Making your Enemies your Rivals

Whitney’s Miltank. Primal Aspids. Sectopods. Feel your heart rate rising yet? That blood rush in your cheeks? That deep seated hatred stirring in your very soul? These enemies provoke a visceral response in players, reminding you that not only are you a fleshy mortal against digital villains, but also that you can still be ruled by your anger. In short, they are subject to what I have decided to call the Fuck That Guy principle.

Now, what exactly is the Fuck That Guy principle? Simply put, it is designing an enemy that fills you with nothing but the overwhelming feeling of Fuck that Guy in Particular. It is not enough for a fight to be fun and well designed, giving you a sense of accomplishment when it is finished. No, to fit within this idea, you must not only feel accomplishment, but a deep vindictive joy at killing the damn thing, whatever it is. It is no longer a faceless enemy, but someone that has personally wronged you intentionally and with great maliciousness. 

You’ll notice that only one of the enemies I listed is actually a boss fight (insofar as early Pokemon games had boss fights). It is vitally important in your game that the Fuck That Guy principle is not only exteded to your boss fights but to random enemies throughout the game. Sure we’ll all develop a level of hatred for Miquella, Blade of Malenia or Shrine Guardian Seth, but ultimately that’ll only be there for that fight. Primal Aspids? They’ll be pestering you for the whole back half of Hollow Knight. Sectopods still invoke a level of fear in me and I haven’t played XCOM in years. If you reserve your uses of the Principle for boss fights, you lose out on the many little rivalries and impromptu story beats that make these games so much fun. Who doesn’t love developing a rivalry with a random enemy because for whatever reason it Just. Keeps. Killing you. 

There are two sets of games that, in my opinion, have truly mastered the Fuck That Guy principle: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War with their nemesis system and then Slay the Spire 1 and 2, especially Slay the Spire 2. 

A quick overview for the uninitiated: Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War are Lord of the Rings games following the gravewalking ranger Talion, who now shares his existence with the ghost of the ancient elven ringsmith Celebrimbor. They stalk through the lands of Mordor, hunting orcs and the servants of Sauron, and every time they are killed they canonically rise again. These games made use of what was called the Nemesis System. The Nemesis System is the in-game mechanic by which the specific Orc Lieutenants and Warbosses are given personalities and combat traits to differentiate them from the other orcs.

Every Orc leader has a name and a collection of traits including things that terrify them, enrage them, types of attacks they are particularly vulnerable to, and types of attacks that they are immune to. If a random orc grunt is able to kill you as you go through the game, that orc will then be promoted to be a named orc with their own traits, giving you a new villain to take vengeance on. Meanwhile, if a named orc leader is able to kill you, or at least survive their encounter with you, they will become stronger, develop new traits, and possibly even gain underlings. It allows for the growth of your enemies as time passes, with new faces constantly emerging, and some old faces defying death time and time again.

When I originally played Shadow of Mordor way back when, there was one particular orc, I can’t recall his name, who simply wouldn’t stay dead. By the end of the game he was covered in bandages from head to toe, immune to every type of damage except stealth kills, and I still just kept sneaking up behind him and shanking him every time I saw him. Sure it was minorly frustrating to have to come up with a new way to sneak up on him in every environment, but I didn’t mind. Clearly Eru Illuvatar had seen fit to curse me with this bastard, and I was going to do my best to ensure that the bastard was also cursed with me. This is the prime goal of the Fuck This Guy principle. To develop an enemy that, no matter in what context you see them, will make you drop everything you’re doing to ensure that they once again are killed stone dead. It was my own mini-quest among the story of the game, giving me a new personal goal to follow and breathe more life into what was already a very fun game.

Slay the Spire 2 takes a bit of a different approach. As a roguelike without a true focus on the story, Mega Crit (The Developers) are less focused on developing the personality of their foes but instead on the mechanics that define them. While Slay the Spire was an excellent game with some unique bosses and elites (Time Eater and the Gremlin Nob come to mind), Slay the Spire 2 takes it to a whole new level. Countless enemies in this game take on unique mechanics that help to differentiate them from every other foe, while also ensuring that they become nuisances that truly stick in your brain. 

Take the Hunter-Killer who decreases your strength and dexterity for every card played in a turn, or the Skulking Colony that can only take a certain amount of damage per turn. You could also look at the Scrolls of Biting that can reduce your maximum health for every unblocked hit or the Entomancer that fills your decks with three daze cards for every time it gets hit. Maybe even the Globe Head that makes it so your power cards deal damage to you or the Axebots that you need to kill three separate times. And that’s not even getting into the Act bosses.

 If you’ve played Slay the Spire 2 it’s entirely likely that at some point in reading that sequence you audibly said “Oh Fuck that guy.” Each of these enemies presents a challenge that no other enemy in the game does, forcing you to adjust your strategy and change how you play the game to suit the combat you’re in. It can be easy in games like this to default to specific cookie cutter builds, but Slay the Spire 2 refuses to allow you to do that. While many of the enemies in roguelike games like this can sort of blend together into a combination of hitpoints and damage values with different skins, Slay the Spire 2 ensures that you will remember every single one of these enemies with complete clarity. Yes, they can be frustrating and they can be difficult and you’ve likely had many a run end to one of their specific mechanics you forgot to account for. But at the same time, god does it feel good when you just get to stomp the Hunter-Killer into the fucking dirt on frame 1. 

Of course, while I do enjoy both of these methods immensely, they do have their drawbacks. Because there’s only so many possible traits in the nemesis system, several of the orcs can start to blend together back into the generic faceless mob of hostile npcs. In addition, some of the mechanics can be a little bland; there’s only so many times an orc can be immune to arrows before it starts to lose its impact. Meanwhile, in the spire, some of the fight mechanics can cross the line from fun and challenging to just downright frustrating (Looking directly at you Entomancer). Neither method is perfect, but at the end of the day, they do get me saying Fuck that Guy with startling regularity.

The fact is, killing an enemy that follows the Fuck that Guy Principle feels so much sweeter than killing some random trash mob. You can see a similar situation in professional sports. As a Bills fan, I don’t really care when the Bills beat the Saints. The win is nice, but it’s just another win at the end of the day. But when they beat the Chiefs or the Patriots? I’m celebrating, I’m jawing off to my friends, and I’m singing Shout at the top of my lungs. The sports leagues understand that rivalries will always up the intensity and the passion, which is why they do so much to encourage them. Video games thrive in a similar manner when they remember to do so as well. There’s a reason every Pokemon game gives you a rival to fight against. Fuck you Silver.

The best games don’t just make your relationship with the protagonist personal, they make your relationship with the enemies personal as well. It’s one thing to know “this guy is evil and therefore I must be righteous and kill him.” That’s all well and good but it will only get you so far. I get that Corypheus in Dragon Age: Inquisition is a prick, but I don’t actually feel much personal antipathy for him. That random orc in Shadow of Mordor though? On sight no matter where or when. Sure I might not remember his name, but I remember exactly how I felt every time I saw him. I want my games to leave me with feelings I’ll remember forever, and the Fuck That Guy principle hasn’t failed me there yet.