Pyre and Incorporating Loss in Victory

Chris Townley
Aug 25, 2017 · 5 min read

When I heard that Supergiant Games’ next release was going to be a sports-oriented game, I, like many people, was a bit surprised. I was never doubting their ability to make a great game, but sports games do not typically contain the incredible world building Supergiant is known for. Hearing in advance from people that got a chance to play Pyre early that the sports aspect was really fun, I grew curious as to what kind of setting it would be set in, and awaited its release.

Well, I just finished Pyre over the weekend and I think it may be one of my favourite game worlds I’ve been in. This isn’t from a visual perspective (though the 2D art is amazing), but from an immersion standpoint. The world is populated by deep characters and lore, but more than that, has an attitude that I’ve not seen reflected in nearly any other art that I’ve consumed.

Let’s set the stage a bit. Pyre is a game that is half magic-3v3-contact basketball, and half visual novel. The majority of “play” that is done is controlling the members of your 3-man team (or, appropriately, Triumvirate) as you try to take an orb from the center of the court into your opponent’s pyre (like a basket, or a net). Each pyre has a set amount of points that are eaten away each time the orb enters it, and victory is achieved when your opponent’s pyre has no remaining hit points.

Between these sport matches, the narrative plays out in a combination of text and images. There is no fully animated scenes, instead offering text description and dialogue. In this way, characters’ reactions are described rather than implied.

I should mention that, in Pyre, whether you win or lose each individual match, the overarching game continues.Sure, the members of your team will be salty that they lost, but they also learn from it.

This is one of the main components of what makes Pyre’s setting so incredible: it offers a choice between personal and communal victory in nearly every aspect of it, and both options are always valid and rewarding from different perspectives.

Personally, I felt invested in the characters to the point of consistently choosing their success over my own character’s. But in making those choices, I felt rewarded by their success, knowing that these digital creations would be fictionally happy with my decision. My choices had an imaginary weight that felt incredibly real in the moment. While they may not have completely altered the narrative to get the “bad” or “good” ending, my experience felt unique and tailored to how I wanted it to play out.

All of this, I think, can be attributed to the tone of the game, which focuses less on the points or win-states of each individual match and the overall tournament, and more on the storybook encapsulating the whole thing. It’s cheesy, but the most rewarding element of Pyre is the journey through the narrative and the friends I made along the way.

The overarching theme in Pyre that can be crudely summed up as, “Shit happens, and that’s okay.” Sure, you’ve been cast out of society into a desolate wasteland, but there’s always a chance to earn your freedom back.

Of course, you were expelled due to unfair and dictatorial rules, but you’ll need to operate within those rules in order to get back in. Don’t get angry or wrathful, just be calm and persistent.

Obviously, you’d want to win every match, but it isn’t necessary to progress through the story. Your personal pride may take a hit, but overall in Pyre, it’s your teammates’ narratives that take on more significance.

Unlike most apocalyptic stories that seem to be, “every person for themselves”, Pyre encourages an abandonment of self. Instead, it emphasizes the need for teamwork and sacrifice in order to achieve overall prosperity.

An example of this occurs several times within the game, as you compete in several tournaments called the Festival of the Rites. With each progression up the ladder of teams in the tournament, you are able to set one of your team members free. You can choose anyone, as long as they’ve been levelled up enough.

And this is where the genius of Pyre is on display. Do I free one of my favourite characters, even if it compromises my team’s skill for future tournaments, or do I free someone I care less about to keep my team together and spend more time with my virtual friends? Is your personal attachment to a character more important than doing what you think is right for them? Would you sacrifice your ability to consistently win in order to do a favour for your best team member?

Of course, these questions are a bit more complicated due to the people in question being fictional. But personally, I was attached to them in a way that felt tangible. Their fate was in my hands, so I had to do right by them. Which, to me, meant considering their values and what they might constitute “success” for them.

At one point, later in the game, these questions are also raised for an opponent who was wronged by the laws of the land worse than anyone on your team. Do you value your own victory over their justice? Personally, I did not, and the game rewarded me with a satisfying conclusion to that match, rather than punishing me for losing. This is my favourite thing about Pyre: the rules of the world Supergiant created matter more than the traditional rules of victory for video games in our own world.

Obviously, in real life, the task of choosing what your friends and opponents do isn’t very practical or kind. But in video games the player typically assumes the role of leader for themselves and/or others. The idea of doing something in the interests of honouring a fictional character’s desires may seem a bit outlandish, but Pyre makes it a key component of their world. The choices are almost always between “winning” the tournaments and honouring friendship. Pyre’s triumph is overlapping and repelling these goals to great effect.

For a post-apocalyptic world, Supergiant does an amazing job of relying on friendship and sacrifice in a genre that is typically composed of survival at all costs. The overall narrative in Pyre did not have as much of an impact on how I played the game as the smaller stories of each individual match or the bonds between the fictional friends I made. Saying that Pyre is my favourite Supergiant game is almost too simplistic, but it is the one that affected my perception of games and world building the most. And that, to me, is more impressive.

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