But a Jape

“I explicitly told you to collect the Fancy Banana Tokens! How else did you expect to defeat the Demon Emperor for good and unlock the True Ending?!”

– Purple Wizard, right before the final boss fight, when you don’t have enough tokens to play the Claw of Fate game and win the Legendary Blade of Evil’s Bane(ana)

I like a good open world game – many of my favorite games of all time are open world – but I can’t understand why they insist on having stories with such urgent stakes. “You have to rescue your daughter who is also the key to saving the world! But also, care to play some cards while you’re at it?” “The castle has been taken over by demons and an army of darkness is invading the kingdom! Ooh, look, this mountain also has snowboarding!” “YOUR BRAIN WILL LITERALLY EXPLODE WITHIN A FEW DAYS! Hold on, this random cave might have treasure in it.”

Yeah, I know there’s story-gameplay dissonance in every game with a plot, but this type just seems so explicitly contradictory in its messaging. Like, is it really that hard to come up with an open world story where things aren’t moments away from calamity because you specifically are choosing not to address it? There has to be a narrative out there that’s just like, “Hey, things suck right now, but it’s not like you have to do anything about it. I mean, you probably can’t anyway, not unless you spent the next dozen hours or so becoming super powerful or something. That would be cool, but like, there’s no rush or anything.”

Actually, I guess that’s what Elden Ring did.

– James