Dark Dawn: Three Years On

by Piyoz on Nov 29th, 2013

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot of things about media that aren’t exactly new. A Nuts & Bolts article. Complaints about the Last Airbender movie. Random GBA games. It may be the lack of new games/movies/comic books into my life that is the culprit, but whatever the cause, I have come back for yet another look back at something. This time, it hits home.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was released in November of 2010 for the Nintendo DS. It is the third installment of the famed GBA JRPG series. I don’t intend to review the game here. My purpose here is to try to figure out why this game wasn’t all that it could have been.

Let me be clear: Dark Dawn is a very good game. On a good day, I might say it’s great. It certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Golden Sun or the Lost Age, but all the pieces are in place. The graphics bring the 2D GBA world of Weyard into fresh, interesting DS polygons. The soundtrack done by Motoi Sakuraba is as good as ever. The dungeons and puzzle sequences are at the top of their game. Dark Dawn’s structure is nearly identical to previous installments. But still, the gaming community has universally agreed that Dark Dawn simply isn’t as good.

How can this be?

To explain this phenomenon, I must employ yet another seemingly-unrelated metaphor.

When I was about 16-17 years old, the ambitious story teller in me had neither the social aptitude or social obligations that he has today. He had the free time to spend hours upon hours every day drawing comics. Not just silly cultural introspection.  Not depressing looks at contemporary life. Not experimental fiction. Just whatever came to my mind. Back then I didn’t really think about what I was writing and drawing. I just did it. Free from any inhibitions that come with age. And it was wonderful.

Granted, not all blind, thoughtless art turns out well. However, there’s something to be said about throwing caution to the wind in creative endeavors. Nowadays I sit and meticulously plan every panel. But sometimes, late at night, a whole page just appears in my head. Like a muse from the heavens, inspiration strikes me like a bolt of lightning. And there is no sleep or meal until this idea is fleshed out. Like a photographer hitting the streets on a boring Sunday afternoon, or a performance artist doing some raw improv, the true essence of the creative spirit lies not in planning but in doing.

The first two Golden Sun games are a prime example of this. Nothing about the original seems fleshed out or thought through at all. Basic story. Basic token characters. Predictable environments for a fantasy setting. Unoriginal combat. The Djinn system is pretty creative but that’s about it. Every other element of Golden Sun is derivative of every other RPG you’ve ever played. It takes everything we’ve always known and hones it to near perfection without tossing much else into the mix.

The combination of game elements for the original Golden Sun games is haphazard. Random. Without consideration for silly things like sales figures or marketability. Camelot Software just did it. They just made it. And the result was a perfect storm of game elements that blended together better than the game designers ever imagined. It was a fluke.

The question remains: how do you do this again?

The sad answer to that question is that you can’t. I tried for years after Operation Seapansy to make a story so big, so original, and so full of creativity. I couldn’t do it. You cannot emulate that sort of random luck. It’s a glorious and enigmatic phenomenon that cannot be duplicated. Camelot can make as many Golden Sun games as they want. Nothing will ever be so sophomorically brilliant no matter how much money you throw at it.

All they can do is make a good game. And they managed that. They can make a dozen more and I’ll play every single one. It will all be in vain. One cannot harness the juvenile creative spirit for profit, and one cannot make another Golden Sun.

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