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Flashes of brilliance in Baten Kaitos
03.26.07 / 07:15PM / Joe
As mentioned before, Baten Kaitos started out really mediocre, storyline-wise. You have the emo kid out for vengeance who partners up with an unlikely band of combatants out to save the world form some giant ancient evil. The best you can say about it is that the Guardian Spirit thing - wherein the game characters routinely face the camera and talk to you - is a small splash of inspiration.
The lands you visit are routine: woodsy forest world, folksy farm world, gruff-but-lovable dockworker world. There is definitely some lush background work here, but, seeing as the environments are all pre-rendered, you would expect that it would all look damn good. There's sidequests out the ass. Every country you visit is populated by generic characters who gush endlessly about their respective King/Queen/Lord/Duke being super-awesome. You churn through battle after battle against skeletons and giant insects and bats, eventually hitting a big boss fight at the end of each world's visit.
About twenty hours in, things begin to change, and the game starts to show the kind of unique vision that it should have displayed ten minutes after bootup.
Near the end of the game's first act, you travel to the country Mira, which is described as a land of illusion. The first city you visit is made entirely of candy, which, although a departure from the game's previously normal worlds, is still more or less in-theme. Then you enter the nearby magical garden maze and you get this:
No freaking kidding. Namco loves their retro fan-service. That there is an almost pixel-perfect rendition of any given screen in Tower of Druaga, a 1980s arcade game series that was never as popular here (US) as over there (Japan). You can't tell from my picture, but there is a fully-3D character standing in the middle of the 2D maze, top-down. Talk about a surprise. And I'm not even going to spoil the game further by mentioning the awesomely outlandish Picasso designs that make up Mira's Picture Book Village. Wow. It definitely proves that most reviewers acted a little prematurely by seeing airships and writing up "Final Fantasy clone, durrrr." Why oh why didn't Namco include more elements akin to the Druaga riff and Picasso-town?
Not long after your first trip to Mira, the game takes a huge narrative turn that I did not expect and rather enjoyed. It is such a loss that the game doesn't use any animated cutscenes for the plot's key moments. I could see myself becoming far more invested in the characters and story if only the presentation was more cinematic. The constant subtitles, the tinny audio, the doggedly unappealing use of the game engine, and the glacially slow pacing just serve to destroy any and all hopes at immersion.
Baten Kaitos could have been Nintendo's Final Fantasy. Or rather, Namco's Final Fantasy, but you get the idea. It could have been a major N-exclusive RPG with a well-developed gameworld, interesting character arcs, and meaty customization. But without the pomp that it deserves, it falls awfully flat. My feeling is that the game is just physically too big for two measly GameCube disks, which is why the character audio is compressed to all hell and there is not a single CG cutscene apart from the intro movie. Jeez, why not go for a three disk game and give us some mind-blowing dramatics.
Had I been invited to the marketing meetings back in the development days, I think I would have also suggested a name change. Either adjective-noun pairing of the game's subtitle - "Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean" - is better than the impassively nonsensical title we ended on. |
