Heya fellas. Despi here.
Sorry for posting this a bit late, I've been doing some spring cleaning.
I thought I'd tackle a light gameplay topic this week, a feature cut from the game in its early stages of development: having the Dreamers be bosses.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Cut Feature
Like I mentioned in my Forest of Bones post, the map was originally meant to be three areas connected by the Forgotten Crossroads, which contained the final boss. The Dreamers would have been the main bosses the player fought throughout the game.
So why were these boss fights scrapped?
There is no official statement from Team Cherry regarding why this specific feature was left out. As they developed and expanded the game they obviously added more bosses and expanded on the lore, but we don't have a solid explanation for why the Dreamers were downgraded.
This exchange hints that the Dreamers weren't originally intended to have bosses before them (as is the case with Lurien and Monomon) hinting that perhaps they were meant to be the final fight in their respective area. But really that's about it.
And as I'm sure we ALL KNOW, a boss is an excellent way to conclude a particular episode of a game, whether it be a region or the entire game itself. The tension builds up during the journey, gradually rising with tougher enemies and unexpected turns, until it finally erupts with the final enemy that must be defeated to move on. Only there isn't one. Instead of our tension balloon climactically exploding it lazily deflates and the experience is ruined. I'm of course talking about Deepnest. One of the best crafted and atmospheric regions in the game, with a hostile and claustrophobic environment crushing us with its sound design, aesthetic, and relentless enemies. We trigger an unexpected trap and fall into the Beast's Den, and after exploring a maze full of spikes and monstrous enemies, we reach the end and find a sleeping punching bag. No boss, no climactic final fight. The air has been let out of our anxiety whoopie cushion, and we are (or at least I was) left with an drained feeling of emptiness and disappointment.
Oh and don't even get me STARTED on the Abyss. "4 new bosses," they said. We all know the Abyss has the largest known body of Void, the Void Sea. Coincidentally it also contains the largest VOID OF CHALLENGE FROM WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO A "MASSIVE NEW EXPANSION FOR ONLY THE HARDIEST OF ADVENTURERS!!!"
Forgive me if I'm a bit livid but this is a legitimate flaw in the game's design. One of the few flaws, granted, in an immaculate almost-perfect masterpiece of art and entertainment but a flaw nevertheless. This lack of a climax ruins the pacing and the slow build-up of tension from the aesthetic and gameplay.
The Abyss would definitely take time to rework but the simple solution to Deepnest would be to have Herrah be a boss, which wouldn't take too much time and effort. And neither would the other two Dreamers.
Which is odd because each of the three Dreamers has entries for the Hunter Journal, in their latest design after the initial generic Dream Guardian form, which means they might have been considered as enemies as of very late in development.
My personal hypothesis is that the fights were removed to make the game more speedrun-friendly. Think about it: what are the simplest and most basic events required to beat the game? Get the Dream Nail, kill the Dreamers, and defeat the Hollow Knight. The Dream Nail is free and the Hollow Knight is a complete pushover. Even the two bosses we fight before the Dreamers (Watcher Knights and Uumuu) are fairly easy for an experienced player. I guess that as Team Cherry expanded the game to its present size and added those two bosses and Deepnest, they found it appropriate to remove the Dreamer fights entirely.
A very good argument for this is that the original intent was to have the Dreamers be highly difficult bosses. It seems their fights would have been "near impossible" and very hard to win. Of course, they could have just dialed the difficulty down, but with the Watcher Knights and Uumuu it probably didn't make sense to fight two bosses in a row, both in game design and in attitude towards the player. My boy u/mossbag suggested that "near impossible" could refer to the Dreamer encounter in the Resting Grounds. This might have been a scripted fight that the player had to lose, as the notes then mention a "crone" that indicates Seer, so eh. Could be. Not much to go on but that's all we got.
Some people have suggested that the Dreamers were removed as bosses not for gameplay reasons but for lore ones. That the Dreamers were established as having lost their strength with time, or that they do not wish to fight the Knight. The first one's okay but the second reason is just plain wrong. All three Dreamers would have reasons to fight the player. Herrah would fight out of dignity and pride from being the Queen of Deepnest and ruler of the Beasts. Lurien would fight to uphold his oath to the Pale King, his vow to keep his Seal at all costs. And Monomon could fight to test the Knight and ensure his strength was enough for what lay ahead. Monomon already helps the Knight gain access to the Sealed Vessel and the captive Light, but maybe she'd want to make sure he was worthy of facing that fated goal.
Or it could be that Team Cherry just ran out of time. Rather anticlimactic compared to the rest of my speculation, but then again so was the Abyss.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Implementation
Now, for whatever reason let's imagine we wanted to make the Dreamers bosses. How would we go about this?
I myself suggest we still keep them optional. This way they do not frustrate the player with having to fight two bosses in a row and we can dial their difficulty up as we'd like, without forcible placing up a brick wall that completely blocks progress to required content. Like Warrior Dreams or Dream Bosses: you can pass them by or you can challenge them, which in turn grants you relevant rewards.
As in the two aforementioned enemies, you would challenge the Dreamers either by using the Dream Nail on them (from within the Dream) OR by indicating the prompt after a few short lines of dialogue, either their current or even removed.
Or you can just bring out the big sword and smack them to quickly unalive them, but you'd miss out from any rewards they'd have to offer. And what might these be?
I myself came up with a few items the player would gain upon defeating each of the Dreamers as bosses. These, of course, are charms. I'm not gonna give you the full entries here, just a short description of what they do.
Beast's Love - Grants a small layer of protected, regenerative health. At 5 max HP you gain 1 mask, at 7 max HP you gain 2 masks, and at 9 max HP you gain 3 masks. These masks are recovered after 10 seconds of being hit, and their regeneration is not broken when taking any more damage. All these masks can sequentially regenerate, but to compensate you can't heal them by focusing. It also makes all Beasts (Deepnest creatures, Garpedes, and hazardous centipedes) passive or harmless.
Watcher's Devotion - Enemies will indicate their HP as a short red bar with a number on top, located above them. Bosses will have a numbered bar at the top center of the screen, along with how many more hits are needed to stagger them. This charm also lets you see the position of all off-screen enemies in the form of small red arrows at the screen's edge, fading or boldening depending on the enemy's distance.
Teacher's Wisdom - Your last 3 health points are protected. You can't take any more than 1 mask of damage per hit on each of these. You'll pass through all Uomas and Oomas, and destroyed Oomas will no longer boomerang or harm you on explosion.
These should be enough incentive to fight the Dreamers as bosses. Strong but certainly allowable by their notch cost and difficulty of access, I hope.
AND there should also be a place in Godhome where you can rechallenge the Dreamers but they should most definitely NOT appear in the Pantheons.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boss Mechanics
And just for fun, let's quickly imagine what the Dreamers' attacks and behavior would be like.
Herrah would definitely be a Beast. A savage, unpredictable, and absolutely unrelenting enemy. I found this artwork that depicts her fighting with a pike, a medium-ranged spear-like weapon, which seemed a good idea to me. Once you close in she'd switch to using her quick sharp legs to stab and swipe at you, or she scuttles away like Grimm. She might be able to crawl up walls and attack from there. She could summon small Beasts as minions, either Little Weavers or Deephunters. And if we really wanted to dial the difficulty up, what if she could spawn temporary spike pits to deny a certain area of the arena?
Lurien would be the complete opposite: cold, calculating, and intelligent. Despite having the Watcher Knights right before him, Lurien would be the most difficult Dreamer of the three. There's not a whole lot of lore on him, so I just designed his attacks after those of the Soul Sanctum. Homing Soul orb and teleport, albeit much quicker than the Sanctum ones. For nearby area-denial I imagined an Orb Cyclone, similar to that of Grimmkin Nightmares, but faster and more numerous. But I really wanted to make some moves based on his eye so I designed Eye of Judgement: a Radiance-like beam that he aims at you from anywhere in the room. It can pass through any surfaces in the arena and slowly follows you. He also has a formidable Perception that lets him see the player's health, healing attempts, Soul amount and react accordingly. When the player is low on health he might attack faster and use double damage attacks (if any), when they're trying to heal he'll use Eye of Judgement, when they're very close he'll use Orb Cyclone, and when they're further away he'll use long ranged attacks. When the player has usable Soul he'll stay out of range of spells and their paths, and he'll teleport away if they player has charged a Nail Art. The most reliable method to attack him would be with Dash Slash. But my favorite is a False Stagger: he'll pretend to be injured and rest for a moment, but when the player draws near he'll instantly launch a heavy attack. All in all, he's meant to be an intelligent, aware, and extremely difficult opponent.
Monomon should be right between the previous two. Challenging but approachable with a cool head. When the player gets close she'll lash with her tendrils but can charge up a tentacle whip, in which she rapidly spins and then lashes out in all directions in a heavy attack. She can billow to close to distance to the player or move away, and she could spawn temporary volatile eggs. I also came up with having her produce a temporary electrical storm: like Uumuu's attacks, but instead of following the player it denies a large area of the area. Other than that, perhaps she frequently spawns Uomas that slowly float towards the player.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's all for today!
Sorry this came a little late but I've been really busy lately.
Next week I'll offer my thoughts on what Hornet's DLC will be about, so you can look forward to that.
Well, see you later and have a great week!
Link to my other discussion posts
Submitted January 05, 2019 at 06:36AM by Despi47 http://bit.ly/2VvyufS
No comments:
Post a Comment