7.31: endings in gaming, literature + observations on colonialism, character upgrades

The Sense of an Ending

...was the title of a book that, with the encouragement of my advisor, I claimed to have read in college, and even served a fairly central place in something that was roughly the equivalent of a thesis, and which they let me graduate inspite of. 

My issues with endings are much older-- I probably really should have read that book-- the earliest one I can remember having been in reference to Arthur Ransome’s “Swallows and Amazons” series-- these books about precious English children doing precious things in the precious English countryside-- which my mother read to me when I was a child, and which I loved beyond all reason. 

I really don’t want to get to far lost in the weeds with the Arthur Ransome-- but, in 2023, the point of those books is that the kids are practicing to be colonialists, making games out of handling the logistics of transport and cruelty that are necessary if you want to run an Empire. However, the Empire was well on its way out by the time the books hit print so the nostalgia, which they capture so beautifully, is not, as a reader might think, a nostalgia for childhood, but rather for the society that embraced the childish world view that allowed colonialism to happen. 

[“There is nothing so pure and cruel as a child.”

-Jet Black, Cowboy BeBop]

Anyway, I really loved these books when I was a kid. And when I got to the last one, I made my mom quite reading after about five pages. I didn’t want to go through life with no more “Swallows and Amazons” books to read. 

When I was in college, the same thinking inspired me to put down “1001 Arabian Nights” as I was about to start the last tale. About a month latter a Middle Eastern Literature professor told the class that there was a superstition that you would drop dead if you ever read the whole thing. 

And I have no intention of touching any of the half dozen Aubrey-Maturin novels that I have not read unless and until I am absolutely sure that I will die in a week or so. 

[MOTHERFUCKER...that list “Swallows and Amazons” “1001 Arabian Nights” and Jack Aubrey make me seem like some kind of post modern Rudyard Kipling-- which was NOT what I had planned for my life. SHIT. I mean, if you asked me what techno-Kipling would be into, I’m not sure I could have come up with a list that good if I tried...just FUCK. 

[Am I techno-Kipling? Did I just discover my real identity? Is Kamuchero actually India, and I am a confused tourist whose passion, food-related enthusiasm and way with language papers over the fact that I have no earthly idea, none whatsoever, what I am talking about, and no real ability to move beyond reductionist stereotypes, broad-brush nonsense about a national character? DAMMIT. As Kipling illustrates, that shit gets people killed. 

[...’course mama Kipling raised racists, not dummies, and the colonialist-ass pice of shit could WRITE. ….and if we are being honest I got a shitload of prose points I need to rack up before we even start talking about that.

[FWIW I do think a clear difference between me in digital Japan, and Kipling in 19^th century India is that Kipling was extremely open about his belief that his culture, the English, were better than the Indians and doing them a favor by colonizing them-- it was kind of his thing. And I that is not where I am coming from. I might be more racist than I can admit or understand, but I don’t consciously believe in the superiority of any culture-- which necessarily puts me on the side of the Japanese because ‘culture’ is an awfully strong word for what the Anglo-Americans have got going on.]

Anyway, it’s easily apparent how the Yakuza series, with its endless ways to fuck around, can pose problems for someone with issues finishing things. You can postpone finishing the game indefinitely, while you close out sub stories, achieve things in mini-games, and max out Kiryu’s stats. On any setting, the challenge is NEVER the final boss battle-- the challenge is deciding you are ready to move on. 

And they all make THAT hard, because these are really, really good games. There are plenty of things that are fucked up and wrong in the Yakuza-verse, but there is also enough depth and fun that a case can always be made for sticking around a little longer, for a few more rounds of PyoPyo, another baseball game, or clearing out the last items on some restaurant’s menu.

I should do that this week. There is a small chance that my war crimes interpretation of the stupid battleship will be vindicated in a cutscene, and matters, to me, at this point. After this week I will be away from the PlayStation for a little bit, and if I don’t use the time to close out these reflections, at the very least the time away from the console should help me form a final perspective.

Issues with upgrading Kiryu, generally; some thoughts on how to go about it in Yakuza 6

For all the things that the Yakuza series does well, designing systems for upgrading Kiryu is a thing that they do astoundingly poorly. This is a problem not really because the upgrades matter, but because the experience you need to upgrade him is a fun reward for doing stuff, and so once you have completely upgraded him-- or at least gotten him as beefed up as you care to-- than doing stuff becomes less compelling because the experience you get from it is mostly to completely useless. 

For what it’s worth, the Ryu-Ga-Gotaku guys seem pretty hep to this, and roll out new forms of upgrading your character pretty regularly, but they still have yet to get it especially right.

Generally most things you did would get you ‘experience’ which would get you “soul orbs” and “soul orbs” would unlock abilities. You would get all the experience you could use relatively quickly, and then you’d feel sort of like a chump for beating everyone in, say, darts, because the experience that you got for doing that was not worth anything. 

In Yakuza 0, they probably did it best by having money and experience be a single currency-- you get cash from everything you do (especially beating up people) and then you just use cash to upgrade you abilities. You can also limit break and keep getting more powerful nearly indefinitely although this involves an unreasonable investment of ANOTHER type of in-game currency, and is in no way necessary. But the cash thing is very nice because it propels the theme of how it’s the ‘80s and everyone is all about money. 

In Yakuza 6 they give you five different kinds of experience, doing stuff gets you various amounts of one or more experience types, and unlocking abilities requires various amounts of one or more of the experience types.

The thing to know going into the game is that you get neither green nor purple experience from fighting or working out at RIZIAP so those will eventually be harder to come by. You can also spend expedience so that each type of expedience will be accumulate faster, and my theory-- at this point, in this playthough-- is that you should dump all your experience into getting more of those two types of experience as soon as you can. You should upgrade stats as you need to, and unlock any moves or heat actions you really want available, but you main focus should be stockpiling as much green and purple experience for as long as possible. In early parts of the game this seems less necessary and the other three kinds-- blue, red and yellow-- might even seem more valuable but trust me, you want all the green and purple you can get. The other three you will accrue enough of in the course of things.

General upgrade thoughts:

- I mostly prioritize moves that help w situations that I find myself in regularly, such as getting knocked on my ass. Stuff that boosts collateral damage is nice, since I like to throw people. You want basic moves that are easy to land in common situations.

-also stuff that gives you more health + makes basic attacks more powerful

- you also want to pick up basic heat actions, like ones that let you disarm people with knives or guns. Again, focus on stuff that helps you in situations you end up in regularly

-the last things I go for are stuff related to accumulating Heat, extreme heat mode, and abilities that trigger at low health, or specific amounts of heat:

-you accumulate Heat by hitting people, ie the thing you spend the games doing, so working on ways to get more of it never strikes me as useful

-I don’t really like/almost never use “extreme Heat mode,” preferring to more or less fight normally, take advantage of whatever a buffs a full heat bar gives you + use heat on heat actions opportunistically. Thus heat actions only usable in ‘extreme heat mode’ are a VERY low priority for me. 

-there’s no real reason to spend much time with low health. If you ever have low health eat a thing so you can have more health + not risk dying + having to do whatever all over again, if someone lands a surprisingly powerful attack

-I have a very ‘let it work itself out’ approach to Heat, so counting on having or not having enough of it for a thing to work is inefficient for me