The Boss Fight That Proves Deaths Door Is On Another Level – Kotaku

Deaths Door, an isometric dungeon-crawler that came out for PC and Xbox earlier this year, is a master class in elegant game design. Nowhere is that more apparent than in one late-game boss fight. In pretty much every wayvisually, thematically, mechanically, musicallythe bout is a tour de force. I cannot stop thinking about it.

Major spoilers follow for Deaths Door.

The setup for Deaths Door is fairly simple: You play as a crow, a rank-and-file employee in a bureaucratic organization that collects the souls of the dying. In the rules of this agency, when youre in the field, you can die. But once you return with your assigned soul, youre back to immortality and an indefinitely extended (after)life.

Your first gig is to field a soul from an octopus-looking monster thats not quite ready to say goodbye to being alive. You pull the job off, because its basically a tutorial level, and then an older crow who calls himself Grey Crow comes out of nowhere and steals the soul thats by rights yours. Apparently, he needs souls to open the titular Deaths Door, behind which hes lost a soul of his own, so he can return to an ageless existence. Grey Crow then tasks you with defeating three Giants, each of whom live, in classic Zelda style, deep in the pits of labyrinthine dungeons. Once you complete your task, shit gets real.

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Using all three Giant souls, you open Deaths Door. There, you meet Death, who is not a concept but actually just a former reaper named Death, who, while wearing a fanny pack, regales you with the big twist. Years before the events of Deaths Door, your boss, the Lord of Doors, sought eternal life in a conspiratorial plot that required locking Death behind a door and tossing away the key. Grey Crow cant handle this information overloadcant handle that he devoted the bulk of his life to a fruitless causeand becomes consumed with rage, transforming into his boss form, The Grey Crow.

Though hes tough, The Grey Crow is by no means the most difficult boss fight in the game. (That dishonor unequivocally belongs to Betty, the third Giant.) But its certainly the prettiest. Heres a video from Fuzzy Bearbarian, a YouTuber who specializes in creating boss fight guides, showing a no-damage (!!) match:

Yes, its an impressive feat. But also: the music! The stark visuals! Its like that definitive black-and-white segment from Gris, Nomada Studios excellent 2018 puzzle-platformer, except stretched and molded into a boss fight that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Gris.Screenshot: Nomada Studio / Kotaku

The fight against The Grey Crow stands out not just because of what it does but because of what it doesnt do. Most of Deaths Door constrains you to a specific space. Dungeon fights are typically bordered by walls or bottomless pits. Prior boss fights, meanwhile, go down in tightly confined arenas, circular or square platforms that can fit in the space of a single frame. But when youre up against The Grey Crow, you can run and run and runforever. (Yes, yes, I understand that its an optical illusion, a graphical trick that makes you feel like the space is without bounds. Still, after spending an entire game navigating dictated boundaries, the sensation of limitlessness is intoxicating.)

But it also plays with the games form in a way no prior boss fight does. Deaths Door doesnt have health bars or hit points or anything like that. Rather, as you chip away at an enemys health, theyll slowly develop fuschia-colored cracks. Once an enemy looks ready to shatter, you can usually do away with them in a hit or two. The Grey Crow introduces an extra wrinkle: Every time you land a hit, hell lose a feather. Any detached plumage will turn into homing projectiles that slowly track you. If you can line it up right, you can smack those projectiles right back at him, thus delodging another feather, creating a cycle akin to a dance.

Defeating The Grey Crow might take you a few tries, depending on how comfortable you are with isometric action games. Like Fuzzy Bearbarian, I found it easiest to pepper him with the upgraded fire spellfound in the catacombs en route to the Witchs Mansionwhich deals consistent damage over time. In the latter half of the fight, hell start dropping gravity wells that can ruin your day, so shooting those is imperative.

Eventual victory brings one of Deaths Doors themes into crystal clarity. Despite its name and its ostensible focus on, yknow, reaping souls, the game about life. Its about how, when the time comes, most folks dont want to die, and will do anything within their power to avoid it. But thats not how things work. Without death, Death points out, there cannot be life.

Theres a haunting, melancholic bent to the whole thing. Yes, you win, but its one of those in-name-only victories. The Grey Crow doesnt revert to his previously even-keeled manner. He doesnt have an epiphany and give up the fight. Hes just...gone. By your hand.

Im sorry about your big feathered friend back there. Its always hard for the living to let go of the dead, Death tells you once you walk back out of his door. Even more of a rough one, having to reap him yourself.

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The Boss Fight That Proves Deaths Door Is On Another Level - Kotaku