A Time for Reflection in a Ruthless Game of Perseverance

I recently (note: like half a year ago, when I first wrote this) purchased Dungeon of the Endless off a suggestion from a friend — one that hardly went into detail beyond that it’s difficult and “pretty cool.” I soon realized that Dungeon of the Endless is part of a series of games which includes Endless Legend and Endless Space, the former of which I quite enjoy. The eponymous Endless were the first space-fairing race in this universe, and their technological advancements were both numerous and egregious. However, I don’t know that because of Dungeon of the Endless- which is barely about the Endless at all- I know it because of Endless Legend, to which Dungeon of the Endless is a prequel. Dungeon of the Endless is about the people who would eventually give birth to Endless Legend.

Both games take place on the planet Auriga, but Endless Legend is a 4X game, and Dungeon of the Endless is a roguelike tower defense sort of dealio. Endless Legend is massive, features several tribes each born of years and years of cultural evolution on the surface of Auriga; Dungeon of the Endless features a handful of seemingly miscellaneous survivors in a desperate scrap to reach said surface. They vary widely both in scope and in concept, is my point. Endless Legend is so verbose in its lore detailing that it’s a little suffocating at times, but Dungeon of the Endless is sparse, and in its sparseness, I found eloquence.

What is Dungeon of the Endless?

A human prison transport bound for Auriga is destroyed by the cloaked defense system they had no idea existed. In fact, as far as they knew, Auriga was the barren wasteland shat out by something called the Dust Wars. But the the escape pods crash through the surface and land snugly within a nondescript Endless facility filled with mutated native life forms which feed on Dust. Dust the currency composed of what is essentially nanobots capable of fantastic technological feats, not dust the dirt and skin-flake compound that plagues my desk. So all the survivors have to fight their way to the surface by working together using Dust to fuel their exploits as well as the hunger of their foes.

Dungeon of the Endless is a roguelike, so the levels and enemies etc. are randomized, and while you get to choose two survivors to take with you into the dungeon at the beginning, there’s no telling who will compose your eventual four-person team. This is because, like a truly fashionable socialite, death arrives at the party whenever the fuck it wants. Because of this, Dungeon of the Endless inherently cannot tell a straightforward narrative (not a good one anyway). Its story must be flexible, able to bend to its own systems, to react to the player’s team building choices and preferences.

Within the game, during each level, each struggle to locate the exit, Dungeon of the Endless feels mechanical. Characters fulfill their roles regardless of their personalities, though often the two are linked in some fashion, and teamwork is forged and forced by the player’s will rather than being driven by a narrative or the characters themselves. And that is EXACTLY why the storytelling is so eloquent; fighting through the dungeon is a time for heartless warriors, not personal stories, but that’s not to say there isn’t a time for reflection.

The characters fit into three categories: crew, prisoners, and Auriga natives. On the ride over, or the years that precede it, some of the crew and prisoners have established what I believe is referred to as: beef. After the completion of each level, the survivors congregate in an elevator where certain characters expound their aforementioned beef with the other character involved. Elevator rides are pretty high on the list of times for reflection, ranked just behind walks in the park and showering alone. Some characters endeavor to squash the beef, and some rip it out of the Tupperware, slam it on the stove and set the flames to max.

The meat of the beef

Sara Numas, who is either a shameless ripoff or a prideful homage to Metroid’s Samus Aran, depending on how you perceive such things, has beef with Gork “Butcher” Koroser. Sara’s the sole survivor of a raid on her home planet Kaytuël (Samus’ home colony was K-2L), and she knows someone who calls themselves “Butcher” is the perpetrator of said raid. Level after level their interactions escalate- Sara gets more information out of Gork, and Gork repeatedly delights in recollecting his murderous rampage. The push and pull between wanting to escape the dungeon, and wanting to avenge her planet is felt through the dialogue; ultimately, their history is irrelevant to their survival, but it clearly weighs heavily on Sara’s mind… not so much on Gork’s. But still he pushes her too far, and should the player progress the dialogue to completion, she’ll straight up murder him in the elevator. Dead. Like, removed from your team immediately. Not because of a player’s tactical oversight, not because they weren't prepared for a wave of enemies, but because those two characters, allowed to progress their argument to the end, are doomed to this fate. It’s their story.

When it happened, I almost leapt out of my chair. I removed my head set, clasped my hands to my mouth, and looked around my room asking all the various appliances and clothes piles whether or not they saw that. They did. It happened.

Backstory is a beautiful thing if told correctly, but in a game like this, which is so mechanics-heavy, not to mention painfully difficult (I still haven’t beat the damn thing on easy 22 hours in), I didn't expect much of it, much less for it to be so impactful.

Dungeon of the Endless conveys a bold theme of perseverance, of equality in the face of death. That each character was called a hero, be they prisoner, crew, or native, intrigued me and sold me on the theme. Your captor, your prey, your nightmare, your friend — all could possibly be your fellow survivor! Those who made it this far have a shared interest in putting aside their personal feelings. And yet, those feelings exist. They persist, as do the survivors surrounded by Auriga’s ire, and everyone will handle theirs differently.

With this in mind, slowly that became the game for me- this sense that some of my team trusted each other, and some of them hated each other. Every time new dialogue showed up, as there’s no real way of knowing who will interact with whom, I’m determined to see that dialogue through- no matter what! Failure isn’t an option… not that it stops me from failing. I’ve still only completed two stories, the longest of which took six floors, because this game is fucking difficult, but I desperately want to see them all.

Beyond that, and even without seeing them all, the sense that these characters are people, regardless of their skills, stats and equipment, is palpable. That’s not something I can say about any roguelike I’ve played, in fact it’s something I can’t say about many games in general. Now, I don’t even want to use Gork — I’m pretty sure he has the highest potential DPS in the game, but just as Sara couldn’t, I can’t let go of his past and personality. Sure, the characters have bios, but people are a reflection of their past, of their relationships, of their fears and their dreams and how they handle them in the present; not a paragraph in a dossier. Each little character interaction, however short, fills them out, turns those paragraphs into people, and makes Dungeon of the Endless a far more engrossing experience than it would have been if the stories were just neatly tucked away in a menu somewhere.

And besides all that... Gork is slow as fuck.