Back in May, I read an article about handling a crisis. It started with a bunch of quotes from high-performing leaders and CEOs who declared that things had never been better for them.
Then it warned everyone to expect rough times ahead:
“for many, the first weeks of managing a crisis feel extremely meaningful and energizing. But when I revisited the same leaders a few weeks later, they reported that something had happened to their energy and to the way their team was collaborating. The adrenaline-fueled pace of the initial crisis response began sputtering. Problems became more complex and exhausting. The varnish started to crack. The glory faded. Fuses were short.
What explains this shift? In my experience as a psychologist and executive advisor, I’ve found that crises follow a rough pattern: Emergency. Regression. Recovery.”
After almost six months of dealing with a global pandemic and ongoing economic uncertainty, I’m seeing a pattern that looks more like this: Emergency. Regression. Recovery. Regression. Recovery. Regression. Recovery. Regression. Recovery. (Repeat until death.)
The good news is that Dragon Quest XI has done a fantastic job of accommodating my regression phases and my recovery phases. Minor spoilers after the image.
On the one hand, this plays like a completely new game. The DS versions of earlier installments in the series are old games with new graphics. This one feels like a modern game taking place in a more immersive environment, paying tribute to the rest of the series.
It tells a compelling story that builds up to the main confrontation. It introduces a mid-game plot twist that strengthens the villain, and then it expects you to work your way back up to the showdown with the Lord of Shadows in the Fortress of Fear.
And even as I played through all that, I worried that I had missed something.
This series has three keys for the player to find: a thief's key, a magic key, and an ultimate key. And Dragon Quest XI establishes that the ultimate key exists, because it walks you past an ultimate door on your way to collect other necessary items for defeating the Lord of Shadows.
I worried that I was doing something wrong. Parts of the story left loose ends that didn't make much sense. Had I forgotten something? Would this "Fortress" be revealed as a sham, or another plot twist? Eventually, I pushed through the last battle.
And that was it. The game is won, the world is saved, roll the end credits.
As a stand alone game, it kind of works? It provides a complete experience, even if it was an oddly disappointing one. I wondered whether my expectations were unrealistic, and maybe I need to make my peace with the fact that tastes have changed.
But the sense of something missing had bothered me, so I went back to work on the post-game content. That's when the game served up another story, and I realized that the end credits are the equivalent of a mid-game plot twist — they've hidden a traditional Dragon Quest experience behind a full JRPG. And it was clearly planned that way because you only find the ultimate key after you've started playing through the post-game story.
It's a clever design. People who are new to the series get a fresh experience that familiarizes them with characters and concepts found elsewhere in the Dragon Quest universe. But the series mainstays also included for the die-hard fans, and they're left in a place where they won't interfere with rest of the experience.
NOTE TO SELF: Hello, me from the future! Remember how 2020 was completely nuts? This post title was chosen because it's the weekend before the "staff action" kicks off, and TikTok continues to be a thing under discussion.
