Angelique: Maren no Rokukishi/Angelique: Six Knights of Dark Love playlog, prelude
Just when I think I'm out, I start another playthrough. And one that's been long delayed, too. Angelique: Maren no Rokukishi - or Angelique: Six Knights of Dark Love, as I am going to be calling it to avoid the thorny issue of whether or not there should be a space after the possible "roku" counter - was, excluding cellphone folderol, actually the last game in the Angelique otome game series to be released, in late 2011. It has a bit of a special place in my heart for a few reasons, not the least of which being that it's the only game of the series (again, excluding cellphone folderol) where I was actually with the fandom on the ground floor from the release announcement and had the small joy of following all the information about character designs, voice casting, and prerelease bonuses as they were brought to light. I actually bought the special edition of the game right at its release date, but...things prevented me from partaking of it until now - over two years later.
Some setup: This is a spinoff to the Angelique RPG, derived from a gaiden novel about the backstory of the main antagonist, a self-proclaimed "Emperor" from a parallel universe named Leviath, and his lieutenants. Sounds quite ancillary, but I like pieces of media that paint in the corners of their universes. Too often, particularly with Japanese games, writers have to tailor events & plotlines to validate a series of often-samey heroes; it's a gratifying experience to follow characters outside the main cast because they're the ones who sparked the creator's interest, not because they belong to the most marketable demographic. (In the Lunar series, who's more interesting: Alex or Ghaleon? I rest my case.) The novel covers some pretty dark territory for a series whose typical apex of horror otherwise is someone missing teatime: Leviath in Maren's pre-Emperor days leads an ever-growing army of mercenaries in committing ever-more-questionable acts in order to gather soldiers for a planned coup, and his followers support his war because they love violence & fighting, or they're fucked in the head, or they're genuinely horrible people. Here, let me make you a Venn diagram to which you can refer for the rest of this playthrough:
This ain't Six Knights of Dark Love for nothin', you know.
Also, everyone dies. At least, they canonically die, and they have to die in the first playthrough, I think; the second time through, you can noncanonically-in-the-main-franchise-but-we're-throwing-our-own-party-here-so-who-cares save one of the knights to live as happily ever after as war-induced PTSD will afford you.
You might find a dating game with these prospects a bit...incongruous, if not off-putting. (From a sensible standpoint, as someone on the Angemedia comm put it, your goal should be not ending up with any of these guys.) Maybe I'm overestimating the hurdle presented by bloodthirsty lead characters with questionable morals; this is a world where over six million people are watching Game of Thrones on a weekly basis, after all.
(Incidentally, this is also a world where almost three million people are watching Dog with a Blog on a weekly basis. It's just out of the top 10 cable shows. I thought this was important to note.)
Part of the game's appeal to me is that, from the standpoint that dating sims are getting-to-know-people simulators, these are interesting characters: Cain, the "good" one who knows better but is snared by sympathy through the similarities Leviath's personal past shares with his own; Giovanni, the con artist and deadly force of nature who can't resist copping a bit of dramatic flair or trying to charm a little love out of his audience; Sionna, the boy genius who tries and fails to understand what he perceives as the great innate red-in-tooth-and-claw cruelty of his world and his own inner nature and thus fixes everything with a thousand-yard stare of scientific analysis. In the book, I actually found Eugene the most intriguing, who, in a pretty well-written part of the novel, is dying inside in his prescribed social & familial role pre-Knighthood but finds a bizarre form of self-realization in Leviath's service, at the feet of another master.
Leviath himself is a weirdly good antagonist for a romance series because of the way he abuses love. He receives from his followers excessive devotion that borders on outright romantic infatuation in a few cases, and he encourages and exploits these unhealthy connections to win these men to his service. Yet he does, despite reservations, have a not-insignificant degree of loyalty to them, in the end. There is a person under there. As there is for the rest of the Knights. Well, most of them. I dunno about you, Kiefer.
The setting and its effect on the characters is another point of interest. In Angelique, universes are ruled over by a god-like figure who maintains the balance of nature, ensures fair distribution of resources, and generally looks after the public's welfare & happiness - a Queen in the series's main universe; an Emperor here. The Emperor, however, is a corrupt sybarite who hoards his power instead of putting it to its intended purpose, exploiting his subjects instead of protecting them. The substitution of vengeful God for happy God has divided the universe into verdant paradises enjoyed by a indolent, corrupt nobility and barren dustbowls inhabited by a desperate, resentful underclass, neither of which breeds a happy, responsible citizenry; in an echo of the idea expressed in The Dark Knight that environment limits morality and people are only as good as they're allowed to be, the people of Leviath's world have little option to be good, and with few exceptions do not turn out to be very good at all.
To destabilize the Emperor's reign, Leviath's mercenary army fights mainly against corrupt local governments & tyrants and are often greeted as liberators by the populace. In order to grow powerful enough and secure the resources needed to topple the Emperor, though, Leviath and his cohorts are led in the novel to commit a series of increasingly immoral deeds. This leads to a weird double act: the Knight Captains are "good guys" purely in relative terms in their own universe but bad guys by any objective standard.
There's this terrific scene where Sionna, the novel's narrator for most of its length, is eating dinner with the other Knights for the first time. Leviath, as lord and leader, is drinking just a little off to the side from his devoted followers; upon arrival at dinner, he's confronted with a few appeals and requests from them, but once they're dealt with, he turns his usual charisma off and sequesters himself from his crew - trying, Sionna notes, "deliberately to repulse. As if he hated his dealings with the others themselves." They give him unquestioning obedience and adoration, and he angrily shuts himself off from it - he just hates them, hates what he's had to become in order to win. Leviath will later arrive at a more nuanced conclusion regarding his Knights, but the scene itself is a good example of how the writer uses the moral climate of the story to explore actual themes and character conflict.
Another part of the game's appeal to me is that, in an age of too many slapdash hired-gun sequels and spinoffs, this seems to be the gaiden concept done right. The creators didn't retread old territory but instead tried to explore a rich, unmined story vein. They hired the original novelist to write the expanded story for the game. They identified one of the major limitations of the Angelique series, its strict adherence to frothy sweetness and frequent lack of substantive story material - and, er, may have gone too far in the opposite direction, but it's an attempt to do something more with this underutilized universe, at least. They didn't try to imitate Angelique artist Yura Kairi's style; she does beautiful work, mind (and I'd like to see these characters designs for the Knights rendered just once in her style), but hers is a unique style, and a cheap knockoff of it would look like just that. Instead, they went for an art style that's full unto its own and distinct from that of the main Angelique series but is pretty and florid enough not to be completely out of pace with it. The creators of Maren have taken a seemingly solid approach to making this game. We'll see if my good impression lasts.
From what I know of the game going in, I do, however, see a few indications that the characters have been softened somewhat. The game makes vengeance for Elis, Leviath's lost love, his central motivation; while it indeed is a central motivation, it's clear from the novel that Leviath was planning his coup before her death. The youngest knight, Renaud, is implied to be an orphan in the game; in the novel, it's suggested that his mother is alive, and that one of the other knights lured him away to Leviath's service, stealing him away from her. Kiefer in the opening of the game is seen casting an affectionate glance at Renaud, an act unthinkable for novel Kiefer, who hates children, other people, and acting anything less than like he's starring in a production of Salo in general. (The game does, however, have Sionna trying to kill you if his affection for you gets too high, which is completely in line with his novel character. I was actually relieved to learn that this could happen.)
I also listened to the drama CD that came with the deluxe edition, and it's traditional Angelique farce. The approach doesn't quite work with these characters; they, and their world, are too grounded and grim to be that wacky. Black humor works better with them, such as when Giovanni is attacked and Sionna correctly identifies that he's been strangled: "I've done it enough myself."
So, the $64,000 question as we dive in here: Can the game pull off the balancing act of having the characters recognizable as their novel selves and being up-front about the crimes they commit while making them...well, perhaps not sympathetic enough, but human enough to want to get to know them better? That's the issue I'll be examining, making comparisons to the original novel throughout. Onward!
.
Some setup: This is a spinoff to the Angelique RPG, derived from a gaiden novel about the backstory of the main antagonist, a self-proclaimed "Emperor" from a parallel universe named Leviath, and his lieutenants. Sounds quite ancillary, but I like pieces of media that paint in the corners of their universes. Too often, particularly with Japanese games, writers have to tailor events & plotlines to validate a series of often-samey heroes; it's a gratifying experience to follow characters outside the main cast because they're the ones who sparked the creator's interest, not because they belong to the most marketable demographic. (In the Lunar series, who's more interesting: Alex or Ghaleon? I rest my case.) The novel covers some pretty dark territory for a series whose typical apex of horror otherwise is someone missing teatime: Leviath in Maren's pre-Emperor days leads an ever-growing army of mercenaries in committing ever-more-questionable acts in order to gather soldiers for a planned coup, and his followers support his war because they love violence & fighting, or they're fucked in the head, or they're genuinely horrible people. Here, let me make you a Venn diagram to which you can refer for the rest of this playthrough:
This ain't Six Knights of Dark Love for nothin', you know.
Also, everyone dies. At least, they canonically die, and they have to die in the first playthrough, I think; the second time through, you can noncanonically-in-the-main-franchise-but-we're-throwing-our-own-party-here-so-who-cares save one of the knights to live as happily ever after as war-induced PTSD will afford you.
You might find a dating game with these prospects a bit...incongruous, if not off-putting. (From a sensible standpoint, as someone on the Angemedia comm put it, your goal should be not ending up with any of these guys.) Maybe I'm overestimating the hurdle presented by bloodthirsty lead characters with questionable morals; this is a world where over six million people are watching Game of Thrones on a weekly basis, after all.
(Incidentally, this is also a world where almost three million people are watching Dog with a Blog on a weekly basis. It's just out of the top 10 cable shows. I thought this was important to note.)
Part of the game's appeal to me is that, from the standpoint that dating sims are getting-to-know-people simulators, these are interesting characters: Cain, the "good" one who knows better but is snared by sympathy through the similarities Leviath's personal past shares with his own; Giovanni, the con artist and deadly force of nature who can't resist copping a bit of dramatic flair or trying to charm a little love out of his audience; Sionna, the boy genius who tries and fails to understand what he perceives as the great innate red-in-tooth-and-claw cruelty of his world and his own inner nature and thus fixes everything with a thousand-yard stare of scientific analysis. In the book, I actually found Eugene the most intriguing, who, in a pretty well-written part of the novel, is dying inside in his prescribed social & familial role pre-Knighthood but finds a bizarre form of self-realization in Leviath's service, at the feet of another master.
Leviath himself is a weirdly good antagonist for a romance series because of the way he abuses love. He receives from his followers excessive devotion that borders on outright romantic infatuation in a few cases, and he encourages and exploits these unhealthy connections to win these men to his service. Yet he does, despite reservations, have a not-insignificant degree of loyalty to them, in the end. There is a person under there. As there is for the rest of the Knights. Well, most of them. I dunno about you, Kiefer.
The setting and its effect on the characters is another point of interest. In Angelique, universes are ruled over by a god-like figure who maintains the balance of nature, ensures fair distribution of resources, and generally looks after the public's welfare & happiness - a Queen in the series's main universe; an Emperor here. The Emperor, however, is a corrupt sybarite who hoards his power instead of putting it to its intended purpose, exploiting his subjects instead of protecting them. The substitution of vengeful God for happy God has divided the universe into verdant paradises enjoyed by a indolent, corrupt nobility and barren dustbowls inhabited by a desperate, resentful underclass, neither of which breeds a happy, responsible citizenry; in an echo of the idea expressed in The Dark Knight that environment limits morality and people are only as good as they're allowed to be, the people of Leviath's world have little option to be good, and with few exceptions do not turn out to be very good at all.
To destabilize the Emperor's reign, Leviath's mercenary army fights mainly against corrupt local governments & tyrants and are often greeted as liberators by the populace. In order to grow powerful enough and secure the resources needed to topple the Emperor, though, Leviath and his cohorts are led in the novel to commit a series of increasingly immoral deeds. This leads to a weird double act: the Knight Captains are "good guys" purely in relative terms in their own universe but bad guys by any objective standard.
There's this terrific scene where Sionna, the novel's narrator for most of its length, is eating dinner with the other Knights for the first time. Leviath, as lord and leader, is drinking just a little off to the side from his devoted followers; upon arrival at dinner, he's confronted with a few appeals and requests from them, but once they're dealt with, he turns his usual charisma off and sequesters himself from his crew - trying, Sionna notes, "deliberately to repulse. As if he hated his dealings with the others themselves." They give him unquestioning obedience and adoration, and he angrily shuts himself off from it - he just hates them, hates what he's had to become in order to win. Leviath will later arrive at a more nuanced conclusion regarding his Knights, but the scene itself is a good example of how the writer uses the moral climate of the story to explore actual themes and character conflict.
Another part of the game's appeal to me is that, in an age of too many slapdash hired-gun sequels and spinoffs, this seems to be the gaiden concept done right. The creators didn't retread old territory but instead tried to explore a rich, unmined story vein. They hired the original novelist to write the expanded story for the game. They identified one of the major limitations of the Angelique series, its strict adherence to frothy sweetness and frequent lack of substantive story material - and, er, may have gone too far in the opposite direction, but it's an attempt to do something more with this underutilized universe, at least. They didn't try to imitate Angelique artist Yura Kairi's style; she does beautiful work, mind (and I'd like to see these characters designs for the Knights rendered just once in her style), but hers is a unique style, and a cheap knockoff of it would look like just that. Instead, they went for an art style that's full unto its own and distinct from that of the main Angelique series but is pretty and florid enough not to be completely out of pace with it. The creators of Maren have taken a seemingly solid approach to making this game. We'll see if my good impression lasts.
From what I know of the game going in, I do, however, see a few indications that the characters have been softened somewhat. The game makes vengeance for Elis, Leviath's lost love, his central motivation; while it indeed is a central motivation, it's clear from the novel that Leviath was planning his coup before her death. The youngest knight, Renaud, is implied to be an orphan in the game; in the novel, it's suggested that his mother is alive, and that one of the other knights lured him away to Leviath's service, stealing him away from her. Kiefer in the opening of the game is seen casting an affectionate glance at Renaud, an act unthinkable for novel Kiefer, who hates children, other people, and acting anything less than like he's starring in a production of Salo in general. (The game does, however, have Sionna trying to kill you if his affection for you gets too high, which is completely in line with his novel character. I was actually relieved to learn that this could happen.)
I also listened to the drama CD that came with the deluxe edition, and it's traditional Angelique farce. The approach doesn't quite work with these characters; they, and their world, are too grounded and grim to be that wacky. Black humor works better with them, such as when Giovanni is attacked and Sionna correctly identifies that he's been strangled: "I've done it enough myself."
So, the $64,000 question as we dive in here: Can the game pull off the balancing act of having the characters recognizable as their novel selves and being up-front about the crimes they commit while making them...well, perhaps not sympathetic enough, but human enough to want to get to know them better? That's the issue I'll be examining, making comparisons to the original novel throughout. Onward!
.