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Pyre
PYRE! My last Supergiant game, and...maybe...my favorite? I don't know, it's really hard to say because while Bastion is clearly and obviously out of the running, Transistor and Pyre and Hades are all such differently constructed games with such different strengths.
-Transistor's short and it hit fucking HARD in a way that really left me reeling, so I think in an immediate sense it probably had the strongest impact. It's also somewhat inscrutable by design - you have to work to piece it together in a way you really don't with the other games, and there's a strong pull that comes with a story that doesn't offer itself up easily, assuming that the withholding is well-executed like it is here.
-Hades welcomes you in and invites you to stay for as long as you want. I spent like eighty hours on Hades and only stopped because after a month of playing it every day my wrist was noticeably starting to hurt. There is a whole-ass world here that absolutely encourages you to immerse yourself in it as much as you can, and it becomes perfectly reasonable to tell yourself "okay, I have to do a whole bunch of runs where I collect absolute garbage boons the entire time just so I can fulfill this prophecy and get a little bit closer to some other story stuff." Of all these games, I loved being in the world of Hades most.
-Pyre...all these games do something to tie story and gameplay together, so that if you want more story, you're incentivized to immerse yourself more in the gameplay and experiment more rather than just finding one thing that works and sticking to it. But I don't know that I've ever played ANYTHING that fit story and gameplay together as well as Pyre does. The story didn't hit like Transistor's, and I didn't take to the gameplay as well as I did with Hades, but the combination of the two...holy shit! I was SO fucking invested in the outcome of this game and that's all down to how it's structured.
The premise of Pyre is that you are an exile in the Downside, the land where the fantasy realm of the Commonwealth sends all of its criminals and dissidents. While the black market has figured out how to send goods and messages back and forth, it's truly impossible for someone who's been exiled to the Downside to find a way to sneak back into the Commonwealth.
You're near death when you're found and rescued by a group of exiles who are on a quest that's been set to them by a mysterious benefactor. Allegedly, if they follow his plan, they'll be able to get out. You can read (rare, since the Commonwealth's government has outlawed literacy) and they need you to examine the Book of Rites for them as the group's Reader. The Book of Rites outlines a process by which exiles can leave the Downside and return to the Commonwealth with full pardons - you follow the stars to celestially-ordained locations, at which you'll face off against another group in a Rite. Eventually, success in the Rites will lead to liberation from the Downside.
The Rites are three-on-three magical basketball. It fucking rules.
Outside of these magical basketball games, Pyre's a visual novel. And it would be SO easy for those two things not to mesh - for the story to feel like something you had to rush through until the next time you were allowed to play basketball again, or for the basketball to feel like the equivalent of a commercial break - something you had to get through before you could get back to the story. For me, the reason this wasn't the case is that the game keeps going whether you win or lose in the Rites. From a purely practical standpoint, that means that I don't hit a wall - if there's a team that's hard to beat, I don't have to keep trying and trying until I either eke out a win or give up on the game entirely. But it's actually much more impactful than that, because somehow Pyre saying "it doesn't matter if you win or lose this rite, because the story will keep going regardless" makes the stakes feel way higher - if I lose, I'm going to see my players react to that loss, and my rivals celebrate their win, and depending on which point in the story I'm at, the story consequences of that loss could be devastating to my own goals.
Because the other thing about Pyre is that it lets you decide what you want to happen. People join your party and they leave it, and you get to know them, and you get to know your rivals too. You miss people when they're gone even though it was entirely your choice to let them leave. You're presented with an overall goal, but the game doesn't much care if you buy into it or not - you could actively work to sabotage it if you wanted to. You could ignore it and focus on your own goals if you wanted to. Personally, I tried to find a balance - I was working to support the Plan but never at the expense of my own priorities, which entirely centered around "I like this character and I want them to be happy" or "I fucking hate this character and I never want them to succeed EVER."
A lot of games with branching paths still end up feeling restrictive because you can sense when you're butting up against the thing you can't do because the game never scripted it. Pyre never felt like that - yes, I had no choice but to go from rite to rite because the game didn't script "you abandon the party and decide to become an accountant" or whatever but within the premise of the game, whenever I felt constrained by my choices, it always felt like the game was either forcing me to deal with the consequences of my actions or denying me the easy way out. It wasn't "you can't do X because that's just how we scripted it," it was "you can't do X because based on everything else you've done so far, you're going to be challenged much more by a choice between Y and Z." And it's hard! It's a real "if you love something, let it go" situation sometimes! But sometimes you love something and you CAN'T let it go because it can really hoop and you need that scoring potential in your next rite!
Being able to set my own priorities, combined with knowing that if I lost a rite the game would just be like "okay, noted" and keep progressing, meant that the rites themselves could end up feeling INCREDIBLY high stakes. Generally speaking most of the teams weren't too difficult for me to beat (I lowered the difficulty for a bit in the first half of the game but then I decided to accept the possibility of failure in the second half), but that wasn't always the case! There was a team that KICKED MY ASS in a relatively insignificant rite, they were just COMPLETELY immune to my scoring strategy and I didn't have any answer for them because they were better at my own playbook than I was, and that loss was humiliating but ultimately not significant plotwise. But then I ended up having to face them again in a rite that WAS somewhat significant, and IT FELT LIKE THE FUCKING SUPERBOWL TO ME? Similarly, there was an EXTREMELY significant rite that I considered throwing For Reasons Related to My Own Emotional Priorities, but it ended up being so fucking difficult that I genuinely got caught up in giving it my best effort and figuring that Whatever Was Meant to Happen Would Happen. (I lost that rite and I didn't end up realizing why until I did a quick replay after completing the game: For the rite before it, I had cranked up the difficulty settings to the maximum - I didn't need the win and I DID want to game the Supergiant-typical system that unlocks rewards if you make the game a little harder for yourself. Unfortunately I neglected to TURN THOSE SETTINGS OFF AFTERWARDS, so I went into that major matchup at a ludicrous disadvantage. Like A Dumbass. BUT IT'S FINE, BECAUSE LIKE I SAID: I KIND OF WANTED TO THROW IT ANYWAY.)
On one level, the core of the ending of Pyre is the same no matter what - but on all the levels that mattered to me, my ending felt completely unique and shaped by the choices I'd made and the victories I'd managed to eke out. You get to find out what happened to about two dozen characters from the game, and it was SO thrilling to make my way through it and find out what kind of future I'd secured for my faves. Granted, if I played it two or three more times, I'd start to see all the overlapping pieces and the ways the endings weren't all THAT different, but whatever, it's REALLY fucking effective at making your first time out feel like you're looking at a future you shaped yourself.
Full spoilers now, more for posterity than anything else because while I think it's important to play your first time without this knowledge, the story particulars aren't as important to me as the vibe and the level of agency I felt as the Reader. BUT I DO ALSO WANT TO TALK ABOUT WHAT I DID AND DIDN'T DO FOR MY NIGHTWINGS, so...don't read any further if you're going to be playing this.
-Actually this one isn't a spoiler but that makes it a nice dividing line. I RELIED ALMOST ENTIRELY ON SHAE AND RUKEY FOR THE RITES (at least until I realized load management was a thing and I had to rest them to avoid banishment sickness) BUT WHEN I GOOGLED TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE THINK IS THE BEST LINEUP, THEY WERE HARDLY EVER MENTIONED???? Shocking!!!!!!! I was STARTING to get the hang of things as I went on but I simply did not have the brainpower for big picture "this person's on offense and this person's on defense and we're passing and shit" gameplay so I was just like GIVE THE BALL TO SHAE BECAUSE SHE RUNS REALLY FUCKING FAST. I upgraded her until she had unlimited stamina while holding the orb, and I upgraded Rukey to the point that he wouldn't have to sit out a round after plunging into the Pyre, and I JUST STEPPED BACK AND LET THEM HOOP.
-This led to Emotional Complications because they were always my top two and the game would only let me choose between my top three for liberation, so at my first Liberation Rite I basically had to send Jodariel home because AS A COACH I had no other option? So I do feel like I missed out on The Jodariel Experience and learning about her which is something to explore on another playthrough!
-I didn't realize it was a top three thing, I thought it was like the Scribe Trials and people just had to be a certain rank before they could be liberated, so I made sure to rank up Hedwyn because I was like HE HAS A WARRIOR BIRD GIRLFRIEND BACK HOME????? LET HIM GO HOME AND FIND HIS WARRIOR BIRD GIRLFRIEND. But then I got to my second liberation rite and Hedwyn STILL wasn't an option and I had to send TI'ZO????????????? Because, again, my other options were Shae and Rukey, and they were my entire strategy, so I COULDN'T send them, but OH MY GOD, TI'ZO, I WAS SO WORRIED, I'M GLAD HE MOSTLY DID OKAY UP THERE? BUT I FELT SO FUCKING SAD, REALIZING I HAD TO ANOINT HIM WAS A FUCKING PUNCH TO THE HEART.
-Okay but then I did liberate Hedwyn but that was the point where I got some Rukey backstory and he started talking a lot about how much he missed his mom???? And then I had a LOT of guilt about how I was basically holding him hostage because I needed him to win basketball games. I still kept him though. He wasn't the last one I sent home but I did wait until we got to the point where it was like "the stars are disappearing and at some point you will stop being able to liberate people." Sorry, Rukey.
-The one not great thing was that I think I frontloaded all that emotional stress because by the end I was like this is a bummer, all my friends are gone, and also I don't care that the Rites are ending, this is fine, Volfred can deal with staying, and Bertha and Shae probably don't even want to go back???? But in the last rite I was like WILL I THROW THIS SO ORALECH CAN GO HOME? But then he won anyway due to me being an idiot and accidentally leaving all the Titan difficulty settings turned on, whoops. BUT THEN ORALECH LET ME GO HOME INSTEAD? Listen I was all about him getting his chance to go back but then he read my mind and seemed to have some epiphany that Volfred sincerely cared for him, and like, legally they're married. I didn't have any kind of say in that: They were close and Volfred WATCHED ORALECH FALL TO HIS DEATH and carried that grief around for years while unbeknownst to him Oralech was alive and suffering and then they were reunited but it was fraught? LEGALLY THAT'S A MARRIAGE??????????? So once Oralech seemed to be having some emotions about Volfred I was like, my conscience is clear if I let Oralech give me his spot in the Pool. He is going to stay here with his Groot husband, he'll be fine. AND HE WAS!!!!!!!! THEY WERE OFTEN SEEN TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU SEPARATED THEM HE WOULD ALWAYS WONDER!!!!!!!
-My one MAJOR regret with my ending was that in my first liberation rite, there was a moment where I could read Ignarius' thoughts and he was realizing he wouldn't get to go home and he had this thought like "oh, Moira, you probably wouldn't recognize me anyway" and ????????????? MY HEART???????????????? I SPENT THE ENTIRE REST OF THE GAME WONDERING IF I COULD RIG IT SO WE FACED THE TEMPERS IN ANOTHER LIBERATION RITE SO I COULD THROW THE MATCH AND SEND IGNARIUS HOME TO MOIRA??????? I FELT SO BAD WHEN I GOT TO THE ENDING AND HAD TO READ HIS MOIRA-LESS EPILOGUE???? Okay except then I was like "what if I replayed this game real quick just for Ignarius, I can just lose every Rite so I don't need to spend any time trying to improve players or anything" AND I DID THAT AND IF YOU SEND HIM HOME HE NEVER MENTIONS MOIRA AGAIN? NOTHING YOU FIND OUT ABOUT HIS POST-LIBERATION LIFE MENTIONS HER? IT'S JUST LIKE "HE HAD A THING FOR JODARIEL" THIS MAN TRICKED ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Hedwyn and his warrior bird girlfriend WERE reunited and I was SO happy for them, but also when I replayed and lost every time - EVEN IF HE STAYS IN THE DOWNSIDE, SHE CASTS HERSELF DOWN THERE TO BE WITH HIM??????????? INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!
-I ignored the Scribe Trials but I was O B S E S S E D with my orb girlfriend Sandra, so it's REALLY fucking unfortunate that I found out after the game was already over that if I had DONE THE FUCKING SCRIBE TRIALS I COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE MADE HER MY ACTUAL ORB GIRLFRIEND? I'm unclear on the specifics but I am 100% replaying this game at some point purely to see if I can marry a cursed immortal wraith.
-Shae and that adopted dogboy were very cute good for them.
-Transistor's short and it hit fucking HARD in a way that really left me reeling, so I think in an immediate sense it probably had the strongest impact. It's also somewhat inscrutable by design - you have to work to piece it together in a way you really don't with the other games, and there's a strong pull that comes with a story that doesn't offer itself up easily, assuming that the withholding is well-executed like it is here.
-Hades welcomes you in and invites you to stay for as long as you want. I spent like eighty hours on Hades and only stopped because after a month of playing it every day my wrist was noticeably starting to hurt. There is a whole-ass world here that absolutely encourages you to immerse yourself in it as much as you can, and it becomes perfectly reasonable to tell yourself "okay, I have to do a whole bunch of runs where I collect absolute garbage boons the entire time just so I can fulfill this prophecy and get a little bit closer to some other story stuff." Of all these games, I loved being in the world of Hades most.
-Pyre...all these games do something to tie story and gameplay together, so that if you want more story, you're incentivized to immerse yourself more in the gameplay and experiment more rather than just finding one thing that works and sticking to it. But I don't know that I've ever played ANYTHING that fit story and gameplay together as well as Pyre does. The story didn't hit like Transistor's, and I didn't take to the gameplay as well as I did with Hades, but the combination of the two...holy shit! I was SO fucking invested in the outcome of this game and that's all down to how it's structured.
The premise of Pyre is that you are an exile in the Downside, the land where the fantasy realm of the Commonwealth sends all of its criminals and dissidents. While the black market has figured out how to send goods and messages back and forth, it's truly impossible for someone who's been exiled to the Downside to find a way to sneak back into the Commonwealth.
You're near death when you're found and rescued by a group of exiles who are on a quest that's been set to them by a mysterious benefactor. Allegedly, if they follow his plan, they'll be able to get out. You can read (rare, since the Commonwealth's government has outlawed literacy) and they need you to examine the Book of Rites for them as the group's Reader. The Book of Rites outlines a process by which exiles can leave the Downside and return to the Commonwealth with full pardons - you follow the stars to celestially-ordained locations, at which you'll face off against another group in a Rite. Eventually, success in the Rites will lead to liberation from the Downside.
The Rites are three-on-three magical basketball. It fucking rules.
Outside of these magical basketball games, Pyre's a visual novel. And it would be SO easy for those two things not to mesh - for the story to feel like something you had to rush through until the next time you were allowed to play basketball again, or for the basketball to feel like the equivalent of a commercial break - something you had to get through before you could get back to the story. For me, the reason this wasn't the case is that the game keeps going whether you win or lose in the Rites. From a purely practical standpoint, that means that I don't hit a wall - if there's a team that's hard to beat, I don't have to keep trying and trying until I either eke out a win or give up on the game entirely. But it's actually much more impactful than that, because somehow Pyre saying "it doesn't matter if you win or lose this rite, because the story will keep going regardless" makes the stakes feel way higher - if I lose, I'm going to see my players react to that loss, and my rivals celebrate their win, and depending on which point in the story I'm at, the story consequences of that loss could be devastating to my own goals.
Because the other thing about Pyre is that it lets you decide what you want to happen. People join your party and they leave it, and you get to know them, and you get to know your rivals too. You miss people when they're gone even though it was entirely your choice to let them leave. You're presented with an overall goal, but the game doesn't much care if you buy into it or not - you could actively work to sabotage it if you wanted to. You could ignore it and focus on your own goals if you wanted to. Personally, I tried to find a balance - I was working to support the Plan but never at the expense of my own priorities, which entirely centered around "I like this character and I want them to be happy" or "I fucking hate this character and I never want them to succeed EVER."
A lot of games with branching paths still end up feeling restrictive because you can sense when you're butting up against the thing you can't do because the game never scripted it. Pyre never felt like that - yes, I had no choice but to go from rite to rite because the game didn't script "you abandon the party and decide to become an accountant" or whatever but within the premise of the game, whenever I felt constrained by my choices, it always felt like the game was either forcing me to deal with the consequences of my actions or denying me the easy way out. It wasn't "you can't do X because that's just how we scripted it," it was "you can't do X because based on everything else you've done so far, you're going to be challenged much more by a choice between Y and Z." And it's hard! It's a real "if you love something, let it go" situation sometimes! But sometimes you love something and you CAN'T let it go because it can really hoop and you need that scoring potential in your next rite!
Being able to set my own priorities, combined with knowing that if I lost a rite the game would just be like "okay, noted" and keep progressing, meant that the rites themselves could end up feeling INCREDIBLY high stakes. Generally speaking most of the teams weren't too difficult for me to beat (I lowered the difficulty for a bit in the first half of the game but then I decided to accept the possibility of failure in the second half), but that wasn't always the case! There was a team that KICKED MY ASS in a relatively insignificant rite, they were just COMPLETELY immune to my scoring strategy and I didn't have any answer for them because they were better at my own playbook than I was, and that loss was humiliating but ultimately not significant plotwise. But then I ended up having to face them again in a rite that WAS somewhat significant, and IT FELT LIKE THE FUCKING SUPERBOWL TO ME? Similarly, there was an EXTREMELY significant rite that I considered throwing For Reasons Related to My Own Emotional Priorities, but it ended up being so fucking difficult that I genuinely got caught up in giving it my best effort and figuring that Whatever Was Meant to Happen Would Happen. (I lost that rite and I didn't end up realizing why until I did a quick replay after completing the game: For the rite before it, I had cranked up the difficulty settings to the maximum - I didn't need the win and I DID want to game the Supergiant-typical system that unlocks rewards if you make the game a little harder for yourself. Unfortunately I neglected to TURN THOSE SETTINGS OFF AFTERWARDS, so I went into that major matchup at a ludicrous disadvantage. Like A Dumbass. BUT IT'S FINE, BECAUSE LIKE I SAID: I KIND OF WANTED TO THROW IT ANYWAY.)
On one level, the core of the ending of Pyre is the same no matter what - but on all the levels that mattered to me, my ending felt completely unique and shaped by the choices I'd made and the victories I'd managed to eke out. You get to find out what happened to about two dozen characters from the game, and it was SO thrilling to make my way through it and find out what kind of future I'd secured for my faves. Granted, if I played it two or three more times, I'd start to see all the overlapping pieces and the ways the endings weren't all THAT different, but whatever, it's REALLY fucking effective at making your first time out feel like you're looking at a future you shaped yourself.
Full spoilers now, more for posterity than anything else because while I think it's important to play your first time without this knowledge, the story particulars aren't as important to me as the vibe and the level of agency I felt as the Reader. BUT I DO ALSO WANT TO TALK ABOUT WHAT I DID AND DIDN'T DO FOR MY NIGHTWINGS, so...don't read any further if you're going to be playing this.
-Actually this one isn't a spoiler but that makes it a nice dividing line. I RELIED ALMOST ENTIRELY ON SHAE AND RUKEY FOR THE RITES (at least until I realized load management was a thing and I had to rest them to avoid banishment sickness) BUT WHEN I GOOGLED TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE THINK IS THE BEST LINEUP, THEY WERE HARDLY EVER MENTIONED???? Shocking!!!!!!! I was STARTING to get the hang of things as I went on but I simply did not have the brainpower for big picture "this person's on offense and this person's on defense and we're passing and shit" gameplay so I was just like GIVE THE BALL TO SHAE BECAUSE SHE RUNS REALLY FUCKING FAST. I upgraded her until she had unlimited stamina while holding the orb, and I upgraded Rukey to the point that he wouldn't have to sit out a round after plunging into the Pyre, and I JUST STEPPED BACK AND LET THEM HOOP.
-This led to Emotional Complications because they were always my top two and the game would only let me choose between my top three for liberation, so at my first Liberation Rite I basically had to send Jodariel home because AS A COACH I had no other option? So I do feel like I missed out on The Jodariel Experience and learning about her which is something to explore on another playthrough!
-I didn't realize it was a top three thing, I thought it was like the Scribe Trials and people just had to be a certain rank before they could be liberated, so I made sure to rank up Hedwyn because I was like HE HAS A WARRIOR BIRD GIRLFRIEND BACK HOME????? LET HIM GO HOME AND FIND HIS WARRIOR BIRD GIRLFRIEND. But then I got to my second liberation rite and Hedwyn STILL wasn't an option and I had to send TI'ZO????????????? Because, again, my other options were Shae and Rukey, and they were my entire strategy, so I COULDN'T send them, but OH MY GOD, TI'ZO, I WAS SO WORRIED, I'M GLAD HE MOSTLY DID OKAY UP THERE? BUT I FELT SO FUCKING SAD, REALIZING I HAD TO ANOINT HIM WAS A FUCKING PUNCH TO THE HEART.
-Okay but then I did liberate Hedwyn but that was the point where I got some Rukey backstory and he started talking a lot about how much he missed his mom???? And then I had a LOT of guilt about how I was basically holding him hostage because I needed him to win basketball games. I still kept him though. He wasn't the last one I sent home but I did wait until we got to the point where it was like "the stars are disappearing and at some point you will stop being able to liberate people." Sorry, Rukey.
-The one not great thing was that I think I frontloaded all that emotional stress because by the end I was like this is a bummer, all my friends are gone, and also I don't care that the Rites are ending, this is fine, Volfred can deal with staying, and Bertha and Shae probably don't even want to go back???? But in the last rite I was like WILL I THROW THIS SO ORALECH CAN GO HOME? But then he won anyway due to me being an idiot and accidentally leaving all the Titan difficulty settings turned on, whoops. BUT THEN ORALECH LET ME GO HOME INSTEAD? Listen I was all about him getting his chance to go back but then he read my mind and seemed to have some epiphany that Volfred sincerely cared for him, and like, legally they're married. I didn't have any kind of say in that: They were close and Volfred WATCHED ORALECH FALL TO HIS DEATH and carried that grief around for years while unbeknownst to him Oralech was alive and suffering and then they were reunited but it was fraught? LEGALLY THAT'S A MARRIAGE??????????? So once Oralech seemed to be having some emotions about Volfred I was like, my conscience is clear if I let Oralech give me his spot in the Pool. He is going to stay here with his Groot husband, he'll be fine. AND HE WAS!!!!!!!! THEY WERE OFTEN SEEN TOGETHER!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU SEPARATED THEM HE WOULD ALWAYS WONDER!!!!!!!
-My one MAJOR regret with my ending was that in my first liberation rite, there was a moment where I could read Ignarius' thoughts and he was realizing he wouldn't get to go home and he had this thought like "oh, Moira, you probably wouldn't recognize me anyway" and ????????????? MY HEART???????????????? I SPENT THE ENTIRE REST OF THE GAME WONDERING IF I COULD RIG IT SO WE FACED THE TEMPERS IN ANOTHER LIBERATION RITE SO I COULD THROW THE MATCH AND SEND IGNARIUS HOME TO MOIRA??????? I FELT SO BAD WHEN I GOT TO THE ENDING AND HAD TO READ HIS MOIRA-LESS EPILOGUE???? Okay except then I was like "what if I replayed this game real quick just for Ignarius, I can just lose every Rite so I don't need to spend any time trying to improve players or anything" AND I DID THAT AND IF YOU SEND HIM HOME HE NEVER MENTIONS MOIRA AGAIN? NOTHING YOU FIND OUT ABOUT HIS POST-LIBERATION LIFE MENTIONS HER? IT'S JUST LIKE "HE HAD A THING FOR JODARIEL" THIS MAN TRICKED ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-Hedwyn and his warrior bird girlfriend WERE reunited and I was SO happy for them, but also when I replayed and lost every time - EVEN IF HE STAYS IN THE DOWNSIDE, SHE CASTS HERSELF DOWN THERE TO BE WITH HIM??????????? INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S LOVE!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!
-I ignored the Scribe Trials but I was O B S E S S E D with my orb girlfriend Sandra, so it's REALLY fucking unfortunate that I found out after the game was already over that if I had DONE THE FUCKING SCRIBE TRIALS I COULD POTENTIALLY HAVE MADE HER MY ACTUAL ORB GIRLFRIEND? I'm unclear on the specifics but I am 100% replaying this game at some point purely to see if I can marry a cursed immortal wraith.
-Shae and that adopted dogboy were very cute good for them.