September 2021 – Parry Everything

Undertale: Combat Where Nobody Has To Die

Much ado has been made about the prevalence of violent combat in games, how it is a much-trodden space with an overabundance of focus on the damaging and killing of enemies in games. It’s worth interrogating how we make games and what the systems we put in place represent. ‘Combat’, as a gameplay system takes the form of abstract tasks meant to represent a conflict. Conflict doesn’t have to be violent, or even involve fighting. When you think about it, a lot of the standards and practices that are common for designing ‘combat’ conflict in games can be abstractly applied to a wide variety of real-world situations that don’t directly involve violence. There’s an adage that action or fight scenes in narrative is like a conversation, and I think this broadly applies to all sorts of interpersonal conflict. All this to say that Undertale takes extremely familiar RPG combat design traditions in an extremely nontraditional way to represent its conflict, which can take the form of violent struggle or extremely peaceful, yet tense conversation. I want to talk about this, in particular, the space where the bulk of Undertale‘s gameplay can be found, in the peaceful ‘pacifist’ style of playing Undertale.

A similarly large quantity of ‘ado’ has been made of Undertale‘s underlying morality system, which allows the game to read and react to player actions across save files to drastically alter the story and how characters react. I’m sure there’s not much more I could add to that well-worn conversation, but what I don’t see talked about near as much is the actual mechanics that make up Undertale‘s combat system. Undertale is ostensibly a turn-based RPG, and it has many of the trappings you’d expect of traditional RPG combat. The player and AI take turns taking actions, there are character statistics such as health or defense, and there are the usual available actions such as attacking or fleeing. Compared to the traditional turn-based RPG formula, however, Undertale leans a lot less on strategy, which is to say forethought and formulating a plan of attack. Success in combat in Undertale is much more contingent on one’s ability to navigate enemy attacks, which take the form of ‘bullet’ patterns in a shoot em’ up or shmup styled dodging sequence. Now, that all sounds rather violent, but all this really means is the player must move around a little icon representing themselves (in this case a heart) so it doesn’t collide with any objects on screen. In this way, Undertale works to make defending, in other words passivity, a more engaging and fun mechanic than attacking. Undertale also loves to borrow from genres outside of RPGs to accomplish this, like incorporating elements of text-based adventure games.

Have fun fighting and/or dating a skeleton, no explicit violence involved

When monsters randomly encounter the player, as they’re wont to do in RPGs, the monsters will be naturally on the defensive around you, a human, a member of the vile people that attacked and banished monsters underground. The goal for a pacifist player will be to simply exit the encounter unharmed so they can reach their next story chapter. You see, when it comes to the player’s form of ‘attack’, their agency in all of this, the problem Undertale faced was making the act of de-escalation as interesting and satisfying as the act of chopping dudes in the face with a sword. The solution to this problem was found in three ways. First, the act of defending is made into a compelling game in and of itself. Secondly, the player is given short-term and long-term goals in every encounter. Finally, the incentive for the player to not perform acts of violence is made to take the form of exploration into interesting characters.

We’ve touched on that first item. Undertale’s defense or ‘bullet hell’ sections involve dodging the magical attacks of your opponents. The conceit here is simple, but a time-tested one, utilized in tons of classic games like Galaga or Space Invaders. The player is represented by a small heart, and obstacles will move around the screen which the player has to avoid by moving freely in two dimensions. It’s among the barest, simplest forms of spacial and temporal awareness as gameplay one could think of, but that’s why it’s so effective. Some of the best games are those that start with an extremely simple base that can be built upon, and Undertale certainly builds upon it. Bullet patterns become increasingly elaborate and difficult towards the end of the game. Bullet patterns can take the form of obstacles that are abstract shapes, obstacles shaped like characters, obstacles along vector lines, any of which can move in a variety of patterns. The game will also iterate on these basic designs using new rules and wrinkles that change up the variety, such as adding gravity to the player’s avatar, a controllable shield, or a controllable projectile to destroy obstacles.

These ‘bullet hell’ sections get **very** creative. Here I have to redirect the enemy’s own attacks at them to pacify them!

This makes up the player’s short-term goal in every combat encounter. Each turn, the player has to focus on the imminent danger of enemy bullet patterns. Lots of RPGs have incorporated real-time gameplay into turn-based actions. Integrating short-term goals like this sort of action gameplay with longer-term goals keeps the player’s attention engaged and the tension subsequently high. There will always be something in the back of your mind that you’re working toward, while immediate concerns keep you constantly engaged. In Undertale‘s case, the long-term goal for each monster encounter is trying to figure out how to make them passive, and amenable to ending their attack against the player. Each one is different, and like a little puzzle or text adventure encounter where the player has to figure out how to spare their opponents. The need for dodging enemy attacks, is essentially your payment ticket for each attempt made to pacify the opponent. A wrong answer means needing to dodge more attacks. There is some strategy in Undertale’s combat in how you approach multiple opponents. Sometimes more than one monster cannot be pacified in the same turn, so a consideration of the order in which they are tackled is added to the player’s long term goal achieving process.

Not every puzzle solution is a brain-teaser, but they engage you with the monsters’ personalities. Get it? Don’t **pick** on your eyes.

The final and I think most important of how Undertale solved for nonviolent ‘combat’ is its methods of incentivizing the player. The typical pattern for any game with combat is to reward the player for killing or defeating enemies, increasing the player’s power as they accumulate more and more victories. So it is with Undertale, when you choose to kill. When sparing foes, however, the game goes out of its way to makes sure there is no direct material reward of in terms of player power. Undertale did not have to do this. In a vacuum, there’s no reason a nonviolent victory cannot reward and empower the player. In Undertale it was very important that external rewards like player ‘LV’ be tied exclusively to killing. Undertale is trying to justify its thesis of pacifism by making that path entirely implicitly motivated by narrative elements, or in other words the process of pacifism itself. ‘Not killing things can be fun too, no reward needed’ it seems to say.

The ‘bullets’ players must dodge can take a wide variety of forms from the tear drops of a depressed ghosts, to the flexing muscles of a pompous weight-lifting horse. If those sound odd to you, it’s by design. Undertale‘s first boss throws magical flames at you, but very little afterward will ever be so typical. Undertale uses the contrivance of ‘magic’, a power which monsters can use to express their emotions as power, to explore the character of the enemies you fight, as you fight them. In what other game can you expect to be attacked by the excited barks of an overstimulated puppy? These attacks are used as subtle characterization of each and every monster you encounter. The act of play is characterization in and of itself. In the world of Undertale magic is an outward expression of emotion, and this carries through gameplay as well. It’s not always a direct metaphor, and it’s often subtle, as reading emotion is in real life, but the attack conveys the emotional state of the monster which used it. You can get a sense of monster personalities just by playing. The dialogue does heavy lifting in this department as well, through hilariously absurd and weird scenarios. In this way, your ‘prize’ for victory is often a hearty joke, or an emotional catharsis. It can engender an intense curiosity to see more out of these monsters, more you won’t get to see if you kill them.

The player is ideally motivated by the desire to explore interesting and compelling characters. This, entwined with the short and long-term goals I mentioned earlier. The player’s long-term goal is usually discovering exactly how new monsters will react to their various actions. The monster Shyren loves to sing but is too timid, needing gentle encouragement from the player humming along. The monster Woshua is obsessed with washing things, so asking for a cleanup and successfully intercepting its healing water will make it very happy. The monster Aaron will become so swept up in out-flexing you if you try to match his style, that he’ll flex himself right out of combat. Keying in on visual indicators like the enemy’s emotional state, the personality in their dialogue, and the queues of their overall physical appearance all work as hints to solving the ‘puzzle’ of connecting with them socially and deescalating conflict. One can trace subtle changes in expression even, in certain encounters. The game, as it were, becomes one of determining your conversation partner’s wants and needs. It becomes a game that teaches empathy.

Here our hesitant mentor Toriel refuses to kill us, it’s clear here what emotions her gameplay are meant to convey

Combat, as it is typically designed, in all of its many forms, is fun. That’s just simply true, and it’s probably the biggest reason violent conflict remains so prevalent in games, as it’s the most obvious way to explore this form of play. This form of play was invented to represent violence, after all. Undertale is refreshing in how it explores a world where such play can be representative of all manner of other forms of conflict. Lots of conflict occurs in our daily lives every day that doesn’t end in death or grievous injury. There’s clearly a lot of space yet to explore how to adapt our design conventions to the task of representing these nonviolent forms of conflict in fun and interesting ways. I think part of the reason Undertale made such waves is that there’s a huge appetite for that as-yet only slightly explored space.

Even when you ran away, you did it with a smile…

Boss Breakdown: Dark Riku at Hollow Bastion

Kingdom Hearts does something interesting with Riku. He’s set up at the beginning of the game as the player and the player character, sora’s, rival through gameplay and narrative alike. His initial early-game boss fight establishes Riku as the primary barometer for the player’s capabilities within the game’s systems. That’s the set up. The punch line, coiled and poised to outstretch and clothesline the player at mach 2, is Riku’s final boss fight – Dark Riku, awaiting at the ominous castle of Hollow Bastion. Regular Riku is difficult, way more difficult than might be reasonable at the very start of a game. However, he’s optional and therefor more of a story beat for both the game’s narrative and the emotional experience the player is being primed for. Dark Riku is not optional, and Dark Riku is levels above his predecessor. This boss also represents a notable difficulty spike and more or less fulfills the role of narrative climax to Kingdom Hearts, and that aforementioned emotional experience for the player themselves. People remember this boss fight. There’s something about it that sticks with you. It leaves an impact.

Growing up is finding Dark Riku impossibly cool, cringe, and then unironically cool again, in that order.

Dark Riku is a fight divided roughly into three phases. Dark Riku, as with the Destiny Islands Riku, has a pretty modest repertoire of actions to use against the player character, Sora. Riku fought defensively and passively on the Destiny Islands, almost always awaiting the player to approach or take some action. His voice lines were goading and taunting, meant to lull the player into making hasty mistakes. Dark Riku doesn’t wait. He may pace around for a few seconds before attacking, but will go on the offensive on a hair-trigger. At this point in the game, the player will have access to new defensive options compare to the Destiny Islands encounter; the block and dodge roll. They will also be able to heal themselves with cure magic.

Like clashing, in which Sora negates an oncoming attack by timing one of his own attacks to hit at the same time, the block negates incoming damage and sets Sora up to counterattack. The timing on a block is much more forgiving. However, if a block is whiffed, that is, if the block is used when there’s nothing to block, Sora has to spend a lot more time returning to a neutral stance than if he had just attacked, so there’s an interesting tradeoff between using attacks as defense and using a block as defense. One is more reliable, but more risky in the event of a failure. Using cure magic to restore Sora’s health will also have become a core mechanic by this part of the game. Sora takes a lot of damage and his health is not expected to hold out over an entire battle. The player is expected to keep on eye on their MP resource, which determines how often they can use magic. The MP bar is also another design tool for encouraging the kind of aggressive action that Kingdom Hearts is going for, as the primary way to restore MP is by attacking. Playing defensively will only get you so far. Using cure at an inopportune time can also mean getting interrupted, so the player must be aware of their surroundings and situation to heal. Riku is constantly prepared to counterattack, meaning the player will have to be more aware of how Riku will respond to certain actions, predicatively.

Magic is fueled by the power of VIOLENCE

For example, one of Dark Riku’s attacks is a medium-ranged overhead swing. The attack can be easily blocked or clashed and then followed up on with a counterattack for a pretty safe way to deal damage to Riku. Riku likes to use this overhead after dodging or blocking Sora, so the fight will reward consciously keeping track of Sora’s actions. Being able to switch from attacking to defending and back to attacking is the surest way to deal damage without being hit. One can goad Riku into dodging, which will likely trigger this overhead attack, which can then be countered. That kind of forethought is what’s being encouraged here. For a player, being able to successfully predict and counter enemy moves is a huge signifier of personal prowess, so it’s advantageous to a combat system to be predictable to a degree, if making your player feel powerful is a goal.

This attack-counterattack pattern Kingdom Hearts settles into creates fight scenarios that are both mechanically and visually dynamic

Another of his basic attacks is a two-hit combo that can close the distance between himself and Sora. It comes out fairly quickly, but it’s most often used when there’s some distance already, so the first hit will rarely make contact. It’s more of a tool for Riku to discourage simply running from him, but like with the overhead it can be blocked or clashed, then countered, meaning it’s also another tool for the player to direct the fight and indirectly control Riku’s actions to making openings. That’s the gist of it, really. If you want to make a really challenging boss fight and trust in the fun of your combat system, focusing on fundamentals makes for a solid foundation. In phase one Riku is just a very aggressive, very damaging, and responsive sword fighter. Understanding of the various defensive and offensive options available to Sora will carry the player far through this fight, but Riku still has a few tricks left.

Like Destiny Islands Riku, Dark Riku may take a defensive stance and taunt Sora, though this time with his more villainous tone. This time getting behind him won’t work, as Riku will always turn to face Sora, so taking his taunt with an attack is the only option outside of waiting. Fortunately, Riku almost always responds to this with an attack that can be easily countered with a block. If Sora gets too close to Riku, he’ll do a fast spin attack to help maintain his optimal distance. This helps keep the player in danger, so to speak, which helps keep the fight exciting. This quick attack is blockable, but not easily counterable.

Riku’s third attack in this phase is the helm splitter, where he jumps high into the air and comes down with a magical shockwave on the ground. This attack is unblockable and deals significant damage, so dodging out of the way with a roll or out-ranging the attacking are the only options. Dark Riku has a few of these unblockable attacks, most likely intended to encourage the player engaging with a fuller breadth of the combat mechanics, such as the dodge roll, blocking, jumping, and clashing. Unblockable attacks don’t have a universal signifier in Kingdom Hearts, but it does a pretty good job of making them intuitive. Riku’s helm splitter is quite a bit more exaggerated than his other attacks in animation, with him jumping very high into the air before coming down. It’s obvious straightaway that it’s more powerful than his other moves. The energy his shockwave creates is given a lot of pure white in its color profile, and any attack he or his derivatives use from here on out with similar visual details are likewise unblockable.

The big jump both warns of the impending danger, and gives ample time to dodge out of the way, which I… fail to do, here

Once Dark Riku has taken a bit of damage, the warm up is over. This is phase 2. From here on out, he’ll occasionally empower his weapon with a dark aura, adding some nasty new effects to his attacks. The art and design assets of this empowered state are really just overlays on the basic behaviors he already has. It’s very efficient design, that wouldn’t have demanded too much production overhead, and yet expands the fight in very interesting ways. Every time he does his two-hit gap closer while empowered, he’ll launch an energy disc ahead of himself, which can damage Sora, or even set him up to be combo’d by followup attacks from Riku. Riku’s overhead will now also launch some unblockable energy, in two lines out to either side of him. The way these two attacks in particular are designed utilize a common trick in action games with a dodge mechanic like Kingdom Hearts. By extending out the danger area of these attacks in lines, they require a greater degree of fine control from the player while dodging. Usually, dodging just vaguely away from danger is sufficient, but if you dodge to Riku’s side during an overhead, or directly away from him during a gap-closer, you’ll get hit. Closing off specific vectors around the enemy during their attacks like this tests the player’s ability to dodge in specific ways, a straightforward step up from what is usually expected of a dodge.

The game is funneling Sora to certain positions with attacks like this, keeping Riku front and center.

During his empowered state, Riku is extremely aggressive, moreso even than before, and will barely give the player a moment to breathe. During this state, healing is very risky, as is going on the offensive, so the challenge becomes figuring out what the player can accomplish that won’t lead to their own defeat. Riku’s gap closer is still blockable, as are the projectiles he creates from it. So essentially, Riku’s empowered state has an unblockable attack that is most effectively dodged, and an attack that is most effectively blocked, so that pattern of encouraging the player to utilize a variety of their tools and maneuvers is reinforced. Riku is much less likely to flinch during his empowered state, but it can still happen, so the player must keep an extremely sharp eye out for their opportunity to deal some damage. The longer the fight goes on, the narrower this opportunity becomes, requiring the player to take greater and greater risks to deal damage, naturally elevating the tension as it reaches its crescendo. The narrative in this fight is meant to be an underdog overcoming his greatest rival consorting with pure darkness – a symbol of overwhelming power. Demanding persistence of the player in knocking down Riku’s increasingly ironclad defenses reinforces this feeling.

Persistence is key in turning Riku’s attacks against him

Riku will finish out his empowered state with an empowered helm splitter that unleashes a wave of unblockable energy bursts. As with any enemy in Kingdom hearts, the key to avoiding this attack comes from understanding its behavior. The attack itself sort of acts like a little mini-enemy in that it has its own logic to how the energy bursts appear. They will surround Sora, and appear at semi-random locations, but there’s a bit of a predictable method to it. They seem to predicatively try to lead whatever direction Sora is currently moving, so quick changes in trajectory as Sora dodges drastically reduces the likelihood Sora will be hit. Figuring out your enemy’s behavior through observation is one of the primary skills Kingdom Hearts tries to impart, and that can also be applied to individual attacks like this.

Notice the appearance of energy bursts are clustered around where I’m facing, just ahead of me, but slightly offset

Riku cycles between his empowered state and the attack pattern from phase 1 until he is reduced to low health. Now the final phase begins, and with the player’s competence in regular combat well-established, the game shifts somewhat to introduce feelings of desperation and survival. Riku will permanently enter the empowered state, and the player will now have to constantly deal with his empowered attacks while whittling down the last of his health. The tension is raised and the stakes are at their peak – be defeated now and lose all that progress you made fighting Riku. The player’s ability to manage risk, defense, and offense is pushed to its limit.

Every so often, and with increasing frequency as his health is reduced, Riku will initiate his ultimate attack. This is one of the earliest examples of such show-stopper, set-piece, mega powerful, screen-subsuming attacks that will become a Kingdom Hearts favorite tradition. First, how does it work? Riku will raise himself into the air, announcing his intention, then fly straight at sora in a dashing attack. A series of identical dashing attacks, this time each forming a part of a rotating danger area around the arena happen in rapid sequence. Finally, Riku does an even more empowered version of his helm splitter, sending energy bursts outward from the center of the arena towards the edge. Like the previous empowered helm splitter, the game is asking of the player here to recognize the behavior of this attack, how it works, and formulate a response. Since this ultimate attack is constituted of mostly things we’ve seen Riku do before, it also acts as a capstone to the fight’s mechanics.

The final step of the fight is, essentially, trying to squeeze in a last few good hits against Riku. You’ll notice he’s totally invulnerable during his ultimate attack. He’s also prone to using it very very frequently when his health is almost spent. I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand I’m wary of ever making a boss completely invulnerable like this when up to this point the fight has been so open ended and player-driven. Riku is never invulnerable otherwise, even if it’s not always wise to attack him, so it can be a somewhat frustrating disruption, especially when he is using it near-constantly towards the end of the fight. I understand what the intent is here. This attack is the most difficult thing to defend against that Riku can throw at you, so it makes sense to use it consistently to up the tension at the fight’s climax. The experience of having only a small window to deal that last tiny bit of damage you need is also a compelling one – it gives the feeling of the fight becoming more and more desperate. Still, the attack is dangerous enough that it feels as though Riku didn’t need to be unassailable during it. The added danger of trying to damage Riku while he’s flying around with this ultimate attack could even be quite compelling, itself.

When this all started, Kingdom Hearts went out of its way to really build up the rivalry between Sora and Riku. It was a rivalry built on a childish sense of possession of their mutual friend Kairi, though that was all merely a pretense to air their own senses of inadequacy toward one another. The rivalry was only ever really about Riku and Sora. They both care deeply for Kairi, but Kairi and her feelings weren’t the real reason they fought. Now, the situation is turned on its head. Riku’s will is suppressed, the real Riku is nowhere to be seen in this dark reflection, and Kairi is in imminent danger. There’s no rivalry anymore. Sora no longer fights for himself, but only for the safety of his friends, both Riku and Kairi. The Dark Riku fight paints a stark contrast to the idyllic playful world our characters once found themselves in, forcing them to grow past the irresponsibility of their rosy childhood to own the consequences of their actions to this point. With the battle wrapped up, Riku is left to deal with the darkness he’s unleashed, and Sora has to be willing to give up his heart, his ego, to save Kairi, proving her well being more important to him than his own.

The Dark Riku boss fight is incredibly memorable. Anyone who played Kingdom Hearts in their childhood will tell you as such. It’s an excellent culmination of the skills one builds up through a long RPG like this, while capping off the central emotional through-line of the game, established all the way back in the opening minutes of the experience. It’s a great fight, but there are some pretty notable issues I should mention. Most egregious, is how the relatively small boss arena interacts with the game’s lock-on feature. The lock-on is meant to keep your enemy front-and-center for easy viewing. While dodging around Riku’s flanks, the camera has to spin and can often get caught on surrounding walls in such a way that Riku will be pushed off-screen, essentially hiding information from the player through the mechanic that is meant to do the opposite of that. It’s a pretty significant technical hitch, and a shame that it can be so readily reproduced. There’s also the repeated periods of invincibility Riku enjoys near the end of the fight, which as I said do accomplish some of the fight’s design goals admirably, but creates a bit of unnatural frustration I feel could have been designed around. While I find what is blockable and unblockable in his fight rather intuitive, that’s a bit of a gray area and I could see it unduly confusing some people. Still, all that emotional catharsis in finally defeating Riku at his best, and seeing how Sora’s matured could make one overlook some of these flaws. I mean who could forget Donald Duck tearfully running to Sora’s side as he disappears.

I told you Donald was the key to all of this

Overall, I think it’s pretty clear why this one fight sticks so strongly in people’s minds. It’s not just the narrative, nor is just that it’s incredibly hard. It’s that synthesis of gameplay and story – action and emotion that really cements moments like this for people. The emotion is heightened by the interactivity, and the interactivity heightened by the emotion.

He sought a way to cross over into other worlds. And he opened his heart to darkness…

Boss Breakdown: Riku on Destiny Islands

Today on Boss Breakdown I’m going to be delving into the wonderfully weird world of Kingdom Hearts to examine an optional boss encounter that comes very early on in the game – the player’s ultimate rival, Riku. Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG developed by Square Enix. Combat in Kingdom Hearts is a fast-paced series of sword battles (well, keyblade… yeah, we’ll just say sword battles) that take place on the ground and in the air with over-the-top fantastical feats of acrobatics and agility. It’s very much larger than life, exaggerated, and full of charm.

The player fills the role of the young dreamer Sora, a resident of the Destiny Islands, a vague sort of childhood-paradise world where teenagers enjoy their seemingly endless summer vacation racing, play-fighting, collecting seashells, and imagining the world outside their own. Sora’s got two best friends – Kairi, a creative, sassy yet kind-hearted girl and Riku, an abrasive, competitive, and contemplative boy. The Destiny Islands act as a safe tutorial space for Kingdom Hearts where the player is free to explore the game’s movement systems without fear of battle unless they seek it out. Riku has an optional boss fight in this early stage and it’s very notable for what it accomplishes. I wanted to talk about Riku particularly for how strong the gameplay-narrative aspects of his fight’s design are. This first Riku boss fight on the Destiny Islands is very basic, comes very early, and is seemingly innocuous. You wouldn’t think it has huge implications on the rest of the game, but there was clearly a lot of thought put into how this early game challenge would fit into the overall experience.

Also Donald Duck is involved, somehow, I understand

Riku is absolutely terrible, at this point in the narrative. I don’t mean to say I dislike his character, in fact he’s very effective in his role. From the moment you meet him he’s a driving force for the player, motivating them to explore the combat mechanics. He teases and condescends to Sora, but it’s all innocent enough. It feels like friendly banter. Some red flags start to go off when Riku and Sora challenge one another to a foot race. Surreptitiously, outside of earshot of Kairi, Riku puts up a prize, a very symbolic and intimate moment with Kairi, as a bet to be won by the victor of the race. It’s somewhat chilling. Sora doesn’t even have a chance to really respond to the rather untoward proposition before the race begins. The player has a single chance to establish who wins this “bet”, though the result is inconsequential, as Riku will play it off as a joke. It certainly doesn’t sound like he’s joking when he first brings it up, however.

This is like wagering her hand in marriage, basically

There’s some clear tension building among this group of friends, and Riku seems to be the source of it. At a later point, Kairi will offer to escape the island with just Sora, the two of them leaving for adventures together, implying Riku would be left behind alone. Sora doesn’t answer quickly enough, and Kairi too plays off her startling proposal as a joke. In actuality, with the benefit of hindsight, Riku doesn’t act all that terrible generally. Perhaps a bit full of himself, but he does show a genuine camaraderie with Sora and Kairi. It’s isolated moments like that proposition at the footrace where an inner darkness peeks through from him. He says hurtful things from time to time, but he’s ultimately a confused teenager from a very narrow world. Before all this though, Riku strongly establishes himself as the de facto leader and strong, wise “elder” of the group (he’s only a year older than Sora and Kairi, but still). He taunts and brags to Sora constantly during encounters with him, demeaning his abilities in a sort of ribbing way, but also the kind of way that gets under your skin and moves you to prove him wrong.

Look at how perfect it is, that text field was MADE FOR THIS

As a young kid, I really did feel like Riku was driving a wedge between Sora and Kairi. It invested me in this microcosmic little world, with Riku as our small-scale antagonist. Riku is positioned that way by the gameplay, as antagonistic. He’s meant to drive you, as the player, to better yourself through game mechanics to better Sora. You feel the same rivalry Sora feels with Riku , and you’re suffering the same way Sora is when Riku beats you into the sand. And he will. A lot. Riku’s boss fight is incredibly overtuned for what I’d consider to be an appropriate early-game boss fight, under normal circumstances, but that’s why Riku is an optional fight. I say optional, but given the aforementioned story context, you’d be hard pressed to find a Kingdom Hearts player who would not at least attempt to defeat Riku a few times.

You can challenge various characters to play-fights with wooden swords. Please ignore the fact that beating each other with wooden weapons would still be horribly dangerous, as this is anime land where human children can effortlessly bound twenty feet in the air, do three backflips, then deflect a flying bullet out of the sky with a sword. It’s fine. These are the only real sources of combat available to the player in this tutorial stage, as the story isn’t ready for monsters to be popping out just yet. They act as a sort of optional tutorial set, with each kid you can challenge specializing in teaching some aspect of the combat system.

Selphie teaches the player how to clash with an enemy’s weapon. Tidus teaches you how to outmaneuver a melee attacker. Wakka will teach you how to deflect projectiles. Riku is the fourth and final kid you can challenge, and he’s here to teach you how to lose. I’ve at times heard individuals deride Kingdom Hearts as a button masher, or in other words, implying the gameplay is overly simplified to the point of being trivialized by mindlessly mashing the attack button. I could go into detail about that misconception, but essentially if you have that experience, you’re playing on too low a difficulty setting for your level of skill. Riku’s boss fight is here to prove that to you.

Riku’s arsenal of maneuvers and attacks is pretty modest at this stage, but very effective. The player too, this early in the game, does not have very many options. Sora can run, jump, or attack with a 3-hit melee combo in the air or on the ground. Your defensive options are severely limited, you don’t even get your proper block or dodge roll until later, so using good positioning is your only way to avoid damage. That, and utilizing Kingdom Hearts‘ delightfully intuitive weapon clash system, which will nullify enemy attacks if Sora matches them with a well-timed attack of his own, deflecting the attack with a satisfying *clash* sound. This system simultaneously rewards attentive observation of your enemies’ attacks for proper timing and promotes aggressive attack-happy play, which makes the combat a very frenetic and fast-paced system. Attacking is, in a way, also a form of defending.

Ahh youth… smacking around your buds with two by fours like god intended

Riku has a fast melee attack that he’ll bring out if you get too close, teaching the basics of how enemies behave in this game. They mostly respond to the player’s position. They can be proactive, but their behavior is extremely contingent on Sora’s position relative to them. If sora dodges this attack but stays close, Riku can follow it up with a second, similar fast and close-ranged hit. At a medium distance, Riku can stab out his sword for a slower but longer-reaching attack. Riku also has a small spinning attack. Observing what Riku can do will also teach the player what Sora can do, as their arsenals at this stage are very similar. The attack button in Kingdom Hearts is contextual, and will activate a different attack depending on Sora’s relative position to his target, and whether or not he’s airborne, similar to Riku! These fast attacks of Riku’s can be clashed, which may stagger him and leave him vulnerable to a counterattack. This is one of the basic methods of dealing damage to enemies in Kingdom Hearts.

Simple so far, right? Well that’s just what Riku wants you to think. In Kingdom Hearts, because battles are so overwhelmingly player-directed, enemies keep track of how much they’re being hit by the player with something called a revenge value. This invisible numerical value, once it reaches certain thresholds, changes the behavior of enemies, causing them to retaliate, or use super moves. Riku has no super moves, but his favorite form of retaliation is so deadly it might as well be classified as a super weapon. If he feels he’s taken too many hits too quickly, Riku will lean onto his back, and point his feet toward the air, before kicking up into a standing position, clobbering Sora if he’s standing in front of the kick’s path. This maneuver deals devastating damage, and has a very tight window within which the player can react and move out of the way. Riku loves to do this in the middle of Sora’s attack combos. Riku’s revenge value is very sensitive, and he’ll start doing this if Sora’s hit Riku with even one full attack combo. The player can stop Sora’s combo, but only between attacks. If you push that attack button one too many times, Sora will be locked into his attack animation, and it’ll be too late. Button mashing is the easiest way to get absolutely demolished by Riku. I think it was very clever to key into this player behavior specifically as a bad habit worth shaking, if one ever wants to be as good at this as Riku. You’ve got to think, look, and listen carefully before just wildly swinging your sword.

If you do keep an eye out though, Riku’s greatest weapon can become your greatest weapon. Riku is unable to retaliate if you hit him just as his kick-stand maneuver ends. If you see it coming, you can step out of the way and respond with a free attack combo, punishing him. If Riku feels he’s in a bad position, or has been hit too many times without landing hits of his own, he may make a short, grounded dash movement to close the distance, or jump into the air to make distance. Riku is unable to attack in the air, nor can he retaliate in the air. The timing is tough, but if you can land an aerial combo on Riku while he’s jumping, he has no recourse. Giving Riku no aerial options at all helps the player realize that aerial and grounded combat have distinct differences and that enemies will react differently to those approaches. Knocking enemies into the air will tend to make them more vulnerable, so this is good knowledge to have.

Riku’s final trick is his taunting. He’s constantly, constantly, goading and heckling Sora and by extension the player about how they’re scared or not good enough. If you act in haste, he’s likely to clobber you, so this really is a game mechanic of sorts. It’s easy for people to tunnel vision in games and make mistakes, which is the main thing this boss fight is trying to teach you overall. One of Riku’s taunts is accompanied by a blocking motion. Any attempts to attack Riku from the front during this extended block will fail, and after a few failed attacks, Riku will hit Sora with a powerful overhead strike. This may at first seem like an impasse where the player simply as to wait for Riku’s taunt to end, but in actuality, if you get behind him, Riku will realize his block won’t work, and he’ll jump to a new position. Given what we’ve learned, and how predictable this behavior is, the player can learn to catch Riku out of this reliable jump to turn the taunt against him. Cool!

I can feel genuine, seething rage start to rise from the depths of my heart. How authentic!

Amusingly, the game takes a moment after each and every confrontation with Riku (you can challenge and re-challenge him to races and fights as much as you want) to highlight your win rate against him, with Sora musing on the current “score”. A fresh player is likely to have lost to Riku many, many times by the time they beat him, if they beat him. The game does not want you to forget that Riku is better than you at this. The race alone, which you are required to run at least once, is likely to give Riku at least one win over you, as the race is also extremely difficult to a new player. The game sets the player up for failure when it comes to beating Riku, and engenders the same sense of dissatisfaction and perhaps inadequacy that Sora feels toward his older counterpart. The player, like Sora, is motivated to improve and master their combat skills as Riku himself becomes an implicit motivator.

It is the game designer’s job to make the player motivated to want to play their game, to spend time in the world they’ve helped to build. Obviously, a designer needs to motivate the player to do so. There’s explicit motivation, which promises the player rewards and treats for doing so, outside motivation. These are useful tools, but potentially much more powerful are the inner motivations whose rewards come from within the player. Fun, satisfaction, and investment in a story are all implicit motivators. These are ephemeral terms, difficult to pin down, which is why when they are designed for effectively it’s so remarkable to behold, and worth studying. Riku will destroy a new player, repeatedly. However, as beating him is entirely optional, this is unlikely to demoralize the player, who is allowed to continue the story, but now carries this internalized rivalry with Riku. One day, you will be able to beat him, the game implicitly promises. Maybe not now, but continue playing, continue improving, and one day, you will. You might see this technique used in games often, if you’re on the look out for it – establish a rival or mentor that both the player and player character cannot overcome, setting the player up to go on a journey of self-betterment alongside their protagonist.

This player-protagonist harmony, where the player feels analogous feelings to your protagonist, is an excellent method of immersing the player in a game world. If the player has nearly the same motivations and emotional responses as the character they are playing, they’ll find it much more natural to put themselves in their shoes and empathize with them for whatever wild scenario you can dream up. This is the real power of video games as a medium. It’s the only form of media where the player can really be part of the story, explicitly, emotionally, mechanically, so I’ve always believed one should lean into that. Gameplay itself can be a form of storytelling.

But this is only part of the story. So Riku is set up as this big imposing physical and emotional obstacle for the player, as well as for Sora. They’re ready to tackle it together. But what next? Where does this story go? You may have heard that Kingdom Hearts‘ narrative gets complicated. People like to exaggerate, but for the sake of simplicity I think next time we’re going to skip ahead a bit and see where this path we’re on leads us, in regards to Sora and Riku. This is, after all, not the only Riku boss battle in this game. Players familiar with Kingdom Hearts will know the others well. In part 2 of this Riku Boss Breakdown, we’re going to take a look at the infamous Dark Riku boss fight.

They’ll remain a part of each other’s lives, no matter what…

Boss Breakdown: Artorias The Abysswalker

Welcome to Boss Breakdown! I wanted to do a series of posts specifically about boss design and the particulars of some of my favorite bosses (as well as perhaps some not-so-favorite ones that are otherwise notable to me). It didn’t take long for me to think of what boss I wanted to talk about first…

We’re going to start off strong with Artorias The Abysswalker from the original Dark Souls. He’s one of my favorites and an excellent study in readability for enemy design. I’m going to go over his general behavior, as I can observe it, then breakdown a number of the specific attacks and moves he can employ against the player. I’ll wrap up by sharing my analysis of what the design goals of this fight were, and how well the final design accomplished them. Some mild spoilers for Dark Souls are to follow. For context, Artorias the Abysswalker is a legendary and divine knight within the Dark Souls world renowned for his heroics and saving the land from a menacing force called the abyss. You happen upon him crusading against abyssal creatures when he turns on you and attacks like a madman. Dark Souls is an action RPG about clashing sword, spell, and shield against various gods and monsters, and thus you must likewise do so against Artorias.

Even with my experience, if I don’t focus on my timing I’m likely to get clipped by his large attacks.

Artorias is a knight, albeit a possessed one, and he fights like a knight. Mimicking many of the behaviors of other humanoid enemies in Dark Souls, Artorias likes to circle around you slowly, as if sizing you up. He’s aggressive, but doesn’t leave you with no breathing room at all. He seems to cycle between states of high-aggression, letting loose a deluge of attacks, and low-aggression, where he’ll be more reactive and less proactive. If in his reactive state, it’s dangerous to engage in maneuvers with a lot of time investment like healing. Enemies in Dark Souls generally do not like it when the player tries to heal, and will move to stop them more often than not if they are able. This is especially true of bosses and especially especially true of humanoid late-game bosses like Artorias. I suspect there is a special behavior baked into his AI to make Artorias lose his cool if he sees you try to slip in a quicky sippy of your healing Sunny-D potion. Healing is not meant to be a free action in this game, rather its something you must do while your opponent is occupied, in order to accomplish it safely. You must take a risk to heal, as healing is, ultimately, correcting a mistake you’ve made to begin with. The added risk is your payment for taking a hit. If you’re hugging Artorias too close he may have trouble hitting you with his wide-arcing attacks, so to counter this problem he may roll away from you to get some distance, or use an attack that allows him to reposition himself like a leaping strike. He also has a dodging side-swipe combination to really dissuade the player from trying to confuse the AI by getting too close. Artorias is most effective when facing the player, so if the player tries to get behind him he’ll splash some dark muck their way. It’s one of his quickest attacks and, proportionately, does the least damage. This move is more an inconvenience than anything, and really meant to just gently discourage getting behind Artorias too often, as it is disruptive and difficult to react to.

NO ENERGY DRINKS ALLOWED IN THE ABYSS! We only drink BLACK COFFEE here!

Most of Artorias’s attacks are slow and sluggish, objectively speaking. He has some extremely generous telegraphs to his attacks, some of which can be almost as long as a full second, while the average human reaction time is at around 250ms, or one quarter of a second. This is purposeful. Artorias is meant to be difficult, but despite a somewhat exaggerated online reputation, Dark Souls always aims to be fair in what obstacles it throws the player’s way. Clearly communicated telegraphs seem to be a priority for the enemy design in this game, and this seems especially true of Artorias. Obstacles simply tend to be more satisfying to overcome for players when they are clearly conveyed, even if they are difficult to overcome, and in an action-based boss fight this means effective attack telegraphs.

Notice how Artorias really drags his sword behind just before he swings it. The sword is so massive it’s very easy to track with the eye, especially with how the animators framed Artorias’s poses relative to the player’s position. They knew Artorias would be usually staring straight at you from the center of the screen, so they knew how to best frame him such that his actions are very traceable by the player. This is important, as a boss that is difficult to read can often mean a frustrating and dissatisfying fight. Most of Artorias’s attacks do not have very strong tracking, meaning he does not aim himself in 3D space at the player with perfect accuracy. Obviously, if tracking on an attack is too strong it becomes impossible to outmaneuver. Artorias’s sword swings have just enough tracking to make casually walking out of the way an unwise evasive tactic, but not nearly enough to overtake the speed of a well-timed dodge roll.

Artorias slowly drags the sword into position and swings it over his head, but then **slows down** the movement of his arm right before he strikes to make sure you can see his sword about to come down, its silhouette clearly defined.

That dragging action of his sword also communicates a part of the narrative; this Artorias is being controlled by an outside, corrupting force. He moves almost like a puppet, as though his limbs don’t act in concert with the rest of his body. Using narrative elements like this as gameplay elements helps make the entire fight feel more cohesive and ‘settled in’ so to speak with the context of the world. I think one of the things that stuck with me so much about Artorias is just how effective his telegraphs are. They are pretty generous with a lot of leeway, but just quick enough to make them feel dangerous, frenetic, and challenging, while at the same time I never feel cheated whenever Artorias gets a good whack in against me (which he does. Frequently). That readability is really essential in making a good boss fight for an action game like this.

Artorias may bound into the air, do a flip, and bring down his sword onto the ground in a slam. For this flipping move you can once again see Artorias’s massive attack telegraphs which give the player ample time to react. This attack doesn’t actually do anything until Artorias has nearly hit the ground, and all that time he spends hanging in the air like he’s posing for a comic book cover is just fluff to telegraph the attack more effectively. Well, perhaps not fluff. It also serves a purpose to cut quite a striking scene. This incredible feat of acrobatics really sells Artorias as an inhuman swordsman. Dark Souls characters don’t really do this. Not usually, anyway. At their most nimble, the player character is a mildly athletic normal person. These sorts of insane stunts really set Artorias and what he’s capable of apart. It reinforces that you’re fighting a monster. Another fun design aspect of this attack is how it can chain into itself. Artorias will do this same attack one to three times in a row, requiring the player to dodge them with correct timing subsequently. It’s one of the best tools in Artorias’s kit for enforcing mastery of the Dark Souls dodge roll. Because the difference in Artorias’s body language between repeated flipping strikes and returning to a neutral position can be very subtle, it’s also an excellent tool for enforcing mastery of observation. To know how to react, one has to perceive their opponent very closely, which can be very challenging with all the moving information in a game like this.

Once again, we can see Artorias’s animation noticeably slow down just as he reaches the apex of his jump to punctuate the attack. Everything the player needs to know is communicated clearly.

The aforementioned flipping attack as well as a long-reaching vertical strike Artorias may interweave in his grounded combat both share the properties of being overhead attacks. Because of how overhead attacks behave in Dark Souls it is probable, depending on the player’s spacing relative to Artorias, that the attacks will go over the player’s shield and hit them regardless of a block, making shields less viable for these specific sorts of attacks unless spacing is well managed. So, these overheads enforce a level of skill in fine spacing – you want these overheads to tip your shield so they do not overreach you. The other option is to engage in at least some dodging, which fits with this fight’s goals of demanding mastery of numerous game mechanics. Another of those mechanics is the stamina meter, essentially a hard limiter on how often a player can block or dodge. If either defensive option is abused, stamina will be drained for a moment and the player will be unable to defend. When Artorias is in his aggressive state, he keeps up the pressure. If defending is done without forethought, stamina will be quickly drained and the player will likely take damage. Managing stamina in concert with your defensive options is another skill demanded of the player here.

Artorias has a stabbing thrust attack with a unique property- it hits twice, and it hits hard. Blocking Artorias with a shield is a plenty viable strategy. Shields are in fact very powerful in the first Dark Souls. This stab move, if taken full-on with a shield, however, may barrel through your stamina, breaking the player’s block and damaging them. Badly. Having your shield stance broken means entering one of several states the game considers to be off-balance, where combatants are vulnerable to bonus damage. The Artorias fight seems to be specifically tailored to ensure a player never relies too heavily on one strategy. To beat Artorias you have to be adaptable, and have at least a cursory understanding of a variety of Dark Souls‘ many combat mechanics, not just one or two.

Block and you’re likely to be hit. Different attacks that demand different strategies keep the player alert and observant.

One of the most devastating attacks in this boss’s arsenal is his leaping stab. Generally I find there are two main kinds of attack telegraphs in action games. There are the momentary tells, which flow directly into the attack they are telegraphing. Think a sword pulling back just before it comes down in one smooth motion. Then, there are the “hey heads up, I’m gonna hit ya!” telegraphs that are more like an ambulance siren alerting you to get the heck out the way, because something is coming. Artorias’s leaping stab is the latter kind. In these situations the game wants you to know that something is about to happen, and you need to be ready to follow up on that knowledge. With this kind of telegraph, you’ll know its coming well ahead of the attack. Designing an attack this way helps build variety in an enemy’s moveset and how the player paces themselves. It also allows the enemy to have an extraordinarily dangerous move that does not feel cheap because it is so forewarned. Artorias will howl at you before leaping into the air from a great distance and slamming his sword down in a stab. Sprinkling in these massively damaging yet easily nullified attacks is a good way to convey the danger and power of your boss without making it feel unfair. This attack also reinforces precision in one’s dodging and spacing, as dodging directly away from the landing site of the attack, toward the camera, is a good way to get stabbed, while lateral dodging, or even dodging towards Artorias’s starting position is much safer.

“AAARRROOOGH” – Sir Artorias D. Abysswalker, Esquire

Artorias is not a multi-phase fight, meaning he does not employ new strategies or abilities, for the most part, against the player throughout the fight. Fighting Artorias is as straightforward as it gets. He does have one last trick he might employ once he’s sustained a decent bit of damage, though. What I often affectionately call his ‘super saiyan power-up’ is an ability where he’ll stand perfectly still while gathering a cloud of menacing darkness around him. Cleverly, this makes boss staggering a central mechanic of the fight, whereas in most other boss fights throughout Dark Souls and throughout the series, even, it is a secondary concern, at best. Enemies in Dark Souls take an invisible stagger value or poise damage in addition to health damage when struck by the player. It represents the force being applied to an enemy’s stance and it’s pretty intuitive- a giant battle axe will inflict more stagger than a rapier. Once a minimum threshold of this stagger value has been reached in a short enough time, the enemy stumbles. Most enemies stagger on every strike. Larger ones tend to be able to shrug off a few hits. Bosses will often require a number of strikes to feel the pain and react. The only way to stop Artorias’s accumulation of power is to stagger him. Fail to do so and you’ll not only be caught up in a damaging explosion of darkness if you’re too close, but you’ll also have to deal with an empowered Artorias capable of decimating health and shields alike with his sword for some time. It creates an interesting dilemma of risk and reward. Do you attack Artorias while he refuses to fight back in the hopes you can stop his empowerment? Or do you take the down time to heal and hope you can dodge his empowered assault later? It demands the player make a snap calculation as to whether they can stagger Artorias in the short window they have to do so, while also making Artorias an even more terrifying opponent.

Now I’d like to briefly go over some of the narrative elements of this boss fight. Any game with a narrative that also has bosses will naturally inject some sort of story into those boss fights. Gameplay is storytelling, after all, so there’s some things worth pointing out. As I stated earlier, Artorias’s sluggish and labored movements pull double-duty in making a satisfyingly readable opponent and selling Artorias as a dangerous, wild monster-warrior not in full control of his faculties. He moves almost like a puppet on invisible strings, with his head leading him where he goes, his limbs dragging behind. The sword is animated to depict its incredible weight, which also informs the shape his attacks take. The sheer might of his heavy strikes, their ability to tear through defenses, and his inhuman acrobatics shores up Artorias as a legendary divine knight. Several of his attacks, especially his spinning horizontal strikes, are very reminiscent of his wolf companion Sif, another boss in Dark Souls. Sif would eventually take up Artorias’s sword, so it’s natural Sif learned to wield it by observing their master. The darkened knight’s volatile, mindless state implies the tragic fate of this hero, and his fall to darkness. Dark Souls is also well known for its environmental storytelling so I’ll indulge a bit and point out a fun detail that can be gleaned about this Artorias from the environment. Elsewhere, it is noted that Artorias is renowned as a legendary left-handed swordsman. You may notice Artorias fights the player with his right hand. Eventually it is discovered Artorias gave up his shield to defend Sif from the abyss. It stands to reason that before succumbing himself, Artorias tried to defend with his left arm, sword-in-hand, shattering all of its bones in the process. The now corrupted Artorias fights, hobbled, with his offhand wielding the sword, main hand a wobbly useless husk. As challenging as the Artorias fought in Dark Souls may be, he is but a shadow of his former self. What a glorious sight the fully capable Artorias must have been in his prime.

But did Artorias carry POCKET SAND in his glory days!?

So I obviously really really like this boss fight. It may be one of my all time favorites from any game. The design suggests a boss that is more straightforward than almost anything in the rest of Dark Souls. Even simple bosses like the early-game Taurus demon have some sort of twist or gimmick, but Artorias is fought in a big, round empty room. His tricks are not that tricky, his attacks are mostly what they all appear to be. It’s a drag-out fight where only one guy can walk away. Dodge and hit better than Artorias to win. It really pushes you to use all of your defensive options. With generous attack telegraphs, but tight windows between attacks in which Artorias is vulnerable, the fight makes knowledge of spacing, Artorias’s animations, and the timing of his attacks your greatest tools. It feels like the purest form of Dark Souls. No fat, just learn your opponent’s moves, learn how to deal with them, and execute well to win. That was the goal with Artorias, and even at this relatively early stage of the Dark Souls franchise he’s one of the stand-out examples of that sort of design. Future games will iterate liberally on what Artorias represents, to great effect, but good ol’ Arty will always be one of the most elegant of these ‘pure fighting’ Dark Souls boss fights. It’s also got some great narrative elements baked right into the gameplay. They really wanted to sell you on the mindless rage of this abyssal thing controlling a once great hero. The way he violently massacres a hapless mook in his intro cut-scene sets an excellent tone that the deranged flailing of his animations expertly follow up on.

Pictured: Me **not** hitting and dodging better than Artorias

Artorias is a microcosm of what Dark Souls wants to get out of you as a player – observation, spacial awareness, and reaction. Thinking while you’re fighting. No matter what approach you take, with whatever tools are at the player’s disposal, Artorias is prepared to respond with the tools at his disposal to ensure you’re awake, and know what you’re doing. He’s an end-game boss, so he’s tuned to be difficult, and a penultimate test of your mastery over the Dark Souls combat mechanics. Artorias also marks the culmination of a shift in boss design for Dark Souls and its various sister series that began with some of the later bosses in the previous game Demon’s Souls. From this point forward, the emphasis the Artorias fight places on in-the-moment decision making, close observation of the opponent’s tells, high-stakes reaction based gameplay, and mastery of the game’s defensive mechanics such as dodging and countering will become a cornerstone of the series, more so than even anything that had come before.

Knight Artorias came to stop this, but such a hero has nary a murmur of dark…