Wow, this may be one of the longer stretches of time I've seen this place dead. I guess that's to be expected, but I somehow noticed it anyway. And now I'm the one breaking the silence?
Anyway, I'm taking a huge chunk of time off from work this month, and I decided to dedicate a lot of that time to going through my old RPG Maker game collection and replaying some of the ones that have stuck in my mind all these years as good or significant. Of course, The Way is on the top of that list.
This might be a little serendipitous, but forgive me for waxing a little nostalgic here. I really only started to think about this when anticipating delving back into the series for a while, but I never really realized just what a big part of my life The Way (and yes, its community) has been up to this point. The possibly pathetic nature of that statement doesn't escape me, but I think everyone has some sort of persistent piece of media, a person or event, or even a philosophy that they discover is really a central aspect to their formative years. I imagine for a lot of adolescent nerds last decade, games like WoW or CS filled that kind of role for them, so in that sense I'm glad I got into something a little more unique.
I got into The Way more or less at the start of my teenage years, and the buzz and activity generated by E6's release more or less faded out as I exited those years. That's six of the most impactful and developmental years of my life with The Way as one the centerpieces. And what I said before about things that can be central aspects to our lives- The Way embodies it all: a piece of media (natch), a person (community in this case), event (episode releases, chat parties, etc), and philosophy (again, natch). I can trace so much of who I am now from all of these things it's a bit mind-boggling: my rather ravenous desire for good solid stories that can still venture into the abstract, my desire to be able write those kind of stories and games, my fascination with being able to peer deep into the mind of visionary auteurs, and countless other ideas that I'm probably not even conscious of.
And I know there's other people who've more or less had the same timeline in this community as me. I really feel like having been there since E1 kind of gave me unique experience. I'll get to what I've been observing from my play-through in a bit, but one of the more pertinent and unexpectedly surprising things I've discovered is that not only did I grow up with The Way, it also grew up with me.
Anyway, I can definitely track my social development as entirely from this community as well. Want to know something even scarier than that? Five years later, I still consider this to be my "home community". I think this might be because as an antisocial dope I've always found it difficult to integrate into a new community (it's much easier if, say... you're there from very early on), but really, I think the rather traditional "online community" concept (main site with important news, insular forums, zany chatroom, crotchety yet well established regulars) is kind of dead. Possibly because of this whole social networking stuff blurring everything together, or maybe due to there being just too many people on the internet these days.
Regardless, I'm still kind of in awe of just how important this one little series of games has been to my life. I've actually kept track of three... I wont say "happiest", but rather most... glorious moments in my life, and still at the top of that list is alpha testing E5 months before the beta, on a cold, snowy December night. Seeing that final revelation, and "to be continued" just as the clock passed 2 AM. I don't really have any point to make about this, just thought I'd share.
Uh, wow. I did not mean to type my entire manifesto there. Actually... eh... I was planning on doing it at some point anyway. I was originally just going to post my thoughts as I went through each episode, so I guess I'll get around to that now.
Episode 1 -
You know, I've always been kind of at terms with the fact that a lot of people bash on The Way because Episode 1 is kind of sloppy. Call it Early Installment Weirdness or whatever, but yeeeaahhh... Episode 1 really hasn't aged well. It's kind of buggy, the pacing is kind of all over the place and occasionally nonexistent. But heck, Lun started this right in 2000. The games I started right in 2000 were about 15 minutes long and arbitrarily leveled the entire party to level 50 when I decided to put the final boss in. If Episode 1 was the first thing I created in RM2K, I'd be a much less lazy, much more inspired person than I am now.
The interesting thing is, looking at all these flaws has made me think about why I was instantly hooked by E1 back in the day. It's kind of shameful to admit, but I know main reason I grabbed it off of rpg2knet was the screenshots of the 3D rendered backgrounds. It's pretty much taken for granted that the 3D renders set it apart from pretty much any other game out there (especially at the time), but I've always felt like they made the world of the game a lot... bigger.
Suddenly hills are not just blocky bumps whose edges are determined by what tiles they are, they're huge and stretch the land up and about, in ways that could never be shown in the constraints of tile based chipsets. The characters seem small and primitive next to the world of giant, twisting terrain around them. They can allow for wide and sweeping panoramas filled with an even bigger sky. They allow for different perspectives, which is simply impossible with chipsets. In the opening shot where we first see Rhue, he stands in on a rock in a valley, we understand that valley is huge, and that it extends into the background. In a chipset, everything that's as many pixels high as a character is exactly as tall as them. In a setting that's all about being vast and endless, and on a quest that's about searching those lands, being able to establish the perspective of Rhue being a mere wanderer in a large and sprawling land that maybe goes on forever is an act of downright cinematic atmosphere that other RPG Maker games just don't have.
The idea of endlessness itself was the other big thing that drew me in. I've never really liked the idea of the story of a character I like just being wrapped up nicely and ending. I like the possibility of continuing adventures, of a world where there's always something new, and somewhere new to explore. In that way, The Way (at least conceptually) is basically the embodiment of endless adventures. There's always further to go, there's always something new, characters can always have new journeys and new interactions. I guess it speaks to the relative obscurity of RPG Maker games that there aren't more fanfics or even fangames set in the universe of The Way. It's tailor-made for such a thing. I even titled my own fanfic "Eternal Horizon" after the idea that the world can quite literally stretch on forever (Lun once told me during a chat party that he thought that was a better name than "The Way", and at the risk of sounding even more aggrandizing, I kind of do too).
So yeah, vast endlessness with infinite possibilities are my all-time favorite setting/narrative devices, and The Way nails them perfectly. That's probably the reason the world of The Way clings in my mind so tightly whenever I try and write anything.
Other thoughts:
- Some of the 2.0 changes aren't exactly integrated properly. Oops.
- I think it was kind of deduced that the Phantom Slasher kills people who distract Rhue from his journey. But looking back on some of these earlier episodes, that doesn't really seem to consistently be the case. I mean, it kills the three random schmucks from the opening cut scene who weren't impeding Rhue at all. I know it also kills people who are "impure" or whatever, but it's still weird that it kills those people (notice how faith in The Purpose doesn't seem to matter) in the beginning, but never tries to kill Strata, Traziun, Kloe, Cetsa, the entire popular of Lide, or a bunch of people who legitimately sidetrack or antagonize Rhue.
- Catching Dippy is still as much of a pain as I remember it.
- "Bloodlife" and all that jazz end up being way less important than they seem like they're going to be.
- The fight with the headhunter is a brutal crapshoot. I had to fight him four times before he just didn't instantly wipe out a party member in the first two turns.
- In retrospect, there's no way this headhunter can be Midian. But then why was he looking for Jeruh?
- When I talk about pacing problems, I'm talking about things like Rhue deciding he's going to go meet the race judge and get him wasted enough to somehow possibly randomly be named a replacement for no particular reason.
- I know there were a couple of theories about this, but I'm pretty sure Slade's remark to Strata is just Slade mistaking him for Kygar.
- The part where you have to force your way through 3 "Brian" clones is still as ridiculous as ever.
- Jumping the river isn't as much of a pain as I remember.
- I know Rhue has kind of a reputation as an rude protagonist, but I never realized just how much of a jerk Traziun is at first. "Oh there's a guy over there who's the helpless prey for a big monster? Well, sucks to be him. But now we know to be on the lookout."
- Did Gaius legit get caught and mauled by the Fligg? When he joins in E5 with all those crazy powers, I always interpreted it as him holding back in the early episodes (same with Traziun, and there seems to be actual evidence for that). I guess he could've been "leveling up" so to speak throughout the entire series, but isn't he supposed to be Teztel/Kalmar/Ronald McDonald's new "perfect blade" or whatever? I guess he could've been purposely waiting for Rhue, but judging from his dialogue when the party splits at Lide, it was just a coincidence.
- I never realized 2.0 removed the blind maze entirely. Good riddance.
- Lyrra surprising Rhue by running out from behind an object in the foreground literally only makes sense from the player's perspective. Maybe I've been playing too many indie games recently, but part of me wants to brush this off as some weird fourth-wall breaking mindscrew, which I think it's not.
- "Percellius"... I JUST caught that. Wow.
- "But I can't love you... I'm sorry!!!" "No problem." is still hilarious.
Episode 2 -
After Episode 1 came out, I started keeping a fairly close eye on Lun's site for news about new episodes. Even back then I kind of understood that nobody ever finished what they started in the RPG Maker community, but The Way was just too fascinating to not pay attention to. I started posting on the old EZ Board and when the call for beta testers for E2 went out, I jumped on board and the rest is history.
Speaking of which, I actually have a filled out copy of the form Lun sent us to fill out after we finished E2. Here's a transcript:
1. What was your favorite part of Episode 2?
The part where Rhue knocks the sword off the cliff under the mayor’s house.
2.What part sticks out in your memory the most? (same as 1?)
Same.
3. Did you run into any trouble spots?
(Didn't know where to go, couldn't get past certain part, an enemy was too difficult, etc.)
Cetsa and Kygar were really hard. I had to tone down their stats a bit. Also, 1 on 1s with Spestas with Rhue alone are near impossible. The mini game with the cannon was tricky too, but I’d keep it that way.
(Either I was a complete moron back then or the Spestas were really toned down, since they're downright trivial in 2.0)
4. Who is your favorite character so far? (Playable or non playable)
(Gaius, Traziun, Rhue, Cetsa, Kloe, Alan, Other. If other, try to name them)
Slade : )
(Slade hadn't been named at that point.)
5. Why are they your favorite?
People who wear black are cool. That and his faceset is nicely done.
(Boy, I sure was a teenager back then.)
6. Did you help the Guided or the Settlers on the Marna Stretch?
(if you didn't do this side quest leave blank)
Settlers.
7. How did you get past the beast in the pass (on the Marna Stetch)?
Blinded him. Then killed him.
8. Were you aware that there was more than one way to get past the beast?
Yup. I tore apart the game in RM2K after finishing it the first time.
9. Were there too few enemies to fight?
Some enemies in E2Map17 respawned, so no.
10. Was there any humorous moment/s Episode 2 that stick in your mind? If so, briefly describe it/them. (I'm very familiar with game, so you don't have to go into much detail)
Rhue’s conversation’s with that one little kid. And that one conversation with Kloe.
11. At the end of the Episode 2, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. What are one or more things that you are interested in finding out?
(example: What is killing everybody? What was Kloe like as a child? etc.)
Basically everything.
(Well said.)
12. How do you expect Rhue to get out of his predicament at the end of Episode 2?
Be rescued by someone. Or bust out.
13. Was Episode 2 more fun than Episode 1?
Oh yea!
14. The Way can be confusing, is there anything in the story that you found
puzzling or seemed contradictory?
Uh, how many shadow people are there? I’m getting them all mixed up…
(It's still pretty ridiculous just how many people are shadows at some point. Also Scatha is shadow in broad daylight at one point which is kind of absurd. Again, I'm just going to pretend it was some weird fourth-wall breaking.)
15. In Episode 2, chipsets were used much more extensively to create more highly explorable and interactive environments. The huge area after Lide is an example. Would you prefer smaller environments?
Maybe ones with less trees!
16. Would you have preferred a form that you could have filled out online?
(Yes, No, Doesn't matter to me)
Whatever works. An online form is leakable, so this is probably better. Besides this is like “officialicious” so… eheh…
17. Do you have any other comments? (put them here)
There isn’t a full recovery after the Cesta/Rygar fight. Love the series. Prolly my favorite along with Legion Saga… Keep up the good work man! I have a char and face set of me for any use at:
http://jeramyu.homestead.com/files/JeramyuStuff.zip
(Legion Saga? Randomly trying to shove a character set and face set on Lun? I sure was a little idiot.)
I've always held that this is where the series really starts to get good. It's better than Episode 1 for sure, and still overall better than Episode 3 (I'll get to that in a bit...), but Episode 2 still hasn't aged nearly as well as I thought it has. The pacing still kind of throws you all over the place, and the plunge has the same crapshoot problems regular combat had.
- Maybe it's because my tastes in storytelling have matured since being a teenager, but Lyrra comes across as absolutely insane. But then I realized, that's probably the whole point (well, maybe not in those exact words, but close enough).
- Again, it took me three tries to win against Nomi just due to sheer luck. The obvious point (and most frequent criticism) is that it's just a game of rock paper scissors, but that's not really what I find to be the problem, more on that in a sec...
- The Good, The Bad, The Ugly theme used for Lide is one of the more inspired music choices. Really sells the atmosphere
- Alan holds up pretty well, despite his obvious gimmick. I actually tied on the plunge with him, first time that's happened.
- When you think about it, Rhue knows a very random variety of information about The Way. He doesn't know what mending is, does know what citadels are called, doesn't know about the upper way, does know about the reaches, somehow doesn't know what the plunge is... etc. I guess it kind of makes sense given his... condition, and yeah there's some audience surrogate stuff going on there too, but meh... more fourth wall messing, I claim.
- I appreciate how the Barrucha remained basically untouchable for four episodes.
- Some of the hidden stuff like the Ray of Light blade art is like... really really hidden. I'm pretty sure I found it first time through by virtue of my meticulous exploration obsession, but I wonder how missing out on potentially a lot of neat stuff affects someone's experience.
- I kind of like the Barrucha cave as a dungeon, but man, I just realized just how many caves there are in The Way. Along side "Forrest" and "Building" it makes up most of the dungeon areas in the whole series. I know in a series largely based around plausible natural and man-made structures it's hard to think of unique dungeon locations, but still...
- The plunge against Parris is really a doozy.
Which brings me to The Plunge. One of the more common complaints from people who stopped after E1 is that the plunge is superfluous and childishly simple. Now the obvious counterpoint, and the one that I've always used is that yeah, E1 doesn't have any real plunges. It starts becoming a real mechanic later on, and the rock paper-scissors element isn't nearly as important as picking blade arts, links, and managing FP. And while that's true sort of starting in E3 and pretty solidified by E4, the fact is the early plunges in E2 are mostly total crapshoots, and the problem doesn't lie so much with the rock-paper-scissors aspect of it as it does the suspect math of the plunge itself. Of course the math doesn't change between episodes, but in later episodes the number of notch items and importance of blade arts kind of cover up the issue, though not entirely.
Now you've probably had at least once experience like this: You pick a Drop Slash risk attack, the enemy picks a Cross Slash risk attack, yet you both end up doing the same or close to the same amount of damage to each other. Now this has always struck me as odd, and even though the math has always been available (remember The Wanderer's Guide Book? It's a thing), only after two years of D&D experience can I fully grasp what the problem is: the dice, man. Dice rolls are used to determine base damage, which opens up a big can of worms. Your plunge score doesn't determine how much damage you do as much as how much damage you CAN do, which are very different things. In D&D dice rolls determine if you hit, and how much damage you do. As such, it's possible to run a party through an identical set of encounters and get wildly different results all depending on the dice (and yeah, there are ways to shift probability in your favor, but it's all just that: probability. Anyone who's played D&D long enough knows the guy who just can't hit no matter what).
Fortunately in the plunge, you don't need to worry about hitting (and yes, I'm aware hitting in regular combat does rely on percentages to some extent, but in regular combat you can also heal, use skills that are guaranteed to work, or defend), but the dice do control damage (though most damage rolls in D&D have some sort of solid modifier added to them to allow for a minimum damage that's more than just the number of dice), which means the damage can fluctuate wildly within a range, as opposed to just being calculated from some sort of attack - defense score, an approach that can have its problems, sure, but also an approach that doesn't make the game look like it's breaking its own rules. Yes, picking the right attack and doing risk attacks can do an extra percentage of damage, but at low levels those numbers are so low that the dice rolls can completely nullify them. Combine this with a low HP pool and you end up with some very random, occasionally lopsided battles. Like I said, later on, the abundance of blade arts and higher stats tend to even things slightly, but ironically enough, when the damage potential starts getting really high, and the percentages start to really equate to a lot of damage, it can lead to some plunges that are very lopsided for an entirely different reason.
So yeah, this is why early plunges are difficult and feature numbers that seem to contradict the mechanics, and later plunges seem to end in step 4 injuries like half the time. There is a sweet spot in the middle though, and I've found it to be the Rosmar plunge. That's it.
Or maybe my luck is crazy and nobody else has had any experiences like that.
- We still never get to know what that blade art Traziun used on Kygar was. I like to think it was his own personal one.
- What was that hidden switch in the sword in Ballar's place supposed to do?
- Cetsa and Kygar seem to have had issues with Scatha before. ...Where exactly would they have bumped heads before? Out of all the characters whose childhoods are connected, I don't think Cetsa and Scatha are two of them. It sounds she was constantly sabotaging them or something. How? Why?
- What were the prevailing theories on why Rhue smashed the other sword into the pit? It's always one of those things that kind of lent credence to the idea that Shadow Swords and Illuminati were separate things, but that can't be it, can it?
- I kind of liked Marna stretch back in the day, but man, even with the map it's still confusing.
- I wonder how many people missed the nova stone? I couldn't imagine playing the rest of the series without it.
- I rather like the Settler-Guided subplot. The Guided are made to look like total jerks, even though they're unquestionably the better of the two groups.
- On that note, as much of a fuss has been made about The Way's alleged links to Christianity, organized religion sure isn't portrayed very well.
- I like how Paradans are always portrayed as giant spineless pansies.
- I also like how one of the dialogue trees in talking to the suicidal guy is attempting to scare him with how gruesome of a death he'll experience.
- The Turnway cannon game isn't THAT hard once you get used to it, but 30 kills is still a pretty lofty goal.
- It really does bother me how the entire plot hinges on Rhue not being able to ask a five second question to Cetsa, it's more annoying in E3 than it is here, but still.
Episode 3 -
I've always held E3 as my least favorite episode. While now I don't think there's really any way for it to be worse than E1, I also felt like I was being a bit unfair to it as well. After all, aside from E5, it's really the only Episode that I ever really got a sense of what it'd be like to wander The Way. It's an episode all about exploring that endless unknown. That being said, playing through it again really only reaffirmed my problems with it. So why do I like it so much more in E5 than in E3? Well, I'll have to get farther before I can fully answer that, but I digress...
- Right before Slade busts in to get Rhue, the text "Hello, my dear." appears from an unknown speaker. Huh?
- So how DID Rhue's sword get shoved through that guy's helmet? Doesn't the phantom slasher have its own sword? Why would it pick it up and randomly stab it into some guy instead of bringing it to him like in E5?
- The pathetic look Slade gives Rhue after his "Now I'm ready for anything." line is like my second favorite moment in the series.
- For some reason, I still like the Water Cave. Maybe it's because the diving was so well done.
- Slade beating up Alan is one of the more tense moments this episode. I like it.
- Now I remember why I didn't like this episode so much... the game really pulls the drag chute here with the endless canyon maps. The chipset sucks, the maps are boring, there's too many enemies and not enough notch stones, blegh. I feel like such an jerk going on about this, but I've always wanted to articulate just what I didn't like about this. Who knows, maybe I'll devolve into fanboy drool for E4-E6 in penance. But while I'm at it...
It breaks my heart to say this, but the run-of-the-mill combat in The Way really isn't that good. Now don't get me wrong, I do like the Notch system, and the Sword/Aura/Flow system quite a bit. Sure, they have their idiosyncrasies (mostly pacing issues), but for the most part it's a slick system that almost entire eschews grinding (finding out how to grind in E2 is actually kind of an easter egg), and beats the stuffing out of a standard store or item crafting weapon and armor system (even if armor pieces are exactly what Flows are...).
The problem is that combat is just boring. Now I'm not trying to grief ol' Lun here. Nobody in this history of ever has ever made RM2k's default battle system even remotely fun. In fact The Way has one of the better battle system mods out there. Maybe things will change come E6, but baring a few exceptions in E1, I beat every single non-boss encounter just by mashing enter over and over again, no exceptions. X Life is an interesting concept, and it does work in certain contexts, but in standard encounters it never charges enough to let you do anything useful, and even if it did none of the standard encounters require it anyway. The fact that you recover to full after every battle means there's no incentive to do anything other than bash your way through every encounter as quickly and carelessly as possible The problem with this system is that in order to have any point to normal battles (beyond rewards), every encounter needs to have capability to wipe the entire party (if it doesn't, then why bother?), at which point it would blur so close to being a boss battle that it'd make every encounter exhausting. Though as broken as this is, having no after battle recovery would make things even worse without completely re balancing the entire game.
And it must be said, the notch/aura pacing issues do occasionally rear their ugly heads. I can recall a few instances of plundering an area of all its notch stones and then running all the way back to the beginning to fight all the monsters, and subsequently encounters becoming 50% pointless when I had absorbed all the notch stones. Having to rely on a zillion notch stones being passed out to make combat more worth slogging through is a bit of a precarious gameplay element. And while thanks to some good loot distribution design from Lun, I think it's usually way less of a problem than it could be, but still, E3's long stretches of monsters make it stand out a lot more. Also, getting some Oneness patterns to use just after I had gotten some level 3 flows made me kind of sad. Also whenever you get new sword auras having to downgrade to an aura with less attack just doesn't feel very fun, even if it makes up for it after just a few levels.
All right, enough nitpicking.
Despite all my complaining, the X-Life and Aura systems work superbly with boss battles. You need to be strategic in saving X Life, knowing when to expend your limited healing, and when it's worth it to have a character draw for a turn. If you're having trouble with a battle you can switch around sword auras/flows to find a more effective combination with better skills and resistances (though if you're like me, you really only stick with 1 sword aura per tier... at least until the phrase "Tri-Ultra" comes into play).
- Jed's screams of "Arghhh" and "The pain" are kind of hammy. I still like this scene though, and it's worth noting that even this early Rhue doesn't really seem to have too much trouble doing something as violent a coup de grace to a dying man.
- Yeah, Lyrra's pretty insane.
- As much as I complain about the canyon areas, I actually like the whole pits sequence. It's has a very oppressive, foreboding atmosphere.
- Is it Traziun who Scatha encounters off screen? I think so.
- Rhue devolves into screaming at the Shadow Man very quickly. Also I got a fluke Step 4 against him. Damage Threshold is one of those stats that never seems to be in quite the right place, and is the reason why later plunges also have balance issues. Cranking it way up can have some broken effects, as we'll see in E5.
- Speaking of screaming, if I had a time machine, one of the first things I would do is go back and time and teach Lun to only use one of the same punctuation mark at a time on the end of a sentence.
- "Lands! You're kidding!" "No. It sucked." is another one of my favorite exchanges.
- I never realized just how often the game does the whole "pan to Phantom Slasher close behind" thing. Why do we really need to know it's at the Green Rocks?
- Despite being prettier than the canyons by orders of magnitude, Green Rocks is still another dull monster slog.
- So let me get this straight. The Blood Lyn have a series of large military academies where 15-16 year old co-eds are split up into opposing soccer teams and compete with each other. After a year each person is teamed up with a person of the opposite gender from an opposing team and they're auctioned off. And nobody has written fanfiction about this?
- I'm probably forgetting something big, but why exactly are they so welcoming of Traziun as a former Blood Lyn? I mean he is... because he ran away. Shouldn't they all be trying to kill him on sight? This seems to be an actual plot point, but there's really never any hints why this is the case.
- Rhue's obsession with seeing Kloe's execution is kind of fascinating. I think it's pretty obvious he didn't intent to save her. Again, it's interesting how he doesn't seem have too much trouble watching acquaintances die.
- What is Traziun's plan? What did he hope to accomplish at Matalan? Thinking about it, maybe he intended to infiltrate the Black Fortress the same way he did in E5, except at Matalan instead.
- Kloe refers to "The Black Lyn", who then appears and (next episode) senses Traziun. So is the Black Lyn actually Kalmar? Is it one of the Blana Sera? Is Kalmar a Blana Sera?
- Yes, The Blana Sera are one of my favorite unexplained mysteries.
Phew, that's all I've played so far, and it's only going to get... uh... thicker from here. Also it's like 6 AM and I've been writing this for like 5 hours. I proofread it once and found like 800 mistakes, so there's probably a lot more. Just bear with me. I'm a terrible proofreader.