Yesterday I wrote about the big gameplay-and-narrative friction we often find in RPGs, but there are all kinds of smaller ones, too.
The Guiltless Hero: You're the only one who can save this world -- but only after you go in that stranger's basement and open all his treasure chests, and then take all the coins out of that lady's kitchen cabinet, and then smash people's crockery to see if there's anything in it. They don't even notice!
The Shameless Invader: Hey, what's up? I'm just making dinner, please do open my door at any time you like and come on in so I can talk to you about stew ingredients, my bratty son or how scared I am for my life. It's not like you're on a quest or something.
The Distracted Wanderer: It's finally time to bring that object you almost died retrieving to that guy who desperately needs it so that he can give you something crucial to this world-saving quest that only you can undertake. Oh, wait, hang on a sec, why don't you just check that grassy field over there first? Might be, I dunno, some mushrooms or flowers or something you could use for something. No? How about in that random cave?
The Castle VIP: Welcome, heavily-armed stranger! I'm totally the king of this city, and my castle is crawling with guards with pointy spears. Their job is to stand at either side of each door and chat about how great I am. Make yourself at home! The treasure room is upstairs. No, you can't get in there now, but you know you will at some point. No one'll stop you! Make sure and stop by my throne room and introduce yourself before you leave? Maybe after you're done rummaging around my gorgeous daughter's room for who knows what?
The Pushover: So hey, do you want to undertake this thing? Your input is really important to me. No? Oh, well, too bad, because you kind of have to. Why did I ask you? Because you like having choices when you're adventuring! Oh, dude, do you wanna help out this chick over here, too? No? Aw, too bad, guess you'll miss your ultimate weapon. Did you realize you're supposed to answer "yes" to everything, and your being asked is only a formality? Yes? Now you understand.
The Ingenious Collector: Hey, pal! Heard you're pretty good at adventuring and stuff. I really really don't know what I'll do unless I get one of these thingummies... small, round, costs five bucks at the store over there? Thanks, pal, you're a lifesaver! I'll name my firstborn child after you!
The Sucker: Okay, not to be a pain or anything, but now I need something else... there's a five percent chance you might find one after spending ten hours in the world's most dangerous dungeon, but I really absolutely need that thing. Oh, you got it? Oh, man, thanks! Here's one of those cheezy things they sell for five bucks at the store over there! Use it well!
The Neglectful Leader: You and your loyal band of friends braved trial untold to reach this place, the final battle. You might die tonight, but at least you have each other. This epic journey has taught you the meaning of love, sacrifice and true friendship. You're all in this together, so everybody give one last high-five and shout out what you're fighting for! Your loyal party-mates, that person with the awesome special skill that you had with you for a while, and... wait, who's that dude? Oh, yeah, he joined your party and then you ignored him because he sucks. Group hug, what'syourface! Your personal motives are totes important to me, yeah, the... yeah.
I seriously love RPGs so much.
20 comments:
I'm glad you enjoy them, but these are the sorts of things that drive me up the wall in JRPGs. As much as I tried to get into DQ9, they united to form an impenetrable wall of irritation.
Which is a little weird, because I delight in the NIS/Atlus games that use the exact same cliches. But they call out their silliness, so they get away with it as satire.
What about: "Oh great! So you'll be saving the entire world from utter destruction, that's awesome. Oh these weapons and medicine? Yeah those will still cost full price..."
I think you've got the neglectful leader one backwards. As you mention in the "Party System" post, Persona 3 greatly incentives you to spend time with everyone even though it doesn't make sense from a narrative perspective.
Instead, I'd say the weirdness is the Prominent Hanger-On. Most leaders have more followers than they can or want to pay attention to. The strange thing is that they still get to be inner-circle when in game play they really aren't.
Of course, this can go the other way when your favorite party-member is a not a key story character, which happens most when you've got big ensemble pieces or secret characters. That said, this can be an easier problem to avoid unless you're dealing with a big ensemble tactical RPG or a Suikoden game.
Yeah, Greg, that's exactly what I meant, everyone's giving their endgame speeches and I'm like OH SHUT UP, YOU TOTALLY DIDN'T EVEN HELP BECAUSE I DIDN'T LIKE YOU AND NEVER EQUIPPED YOU.
Fred -- I'm mostly kidding around. I think I'm so habituated to JRPGs that I'd get ticked off at the developers if I got in trouble for breaking someone's pots or for entering the town's fancy-looking central castle.
In any case I'm choosing to engage with the world and suspend my disbelief, so these things don't actually interrupt my engagement. If they did, it wouldn't be so funny for me to pull back and notice the kinds of bizarre things I tolerate unblinkingly in game worlds!
It's like my whole life flashed before my eyes °__°
Leigh - I'd say the most prominent example I've seen of the "You didn't help" thing was my wife's opinion of Vaan when playing FFXII. She ultimately enjoyed the game but thought that Balthier and Fran should have been leads.
Apparently in some of Balthier's dialog he claimed to be the leading man, lamp-shading Vaan's unearned (in my wife's case) prominence. That said, being forced to use him as your main character in town undercut any good will earned by the dialog winks and nods.
She's still a series fan and likes FFXIII, but she did not approve of that protagonist choice.
Good point on the immersion-breaking. One of my big concerns with Western RPGs is that there's an attempt at realism that can hurt the experience: just as animation has an Uncanny Valley where it looks almost-but-not-quite real, you can get similar problems when your NPCs have schedules and ownership of the items in their house, but don't care if you're jumping on the table and shoving them into a corner. That's why I prefer a game that's deliberately stylized than one that's ultra-realistic.
Of course, sometimes Uncanny AI is funny for entirely accidental reasons.
Pushover is poked fun at in Demon's Souls, where the only "Yes/No" dialogue options are for incredibly obvious things like "Do you wish to level up?" or "Do you wish to give away this worthless quest reward for a magic ring of inestimable value?"
My tiny irritation is related to the Distracted Wanderer. Right now I am playing Fable 3 and the main quest line keeps telling me to do x or y to start the revolution, but I am buying houses, making pies and playing the lute instead. Oh, and having babies. Revolution?
I think some RPGs should let you wander in percentages-like, you can't do all of these things until you've reached particular levels in the quest. F3 has some of this in the Road to Rule, but I am about six hours in and have only completed about an hour of the main quest. Granted, this is my decision, but...it puts less urgency on the urgent voice telling you to move forward.
Jessica -- yeah, you're doing those activities because you want to, and you might actually become annoyed if the game didn't let you. The designers are allowing you the freedom to play the game you want to play, and yet then it conflicts a little with the narrative in which they're trying to get you to invest. That's a problem I don't know if RPGs can solve, and we're so used to it we suspend our disbelief anyway, generally.
The webcomic Adventurers! milked every RPG cliche and gameplay mechanic for big laughs, all the way through the inevitable multi-part final boss battle and ending. Highly recommended.
The Patient Damsel in Distress:
Hey, my name's Rinoa and OMG I AM TOTALLY HANGING OFF THE EDGE OF THE WORLD BY ONE HAND! Please help me, incredibly masculine hero! But don't feel like you have to make me your priority or anything. Feel free to have a wander, maybe do a couple of hours' worth of sidequests while you're at it. When you're done, I'll still be waiting patiently here for you to save me.
The "Guiltless Hero" complex was a little hard to accept when I played Mass Effect 2. I don't know why, it just... stopped making sense. I feel like they should at least give you renegade points when you hack an innocent citizen's wall safe for credits.
Don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's this pretty neat free browser game called "Synopsis Quest" (http://www.skipmore.com/freegames/synopsis/synopsis.html) which touches on a lot of the points you made.
It's basically a spoof where you have to solve mini-puzzles that are based on tired clichees and tropes of JRPGs, so if you're genre-savy, you'll have not too many trouble finishing it.
Plus, it's hilarious.
great post
Awesome post Leigh, you needed a "warning - likely to laugh out loud" notice for this post.
I'm not even sure what I'd call one that just drives me nuts with The Witcher. You're in the midst of fighting some nasty beast near somebody else who jumps into the fray to assist. Wonderful right? Unless you accidentally hit one of your new comrades-in-arms during the fight, in which case after dispatching the beast they'll all turn on you.
Stop helping me!
The Metagamer: Yo dawg, I heard you like games, so I put a game in yo game so you can play while you play!
(Alternately, the Min-Maxer.)
All these tropes are just elements of highly stylised or badly written games, you don't get them in bloodlines for example. You do get a sucky second half of the game though, but oh well.
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