by @marathemara​

Today we return to our ongoing series of Ways Homestuck Looks Like a Classic Video Game with another really cool mechanic: New Game Plus. The first game with New Game Plus was the original Legend of Zelda: once you’d beaten the game, you could start a new save file, name it “Zelda,” and get basically the same game, but with new dungeons, harder puzzles, and meaner monsters. Since then, New Game Plus modes have appeared in games as diverse as Kirby’s Dream Land and Dark Souls, and in most of those games, you get to keep all your old experience and gear in the new game. This sort of upgrade also appears in Homestuck, where it translates into the much grander-sounding “God Tier.”

[http://www.screwattack.com/news/these-are-pros-and-cons-new-game-plus]

You don’t have to win the Game to reach God Tier; instead, you can achieve it when you’ve leveled up as far as you could otherwise. All you have to do is die on the Quest Bed on your planet, or your Crypt Bed on Prospit or Derse. When you come back to life, you’re stronger, you have more magical powers related to your Class and/or Aspect, and you’re ready to take on even more difficult challenges and gain all the levels. ALL OF THEM.



Because you don’t have to win to reach God Tier, and you don’t have to kill your character to get New Game Plus, it might seem like they’re not all that similar. But games like Undertale have treated resetting a game and starting over as killing and resurrecting the characters, and some hardcore gamers don’t really consider a game won until they’ve hundred-percented it on the hardest difficulty setting, which is what New Game Plus generally is. So God Tier feels like a New Game Plus.

Among players of video games, achieving New Game Plus is generally seen as a good thing–you’ve beaten the game, and you can keep playing without repeating stuff, and you can brag to other people about how you’re playing New Game Plus! Among Homestuck characters, though, reactions to the idea of God Tier are much more diverse and interesting. Vriska and Karkat view it like typical gamers, as a sign of status. Vriska has it and flaunts it, while Karkat doesn’t have it and desperately wants to.

Aradia sees God Tier as her chance to come back to life; and once she gets it, she basically stops playing so she can hold onto that life.

John has no idea what’s going on. He follows Vriska’s instructions and is pleasantly surprised by the result.

Dave is the only character who’s really negative about the idea of God Tier. Terezi presents it to him more honestly than Vriska does to John: she shows him that he’s going to have to die to reach God Tier, and he balks. For a long time, he’s too afraid of dying to even consider it, and then after he does go God Tier, he’s still scared of the increased challenge and responsibility it represents.



Each of these characters’ reactions to the concept of God Tier parallels their understanding of life and the Game in general. John goes with the flow, Vriska wants to be the best at everything, Karkat wishes people would take him seriously, Dave is convinced he’s not a hero, let alone a god. Kinda makes me wonder what I’d do, faced with the option to become God Tier. Would dying be worth it to become effectively immortal, eternally young, and have magical powers and incredibly comfortable clothes that never need washing? I don’t like the idea of dying, but I find it difficult to say no.