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Celeste’s DLC chapter is arriving next week

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When I wrapped up 2018 with my obligatory round-up article I mentioned that Celeste quickly went from a game I wasn’t really too interested in to one of my favourite games from last year. It adopted the kind of punishing insta-death platforming format I’m usually too inept to enjoy and fine-tuned the pacing so that you were never so far from progress that you gave up on the game. Having great presentation and a charming story was also welcome, of course, but that tight gameplay made it hard to put down. The game already has a decent amount of content as it is; if you’re just interested in seeing the main story you can enjoy the first seven chapters, and then afterwards you can go for the crystal hearts, or even consider the B-sides and C-sides. Even beyond that, there are strawberries to collect and the lure of completing levels faster and with fewer deaths. However, fans are going to have even more content to enjoy when Celeste’s DLC chapter arrives next week.

Celeste’s DLC chapter: the details

Celeste's DLC chapter

What we know so far is the following: Celeste’s DLC chapter will be released on September 9th for all platforms (although Matt Thorston mentions that the Xbox One version may release a little later.) Players will get to enjoy a new 9th chapter named “Farewell”, but they must have completed the first eight chapters before they’re able to try it – that is, the initial seven chapters of the main story and the eighth chapter you can open up after fulfilling the necessary conditions. The new chapter won’t have a B-side or a C-side, but there will be “new mechanics and items to discover”. Thorston also mentioned on Twitter that the new chapter was originally going to be gated behind the C-side levels, but now this is no longer the case. It’s an interesting detail that might hint at the difficulty level one can expect from the chapter (although presumably players will still be able to use the Assist Mode if they’re struggling for too long.)

Hopes and expectations

Celeste's DLC chapter

As for me… I’ll admit that I didn’t go back for all of the optional bits and pieces, but I did unlock and complete chapter eight, so hopefully I can dig up an old save file that I have in the cloud or something. I’ve tried to resist snippets of footage and screenshots tweeted by the official accounts but I’m personally hoping for a similarly well-paced level structure, with checkpointing that feels generous enough to keep you hooked, but not so generous that all challenge is removed from the experience. Also I’m kind of hoping that we’ll get some narrative and dialogue to accompany the experience, since the writing in the original game was engaging and sometimes quite humorous. Finally, I’m curious to see how much knowledge of hidden tech will be necessary – will players need to be familiar with speedrun tricks to make impossible manoeuvres, or will the average human be able to make progress?

Celeste’s DLC chapter: coming soon

Celeste's DLC chapter

Summer is quickly becoming a distant memory, and my gaming schedule had been pretty quiet for the past few weeks, so this will at least be something to keep me occupied between now and whatever the next most interesting release is. We’ll hopefully have more coverage of Celeste’s DLC chapter on this site in the future, although that kind of depends on my own competence with the game. Let’s just say that if there’s a suspicious lack of Celeste news on Disposable Media I’ve either thrown up my hands in surrender or I’m still making futile attempts at progress. Let us know your thoughts on the new chapter in the comments below.

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – highlights from the year

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I’ll be honest: I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from the past twelve months in terms of new entertainment releases. Let’s not forget that 2017 delivered the sequel to my favourite JRPG with Persona 5, gave me a new Nier game, brought me new material from The Upbeats, Major Lazer and Shobaleader One… heck, we even got a decent Sonic game in Mania. With all of this in mind I kind of expected the shortlist titled “Qazi’s Disposable 2018” to provide evidence of a “filler” year – one with plenty of content to enjoy but nothing on the same scale as 2017’s output. This is why I was so pleasantly surprised with the things that I’ve been enjoying in 2018.

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – music

Qazi's Disposable 2018
If the Qazi’s Disposable 2018 shortlist was in physical form it would be full of hasty scribbles and Tipp-Ex as new things regularly edged into old lists, and nowhere was this more apparent than when I was checking out new music. There are a few albums I simply couldn’t cover on this site because I was spending too much time listening to things and not enough time talking about them, but notables outside of the website include The Pack EP by the Upbeats/Truth, Deep News by Halogenix, Collapse EP by Aphex Twin and where’s the drop? by deadmau5. Whether you like layered melodies, big beats or atmospheric wobbles, there was a lot to enjoy – however, I think the best thing I ended up reviewing was No Tourists. It marked a maturing of The Prodigy and showed that they were willing to embrace their older electronic roots when Fat of the Land came so close to discarding them. Elsewhere, The Pack EP was probably the best thing that missed a review: four compact but punchy experiences that all have their own identity and are all worth listening to.

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – gaming

Qazi's Disposable 2018
As mentioned in my intro, I didn’t think there would be a whole lot of noteworthy titles in the gaming segment when shortlisting names for Qazi’s Disposable 2018. I couldn’t be more wrong. Dragonball FighterZ started the year with a bang, boasting some of the prettiest visuals of any game I played this year and maintaining an enjoyable balance of accessibility and depth. Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition finally finished the game’s transformation from a rushed-out mess to a fully-formed fighter. PSVR continued to remind people that the right combination of game and hardware can create an experience as intoxicating as Tetris Effect or the Wipeout Omega Collection update. Oh, and Celeste propelled itself from “that thing I bought with spare PSN change” to the top of my game of the year list because the difficulty is pitched so well and it’s wrapped up in some great presentation. (In hindsight, however, I think it runs the risk of beating you over the head with its theming… and although the writing gets praised for acknowledging a minority, there are a lot of smaller narrative elements that speak to other audiences. I’d argue that the broader themes of crushing self-doubt and glimmers of self-belief – things that everyone can relate to – are every bit as valid as the examination of anxiety and the exploration of mental health.)

Qazi’s Disposable 2018 – miscellany

Qazi's Disposable 2018
As for other stuff? I ended up catching up with a slowly building backlog of Blu-Rays, returned to some old favourites via Amazon Prime and the like… and I sadly had no time to watch Die Hard on Christmas Eve (however, during the holiday I somehow ended up randomly discovering old episodes of Batman: The Animated Series on Amazon Prime, which was as entertaining as it sounds.) A special mention to Rampage – the Dwayne Johnson film based on the Midway arcade game – I ended up renting this digitally before it came out on Blu-Ray, and it’s the perfect celebration of Hollywood excess and dumb videogame setups.

Tips for 2019

Qazi's Disposable 2018
So what have we got to look forward to? The third season of The Grand Tour will be released, so hopefully that will maintain the stronger format of the second series… In music, Major Lazer will release the Essentials collection in physical form (and – despite there being no indication of it – I’ll personally be crossing my fingers for The Prodigy to announce “No Tourists: The Remixes” or something similar…) With regards to gaming, Sekiro will be released and everyone will pigeonhole it into pigeonholes instead of praising the game for its own ideas, we’ll finally find out what Babylon’s Fall is about (because they’ll reveal more information and it won’t just vanish into obscurity, right? Right?) Oh and maybe I’ll follow up my Persona 1 rambling with a look at P2: Innocent Sin. Don’t hold me to that though.

Thanks to anyone who’s taken the time to read our content during 2018 – leave a comment if you’d like to let us know what your highlights of 2018 were, or if there’s anything you’re looking forward to next year.

The struggle: or why death in Celeste works so well

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They say that part of telling a good story is to start as close to the end as possible, and so as soon as I guided Madeline towards the top of the mountain I instinctively hit the Share button. Not so that I could secure bragging rights on YouTube, but so that people could understand the cause of the late nights, ignored game invites and missed Messenger updates. Death in Celeste is pretty much guaranteed on a blind playthrough, but to an outsider looking in, it’s easy to wonder why a player would persevere so much. I know this because I’ve been there; I delayed picking the game up for a while after reading the horror stories and assuming that it would be something I’d never see a credits sequence for, and I only persuaded myself to buy it because I’d made some spare credit from trades. So why would I sign up to such a punishing experience?

Death in Celeste is part of the challenge

Death in Celeste

Before we get to that, some context is needed. Celeste is a 2D platformer released on Steam and consoles, and the player’s goal is to guide the determined Madeline to the top of Celeste Mountain – a straightforward task, were it not for the numerous spikes, traps, pitfalls and other hazards – hazards that cause instant death and a return to the last checkpoint if Madeline comes into contact with them. Death in Celeste isn’t just something to be feared; death in Celeste is something to accept – it’s all part of the learning process. Madeline can run, jump, climb vertical surfaces for a limited time and perform an air-dash that recovers when her feet touch the ground… and for the most part this is all that the two of you can work with. Celeste actually typifies a breed of game I’ve always admired – the game that gives you a generous amount of control over a character or situation, but provides a challenge that forces you to make the most of that control. I see it in parts of games such as Mario 64 and Viewtiful Joe, but here, it’s the game’s M.O.

Death in Celeste is never unfair

Death in Celeste

In other words, death in Celeste is always on you. It helps that the experience is as charming as it is brutal – the presentation is gorgeous, the music is fantastic, the story is brief but also engaging and quite touching, and the small cast of characters is likeable. However, for some players charm won’t be enough, and it’s not long before the game reveals its real draw – the compact form of the challenges. You see, Celeste is harsh with its level design, but rather than giving the player a long slog through some mildly irritating sequences, it offers generous checkpointing and compact platforming action that’s highly demanding. Nothing feels unfair when you’re only teleported back to the start of the screen where you died, and this has the subconscious effect of preventing failure from ever feeling like a massive setback, even when you’ve been trying to master a particular sequence of jumps for half an hour. It’s a psychological trick that’s old-fashioned but always effective… however, it only works when you’re confident that the pacing of the challenges and checkpoints is judged perfectly – have your checkpoints placed too frequently and the sense of challenge is gone; spread them too far apart and the player will walk away from the game. Admittedly, death in Celeste is sometimes followed by what seems like a large setback – one sequence towards the end of chapter three almost felt like it was stretched out a bit too much, even though if you remove the deaths and retries there’s probably only a few minutes of gameplay there – but such experiences are few and far between.

Death in Celeste is one part of an engaging whole

Death in Celeste

It’s a big part of why I kept playing, but it would be unkind to ignore the accomplishments outside of the gameplay – the story is simple but affecting, touching on similar themes of self-doubt and denial that were so thoroughly explored in Atlus’ 2009 masterpiece Persona 4. It doesn’t run quite as deep with the themes as the JRPG did, but Madeline’s journey in Celeste is much more personal, and the climax of that journey is almost as memorable. Additionally, the presentation is excellent – striking pixel landscapes provide the backdrop whilst twee earworms deliver the soundtrack.

What this all means is that death in Celeste is a small price to pay for what ends up becoming a rewarding and rousing experience. To those people who watched the replay of my numerous deaths near the summit – this is why these games keep us coming back, and I can easily see it becoming a modern classic of 2018.

Celeste is available now for Switch, PS4 and PC.

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