One of the most influential Japanese visual novels ever made is getting a PC Steam remaster this week

This week, Type-Moon and Kinoko Nasu’s dark fantasy visual novel and dating sim Fate Stay/Night is getting a new Steam release. During the pandemic lockdowns, I randomly watched Fate Zero, one of Stay/Night’s many anime spin-offs. It sparked a brief obsession with the Fate series — I even dipped a toe into the long-lived mobile gacha game Fate/Grand Order. As such, I consider myself the closest thing RPS has to a Fate “expert.” Take a brief, occasionally informative tour of a universe whose culture has been shaped by so few.

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First published in 2004, Stay/Night is the story of Shirou Emiya, a schoolboy with an obligatory buried hero complex who finds himself drawn into a war between wizards for the Holy Grail. The wizards fight by challenging legendary heroes to duel on their behalf. Shirou somehow manages to match up with one of the elite – Saber, aka Artoria Pendragon, the blonde bob-haired, gender-swapped King Arthur.

Saber is absolutely ubiquitous in the Fate universe and beyond. Even if you haven't watched, played, or read anything Fate-related, you may have seen an homage to the character, aka “saberface,” in another anime or manga. You may also have come across a reference to Rin Tohsaka, Shirou's schoolmate who is often referred to as the original twin-tailed tsundere (a tsundere is a character, usually a girl, who shows affection towards the main character by being aggressive and distant).

If Saber is the heart of the series, Fate doesn’t want any alternative poster children. Period celebrities in Stay Night include a flamboyant take on the Irish mythological hero Cu Chulainn, whose tendency to get himself killed is a running joke in the franchise, and a disgusting, lecherous take on the Sumerian king Gilgamesh. As “history’s first hero,” Gilgamesh claims ownership of the legendary weapons wielded by all other heroes, and enjoys firing them through a giant golden portal. He’d do well in Total War.

Gilgamesh may be a jerk, but he's definitely a show stopper. When the Fate heroes do fight, it's a bloodbath, especially in the case of Ufotable's Unlimited Bladeworks adaptations – aka Unlimited Budgetworks – where the heroes throw castles at each other and perform magic attacks that make Final Fantasy summons look like snapped rubber bands. Later Fate stories spice things up by introducing multi-era, full-on gods and goddesses, like the Grand Order series. However, much of Fate Stay/Night is about the conversation. There's the opportunity to romance Saber, Rin, or their overly-bully schoolmate Sakura, and each of these romantic arcs corresponds to a different ending to the overall battle royale plot.

Stay/Night is not a casual game. It's all too easy to make the wrong decision and perish without warning – after all, you're a puny human who's encountered various giants from the ancient world. The narratives can be very disturbing – the plot path of Heaven's Feel in particular is a horrific chronicle of sexual abuse.

The original game also features some extremely vulgar, male-gaze sex scenes, but these have been removed from the Steam remaster (which is based on the intervening, non-adult Realta Nua adaptation). If the violence is too much, the Carnival Phantasm parodies are a nice, if deeply confusing, introduction to the fundamental stupidity of a series that has Shakespeare squabbling with Hercules and Jack The Ripper. There’s also a laid-back Fate cook-off, where Saber, Shirou, and their friends bond over omurice and curry. I’m pretty sure the whole thing is Fate-themed at this point.

The new version of Fate Stay/Night is coming out on Thursday, August 8th and will be available in English, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Here's the Steam page. I'll leave you with Berser-CAR.

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