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Pepsiman

英語圏のゲームサイトだからこそ、ここで自分がはるかの旗を掲げなければならないの。

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Gameplay and Game Narrative: Another Forum Post Rehash

By Pepsiman 14 Comments

As many Americans were probably wont to do, I ended up heading back home earlier this week to spend time with my family on Memorial Day. Although we no longer have any living relatives who fought in a war, the holiday is always a good opportunity for us to sit down, have a barbecue, and bond in the midst of all of our busy lives. After all, I'm normally a Japanese student by day, my mother a legal advocate for disabled kids, my older sister an ever persistent and productive worker despite her own mental disabilities, and my father a plumber with his own business. Suffice it to say that we get together when either our schedules naturally allow us to or we force them to do so, but that these breaks are rare occasions to sit down and just talk and do whatever.
 
I bring this all up because it was on Memorial Day that my mother and I ended up talking about Persona 4, partly because I had a copy of the game's Japanese art book sitting nearby, having only recently been rediscovered in my bedroom. My mom has always been one to respect my love of games, but at a distance. Part of it is a generation gap, part of it is a lack of intuitiveness for her, and part of it is simply the culture and mentality behind a lot of games. As a sociology major and the proud owner of a law degree, she often needs her entertainment to at least have some intellectual engagement in order to be enjoyable and games, although improving in that arena, don't have a consistent history of doing so, at least in an accessible way to the masses. While I greatly treasure a "smart" game as well, it's less of an issue for me since I grew up with games as a means of escapism during a rather emotionally bumpy childhood, so I'm better able to appreciate games on rawer, visceral levels when need be.   

 

 Here's a picture of Rhythm Tengoku, to break up the wall of text. That game is pretty damn fantastic, even today.
 Here's a picture of Rhythm Tengoku, to break up the wall of text. That game is pretty damn fantastic, even today.
Regardless, the subject of Persona 4 came up and when I told her it was one of my all-time favorite games, she was curious, since she knows I'm a bit of a connoisseur. I told her that it was a lot of things that made the game feel so special and still occupy my thoughts today. In particular, I emphasized the characterizations, how well Atlus had written them and crafted people I could really relate to. For every member in the main cast, there was usually a direct analog in my real life that I knew at that age as well I could reference while interacting with them. The fact that they all have problems and traits I understood from my own experience was what allowed me to bond with the cast, in a way, I said. To emphasize my point, I ended up pointing to individual characters on the cover of the art book and describing their basic traits, saying stuff like, "Well, Chie here is the quirky girl who has some self-esteem and inadequacy issues" and "Kanji's got problems figuring out his sexuality as a man." What initially started as intrigued confusion from my mother as to how I could think of a game so highly eventually turned into respect and admiration for that very same game. I had eventually made her into a mini-fan of Persona 4 of sorts once I described the game's premise and flow in terms she could understand as a woman who grew up with classic books and movies at every turn of her life. When she said that it was the sort of game she'd have probably gotten really into at my age as well, had it existed at the time, I was nothing short of pleased, since, for once, she and I had a mutual understanding as to why I love the unique act of pressing buttons and seeing things unfold on a screen accordingly.
 
Ironically enough, that big old story was not what I originally wanted to call to your attention today, especially since I didn't expect it to turn into a multi-paragraph behemoth. But still, I wanted to retell it for the context of this reprinted forum post I provide below. Coming from a thread in which the topic starter tries to propose a plot he feels is original and could help stymie the maligned trend of relying heavily on cliches in game narratives, I decided to provided my own thoughts on stories in games and how they're married to the gameplay mechanics to make the final product what they are. It's a subject I think about a lot, but I suppose the conversation I had with my mother earlier in this week made the subject fresh enough to warrant another bit of rambling from me. It also probably helped that the original poster reminded me of myself years and years ago, when, as a gamer, I wanted nothing more than for every game ever to be original and innovative, traits I still appreciate within a more accommodating viewpoint these days. So here my response finally is, word for word, and for once it's not actually about Japan. At least not directly. 
 

 Here's an image of a game with more dubious contributions to the advancement of narrative in the medium.
 Here's an image of a game with more dubious contributions to the advancement of narrative in the medium.
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It's not normally the ideas at their core that make or break a story-focused game's potential, but rather their execution. A lot of people have common interests in literary themes that appeal and relate to things that they can understand in their daily lives. It's why you see a lot of basic points transcend any number of stories: they need some sort of common ground with the viewer, player, reader, whoever and time-worn tropes are one way of doing it. Things normally only start getting iffy if the execution of those premises is stale or cliche, since it then shows that the creators are unable to spin their narrative in a way that still appeals to their audience despite some of the familiar territory it covers.
 
Take Mass Effect, for example. I can't say that I've personally completed it myself, but from my perspective, the series has a lot of the fundamentals of your average space opera. Intriguing alien races, exotic locations, galactic politics, and, of course, a human hero, to give the audience a perspective from which they can watch the events unfold and, by proxy, relate to them. By these tenants alone, it'd be easy to conclude that Mass Effect games graft a lot of their plots' individual facets from most every piece of science fiction before it, from Star Wars to Star Trek to arguably even something like Ghost in the Shell. The reason why it still stands out is that dialog and the personalities interjected into its flow make for a dynamic experience for the players. You don't get to just watch Commander Shepard kick ass and wax rhetoric from afar; you're an active participant in it, an omnipresent force able to influence situations (albeit in a scripted way) on your own terms, in the manner that you'd use personally if you were actually there. It also doesn't hurt that Bioware knows their stuff when it comes to RPGs and has the gameplay to back it up, too, of course.
 

 This image wasn't in the original post, but I thought I should give you SOMETHING to keep going. I would have totally bought that shirt, too, were it not for its adherence to the hidden rule in Tokyo where all pieces of fashion must be irrationally expensive. That shirt was like, $30 to $35, if I recall.
 This image wasn't in the original post, but I thought I should give you SOMETHING to keep going. I would have totally bought that shirt, too, were it not for its adherence to the hidden rule in Tokyo where all pieces of fashion must be irrationally expensive. That shirt was like, $30 to $35, if I recall.
It's those sorts of unique traits in execution despite at least some underlying familiarity in the themes that allows the best story-driven games to become so big and influential. Metal Gear Solid games are hardly the first works of fiction to cover the threats of nuclear weaponry, but they still stand out thanks to Kojima's training in filmography and a knack for making plots that take huge, global problems apply them to the characters on a personal level. There have certainly been a lot of games to take place before Personas 3 and 4 that involved growing up in high school and the implications of everything from teen suicide to how people project themselves, but they're still appealing because they're portrayed in a way where you can influence ordinary lives and, particularly in 4's case, possibly come away learning something about yourself or other people. Innumerable games have mooched off of Japanese mythology, yet Okami was still well-loved because it had good visual artistry and technology to back it all up and make everything nothing short of beautiful. Gameplay-wise, these are all pretty vastly different from each other, but they all share that common potential problem of being bogged down by poor execution of their well-trodden ideas, yet still ultimately come through in the end and make experiences that are compelling in their own right, even in comparison to the source materials from which they may have borrowed.
 
My point is that I don't see a whole lot of actual potential execution that your game has at this point to transcend the self-admittedly worn territory the plot seems to exhibit by itself. Off the top of my head, here are some games I can already think of that cover a lot of similar ground:
 
  • Tales of Symphonia, Abyss, etc. Lots of religious and political dissections regarding whether the established moralities really are good for humanity. Characterizations aplenty of people on all sides of a given conflict with plausibly explained motivations for why they do what they do, both good and bad.
  • Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. Depending on which plot route you take, the game's ending can be very heavily about working with or against the major religious order in place and the implications of those decisions. As with other Megami Tensei games in general, though, the overarching design and gameplay mechanics are generally skewed to have a skeptical tone. There is a reason why God's minions such as the angels are usually portrayed as major jerks in these games.
  • Fallout 3. Naturally, a lot of decision making to be had in this game, with the game acknowledging that regardless of whether something is good or evil, there are inherent pluses and minuses to be had in the charades. It's not as though some people chose to set off the nuke simply because they were jackasses.
  • Shadow of the Colossus. While you can't influence the plot, it is definitely one about the ambiguities of what good and evil really are and the influences it can have on the human soul's integrity one way or another.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV. As a character who's often put into situations that can't really end all that well one way or another, Niko Bellic sometimes has a lot on his plate. Who you choose to associate and, by extension, who you choose to kill, has consequences both tangible and intangible, with a lot of the major ones forcing automatic game saves to occur immediately after they happen. Just like real life, sometimes you have to have your cake in that game and eat it, too, even if that cake turned out horribly.
  • Alpha Protocol. Actual quality issues aside, it seems to be a lot like the other Western games in this list in that it takes your decisions and forces you to live with the consequences without giving you a chance to restart. Apparently this can result in pretty drastic changes in the plot affecting everything from the ending to who you even meet along the way.
 

 I gave up on making the images in this post relevant a long time ago. Fargo!
 I gave up on making the images in this post relevant a long time ago. Fargo!
Nothing on this list might be an exact match to what you've described, but I'd say that they're similar enough that things on your end would have to be fleshed out significantly more to make your game stand out in the midst of a lot of these other ones. Sometimes that can't happen with just the story by itself. People in this thread are asking what the gameplay is like for a reason, as that can contribute to the game's story and thematic executions in more personal, immediate, and visceral ways. There are very few story-heavy games that can get away with using the story as a complete clutch. Indeed, there's still actual gameplay in them because the designers intended for their plots to be interactive experiences. Otherwise, if the creators were interested in just purely telling a story, they could have gone off and told it in any number of other more static, established mediums. Gameplay can, does, and should accent the narrative if that's what's important. The dialog system in Mass Effect and Social Links in Personas 3 and 4 are two ways how previous games have accomplished this and it's up to you to create your own solution if you're hell-bent on making a game that lives and dies with its story. That part doesn't even necessarily have to be original; just, again, well-executed. The line for what works and what doesn't, though, is on a case-by-case basis.
 
In the end, there's no real reason why I had to make the post this long or critical other than for my own personal sake of wanting intellectual engagement and the chance to play some Devil's Advocate. But still, hopefully this might give you some ideas on how to move forward (if you're genuinely serious about all this) and why people will still have legitimate questions anyway. All good creators strive to be the best and original in their own way, but that's not possible without outside feedback, either, so don't be surprised if people keep calling you out on what you've presented if you're not ready to back up your ideas with more of them, ideally fleshed-out.
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 Here's one final picture to reward you for all your patience with this blog post. It's a parody that works on multiple levels if you read enough into it.
 Here's one final picture to reward you for all your patience with this blog post. It's a parody that works on multiple levels if you read enough into it.
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