“A squawking bird repeatedly shrieks ‘You owe me!’ in a cockney accent”
Visiting a beautiful neon-lit city that hides a sinister secret in Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
I’ve always loved a good JRPG town. Those little pockets of calm where the battles stop, the heroes lick their wounds, and you learn something about the world. The best ones are more than just a random scattering of houses littered with static NPCs. It’s when they feel like they have their own distinctive history and culture that they become memorable, and one of the most recent examples of this I can think of is in the wonderful Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom. Goldpaw is a city covered in neon signs, and one of the prettiest locations in the game. It’s essentially the Las Vegas of Ni no Kuni’s fantasy world, where gambling and other vices are encouraged by the government, and getting into debt is a way of life. Its citizens are so obsessed with chance that the tax rate is decided by a dice-rolling statue. If it rolls a double-six taxes are increased (which, suspiciously, it always does), but if it’s any other combination they’re lowered.
I love how Level-5 didn’t just create a straight-up Vegas analog when designing Goldpaw, but thought about how a city that worships gambling would take that to an extreme, embedding it into its culture. After the statue rolls another double-six, people on the street bemoan the tax hike, but say they’ll just have to tighten their food budget for the month. Lady Luck has spoken, and her word is law. It’s a grim place, but it bubbles under the surface, masked by the neon glow.
When someone gets into debt in Goldpaw, there’s no way to hide their shame. The casino conjures up a hideous, squawking bird to follow the person around, which repeatedly shrieks “You owe me!” in a cockney accent. When Evan gets into debt thanks to some loaded dice, he’s followed by one of these birds and notices that most other Goldpaw residents have them too.
Gold-awe
When Ni no Kuni II was announced and I learned that Studio Ghibli was no longer involved, I was a little disappointed. But Level-5 has done an impressive job creating its own world, and I think Goldpaw would feel at home in a movie by the legendary animation studio. Some parts of the game, like the citybuilding system, feel half-baked, but otherwise it’s a gloriously lavish thing, with heaps of personality— particularly in its towns and cities.
Evan and the rest of the gang are baffled by Goldpaw’s culture, but that’s how it should be. When you’re traveling in an RPG, you want to feel like you’re visiting places that feel alien. It makes the adventure more grand, and the hero’s hometown seem even further away. When you visit Goldpaw, you’re in awe of its lights. But as you learn about how all that glitz and glamor is funded, a darker side to the town is revealed.
Level-5 has done an impressive job creating its own world