Shrek Reference - Tumblr Posts
Footnote: Psst, This is my new blog! Due to some technical issues with the old one, I am rblging the original MMM and CFF posts on this account, as well as continuing the future rambles under this handle from now on!
Media Marvel Monday, #6:
It Feels Good to Be Bad, and Why The Overlord is The Perfect Playable Villain
Anime fans, I absolutely love you, but sit down, this is about a video game series from the late 2000s. One I really don’t remember how I got into exactly… I sort of think I rented Overlord 2 once upon a time on a whim.. Know I never saw any ads for it though, and barely anyone talks about it much these days. So, gotta do what I gotta do! Trust me though I actually think we have some common ground here you might be interested in.
And you others out there, I see you, disney fans exclusively fixated on the villains of every classic, y’all who main Bowser and King Boo in Mario Kart, everyone one of you eccentrics who can’t stop spilling your heart out for Megamind at any chance you get, who unironically throw it back to hits like “When You’re Evil” and root on that feral madman who wants to watch the (fictional) world burn. You guys are MY kinda people, okay?
And can anyone really blame us for how damn FUN the role of evil can look? By which I mean the outfits, the energy, the vibes, and the simple joy of fucking some shit up and climbing atop the world, perish all who stand in the way. You want me to love your villains, you need to engrave three words about them in my mind: Determination, aesthetic, and Badass. These are not the best villains in writing period, but I personally find them the best suited for the shoes of a non-heroic protagonist. THIS is what you want to sell when you’re pitching “play the monster” as your game premise. This is the first piece of what makes Overlord and its sequel shine true to form.
But on the second note, why do so many of us enjoy this anyway? Minor guess, but this is not actually pulling the wings off of an ant sadism, don’t get it twisted. This is more.. the innocent, childish glee of stomping around a cardboard city and pretending to be godzilla. This is only love of "evil" as performance, just the other side of the same indulgent coin that loves for the power fantasies of Batman and Rambo. Authors who love villians, or at least understand and love the impact a villain can really have on a memorable work, write great villains. So, no need to even consider feeling weird about it, and definitely a reminder: nothing to judge or take wrong. But something else I think this comes from is an oft overlooked angle of humor. That is the other piece right there, my friends- a dark kind of humor that only a bad guy would have any position of self awareness or cynicism to make work. To give easy example, Puss in Boots, so many agree, is a great case lately of seeing a revived flocking back to love for what I’m talking about here. Complex, multidimensional villains are freaking awesome. Villains with humanity and sympathetic glints rock. That’s just good writing when done competently, but it’s something so caught onto these days that we’re at the point where an unapologetic monster is the retro subversion rather than the rule exception anymore. Like you CAN’T tell me Jack Horner was not a hilarious, well-received breath of fresh air.
The Overlord series, in a nutshell, unironically lets you be Jack Horner, and win.
(Note: The following is specifically going to pertain to my personal favorite of the franschise: Overlord II. You’ll have to trust my anecdotal word that the first game is still really good, but not entirely necessary to enjoy its sequel.)
To sum up the meat of the setting, it basically follows your stereotropical fantasy world, with elves and gnomes and all of that fun jazz, but it does so in a "Shrek" sense. It's a whimsical and epic world that is to put it bluntly, unapologetically fucking ugly. Unicorns are bloodthirsty terrors, gnomes are on level with nuissance pests, and elves are portrayed as obnoxious caricatures of tree-hugging hippies. Humans have a powerful civilization going that takes the Roman Empire as its on the nose inspiration, but most people of the world are shown as bigoted, self-interested, and sheeplike. There is maybe one character I can name from Overlord 2 that isn't a POS in some respect.
But you're sure as hell not playing to be that person, lmfao. You play as an unnamed beast of a man referred to as the Fourth Overlord. See, there's somewhat of a cycle to the world that follows the usual script of the fantasy paint by number- the dance between good, and the stubborn evil that keeps somehow rising to power every generation or two because of plot reasons. Your guy, he's the son of the third overlord, dude from the first game, and that fella sure checked off all of the "Sauron-esque dark lord" boxes and then some. Long story short, he had a solid run of world domination, and then met an untimely oopsie one day that left him more or less trapped in Hell. So, role's open, you've been an evil little demon child since basically birth, time to put on your big boy cape and show the world you got what it takes to carry the legacy on.
My, unspeakable monsters do grow up so fast 🥺❤
So, you got your goal in order, but the question is, how does someone take up the mantle of building an empire of darkness? A little help , of course, because what the hell would a true Overlord be without
MINIONS!
Those banana bitches from Despicable Me don't have shit on these hysterical hellspawns. Years before pop culture was saturated with those yellow pill dudes, Overlord had already come up with the exact same concept, but done fucking right. They're rowdy and crude. They're whacky and wild. They are DUMB as rocks, but masochistically loyal to their master. And they are the scrungly lovechild of Gremlins and Pikmin, so obviously, the complete package as far as little funny henchmen go. They come in four different variants with distinct strengths and weaknesses. Most of the gameplay revolves around commanding hordes of these fellas and utilizing a mix of puzzle-strategy thinking and action-rpg antics. What's even better is that your central hub and seat of power rests in a super kickass upside down tower in The Netherworld. The demons got some good real estate tastes.
An interesting way the game lets you decide exactly what sort of evil tyrant you'd like to be is in the implementation of an interesting sort of "morality", or, immorality system. Picture the usual sort of "this route, that route" karma mechanic, but instead of a sliding scale between good and evil, your optional values are domination vs destruction. The gist is on the tin, and if either option is leaned into completely, it does effect the epilogue cutscene. If you prefer to control your unwilling subjects through magical coercion, keep your impulse control in check, and play a more cold and clever Overlord, you'll be running down the domination route. The effect on gameplay this has is that it generally specializes your dark magical skills into minion buffs and being able to turn your weakest enemies into mindless slaves for your side. The destruction route, on the other hand, is for those who want to go full chaotic evil and isn't afraid to get their hands very, very dirty. The spells along the destruction tree are good at exactly what you think they're good at, and if you really want to FC this style for the ending, you may find fights a little easier at the cost of really kneecapping your ability to easily farm certain resources. Quite hard to extort villages after you've burned them all to the ground with no survivors, after all. Despite the absolutely unserious overtones that Overlord 2 treats itself with, there is actually a story to experience (With a fun twist-antagonist to boot), and it was hardly a thoughtless project. The soundtrack is earnestly one of my favorites of playstation titles, and while the worldbuilding is a cynical kind, it's very consistent to itself and actually thought out a lot more of itself than it lets off at the surface level. I can't help but dream of a world where it got enough lasting popularity to make a modern remake possible, because it would have been lovely to see the concept art's vision given a better justice than the limits of the time.
Overlord has always been something of 'the Shrek of old Playstation games' to me. It was tongue-in-cheek subversive while simultaneously celebrating the heart of the genre. I think it could have been well remembered by more if it had gotten better luck back in the day, that is, if you can look past the elements of it that didn't hold up as well as it did twenty years ago. Most I remember being the low hanging fatphobia fruit that the humor style had a bit of a fixation on for a lot of the story, and perhaps the canonical harem situation but... it's practically a moot point in the context to the fact that this is still the same game where it is physically impossible to progress past the tutorial level through any other means besides clubbing a group of baby seals to death. It was T-rated edgy, but it didn't forget that really, it was about silly fun and the "Jack Horner" kind of absurdity of it all at the end of a day.
Peppiona!? (❀｣╹□╹)｣*