Whereas a few of the greatest story video games inform a definite story that is set in stone, videogames are capable of elevate the format by involving you instantly within the consequence of occasions. Committing to this as a developer is hard; do you restrict the selection largely to the very finish, making certain nearly all of your recreation is seen by everybody, or do you settle for that your gamers would possibly miss giant chunks of what you have created? The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy commits to the latter in a means few video games can get away with, and the consequence has wormed its means into my mind and wrapped itself round my very psyche.
One in every of final yr’s most hanging recreation tales was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which retains its wide selection till the ultimate second and delivers it masterfully, leading to no clear proper or flawed reply. However E33’s inventive director Guillaume Broche was wanting to not let The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy fall by unnoticed when its launch landed alongside each his personal recreation and Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered. Broche bemoaned the variety of good video games popping out without delay, hailing The Hundred Line as “one other nice turn-based RPG made with love by an superior staff”.
The Hundred Line is nearly too bold for its personal good. I will attempt to keep away from too many express spoilers, though some dialogue of the final construction is inevitable right here. It begins as a linear narrative of you defending a college from enemy attackers over the course of 100 days, studying about your fellow troopers alongside the way in which in a fashion paying homage to its two co-creators’ previous works. In the event you’ve performed Kazutaka Kodaka’s Danganronpa video games or Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape collection, you may discover loads of familiarity right here.
However then all of it adjustments. You are supplied the prospect to return to the very begin, and play issues out in another way. By making selections at key inflection factors, you’ll be able to alter the timeline and alter what occurs. The Hundred Line wastes no time in emphasizing the ramifications right here. By performing to avoid wasting a personality that died in my preliminary playthrough, I can have them round for the remainder of the marketing campaign. Whereas doing so, nonetheless, one other member of the crew is killed (one in every of my favorites, because it occurs), and I am pressured to simply accept this grim trade-off.
Merely recreating the identical narrative with one character changing one other is not sufficient to be outstanding, nonetheless. Mass Impact pulled that one off via a whole trilogy almost twenty years in the past. The Hundred Line would not simply swap out its forged; every branching selection can result in fully completely different playthroughs. Occasions play out that by no means occurred beforehand. Bosses you battled individually now assault collectively, and even merge into fully new threats. Typically, this leads to a wholly completely different consequence to the battle; in others, it cuts your journey quick, both in jest or with a totally straight face.
In a single doable path, you are captured by the enemy commander, a determine who you not often get to listen to quite a lot of phrases from at some other level, and end up locked in an prolonged collection of one-on-one debates along with her concerning the philosophy and morality of the battle effort. In one other, a very reluctant member of your staff turns into your most ardent ally. Elsewhere, you and a confidant commonly slip away from the group to nurture a mysterious, alien being in secret. A foe you are taking prisoner can be part of the staff, opening up new details about their background. In one of many much less severe routes, you all depart the college you are defending and find yourself turning towards one another in a battle royale-style ‘killing recreation’.
Extra importantly, each path builds on the character work that each Kodaka and Uchikoshi like to deal in. Your companions’ habits might be dramatically completely different down every of the doable strains, however in each case it appears like a pure evolution of their persona based mostly on what’s occurred to them on this timeline. Some ship main revelations concerning the state of the world; others are principally comedian reduction. Not each route is a winner (I have not even seen the complete complement but), however quite a lot of them are – way over I might anticipated given the sheer scale of the mission. The result’s a forged I now get pleasure from greater than nearly some other. Solely Closing Fantasy 14’s Scions may need it beat, and I’ve spent over a decade of my life with them.
The Hundred Line should not work in addition to it does. It brings collectively two creators whose work I’ve loved prior to now, and elevates their concepts to new heights. It is bold to the purpose the place developer TooKyo Video games wasn’t certain it’d make its a refund. Fortuitously, it is steadily grown into the success it deserves, with Kodaka just lately suggesting in an interview with ‘Weeby Newz’ that he’d wish to “maintain increasing it into 200 strains, 300 strains, and even 400 strains”, constructing “a recreation folks have by no means seen earlier than” that might final for so long as ten years. Whether or not he really follows via on that or not, I will always remember my time with The Hundred Line.
The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is on the market on Steam, priced at $59.99 / £49.99. There’s additionally a demo you’ll be able to obtain to get a really feel for its characters and fight, though you will not attain the purpose the place it springs to life in fairly the way in which I’ve described right here. I do not assume everybody will get on with The Hundred Line’s grand-scale strategy to storytelling, nevertheless it’s modified the way in which I’ll take into consideration multiverse narratives and branching selections endlessly.
