Tevi Is The Best Game With The Worst Fucking Narrative Design

10 12月 2023

i cannot believe this game is almost everything i wanted from a metroidvania game with unique bosses and the scenario is also one of the greatest stinkers of all time.

before this post gets seriously negative, i want to first stress that i love this game. the graphics are some of the best looking in indie games and the combat system is unbelievably satisfying. bosses are honestly some of the best i've seen in a game and the exploration, while the main game doesn't hold a candle to rabi ribi's free form style, is challenging and always interesting. playing it on expert was one of the funnest things i've done all year.

i'm also really, really fond of gemayue's storytelling when he is given the chance. you can read how much love i have for the irisu fight in rabi-ribi. so all the criticisms i have against tevi's narrative design come from love because i cannot believe how poor the scenario is at integrating with the gameplay.

there is a fundamental disconnect between the scenario writer (ein lee) and how gemayue designs metroidvanias. the scenario we got in tevi feels like it's meant for another title. the metroidvania design and boss battles suffer from this. i have never played a game where elements are at odds at itself and it makes this an "interesting" game to think about in terms of narrative design.

the tl;dr is that there's too much text that doesn't matter. the player is flooded with information that has no relevance to what they're seeing and interacting with. there's no reason for the player to care about the world, the characters, and what they are doing besides the gameplay being the best thing ever. in other words, the narrative design actually pushes the player away from caring about anything and i don't think the story in the game is supposed to do that!

1) your protagonists never grow as characters and it gets very dissonant as you become stronger

the most important part about any game is likely how the protagonist feels. tevi is a versatile character who can navigate the screen at ease, especially when all movement tech is unlocked. her buddies, seria and sable, provide her ammunition against enemies and bosses. the player can craft more items and sigils to make the trio's combos more powerful and easier to use. it's easy to think how in the game world they become closer as comrades against the greater evil as they learn each other's strengths and weaknesses.

however, that never happens.

your characters talk about how they're destined to be together, but for some reason there's not that much banter. no one exactly has chemistry, even if it's obvious there's supposed to be a dynamic. tevi, seria, and sable never feel believable as a friend group at all. instead, the characters only pop up to discuss the world around them and they don't even have silly slice-of-life dialog between each other. it's extremely strange that we never get anything that resembles a chat.

this makes it very strange as the player unlocks better combos. tevi's whole attack relies on her teamwork with the two and nothing about it makes sense outside of the game stat rules. while this may be minor for most people, i remember feeling off especially in the lategame when we unlock core expansions (the shmup bomb equivalent) where teamwork does actually happen; the current partner you're using fires up a shield while the other partner works as a substitute. switching between firing patterns/partner is smooth, so i find this very peculiar.

unfortunately, this is the least of the issues.

2) the worldbuilding doesn't matter

tevi's biggest sin is making you think the worldbuilding is important.

we get a lot of talk about how magic works and the politics that make up the world. we learn that there's a group of soldiers and robots who patrol the world. lots of interesting details that would work well in most stories. however, these details turn out to be pointless as conflicts suddenly get resolved and the game will then proceed to introduce new plots and settings.

this can become quite silly. in the earlygame, we get introduced to racism as a conflict: humans and beasts kinda hate each other and beasts also have the disadvantage in being unable to use magic. tevi is also a human who is wearing bunny ears; her science magic makes people think she's a beastkin. however, this conflict is never raised past a certain chapter where a boss calls tevi out for "beastfacing". THIS IS VERY STRANGE. the game introduces racism, tevi gets called out for pretending to be a minority, and then it never gets discussed again.

there are more spoilery worldbuilding details that just get thrown out for no good reason, so it's hard for someone like me to care about what tevi is doing. outside of the exceptional gemayue challenge, i feel like i'm doing nothing to change the world when i control tevi. the game will say, "Congrats for beating the boss", but what did tevi do exactly? the boss anyway will just go "Heh, I'll return!"

and there are also times when the game will set up something that should foreshadow a bigger plot arc, but it doesn't happen. the prologue begins with tevi being caught in a team rocket-like organization and you think they'll be recurring cartoon villains, but they only appear at the very end of the game -- right when i completely forgot their existence.

worse, if you like certain memorable details about the setting and characters and anticipate something bigger, it's not like they're going to return. there's like a fatally sick character who needs tevi's help and the plot seems like it's supposed to resolve that, but ... there is no discussion on what happened to her -- even in the epilogue. i am honestly surprised a game would introduce elements that should give reason for the player to be invested only to betray them for being invested.

i also think it's really cool for the mcguffins of the game, the astral gears, to have no narrative or mechanical relevance in the story. the final boss sorta remembers they're important, but other than that i'm not sure why i've collected these items. there's supposed to be an explanation (there's a quest that's literally called the power of astral gears), but it never happened...

3) the game will introduce the silliest worldbuilding because it thinks They Matter to the player

nevertheless, the game thinks some details are more important than what the player will probably care about. throughout the game, tevi will meet characters who she claims to have a long history together only for them to meet tragic ends.

everyone's favorite is likely the waffle robot in the beginning. waffles are introduced as tevi's quirky food love, so the waffle robot clearly has some rapport with her. but it doesn't build up at all: tragedy happens and tevi cries, promising the robot that she'll make the best waffles. i have never seen a "quirk" be this forced...

another character follows a similar arc: she gets introduced as a long-lost childhood friend of tevi and it's one of the most random events that ever happens in the game. and all of a sudden, the whole plot revolves around this character for a few chapters because she's important! ... until she isn't!

i think you may see a trend going on.

but i think the worst part about this aspect is how the Actual Plot reveals itself at the final moments of the game. all that worldbuilding details about the political factions and so on are gone entirely; it's some terrible romance story between characters who are only introduced in the final act. the game will force backstories into the player and it just never stops.

by the end of the game, i cared little about the antagonists' motivations. i didn't care about the stakes of defeating the final bosses. all i wanted was a good time with the game, which to be fair i did as long as i shut the plot out my mind.

4) you cannot ignore the text in story mode because the text boxes will intrude into the game

let's say you read all this and go, "Well, Kastel. Sounds like a bad story, alright. But wouldn't it be alright just to skip the text? It's not like the game doesn't give you clear objective markers."

this may be true and the game does have a useful skip feature. however, there are a lot of cutscenes in the main game and it's even more egregious during boss battles -- and this also happens during phase changes in the final boss.

it's awful to go from avoiding epic bullet hell to pressing Esc to skip the goddamn cutscene. if you die at a boss battle, you'll need to skip that cutscene again. there are so, so, so many cutscenes in the game.

according to my clear file's log, there are at least seven hours i spent on reading dialog. speedrun mode, an unlockable modifier, takes out the text and it seems like the game is more enjoyable that way...

5) the story fucks with the metroidvania design through plot gates

but finally, and this is easily the worst aspect of the narrative design, it ruins tevi's exploration. sections of the world do not get unlocked unless the narrative says so and it can get pretty bad.

i was once exploring this difficult dungeon and thought i've seen it all. then i returned to the story only to find out i have to return. imagine my surprise when tevi went into this deadend to reveal a pathway to the next area. it was the most rage i've ever felt toward a game.

rabi-ribi fans have good reason to get pissed at tevi, but i think this is honestly far worse than most metroidvania games. these plot gates discourage early exploration and item collection because in the back of the player's head, they're going to be here for the plot anyway. if they struggled to navigate this area, they'd rather do this once.

this linearity would probably feel better if the narrative actually had reason to hide these pathways. they could just add a door that can only be unlocked by a key an npc will give later. instead, it's just tevi revealing some bushes to a new area.

the lack of justifications in the narrative is pretty baffling to me. it's obvious gemayue's approach to metroidvania design was at odds with the story, hence these arbitrary plot gates. but at the very least, i expected a good reason for tevi to not be able to uncover these areas.

this aspect honestly defeated me as a player more than it should've. iirc i had to take a day off to play another game because i was so annoyed how much the game didn't want me to explore.

which leads me to my final thoughts on the narrative design of tevi: i don't think the story cares for the fact it belongs to a metroidvania game. its priorities as a story seem to fit a traditional jrpg game (multiple towns, episodic arcs) and it has no flexibility to accommodate the usual freedoms a player has in this kind of game.

and it's not like a metroidvania requires the most intricate story. as long as the player has reason to care about what is going on, that's pretty good narrative design. give a reason why these bosses matter, why we should help the protagonists achieve the impossible, etc. you don't even need to be a writer to do this -- rabi ribi offers the most contrived plot and it still made me sob.

instead, we got a laughably poor story that mocks the player for even trying to care about the game's world. and it's a shame because the gameplay is wonderful and the world is gorgeous. however, the narrative design makes it hard for me to care about the happenings of the world besides in an abstract "game" way.

i don't like seeing games in a very detached and abstract way like that. narrative design to me is how you get players to think about what they're doing in the world; it's not just crafted stories or detailed worldbuilding but a reason for the player to keep playing the game. defeating a boss because it's challenging and hard is always cool, but it's even more meaningful if the boss fight has meaning for the player. to put it another way, narrative design makes the game not feel like a chore, another item to check off your backlog list.

i have a difficult relationship with tevi because of this. throughout my session, i would enjoy fighting the bosses and exploring the world only to get hit by a narrative that works against my investment in the title. it was only until i played other games during my session that i began to appreciate tevi by not giving a shit about the plot. however, it doesn't have to be that way and it's unfortunate that tevi is burdened by this poor narrative design.

i write this post not just to say i really like tevi in spite of this nonsense but also to show how important it is for game developers to think about narrative design. you can write shallow plots for all i care as long as it is harmonious with the gameplay goals you want players to have. writing a wordy plot that goes nowhere only upsets the player and makes it hard for them to care about the game you're playing. narrative design structures the game for the player. fail that and you're going to lose players' interests.

as for the future, i'm so glad gemayue's next game will be solo. his stories are terrible, but at least they consider the purpose of text in narrative design. as moogy said, rabi ribi knows when to "shut up".

that said, i think it's entirely possible for a metroidvania to have a good, even focused story. there is an alternate timeline where tevi is written by an actual writer concerned about how players experience the game: the plot beats need to be timed well, player agency is respected, and the world actually feels like it's worth fighting for.

oh well, i still love this game regardless of my issues with the narrative design. it's still one of the best games this year. i look forward to replaying the game on infernal bbq and free roam mode at a later date. i just wish tevi was the ideal gemayue game that i hoped for.