回顾性 (RETROSPECTIVE)

Earlier this year I treated myself to an early birthday gift: the latest Fire Emblem. I was ecstatic. The reviews were excellent, and the Fire Emblem series is among my favorites. But one thing had me nervous.

Ëarlier今年我处理自己早期的生日礼物：最新的火焰纹章。 我欣喜若狂。 评论非常好，《火焰纹章》系列是我的最爱。 但是有一件事让我感到紧张。

During my pre-purchase research, I read about the calendar system and how the game featured a “Persona” style approach to character-building. The idea is you spend a sizable portion of the game interacting with your team and learning more about them. This is a departure from how they’ve done it in the past, where you build relationships with the characters through support conversations, side-missions, the battles, and of course, the plot.

在购买前的研究中，我了解了日历系统以及该游戏如何以“ Persona”风格构建角色。 想法是，您需要在游戏中与自己的团队进行大量互动，并更多地了解他们。 这与他们过去的做法背道而驰，在过去的工作中，您通过支持对话，辅助任务，战斗以及情节与角色建立关系。

Fire Emblem: Three Houses uses all of these to build character relationships as well, don’t get me wrong, but it adds the calendar as an additional dimension.

火焰纹章：三宫同样使用所有这些来建立角色关系，不要误会我的意思，但是它将日历添加为一个附加维度。

Sounds great on paper, but I was hesitant.

在纸上听起来不错，但我很犹豫。

A core feature of the Fire Emblem series has always been character-driven storytelling wrapped in high-stakes turn-based battling. The two have co-existed organically for years. The plot would force you into battles. Those battles nurtured relationships with the cast, revealing slightly more about everyone over time. The core gameplay mechanic was battling, and character-development/plot were natural outcomes.

火焰纹章系列的核心特征一直是角色驱动的讲故事，而这些故事都包裹在高风险的回合制战斗中。 两者有机地并存已有多年。 剧情将迫使你参战。 这些战斗与演员们建立了良好的关系，随着时间的流逝，每个人的情况都更加明显。 核心游戏机制在争夺战，角色发展/情节是自然而然的结果。

Fire Emblem: Three Houses doesn’t follow that same formula. Instead, much of the development and storytelling happens during the “exploration” part of the game where you talk to the cast from your home base.

火焰纹章：三宫没有遵循相同的公式。 取而代之的是，大部分的开发和讲故事都发生在游戏的“探索”部分，在那儿您可以与自己的家庭成员进行交谈。

Here’s where the problem starts to come in. The time you spend at home base getting to know the characters (among other things that I’m grouping into the same category, like “instructing,” which yields skill experience) ends up being such a large part of the game that it makes the battles feel like an afterthought. And since the major plot points happen in-tandem with the battles, the story ends up feeling slow and muddled.

这就是问题开始出现的地方。您在家庭中花费的时间来了解角色(我将其归为同一类别的其他事物，例如“指导”，这会产生技能经验)最终变成了这样一个问题。在游戏的很大一部分中，它使战斗感觉像是事后才想到的。 由于主要情节是在战斗中同时发生的，所以故事最终变得缓慢而混乱。

Truth be told, it took me nearly 6 months to finish this game, despite the fact that, overall, I loved it. The problem is that I would play a chapter, fight a battle, get super hyped about the story… and then return to the monastery.

说实话，尽管总的来说我喜欢它，但我花了将近6个月才完成了这场比赛。 问题是我会玩一章，打一场仗，对故事大肆宣传……然后回到修道院。

Once at the monastery, the game would go over the “wow huge plot point” and act as though it had critical significance, but then force me to spend the next month (of in-game time) doing the same auxiliary quests, talking to all of the characters to get their input, and largely ignoring whatever major thing just happened.

到达修道院后，游戏将越过“哇巨大的积点”，并表现出至关重要的作用，但随后迫使我花了下个月的时间 (在游戏中)进行相同的辅助任务，与所有角色都得到他们的输入，并且基本上忽略了发生的任何重大事件。

Your initial thought might be, “Well, why didn’t you just skip through it?”

您最初的想法可能是：“嗯，为什么不跳过呢？”

Because that’s not Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is not a game for skipping content. Fire Emblem is about talking to your crew, building the dream team, and getting attached to their relationships with each other. The gems in these series have always been hidden between the lines.

因为那不是Fire Emblem 。 Fire Emblem不是一款用于跳过内容的游戏。 Fire Emblem就是与您的工作人员交谈，建立梦想团队，并与他们彼此建立联系。 这些系列中的宝石一直隐藏在线条之间。

But in Three Houses, what I’d expect to be in-between the lines ended up being a bunch of shallow filler and redundant “gameplay.” Why do I need an entire “instruction” day to add a small amount of skill experience to my units? This used to happen automatically by just using the units in battle. What’s the point of going to the shopping district when all of the things they sell there are available in the battle screen?

但是在《 三宫》中 ，我期望介于两者之间的结果是一堆浅浅的填充物和多余的“游戏性”。 为什么我需要一整天的“教学”日才能为我的单位增加少量的技能经验？ 过去，这只是通过在战斗中使用单位而自动发生的。 当他们在战斗屏幕中出售的所有物品都可用时，去购物区有什么意义？

All of these “features” slow down the game but for little gain. And in Fire Emblem, a series typically set around plot twists and player choices, all this ends up doing is make the story feel unimportant. By the time I finished the month, I had almost forgotten whatever major plot point happened before, and whatever new plot point they would introduce had less impact.

所有这些“功能”都会减慢游戏速度，但收效甚微。 在《 火焰纹章 》( Fire Emblem)中 ，通常会围绕情节曲折和玩家选择进行一系列设定，最终所有要做的就是使故事变得不重要。 在本月结束时，我几乎忘记了之前发生的任何主要情节，而他们引入的任何新情节影响都较小。

I think the worst example of this was in the Golden Deer route when sieging the Imperial Army. I thought “Oh boy, major battle after major battle here we go.” The game sets it up as this long conquest, which is a classic move for Fire Emblem.

我认为最糟糕的例子是 围攻帝国军时在金鹿路线上 我以为“哦，男孩，大战之后，我们要去了。” 游戏将其设置为长期征服，这是Fire Emblem的经典举动。

But in-between each battle guess what happens? That’s right. Somehow they decided it would be a good idea to break immersion and put you all the way back in the Monastery which is supposed to be hundreds of miles out of your way.

但是在每场战斗之间，您猜会发生什么？ 那就对了。 他们以某种方式认为，打破沉浸并将您带回到修道院的路上是个好主意，而修道院距离您有数百英里。

Stuff like this shatters what would otherwise be a well-paced game.

这样的玩意破坏了本来应该是节奏很好的游戏。

In my opinion, the previous games in the series did not suffer from this, even though they often had side missions or other departures from the main plot. This is due to the fact that the side missions felt meaningful and maintained pacing, even though they weren’t necessarily directly related to the game.

我认为，该系列的前几场比赛并没有遭受此影响，即使它们经常有副任务或其他偏离主场的情况。 这是由于这样的事实，即使副任务不一定与游戏直接相关，副任务也感觉有意义并保持节奏。

What do I mean by “maintained pacing?” Let me give an example from another game that did it right. Not so coincidentally, let me talk about Persona 5, which laid the blueprint for this calendar system.

“维持节奏”是什么意思？ 让我举一个做得对的游戏示例。 并非巧合，让我谈一谈Persona 5 ，它为该日历系统奠定了蓝图。

In Persona 5 you have a similar setup. A major plot point happens roughly every month followed by exploring a dungeon, and in-between those plot points you spend time learning about your team, exploring the city, and more.

在《 女神异闻录5》中，您具有类似的设置。 大约每个月都会发生一个主要的计划点，然后探索地牢，在这些计划点之间，您需要花时间学习有关团队的知识，探索城市等等。

Yet the game does not slow down. In fact, it seems to speed up.

然而，游戏并没有减慢速度。 实际上，它似乎正在加速。

That’s because what you do in Persona’s downtime feels important in the larger context of the game. The interactions you have with the major characters in this downtime build in distinct, standalone ways that make you excited to play that part of the game. They add flavor to the overall experience in a way that isn’t forced and doesn’t feel repetitive. Most of all, these in-between periods work in the context of the game. There’s a reason for the time between events, and due to the events in the plot, that time feels precious. Every day counts. If you don’t do something fast enough, you lose the game.

这是因为在更大的游戏环境中， Persona停机期间的工作很重要。 在此停机期间，您与主要角色的互动以独特，独立的方式构建，使您兴奋地参与到游戏的这一部分。 它们以不被强迫且不会重复的方式为整体体验增添风味。 最重要的是，这些中间时间段在游戏环境中起作用。 事件之间有时间间隔是有原因的，而且由于情节中的事件，所以时间感觉很宝贵。 每一天都很重要。 如果您做得不够快，就会输掉比赛。

Contrast this to Fire Emblem, where the time feels completely random and the jumps back to the Monastery (as pointed out above) often feel arbitrary or worse. There’s often no sense of why there’s a whole month between plot points, or what the point of even returning to the Monastery is.

与此形成鲜明对比的是《 火焰纹章》 ，那里的时间感觉完全是随机的，跳回修道院(如上文所述)通常会感到任意或更糟。 人们通常不知道为什么在阴谋点之间要整整一个月，或者什至回到修道院的意义是什么。

慢节奏的价值 (The value of slower pacing)

After all of that, a natural conclusion might be that games should just avoid slow pacing, but that’s far from true. Some games only really shine because of a slower pace.

毕竟，一个自然的结论可能是游戏应该避免缓慢的节奏，但这远非事实。 某些游戏只是因为速度较慢才真正发光。

One great example is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

一个很好的例子是《塞尔达传说：荒野之息》 。

Here’s a game with near-perfect reviews and a hungry following years after being released. An old friend described it as a “quiet masterpiece.”

这是一款评论近乎完美的游戏，发布后的几年里又饿了。 一个老朋友将其描述为“安静的杰作”。

Saying that the game is slow is an understatement. The game lets you do whatever you want at whatever pace you want, and due to the grandeur and scale of the world, the pace is naturally slower. The majesty of BotW accumulates over time. It’s a long, beautiful journey into a serene apocalypse.

说游戏慢是轻描淡写。 游戏让您以自己想要的步调做任何事情，并且由于世界的宏伟和规模，步伐自然会变慢。 随着时间的流逝， BotW的威信不断累积。 经历一段宁静的启示，这是一段漫长而美丽的旅程。

That’s not the kind of experience you can rush.

那不是您可以匆忙的经验。

宕机并不都是坏事…… (Downtime wasn’t all bad…)

Despite my negativity, there were redeeming qualities to the downtime, especially early in the game. Having the opportunity to talk to all of the characters and explore the Monastery was fun. It added a new element to the series, which is always refreshing in a game like Fire Emblem that owes success to its tried-and-true formula.

尽管我很消极，但还是有一些可以弥补停机时间的特性，尤其是在游戏初期。 有机会与所有角色交谈并探索修道院很有趣。 它为该系列增加了一个新元素，在诸如Fire Emblem之类的游戏中，它总是令人耳目一新，这要归功于其久经考验的公式。

Personally, I would have loved if they just cut this part out of the game after a certain point. By the end of the game, I was just going through it as fast as possible because it felt so unimportant compared to the larger scope of events.

就个人而言，如果他们只是在某一点之后将这一部分从游戏中删除，我会很喜欢的。 到游戏结束时，我只是尽可能快地通过它，因为与更大范围的事件相比，它是如此重要。

If instead, they could have found a way to shorten or condense it, as well as modify it so it made sense within the context of the larger narrative (i.e. not jumping back to the base in the middle of a conquest halfway across the continent), I think it would work better.

如果相反，他们本可以找到一种方法来缩短或压缩它，以及对其进行修改，以便在更大的叙述范围内才有意义(例如，在征服整个非洲大陆的中途，不要跳回基地) ，我认为它会更好。