What's the story? - December 22nd, 2001 - Drew Cosner
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I taught a hippie to roll over. Don't say we didn't warn you.
I may as well get my thoughts on this discussion out right now: I'm all for complex, intruiging storylines, so long as they fit the context of the game. RPGs and adventure games, in particular, are substantially more fun to play when the storyline is adequately enthralling. Even games outside of those genres can be paired with a strong plot to great effect. Grand Theft Auto 3 comes immediately to mind.
On the other hand, some games are strictly about the gameplay, and wouldn't be much better with a story of the most epic proportions. Mario saves Peach. It's what he does. It's what he's always done, and it's probably what he's going to keep doing for some time. I don't think Mario 64 would have been much better if it turned out Bowzer was in league with a subversive, extra-legal group of conspirators bent on overthrowing the governments of the world through commerce. It just wouldn't have fit.
In other words, I'm not one of these people who insists that any RPG with a strong storyline is just a "semi-interactive movie." Those people are missing the point. I just think that everything has its proper place is all. I know, I know, that kind of middle-of-the-road viewpoint isn't like me, and I apologize. I found a comfortable spot right here on the fence, and I'm not moving from it.
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Mulholland Drive is second favorite movie right now (after LotR). Twin Peaks is the best thing ever to grace a tv screen. Memento, Amelié, Ghost World, In the Bedroom, Six Feet Under, and the rest are all incredible works of cinematic art.
The question, however, is would the stories, characters, direction/cinematography, setting, etc. of these be suitable for a console-based role-playing game of any merit?
The simple answer is yes. One of my favorite games, ever, is Megami Iburonoku Persona (Revelations: Persona is its American bastard offspring). Not only did it have a dark, realistic setting with atypical, down-to-earth characters, but it had a plot which both took you to an ethereal plane of thought while keeping you grounded firmly in the present time and place. Characters like Alana (a "bimbo" with more intelligence and worth than she might show on the outside because of her deep-set insecurities) and Brad (your very common arrogant high-schooler, having a unrealistically high opinion of himself but actually harboring a great deal of sentiment for others under his innocent, protective coverings) thrown into the situation most RPG characters seem to be raised for is worth every single Grandia and Wild Arms game ever made.
Not to day these games don't have their own merits, mostly in the field of gameplay and graphical appeal, but not one of them has the deep plotline, characters, or setting of a Megami Tensei game. Sure, Persona suffered in the realm of graphics and gameplay mostly due to its reliance on past standards that did not sit well with American gamers at the time, but I still remember every detail of the plot like as if I beat it yesterday. Every character still stands out in my mind to this day. There is the true appeal of a game for me - making some kind of emotional impact upon the player.
Mulholland Drive was not only a great mind-opener for me (I actually put together the plot, step by step, and got probably too many themes and messages out of it that have impacted me greatly) but it was a thrill ride without having car chases, explosions, or sappy romance. Persona helped me open my horizons in ways I never imagined when I played it. Persona also was the first game that made me realize the importance of story; sure, I wanted to get those 99th level personas like Lucifer, but I really played through it like a maniac, multiple times, because I HAD to find out what happened to the characters in the storyline. I also had a great deal of fun and was thoroughly challenged.
If more games could get rid of their reliance on the "Active Time Super Interactive Battle Magic System Plus Supreme" systems and mind-blowingly realistic graphics, put more thought and time into plot/character/setting, find a unique way to present it *coughMementocough* and add the gameplay and graphics as those elements see fit. Sure, this is my opinion, and one most disagree with at that, but games like Persona come along so rarely and are so often ignored for being different that most haven't even felt the true experience. A parallel can be drawn to the independant movie industry which produces most of the above movie masterpieces but rarely get a high gross due to them being "artsy", "boring" and "hard to understand".
And you simply have to love a game where you can choose to go through a twisted, frozen-over version of your high school to save fellow classmates whose fears and desires have taken over them (the insecure, sexually abused girl becomes chained to a floating bed and casts spells which invoke fear and darkness to ward you off; the unattractive, fat kid with a crush that could never come to fruition turns into a "sex demon" that tries to consume the object of his desire whole) just to save your caring and sympathetic teacher, who has been taken over by the ancient spirit of unfufilled desire and misplaced love. No sequence, in any game, has ever come close to the emotional response evoked by the simple reality shining through in every single event you perform on that side quest.
Well, that's all the mad ravings of me for now. Succintly put, I hope and dream that more games like ICO and Persona would grace the market; even if they were seen as "alternative" and "artsy", at least there WOULD be a alternative to your FFXs and your Star Ocean 3s.
-Xaen, insane and analyzing it.
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I have to be honest; trying to come up with a response I felt fitting for this letter gave my brain a real wedgie. I still can't quite get my thoughts organized as I sit here and try to write. I think the crux of the problem is that comparing games to movies is, at its heart, comparing apples to oranges. Allow me to clarify.
The good majority of your letter asserts that Persona is an excellent title because of its deep storyline. Well enough. You say that it went unappreciated by Western gamers because of "...its reliance on past standards..." Still fine and good. Then you draw a comparison to small-time films, which go unappreciated because their storylines are too hard to follow. Huh?
I think I understand the spirit of what you're trying to say: that non-mainstream movies, like games that challenge the industry's paradigms, may very well go unappreciated by the public-at-large. The difference is that a film lives and dies by the story it tells, albeit aided by visuals, whereas games have that pesky "gameplay" the developers have to concern themselves with. For your comparison to work, Persona's lackluster sales would've had to have been a result of a inscrutible, if rewarding, plot.
Where you really throw my poor head for a loop is in that last paragraph. You place Persona and ICO side-by-side as examples of adequately artistic games. And, if I'm reading your letter correctly, the reason Persona was such an excellent game, in your mind, was for the story. That strikes me as strange, since ICO had pretty much no plot of which to speak. In fact, ICO was the perfect example of a gameplay-driven game; everything else took a backseat.
That said, I'm all for games with "'...Active Time Super Interactive Battle Magic System Plus Supreme' systems and mind-blowingly realistic graphics..." so long as they aid the gameplay. Mario 64 had "gimicky" 3D mechanics and excellent graphics, and was an excellent title for it.
I think what I'm trying to say is that a great story certainly helps, but it's not all that matters. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say anymore.
I won't even get into the fact that smaller films' lack of sales probably have more to do with poor advertising and distribution than anything else; my brain already feels like a calculator being asked to divide by zero.
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Drew -
Hold on here. I kinda like current game narratives. Maybe I'm a romantic or
something weird like that, but I enjoy plots like Lunar's a bit more than I
enjoy hearing about how the entire cast needs therapy.
Peace,
Ray Stryker, who actually doesn't mind some of the RPG cliches everyone
complains about....and highly doubts that we will ever see a game on par with
"Memento" as far as plots go anyway...
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Well, this point had to be made sooner or later: nobody's going to ever agree on what makes a story "great." Even films like Memento, all but universally praised, had some bad reviews. In fact, I remember one critic saying the reason Memento's storyline ran in reverse was to disguise how idiotic the plot was, in so many words. Most would disagree, but I think you get the point.
Some people are perfectly happy with RPGs as they are; some people would rather watch a favorite black-and-white film than head out for the theatres. It's all a matter of preference.
Of course, just to throw in my two cents for the sake of keeping things interesting, I'm more in favor of progress. Black-and-white films may be fine for some, but their didacticism and idealism always grated on me. Show me a movie where George Bailey realizes his souse of an uncle has really screwed him over and the world in general couldn't give a shit; that's the way life actually is. Maybe I'm too Gen-X for my own good, but that's the way I feel.
That said, I'm more a fan of RPGs where the entire cast ought to be on therapy. People are screwed up, and I want to see games that don't gloss over the fact. The fun of FFVIII, for example, was watching a guy who could have been just about any introverted dork you know grow into a decent person, shouldering the responsibility of saving the entire planet from destruction. But hey, that's just my opinion.
Or to take things even one step further than that:
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Drew-
As far as I'm concerned, most Square game plots suit me just fine as far they go.
It's Game Arts (Y'know, the Lunar and Grandia developers) that's starting to piss me off.
I mean, come on! Haven't you noticed the coming trend in all their games? Take both Grandia games, for example. In BOTH games you end up in some giantly oversized monster, and fight it out with the crazed whacko where he tells you that humanity deserves to die and you rant on and on about how freaking good humanity is and then win and have a freaking celebration. If It weren't for Ryudo, I would have assumed that Grandia II was a really pretty remake of the first one.
The Lunar series has taken the exact same direction. Lunar: SSSC: Boy meets girl, girl turns out to be deity, they fall in love, she gets kidnapped, they save her, they live happily ever after in a gumdrop house on lolipop lane. Lunar 2: EB: Boy meets girl, girl turns out to be deity, they fall in love, blah blah blee.
The "Lunar" series also tries to force feed me the same moral crap that the Grandia series does. If I have to hear one more goddamn time about how fucking good humanity is, I am gonna puke, so help me god. I liked the first Grandia, and LOVED the first Lunar, but it seems that Game Arts is only capable of regurgitating old crap and calling them "sequels." I'm quite frankly sick of morals being crammed down my throat. I can just imagine the themes for the next games in both series: "Grandia Xtreme: Eat your vegetables" and "Lunar 3: Don't take candy from strangers."
What I would consider a good plot twist in a Game Arts game would be this: Your party goes on an on about how great humanity is, and they say to your protagonist "(Name of Protagonist)! We must stand and fight for humanity!" and your protagonist says, "NO! YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF INSIPID DOOSH BAGS!" and then slaughters them all with his sword.
Well, maybe not. But all I ask is that Game Arts try to be original for a freaking change before they make me absolutely sick.
And when all is said and done, I can only hope that I was the first person to use the term "Doosh Bag" in a DA column. That would really make my day. Even though I spelled "doosh" wrong. Doosh doosh doosh.
Rock over London, Rock on, Chicago!
-Irvine Kinneas, Uh-huh!
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I'm not sure I'd go so far, but yeah. Point taken.
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Why, oh, why must a "good" plot be the dark, weigthy plots of literature
that only Erin seems to think is popular (or at least, noone I know
reads that sort of thing.) What I'd really like to see, for once, is a
genuinely witty plot, preferably one where you do things remarkably less
than saving the world. A game with the wit and cleverness of, say, Terry
Pratchett, Jane Austen (she is witty, I tell you! go read Pride and
Prejudice), or any of the popular British comic authors, like Andrew
Harman or Susan Townshend (No offense meant to Americans here, it's just
that no American authors of that type spring to mind). I think it should
be possible, by choosing a unique set of people, who, shockingly, are
NOT terribly good at what they do, and only really start to become good
late in the game; to set them against Villains who are NOT pure evil; To
actually avoid the seemingly relentless melodrama an RPG seems to need
nowadays....
THAT IS WHAT I WANT! Surely I cannot be the only one!
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Did I mention that people's appraisal of a story is entirely subjective? Yeah.
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D-man -
Square and the like can put out all the dark, brooding,
thematically-complex feats of visual engineering they can muster, so long
as I never have to write a ten-page report on "Jane Eyre: The Game" to pass
an English Class.
- An'Desha - If the graphics are too complicated to suit a game's plot,
simplify the graphics.
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Leave it to our cynical readers to think up the potential negatives to any seeming positive. It would certainly suck if games were finally embraced by the general public as "art," only to result in our having to write boring research papers about them.
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Drew,
I don't have anything specifically relevent to add to the discussion, but as
Erin's topic is basically the "art versus entertainment" question with some
added repercussions, I felt that this quote might be of interest. Courtesy
of Miss Pauline Kael, one of the finest critical writers in the history of
America:
"All art is entertaining, depending on how educated you are. If you're
educated enough, you enjoy Shakespeare; but if you aren't and don't have an
instinct for it, you may find him tedious work rather than entertainment.
There are entertainers who are not artists, but then are also pop singers
who reach a level where they become artists. But these are just
hairsplitting gradations. If art isn't entertainment then what is it?
Punishment?"
Food for thought.
--Adrian Langston
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I'd say that's as good a place to end the column as any.
Closing comments:
I know a lot of you are dying to talk about FFX, but I haven't played it yet, so screw you. Instead you're going to deal with this stupid topic: what do you think of Maximo from what you've seen? interested at all? Think it will be afitting spiritual successor to the Ghosts and Goblins/ Ghouls and Ghosts franchise? Just mail me and let me know.
-Drew Cosner
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