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An Adventure in Fun (and Pain): My First Nuzlocke

I’ve been a Pokémon fan since I got Red for my Gameboy Pocket a long time ago. I’ve played at least one game in every generation that’s released since then (8 for those curious), and while my love for the games has diminished over time, they still hold a fond place in my heart.

One of the reasons that I don’t enjoy the games as much as I used to is that they’re made for children and, well, I need a little more difficulty to keep things engaging. To solve this exact problem, members of the gaming community came up with Nuzlockes: a self-imposed Pokémon challenge run that comes in many variations but which generally share three rules.

  1. You can only catch the first Pokémon you find in each route.
  2. You have to name every Pokémon you catch.
  3. If a Pokémon faints, it’s “dead” and can no longer be used for the rest of the attempt.

I’ve never tried a Nuzlocke before, in part because doing so would require deleting the save from one of my existing games. However, for Christmas this year, I received a copy of Pokémon White 2, a sequel game from the 5th generation, that I’ve NEVER played. Naturally, my first thought was “I should do my first ever challenge run in a blind playthrough! What could go wrong?”

A lot, dear reader. A LOT.

So much, in fact, that my wife (who gifted me the game) requested I document my hardships and triumphs for you. And those hardships start with Waddles.

Heroic namesake seen here. If you know this reference, I like you.

In every Pokémon game, you have to pick a starter. I generally lean Fire type in this choice, and I lean even more strongly that way in the 5th Generation because I’m not a big fan of the Water or Grass starters. Thus, I chose the Fire-type pig, Tepig. And since Nuzlocke rules demand I name him, my Tepid became known as Waddles.

I was very proud of Waddles. We got off to a good start by beating our rival trainer (the weirdly intense Nigel) twice. We met other Pokémon like a Patrat I named Timom (was supposed to be Timon, but I mistyped) and a little caterpillar I named Nibbles. To be clear, I had no intention of using Timom or Nibbles. I was hoping to catch the Dark-type cat, Purrloin. Or even a Lillipup, since they’re cute and evolve into a solid attacker.

But no. I got a misnamed gopher and a caterpillar wearing a leaf hat.

At least I still had Waddles.

The first gym comes at you fast in White 2. Waddles was level 13. Nibbles was level 8. Timom was level 6. There weren’t any other trainers to battle. Grinding for more experience would be a SLOG since the only mons around were very low level.

So I took a stab at the Aspertia City Gym, battling its leader, another kid named Cheren who really liked normal type Pokémon.

“No problem!” I thought to myself, like an undeservedly confident fool. “This will go fine!”

It did not go fine.

Cheren led with his own Patrat (it did not have a name), which Waddles successfully overcame with some mighty Tackles. The leader then dug deep into his collection of 2 Pokémon and threw out his mightiest…a Lillipup. That’s right, a tiny little puppy named as a reference to the diminutive people in Gulliver’s Travels.

Sigh.

This little puppy hit HARD. It exclusively used the move Bite. Since I needed to heal Waddles from the gopher battle in the first round, I used a Fresh Water, which brought my pig back to full strength: 41 hp.

In comes the first Bite for…19 Damage?!?!

Seen here: my heart and my brain at that moment.

I didn’t expect anywhere near that damage out of the puppy. Waddles had fine defenses. I assumed he could take 4 or 5 hits before getting low. Nope. Not even close.

I used a Potion to heal him back to full.

Another Bite for…18 Damage.

“Okay,” I thought, “It does a little less than 20 damage per Bite, so I can get in an attack before I heal again. Great.”

No, Christopher. Not great. MISTAKE.

I ordered Waddles to launch his most devastating assault, and he surged forward like the champion he was surely destined to be, leaving the Lillipup inches from fainting.

Then came the expected Bite. But it didn’t do 18 damage. Or 19. It did 22.

22!

For anyone doing the math, Waddles had 22 hp at that point. And in one terrible CHOMP, Waddles was no more. See, I knew that almost every damaging move in Pokémon has a range for the specific amount of damage it can deal. I did not know the range could be as high as 4 points so early in the game. This wasn’t a crit. No extra luck or stat changes involved.

Just a slightly bigger bite that ruined my dreams.

I looked at the rest of my team and saw a misnamed gopher and a caterpillar named Nibbles who wore a leaf on his head.

With nothing else to lose, I tossed Nibbles out…

AND NIBBLES WON!

HE NIBBLED THAT PUP UNTIL IT GAVE UP AND I TASTED SWEET VICTORY!

Except that I lost my best Pokémon in the process. In the first gym of eight. Barely an hour into the game.

Meaning my only hope for success remained a Disney knock-off gopher.

And this fierce guy:

Find out what happens next in Nuzlocke Part 2: Leaning on a Caterpillar Is Not a Good Plan, coming to this blog soon!

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Cause and (Mass) Effect

Welcome back to another Monocled Gamer! Today, I want to talk about my favorite game: Mass Effect 2. Yes, 2. Not 1 and definitely not 3. 4 is right out.

More specifically than just raving over why Mass Effect 2 is one of the greatest games ever made (which I could do for hours), I want to compare it to the new-in-2017 Mass Effect: Andromeda and why one succeeded as compared to the other.

Even more specifically than that, I want to have this discussion solely based on the WRITING of the games. This post is meant to be a snapshot of comparison, not a comprehensive analysis.

So Mass Effect 2

Vs.

Mass Effect Andromeda

I feel that this comparison can be broken down into two major factors:

  1. Characters That Are More Like People Than Facsimiles (See previous entries on character writing for more thoughts on this)
  2. Focused Narrative

Characters

Ultimately, the characters of any story are the most direct means through which we learn. Their interactions teach us about each being’s values as well as where they fit in the world. Their observations and histories inform our own. Especially in games, such as much of the Bioware catalog, where the player creates their own avatar in game, characters are the core bridge to narrative engagement.

Among myriad other effects, this also means that players will often feel out-of-place character moments more quickly than any other story inconsistencies. It’s why the precise choices of Captain America and Iron Man in Marvel’s Civil War event (movie or comic book) often don’t quite add up when you stop to think about them.

Mass Effect 2 delights in tightly told, restrained interactions with each character whether primary, secondary, or tertiary. While some characters are more cardboard than others―Jacob and Miranda, for example―every significant individual in ME:2’s story experiences some amount of growth. Unless you skip all personal quests, in which case YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.

Each of these individuals has likes, dislikes, families, histories and events that drive their actions. Some are consistently resentful but when you learn why, you can at least understand. Some are eternally optimistic, in spite of their lives. Others become dismal realists in the face of galactic terror. The evolution and decision making of characters drives the narrative forward meaningfully.

On this count, Mass Effect Andromeda still does a great many things right. Characters are varied, if considerably more cardboard overall, and share elements of themselves over time quite effectively. When an intense moment of character development arrives, you engage with it…but may wind up feeling like the payoff was lesser than anticipated. The first reason for this is that characters in ME:A rely on their cardboard characteristics―those infallible traits that you would use to describe them in 2-4 words (i.e., lifelong mercenary for hire; human asari commando; repentant, religious assassin; bookish scientist turned super spy)―more than they should. The second is a problem of…

Narrative Focus

To be blunt, ME:A lacks narrative focus. It attempts to tell many stories and in so doing, dilutes them all. This is a common element of early story drafts. When in the midst of storyboarding or worldstorming, countless ideas will come to mind. What’s most important (after embracing these ideas) is finding the ones that are the most vital to the core narrative you’re trying to tell, and removing the rest.

During my time as a managing editor, I’ve come up with a name for this rule: “Neat but Unnecessary” or NUN for short (NBU is a cruddy acronym to remember).

Mass Effect Andromeda has a lot of cool story moments, but every single one is buried under heaps of NUN Rule violators. By contrast, Mass Effect 2 is a shark of storytelling―it is lean, fast, and muscles you from point to point.

Narrative revelations in Mass Effect 2, either character-driven or plot-driven, happen continuously. Events roll from one to another rapidly but smoothly. Narrative revelations in Mass Effect Andromeda wind up dragging along the baggage of things you missed or forgot in the umpteen other things that have happened since the last revelation. It’s not that you don’t care for the story (at least at first), it’s that so much happens without really mattering that you can’t be bothered to care once something does.

At the end of the day, a story can (and should) be as long as it needs to be. It can be easy to cram it full of extra details, but those details need to add cohesively to the narrative rather than distracting or, worse still, creating brand new questions that may not be answered (*cough*Quarian Ark*cough*).

So as you go on and write whatever it is you’re writing, take time to think about NUNs. Not these

https://giphy.com/gifs/hayley-mills-the-trouble-with-angels-AqlX1TY49hTS8

but those details that are Neat…but UNncessary. Unless you’re writing about actual nuns. In that case, have at it!

For more content, head to the main page HERE.

Make sure to let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter!

Thanks for reading and see you next time.

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Cheerio and Characters in Persona 5

So, today, I want to introduce you to something I used to do. It was not a famous or popular thing, but I enjoyed doing it for the brief time I could. You see, I really like video games. After writing, they are my favorite hobby both to relax with and to explore through. While not all great games have great stories (or even good ones), those that do are often my very favorite titles to play and replay. Because of this, six or so years ago, I became…

…the MONOCLED GAMER.


“Yes, yes. Good show and all that.”

Yeah, dumb title, I know. The point of the channel, though, was to talk about games old or new, forgotten or celebrated, that pushed storytelling in the medium forward. While I have no intention of making it “a thing” again, I think it’s important for you folks to have an idea of who I am and what motivates me. So, from time to time, you’ll see a post in a folder called “Monocled Gamer” that will extol or decry something video game story-related. In a similar fashion, posts about music, movies, and such will intermittently make themselves known—but always with an eye toward the process of writing or storytelling.

For example, by way of introduction, let’s chat for just a minute about Persona 5: a game developed by Atlus that I had no interest in playing.

For the diehard fans out there, I apologize. I am known to sometimes love a good JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game for those not in “the know”), I just never played any of the earlier games in this series and, therefore, had no interest. The point is that I knew the game was coming out, knew that it had taken many years to make, and knew that it was a JRPG a lot of fangirls and fanboys were desperate to get their hands on.

To celebrate a work achievement, since the reviews were SO good, I picked up Persona 5, content with the idea of selling it online if I didn’t like it. Since then, I’ve put 200+ hours into the game (I know, right?!): 140 in my first playthrough and the rest on a New Game+.  All of this led me to question what I am so enamored with, intrigued by, and excited about regarding Persona 5. And I use “what” conspicuously. There are parts of the game I’m not overly fond of; nothing’s perfect after all. Nonetheless, in spite of those things, Persona 5 ranks within my favorite games of all time.

A lot of factors play into that, of course; the insane attention to detail, the terrific style, the bumpin’ soundtrack, etc. But the two things that most pull me in are core elements of the story. The first, and biggest, is that it tells an incredibly ambitious tale (the things it pulls off are impressive) built around a simple conceit—the world isn’t fair, crappy people often succeed most, but you have the power to change those people and the world for the better.

That concept is not original to this game or franchise, and I know it. However, the unbridled optimism with which the game tackles it, encourages players to feel a bit of that optimism themselves. It is a game that, when played with an open heart and mind, will leave you smiling at the end—even though you’ll be sad that it’s over.

All of that is great, truly, but it wouldn’t work without the second and, I would say, most important piece: characters that feel pretty friggin’ real. Throughout the game, you engage with and can choose to develop deeper relationships (romantic or not) with dozens of characters. Some want to help you, some want to use you, and some want to harm you. Going back to something I said in a previous post on this site, these characters motivations never really come off as plot-driven. They have their own problems caused by past decisions they’ve made or unfortunate turns of events in the world around them. If you choose to help them, you’ll inevitably learn more about them that maybe you wanted to know…or maybe you didn’t.


“Futaba is the best. If you disagree, you’re mistaken.”

That is what is remarkable about this game to me. While I was engaged in the main story, I am so much more engaged in these little vignettes and quiet, personal moments that occurred between friends, family, and enemies on the street each day. Yes, of course, there are tropes and stereotypes and the occasional “I can’t believe that just happened” moments, but those largely fail to take away from the realism of the relationships that develop.

If you’re the type of gamer, reader, or writer that enjoys interpersonal relationships developing over time, check this game out. You’ll thank me later.

And if you’re the type of storyteller that enjoys video games, keep an eye out for more Monocled Gamer posts in the future!