Ys I Reflections
I wrote this review-of-sorts over a year ago now. when I did, I was at the beginning of my journey in getting my feet back into gamedev and looking to develop a personal ethos towards how I understand and create games. my journey has progressed substantially since then, but rather than rewrite parts of this piece to reflect where I am now, I've decided to leave it as-is to preserve the snapshot of where I was at the time.
rather than doing "reviews" per-se, I want to explore craft and how creative decisions shape the experiences we create, as well as my personal experiences and thoughts. for that reason, I'm titling this article series as "reflections." we'll be talking about subjects like texture, gameplay dynamics, UX and how all of the elements of the game interconnect to form a whole. within this blog you will find no conventional criticism--it is assumed each element of the game was the best possible within the context of the creators' circumstances, including but not limited to the art, music and gameplay. instead we will explore how these creative elements form the final experience and what that conveys.
today I'll be reflecting on my experiences with Ys I. I played the PSP version of the game (Ys I & II Chronicles) so all thoughts will be relevant to that version of the game in the case of any version differences. for the best experience, I recommend at least some familiarity with the source material before continuing. I will try to explain the game as I go, but my points will likely be most appreciable to someone who has played it for themselves.
there were two things that struck me as I began the game: the first was that all the NPCs were named. this immediately added an intimate element to the game for me, lending to a liveliness of the world I'll touch on soon. the second was the lack of direction--the game was very quick to not even give me a vague sense of where I should go next. at the start I was immediately stuck, and nearly frustrated. but soon the advantages behind this approach revealed themselves to me: it provoked me to become investigative and fully engaged my attention. I took an active role in the story as its genuine protagonist, and soon felt personally involved in the mystery and adventure presented before me.
Part 1: Friction, Involvement and the role of information
I am an enthusiast of UI, and there is a push-and-pull between UI and the game world. UI exists to efficiently communicate information to the user. much of the experience of a game is the process of digesting game information into actionable knowledge. for example, even in an action-focused game, before you can dodge an enemy's attack, you must first know when to dodge by memorizing the enemy's attack pattern. this isn't limited only to UI (or GUI, to be more exact)--for example, if the enemy flashes just before you need to dodge, that element of learning is reduced since you have a much more distinct indicator. for UI, there is a twofold effect on the gameplay experience: first that freely given information reduces the necessity of learning and memorization, and second it does so often without being rooted within the game world, making the player interact more with menus and not the game world itself. this is an artistic choice made to suit the kind of experience you want to craft. on one extreme you have immersive diegetic experiences that reward knowledge mastery of its world and use more diegetic information indicators (like say, Shadow of the Colossus), and on the other extreme you have more abstract experiences that are about processing large amounts of information and good management skills (such as in Crusader Kings or Final Fantasy 14).
ultimately, how you present information and how much information you present depends on the experience you want your game to have. a strictly action-focused game like Metal Gear Rising includes explicit attack telegraphy, and as a result the game leans more towards mastery of reactions and of your own character rather than intimately knowing the enemy. this lets you feel awesome and keeps the game moving forward. you can then contrast that with a game like Demon Souls, where little (and even deceptive) information about how you should approach an enemy is given, and learning about the enemy makes such a strong difference that knowledge mastery can trivialize the action mastery required to defeat many enemy encounters in the game. this lends to a game that strongly rewards learning its world and investigating it in and out. in Metal Gear Rising, the experience is about pulse-pounding moment-to-moment action, and in Dark Souls the experience is about the process of becoming familiar with a strange and hostile world.
for Ys I, starting the game with almost no given direction was astounding. just figuring out where to go at the beginning was a head scratching experience until I got my bearings. in this game there's no quest log, minimap, directional markers or any similar modern conventions of RPGs. and in the absence of being given this information I was required to collect it myself. this meant talking to every NPC and checking every corner, and often twice! despite the initial friction, this was a very rewarding and involving experience. I had to take all those piecemeal rumors and my mental map of the game world, synthesize them and make inferences on what to try next. this led to me becoming intimate with the game world and its inhabitants very quickly, an experience I never would have had were the information given to me through objective markers or quest logs. from the start, it told me the experience of the game was about exploring the world for myself and getting to know the people and places in it.
for its wonder, this experience came with frustration. an inevitable consequence of such an unguided structure is that you're bound to make some wrong guesses. one thing that makes it work is that there's no truly wrong answers to what you try or where you look--the world is small and concise, and everything you find and everyone you talk to has some role to play in the overarching scenario. If you go to the wrong place or talk to the wrong person, you still encountered something that will become relevant later. every element in the game exists either to paint a picture of the world and its denizens, or gives you a puzzle piece-like hint to progress with, and often both at once. this is where the process of figuring everything out yourself reaches its full harmony, because you are always obtaining information and context that is just as likely to be useful later as it is now. as a natural consequence, it means everything you encounter in the world has an immediate sense of importance and place. all characters being named NPCs with something to say about the world ties meaningfully into this!
some games solve the "problem" of getting lost by making sure you always know where to go next, yet it tends to disengage the player from embodying the protagonist role and reduce their involvement in the narrative. have you ever had the experience of playing a quest-driven open world game and gone into autopilot navigating from one quest marker to another? when you are given this information, every object in the game world can be instantly sorted into the categories of "relevant" and "not relevant", making everything else in the game except the quest marker a sort of second-class citizen. the strength of such a system is, of course, that it greatly reduces the cognitive load required to navigate its world. in a game with hundreds of separate and distinct storylines, this is nearly a necessity. it complements the MMO genre it derives from well, since each region of the game world is a cluttered sandbox environment. the quest log paradigm adds order to such a chaotic environment and allows you to easily experience bite-sized storylines within it, making for an easygoing low-friction experience. the approach Ys I takes is, in a sense, the opposite. its focused scenario with little given direction creates a world where every direction you look in is just as important, making the entire experience highly involved and distinct.
the self-directed nature of the game combines with its small, puzzle piece world to create a sense of adventure. the likes of which I think is rarely captured in contemporary videogames for all it is spoken of! it's the kind of adventure that I think of when I imagine old adventure serials and the early days of DND, translated into videogame format (which the bouncy prog rock soundtrack aids greatly). the way that you are directly placed in the shoes of Adol--figuring everything out and finding your own way through firsthand experience--makes for a highly involved experience within the game. it's a simple story, one about a foretold hero vanquishing the darkness, yet one I became easily invested in due to placing myself into it through my own actions. In the end, I was left feeling a sense of ownership over my experience of the game, and it was a sublime and refreshing experience amidst the standard practices of mainstream videogames today.
rather than minimizing friction, Ys I allows friction points thoughtfully as a necessary part of building its experience. involvement and friction are necessary companions in game design: in order to have a more active, engaged experience there must be something that requires your attention in order to proceed. friction can take many forms, from mechanical difficulty to a requirement to explore for oneself to needing to pay attention to the dialogue in order to know how to proceed or understand the story. the product of friction is involvement, the feeling of being personally invested and engaged in your experience. not all friction is created equal, and some will be too much for some (or even many) players, but all forms of friction create unique experiences. Ys I gently applies friction at every corner to bump you around like a pinball through the world, making for a generally relaxed though still highly involved experience. this complements a light-hearted action adventure very well and is a strength i will continue to regard this game for highly.
Part 2: Scenario, Resonance and connection
like I mentioned in the introduction, one of the first things that I noticed when I began playing Ys I was that every NPC is named. following that, they all have a distinct place in and connection with their communities and the world around them, all communicated through a few succinct lines of dialogue. the game uses its small scope to its advantage in forming a lively but not overly difficult to digest world.
as we live in an atomized capitalist society, the importance and value of community and connection is often dismissed (or worse, sold as a placebo) by mainstream sources. as a result, we tend to not get many games which focus as much on relation as Ys I does, especially in a genre with such typically individualistic roots as sword & sorcery pulp fantasy. Ys I presents a world of tightly-knit communities that all rely on and care for each other, however imperfectly. for one, this is effective at answering the typical genre question of "Why am I bothering to save these people?" with the answer that it's easy to come to know and care for them. this is a simple and fundamental aspect of scenario design that is often overlooked. by creating a place you become invested in, you both naturally want to know it even more closely and want to save it.
I like to describe how games create narrative in the sense of "resonance" (a term I've adapted from Magic the Gathering's Mark Rosewater) and "scenario", in contrast to the common "plot" structure of linear media. scenario in my usage could roughly be summed up as "all the stuff going on in the game world and the actors within it." the ultimate narrative of the game is something you reveal through exploring the scenario and gradually building a fuller picture, inflected through the prism of the player's actions within the game world. said another way, scenario design is about creating places, people and their relationships to one another, and then presenting those things for the player to become involved within and form their own relationship with, creating their own story.
Ys I is, to me, exemplary of this kind of scenario, and has played a strong role in crystallizing this concept for me. despite its short length, I became more invested in this world and its inhabitants than I have games I've played for hundreds of hours. I believe this speaks to the strength of its scenario and how, at least for me, relation is a powerful mechanism for narrative resonance. every line of dialogue in the game has a purpose, either to provide leads for the quest or make you more familiar with the world, and often both at once. places and people have not just names and relationships, but even histories, and indeed histories with each other. this lent to the emergence of many sub-narratives, which all layer together to create the larger interwoven story that is the scenario. a line like "I'm worried about the future of our village..." can land so differently when spoken by a generically-named "villager", versus a named NPC with a unique sprite and portrait. it becomes an even richer narrative when you can find that NPC's wife nearby, who confides in you her frustration with her depressed husband, and so on. an abundance of simple, effective broad stokes characterizations like these create a lively, resonant world and a rich scenario.
relation is so critical to us as people and to life in general. when an NPC isn't named, it subtly signals that they don't matter. this framing, while sometimes a necessity of scope or a means to reduce cognitive load, can lead to cynical individualist messaging that is unfortunately ubiquitous in games. it leaves many games with a sort of existential loneliness. and in darker cases, with an all too common dehumanization of the 'other' or of those framed as 'lower' than you--the "NPC" vs "Protagonist" parlance we see as slang today. the antidote to so much of this is specificity, and with specificity comes relation and the way innumerable people and places are interdependent upon each other. a beautiful thing about scenario design is that you get the opportunity to weave your own tapestry of relation and allow someone else to place themselves within it, to give someone else the opportunity to experience the deep interconnection of things you've created and place themselves within it. this is the opposite of that cynicism, where for a time you get to belong in and intermingle with a complex world, even if initially as a stranger. this is precisely what Ys I did for me in a straightforward and concise manner, and I adore it for it. it conveyed to me a refreshing sense of love in an increasingly solipsistic world. you start the game as Adol the stranger, and finish the game not just as the hero, but a beloved community member who has formed innumerable bonds along the way.
Part 3: Danger, safety and motion
as I explored and investigated I quickly developed intimate familiarity with the game spaces. each map is concise and distinct, and with my frequent pinball-wanderings I soon developed routines for navigating location to location. when you choose to run Adol is quite fast, and there is some inertia to his movement. as I developed these routines, I naturally wanted to optimize them. I learned to dash through the maps without crashing into anything, picking up exp along the way and perhaps becoming curious about something I didn't notice yet. like much of the game, this too rewarded taking the time to become familiar with it.
an amount of grinding was also required, and this fit into the exploration-and-familiarity loop tidily. as you attempt to progress, you eventually either run out of leads or run into a wall of too-powerful enemies. in either case, it compels lateral exploration. similar to my routes between locations, I quickly developed routines for dashing through the areas to level up as efficiently as possible. in a dense world like in Ys I, even exploring familiar places can lead to discoveries, or give you time to ponder how the puzzle pieces around you might connect. for example, as I was grinding monsters I frequently ran into the Roda Tree, not knowing its purpose. this led me eventually investigate, putting me on a detour before returning to my previous leads and preparing me for its relevance later. all together, this forms a very effective gameplay structure that mutually reinforces both "wide" and "deep" exploration. (exploring new places vs. exploring known places more closely)
this aspect of route-making was enhanced in the dungeons. they fully contrast the overworld, being dangerous, tight spaces that require thoughtful navigation. due to the lack of a minimap I was required to memorize the dungeon layouts in order to navigate them, which would gradually evolve into second nature muscle memory. dungeons often have "safe spots", such as the rickety bridges in the mines or the balconies on the tower, which grants adds a brief reprieve to the usually high tension rhythm of the dungeons. and with those safe spots, the routes you memorize may be done so in smaller chunks, reducing the tension's strain on the player. the game thoughtfully twists this pacing mechanism later on by making some longer-than-expected runs that have a very high tension. one of them, during the higher floors of the tower, even has a sort of jumpscare, enhancing the tension of the moment. as a result of these design choices and techniques, exploring the dungeons felt highly involved and exciting.
I had a similar relationship with memorizing enemy movement patterns, a very important aspect of the game since the angle you nudge the enemy at determines both the effectiveness of your hit and how much damage you take in return. this is the "bumpslash" combat in brief summary. the enemy movement patterns worked their way into my routines, often with an element of adjustment on the fly (due to some randomness/unpredictability) that kept me on my toes. in this way, enemies tightly integrated themselves into the game space themselves.
the dungeons of Ys I feel unique to me as an ARPG in that they aren't primarily challenging in an action mastery sense. the tension of dungeon delving is foremost defined by navigation and resource management, the resource in question being your HP. the aspect of action mastery plays into this here, with effective bumpslash attacks helping you conserve your HP. each further mechanical element in the game (equipment and items) relate back to this core tension: your desire to explore deeper versus the increasing risk of doing so as your HP dwindles. so it becomes this loop of exploring as far as you dare, perhaps getting stuck along the way, then retreating to a safe spot or to town to gather leads and upgrade your gear before diving in again. Ys I makes the reward for spending time learning and mastering it be that you get to explore and experience more of it, and it's a loop I found joy in. especially with the way it dovetails with getting new dialogue with the NPC's as their stories progress, letting you get to know them better or getting new leads to drive your quest.
it feels apt for me to call Ys I a game about movement. movement is your principal method of interacting with and exploring the world, to the absence all else (such as an attack button or a turn-based battle system) in order to hone in on movement itself. this is not something I see often outside of the platformer genre, and as a genre platformers are typically focused on the mechanics and textures of motion itself. instead, Ys I is a game firmly about the world that movement takes place in. by my interpretation, Ys I is a game about travel. there two key aspects of travel, movement and place, align directly with what the game accomplishes. Adol is, after all, a wanderer. and every great story about travel isn't simply about being an external observer, but rather developing close relationships to new people and places.
parallel to this importance of movement is the importance of memory. memory tells the story of bonds forged and secrets found, and here too these aspects are arranged in a way that mutually reinforce one another. there is an abundance of involvement in this structure, requiring a thoughtful approach towards both where and how you move about the game world and how you relate (physically and socially) to the things in it.
Part 4: Conclusions
even months after my time with the game, the world of Ys I has stayed with me, all its fields and corridors and monsters and items and characters still etched into me. that's what I got from a game that invited me to explore it and come to know it fully. as I played, I realized at some point I developed a fear of exploring games, of figuring things out for myself and being curious. putting in all that effort to involve myself is a bit risky, because I'm afraid of putting that much of myself into something and becoming disappointed. instead, Ys I met me where I met it and left me with joy at every turn. it both asked more of me than most games do and gave me more than most games do, without truly ever asking that much of me along the way. it was a simple, inviting game whose exact strength is in its short playtime as much as it is its strong design and scenario. if I had the same experience over 30 hours instead of 5, I'm not sure I'd have felt the same way about the game. Ys I has taught me how powerful something small can be, and likewise how powerful thoughtful simplicity is when it comes to making a game.
in some sense it's a game that's an antithesis to so many mainstream design trends I find myself worn out by. experiencing Ys I brought a joy towards videogames back to me that I'd nearly lost, and has given me much inspiration to inform my craft going forward. so many games today are afraid to ask players to be patient or curious for fear of friction, and yet friction is at the core of the strength of videogames and the reasons why I love them. it has reminded me both that there are so many more ways to challenge and involve a player than action or strategy, and that a gentle challenge is more than sufficient to make a compelling experience. that is in fact what led me to develop the term "involvement" for myself, as I reflected on what was so effective about what this game was doing that made me so invested in it. I've been so used to "challenge" as the default vector of engagement with videogames, but challenge has always failed to describe so much of what invests people in games. and I think a lot of the time, people really like "involvement" when they talk about liking challenge or difficulty. I can't help but think of the souls series as I say this, which somewhat shook up a stagnant industry by daring to ask players to involve themselves. and of course, in many ways it mirrors so much of the design of Ys I!
I'm incredibly grateful for this game and all it has given me to reflect on. I've done so for months since playing it, and I think I'll continue to do so for years and decades to come.(a note from year later me: yup) It's hard to express fully what a deep love and admiration I feel for this game and what a deep imprint it has made on me, though I hope these words have accomplished that somewhat. it's wonderful to still be having such impactful experiences from media even as I crest 30, to still be being shaped and formed and affected so much by these little bundles of passion others have made. they make me feel connected to others, and a joy for life and what we might make of it. I think that makes quite a good bit of sense with Ys I, a game so full of life and connection. I hope we'll meet again someday soon, Adol and friends!
footnote: I couldn't find anywhere to fit this in, but I love Dogi so much. I would do anything for him. I want to cook him dinner.