The Rooks

Yesterday I finished several minutes of the Rook boss soundtrack and devised a basic layout for the boss fight.

Each boss fight in the game should reflect specific aspects of the officer's character. 

The queen is elegant, powerful, free to move wherever she pleases ... and incredibly intimidating. She is always present in some shape or form and can project power even when she's far, far, far away from the frontlines. If she's close, she can mate you all on her own with minimal backup or no backup at all. Each of her moves is a step in a deadly choreography and you better keep up, or you'll regret it ....

The bishops are bound by specific rules (their own convictions and beliefs), but they can be deadly in the right situation. However if they don't act when the opportunity to attack arises, it can sometimes directly lead to defeat. While this is obviously true for all other pieces, bishops' inability to liberate themselves when they're stuck in a corner can sometimes cost your opponent a high price.

The knights are unpredictable in close quarters. They are specialists, trained in attacking from above. One moment you're safe, the next you're just staring down certain defeat and you never saw it coming. A knight in a crowded or narrow section of the board can do a thousand times more damage than a queen ever could under the same circumstances, because he can reach you, when others can't.

The rooks however .... they are really interesting. On the board rooks are very similar to bishops in many ways. But due to the fact, that they can occupy and threaten massive portions of the board through their bare presence (similar to the queen) and are able to move quickly from one threatening position into another got me thinking.

In a way rooks have the power to shape the situation on the board. Having a rook in a specific position can make things so much more difficult for your opponent. Rooks are prime candidates for mating your opponent and in some instances two rooks can even be more deadly than a free moving queen. Two rooks working in sync are a permanent death threat to your opponent.

Rooks create barriers by limiting the king's ability to move beyond a specific rank or file.

Rooks sweep across the board with incredible speed.

They are powerful when they're together, but much less so when they are isolated.

They have a certain kind of maliciousness about them. Each game I played, I felt they were having "fun" just being rooks, out of the sheer pleasure of their threatening abilities and speed. Sometimes they felt kind of ... childish to me. They can only move in straight lines, but they don't care. To us they look "limited", but in their minds, they are not. They are having the time of their life. Rooks tend to mate you slowly, even if they could do it quicker. They display a certain amount of sadism. They know your defeat is inevitable and yet ... they just lock you in one move at a time, so you can slowly watch your own demise, without being able to interfere in any shape or form.

The number 5 is also significant. Rooks count "almost" as much in value as two regular officers, or 5 pawns. I recently asked myself why only 5 and not 6? The reason is obvious: Because rooks are more powerful in duos. Two isolated rooks are much less powerful than a free moving duo of rooks. If one falls, the other also loses in value. You can't create a duo anymore if one was taken. Of course you still have the queen. But if the queen has to take on the tasks of a rook by blocking ranks and files or forcing the king to move in a specific direction, she can't commit to other tasks, such as clearing the board or actively facilitating mate by cornering the king directly. (the same is true for other pieces as well: The queen can compensate for their absence, but if you overload her with too many tasks at the same time, you stress her and take away her elegance)

The rook boss fight is based on an old German children's game and you will encounter the rooks displaying these qualities while playing with them.