When you boot up Touhou 7, you’re greeted
with a title screen covered in blue hues. The song that plays is the most serene of
any Touhou title so far. Reimu stands in the center closing her eyes,
as if she’s entranced by the song. This helps set the game’s mood. From the menu screen, Touhou 7 has done its
first bit of storytelling. When trying to tell a story in games, it’s
important for a developer to consider their game’s genre. A lot of expositional text might work out
fine in a JRPG, but might not in an action platformer. Touhou has a unique challenge when it tells
its stories. It’s an arcade SHMUP designed for players
to attempt over and over again. If dialogue were too long in this type of
game, players who game over and get to that dialogue again will just remember it’s long,
and not want to re-read it. So what do you do to fill in the gaps? Well, with the menu example, we’ve already
demonstrated part of Touhou’s technique. Touhou storytells subtly. Even before you start the game, you can scroll
the character select screen to something different. Reimu’s wearing longer sleeves, Marisa’s
got a warmer outfit, and the newly playable Sakuya has a winter scarf… And a short dress? It seems like the characters are geared up
for the cold, and Sakuya’s weirdness gets emphasized early. Touhou character designs tend to change slightly
with each game, and here they help establish the initial winter setting of Touhou 7. When the game starts, we see something unique
to Touhou 7: a little poem. These poems come at the start of each level. “Cherry Petals should’ve fallen like snowflakes,
yet it was still silver with snow.” This alludes to the game’s incident. Spring is supposed to come, but it’s still
winter. The poems give Touhou 7 a more unique identity,
rather than it just being a simple sequel to Touhou 7. Further distinguishing the game, the first
stage theme opens with a traditional Japanese string instrument. After a Western Inversion from Touhou 6, we’re
thrown into an Eastern Story in an Eastern Project. And yet, a lingering sense of familiarity
still remains with Cirno’s entrance. She had ice powers in the last game, so her
being here makes sense. This, Sakuya, and an upcoming character make
it clear that Touhou 7 is building off what came before, rather than starting fresh. Music continues to set the game’s mood,
with the music being a bit slow, yet upbeat. When we get to Letty, we learn the incident
properly. The characters have seeked out her since she
can manipulate winter. I talked before about how long dialogue can
distract from a game’s pacing, especially in a game this fast. So, Touhou’s dialogue is often snappy, and
to the point with its meaning. For Letty, we learn that winter’s going
on longer than it normally does, the protagonist accuses Letty of doing the incident, Letty
pleads innocence, there’s some wrestling style trash-talk, and then a fight happens. The player does not have to remember much,
so the dialogue can be rushed through the next time if they wish. I won’t talk about this for every boss since
that distracts a bit from the broad points, but characteristics are often communicated
through gameplay. Letty’s dramatic theme brings up the energy
considerably. Her blue bullets match her winter theming. She also has a card reminiscent of a snowflake,
matching her identity of a winter spirit. We don’t have to read about how “cool”
(haha get it) she is. We just get to actually experience it. Like the Touhou games before, 7 continues
to characterize through its fights. The game also features something a bit unique. Touhou 6 did not feature a visible hitbox
for characters. This game does, and patterns can be made more
dense because of it. So, Letty’s snowflake pattern looks a lot
harder than any of Rumia’s, but the visible hitbox means the difficulty is actually fairly
similar. Touhou 7 is able to build a sense of scale
compared to Touhou 6 without increasing the difficulty. Stage 2 doesn’t do too much dramatically
differently from stage 1, but it does feature something important. In Touhou 6, we’re told about a red mist,
but don’t really see it in some of the stages. So, stage 2 in that game feels like a bit
of a jump. In Stage 2 of Touhou 7, we’re still met
with similar music, some mist, and even some snowflakes. The winter still continues. In this way, Touhou’s world feels a bit
more connected. We really get to see how this extended winter
is affecting all of Gensokyo, and not just stage 1. When we reach Chen, we get some threats about
“never being able to leave”, and retorts from our protagonists like “The Buddhist
Paradise is warm, they say.” Chen’s general confidence contrasted by
her early placement helps establish her as a sillyer character. There’s also more to her than first glance,
but that’s a story for another time. In stage 3, ZUN had an interesting conundrum. He wanted to reintroduce a character from
the older games who’s important to the series. But aside from one silly line, there’s no
reference to her being any more special than the previous bosses you fought. How do you make it clear she’s special without
heavy exposition? Well, the solution here was pacing. In Touhou, you normally fight either a series
of midbosses and a boss, or you fight the boss as a midboss, and then them again. Alice is the first character in the series
you fight three times in one stage. She keeps attacking as a midboss, not only
establishing her as a special character, but also giving the stage itself some uniqueness. For players who did play Touhou 5, this is
a great reintroduction to Makai’s extra boss. For players who didn’t play, they’re instead
introduced intriguingly to a new face. Alice’s dialogue also establishes that she’s
mellowed out since Touhou 5. Compared to the trash talk of before, she’s
just looking for a duel. I’ve already talked extensively about stage
4 in a previous video, so I’ll be briefer here. This stage does a wonderful job building up
tension, with its length and increased difficulty serving well as a transition to the back half
of the game. Importantly, this stage sees the player leaving
the ground and taking to the sky. In moving from ground to sky, the player can
feel real progress through the game. Touhou 7 doesn’t have rooms of a mansion
as a framing device, so instead, we have the sky and seasons. We do move a bit closer to spring, with us
even meeting a Spring Fairy. We also get to meet the Prismriver Sisters. Each character gets to fight a different sister,
which also brings up something Touhou does: it’s an arcade style game that encourages
replayability, and this helps. Importantly, the player is never lost with
the game’s plot. There are some major info snippets you can
miss out on which I will get to later, but it never distracts from the game’s tension. Stage 4 might arguably be the most well-known
stage in the game, but I think 5 does a brilliant job with its atmosphere. After the swarms of enemies from the chaotic
sky, the Netherworld is comparatively more peaceful. The song opens similarly to End of Daylight
from Touhou 2. You’re entering a new world, and this helps
signify this. The Netherworld is serene. The stage also ditches the snowflake effects
for full cherry petals. You’re out of winter now, this is Spring. You’re getting closer. It’s also a very… Long flight of stairs. Like you’re climbing towards something unthinkable. And then, we get to Youmu. Sakuya in Touhou 6 left an impression because
she was a bit aloof. She cracked a few jokes here and there, and
yet still felt devoted to her job. So how do you set the next stage 5 boss apart? You play her completely straight! Youmu exudes a sense of loyalty people imagine
from a bodyguard. She openly declares that she will defeat you. In a world where characters make wrestling
threats and don’t take things too seriously, Youmu is a pretty sudden change of pace. The way she bounces off the cast is also pretty
different. There’s no witty banter, she just says things
as they are. She’s focused on her mission. And this is of course contrasted by the fact
that even with ZUN’s art, she’s adorable. We also get her iconic line: “The things
that cannot be cut by my Roukanken, forged by youkai… are next to none!” Stage 6. We have that frantic song playing, as if the
end of the world is approaching. The sky is an ominous shade, signaling that
the finale has come. I’ve talked about this in a different video
too, but we also get a defining Youmu moment. She’s hurt badly from the previous fight,
but she’s still willing to stand up against the player for her master’s sake. Sakuya did this too, but Youmu does it with
a certain level of desperation that lands with players harder. But, you beat Youmu and… Yuyuko. I’ve talked at length about how less dialogue
is often used to keep the game’s pacing on track. Here though, that rule is slightly broken. The player’s made it through a 30 minute
bullet hell adventure, so a little breathing room with the dialogue is fine. But, the dialogue itself still isn’t too
long. Yuyuko explains in all routes that the tree
needs to bloom with the Spring that’s been stolen. The player’s been collecting spring throughout
the game as a gameplay mechanic. We know how that spring was scattered. But, only in Reimu’s route do we get to
learn that reviving the tree will revive someone. Reimu is a guardian of Gensokyo, so she gets
a bit more motivation. While the other two characters simply want
Gensokyo’s spring, Reimu needs to ensure the tree’s revival doesn’t cause major
consequences. She gets extra stakes. Each character also gets a little double banter
with Yuyuko, and the fight begins. Yuyuko’s fight pairs with Border of Life,
one of the most powerful songs in the series. The use of spring colors, flower-like bullets,
and expanding attacks help give this fight a true sense of beauty. It’s as if you’re fighting through a dance. This goes on, and the player enters a surprisingly
easy final spell. Then that’s done, and… We get a poem like the ones that open the
stages. One final one before the end. That ends, and
border of life 2 fades out. Resurrection Butterfly starts. This is the culmination of all of the Spring
that’s been stolen, and all of the Spring the player’s gathered. It’s a final fight for the balance of Gensokyo. You can feel the importance of this last rush. The silhouetted Yuyuko with the tree also
leaves a sense of intrigue. The Spell itself is the most visually stunning
in the entire game, and gameplay wise it’s no walk in the park either. You could lose a run to this. But, you survive the final rush, and… There are endings to this game that I’m
unfortunately not allowed to show. Each show off something about the character
you won with, such as Sakuya’s devotion to her master, or Marisa freeloading in the
Netherworld. Here, they serve as nice palette cleansers
after an intense battle. So ends Touhou 7. This was not really a plot summary of Touhou
7. It was instead a rhetorical analysis of what
Touhou 7 does in the video game medium to tell its story. Through its use of the environments, framing
devices, gameplay integration, and mostly brief dialogue, Touhou 7’s able to tell
an effective story in a genre that otherwise seems challenging to do so in. For players who do want more context, the
omake of the game provides more information, such as a direct answer as to what exactly
was under that Cherry tree. Keeping this information out of the actual
game allows for the game’s pacing to stay on track. Everything mentioned in his video was not
new to Touhou persay, but I think at the time, 7 was the best Touhou game in terms of how
the story was told. It’s a remarkable balancing act between
plot and gameplay that served as a structural basis for two decades of Touhou game stories
that came later. There is something a little… “extra” I didn’t cover, but as said
before, that will be a story for another time. But for now, that is how Touhou 7 Tells its
Story. Happy PCBirthday.
