An Odyssey To Remember

With credited names such as Hironobu Sakaguchi, Nobuo Uematsu, and Takehiko Inoue under its belt, Lost Odyssey is possibly the latest RPG that delivers a genuine tribute to the genre’s days of yore. Through turn-based battles, amnesiac characters, three-level upgrades of spells that are abbreviated by different suffixes, and an airship vehicle that pops up later in the game where you will spend most of your time side-questing and hunting deathly beasts, the game is intentionally traditional. Lamentably though, the game suffers from a dissociative identity disorder; despite the über-westernized Unreal Engine exhausting its graphical presentation, Lost Odyssey arrives to its players as a game that is unfolding few modest risks. It cautions itself by integrating several presentational features that eventually become meaningless and derelict, which by no means an accusation of its design or the construction as being unfinished, but there are several moments where you cannot help but to reflect on Mistwalker’s true intentions. Kaim’s conflicted loss of memory is simply a mere projection of the game’s state of play, apparently.

Let’s start from the opening scene, for example, in which it bursts with an audacious score that pertinently flatters the accompanying cinematic, sinuously integrates its own gameplay and battle system. The smooth transition and the epic introduction might insinuate similar tendencies to come in the course of the game; unfortunately, such prospects are hardly ever confronted. The game simply ends up relying on the genre’s tradition of random encounters and load screens instead. The criticism is obviously projected to the failed attempt in portraying the same impression that was initially facilitated in the game’s opening scene; in fact, the direction of boss and event battles is mostly habitual to what players are accustomed to, an unfortunate composition considering there are key moments in the plot that Mistwalker could have devised far more intriguing approaches. It’s the fact that Mistwalker focused on embellishing the first 20 minutes -resulting one of the most memorable opening scenes in videogame history- that is conceptually aggravating. The game certainly would have fared better if such similar efforts were tasked in crafting the rest of the game’s cinematic.

Another analogous offender is the use of dynamic shots that simultaneously focuses on different events or characters to provide a sense of continuity and immersion in the narrative. Lost Odyssey isn’t exactly the first game to utilize such a presentational tool but it certainly doesn’t exploit it intelligently and cohesively. Granted, there are some clever moments that can firmly stand against the criticism; conclusively though, the technique falls flat due to misuse of its potentials, or for worst, not being used at all. The first disc exhibits a dichotomy of shot directions, but as the game progresses through its four discs, the dynamic procedure completely disappears. An example of mistreatment is exhibited during the game’s first hours when the initial party confronts a vicious griffin on a summit of a mountain. Upon their stance of defiance, three separate portraits of the three main characters briefly flash the screen to supposedly heighten the opposition toward the beast. Unexpectedly, this particular scene is the only kind that benefited from the technique –despite its meaningless presentation- and no other boss confrontation has employed it ever since. It seemed as if Mistwalker scraped the idea as they continued experimenting with the game but completely forgot to adjust or remove the initially adapted scenes, or simply, they became completely oblivious that it existed. Perhaps, this is a consequence of the creators’ inexperience with such foreign conceptions that is usually prevalent in western games. Lost Odyssey, after all, is Mistwalker’s first endeavor to attract Xbox360 elitists to the conventional mindset of how a Japanese RPG properly functions.

However, if the aforementioned obstruction can be excused for allocating an untapped, westernized ploy, the next matter has no excuse at all, considering it was envisioned and exhausted several times in many JRPGs. In his “Playing As The Enemy” critique, Sinan Kubba tackled the contrivance of separating the characters at one point as an indication of weak narrative pacing. Though, it wasn’t the execution that was perceived unfavorably but rather the approach the game decided to go around it:

“In its favour, Lost Odyssey tries to deal with this issue [weak pacing in narrative]. Unfortunately it breaks up these exclusive sections with odd switches from play to story and vice-versa. Rather than keeping me engaged in both elements, these switches left me bewildered and detached…”

Kubba endorses his deprecation with several plot instances that most of them occurred at the end of disc two, and all of them happen to be indisputably legit to his contention. Though, it was the prospect of controlling Gongora -Lost Odyssey’s notorious and unconvincing villain- that was the most conspicuous and unconstructively outstanding. This limited opportunity doesn’t employ any meaningful purposes outside of composing the scene of Gongora’s ruthless execution on his loyal sorcerers by casting a specific, elemental spell to annihilate each of them individually. The idea and the execution behind this scenario are simple and quick to follow, in which in a later stage in the narrative the player will lead the heroes to battle the evilly-possessed sorcerers and defeat them in the same order of weakness that was assigned by Gongora. Objectively, the altogether design is as graceless as the previous examples; few ideas managed to capture the intended goals of the game but the rest wound up falling flat by feeble implementation.

Even if Lost Odyssey’s flawed remnants seem quite hindering to you by now, the favorable craftsmanship of the genre retains its cohesion elegantly most of the time. When it comes to characters customization, for instance, Lost Odyssey pioneers the conventional system by accommodating the Immortals’ capability of gradually inheriting the exclusive skills and spells retained by the Mortals. Surprisingly, you might think this will eventually break up and unbalance the system through progression and continuous grinding, but such prospect is evitable due to the cautious narrative structure; the availability of all playable characters isn’t fully assembled until the beginning of disc four and just few hours away from the game’s endpoint. This results a creative cast of party members in which their specialties and positions become perceptible and vital in the game’s toughest events and harsh foe encounters; experimentation will eventually creep into the gameplay as an alternative methodology of the usual all-brute strength strategy.

Ultimately, the genuine admiration of Lost Odyssey prospers in its endeavor of composing a developed narrative and fascinating characterization, that alas, due to the absence of thematic premises and halfhearted character motives within the main plot, it’ll be hard not to accuse Mistwalker of such inadequacy when the rest of the gameplay seems quite polish. Then again, the inclusion of spurs of tenderly written chapters guised as reveries and recollections tote up an intimation of profundity in Kaim’s younger days. These digitized novellas encompass the most endearing stories of life, death, love, friendship, and heroism that don’t necessarily always pulse Kaim in their hearts. Though, there are very few moments when the game manages to deal with comparable sentimental notions; the overtone, however, remains stoically political and procedural as seen in the genre’s other offerings.

Lost odyssey is a game of appreciation; it’s a pleasing, affectionate, and an epic exemplar of its type, but those for whom the genre holds no interest aren't going to be converted by a game that rarely offers the innovation it thought it did, whether it was through unvarnished, depictive devices or seemingly insightful narrative. Factually, Mistwalker’s current portfolio still conforms to more of the genre’s old annoyances than it probably should, but its earnest struggle to cop with the conventions and expectations of gameplay modernism shouldn’t come unnoticed and tarnished by a passing reference. Sakaguchi's opus didn’t faithfully garner many loyalists but his reformative convictions could secure at least a thoughtful ascertainment.

Further Readings

• Interpretations of Dreams [Gamer Quest]
• Lost In Broken Dreams [You Have Lost!]

Comments

[Matthew Gallant]

Great post Angelo. Lost Odyssey has been in my backlog for ages, I'll have to make time for it ASAP!

[Angelo]

@Matthew

Welcome to my humble blog, Matthew, and thanks for stopping by.

Ah yes, the evil backlog. Things can be quite fantastic if such a hindering list didn't exist in the first place :P

I clocked roughly more than 80+ hours in Lost Odyssey, though, have of that time was geared toward completing side-quests and unlocking achievements that most of them were opened at the beginning of disc 4. Basically, the game is surprisingly linear, but once you unlock the airship vehicle, you will probably spend most of your time revisiting dungeons and battling some tough beasts. Otherwise, it's quite possible to finish the game in less than 40 hours if you aren't a completionist such as myself.

Will be looking forward for any inputs and critiques from you when you finally get the chance to play it. I'm pretty sure you have some interesting things to say.