Dirge of Cerberus

Nowadays, it seems like any game that becomes remotely popular gets some sort of spinoff.  Hell, they took a mini game from The Witcher and turned it into its own standalone title.

But that wasn’t always a given.  Even with a game as popular as Final Fantasy VII, the thought of having a cannon spinoff wasn’t something that crossed most people’s minds.  I talked last week about how deep the characters in FFVII were, so it would make sense to give them their own time in the spotlight.  Dirge of Cerberus puts said spotlight on Vincent, one of the more popular characters from the original game.  Though he’s and optional character, Vincent has a very deep, intricate backstory that is very closely related to many of the critical characters of the universe.  Aside from Cloud, he’s probably they only member of your party that has close ties to both the Shinra and Sephiroth.  So a spinoff about him definitely makes sense from a storyline perspective.

Rather than just make another RPG, Square decided to go a different way.  Dirge of Cerberus is a 3rd person shooter, which, to me is just about as opposite an RPG as it gets.  Vincent uses a gun, so this makes total sense, but it threw a lot of series fans for a loop.  It could just be my personal bias talking, but a lot of RPG fans don’t really care for games like this.  Square certainly took a risk, but did it pay off?

I’m not sure.  Dirge exudes the quality you would expect from Square in terms of graphics, sound and presentation.  However, its very clear that games of this style are not in their wheelhouse.  Nothing feels broken, but it doesn’t feel quite right either.  The controls are responsive and fluid, but they are poorly laid out.  The HUD provides you with all the information that you need, but its prevented in such a way that its difficult to find what you want.  The environments look great, but not enough attention was paid to draw distance.  That’s forgivable in an RPG, but being able to clearly see snipers is critical in a 1st or 3rd person shooter.

The biggest issue its that its very difficult to see where you are being shot from.  There is an HUD, but its very hard to see and the indicators aren’t nearly in your face enough that you see them right away.  They are also seem to pop up too late, so you usually take a second or even third hit before you finally find out where you are getting hit from.  A lot of the enemies are so far away that they are damn near impossible to see without zooming in.  That would be okay, you’re provided with a sniper scope pretty early, but all of these guys are pinpoint accurate, so there’s a good chance they will drain half of your life before you even see them.

As I mentioned before, the controls are poorly set up.  For better or worse, every single button on the controller is mapped to something different.  It mostly makes sense for the face buttons, but I feel like the shoulder buttons are off.  L1 uses magic, L2 reloads, R1 switches weapons and R2 shoots.  The two offensive capabilities should have been mapped to either the same side of the controller or the same set of triggers.  I got killed a lot trying to switch weapons or reload.  I also burned more of my MP using magic by accident than I ever did on enemies.  Bringing up the map with the D-pad works, but the map itself is terrible and you can still get shot when its up.  My final complaint on this front is the camera.  It rarely goes where its supposed to, especially in big open areas, and that adds to the problem with actually being able to hit anything.

But at the end of the day, you are playing a Final Fantasy game for the story, even if it isn’t an RPG.  Dirge is set a few years after the end of FFVII and one year after the events of Final Fantasy: Advent Children.  A group of super soldiers called Deep Ground have emerged from a hidden facility beneath what is left of the Shinra building and have begun kidnapping civilians en masse.  You play as Vincent, who is enjoying a quiet stay in Kalm when Deep Ground attacks.  It turns out that you are one of their primary targets, as you possess something called “protomateria” as a result of the experiments that were preformed on you pre-FFVII.  As you battle deep ground soldiers (who look suspiciously like Shinra soldiers) through familiar locales like Kalm, Nibelheim and Midgar, Vincent learns about the origin of his powers, the expirements he was subjected to and how important the work of his lost love, Shinra Dr. Lucretia Crescent, was to deep ground.  (Side note, that’s another FFVII name I was apparently pronouncing wrong.  I always said Loo-kree-sha, like Lucretia Mott.  Apparently its loo-kret-she-yah, like something a drunk person at Square made up).

The story is well told, the writing is halfway decent and the in-game cutscenes are well done.  It’s actually an interesting plot and a solid side story in the Final Fantasy VII cannon.  However, I have two major, major problems with it.

First, for a game about Vincent, you don’t really learn all that much about him.  Sure, there’s the whole side story with the protomateria and his transformation powers, but much of the backstory given is stuff we already knew from FFVII (if you did his side quests, that is).  I know he’s not supposed to be the most talkative, but Vincent barely talks at all.  All he seems to do is throw out the occasional, okay at best one liner or say Lucretia’s name in a pained, drawn out manner. 

 A lot of your old friends from the original game show up here and I feel like you learn as much about Reeve, Cid and Yuffie as you do about Vincent.  I also don’t understand why they felt the need to black out Hojo’s face in the flashbacks, we already know he’s the one that performed experiments on Vincent and worked with Lucretia.  I should also mention that Vincent spends a lot of the game standing around and looking bored.  There will be this big, intense scene where someone has their weapon drawn on him and he doesn’t even look concerned.  It’s kind of weird.

But the biggest issue here is the new characters.  While some of them are interesting in theory, they all have a certain “anime vibe” that the rest of the cast of FFVII doesn’t have.  I know I have been complaining about this non stop in recent weeks without really elaborating too much, but Dirge finally gives me a chance to do so.  Shalua Rui is a scientist, so why is she wearing what’s basically a bathing suit under her lab coat?  Do you know any scientists who do that?  I mean, I know its a fantasy world, but its supposed to be a more gritty, cyberpunk world, not a quirky anime one.  Lucretia doesn’t wear a bikini under her lab coat.  Hojo doesn’t wear trunks under his, even on the beach in Costa Del Sol during the original game.  That kind of thing just screams “anime fan service.”

And that’s just getting started.  Early in the game, you are introduced to the Svietz, Deep Ground’s elite soldiers.  They all have stupid names, like “Rosso the Crimson,” which basically translates to “Red the Red,” or look ridiculous. “Nero the Sable” looks like he’s wearing a pair of tightey whiteys that he cut holes out of on his face.  All of these people talk in an overly dramatized, trying-to-be-intense-but-coming-out-ridiculous tone.  They make these big, dramatic, ridiculous appearances in bizarre, out of place cutscenes.  It seems like every cutscene they are in quickly jumps the shark, even after they all leave.  Again, its something that feels like it belongs in Dragon Ball Z, not Final Fantasy.

Again, an example.  One of the first cutscenes you see in the game shows a young girls and a big monster watching Vincent on a monitor from some undisclosed location.  Okay, fine.  You continue your fight through the streets of Kalm, enter a random house and then all the sudden, the big bonehead busts through the wall like a roided up version of the Kool Aid man with the young girl following close behind.  The little girl, who we later learn is named Shelke, babbles to Vincent about protomateria for a while.  The big guy, “Azul the Cerulean” (guess what color he is), also talks some melodramatic smack while Vincent stands there looking bored.  Just when you think you’re in for a boss fight, Shelke collapses, Azul picks her up and carries her away and is just like “later.”  All of that just for some random, nonsensical dialogue that was poorly delivered.  And that isn’t even the end of the cutscene, there’s more BS with Reeve and (ugh) Cait Sith.

The new characters are mostly lame, though Shelke has an interesting design and backstory.  She looks way more like an actual Final Fantasy character for one.  The whole “little girl” thing smacks of more anime stuff, but its actually explained here.  She has a dependency on Mako and a lifetime of forced treatments are what causes her to look like a child despite the fact she’s in her 20’s.  Her voice actress isn’t great and she has an annoying habit of constantly calling Vincent by his full name, but she’s easily the best of the new characters.  

I am running long and I don’t know where else to put this, but I have to mention that there is a stealth section where you play as Cait Sith.  It’s short, but it feels like an eternity.  I swear, when you boot up a video game in hell, that’s what it will be, just an everlasting stealth game that stars Cait Sith.  I almost shut off the game right then and there.  Satan must have snuck this in after the Dev team was finished.

At the end of the day, Dirge is a solid video game and it isn’t so off-putting that an FFVII fan will want to skip it.  The Deepground characters kind of suck, but the events are cannon and the plot is interesting enough to keep you hooked.  Having such weak characters share the screen with such strong ones drags it down a little bit though.  It’s also cool to explore some of the areas from the original game in more depth.  However, those that are fans of 3rd person shooter should probably pick up something more refined, even if they are looking for a gateway into the Final Fantasy universe.  

6.75/10