The Art of The Boss Fight

it's all led up to this boss fight they're like any enemy in a video game except you fusioned a lot stronger whether it's the final boss at the climax of a game or just some stupid little plant that needs a bath boss fights play an important role in most games they could be a test to the player's skill level an action set piece to fulfill power fans they can function as the culmination of a story or just be a general Vibe set or maybe they're just to make you think you should call your mom will you adopt me there are countless reasons to put a boss fight in a video game and even more ways to go about creating one you probably wouldn't even notice it because you're too busy squirming around the Boss Arena but there are so many elements that work together to create an awesome boss fight I mean somebody actually had to sit down and conceptualize how the boss would function mechanically or what it would sound like if they tried to sit on and Beyond just designing each element making sure that they all come together in an awesome way Kick-Ass boss fight oh my God I'm so sorry are you okay I'm sorry there are so many different things that go into making an awesome boss fight I couldn't possibly name them all but I'm gonna try before I do though this video contains spoilers for this game this game this game this game not this game this one's safe put all of these games too so everything on the screen there are spoilers for if you want to avoid spoilers for any of these there will be a pin comment with the timestamps for all of the spoilers that you don't have to worry about it and you can just skip over it and with that let us explore the art of the [Music] if someone just came along one day and uh uh pushed you off a cliff it's probably gonna be pretty memorable I can think of more than a few boss fights that feel like you're getting pushed off a leg fighting a boss that's competent can make it way easier to take them serious that's not to say that every boss needs to be hard but there's definitely a market out there for those games that just punish you endlessly in my experience I've always kind of avoided bosses who are just hard for the sake of being hard and that's because there's one major issue with all these hard games and it's that I'm bad at them I'm not good at the games but I got halfway through cuphead and it only took a year Honestly though I just never understood why people enjoyed games where the entire point was just it was hard the ones that really stand out to me that are like this are the Dark Souls games this old notorious for being hard that when something completely unrelated to video games is hard people will compare it to Dark Souls I never really got into the souls-born games I just kind of figured they weren't for me considering I'm so terrible at video games but every time I tell people that they slap me in the face and they say go play Elden ring this is another game by from software the same people who made Dark Souls I actually decided to give this one a shot I jumped in I made my classic bibo bebus character an old man with a silly little staff and I jumped in at some point in my journey a woman approached me she called me maidenless and then came on really strongly and I mean I'm gonna take him in right so I I stayed focused and I told her to hit the bricks people faithful I then went on to fight my first boss I twinkled my little staff at him all day long until both my controller and my spirit were broken I gave up and it was only later that I learned that you actually have to accept the woman in order to level up in the game the real challenge of Elden ring monogamy when I started dreaming up this video I knew one thing for certain nobody was gonna take me seriously unless I had played a Souls game but I couldn't play Elden ring no I'd already been shamed I had to go back to where it all started I had to play Demon Souls but I didn't really like it very much so I switched over to Dark Souls 3. every second I spent playing this game I was sweating enough to fill up jugs with my sweat and sell it on the internet check me out at buymyswat.com it wasn't even the boss fights that were really getting me it was every single enemy just ripping me a new one even just rushing to the boss fight felt like a boss fight and after 10 hours of experiencing this beautiful world this amazing music such creative level design I still didn't get it I didn't understand why people enjoyed just being absolutely punished like this but you see then I got to the boss fight against the abyss Watchers I sprinted around a hill through a little shortcut straight into this doorway that very obviously leads to a Boss Arena I stepped in and a cut scene began to play a faceless foe plunges his sword deep into a figure that looks identical to him in a room filled with corpses that all look the same it lingered for a moment allowing me to take in the sight and then he turned to me the fight starts and he rips towards me with this sword I'm running around like a little baby I'm pissing myself eventually I build up the conference to hit him I get close it doesn't look like he's moving and then Wham a sword Falls right on my head but it wasn't from him it was from another one who looked the same as him I was now fighting too I continued in the loop of dying and running back in there to try again until I finally managed to stay alive for a little while against the two a third one shows up and is fighting the other two I mean I guess he's kind of helping me but he also fighting me it got really confusing I threw myself at the abyss Watchers for two hours straight until I was finally able to defeat them but when I did another cutscene began the life Essence from every fall and Abyss Watcher seemed to rise into the air and drift over to the main he stood back up his health bar was full again and now he had goddamn Fire magic and I had to fight him again the challenge just kept one-upping itself I just this was my nightmare I was throwing myself at this all night on the sixth hour of my torment I dropped my ax onto the head of the Abyss watcher and a message appeared on my screen Lord of Cinder Fallen I [ __ ] did it I did it throw me apart with the streamers don't I did it I did it as soon as I saw that message I got it I understood why people liked this kind of thing challenge makes a boss fight memorable because the gratification you get from overcoming that adversity is unlike any other experience you can have in a video game it made me want to keep playing this game and not even just to research for this video but because I finally felt competent in a game not lame I didn't just stroll into the fight and win I had to earn it this is something that not only makes boss fights memorable but can actually change your mindset outside of the game take a look at the Dark Souls Reddit and you'll see multiple people who have found that strength to press on in their real lives from these games seeing life's problems is just another boss fight and knowing that if they keep trying they'll make it through another important realization I had is the distinction between hard and challenging you see I still believe boss fights that are hard for the sake of being hard are pointless and no fun but a boss fight that is challenging one that pushes you to improve in order to overcome can be a meaningful and memorable encounter that ushers you forward on your journey and the difference is all really in design if you're just fighting a big dumb thing with like a lot of Health that deals a lot of damage but doesn't actually require skill to get through just time it's gonna feel like a pointless Endeavor but a boss fight with intricate and evolving attack patterns that you have to memorize in order to overcome will be infinitely more satisfying because that win will be attributed to your skill challenge is best implemented in a boss fight when the game lays out a blueprint for how to overcome this Challenge and it is the responsibility of the player to learn and apply this knowledge properly Miss Watchers is definitely my favorite implementation of Challenge in a boss fight because it's the one that helped me understand it in the first place but of course it's just one of many opinions as the resident from softguy I have a lot of memorable experiences when it comes to challenge and difficulty with boss fights yishun the sword Saint slave night Gale Melania if I had to pick just one from that Pantheon of greats it would have to be Sans undertale I thought a lot of bosses over the years but the memory and difficulty of this one has stuck with me flashback to September 2015. undertale had just come out and was not yet memed into Oblivion I was doing a second playthrough a genocide run I had finally reached the man himself Sans that initial surprise and shock of sans just unloading right at the start is still fresh in my mind as a fun opening then the rest of the fight is just pure trial and error pain in most cases I would hate this but it just kind of worked here you got the Banger of megalovania in the background and the story context of how this fight is supposed to be unfair and [ __ ] and then there's the endurance Factor you get to be on your A-game with muscle memory and reaction speed for 10 minutes straight fighting the skeleton man it was hard it was fun and it took me several hours straight of just suffering to finally get it few fights of asked this much of me over the years you gotta jump and Dodge and jump and Duck and jump and Dodge 10 minutes of that I'm not sure how many of you can relate to actually fighting Sans yourself in a blind playthrough but the wave of relief and satisfaction after finally beating him is something I still remember what a cool fight music is the ultimate tone Setter when something like this place I just get so sad so sad and now I'm taking part in serious and important business taxes finances money now I feel like something bad is gonna happen the Beast is currently chasing me all right you get the idea music is a universal language that speaks to our emotions and in the context of a boss fight music can make or break the entire experience if I was fighting like the demon of the storm and all of a sudden a SpongeBob background track just started playing like I'm just hopping along and he's like imposing over me and he's like gonna electrocute me but like the music is really chill might be you know weird vibe mix making boss fight music has got to be difficult right because you have to think like what sounds can I just bang together to fit the vibe of fighting a hundred foot tall sentient bottle of lotion if you're curious this is my attempt at a track for this [Music] the most compelling boss fight music I have ever experienced is by far from undertale the music in this game was composed by Toby Fox who also just so happens to have developed the entire game on his own clearly he had a vision because the music in undertale perfectly captures the vibe of the rest of the game in undertale you play as this little creature that just drops down and starts talking to different people as you explore this strange New World your ears are graced with several different light motifs which are recurring themes throughout a musical or literary composition associated with a particular person idea or situation basically you hear song you associate with thing undertale uses light Motif so much that I could probably fill up an entire video with that alone so I'm gonna use a simple example when the game begins you're instantly met with the song that you're hearing in the background right now it's a very simple opener that plays while you begin to immerse yourself into this world and as you play through the game you will hear this same light Motif used over and over again in tracks like home foreign [Music] falling down at interpreting music but I personally Associated this light Motif with the journey it's used from the beginning to the end through upbeat happy tracks and somber emotional tracks though it hit especially hard in the ending boss fight the track begins to play and you are immediately met with that familiar tune this for me resurfaced all the feelings I felt throughout my entire playthrough and made the moment feel like the culmination of everything I'd done up until that point and then the drums and [ __ ] kick in and it just starts going crazy I mean this is just an all-around Banger best boss fight track ever this really is only the tip of the undertale light Motif Iceberg so let me know in the comments if you think I should do a full video on this just because I absolutely could alright this last example might be cheating a little bit but I've gotta mention the boss fight against Satan in Guitar Hero 3 we have to play Devil Went Down to Georgia I vividly remember being a 10 year old just like jumping around my room completely in my underwear trying to beat this one that's a good song and it's technically a boss fight on the flip side I don't think every boss fight track needs to pull together emotional elements to make this like the moment you know what I mean because there's games where there's multiple boss fights the best example I have of this one is God of War Ragnarok because oh my God the music is so good whenever I'm fighting somebody and I hear that oh boo boo that [ __ ] Cooks goes crazy it's just awesome it's a viking setting so clearly they take elements and inspiration from that and apply it to the tracks and It just fits the world and the vibe so well whether it's music that pulls together elements from the entire game into one track that makes the moment feel like the culmination of everything you've done or it's just a powerful awesome track that increases the intensity of the moment they're all important but there's one more that's also important what makes a great boss theme well there's a lot of potential factors maybe some crazy percussion but a demonic vocals sprinkle in a light Motif or two I know I'm like the only guy who's ever beaten ringfit but that final boss has an absolute banger but today I want to talk about a boss theme that tells a story specifically song of the ancients from near replicant but this is one of those recurring tracks that needs a bit of context first throughout the majority of the game Neri is guided on his journey by the Twins devila and pobola so their theme embodies home a symbol of safety and comfort one of the first tracks you hear after the game's dramatic opening is song of the Ancients a soothing Melody played by devila as she sits by the fountain in the library a slightly more wistful and ethereal version of the theme plays sung by popola and backed by mallets and synths and if you finish an optional side quest for the twins they'll also join together to play a jazzy duet I actually stood still here for like a few minutes and I never do that in games so that means it's a big deal however replicant is not a happy experience so as you approach the shadowlord's castle your path is blocked by none other than devila and popola and as they begin to explain the truth about the game's story this [ __ ] kicks in sorry [Music] foreign this final version of song of the Ancients is more than just a light Motif it's a complete re-contextualization of an entire song and its meaning the equally determined orchestration and percussion paired with a haunting duet solidifies this as a boss theme but it's not your typical boss fight devila and popola are Androids programmed to oversee the protection of humanity and reunite their souls with replicant vessels but despite near being a replicant the twins have come to care for him deeply they've been supporting him for his entire life the very nature of this encounter is an inevitable tragedy in which there are no true heroes or villains so there's no ill will or malevolence in the music as two of the most important people in near's entire world leave his side this final version of the song turns a chaotic bullet hell into a standoff that becomes more heartbreaking with every button press then after devila dies popular lashes out in agony and despair and the music Fades into an all too familiar rendition q1 stops it's way too late to stop no one stops [Music] [Applause] please don't do this Buffalo you a devil were like parents to Me song of the Ancients lands a direct hit on my emotions in a way few songs can and demonstrates that a track doesn't have to be a 200 BPM metal blend of Pure Evil to be an incredible boss theme But Metal Gear Rising has more electric guitars so it's hard to say which one's better music and mechanics both obviously elevate a boss fight to the next level but do you know what else elevates a boss fight to the next level when the boss is literally elevated look at that big boy that's a big boy all right scale doesn't always play a big role in boss fights but when it does oh boy is the dynamic change it doesn't always have to mean fighting a literal big guy either you know scale could mean like you're fighting a thousand guys or you're just fighting like a god of some kind in my eyes scale in a boss fight is really just anything that calls upon that David and Goliath effect when you're playing the role of the underdog winning always feels more significant it's very similar to the idea of overcoming adversity making a boss fight feel better but it's different because it's not really attributed to skill and it's more of just a spectacle scale also feels like one that's very easy to mess up because so many games that try and do this fall victim to the shoot the pimple prop when your boss is gigantic there's not as many obvious ways to hit him and so a lot of games will give you that like pulsing glowing Mass to shoot at fighting Mysterio fighting the final boss of Dead Space fighting adult acne none of these were very fun for me fighting Kronos in God of War though that was awesome I'm pulling straight up to this guy and I'm ripping off his fingernail it's just like that episode of SpongeBob that you'll never forget no matter how hard you try to be completely Fair a lot of these boss fights are just glorified cut scenes where you get to press a couple of buttons but uh you know I'm a simple man if it looks cool I'm happy both this game and Shadow of the Colossus have moments where you have to climb up the enemy stick your sword into the Beast and make your way up it's like the equivalent of an ant coming up to me and stabbing its way up my leg the only difference between the ant and Shadow of the Colossus is that I would take it personally and I would pour molten aluminum down into his little stupid ant hill and then I would take out the mold and keep it as a trophy a reminder sorry I've been having a lot of amp problems at my house maybe a little redundant to bring this up but I can't not talk about it my favorite example of scale in a boss fight is the end of Dead Space 3 when you fight the literal Moon yes I played the game in co-op with my friend and what we bonded over was just how stupid and insane the entire game was and it was so perfect when it all culminated into fighting the entire Moon it was amazing it was the perfect boss fight I don't think we enjoyed it for the reasons that the game intends for you to enjoy it but it doesn't matter I just remember losing our goddamn Minds as soon as we realized what was happening in this case I think scale was important to highlight the insane absurd nature of this boss fight even if it might not have been intended that way I'll say this scale is not crucial to make a good boss fight but when used properly or improperly it can make for a really memorable one [ __ ] I mean size I mean Mass I mean getting so [ __ ] big I mean come on with Pacific Rim be as cool if the robots were three inches tall just kind of smacking against each other yes bear with me bear with me when my brother and I were still in elementary school one day this weird kid came to class with a copy of the GameCube game gotcha Force you've probably never heard of it and to this day I'm not even sure why he brought it to school there was like no GameCube in the whole building I don't know what he possibly had to gain anyway it was basically about these toys that came down to earth to team up with kids that fought other kids and other toys and sometimes just like random [ __ ] and we thought the game looked so cool from of course the PNG on the case we didn't have internet back then or colors so we proposed a trade deal we offered to buy it from him for all of our little boy pennies why did I write that why did I write little boy you see he liked the game too much to just give it up so he let us buy the instruction booklet at a discount so me and my brother went home with just destruction booklet of a GameCube game we liked ten dollars poorer and we played it in our minds for weeks the whole time we were trying to save up enough money to buy it and buy it we did [Music] it was incredible there were hundreds of toys you could play as all on these cool like miniaturized levels like you were fighting on playgrounds and desks and sandboxes it was like all of your coolest action figures came to life and started beating the [ __ ] out of each other with really admittedly bad voice acting but then something strange happened about halfway through the story you see the toys got bigger all of a sudden you weren't fighting a plastic dragon on a swing set anymore you were fighting a real dragon in a in a city and you were destroying buildings and killing thousands of people you gotta understand and then came twit oh [ __ ] the [ __ ] course you see gotcha boards aren't actually toys they're aliens and they didn't come here because they liked us running from a world destroying super organism the size of a planet so remember how before the toys grew to the size of a small townhouse now what if I told that the climax of this game had them growing to the size of the continental United States and fighting a giant alien Brave spaceship Atop The Earth also it's a PNG of the earth also the Earths are black and also you can see the crust from the side take that fear Believers just put it on screen it's probably even could I remember we'll win [Music] time has arrived okay [Music] surprise the unexpected you want to make me panic in a game just feed me that warm soft milky sense of security and then rip it right away took me into bed let me get all cozy and then drop a box of 100 spiders on my face fries could play a role in the boss fight in a few ways for example maybe it's surprising how the boss fights you or it's surprising where you fight the boss or even who the boss is for this I'm gonna use the example of a way out and if you haven't played this game it's gonna be a really really big spoiler and if you haven't played it you don't know I urge you to go down to the comments and click the time stamps right after this part is over are you gone you better be if you're not at least I warned you this game's got to be the best example of surprise in a boss fight I've ever experienced it's a co-op game where you and your friend work together to break out of prison and then you track down drug dealer guy and there's like a whole like knock off Uncharted shootout the point is you and your bro the whole time you two together making it work getting out of there kissing a little bit not really but maybe I mean you guys break out of prison together and then you gotta go forage in the woods for food together and then you gotta go and break into old people's houses and steal their car it's a bonding moment as much as it is several felonies the game carries on and you're tracking down somebody that seems to have wronged both the main characters in one way or another and it just kind of continues down this path and you get to experience like personal moments in these people's lives right like you get to see this guy's family you know his kid you get to play basketball with his kid I love you buddy I love you so much you get to see this guy's kid get born you guys get all the way to get on a plane and go stop the guy that is their common enemy and then you kill him it's awesome you get back but as the plane lands a revelation is unravel is unre is revealed everybody Stand Down all right there you go good job Vincent I'm sorry Leo your buddy pal your guy friend buddy dude pal who you've forged with bonded with maybe kissed a little has been an undercover cop the whole time when I tell you the Betrayal that I felt in this moment was strong I mean like I felt it like a partly my soul in my soul what made it so much worse was that I played it with my girlfriend at first and she knew she had played the game before so she knew he was a traitor and she picked him on purpose devious woman devious the real final battle in a way out is not some stupid drug dealer knockoff Uncharted moment it's your friend it's the person who's been sitting on the couch next to you the entire time and that fight is awesome it takes place on a boat and then it takes place in a warehouse it just becomes a shootout between you and the person that you thought you could trust and whoever wins the shootout between the two of you decides the actual ending of the game foreign plays a very obviously important role in this boss fight because it's that feeling of betrayal that being caught off guard by your close friend turned enemy that dials the intensity of this fight to 11. that moment that revealed one little moment was just so amazingly well done and it's got to be one of the most memorable experiences I've even had in a game especially a co-op game anybody watching this I encourage you go find some clueless little sap sit him down on the couch and say you want to break out of prison together because I promise that second time around when you know and they don't is just as good if not better now that I've talked about how awesome surprise can be in a boss fight I do have to say surprise uh can be a little jarring in a boss fight as well for example in Resident Evil 4 you fight a guy named Jack krauser who just kind of shows up at some point and I feel like when he showed up I felt like I missed something because it just it was just out of nowhere there's just all this like implied history between you and this Jack krauser supposedly he trained you and stuff like that and I I'm sure it was explained in an older game I hope but I didn't play all those games so it was very confusing to me it definitely felt like I missed something which I guess I did but I would have liked if it had a little setup in the game where it got paid off I guess I don't know krauser is a cool character once he actually gets like some screen time but when it just shows up out of nowhere and the game treats it like I'm supposed to know exactly who this is it just didn't feel very good probably the most common use of surprise in a boss fight is where you'll be fighting a boss and then you'll beat them but a phase two of that boss fight will come back and then maybe they'll have a full health bar again you've got to fight them it's something that's done a lot in the Dark Souls games and there's one really great example of this that I have not myself experienced so I'm gonna let my friend candy talk about it what's up guys it's me yeah got you you're shocked surprised even huh had to keep you on your toes it also have got this gun you know what that surprise you felt that shock it's also something that's very important in boss fights you know like how undyne doesn't die in one hit in the undertale genocide run but my favorite example of this isn't sakiro this entire game you're running around fighting lame ass dudes with swords and pole arms and some of them aren't horses until eventually you roll up in this giant foggy area with dead trees you know the vibe is just Immaculate and there's a monkey and she caught me off guard man like this monkey almost killed me because I was laughing so hard dude it was a funny [ __ ] I ever seen but no you know killed it cut off its head moved on you know it's sweated it [Music] what yeah so you know when the monkey is Immortal not only that his entire move set is different now too it's much more sloppy and unpredictable it immediately became a much more difficult encounter and that feeling of shock as a monkey picked up his decapitated head and a sword and immediately murdered me with it it's gonna stay with me for a long time hey where you're fighting is almost as important as who you're fighting I don't know I just don't think fighting the accursed one will have the same Vibe if we're doing it in a Wendy's winner gets a four for four aside from just looking cool too I mean there's a lot to consider when choosing an arena for your boss fight for example environmental storytelling that can teach you more about who you're fighting or just the world you're in maybe like a pillar you could hide behind or something or like Health pickups another loot in nearby barrels maybe the environment even plays a role in how you defeat the boss like maybe you gotta take down all the pillars like in Spider-Man or you know you gotta make him stand next to a fire barrel and blow it up maybe you gotta goat him into attacking you and you move out of the way and he hits the wall or maybe there's a big lava pit beneath you and you just gotta open the door Resident Evil 4. look I love you I love you what is this room for what is it no but what is the room for because there's no purpose for that and no reason practically oftentimes when you're playing a video game and you walk into a Boss Arena you can tell maybe there's just something about this open courtyard that really really gives me the vibe that the mass is about to descend upon me weirdly though my favorite example of a boss fight Arena actually comes from Minecraft I mean that is core Minecraft is a survival game right so you never have to fight the final boss you can kind of just hang out with your dog and build cool stuff if that's all you want to do but if you want to make it to the end of the game you'll have to actually make it to the end which is a dimension through this little portal where the final boss the Ender Dragon is waiting for you while I wouldn't exactly call it linear progression everything you do in the game leads to you getting these like pearls that you put around the portal to open it up so there's an anticipation built throughout the entire time you're playing the game to get here once you finally get here and you jump in the tone is immediate set in the end there's a bunch of these towers around here that all heal up the dragon and they surround this center stage where she just kind of flies around on the ground there's all these different Endermen they kind of act as her little lackeys and so you have to take out these towers and you gotta deal with them if they try to mess with you and then you can actually kill the dragon there's also a ton of pressure in here because if you die you get sent back to that original world and you have to come all the way back into this portal and get here and by the time you get here the stuff you drop might be gone not only does this Boss Arena contain elements that change the dynamic of the fight but it also aesthetically fits the dragon so perfectly and the Enderman that you've been fighting through the entire game you're confronting the final challenge in the void this Boss Arena feels like the end let's see we're a well-designed Boss Arena really becomes crucial is when that Arena plays a part in how you beat the boss if any of you have ever played portal then you would know that in the game you get this portal gun where you can open up a portal and open up another one and they connect to each other but you don't get a gun gun like a real gun so there's really no way that you can defeat anything right but at the end of the game there is a boss fight against GLaDOS who starts shooting these rockets at you and how are you going to do anything about these Rockets well now you got is some portals you stand and you wait for the rocket and as soon as it gets there if you open a portal and you move the rocket goes through and then it comes back really you're making the boss take themselves out which I think is such a creative way to go about a boss fight in a game like this the stage is so important here because you have to have a place to put these portals so that you can position yourself and the portals in a way that the Rockets will go through and hit the ball it's almost like you're using the stage as a weapon which means it's got to be designed I'm there's so many more things to consider beyond that right like if the stage is small then you're not going to have as much maneuverability whereas if it's big you can run away and hide from the boss like a little baby and even when there's no element in the environment that impacts the actual gameplay I still just like it when I'm fighting somebody and we're in like a cool place do you know what I mean like we're in a cool awesome looking Arena gameplay changing or not stage is a crucial part of the boss fight so when the baby boy busy hits you up to talk about boss battles you know I'm gonna go all in just for you man I want to talk about two different boss battle designs that I think really showcase when a boss battle is done correctly versus when a boss battle is done kind of poorly let's start with the bad one my favorite video game of all time is Halo 3. the multiplayer is amazing the campaign is actually pretty great and most people remember the ending of Halo 3 because it's when you drive that warthog through everything like the warthog run going through explosions the music's super epic but most people don't ever talk about the final boss of Halo 3 because it's pretty bad a little mini spoiler if you're somehow a fan of Halo but don't know the ending 343 Guilty Spark ends up being like the bad guy kills like Sergeant Johnson and everything and then you fight him in this like room and you just have to shoot Spartan lasers at him this I feel like was barely even a fight this is the guy that killed your best friend and this boss battle is a joke I don't know a single person that found this boss battle hard even on legendary difficulty and it kind of sucks because I feel like like the entire campaign of all three games were culminating to this one point for such an easy and boring fight but you want to know how to make a real boss battle make the boss literally just be you what do I mean by this Ultra kill in Ultra kill there are plenty of really good boss fights to talk about that all vary wildly in difficulty and require you to use all the different guns and skills that you've acquired throughout the game but one boss in particular that you fight multiple times is V2 V2 is essentially just a carbon copy of your character but red so he's kind of cooler and what makes him extremely scary to fight is that he uses the same thing that you're using all the abilities that you've acquired he has as well which is honestly pretty scary but what that also means is that he's pretty predictable you know everything in his Arsenal you know that if he flips a coin you can shoot that coin you know that if he's charging something that's his shotgun get out of the way every time this dude popped up it was really exciting it was initially very difficult but over time you can understand his patterns and eventually succeed this is kind of a Trope in a lot of video games where there's like a shadow version of your character Shadow Link Shadow Sora and Kingdom Hearts but seeing this in a first person shooter type game which is like my specialty it's pretty hype love you baby boy also last time I gave you a green screen you made the background like just pure trash for me I swear to God you better not do that again challenging mechanics in an immersive Arena can make for such a memorable boss fight but you know what else is memorable when they look cool look how awesome this guy looks and this guy and what about this guy hey that little guy what the hell happened to you cool cool cool cool cool sick okay awesome I would set my car on fire for you how a boss is designed can completely change the tone of an encounter in the same way that music does when you're playing a silly cartoonish game like Super Mario Sunshine you're not exactly looking to fight the Eldritch Horrors although that would make for a pretty good surprise you're ready to fight a funny cute little guy and pull his arms off but like in a silly way if this were realistic it would be a horrific bloodbath and you wouldn't be looking to fight the silly cartoonish creatures in Dead Space right you're looking for the horrific beasts that need to be put out of their misery it all kind of comes together to set the tone for the game I think a game that did this perfectly is cuphead this entire game is drawn beautifully and the actual designs of the bosses will indicate what they might do plant guy hits you with plants right it just kind of makes sense I think what does it for me here is that the bosses are so unique and creatively designed like I couldn't imagine what it took to even conceptualize these two fighting frogs that are you know they're the boxing you and there's a whole thing and then they turn into a freaking slot machine and then you now you gotta Parry this little thing here to pull it down it's just so cool it's just so cool and like I could never come up with something like this good boss design can be what sells you on the fiction and makes the entire experience way more compelling whether they're meant to look horrifying like Omega flowey and undertale or just kind of fit the vibe like soul of Cinder and Dark Souls the design of a boss can absolutely be what makes a fight memorable character design in itself has the power to tell a story with only visuals in Persona 5 you dive into people's subconscious given form called palaces these palaces only manifest when an individual has heavily distorted thoughts or corrupt desires one of these individuals is the Beloved character Futaba Sakura futama's Palace manifests as a lonely scorching desert which she herself refers to as her tomb Shadows are the Twisted mirrors of people inside their own Palace and futamas is designed akin to a pharaoh and the final boss of this said Palace is the Sphinx with her mother's face already if you've not played the game the designs with the level and the character are telling you a story in the real world Futaba is greatly suffering from a traumatic past losing her mother and the death being blamed on her very existence she locks herself in her room and believes she is going to die there the room becomes the pyramid the outside world becomes the desert and Mommy's Sphinx is not the protector of the Tomb but a warden over the pharaoh's distorted perception and the very reason it is inescapable it's not until Futaba begins to discover the deception and lies around her mother's death that she joins you to fight this Phoenix the false version she constructed of how her mother felt about her a depiction of her past reaffirmed by those lies and the tragedy and winning this beautifully designed boss battle not only allows futama to be free from the pyramid but also remember the unconditional love her mother gave her before she died and that doesn't even hold a candle the moment in the Final Fantasy VII remake where the final boss is a [ __ ] house who gives a [ __ ] about this character design when the most memorable boss fight for me is the HOA [ __ ] this busy told me not to make a point but the moral of the story is you can either design great bosses that supplement your story and characters or you can fight a [ __ ] toilet and it'll probably get more hype bye we better make this fight quick hombre I think I left the oven on now dialogue does not commonly play a massive role in boss fights but there are just a few examples that make this worth mentioning the first one of those being Metal Gear Rising Revengeance in this game you fight off against Senator Armstrong who just throughout the entire thing spouts his insane ideas at you there's also my favorite clip of him where he says college ball you know and then proceeds to beat the [ __ ] out I love when he talks I just love when he opened his little mouth and I think it really does elevate the boss fight because the entire time he's spouting all this insane stuff at you and it's reminding you what you're fighting against the only other example I can even think of is in God of War Ragnarok when you fight against Thor for the first time he is just the absolute Mega hater he talks smack to you the entire fight and it goes so far that if you die fighting him he will summon lightning to his hammer use it as a defibrillator and bring you back to life so that he can kill you again oh no I say when we're done that's the ultimate hater whether it's just to raise the tension or give the boss you're fighting some character even just to add insult to injury literally dialogue can add so much to a boss fight Portal 2 is my favorite game of all time and I could talk about it for hours on end but bisley's only giving me four minutes and a government regulated unpaid break so I'm just gonna talk about how the dialogue in Portal 2 makes the boss fight so memorable also spoiler wording I would never want to be the reason that somebody doesn't experience this firsthand because I would pay somebody to concuss me with a metal pipe so I forgot this game just so I can play it blind again uh please play this game Jesus Christ your enemy in Portal 2 is GLaDOS a wisecracking and hyper-intelligent robot that has been conducting various dangerous and ridiculous scientific tests on you basically for as long as you can remember did you know that people with guilty consciences are more easily startled by loud noise your plan to get rid of her is simple take her stuff and make it into worse stuff and take the stuff that kills you and get rid of it leading up to the fight you are joined by Wheatley a personality core that immediately shows his inability to help in any possible way I'm speaking in an accent that is beyond her range of hearing look metal ball I can hear you but I don't need to do the voice when you finally make a tour Lair GLaDOS parades you in the same way that she does throughout the entirety of the game if I'd known you let yourself get captured this easily I would have just angled a turkey leg on a rope from the ceiling and gets ready to fill you with more bullets than you have cells in your body but she soon realizes you've already thwarted her plans her turrets are faulty she has no neurotoxin to pump and best of of all Wheatley is specifically built to be plugged into her to take over my Mainframe Everything feels almost too easy as you shut GLaDOS up and let Wheatley take control because it is an Allied and this isn't even the boss fight but oh my God isn't it cool that they tricked you like that turns out plugging your best friend into glados's all test no ethics system made this dude crazy hahaha and after Wheatley uploads GLaDOS into a potato battery and then drops you down a 6 000 foot pit you are now forced to work aside your newly empathetic ex-boss to put her back into power and save the facility because a smart Maniac in charge is probably better than a dumb one GLaDOS have to travel through a number of tests designed by Wheatley that I can only describe as being held together by duct tape and gum also wheelie is addicted to testing like it's meth I have to test all the time or I get this this itch and when you finally arrive Wheatley seems unprepared he Rambles through his plan and sounds just as incompetent and directionless as he did when you first met him because despite all of his Newfound power he cannot account for how genuinely stupid he was doomed to be by the scientists who created him throughout the entire battle you listen to Wheatley fight against the reality of his intelligence and blame you for the facility destroying itself due to his ineptitude and through his corrupted and overwhelmed frenzy he finally admits that he doesn't know what to do I'm still in control and I have no idea how to fix this place in the final moments of this battle and in one of the coolest ways I've ever seen a boss be defeated you shoot a portal onto the moon and suck him into the vast nothingness of space so he can float around his space junk for the rest of Eternity and contemplate what he's done you know if I was ever to see her again do you know what I'd say in his face I'd say I'm sorry sincerely this boss battle is not hard at all it doesn't throw some insane curveball at you the puzzles aren't exactly the craziest and most complicated things ever but it's the emotional release that this encounter was built for just as the fake out boss was supposed to make you think oh [ __ ] uh this isn't gonna get better you finally finish the mental and the physical torture that not just Wheatley but all of aperture has put you through for however many years you are the most important puzzle piece to the conversation despite saying nothing at all and I think that's pretty cool also this is the one game where I'm allowed to put the cube through the circle Hall so [ __ ] you preschoolers I'm better than you [Music] put a finger in your butt yes this is the part in the video where I turn into a pretentious little worm I love a good story telling stories is technically my day job and I think the most compelling thing you could do for a boss fight is give me a narrative build up and a reason to want to fight this person there are so many boss fights that on the surface look like nothing but once you have the context for what's happening there it's a thousand times more impactful a beautiful example of this is in Ghost of tsushima a game where you play as Jin Sakai a samurai whose home Island was taken over by Mongol Invaders the Mongols clearly played Dark Souls because they studied everything about these Samurai showed up and wiped them out Jin being a samurai is Honor Bound To Face his enemies head on but because the Mongols knew everything about the samurai he had to take a new approach a less honorable approach he began using the Shadows to his Advantage seeing it as the only way to take down these Invaders Jinn as a character was orphaned at a young age and taken in by his uncle Lord shimura who holds High status as a sammer Jin's entire childhood was spent learning the ways of the samurai from his uncle and so when Jin turned his back on tradition on honor his uncle saw it as Jin turned his back on him this is not a way your way can't save our people throughout the entire game Lord shimura expresses his love for jyn even saying that he wants to adopt him making him legally his son but this dishonor is something that he can't take in the end he can't stand by his nephew as he walks down this dishonorable path and so Lord shimura leads Jinn to the same place he trained him as a child and they both draw their blades it's clear he still has love for his nephew for who he sees as his son but he now has orders from the Shogun deals but I will not kill my family but hey on the other hand if there's a character in a game who's just a complete Menace throughout the entire thing and he makes you just really want to kick his teeth in I think that's just as compelling the Batman Arkham series perfectly portrays the villain that is sick and twisted the Joker in each of these Arkham games there are four Joker is featured as a main antagonist in some way in Arkham Origins Joker takes over the entire criminal underwear in Arkham Asylum Joker takes over the Asylum and orchestrates a whole bunch of Shenanigans in Arkham City he kills Batman's girlfriend and then just beefs it at the end he's dead he's gone and then in Arkham Knight he's still a villain because he's stuck in Batman's mind there are multiple boss fights with the Joker in these games and can I be honest they all kind of blow chunks I don't like any of them mechanically they all suck there's nothing fun about fighting a roided up Joker I'm basically just fighting Bane but worse what makes these Joker fights compelling is entirely in the story and the build up in the character dynamic between Batman and the Joker there is one final boss fight with the Joker in Batman Arkham Knight where it's just a glorified cut scene and Batman just punches him a bunch and kicks him into a cell but it's actually all happening in Batman's mind so you're not even punching anybody bro you're just thinking really hard but the story behind it all the idea of Batman once and for all locking up the Joker in his own mind gone away forever is compelling to me I don't think narrative is a necessity in a boss fight I'm all down for showing up in a dark souls Arena killing God and then just ditching with my Souls having a story reason to go up against this enemy can freely bring weight to an encounter making the entire experience much more memorable Portal 2 creates the ultimate narrative boss fight experience for me wrapping up two games that excel in complex narrative storytelling all because of this stupid dumb Daft idiot Wheatley as a character makes his prominent trait glaringly obvious from the moment you meet him by trying to put himself on a pedestal above you you very quickly learned that this personality chord that at one point was attached to GLaDOS is stupid what starts off as an endearing character trait very quickly becomes the game's Twist by making him the antagonist and GLaDOS your unwilling potato partner he's provoked into a fit of rage the moment it's pointed out to him where he throws a tantrum and leaves you to go learn salt mine lore ooh the Borealis two chapters later you come back and this is what he's able to present as a test all of his ideas are designed to just be the worst like this sucks man fatty adopted fatty fatty fatty eventually we leave stupidity culminates in the part where he kills you as GLaDOS points out as Wheatley points out as the chapter card points out the song the achievement the boss fight starts here and his downfall is made glaringly obvious valve also manages to beat the CinemaSins allegations where someone would just go Um why doesn't Wheely just trap you in a room with neurotoxin and do nothing Bing because he's dumb he has to come up with stupid idea is it's what he was made to do as you and GLaDOS agree on Revenge the fight ends with his pathetic mules to grab him and GLaDOS saving your life it was a chance for valve to have the real final boss be a moment here where in a last-ditch effort you find some way to shut down GLaDOS for good but she admits defeat she's an antagonist still but you know what Shell's a pain in the ass go make some new disaster it's what she's counting on you're someone else's problem now she only wants you gone the fat turret has sunglados has sung and Wheatley says sorry the end all these different elements some of them more important than others but at the end of the day they're all important because you can't make a great boss fight with just one of them maybe a boss fight where the attacks time up with the music a large-scale battle against an enemy who becomes the stage as you climb them fighting an enemy whose narrative is only discernible through clues in the environment or in their dialogue these elements are all at their best when they can be used together to create an experience that's greater than the sum of its parts I'm sure when I say that there's one that comes to mind for you feel free to leave that boss fight that resonated with you specifically down in the comments and we can talk about it and after you're done with that click on this card right here that'll take you to another one of my videos been working real hard on these videos I'd appreciate if you gave that one a little click um but all right goodbye foreign

Channel: bizlychannel

Views: 341,826

Keywords: Bizly, bizlychannel, I played and ranked every Spider-Man game, tier list, Boss fight, The Art of The Boss Fight, Every Boss Fight, video essay, Final Battle, Nameless king, guardian ape, king dice, glados, boss battle

Id: pcWzSCjocjg

Length: 53min 39sec (3219 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2023