do: especially players who either have one foot out the door or uninstalled already will always interpret it in the most negative way possible.

Had I been a little younger, I would maybe have fallen prey to this mentality as well.

I fit the bill: I’ve played ESO for nine years to the day, and I’m part of multiple communities where the majority of the people there appear to play this game against their will, appreciating the social aspect while loathing the gameplay every step of the way.

Still, I can’t get myself to go along with it. I know that a developer never sets out to make a bad game. And even if the game might not always give me what it used to, instead of feeling resentful, I try to appreciate that I can now play this game more casually. That I’ve achieved pretty much everything I’ve wanted to achieve in this game, and can now help people who are only just starting their ESO journey.

Most importantly of all, I realize that - as the cliché dictates - communication is a two-way street. Improving a game does not just demand developers that are willing to listen; it demands players who are willing and able to communicate. To give feedback that the developers can digest and work with.

Telling people that their game sucks is easy. Telling them how to improve it? Not so much.

This is why I cherish my experience as a playtester.

It gave me an insight into game development that I would not have had otherwise. It also made me think deeper about why developers make the choices they do. Don’t get me wrong - developers make bad choices all the time, but they seldom make them randomly.

If you, as a player, want to criticize a game, try and look at it from the developers’ point of view. Not to excuse them or to make a bad choice appear less bad. But because considering their motivation for a given choice will help you formulate a better argument against it.

These days, games get updated constantly. So who knows, maybe your suggestion will make it into the next patch notes. All it takes is a player willing to communicate, and a developer prepared to listen.

On that latter note, if I can give one word of advice to game studios: make sure the lines of communication between the developers and the players remain as short as they can be. Sure, bigger studios do need something in the way of quality control to prevent regular devs from being overwhelmed by the volume and tone of player feedback, but don’t cut them off completely.

Man, being a video game developer seems like hard work. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea to become an astronaut instead.

Notes:
*My charging flashlight example is based on publicly communicated information available to anyone. Since I signed an NDA as a playtester and intend to respect it at all times, I cannot go into any similar examples that popped up earlier in the playtesting cycle.
**While official player counts for MMOs are not public and in fact protected by NDAs, ESO’s decrease in players can be inferred from Steam charts, dev statements and anecdotal evidence.

There is a game that still manages to put me in a foul mood every time its name is uttered. Not because it is the worst game I’ve ever played, but because it betrayed me.

That game? Oh, it’s Hellbound, an indie game you’ve probably never heard of. Lucky you.

Hellbound is a first-person shooter that’s sold on Steam for about €/$15. In truth, its biggest crime is that it’s just kind of generic. It ain’t broken and it’s not an asset flip, and especially since the advent of AI-reliant gaming studios, there’s an entire ocean’s worth of worse games on the platform.

Why could I possibly feel so strongly about it?

My particular disdain for this product is rooted in something really bothering me about its marketing angle.

The problem with that aspect of the game is perfectly summarized by its tagline: A ‘90s FPS, 30 years later. While reminding me that the ‘90s were 30+ years ago gives me enough reason to feel annoyed, my real issue with it is that it comes across as the video game equivalent of stolen valor.

Hellbound is not like a ‘90s FPS in any real sense, and I can prove it by giving a small history lesson.

You see, I’m enough of an unc to remember FPS juggernauts from the ‘90s, mostly because I inherited those games from my older brother like a pair of baggy trousers.

Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake: all the games that are invoked as inspirations in the marketing copy of this game, I have played rather extensively. Even though, as a kid, I obviously only cared about the shooting, violence and badass look, I now realize that these games had smart, well-balanced design that was deceptively intricate.

These old games were, in actuality, part shooter, part labyrinthian key hunt; they used open-ended level layouts that encouraged exploration, adding layers of depth beneath their simplistic superficies.

While the enemies themselves were quite rudimentary in terms of their behavior and movement, the variety of your opponents and the weapons with which to most efficiently kill them spawned infinite possibilities for clever encounter design.

Is it any wonder, then, that a game like Doom still has an active community despite it almost being old enough to move out and rent a one-bedroom apartment?

With the advent of the military shooter in the mid 2000s, the FPS genre started centering around giving players a cinematic experience, courtesy of the rapidly advancing technology of the day. In practice, this meant taking control away from players and putting them pretty much on-rails, just to ensure that they wouldn’t potentially miss out on any of the rad explosions the devs had mapped out for them.

So yeah, FPS games looked flashier on a visual level, but they didn’t let you explore and work out a level like they used to. Design-wise, this was a step backwards.

Throughout the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, there were actually a lot of attempts to recapture that old-school FPS magic. But, for whatever reason, they always focused on the wrong aspect: the aesthetics.

This is how we got abominations like Duke Nukem Forever (2011), a game so insanely tone-deaf that it becomes funny again on some fucked up, post-ironic level.

Yet, despite how misguided its attempts at toilet humor may have been, the game failed as a Duke Nukem throwback because it didn’t pay homage to the level design of old. Sure, the Duke tried his best to crack crude jokes like 15 years hadn’t just passed him by, but the game itself was a sequence of all the worn-down trends of modern FPS design: linear levels, too many cutscenes, boring vehicle sections... Hell, they even had that ‘you can carry no more than two weapons’ gimmick on lock and only saw fit to change it when enough people complained.

What many people forget about Duke Nukem Forever is the context that surrounded it. Following the success of Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare subseries in the late 2000s, every studio wanted a piece of that pie.

Medal of Honor went for that whole bearded guy in a desert wearing pit vipers 2010 idea of cool, while FEAR’s third installment completely betrayed the series by copying Call of Duty’s entire game plan, complete with wave-based combat arenas and regenerating health. Big publishers wrongly assumed that FPS players would only be willing to digest linear spectacle.

Given the fate of the respective FEAR and Medal of Honor franchises - both series lost relevance soon after - it was becoming clear that big studios were riding a dying trend. This left fertile ground for more creative souls to come up with different takes on the FPS genre. It was in this moment that we saw the rising popularity of open world-based design in shooters. And, more relevant to our argument, studios that attempted to draw inspiration from the OG generation of first-person shooters.

‘Attempted’ being the operative word here.

Duke Nukem Forever was but one of those attempts. For instance, we also had Hard Reset (2011), which was at the time seen as a ‘throwback to the old-school’, and Rise of the Triad (2013), a reinterpretation of the game of the same name from the mid-nineties.

However, those games never quite captured that ‘x-factor’ that had made the ‘90s classics so memorable. In the case of Rise of the Triad, it was just an overall lack of quality in the game itself*, and in retrospect, Hard Reset never really had much to do with ‘90s design to begin with.

There was certainly an audience for it, but it seemed like any attempt to relive the glory days of the FPS was doomed to fail.

That is, until 2016, when we saw the reboot of the Doom franchise. Doom 2016 did what no modern game had been able to do up until that point: it captured what had made those ‘90s shooters so unique without feeling archaic or disingenuous.

Doom 2016 had all the ingredients of a classic Doom game: key hunts, exploration-friendly levels and an arsenal of weapons way too big for any human to carry. To this blend, the devs added verticality, ultraviolent glory kills and a bigger focus on storytelling. In short, the game perfectly understood what had made its grandparents - Doom I & II - work, but also which parts of that classic design philosophy were in need of modernization.

What Doom 2016 did for the FPS genre cannot be overstated. It primed a new generation of gamers for a deep appreciation of classic FPS design, even if many who played it might not have realized just how ‘retro’ this experience was.

It’s no coincidence that the rise of the indie retro shooter took off soon after.

2018 saw the release of Dusk, a fast-paced retro shooter created by David Szymanski, which felt a lot more like classic Quake and Doom than anything released post-2005. The following year, Voidpoint’s Ion Fury emerged as the true spiritual successor of Duke Nukem 3D, with the devs even going so far as to make the game run on a source port of Duke 3D’s original engine. That same year, Amid Evil gave the fans of dark fantasy FPS classics Heretic and Hexen something to feel excited about.

And the ball just kept rolling from there.

By now, retro FPS titles have become their own subgenre, called ‘boomer shooters.’ As with any hype, the boomshoot craze would attract a bunch of opportunists, but we have also seen some genuinely insane retro FPS projects that, frankly, beat a lot of ‘90s and early ‘00s stuff at their own game. Supplice, Selaco, Cultic... the list goes on.

That finally brings me back to Hellbound. A ‘90s FPS, 30 years later.

What bothers me about this tagline is not that the game isn’t like any ‘90s FPS, but that the devs would’ve had ample opportunity to learn what made ‘90s FPS games great. Hellbound was released in 2020, four full years after Doom 2016, and well after the first boomer shooters had started taking the underground FPS scene by storm.

Yet, in spite of all these lessons, Hellbound had none of the hallmarks of a ‘90s shooter, and instead felt more like one of those failed attempts at a revival that we’d seen in the early 2010s.

Levels were linear rather than labyrinthian, sometimes being reduced to bland, open arenas with very obvious enemy spawn triggers that would make you play out the same boring fight a dozen times over.

To top it off, there’s little enemy and weapon variety, which limits the encounter design to ‘point your strongest weapon at the enemy and switch to the next-best thing when you run out of ammo.’

So what actually is ‘90s about Hellbound? In truth, nothing. It’s a modern approximation of a perceived ‘90s vibe that never really existed.

Sure, the protagonist swears once at the start of each level, but he does so using swear words like a kid who just learned how to spell the word ‘profanity.’ Some ‘90s protagonists did have an ample library of oneliners, but they were contextual rather than confined to just level starts.

More importantly, old protagonists of games such as Shadow Warrior and Blood were purposefully over-the-top. They quoted cheesy movie lines because it was tacky, not because the developers were desperate for us to perceive them as quote unquote bADaSs.

These more straight-faced attempts at ‘badassery’ are actually a relatively recent phenomenon and can largely be traced back to Doom 2016 and codification of the Doomslayer experience. This was a conscious effort to ease the player into the power fantasy of an all-conquering demon killer. Said recontextualization was necessary, as this concept clashed sharply with the weak FPS protagonists of all the realism-driven shooters that dominated the 2000s and 2010s.

Funnily enough, the whole ‘I’m ridiculously overpowered and cool’ angle didn’t have to be explained or justified in old titles because it was part and parcel of the FPS experience.

As a result, its presence in Hellbound feels odd. Like the devs are trying way too hard to convince us how old-school all of it is, which of course achieves the exact opposite.

The lesson we can draw from this is that, if you want to claim the legacy of games on whose shoulders your product aims to stand, you’d better make sure that you understand the assignment that comes with it.

An authentic ‘90s FPS experience relies on open-ended levels with light puzzle (and sometimes platforming) elements. Combat doesn’t rely on reflexes as much as knowing which weapon to swap to in a given situation.

That’s why Hellbound annoyed me so much. Not because the devs themselves are untalented or malicious, but because its marketing premise sends the wrong message. Despite its claims, Hellbound plays less like classic Doom, and more as if someone who’d only experienced the 2016 Doom reboot tried to reverse-engineer a retro experience based on just that game.

In addition to the so-called ‘boomer shooters,’ classic games like Doom, Blood, Duke Nukem 3D and pretty much all the others actually have high-quality remasters available. Give them a try if you’ve never played them. You’ll soon realize that those titles were a lot less about metal and roids than you’d think. They are considered classics for a reason.

The fact that developers in 2026 are still looking to old-school FPS games for inspiration speaks for itself. I just wish that, before people move to add to that legacy, they’d take some time to fully grasp it first. It’s all too easy to get it wrong.

Learn from me. Don’t get retrobaited.

Notes:
*I just wanted to note that, while the Rise of the Triad reboot wasn’t a good game by itself, it was a very important building block. As retro FPS YouTuber Civvie11 pointed out, this game brought together some of the people who would later grow out to be boomer shooter trailblazers. As such, it is still a historically relevant game.

Look, I always was a Nintendo kid. As the youngest among my siblings, this fate was bestowed upon me by familial decree. Although I had little say in the matter, I can’t complain about growing up with Mario, Zelda and Metroid. I still keep up with these franchises today and they taught me a lot about what good video game design looks like.

Still, I can’t help but wonder. What if I had been given a choice as a kid? A blank slate to select my gaming platform of choice.

I don’t know how the console wars are being fought on the playgrounds these days, but back then, your console was considered part of your identity. Us Nintendo fans were quite snobbish about our precious exclusives, and in retrospect I can’t help but admit that most of the cool kids owned a Playstation.

Sega kids, though?

Yeah, we didn’t really have those where I lived. The only Dreamcast I ever saw in real life was one of those demo booths at the local game store, which showed a loop of cutscenes from Sonic Adventure. I’d be lying if I said the graphical fidelity of those images didn’t pique my interest, but at the same time I knew no one who actually owned a Dreamcast for me to try, or a Megadrive/Genesis or Saturn for that matter.

Yet looking at that blue hedgehog, I can see a reality where my young self would’ve been captivated by his speed and his ‘tude. That edge that Nintendo never had. Mind you, this would’ve been well before his franchise became associated with mediocrity, memes and mockery.

Though it may yet be too early in my life to call this a proper midlife crisis, the other week I decided to try and live this alternative reality and played through all four classic 2D Sonic games sequentially - Sonic, Sonic CD, Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

Part of this experiment was to get a taste of what my childhood would’ve felt like had I taken Sega’s blue pill over Nintendo’s red one. I also just wanted to close what I deemed to be a glaring gap in my video game ‘education.’ Besides, I had played Jazz Jackrabbit as a kid, a DOS game that copied so many of Sonic’s ideas that it bordered on copyright infringement. So this should be fun, right?

My chosen vessel for this journey was the Sonic Origins collection, which I played on my Switch 2. After all these years, playing Sonic on a Nintendo console still feels like drinking Pepsi from a Coca-Cola glass, but it’s still a more natural combo than a retro console hooked up to a flatscreen TV.

So off I went with the original Sonic the Hedgehog from 1991. This game played out pretty much as I’d expected. Until it didn’t.

Playing classic Sonic - The hills are always greener on the other side

I’m not a philistine; I had actually played Green Hill Zone before, which gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect from Sonic. Fast-paced platforming gameplay where momentum is everything. That’s what Sonic is. I saw that commercial from the ‘90s where that kid who sounded like Beavis & Butthead pointed how fast Sonic is, dude. So obviously, this is what the game is all about.

Except it turned out, that’s just what Green Hill Zone is all about.

The levels that followed put quite the damper on the pace. What started as a promise of parkour-infused platforming madness devolved into more traditional platform-hopping, where precision and patience often trumped speed. Marble Zone was the worst offender in this regard, and based on Act 3 it ought to be redubbed Elevator Zone given how much time you spend just... waiting around. All in all, this game was not quite the start I had hoped for.

Don’t get me wrong - Sonic 1 is not a bad game by any stretch, but it’s as if the developers stumbled upon this new and exciting gameplay formula that no one had ever pulled off before, but they flinched when it was time to bring said formula to its natural conclusion.

Over the next few games, you can feel the developers gaining the courage to lean into the core identity of Sonic more and more. It’s a gradual process, sort of like Sonic building momentum to speed through a loop-de-loop.

Starting with Sonic CD and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - because yes, of course Sega developed two separate sequels to the first game - we already see much less of the snail-paced hazard traversal sequences that littered the first game, but we’re not quite out of the woods yet.

Sonic CD adds a lot of speed and verticality but fumbles the bag with a poorly implemented time travel mechanic. This gimmick manages to be both core to Sonic CD’s gameplay experience while also being, for some reason only Sega can explain, entirely optional.

So what about that other sequel? Is it Sonic CD, but cooler? Well, at the very least, it does come a lot closer to delivering a finished product that fulfills the promise of the Sonic IP. Sonic 2 focuses on intricate, momentum-based levels that strike a balance between player skill expression and maintaining a steady flow. Mostly. Sort of.

The last few sections of the game, including Metropolis Zone and the final boss sequence, considerably ramp up those ‘oh come on’ moments where you’re one-shot by cheap enemy placement or you bury your head in your hands as your assigned hedgehog falls into a bottomless pit that you did not realize was bottomless.

Okay, maybe I am also not amazing at these sorts of games, but I should remind you that I’m on a journey here, living that Sega kid life I never got to have. All I could think was that those isolated moments of me yelling various obscenities at my screen when I saw yet another drowning animation play out, those moments would have been full-blown trauma had I grown up on these games.

Despite my complaints, I do recognize that these are special games, and I can see why they are still cherished by many.

Even so, I felt like I needed a redemption arc, and I got it in the form of Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Again, Sega didn’t just release a sequel, but they released two separate games that are really just one game, but they didn’t fit on the cartridge, something something time constraints. It’s all irrelevant now anyway, because on Sonic Origins they are presented as one and the same game, which they were originally intended to be.

Although I can’t deny that there may have been small instances of seething sprinkled throughout my playthrough, this was where the series clicked for me. The developers appeared to have gained enough confidence at this point to create a product that is unapologetically Sonic while having a minimal amount of Rockstar Moments in the game. If you want to know what those are, read my other article.

The first half of the game is again fast-paced, retaining that natural parkour flow while also not being trivial in terms of the challenge it offers. It’s right up there with the best moments of Sonic 2, and then some.

The second half of the game - the ‘Knuckles’ part if you will - appears to be a bit more controversial, but I loved most of it. Yes, even that Sandopolis level. Maybe I’m biased in that regard, since a lifetime of overdosing on Zelda trained me for those time-based puzzles.

In general, the pace is slower across the latter half of the game, but they got really creative with the level gimmicks, such as the switches in the aforementioned Sandopolis or the gravity reversal in Death Egg. These mechanics still made the game feel unlike any other 2D platformer I had played. Even if you don’t like some of these gimmicks, they’re gone 2 levels later. That restraint to retire a novel gameplay mechanic before it loses its spark instead of beating it in your face until you cry is admirable, and still rare among developers to this very day.

Add an endgame sequence that actually has proper build-up and a satisfying resolution in the form of a good boss fight, and Sonic 3&K is the first installment of them all where I didn’t dwell on a sour aftertaste left by the more cumbersome elements of the game. Sonic 3&K, dare I say, saw Sega start to reach the heights that Nintendo routinely occupied with Mario. Oh, what could have been.

Once a fanboy...

So, am I going to develop a complex about my parents or siblings not letting me play Sonic as a kid? Based on my recent experience with these classics, enjoyable though they (mostly) were, they did not make me feel like I had massively missed out.

Rather, I am more glad than ever that the wheels of fate decided on a Nintendo-tinged childhood. Just to clear the air here: I’m by no means a Nintendo fanboy. I switched to PC after my teens and mostly ignored the company in the dire Wii/Wii U years. Yet, at the same time I have to acknowledge that they have a certain quality to them that always makes me come back eventually, even if it’s just to keep tabs on what they’ve been cooking up.

One thing I do like about Nintendo is that I can nearly always rely on them to give me a well-rounded gaming experience. If there’s a certain skill I need in order to beat one of their games, I can safely assume that said game will teach me in a way that feels natural and fun. That is something that I absolutely took for granted as a kid, and part of the value of playing games outside of that orbit is that you start to recognize those hidden mechanisms, because they simply aren’t present in many other titles.

The Sonic games were mostly good, but I did feel like Sega kept throwing things at me hoping they would stick, rather than expertly guiding me through an escalating series of challenges. I also realize that this unpredictable chaos is part of the charm to many fans of the series.

Sega kids were already a dying breed when I was doing my part in the trenches of the console wars. I’m not sure that I would’ve found Sonic too ‘radtastic’ had I had the opportunity to actually play those games back in the day.

Still, I respect the effort. Sega had a unique take on the platforming genre and they eventually got it right. While it was (mostly) fun to plow through these games in early 2026, I do find myself in need of a palate cleanser. I’m thinking something Nintendo-made.

Maybe I am a fanboy after all.

Are video games too easy these days?

Before you answer that, I invite you to think of the worst mission or segment in a video game that you’ve experienced. Is it Sonic 1’s underwater levels? The tutorial in the first Driver? That toy airplane mission in San Andreas?

There are too many options to choose from, but I would like to propose a definitive answer that popped up in 1999’s Donkey Kong 64.

A 3D platformer from the same mold as Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong 64 had you explore huge, themed levels as one of 5 apes from the Kong family. There, you were tasked with collecting bananas and other items needed for progression. While memorizing the characters’ respective movesets was a challenge of itself, and this game was released back when we hadn’t quite figured out how the camera should work in a 3D environment, the moment-to-moment gameplay actually wasn’t that difficult.

Until a moment, in the middle of the game, where you are presented with an in-game arcade machine containing the original Donkey Kong game from 1981.

A fun little throwback? If only.

In order to progress DK64 and unlock the next batch of levels, you had to beat the game that started it all. In its entirety. Twice.

Now, the OG Donkey Kong isn’t a long game. You can beat it in around 20 minutes. However, this was an old game made for arcades, meaning that it was designed around eating through your older brother’s quarters by being difficult and unforgiving. Touch a harmful object? You die. Fall too far down? You die. Time runs out? You die. Lose 3 lives, and you have to start from the beginning.

What’s worse is that none of Donkey Kong 64’s gameplay prepared you for this challenge. You had to dive from a free-form 3D platformer into a rudimentary arcade platformer. The carryover skill was precisely zero. Yet, if you wanted to progress in the main game, you had no choice but to suck it up and master this completely different game. A design fumble that cost kid me an entire day to overcome. This requirement still baffles me to this day.

This may be an extreme example, but I bring it up because it perfectly encapsulates what made difficulty spikes such as the ‘Supply Lines’ mission in San Andreas and other such segments so traumatizing. They flipped the board and decided that, actually, those skills you’d been honing up until that point don’t matter. By giving you a challenge you weren’t in any way prepared for, the developers breached the contract with the player. In doing so, they interrupted the flow of the game and hurt the player’s trust, ultimately resulting in a worse product.

These segments were so common in games in the nineties and early noughties that my brother and I actually coined a term for them. Having encountered random difficulty spikes in Rockstar games such as GTA 3 through San Andreas, The Warriors and Bully, we came to refer to them as Rockstar Moments. Sequences of tonal whiplash that stuck purely because of their ill-deserved difficulty. Once you hit a Rockstar Moment, you were in for a bad time.

Fortunately, in recent years it seems that we’ve seen fewer and fewer of these Rockstar Moments, regardless of the developers in question. Some veteran gamers even complain that many games today are too easy. And while it is generally true that there is more handholding and overall mercy in games these days, developers also just respect their contract with the player a lot more.

We can identify two main reasons for this.

The most important one is that games are less of a rare commodity now than they were in the ‘90s. Back then, if you bought a game as a kid, you were stuck with it for months. There were no Steam sales, no free games on Epic, and no backwards-compatible digital game libraries. So if a game hit you with some cheap shots, your only choice was to buckle down and roll with the punches. Nowadays, moments like that would more likely be to the detriment of player retention since the modern gamer can just boot up something else instead. Especially in an industry rife with DLC and microtransactions, that’s a dangerous game to play.

What’s also relevant, though, is that we’ve come a long way with game design. Some of these notorious missions were the result of ulterior motives trumping core design philosophy and pacing. Ever wondered why developers in the ‘90s could not resist putting infuriating water levels in their otherwise great games? Not because they were fun, but because water physics in those days signaled technical prowess. Similarly, we never would’ve had any escort missions if developers hadn’t made huge strides with NPC pathing and behavior in those years. Rockstar’s most rage-inducing missions mostly emerged from that studio’s perhaps misguided urge to showcase their versatility. If you play San Andreas in this day and age, you’ll notice how many segments in that game are just minigames of varying quality.

That we are seeing fewer Rockstar Moments across the entire gaming landscape means that, despite all the bad things we can say about modern gaming, we have made progress in some areas.

Even games that pride themselves on their ‘old-school’ difficulty, such as the Souls games, treat difficulty as something that teaches you and helps you improve. Despite hundreds of deaths and frustrating moments, that contract with the player is seldom breached.

If, in the middle of Dark Souls 3, your progress were stifled by an in-game Space Invaders arcade machine, odds are that would be more infuriating than any cheap death up until that point.

So, are video games too easy? Well, maybe some are. But I, for one, am glad that Rockstar Moments, regardless of the studio involved, are starting to become a thing of the past. I can now confidently play a game and trust it to teach me the required skills for completion along the way. No longer do I have to worry about random rug pulls in the form of toy planes or evil arcade machines that eat away at my sanity instead of my quarters.

Games may generally be easier, but above all, they are better at respecting the player.

Hello traveler, and welcome to my space away from the algorithm inferno that is the rest of the internet.

For some years, I’ve been making video game content on Youtube. More and more, my interest in these videos has shifted towards analysis of game design and narrative structures. Although I still make videos regularly, I found that I needed another outlet for my many ideas, thoughts and ponderings that don’t fit the parameters of a video format.

Substack seems like a good place to put these thoughts. As such, the articles I post here will dive into some of the questions you may have when playing a game. For example:

• Why is this level so frustrating?

• Why do I care so much about the characters in this story?

• Why is the pacing so good in this game?

Will these articles be short or long? Both, depending on the topic at hand! Much like in a video game, switching things up prevents them from becoming stale.

It’s hard to say anything about the frequency of my posts, but rest assured that any particularly interesting musings will find their way onto my page!