These are lonely times we’re living through. I know the lockdowns and the restaurants being shut and all the rest are for good reason, but that doesn’t stop everything from feeling so isolated. I haven’t seen anyone besides my partner and the postman in months, and apart from a couple of times during the halcyon days of the summer bubble, I haven’t seen my friends in over a year; no, Zoom does not count. It’s hard. And hey, I’m one of the lucky ones. I live with someone, I haven’t personally lost anyone to COVID-19, and I recovered quickly when I had it myself. I still have a job. I got off easy. But knowing that I got off easy doesn’t seem to make it any easier, and that’s why I keep returning to games💎 with built-in friends.
What I mean by that is games which revolve around group camaraderie, around relationships, and in the best cases, around the very idea of friendship. Lots of games have NPCs you meet along the way, or some kinda suicide squad to fight alongside, but that’s not what I mean. I love the supporting characters in, say, Genshin Impact or Hades, but these characters never feel like they’re my friends. They’re entertaining and engaging, but there’s no deep seated link that forever brands their bonds upon my heart. So🎃me games move beyond this though, and make friendship itself the heartbeat of the experience. These days, I need games like that more than ever.
Mass Effect is the best one to start with, because it was the first game to really gra🌊b hold of me in this way, and because I’ll soon be revisiting those bonds in the Legendary Edition. At first, Mass Effect’s themes of friendship are not immediately cle🔯ar. You begin as a military commander, and those who fight alongside you are soldiers. You might have some witty banter in the field, but those supporting characters are there to give you extra firepower against the Geth, not to be your bestie.
As the game - and its sequels - go on, however, you start to add a much more diverse roster to the Normandy’s crew. The longer you spend talking to them during your downtime, the more these bonds can form. You can explore relationships with various crewmates, or even watch as they initiate relationships with each other, and dig further into their personal lives as your friendship deepens. As you complete various errands for your squadmates, it begins to feel less like they are there to make your life easier on the battlefield and more to make your life bearable off it. Shepard’s drive and position at the front of the fight for the galaxy makes their role an incredibly lonely one, and it’s not the guns and grenades the squadmates are there for; it’s the friendship. That’s why the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC is one of the most personally important video game experiences I’ve ever had, and I know 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:I’m not the only one 🦩at Th𒈔eGamer who thinks so.
While Mass Effect’s friendships matter more to me than any in gaming, I don’t think🍨 they’re objectively the best example of a game that revolves around friendship. Instead, I’d point to the examples on offer in three recent JRPGs: Persona 5, Final Fantasy 15, and Yakuza: Like A Dragon.
The characters of Persona 5 just feel so familiar, mostly because the game has player character Joker take a huge step backwards, allowing the rest of the gang to fill that space. Joker is an everyman, but even then he’s an incredibly flat one with few distinguishing qualities of his own. He’s positioned as the leader, but he mostly delegates through a series of non-committal waves or nods. This leaves room for the colourful cast to imprint themselves firmly upon the game, and it’s much easier for the player to see themselves as Joker, to grow closer to Ann and Ryuji and the rest as Joker’s own connections to them become stronger. We all know people like the cast of Persona 5, and so they replicate the feelings of closeness that have been absent in so many ways this past year. I’d describe Persona 5 as a brilliant 50-hour game cram🍰med into 100 hours, so I haven’t gone back for the even longer Royal, nor Scramble or Strikers, but for people who have, I’m ﷺglad their friends are still there.
Final Fantasy 15 goes in a different direction to Persona 5 - instead of pushing its leading man back, it puts all four of the main stars on the same pedestal. Noctis might technically be the protagonist𝐆, but the game feels like it belongs to Gladiolus, Ignis, and Prompto just as much. Friendship actively drives the game forward, and even though the gang begins the game as inseparable buds, the game is still able to take them on a journey with you. For all the typical JRPG monsters and villains, Final Fantasy 15 is a nice game about nice boys being nice. It’s comforting and kind in ways many games - especially games with male leads - are often too afraid to be.
Then, there’s Yakuza: Like A Dragon. This game has the loudest, most raucous group of friends at the party - damn, remember parties? - and I wouldn’t have them any other way. The game’s lead, Ichiban Kasuga, is the polar opposite of Joker, demanding your aไttention with his charismatic, energetic presence. Despite this, he’s incredibly eager to thrust the spotlight back onto his new pals, constantly pulling them into his story, and going out of his way to make sure he does everything he can to help each and every one of them. More than any game here, maybe more than any game I’ve ever played, Yakuza: Like A Dragon is about a ragtag bunch 🌳of misfits, and seeing this unusual group somehow knit themselves together into something both deadly and heart-warming was such a hopeful, endearing experience during the pandemic.
Ichiban has story motiva✨tions, a 🍌mystery to unravel, and various main missions to complete, but it feels like the main thing pushing him forward the whole game is just a desire to help people. It made me want to help people too, because I didn’t want to let him down, because I wanted to spend more time with my in-game friends, and maybe most importantly, because it felt good knowing Ichiban and I were in the same corner.
I know gaming can be a wonderful vehicle for connecting real people, but to be honest it never really has been for me. I typically prefer offline, story-based games, and the few online games I probably would bother to put the time into - FIFA, for example - aren’t popular in my circle of friends. According to my PlayStation roundup, only 1% of my gaming time was online last year, and most of that was trying out Fall Guys. So while I know gaming can be an essential tool in staying connected with real friends, it has never reallဣy been that for me, and that’s why the built-in friends so many games come with are so important.
Of course, these examples just scr🍨atch the surface of the brilliant built-in friendships many games come with. Red Dead Redemption 2 is similar to Mass Effect, for example, in that the bonds between the characters seem to grow stronger as the game develops, even as death and tragedy befalls them. BioWare’s other major franchise, Dragon Age, works similarly to Mass Effect♏ as well, only without the friendships forged in fire carrying over to the next game. I don’t know what your Mass Effect is. Maybe it’s Mass Effect, maybe it’s something I’ve already mentioned, or maybe it’s something different entirely. Whatever it is, especially in times like these, I hope you find it.