From when Prince of Persia, Jak and Sonic became teenagers and tried to be the coolest and baddest in the place. Changes in tone, adult content and action, lots of action.
What happened to the Prince of Persia in The Soul of the Warrior? Not seriously. What happened? Do you remember Las Arenas del Tiempo? That game was color, magic and romance. It was something halfway between One Thousand and One Nights and Sinbad the Sailor. Their prince was endearing, perhaps even Nathan Drake’s family. He continually tugged at irony and kept giving funny comments. But it was much more than that. He also carried the weight of guilt and emptiness of loss. We still break our hearts remembering Farah’s betrayal, the fight with our father and the word kakolookiyam. However, in its sequel everything was dark. Suddenly we were surrounded by heavy metal, half-naked aunts and nightmare monsters. The Soul of the Warrior looked like the room of a fifteen-year-old. The opening sequence had a close-up of an ass going up a flight of stairs. The final first boss was an aunt who, in the middle of the perfect storm, wore a tiny bikini made of … metal? And one of the first sentences of the prince, now sullen and sullen, was to call that character a whore (well, “harpy” in the Spanish version, “bitch” in the original). So that later they say about The Last of Us Part 2. There will never be anything more violent and uncomfortable in a video game than the change of tone and register that Ubisoft marked with the prince.
The beginning of El Alma del Guerrero was a declaration of intent.
What is edgy?
This article has nothing to do with El Alma del Guerrero’s quality as a game, which was wonderful. (In fact it is the favorite installment of this humble editor). We only refer to that, to its change of tone and register. Both are the paradigm of the edgy, understanding by “edgy” something that wants to be dark, depressing and mysterious simply because he believes that this is cooler, that it is “cooler” and attracts new audiences, generally teenagers. It should be a shame to use words like edgy, cool and cool in the same sentence, but welcome to the 21st century. Speaking clearly, the sequel to Prince of Persia was like the mythical kid from Patricia’s Diary who smoked to be a pimp, and following this comparison, Ubisoft would be like Mr. Burns dressed up as Jimbo. The developer could not think of a better idea to catapult the saga than make it “the most evil in the industry.” A plan that seems ridiculous today, one of those drawn by Captain Qwark in Ratchet & Clank, but that in the early 2000s it should have seemed brilliant to other companies. At the end of the day they all did the same, inaugurating what would become known as “the edgy era of video games”.
One of Penny Arcade’s most iconic comic strips featured Prince of Persia precisely for its edgy aesthetic.
When video games became teenage
Let’s face it, no one was too good at the turn of the century. We were so aware of the end of the world and the 2000 effect that, when we had to live a little longer, we had a hard time getting used to it. There is no other explanation for all the nonsense that happened during those years. It was a strange time in which we believed that Lost would make sense and in which Depor won the league. A world turned upside down in which we liked Amélie and in which we still saw something like games like Shenmue. Blush, huh? It makes sense that the edgy era of video games was then. Specifically during the second half of the sixth generation of consoles, that of PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube. But although Prince of Persia: The Soul of the Warrior is its greatest exponent, it was not the first. A year before it went on sale, Naughty Dog had already made way for him. Yes, yes, that Naughty Dog. Uncharted’s, Ellie’s. Capable of the best and, in its day, also of the worst. The same thing draws you two games at the top of Metacritic that transforms you a unique platform into a third person shooter. Because many have not yet overcome what happened with Jak 2 in 2004, when the Jak and Daxter saga went through its adolescent phase, or what is the same, its edgy stage.
To explain this traumatic change to those (lucky) who did not experience it, it is enough to remember the beginning of Jak 2. We came from a family-friendly platform in which a mudito protagonist toured a very varied and exotic world like himself. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was a medley of cultures and a very simple story about friendship. A clear heir to Super Mario 64 and, of course, Crash Bandicoot (also from Naughty Dog). Its protagonists made their way through the adventure with punches, kicks and jumps, many jumps. As crowded as the 3D platformer genre was, Jak and Daxter had just a few twisting attacks to dispatch the rest of the pets and make it onto our favorites list. However, all that changed in the second installment. In the opening sequence of Jak 2: Renegade we were traveling to a futuristic dystopia and Jak was caught by a group of soldiers. When Daxter released him, Jak broke his vow of silence and left us some sweet and innocent first words: “I’m going to kill Praxis.” And do you know what is the most fun of all? That in Spain the voice actor of Jak was the same as that of the Prince of Persia.
The parallelism with the prince started there, but it extended to the rest of the game. The color palette was fading. The setting changed its wild and fantasy nature for realism, the city and technology. The story was about a rebellion and was riddled with soldiers and following orders. And even the proposal was much more focused on action and we started using weapons and shooting left and right. Jak had become a bad boy. He was always in a bad mood, biting comments and giving him fits of rage. On top of these tantrums they transformed him into Dark Jak, an emo version of the character whose eyes gleamed, claws came out and even generated rays around his body. But far from affecting his private life, these characteristics made him a hero in the eyes of others. A mysterious hero who, to Daxter’s envy, “had them all crazy.” The Precursor Legacy and Jak 2 were like day and night. And yet, Jak 2 was also a great game that is hard not to remember fondly.
Jak’s adolescence was also difficult to fit in.
We would conclude that the edgy aesthetic, even bordering on the ridiculous out of context, does not imply anything at the level of quality, but there is a third example that we want to give you and that, yes, in addition to edgy was mediocre like himself, so you never know . But before we go with him let’s recall some statements from Naughty Dog about Jak’s change. They explain very well the reasoning followed by the industry at the time and the reasons for such a transformation. “Things have changed. Ten years ago there were no games like Grand Theft Auto. You played Mario because Mario was all there was. But now the Pandora’s box has been opened and the young people want to play the same as the older ones, and the young people want to play things like Grand Theft Auto, “said Jason Rubin, co-founder of the studio, in 2003.” I am 33 years and what I want now is very different from what I wanted ten years ago. We have grown. So we have changed the atmosphere of the game to adapt it to older people. This is no longer about saving princesses, now it is about treason and revenge. Jak has changed a lot. He’s older, he’s been a prisoner, and he’s pissed off. He is not a hero like those of the past ”.
“Before, you played Mario because Mario was all there was. But things have changed and this is no longer going to save princesses.”
These daring statements, which certainly have not aged well, were accompanied by an equally daring dart to Nintendo. Rubin himself acknowledged that the fact that Mario Sunshine (2002) had sold below expectations redoubled his idea that Jak and Daxter needed a change. “When I put the game on (Mario Sunshine) I was hoping to see Miyamoto’s greatness again, but the characters came out saying“ Bloop! Bloop! Bloop! ” and it was like … this is from 1997. I don’t need this in 2003. You need a character with voice and personality, a more cinematic experience. Don’t give me the Mario from 15 years ago. Nintendo just hasn’t turned the page, they haven’t focused on that. For Miyamoto it must be difficult to direct Nintendo and at the same time be aware of video game design. ” Leaving aside that if there was an award for an edgy interview it would be for this one, the answers allow us to glimpse another of the reasons in which we will later investigate: the “bump” that Grand Theft Auto III meant for this industry.
Shadow the Hedgehog is another of the great “jewels” of the time.
But before we close our three peat. The crown jewels of this era were always Jak 2: Renegade (2003), Prince of Persia: The Soul of the Warrior (2004), and Shadow the Hedgehog (2005). Because yes, in the mid-2000s Sonic wasn’t enough. This one and his friends were too colorful. Besides, his only ability is … what, running very fast? Well go And last but not least, his greatest enemy has proven, thirty years later, to be nothing more than a chubby version of Jim Carrey with a mustache. Fortunately, Sega realized it in time and gave us this wonderful spin off. We needed an adventure in which its protagonist had not fallen from the rainbow. A character who, apart from the bullshit of running, knew how to do heroic things, such as holding a gun, and who had unique and original enemies to match. We talk about aliens, of course. Shadow even understood how pathetic Sonic’s missions were and went everywhere pissed off and cursing. His most common phrases were two: “Where is that damn emerald?” and “I don’t have time for this.” The cane music and the explosions everywhere were just the icing on the cake. He was a protagonist of ten whose past tormented him so much that it infuriated him, so much that he didn’t let him think about anything else. The game began (and half of the animations) looking at nothing and thinking about everything. Yes, irony aside, it’s clear that Shadow the Hedgehog is a key piece of that edgy gaming trident. His legacy is eternal. We are not referring to his 45 on Metacritic, but to his work on YouTube, where if you search for “shadow edgy” you find more material than humanity deserves. See that Sonic Adventure 2 had warned us, but …
Can a sports game be edgy?
There are many more examples of this prepubertal stage, although no case is as exaggerated and pronounced as that of those three. One of the oldest there is and one that perhaps could rival them is the BMX XXX, from 2002. As its name suggests, it was a sports game focused on BMX and free style. But at the same time, and also as its name suggests, the game fooled around with porn and adult content. Because yes, surprising as it sounds, the sports genre also has several edgy titles. For the record, this one in particular was not so, so bad. Playable it was correct. It was like a sequel to Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX (2000) and inherited many of its mechanics, but since it had not been very successful at the sales level, its developer decided that, instead of having a professional cyclist like Dave Mirra image. , the best thing was to bet on naked women. It had to be “cool” and seem intended for adults. The product would be the same, but its packaging would scream “for adults only”. The idea was carried to its ultimate consequences. The game signed a contract with a New York strip club and recorded scenes with real strippers that it later included as a reward. He even had his media coverage brought to him by Playboy magazine. The result? Chains like WalMart and Toys ‘R’ Us refusing to sell it and Sony demanding that it be censored on PlayStation 2, something that did not happen in its versions of Xbox and Gamecube. The title let us handle a topless cyclist and had scenes full of erotic motifs. Talking about sexualization in video games and not thinking about BMX XXX is impossible. There have been countless releases that have pulled sex to get attention, but what a BMX-focused sports game would do … it’s hard to define. Without a doubt, the edgy version of the genre. The crash was historic, as you can imagine, but it set a precedent. Thanks to him, there were titles such as Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (2005), among many others, who learned to renew their image to offer the same content as always, but with a layer of vandalism and Jackass on top. “To become pimps”.
So that later they say that sports games cannot also be edgy. The slogan “This is BMX?” Is wonderful.
Dozens of examples
The thing is, there was a time when it seemed like every sequel had to feature a darker tone, or a dark power, or even a dark alter ego. Hell, it even happened to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004), which is not suspicious of it but had that element and even had a level called Dark Aether. Another mild case was that of Ratchet Gladiator (2005), in whose promotional materials Insomniac decided that Ratchet always had to appear angry, with a black background and if possible, with the “coolest” armor they had. And already in the game they thought that the jump was a little the same as long as there were shots and explosions. What to say also about Vexx (2003), a platform very inspired by Super Mario 64 that would be like turning Mario into Wolverine and making him look for human hearts instead of stars. Of course with a story of revenge behind. With death and rage as a background, nothing generic about them. Even Lara Croft suffered the edgy effect when switching generations. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness (2003) showed a depressed Lara, for the first time interested in an adult relationship (remember Kurtis?). This is how the game description said, for you to see: “After her close death in Egypt, Lara has become colder and more calculating, with a darker and more distrustful soul that haunts her to this day.” In the first levels, it didn’t take long for him to be charged with a murder and he devoted himself to fleeing from the police (is there anything more badass than that?) While looking for clues to unravel clear his name and unravel a great mystery. Without going completely wrong, the game did not have the expected success and Crystal Dynamics canceled the plans it had for him, in which he was considered the beginning of a new trilogy. To finish we did not forget Bomberman Act Zero (2006), already for Xbox 360, where the character was simply unrecognizable and looked like a kind of cheap Iron Man. When encyclopedias embrace millennials and pick up the term edgy, the Act Zero cover should be right next to the word. It is one of the lowest rated titles in history. One of those that deserve to be buried in the desert along with Atari’s ET copies. More than a decade later, its gameplay is still terrifying.
Neither Lara Croft nor Bomberman escaped being “products of their time”.
How did the edgy era come about?
Broadly speaking, the reasons that led to the appearance of this stage were three. The first, the decline of platforms in three dimensions. The public was saturated. The genre grew at a rate that was not matched by news and improvements that justified it. They began to see the seams of the great sagas of the genre and with each new delivery sales and notes received dropped a little more. Remembering the latest Crash and Spyro from the PlayStation 2 era is heartbreaking, not to mention the high price Sonic, Rayman, and Mega-Man paid in their jump to three dimensions (with exceptions like Rayman Revolution). A change was necessary, something new. The second reason was, as Jason Rubin said, the growth of the target for which video games were intended. They wanted to reach new audiences and propose deeper and more mature experiences. The problem is that many did not know how and did not differentiate between an adult video game and an adult video game. They believed that the only way to demonstrate how older they were was to offer large doses of action and a darker aesthetic. Largely motivated by the third and most important reason: Grand Theft Auto III (2001). The Rockstar game was a turning point not only in the saga, but in the entire sector. That Liberty City, the first great open world; its history, characters and situations; the amount of possibilities that there were at a playable level … It was something revolutionary and, even more important, it made the saga jump from the 2-3 million units sold to the more than 10 million that it harvested. GTA III had ridiculous numbers for the time (and its sequels, seen the 130 million of GTA V, still have them). So, unsurprisingly, everyone wanted their share of the cake. They wanted to approach their formula and repeat such a success. “Good artists copy, geniuses steal,” said Picasso. Too bad imitating Rockstar has never been easy or fast. You know, the cake is a lie.
Even Ratchet & Clank momentarily forgot about the platforms and focused on downloading shots and bad milk.
Stephen King said in As I write that adolescence is a stage of life in which it is obligatory to be arrogant. A time when we have to drink nitroglycerin and smoke TNT. They are years to spit into the sky without fear that then it will fall on us. There will be time later for life to pass us the bill. Video games did all of this. Wow if they did. Many believed they were the baddest and coolest in the place. They misinterpreted the meaning of the word “adult” and wanted to grow up ahead of time. If they looked back themselves, surely more than one would blush. It is not for less. Out of context they are almost parodic games, exaggerated and without braking capacity. Many were an accumulation of stereotypes and looked like that kid who went to the video store and looked askance at the “adults only” section, from which he could only imagine what was inside. Wrong clichés about music, women and what it implies “Being a man.” Most were appearance, social convention. Little angels! But that’s the way. We’ve all been teenagers and done stupid things. Some of those stupid things also ended up being wonderful experiences (just like Prince of Persia: The Soul from the Warrior and Jak 2), and from others at least we learned a valuable lesson (such as Sega with Shadow the Hedgehog) .Therefore, we should not look at this Edgy era with superiority or embarrassment. We should not try to forget or eradicate those years of our history, but to assume them with a nostalgic smile and with pride. Because this industry spent its own adolescence means that it has grown and improved, that luckily we have changed and that thanks to it it is such and as we know it now. And be careful because you already know how fashions are. Sooner or later the edgy stage will return. May God catch us confessed.
