Games I'm Playing

How Soon Was Now?

In the realm of games that want to be Dark Souls, it’s a packed subway. It’s when all those fake batmen show up to fight the Scarecrow in The Dark Knight. Something just doesn’t sit right, deep down in your stomach, like when you were in your 20s, out drinking, and stopped to get a late night snack. It seemed like a good idea at the time, then you wake up wondering why a half eaten burrito is still in your hand. So, get on the subway and sit in that awkward middle seat between the lady who looks like she’s been riding it her entire life and the guy who spreads his legs an unreasonable distance. In comes a guy donning an acoustic guitar setting up to sing The Smiths catalogue. Enter Mortal Shell: II: The Second Coming

I’ve consistently argued for tip of the iceberg storytelling. That’s where you hold back information and leave the rest to the imagination of the audience. It’s the razor’s edge of narrative. Too much information and it feels prescriptive, too few morsels and the mind is confused and unsatisfied. FromSoft** excel at riding this line. Enemies, items, art all enrich dangling cryptic threads. They don’t demand attention, but they do whisper 

MSII is trying to mimic this style. You are a harbinger… the harbinger. You meet a talking bird with a skull in its mouth named Ruk (like this one?). Then a big ceremony takes place and it’s filled with reverent people who look like extras from Midsommar. There’s talk of a baby and me mather whose Ova (eggs) you are to save… so I guess we’re Harbinger the Oologist now (someone who collects eggs. I had to look it up too). Well, I guess I’ll take my faceless self and go harbinging. Wish me luck everyon… oh mather, they’re all dead. I hope the sacrifice was worth it!

After an exceptionally long introduction, a title screen appears and you’ve made it to Marrow Keep, a wondrous hub area (good to see you, old friend). It’s a convenient place where others hang out with the sole purpose of catering to your every need. Want to find new shells? Talk to Chesty Larue. Need to buy maps? Talk to Merrick. Want to get your feet washed with milk? Talk to the zen diagram, dairy/foot fetish guy

“Wait, is that real? Also, it’s Venn Diagram”

It is real and I know

Then there’s some stuff about a gloom syphon, shell bonding, and learning more about whatever body the harbinger is inhabiting. <queue elevator music> (you’ll want to play that while you read this section). Hi. I want to talk to you for a second. Let me acknowledge how difficult it is to make games. It takes an extreme amount of coordination across multiple disciplines and personalities. At the best of times, things only go a little sideways. Making games is knowing not only what to include but also what to cut. It’s seeing the vision, focusing, while remaining flexible yet judicious. Sound hard? It is. So it is with that knowledge that you must consider my thoughts from here on out </end elevator music… unless you don’t want to>

There is no question this game was heavily influenced by FromSoft. It’s evident through the combat, world design, enemy design, narrative, upgrades, abilities, etc. I recognize that Souls games aren’t for everyone, or even most-ones. They are, however, expertly crafted. It is here, I say, if you come at the king, you best not miss

There’s an elegance to the naming of things in FromSoft games. Heide’s Tower of Flame, The Forest of Fallen Giants, Untended Graves, Consumed King’s Garden, and on and on. The list is long and each name is evocative. But they’re more than evokers of place. Each ties into the area, the art, the history, the enemies, the items, and the boss(es). They create a narrative throughline that tickles the imagination. It’s also extremely difficult to pull off, and if attempted and missed, it can sound forced. MSII suffers from this. It’s not that a particular name is bad, it’s just that it lacks a certain panache

Artistically, there’s a lot of variety in the world. Enemies are generally interesting, areas are generally distinct, and it flows nicely. However, it’s also difficult to read. Pickups get lost easily on the ground as there isn’t enough god glow to make them visible. I end up running around like a madman smashing the X button trying to pick up what I don’t see (I’m looking at you gold… actually, I’m looking for you)

There’s a cool animation when you warp from the tower to an area on the overworld map. You jump on something that looks like it’s possibly from the set of Event Horizon and then become atomized and turn into a fireball that flies wherever you set your sights to go. What’s that? The teleportation takes place in real time… 

The music brings forth that forlorn unease that is typical for a game like this. Actually, that’s the menu music. I am not sure if there’s music in the game at all. I assume there was but it didn’t register

The meat of these potatoes is how the game plays. It is trying to do a lot of heavy lifting. It’s an Action RPG, like most in this vein, where you run around, kill enemies, get gloom (souls), upgrade, explore, get walloped by a mob that hits way too hard, and do the whole thing over. Pretty standard. Since it’s so similar to Souls games, let’s focus on what’s different 

There’s no stamina, you can pause the game, fall damage is limited, you have guns, and you discover/inhabit different bodies (shells) that give you unique fighting styles… I think, I only ever used Proxima

No stamina means you can be more aggressive than a standard Souls game, since you’re not worried about tiring out with your hands on your knees and a single finger raised in the air for a breather, only to be smashed by some enormous hammer. The hammer is still there, mind you, you just don’t ask for a second to recover before the smashing

The lack of fall damage doesn’t change much, except that you can fall down to places you might otherwise avoid. Of course if you fall too far, then you’ll instantly die. The levels are set up pretty well so you can tell the difference

Guns are more aggressive than in a game like Bloodborne, as they can be used as offensive tools rather than simply to parry an enemy attack. There are different kinds with names that range from reasonable, like the Forgotten Crossbow, to the, uh, stretched, like the Ballistazooka (see what I mean about naming? It’s a fine line)

The shells are interesting, despite my primary use of one. Each serves as a class with specialities: speed at the cost of health, defense at the cost of speed, magic user is a glass canon, etc. Proxima felt like a pretty good all-around character to play, which is why I stuck with her

There are also 16 different weapons (8 melee and 8 ranged). You have to buy maps from Merrick that give you an idea where to find them in the world. The variety is enough not to be overwhelming and still give you a favorite. I have been partial to the Martyr’s Blade. It’s a greatsword, meaning it’s slow and heavy. Not my usual steeze, but it was fun to try something different

There are two currencies: the standard Souls currency that is used for leveling and is lost if you die and don’t make it back to the same place… or even if you do, it sometimes magically disappears. Then there’s gold which you don’t lose and is used to buy maps, weapon upgrades (combined with upgrade materials), and buffs

I want to present what bothers me most about the game and potential solutions: 

• When you do a finishing move on an enemy, you cannot rotate the camera. That’s frustrating as there are often other enemies around you that immediately attack and do damage
  • Players should be able to rotate and see where attacks are coming from and potentially invulnerable for a moment or two post finishing move so they can escape
• No weapon collision on walls
  • Should have been fixed as you can cheese enemies through walls (of course, they can hit you too)
• Inconsistent hit boxes
  • Every interactable in a game has an invisible hit box around it. Think of it as a volume in space that when you enter you can press a button and interact with something. It would often seem like you should be able to interact with something, and couldn’t, or vice versa. This isn’t an issue exclusive to this game, but it’s always annoying. Since most of these things are about progression, make those boxes bigger for god’s sake, and, in some cases, have them extend all the way around the thing rather than a narrow path in front

There’s also the issue of too little explanation. Rich, I know, coming from someone who likes Souls games as much as I do. Souls bakes difficulty into the world. If you want the game to be easy, summon help. You don’t even need to talk with those people. It works in the fiction they’ve created. In Mortal Shell II, there is also an “easy” mode. However, it is not nearly as clear as summoning someone

Let me tell you a story and then we’ll wrap this up. There are two paths to travel from Marrow Keep: one to the north and another to the south. I went to the south one early and got the shit kicked out of me over and over. Wisely, I abandoned ship and headed north. As I picked up items to equip, I found the Slayer’s Seal lying there in Marrow Keep. I equipped it as it looked like the best of the bunch. I then proceeded to head north and play several hours, breaking enemy posture with my Forgotten Crossbow and then decimating foes with a finisher like I was John Wick. The trouble is, I had no idea the Slayer’s Seal was “hidden” easy mode. It just seemed like a regular equippable. The trouble here is I played through a bunch of the game, not how I would have preferred. I was simply unaware of what that thing did. Moreover, it was in Marrow Keep, so I assumed it was standard fare

I think that’s a design flaw. Say what you will about easy mode in Souls games, but it makes fictional and logical sense. Here there was absolutely no logical indication that this specific item was any different than any other one. It’s so disconcerting that I’m considering playing this some more at the correct difficulty and writing about it again, as god intended

What’s worse than being between those people on the subway is listening to the guy struggle through the Johnny Marr guitar licks and sing as an offkey Morrissey. Sure, I like The Smiths as much as the next guy. It’s not the lyrics Morrissey sings (how many times can you repeat the same phrase), but the inflection in his voice. Here’s this guy, going through the motions. All the pieces are there, but they’re not working in unison

In the end, I applaud the attempt to make a soulslike. It’s a monumental task to take on and not for the faint of heart. The trouble is, those games are already exceptional. MSII really would have benefited from a slimmed down approach as it’s trying to do too much. You could cut ~33% of the features and make the remaining ones sing. That would have created a tighter experience