The value of replayability: when the credits are not the end

Start over

From Metroid to Chrono Trigger, we cover games that base their appeal not only on the first game, but also on the possibilities of the following ones.

During our Metroid Dread review a few weeks ago, we estimated the length of your first playthrough to be around eight to ten hours. Doing this kind of calculation, however, is one of the less exact sciences that we can get into when talking about video games, because the duration is a variable conditioned by factors such as the ability of each player, their previous experience with the saga or the genre, as well as his willingness to go out of his way to complete optional tasks because he enjoys every moment of the experience and is not in a hurry to finish to release a different one. Postponing the final boss fight or continuing to scour the map after defeating it greatly alters the length of that first playthrough, but even getting 100% doesn't mean the game is at its best either.

Because reaching the credits of Metroid Dread ends the story, yes, but it also rewards one or more artworks depending on the time spent —suggesting that you have to play more to get the rest— and unlocks a difficult mode that tempts us to start over again under harsher conditions now that we are hardened. Many will ignore the challenge and turn the page; others will see it as an opportunity to go deeper. To go through it in half the time because they already know where everything is. To destroy bosses who used to intimidate. Or to experiment with sequence breaks that change the order of exploration and acquisition of improvements, allowing, for example, to quickly defeat Kraid thanks to the morphosphere bombs or the flying beetle that guards the multi-missile thanks to the spiral attack despite not be tactics devised for the first game.

Losing four hours on hard to achieve the final artwork in such a way may seem like an unreasonable demand at first, especially considering that the prize is just that, a simple artwork; but it ends up becoming an affordable achievement as soon as we have two or three games behind us, and it rewards in a way that goes beyond the material reward, that artwork that we can find and download using the internet. Just as reaching the credits under normal conditions is satisfying because we overcome some already considerable challenges (playable gratification) and see the outcome of Samus's adventure (narrative gratification), achieving it again under harsher or more pressing conditions, even if they are self-imposed, reaffirms a extra mastery class over the game. It means reaching a higher peak than the other players who also saw the credits, but did not go further.

Extending shelf life

It is a principle of improvement that has been with us for many decades, when the arcades tempted us through rankings with the initials of those who had achieved the best scores. Back then, reaching the end credits used to be an even more difficult task despite the brevity of the games - unless we dropped quite a few coins in the process - but the rankings served as another kind of perk relatively speaking: maybe you would have stayed in the third phase of a shoot 'em up, or you would not have made it past the fourth round in a sports title, but your small feat was recorded for all to see, in a decent position if the game had only been in for a short time the room or the others had simply performed worse than you in their attempts.

Of course, this system is still used today, and has also been adapted to home platforms with online rankings for players to compare across the globe, although it only represents one side of replayability: going back to Metroid, already in the eighties the NES delivery only revealed that a woman was hiding under the armor (data hidden by the manual) if the player finished in less than five hours, with the possibility of seeing the bounty hunter with progressively less clothes when going down three or even one. Like the devilish difficulty prevailing at the time, these practices had their origin in the need to compensate for shorter developments, which would generate disappointment when discovering that one or two days after investing several thousand pesetas we had already taken all the juice out of the new purchase; although as the strict initial limitations loosened, they persisted as a method to achieve more polyhedral experiences.

A great 90s example of this reformulation on consoles (where players did not compete against others, but with themselves) was Star Fox 64, a Nintendo 64 rail shooter whose credits could be reached in less than an hour, but which required replaying each mission until destroy a set number of enemies to get gold medals and unlock expert mode. However, what made Star Fox 64 an exceptional case is that not all missions were accessible for one, two, or even three passes unless we figured out how to get to them: based on variables like going through a series of arcs , prevent companions from falling in certain phases or the destruction of objectives in less than the stipulated time, the path to the final planet changed on the fly, branching into different routes instead of following one preset by the difficulty mode as in the Star Original Super Nintendo Fox.

This flexibility, together with the skill necessary to get all the medals once the way to achieve the missions had been figured out, meant that the same game that could be completed in just one hour could be ten, twenty or more on the console, offering challenges to anyone. interested in expressing it. That's why it's easy to understand why years later, since he was already a veteran developer with sagas like Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and Bayonetta in his history, Hideki Kamiya volunteered to take the reins of the saga. And so it was: although not with him at the helm, Platinum Games, the highest authority in proving that action games can —or even should— allow themselves the luxury of being brief if in return they are intense and replayable, would end up allying with Nintendo to create the experimental Star Fox Zero.

Testing what has been learned

El valor de la rejugabilidad: cuando los créditos no son el final

Although today what most interests us about Platinum is Bayonetta, saga again on the lips of many due to the expected appearance of its third part during the last Nintendo Direct. As in the case of Metroid Dread, the two installments published to date can be finished in a matter of ten hours, but that is only a superficial approach to its possibilities. A journey through levels, bosses and sequences that culminates in the great final climax that will surely serve to satiate the most casual fans of hack and slash, but the game continues to evolve after its credits. Whether it's moving to a higher difficulty mode, or trying to swap stone prizes for platinum or pure platinum prizes, success requires an internalization of the mechanics, of Bayonetta's repertoires and enemies, which is not fully developed. during the first game.

The game can explain how the basic controls work or the warping time (enemies slow down if we dodge just before receiving an attack), and introduce each creature separately so that we acclimatize to its particularities before including them in groups with others, but developing the analytical ability and muscle memory to perform at a high level takes time. Only practice serves to become familiar with the range and cadence of each weapon, find the ideal combination in hands and feet, dominate the airspace, anticipate enemy attacks during the first frames of their animations or internalize the sustain of attacks to maintain the combos even while dodging, lengthening chains that culminate in summons to break through defenses and follow the action from a higher vantage point. Less danger, more points, better trophy. And more chances of surviving if we dare with the highest difficulty (only unlockable after completing the game).

Kamiya and his fellow students have made an art out of this learning game after game rather than just level after level, but it's not something unique to pure action games. Resident Evil, the horror saga in which the creator made his directorial debut, also displayed similar principles long before the conception of Devil May Cry (predecessor of Bayonetta) or the formation of Platinum, although in his case applied more to the exploration than combat. Since its inception, the Shinji Mikami series (another expert in this replayability, see Vanquish) was characterized by offering two routes, two parallel developments depending on the chosen protagonist, something that ranged from exclusive weapons and secondary to variations in the order entrance to certain places. It was a concept that was pushed much further when Kamiya took the lead on the sequel and introduced the alternate scenarios, bringing the number of games needed to see it all up to four.

In Resident Evil 2, reaching the credits with Leon or Claire could take as little as five or six hours, but then a B-scenario would unlock where the other character started the adventure from a different location (changing the initial direction of exploration and skipping the encounter with the first friendly secondaries), he was surprised by a marauding Tyrant (Mr. X) at various points in the police station, he was affected by a couple of decisions made by the first character, he faced more Lickers and culminated in the true final boss to tie the outcome of both with a bow. In this way, the game not only seasoned the replay with exclusive weapons, puzzles, locations and secondary of the other protagonist, but also; it also subverted expectations thanks to events (a Licker falling through a window after picking up an item, Mr. X bursting through a wall after solving a puzzle) that weren't in the first game of one or the other character.

Then, wanting to check how the developments would be in case of reversing the tables, replaying scenarios A and B with opposite characters rewarded with new sequences and even locations. It's one of the few points where his 2019 remake curiously regressed. In it, Mr. X was brought forward to the A stage and both Leon and Claire inherited elements that were once exclusive to each other (the chess plugs, the detonator). This propelled the pre-credits-to-the-ground length of eight hours and didn't hurt the second scenario because unreleased content was also plentiful and subversions were still rampant, but it did somewhat trivialize the distinction between four routes by bringing almost everything together in two. The reason, obviously, was to show as much content as possible to players less willing to repeat the same process over and over again, although in return, for those who want to improve game after game, it left a better tuned system of ranks based on to time, difficulty mode and saves used.

The grain and the chaff

As in the case of Metroid, encouraging speedrun with unlocks is an idea present in Resident Evil since its first installment, where the rocket launcher with infinite ammunition was less than three hours away in a game. Unfortunately, the knowledge of levels and resource management that RE2 Remake requires to earn S+ ranks and unlock its infinite ammo weapons is now a rarity: the recent Village turns them into store acquisitions and then gets lost among more achievements. abundant and mundane like the ones that became popular at the system level from Xbox 360 onwards. It is also something related to that prioritization of the first or, at most, the second game over what may come later, because in many cases nothing will come. Because in a market with more and more offers, expecting a player to dedicate himself to replaying your game over and over again is a proposition that also sounds increasingly risky.

Procedural games like Dead Cells or Spelunky 2, thankfully, don't have to deal with that dilemma because they're built with replayability as an intrinsic part of their offering. Starting over and over again, with more experience and/or better equipment to write small self-contained looting adventures, lessens the importance of credits that may come sooner, later, or not at all. Last year, Hades emerged as one of the great highlights thanks to its ability to combine that beginning of the reboot as a new opportunity to go further with a superb staging, a gameplay polished to the extreme and a meta-narrative aware of its nature. Roguelike: Kills didn't just push the player back, they also served as a way to access new conversations and discoveries, fueling progression even if it didn't manifest in the more conventional way of moving forward.

It is a less exploited facet of a medium that has often grown looking towards more rigid ones such as cinema or television. After all, Hades may have been the second most awarded game of 2020, but the former carried the Naughty Dog label again, making The Last of Us: Part II its longest opus to date—although not the longest. flexible or replayable—. Shortly after its premiere, the former president of PlayStation Studios, Shawn Layden, generated a small debate by commenting that he wanted the return of the triple A of less than fifteen hours in pursuit of a more sustainable industry, with lighter and more restrained products. . Weeks later, the contribution of Cory Barlog, director of the latest God of War (a game that also doubles the duration of its predecessors), went in the opposite direction: what he had to do was raise prices, an idea that Sony put into practice after of few months.

The relationship between production values, duration and sale price is a complicated and cyclical issue that came up again this year precisely with Metroid Dread, which was initially questioned by some for the 60-euro launch price because it was a side-scrolling game. overcome in ten hours or less. It is, as we have already established at the beginning of the text, a simplification that tiptoes around the potential of the replays, as well as the work dedicated to making all its pieces fit together as part of a harmonious whole. It is a title that, despite its shortcomings, lives by and for a density that is a value in itself, often absent during the open world boom that exploded almost at the same time as the achievement boom. A boom that is still used to push useful hours from ten to thirty at the cost of increasing programming and debugging work, but not creative workload.

With this we do not mean that there is no room for games of several dozen hours - multiplayer apart - great from start to finish, or that they at least take advantage of that kind of extension in time and space to do justice to adventures that would be less otherwise. After some mixed success installments, this year's Tales of Arise has brought Namco's saga back to its best without denying a forty-hour epic to JRPG fans who wouldn't settle for less. Although in the middle of 2021, it is also symbolic that Chrono Trigger, a JRPG released in 1995, is still unanimously counted as one of the great references of the genre. This, of course, is influenced by several aspects, such as the beautiful pixel art created from designs by Akira Toriyama, the memorable soundtrack composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, the hook of time jumps to know different eras and cultures, and the combat agility with position changes and combos between characters. But among all this, its replayability also shines with its own light.

Because Chrono Trigger was quite an anomalous JRPG in the sense that it could be completed in less than fifteen hours (usual duration in the 8-bit generation, not so much in the 16-bit generation to which it belongs), but it still was more in the sense that this brevity was due to the set of ramifications that could take us to the final boss at different times, also culminating in different outcomes and even possible failures, which end up condemning the world for our excessive haste. The game even introduced the concept of New Game + when it was not a recurring practice, allowing you to start over with the equipment already obtained to speed up the process of the next one and experiment with making decisions, altering subplots and reaching new endings (one of them inaccessible until NG+ itself) and then start again if we wanted to continue seeing more.

It was a masterpiece of prodigious pace, without "filler", where much of the character development unfolded in optional events that were not secondary. A notable break with the JRPGs of its time, and with those of now unless we look at specific (and western) cases such as The Outer Worlds. Because short and replayable games still have their space, but also a certain stigma among many users, who prefer to invest in a guaranteed duration or, failing that, wait for the discount that makes that brevity more attractive. It is understandable. Just as creating them takes time and effort, buying them too, especially at full price. And in an industry that now moves so fast, where it's so easy to add to the list of pending games, convincing someone to start over one they've already seen the credits for requires a leap of faith. But many times it pays to give it. Be it for an alternative ending, for an artwork or for the sensation caused by looking from the top of a mountain that most have not climbed.

Francisco J. Brenlla

Metroid Dread

Samus' story continues after the events of Metroid Fusion as he lands on the planet ZDR to investigate a mysterious transmission sent to the Galactic Federation. This remote planet is totally dominated by aggressive alien life forms and terrifying mechanical beings. Samus is more agile than ever, but will she ever escape the clutches of the Inhuman menace that prowls the depths of ZDR? Metroid Dread is an action-shooter platformer by MercurySteam and Nintendo for Switch.

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