Transcription
Hi there, I'm John Wolfe, also known as Superdude or Super, whichever you'd prefer, and I would like to talk about a particular type of video game progression that I think more people should experience.
Most people who have played an adventure game have come across an obstacle that you simply can't do anything with. Be it a physical obstruction or a ledge that's just a bit too high, you could not possibly do anything to clear this obstacle at this point in time. So, you move on, and continue exploring the level until you come across some treasure chest that gives you a handy dandy power-up. A-ha, you think, this is just what I need to clear that previous obstacle. So you go back there, a good and smart little gamer, and you clear the obstacle. Hooray. You feel both strong as a result of gaining new power, and smart, since you figured out how to use your ability.
There are examples of this all over gaming. I have been showing you Hollow Knight's Forgotten Crossroads, but there's also the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess' Arbiter's Grounds, where the way to the boss key is locked behind these silly wall grooves, and this seemingly unrelated cog-shaped hole in the floor, a room over, which stops direct progress through the rest of the dungeon. No idea what to do with these things, so you keep exploring. One mini-boss later, and you gain the Spinner, which lets you grab that boss key and open that final door of the dungeon in one fell swoop. In God of War 2018, when you're walking through the Light Elven sanctuary with your boy and there are all these blue crystals all over the place. In fact, they've been all over the game up until this point, so when Atreus finally gets the special light elven arrows that make bridges of light, your brain is happy to finally put two and two together on that. In the original axiam... [jumbled chatter] [rising scream] This is a tried and true method of progressing in video games, and for some genres such as the Zelda-like action-adventure game or a Metroidvania, it is their bread and butter. Rub in their face that they can't achieve something. Give them that handy dandy power-up and show them how it works, use it later in puzzle or platforming settings. Winner every time.
But, there is another method of progression that is a little less mechanical and a little more cerebral. Where rather than giving the player an item or ability with which to interface with the world in a new way, the game instead pulls back the curtain and reveals possibilities previously unknown to the Player. This is what I will call Knowledge-Based Unlocks, hereafter abbreviated as KBUs, and in my opinion, KBUs completely change how a game is experienced. I hope to share with you some of my favorite games that forefront KBUs, hope that you try them out for yourself, and highlight why more people should make video games like this.
Quick disclaimer for you: Because they are KNOWLEDGE-based unlocks, if I tell you any of these unlocks, I will have, in fact, ruined the thing and taken away from some of the game's discovery. As a result, I will be talking about vibes, opening hours, why the game is cool, how the knowledge-based unlocks help, but not really talking about, you know, the mechanics. Even the opening hours may be considered spoilers to die-hard fans of these games if I were to tell you, so just know that going in. If something sounds cool? Stop listening immediately and get in there. Try it for yourself. If you need more convincing, please, keep watching the video. I mean, it's not really YouTube if I tell you to stop watching, so... maybe just skip that section and go... anyway...
The purest expression of what I'm referring to is a game where everything is learned information. No unlocks, no items, just knowledge, from lore down to every single mechanic. And as far as I know, no game goes harder in this regard than Outer Wilds.
Outer Wilds is an archaeological space exploration game where you're this small little guy called a Hearthian who's preparing for his first day out in space. You have a starting area where the basics of space travel are explained to you: from piloting your spacecraft, to various tools of the space-faring trade, and how to travel in a zero-G environment. Once you find the launch codes to your ship, you can actually enter the thing, where you are given your greatest ally in orienting yourself for your mission: the Computer. The computer logs locations and things you've learned about, and gives you a sense of what you know and what there is to discover. After giving it a once-over, you're off to space to go wherever and do whatever. So, where do you want to go? Depending on your dialogue choices back home, various planets may have been pointed out to you. As you set out to wherever you choose, you will very soon discover that there was this ancient alien race called the Nomai that seemingly took up shop all over your galaxy. They have some pretty sophisticated tech, but they all are gone now. What happened to them? Where did they come from? Are the Hearthians evolved Nomai people? Did the Nomai find some way to leave this solar system entirely?
At its core, this game is archaeological in nature. You are staring at the ancient history of your people and the Nomai and trying to figure out how this all pieces together. Put another way, the goal is to learn. Everything in the game, from story threads to mechanics, are out in space for you to discover for yourself. And yes, I did say mechanics. Learning gameplay mechanics in this way means it is up to you to discover how that mechanic works, and experiment on your own. Not only that, but once you have your head wrapped around it, where do you apply this information? It's a lot less obvious than "use your new blasty power on the big bug blocking your path," and this engages the player more than the alternative. YOU both discovered how this works, and what to do with it in your own brain.
Now, with the trappings out of the way... I can tell you about my first day out in Space in Outer Wilds. I went to the moon, spoke to the old man sitting there, and was staring at the planets in the sky as I wondered where I wanted to explore. The game has only really presented me with one wrong answer: Dark Bramble. Dark Bramble is a mysterious hole with roots grabbing chunks of rock. If you suggest going here to the Hearthian in the Observatory, he says to you, "I must say... Should you choose to go to Dark Bramble, be very careful. No one's explored there before, either, for what you'll find are excellent reasons." This place is dangerous in some manner, and I ignored all of that. Going inside I immediately discovered UNIMAGINABLE HORRORS BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION. Piloting my ship and being generally pretty terrified of the situation I put myself in, I managed to find one quiet location where I could rest a bit, and explore. I entered a hollowed-out inside of one of those roots found on the outside of the Bramble. On the very tip, was something quite out of place on this planet, and I was woefully unprepared to discover it. I had just happened upon a gameplay mechanic, and given that this was Day 1 of my adventure out here, I didn't know what I was seeing. Luckily, when you find bits of information that are important to your greater understanding of your solar system, the computer is updated with this information. A little pin appeared on my computer, detailing what I had found... for the rest of the playthrough. It was only near the end of the game, looking over my pin board like a madman, did I come to understand the significance of what I saw there, and was finally able to complete the game after.
This is the experience Outer Wilds and, by extension, I am selling you. This is a game where everything is a discovery, and the onus is on you to piece it together. You explore at your own curiosity, to satisfy your questions and hopefully find some answers for the Nomai, and yourself. This means to see the story, you must be thinking actively about the information you're presented with. As a result, you are inherently more invested in what's happening in Outer Wilds than in a video game where information is delivered by cut scene, and that allows it to cut deeper when it wants to. Speaking personally, this game made me feel immense sadness, triumph, fear, and perhaps most often, a deep existential horror on multiple levels throughout the entire game's run. While I will say the game doesn't end in that place, space has a way of making you feel the tininess of your own existence, and this game has achieved that feeling like no other. Outer Wilds is the purest expression of KBUs, and this fact allows it to stick in your mind for weeks as you're trying to make sense of what you've seen, piece together the threads, and even after it ends, you'll be beside yourself thinking about it for months to come. I know I was.
Oh, and uh, one more thing. I have purposefully left Outer Wilds out of its frame, so to speak. There is a mechanic which you will discover within the first hour of playing that is structurally important to the entire game. Reviews will tell you about it. Other YouTubers would tell you about it. Watch any Let's Play and you would see pretty immediately what I've purposefully neglected to mention within the first hour. I have neglected to mention this very crucial frame, because it is the actual reason for your adventure. You go out for the Nomai at first, yes, but you discover something greater soon after. And it is THAT thing that I want to leave unsaid, so you can have a rather strong discovery all of your own, unsullied by me. I hope you enjoy it.
I can sing the praises of Outer Wilds for probably twice the length of this video alone, but it does have a pretty massive downside that any game with KBUs has. You can only purely experience it once. Games of this type are lightning in a bottle; the first time with them is electric and a one-of-a-kind experience... but once you know the secrets to a knowledge-based game, you can't unlearn what you've discovered. Cat's out of the bag.
Most games have this problem to some degree: take for example, this church in Dark Souls 1's Undead Burg... [game chatter: What I would suggest doing is look for an opening] (Hey did you know? There's an arcane spellcaster above you right now.) Once you've seen them, that's it. You know they're there. Another fun fact, once you kill them? They never spawn here again. This wizard is both out of place in this church AND their presence is VERY important to the story of Dark Souls, and they disappear after you kill them once. Brilliant. This is partially the reason why members of the Git Gut Gang are constantly on the prowl for new Souls-likes; once you know the layout of enemies, the boss designs, and the secrets, a lot of that initial challenge is gone. So, you must search for more games of a similar ilk to get that same hit. Many games from many studios have risen to the challenge of sating the Git Gut Gang, and From Software is no exception. But every game of this genre has that issue. Play it, beat it, maybe try out some different builds if you're into that sort of thing, onto the next one. In this way, we can consider the level design and enemy layouts to be another KBU (I know I'm stretching, bear with me), and this also suffers from the lightning-in-a-bottle problem. Since most studios are chasing a trend when they make Souls-likes, they just ignore this negative feature of the design process and walk right over it. They got money to make.
But one studio, namely the one who started this trend, decided to take Knowledge-Based Unlocks for a ride, and make a game where what is normally a weakness of the genre is played to their advantage. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a, uh, uhm... aaaa... Honestly Sekiro is really pushing the boundaries of the genre conventions but let's call it what is easiest. Sekiro is a Souls-like made by the genre's founder From Software back in 2019. It is a game where you play as Wolf, a shinobi who's put in charge of a prince named Kuro, who is cursed with a bloodline of mysterious power that the villains in the game want for themselves. As his protector, it is your job to protect Kuro from anyone who would... oh my god WOLF. OH MY GOD WOLF THAT'S NOT HELPFUL, YOU WALNUT. You wake up from that massive loss very much not dead and sporting a cool new bionicle arm that was passed down to you by The Sculptor, the very man who saved you from death in that field earlier. From here, Wolf must fight with everything he has to regain Kuro from those who would use his blood for... evil? You're not sure what they want his blood for at this point, but who cares, you're not paid to think. You're a Shinobi.
So let's talk about how you actually fight in this game. You slash with your sword, block enemy attacks, and sometimes throw special attacks that come from your prosthetic hand. You have some items that can affect your stats or cure status ailments, but not a lot with offensive utility. What you have in your hands is what you're fighting with. As for defenses, you have two bars that represent health and posture. Your health is pretty self-explanatory, but it's the posture bar that is Sekiro's innovation. You see, unlike in the other SoulsBorne titles, where your ability to block a blow is determined by stamina and your shield's quality levels, Sekiro allows you to block infinitely, and suffer no health damage... in theory. What DOES take damage is your posture bar, which breaks when it reaches capacity, causing you to stagger, and allowing the enemies to capitalize on your mistakes. You can regain posture damage by sitting there and blocking, but if you recall, that's what got us here in the first place. The only way to take an enemy's attack against you and turn it into a positive outcome with no downsides is not to block, but to deflect the blow. Deflecting requires an accurately timed press of the block button moments before they would hit you, forcing the enemy's attack out of the way, and shaking their footing. This maneuver deals reduced posture damage to you and forces some of that posture damage BACK onto your enemy.
Here, we see the full picture of the combat. You attack when you can, block your foe's attacks with precision timing, with the hopes of breaking their posture bar and staggering them. And unlike your foes, most of them at least, Wolf is a trained killer. When that bar breaks, he takes them out. It is for this reason that the health bar is in THAT corner of the screen and the Posture bar is HERE all up top. This is the bar you want to destroy. Knock your opponent to their knees so you can end them right then and there.
There are some pretty important ramifications to the combat being this way. For one, it turns Sekiro into a rhythm game of feeling the pulse of the enemy's hits to deflect against, the return with a volley of your own. The combat is twitchy, personal, and fights can often be fought nose-to-nose, neither side giving an inch until one drops dead and the victor is declared. Another consequence is that the game is hard as balls. Each fight is a fight where you must internalize the rhythm. If you don't, you lose. There isn't some overpowered sword you can go find and come back with. You have Kasubimaru. You don't have any awesome spells to blow bosses down in one go, you have shurikens, an axe, and an umbrella. Stat increases can only be gained through Prayer beads, and while some can be found through the environment, the bulk of them are dropped by the VERY BOSSES YOU ARE STRUGGLING AGAINST. So, unlike in every SoulsBorne title before or since, you can't grind to a higher strength in Sekiro. You just have to internalize the fight and become better, actually better, as a person.
The knowledge unlock in Sekiro is rhythm, twitch-timing, and an internalization of patterns that you both must recognize on your own and be able to ACT upon on your own. You are unlocking: the ability to play Sekiro, and the game is constantly questioning if you actually do know how to play it. If you make it to the end, after they throw the actual kitchen sink at you, it finally concedes, "Yes. You do know how to play Sekiro..." And the credits roll, followed by an invitation, to play New Game+. Now, remember how I said mere moments ago that you JUST learned how to play Sekiro? What's say we take that notion for a spin, eh? [Music: The Only Thing They Fear is You, by Mick Gordon]
You see, in most other Souls games, New Game+ lets you keep all of your gear, and the enemy's health and damage increase, but the mystery is gone. It's kinda just a run-through of the same game again, but this time you're prepared, and know what to do with yourself at all the twists and turns. Sekiro takes that idea and turns it up to 11. [Music: The Only Thing They Fear is You] (this song rules) Remember, Sekiro's a rhythm game. Once you have the rhythms down, it's like your favorite song coming on at the dance and you already know the moves. Playing Sekiro through a second time is like cheating. Every wall from your first playthrough? Smash them one by one, first try, without fail. That horrible centipede guy who swings at you nonstop? You remember the rhythms, it's [saying "block" to the rhythm], now he's going to back up - you're going to want to jump - you jump on his head, repeat until he dies. That's MUSIC baby, you could TRANSCRIBE that crap! Playing Sekiro again turns the experience into a power fantasy where your third eye is opened, and nothing can stop you. And remember, YOU learned this. There were no grinding levels to get this power, this is something you earned and you are now reaping what was sown. You are a friggin Shinobi, and you're gonna tear this country OPEN until you find Kuno, then do... whatever happens after that. I'm sure I'm sure the game just ends once you get Kuno back.
There is this video by FitzRoy Animations that encapsulated this feeling in an animated video. I encourage everyone to give it a look, though it is the entire game in animated song form, so perhaps don't if you mind the spoilers. Elsewise, I definitely recommend it. This song has been stuck in my head for years and years.
So, in summation, whilst KBUs do make the second playthrough a less magical experience in comparison to the first, sometimes you can lean into that, and give your players something to look forward to on a subsequent playthrough, like with Sekiro.
The final game I want to talk about blends elements of both games I've spoken about thus far: The act of mechanics being given to you as knowledge like with Outer Wilds, and how we can use knowledge gained to enhance a second playthrough. This game is none other than 2022's TUNIC.
TUNIC is an action-adventure game made by Andrew Shouldice where you play a little fox friend on an adventure through a voxel world. From the outset, you are told nothing about how the game works, save one thing. Once you gain a stick, you are told what the menu button is, and from there how to set the stick to an equipment slot. And that is it. By button freaking, you can see this flip action, but that's the end of what you can discover by just button freaking. Get a key, open a door, and you find the first page of the Manual. The Manual is, well, a manual for the game that you're playing right now. It is a glossy, beautifully crafted book which illustrates mechanics, secrets, and maps of the in-game environment, as well as what you're supposed to be doing here. This is where the KBUs come from in TUNIC. Without this manual, TUNIC is an action-adventure game that absolutely looks up to the Legend of Zelda and has Souls-like combat ('cause there's nothing more hip than Souls-like combat). That is completely fine, the game would still have so much to offer with a vibrant world to discover all its own. But because the game tells you nothing of mechanics, and instead places them within a Manual which is a collectible WITHIN THE GAMEWORLD, this changes the discovery of the game immensely. It is very similar in structure to the see-a-thing, get-a-power, use-it-later system that we've spoken about already with Metroidvania's like Hollow Knight, but now with those unlocks, those powers, are knowledge. What does this yellow square do? It obviously does something. And there are multiple of them throughout the game which you WILL find before you will realize what they do. What about these Hero's Graves? What about the PURPLE ROOM. Or ANY SINGLE item since NOT A SINGLE ONE is explained to you? The Manual will help you figure it out, and now, like a Metroidvania, you remember that you saw this elsewhere and want to go use your newly discovered ability over there. And to be clear, it's not like it's spelled out in the Manual once you get the pages. The Manual is written in a foreign script, so all you really have to go off of are pictures, unless something is really important in which case it's in your chosen language. So you still have to figure it out for yourself and be willing to experiment with the possibilities you're presented with. All the way to the end of the game, you are getting pages for this Manual that are revealing entire new mechanical aspects that you weren't aware of, and it is super amazing that TUNIC pulls that off in both its first and eleventh hours. This game rules, and beating it is a true treasure... but then there's the second playthrough.
I know that TUNIC is considered an action-adventure game officially, but I think it is more Metroidvania than people give it credit. Metroid has this habit of presenting the game in an order to you which, if you know its ins and outs, you can just ignore to do the game in the order you please. Now that you know nearly every mechanic that TUNIC kept locked away from you, you can use them "out of order" so to speak to do what you want in whatever order you want. This first yellow square? Yeah, I know this song and dance, watch as I ... Unlike in Outer Wilds, where the second playthrough holds little new content for you if you were thorough, TUNIC's second is a wholly new experience as the world presented before you is delivered in a remixed order. Just like Sekiro, take your experience gained from a different game's worth of discovery and curiosity, and turn it back on the thing; beat it to pieces with information you've gained out of order. You cheater. For this reason, TUNIC is both a lightning in a bottle, magical experience where you play it through to the end, AND it has more delights to discover past that if you choose to go back for more. TUNIC is, as of my writing this right now, the closest a game has come to deleting KBUs' weakness while keeping all of its strengths. And I love it for that. I hope you do too.
Conclusions are stupid, let's be quick. Knowledge-based unlocks are like giving you the Bow and Arrow unlock, but the Bow and Arrow is information, and you have to figure out what it does all your own. These invest you more since you're having to think about them, what this information means, and how to use it, rather than say, being given a slow-down power in the same room as the super fast slammy door. These lead to lightning-in-a-bottle experiences, and here are some of my favorites: Outer Wilds, an archaeological mystery game that is the purest form of this experience; Sekiro, a truly difficult game to master that takes the knowledge gained from your first playthrough and uses it as a catalyst to make you feel like a powerhouse in the second; and TUNIC, a Metroidvania which blends the two games' strengths into one cohesive whole, tempering KBU's one big weakness.
I am Superdude. Thank you for watching. Hey, thank you for watching the video. This is my first real YouTube video outside of college and the first one I actually wrote a script for - I mean, this isn't 'scripted' but uhh, yeah! Thanks for watching, let me know if you agree, disagree, hate me, wanna say whatever you want. I don't care, just say it in the comments. Uh... sometimes I'm on Twitch, same name as here and uhm yeah, I am Superdude. Thank you for watching.