The Maxx was a comic by Sam Kieth that ran
from 1993 to 1998.
I don't know anything about it.
You can look it up on Wikipedia.
However, The Maxx was adapted into an animated
series.
That was my s**t.
It was brutal, severe, dark and a little funny
in a
sadistic sort of way.
And that animation!
Watching now, I can tell that it was pretty
minimalist, but even with limited motion
the show was savage.
It was far removed from the silly-violent
cartoons I'd grown up with
You know, those cartoons with the a**hole rabbit
tormenting that lovable loser Daffy Duck?
Anyhow, Darkest Dungeon looks a lot like The Maxx.
["Calm The F**k Down" by Broke For Free plays]
[Sounding out "Chiaroscuro"]
Chiaroscuro is used to great effect to make
the dungeons even darker and the characters
look even harder -- there is no love in
this place, only death, despair, and horror.
[smiles sarcastically]
The profession choices and character designs
are intense as well -- Plague Doctor, Hellion, Crusader,
Bounty Hunter, Arbalest.
Historically, these were not mundane professions.
These people were dealing with some intense s**t
The designs are
identifiable, even if you don't know what
the jobs are -- by the way, an Arbalest is
a person who uses one of those giant
f**kin' crossbows.
You know, the ones with the big crank?
Yeah.
The dungeons feel sticky and wet.
They look decrepit and dingy.
They represent terror in its very essence,
all just by using
creepy details and light to a very strong
effect.
While we're on the subject, light is very...
Aw, son of a b***h!
...light is very important in Darkest Dungeon.
[sarcastically] Who would've guessed?
It has a mechanical function -- more light
affords you
certain benefits and less light will f**k
you over.
It functions much like a parking meter, forcing
you to use up your torches
instead of -- you know -- quarters.
It's just one more thing eating away at your
party -- they might be hungry or battered
or
even mostly dead, and the dark is just another
thing you have to worry about creeping in.
The time limit enacted by the torch is also
meant to entice you, to a certain extent.
Running out of light isn't a death
sentence after all -- it makes things
harder, but you don't fail immediately.
It's sorta like Spelunky, where the added danger can grant you
greater rewards -- better loot, a greater
chance to meet a Shambler
...who carries Ancestral Trinkets -- very [tongue clicking noise]
I still haven't talked about the animation!
Darkest Dungeon uses minimal motion to its
benefit. Much like The Maxx.
When things are calm, there's hardly anything
happening on screen at all.
Walking animations are dull. Sorry.
Background animations are non-existent, and in the Hamlet there are barely any signs of life.
When things start going down -- like when folks
are being shanked or getting poisoned -- the
entire screen moves.
The camera zooms
in on the action and you get to see every bloody detail...
[repeats for emphasis] ...every bloody detail of the savagery being perpetrated.
The animations are simple, but when you whittle
movement down to its barest pieces, you start
to see the action in greater
detail because
there's nothing else to distract you.
It also, I suspect, makes it easier to mod
things, but
that's neither here nor there.
Of course, the soundtrack contributes to the ambiance.
It's creepy and foreboding in equal parts,
especially the pieces playing when you're in
the dungeons.
But I do recommend trying it without the soundtrack
-- as much as I love the music,
the sound design is incredible and deserves
credit for how creepy it makes the game.
There's a lot of scraping, screeching,
bellowing, and general eeriness.
They borrowed a lot of cues from horror films, and it makes every moment unnerving.
This is all to say that Darkest Dungeon has an intense aesthetic.
Equal parts horror, darkness, savagery and
the unknown, this game
makes it hard to not be stressed just by it's
execution of theme.
It's solid and consistent and it makes the
game better just
because of how well Red Hook stuck to it,
not to mention how well executed it was.
[spoken in deeper voice]
These dark caves drip with an overabundance of humidity, beyond my threshold of comfort.
I nearly broke my ankle on the rocks,
made slick with some ubiquitous slime.
The pools stir and slosh with no visible cause
and the shadows beyond the torchlight
seem to grow and shrink of their own accord.
Video games don't give a s**t about stress.
John "The Doom Guy" Johnerson (yes, that's
his official name don't look it up) mows
down demons without a second thought.
Joker of Persona 5 runs around tearing masks
off of creatures in a pretty horrific
manner, and all he can concern himself with
is how cool it looked.
And What's-His-Face from Dead Space?
He's stalking through
the spookiest hallways and getting jump scared
and none of it bothers him in the least.
But guess what?
This s**t would be
stressful to, like, ninety-five percent of the population.
But Darkest Dungeon has a clever Stress mechanic.
Earning 100 Stress Points will get you an
Affliction like Paranoia or Fearful or A**hole
Although, with some luck you
can become Virtuous which turns the mechanic on its ear.
If you suffer an Affliction
and hit 200 Stress Points, your employee will
have a Heart Attack -- putting them on Death's
Door or just killing them.
[swallows hard]
The concept of Stress is judged with a meter -- not unlike damage.
Where damage is incurred by physical violence,
Stress is incurred by -- well,
f**king anything.
Physical and Magical Attacks, animal noises,
strange thoughts, lack of light, overabundance
of light, strange
creatures, being overwhelmed, being in a group
with someone they don't like, self-preservation,
a fellow party member saying
something onerous.
F**king anything.
Now, you may have noticed earlier -- I referred
to the character suffering stress as
"your employee".
That was intentional, because I'm very clever. I wanted to make it clear that you aren't
playing as the adventurers -- you're the employer.
Yes, you watch them go into the
dungeons and yes, they listen to every order that you give them
You are not the adventurers.
Leading a party who is stressed -- as opposed
to being part of a party who is stressed -- is
a significantly different
experience.
When I realized that I don't actually have
to care about my Dungeoneers -- that I can just
let them freak out
and get rid of them when they become more
trouble than they're worth -- that complicated
things for me.
Like, as a g*mer, I recognize
that I'm working with mechanics -- I'm using
the rules of the game to get a better score.
But as a human being -- as someone
who can sympathize with these individuals,
digital though they might be -- I am unsettled.
Human beings aren't disposable.
But in Darkest Dungeon, they are.
Every member of every class looks nearly identical.
My Plague Doctors Lindvay and Photocopius  are virtual carbon
copies of each other -- save for differences
in quirks and abilities (both of
which can be managed to suit your needs).
And with each round, you have the ability
to recruit more versions of each class.
Like literally, you can get rid of someone in your
party just to hire someone who is almost exactly the same.
Your adventurers experience the stress of the
dungeon crawl.
They are the ones who are suffering from Demonomania, Dipsomania, and
Night Blindness -- conditions that make dungeon
crawling more difficult, and conditions that
might have even been caused by your
orders.
As the manager, you have to decide how
these "quirks" will effect your success.
To put it another way -- Darkest Dungeon wants
you to decide if a person's Anemia will effect
your bottom line and wants yoooou...
[said as an aside] that was a weird way to say "you"
...and wants you to ignore how it effects the character.
As a mechanic, this is clever.
Healing a character's body is a matter of
bandages and Stimpaks.
Healing a character's psyche,
however, is more complicated.
Fellow Dungeon Crabs can help each other
a bit with kind reassurances.
Individuals performing crits and becoming Virtuous can
help a bit more, though that's unpredictable.
The facilities in The Hamlet are the most
reliable, but will cost you money
and your suffering adventurer might
disappear for longer than you expect.
And that doesn't even account for the time
and money you might spend on "curing" those "quirks" that
might be detrimental to your goals.
But here's my thing.
I've worked at software
companies before.
And I know that some managers have no trouble
actually treating their employees like this.
The Stress mechanic in Darkest Dungeons is a description of how some real life managers treat their
real-life employees as assets, not as human
beings helping them to achieve a goal.
Darkest Dungeon doesn't really confront this reality, just explains
"This is the way it is."
I'm not sure if
that's a positive or a negative for this game,
but we can still take the idea here and try to figure out how to fix it.
But Darkest Dungeon is about just surviving the
Hell you're in as you're slowly driven towards
death and-slash-or madness.
Hopefully you don't think your life is the same.
Please! Take care of yourself.
[spoken in a deep voice]
Sebastian's watch was his last.
We were jolted during our evening's repast,
the best we could make in these murky halls
of our
once great house, from the roar and flash
of black powder.
Let's talk about leveling -- only for a moment,
though, don't get too comfortable.
Earthbound is a game that requires leveling.
[makes noises]
[clicks tongue] It does.
Ness starts pretty weak, and even though the enemies around you are also pretty weak, they
are strong enough that the game is
challenging.
Over time, you level up and you get stronger than
the snakes and dogs
that you're fighting in Onett
In fact, if you become
sufficiently strong, you don't even have to
fight them anymore -- they attack you, you
deliver a one-punch-defeat, and then you
go about your day.
But what if -- go with me here --
at literally any point in time you could be derailed?
For example, say you get into a zombie fight in
Threed, one for which you are grossly overpowered.
You think this one's in the bag -- it's the
last one before you have to fight
the Boogey Tent and you see no reason these
zombies will cause you any trouble.
But guess what?
The zombies deliver an
unlikely series of severe attacks and, while
you do end up winning in the end, you are severely crippled.
To boot -- for whatever reason -- you aren't "ee-ble"
[annoyed chuckle]
you're not even able to heal
your characters before going into the
Boogey fight Tent.
[chuckles]
Son of a bun!
The Boogey Tent fight has changed in that case, hasn't it?
Things don't seem so easy.
In the Darkest Dungeon, my fight with the Sonorous
Prophet went exactly like this.
I thought I was set with only one battle between
my camp and the boss battle -- but those
f**king enemies nearly dropped me dead and the Sonorous Prophet was
a far more difficult fight as a result.
Surprises are a big part of Darkest Dungeon.
Whether it's a trap set inside a particularly
tantalizing curio, or a series of
devastating attacks from the weakest demons that you could find, these surprises
can really kill your momentum
and your dungeon fighters.
And there's very
little that you can do to stop these things.
Darkest Dungeon is RNG based. I had to look this up -- that's "random number generator"
Which means that no matter
how confident you feel, there's always a chance
that something out there is gonna knock you down a peg.
This gameplay element made me rethink everything
I did.
Should I open that chest -- am I strong enough
to take a hit or
resistant enough to Blight that I'll be okay
if something happens?
Should I continue fighting these scoundrels
before me
considering they've already taken two of my
favorite characters?
Should I press on?
Now with most role-playing games, these questions
are furthest from my mind.
When I play an action RPG like Skyrim or Fallout 3,
I'm only thinking about the moment.
If I'm near enough to death that I should be worried, I can run away or -- what the H**l -- I could just stick it
out because I saved pretty recently.
In a turn-based RPG like, say, Final Fantasy, I probably have a good idea off the top of my
head
whether or not I can withstand more attacks
-- and if push comes to shove, I can always
run away from random encounters
In a lot of action-based games, we are conditioned
to only react because strategizing isn't really necessary...
or particularly sexy.
But in Darkest Dungeon, you need to think about what you're bringing
into the dungeon.
You also need to make decisions on the fly as your party is damaged or demoralized.
And you have to make longer-term strategy
adjustments as your party changes.
Okay, fine, but how does this effect the player?
I don't know, I don't speak for
every Darkest Dungeon g*mer, you a**hole.
Don't ask me to represent them, and don't
act like my analyses are bulls**t because
I believe in feelings and you don't!
[clears throat]
Sorry, that was unnecessary.
This game makes me nervous
is my point.
It makes me second guess every choice I would
have made automatically
in any other game.
Like "Hey look at that Shambler Altar -- wanna put a torch in there??"
In another game I might just be like "Sure, go ahead!" but
in this one, that doesn't sound so good.
And then again, maybe there's a good reason to do it.
"Look! There's a trap coming up, watch out!"
That's fine, my highwayman has a high disarm
rate
but it's not 100% and he's nearly dead.
Can I risk it?
Should I have someone else attempt a disarm
even though they have a lower success stat?
Developing strategies like this in a tabletop game is common practice but
it's abnormal in video games.
I blame
Halo and that "30 seconds of fun" nonsense.
Modern design demands that the player constantly
be doing something
working, fighting, shooting, jumping, kicking, adding,
subtracting, dragging sticks.
Developing strategies is just as engaging,
but triple-A
studios don't think they'll make money off
that sort of thing.
[gag noise]
Needless to say, surprises took a toll on
my confidence.
You have to consider that you might become a casualty at any time
Darkest Dungeon is equally
cruel to the prepared and the half-cocked,
the trained and the untrained, the careful and the careless alike.
[spoken in a deep voice]
We dropped our bowls and hurried to him.
All we could find was his spent pistol
and a trail of blood leading into a maze of shadows
[inaudible]
To play Darkest Dungeon, you should be cold,
calculating and manipulative.
To win Darkest Dungeon, it's probably best
to be a
horrible human being.
Or at least pretend to be one.
I have played games for a long time.
Seventy-six long years, if you can believe it.
I don't let my characters die.
I don't
run away.
I don't shy from difficult bosses.
And I don't back out of a challenge.
Some might call me stubborn.
Yeah, they'd be right.
Darkest Dungeon would like you to know that letting your characters die, running away
those sorts of things can actually be
beneficial to your run.
And that's a really difficult
idea for me to embrace.
There are loads of things trying to kill your
party -- and most of those things will succeed.
Which means stubbornness in Darkest Dungeon
is not a virtue.
I need to learn to let go -- to be okay with
failure
and with characters dying.
And that's not just because DD is asking me to be heartless
it's because I need to reconsider
the possibility
that death, madness and retreat are not  necessarily
failures.
The most obvious example of rethinking these
concepts is The Flagellant.
introduced with the Crimson
Court DLC,
thrives on suffering.
He becomes Rapturous
when he reaches 100% Stress
That's +25% DMG, +3 SPD
and a 20 point "knock" to his Dodge capabilities
plus there's a chance for random attacks (though that's
sometimes against himself).
He receives buffs when he is below 40% health
more buffs
if he reaches Death's Door; plus he heals
his fellow party members when he's at Death's Door and after he dies.
So letting the Flagellant get stressed,
get injured, or even die
is beneficial.
What is this?!
It's a reexamination of fail states.
Where once we thought of success and failure
as a binary condition, Darkest Dungeon toys
with the idea that it could be a spectrum.
They are using the game's mechanics to promote
almost failing.
In other words, sometimes it's beneficial
to manipulate your characters in a way
that is hazardous.
Now as for retreating, there aren't benefits in the same way
which is sort of disappointing,
because I think it would be really cool to explore
the idea of
retreat in a positive light.
So there you go.
Failure isn't so clearly failure after all.
They do say "To make an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs."
And to succeed
at "Dungeon Time", you gotta
break a few souls.
[spoken in a deep voice]
We press on.
So that's it.
Darkest Dungeon is out to make you a nervous
wreck.
You. The Player.
The person playing the f**king game.
Whether it has asked you to sacrifice your
favorite
character just to get a silly trinket, or
it plants spikes shooting out of the ground
to severely cripple your healer
you'd better be on your toes.
Stress and setbacks are a key to Darkest Dungeon,
so hopefully you're prepared to handle both.
There's no way of knowing how any of this
gonna turn out
so be warned
you're gonna die
And it's really f**king dark in that dungeon!
