JRPG Party-Based Combat

About two or three months ago, I had been playing a lot of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride. I'm a firm believer in handhelds, thus why I love my DS so much. Handhelds allow focus to be on gameplay rather than graphics, which is something that I value highly. Dragon Quest V sent me on a kind of retro journey into adoration. I've long preferred the Dragon Quest series to Final Fantasy because I like the gameplay and the stories better. I find the monsters charming; I adore Slime.

There are a lot of things I love about Dragon Quest V. The little things that count can be counted upon in this game. The Hero, who has extremely bad luck in game, has a very, very low Luck stat. The inn prices-- in Whealbrook, post-burning, the inn price is extremely cheap, due to no one wanting to stay in the town and the innkeeper needing to take what she can get. In Coburg, where the taxes are high, the inn is about eight times more expensive than in Whealbrook. You can actually talk to your party members. One thing I don't like is the combat system.

JRPG battle is almost always turn-based. It is always party-based. In the combat menu, selections are divided up into different types of combat. Usually, the rule is Attack (physical), Magic (either assault or supportive), Item (to access your inventory), and Flee (to flee battle). Different characters will have different abilities. Some will be powerful magic users, either combat or restorative, and some will be tanks (high attack, defense, or both). However, different variations can turn combat in a JRPG from a button-mashing mess into a fun time. I've broken it down into the two major things:

1) Lineup. Standard JRPG lineup is just who goes first-- one, two, three, four. Enemies tend to focus on the ones in the middle in my experience, for whatever reason. However, good JRPG lineup also has front and back positions that the characters can take. If a character is in a "back" position, their physical attacks are weaker, but enemies' attacks will hurt them less. That means that the back position is good for archers and those who are primarily magic-users. Ideally, this also means there are archers.

Why DQV Failed: They didn't include this, simple as that, even though there was distance weaponry (boomerangs) and magic.

2) Unbalanced party members to make up a balanced party. Yes, this makes sense. Just hear me out. Each character should have strengths and weaknesses. And they should be important and their weaknesses should be fatal if they aren't supplemented with other members of the party. This is why a JRPG is a party-based RPG. If the party itself doesn't matter, why do I need to have one? Why don't I just dump everyone off somewhere and journey alone. The hero always needs to be relatively balanced, since for at least some of his journey, he will be alone and need to fight alone. However, he will be fighting against groups of enemies and thus will be outnumbered. He needs his party. His party should also need him, and each other. If each member of the party is perfectly balanced, why bother? Having unbalanced party members (Stat-wise. Not mentally. Though that would be cool.) gives the player a resource to manage. That way, you need to figure out which party mix-up would work best in various situations, in addition to figuring out which attack to use.

Why DQV Failed: For many, many hours in the game, it's just you, the balanced hero, Harry, the balanced prince sidekick, and whatever monsters you recruit. Dragon Quest V could have done something awesome with this, since recruiting monsters gives you a gigantic party to work with, each (presumably) with different strengths and weaknesses.

Of course, given where my brain has been recently, I related this to MMOs. MMOs are, by nature, party-based, though some obviously emphasize PvP rather than cooperative play. One of the reasons I like Korean MMORPGs is actually because there is very little cooperative play, so I don't have to deal with other players if I don't want to.

Relating this to Elder Scrolls Online, how will a game famous for their single-player games, where you can be anything and need to be able to journey alone, manage party-based combat? Will even a fighter still be able to learn restorative magic? How will Elder Scrolls Online walk that line between self-sufficiency and cooperation? How will they deal with the hero mentality of their long-time fans and the MMO world's need to have a little army? As DQV shows, you can't really have both. To wait and see is the only thing I can think of to do, and even then, it bothers me. Because unless some friends decide to jump on the Elder Scrolls Online boat, I don't want to play with other people, necessarily. And I don't think the game will be a success as an MMO unless it makes parties a necessity.

Oh well. If Elder Scrolls Online fails, I can always immerse myself in Skyrim again. There's always that.

News from Boston. Old News, but News Nonetheless

I was silent for most of April; there was nary a post. The reason for this was I was gearing up for presenting at the PCA/ACA National Conference in Boston. The PCA/ACA stands for Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. I presented on the use of perspective in games to portray female characters,  I.E. the first-person female player character.

Promotional image from Tomb Raider: Underworld.

It sounds all technical and academic-y, doesn't it? Well, provided I can remember my own argument, let me break it down. The way that the camera view is used in games directs the gaze of the player. This makes it so that the focus of the game can be said to be on either character or graphics-- something superficial, so to speak (third-person), or to be on gameplay or graphics (first-person). When featuring a female lead, in those rare times, the focus tends to be on third-person. This directs the player toward the fact that they are playing a woman. "Oh my, look! A GIRL! And she's got BOOBS!" tends to be the player's reaction. When games with a female lead are in first-person, it helps to focus the game developer and the player on the playing of the game rather than staring at a busty brunette. Though there's nothing inherently wrong with this busty brunette, having to portray a female character in a certain way due to social expectations &c causes game developers to portray a shallow character, perpetuating female stereotypes. First-person helps side-step these problems, and might be a helpful tool in character development for game developers.

Promotional image from Mirror's Edge.

Consider the differences between Tomb Raider and Mirror's Edge, for example. In some ways, very similar games. However, the ways they portray women are very different. Tomb Raider's focus is always on her body, especially in promotional art. I'm thinking especially of a certain photo shoot from the new Tomb Raider, where Alison Carroll (the model for Lara) lies around in a bikini with a pair of guns in hand. Mirror's Edge focuses on the game dynamic-- the constant motion of running, jumping, and vaulting. Consider also the differences in the portrayal of Metroid's Samus Aran between Metroid: Prime and Metroid: The Other M. At one point, Samus was kickass, yet somehow that disappeared when the game put more focus on third-person and thus had more need to develop a character who was female, and had all the pressures of the stereotypes associated therein.

The paper had more examples, more academic double-talk, forty-five slides, and some quotations from various people. I remember distinctly that there was a section on Mass Effect. However, any further suggestions for games with female leads in third- or first- person would be more than welcome. I would also appreciate book recs concerning the implementation of viewpoint.

[First Impressions] Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

Narrative's place in video games is so difficult to pin down. Because the story is definitely what peaks my interest in a new installation of a series, but new innovations in game play are what get me to buy a game of a new series, or rather, a series new to me.

So, I decided to test some of my thoughts from my last post "Writing and Narrative in Video Games" in my new purchase of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Golden Sun originally came out for GBA in the latter years of GBA's run. It was November of 2001 and the DS would come out in November of 2004. Golden Sun was one of the last really good RPGs for GBA. It is also one of the very few games that I've played all the way through, start to finish, and with a great amount of love. The graphics were the best seen on GBA yet. I was impressed by special attacks, which were often reminiscent of the first Playstation game I ever played and my favorite game for Playstation still, Legend of the Dragoon. The story was interesting and compelling, and the game was just impressive all around.

So why has it taken me this long to buy Golden Sun: Dark Dawn? Because I haven't heard anything yet that contradicts my supposition that the story is very much the same as it was in the original Golden Sun. Additionally, there didn't seem to be any innovations in game play. This supports what I said about Fable III in "Writing and Narrative in Video Games," where I said that what causes me to buy a new game in a series is innovations in story rather than game play. Although I might have bought the same story if the game play was significantly different, I wasn't willing to buy the same story, same game play.

What would I like to see? My major bugaboo with the original Golden Sun is the class system.  It was very boring and stagnant in the first Golden Sun-- there was a class system, but it seemed irrelevant most of the time, and I pretty much ignored it because it seemed useless. I want a class system that seems useful.

Now, I'm going to see if any of my suppositions were founded. Is Golden Sun: Dark Dawn more of the same-old, same-old, no matter how good that same-old was? Or is it a new game, as interesting and compelling as the first?

Writing and Narrative in Video Games

To decide whether narrative needs to be in video games-- which is apparently a hotter topic than I ever thought it was-- first you need to define two different things. What is narrative, and what is game? No one can decide on the exact meaning of either of those things, particularly as narrative pertains to video game and particularly as game pertains to video game. Meaning, video games are a new art form (and yes, whether video games are actually art is another hot topic, which I'll discuss at some point later), and no one quite knows how it fits into the larger structure of the world, including pre-existing games, I.E. hopscotch, tag, etc.

But, for the sake of simplicity: a game is a system of rules which the player voluntarily agrees to obey for a set period of time. These rules may or may not resemble those of the real world. A narrative: a structure in which a story progresses, suggesting the existence of a story, and relying on the release of some information pertaining to where a character is from and where he is going.

At this point, I would like to note: there does not need to be a set narrative for the main character, provided that the player is allowed to make choices which can dictate past, present, and future for their character. I would also like to note that narrative does not HAVE to exist for a game to be successful (or in other words, entertaining). ExciteBike for the NES was definitely entertaining. And it had absolutely no narrative or story to speak of. Eventually, the player inferred that they were intended to go around the track. Yes, it was fun, and yes, there was no narrative.

Does narrative BELONG in video games, however? The answer to this is a question: why not? Games that have narrative are proven to be successful. Games that do NOT have narrative are also proven to be successful. They cater to different audiences, or to the same audiences who have different entertainment needs at the time they play the game. When I want some quick entertainment, I play Vexx, an arcade-type PS2 game that involves slashing up monsters and solving puzzles. When I'm in the mood for a gigantic soap opera of a narrative, I go for the Sims-- and note that in the Sims, the entire narrative is of my own design. When I am in the mood for what I term "hardcore gaming," I tug on the headphones and hunker down in front of the PS2 or computer. DND: Gaming Now. I play Spider Solitaire; I play Fallout. I play Portal; I play Zoombinis. People play different things at different times, and many will try anything at least once. The argument that the producers and designers need to be given is that narrative belongs in video games because there is a market for it. But there are other arguments.

In his book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Tom Bissell quotes John Hight as saying "Why do we have so many first-person military shooters? Because it's proven these things can sell" (86). First-person military shooter is the genre of game. It is the system of rules that the player agrees to follow in his or her pursuit of fun. But why pick THIS shooter over THAT shooter? There are a lot of RPGs on the market, a lot of shooters, a lot of this and a lot of that. Those are the genre-- genre in games being the set system of rules that certain types of games follow, where most games in a genre contain the same or similar sets of rules.

Fable III. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies.

These are three RPGs that I have played recently. There are thousands of RPGs on the market-- and granted, Dragon Quest IX is part of the JRPG sub-genre, but it is also known as a Western RPG fusion with the genre, so can stand for both. I could get any of those other RPGs. I HAVE many other RPGs, including a few I haven't played much yet, or at all. Why choose these?

Fable III is a game that I have noted issues with. (Many, many issues.) I chose the original Fable: The Lost Chapters because it had new variations on the same-old RPG genre system. Namely, I could choose my morality. I played The Lost Chapters and was astounded by its humor, its meta ability to poke fun at its own RPG status (à la Heroes' Guild), and my own ability to be badass with a bow. Fast-forward to Fable III. It offered no new genre innovations, yet I bought it anyway. I did this because I wanted a different story for the game that I already knew and loved. Sure, there were different window dressings. My inventory was actually in an entire awesome tower instead of on my back; the bows turned to guns-- which were better and awesomer. But those little details, while occasionally great and occasionally gigantic failures (such as the lack of hit points and will points, eff you Lionhead), where not why I bought the game. I bought it for the change in story, not in the window dressings. I may have preferred the original story-- and I do-- but being a princess whose brother has wrecked my reputation in a destitute nation, fighting to overthrow the man who's killed my lover? Dude, that's awesome. And, that's a story. I can choose whether I want to be a good ruler or a bad ruler; I can roleplay and decide how I think my character would feel about the things she's doing, and I can decide whether she'll keep the promises she makes. In terms of giving me that, Fable III pwned. But Fable III was an instance where the story worked for me, the narrative, and not the game play, thus making it a failure to me: they changed the game mechanics too much from the original, took away all the things I loved. Game mechanics cause a game to succeed or fail. But it's the STORY that gets the game bought for the majority of RPGs, at the very least. Often a radically new setting will work as well, or a new game mechanic, but in a series? It's always the changed story.

Oblivion has no story, pretty much. I don't care about the gates to Oblivion when I play it. I care about the world. I want to live and work and play in the world Oblivion has made for me. I want to affect it, to own it, to be relevant in it. (Ideally, I'd like to own a business, quest for things to sell, and occasionally save my neighbors, just because.) Oblivion is a sandbox RPG: I want it to be my second life. In this case, I want to make up my own narrative, invent my own story. Sandbox games are for a different audience than other RPGs, and always should be DIY narrative. Game mechanics are the end-all, be-all to the sandbox RPG. The story that Bethesda came up with can fall flat if it wants, as long as the mechanics are strong enough for the player to invent her own story.

With Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, I've played Dragon Quest games before. I've played them since they were known as Dragon Warrior and I was playing it on the NES. I bought DQIX because of the story: an angel going around trying to save the world. Cool story is cool. The one failing of DQIX is that its story isn't deep enough, though its mechanics rock. As in Fable, I would have enjoyed the ability to be good, be bad, be whatever I want to be. But DQIX is on rails; it's linear, and has only one outcome. If the story is linear, it HAS to be a compelling story, otherwise the player won't be willing to surrender to it for 50+ hours.

With Fable III, a game can fail because of its mechanics even if it has an intriguing story. With Oblivion, the mechanics are so strong and the story so open that its main storyline is almost irrelevant. With Dragon Quest IX, as with all linear JRPGs, the story is everything.

From these examples, we can extract the conclusion that the more open-ended a game, the less structured narrative necessary. The more linear a game, the more structured narrative necessary.

And let me be clear: regardless of the amount of narrative necessary for a game to succeed, that narrative must be well-written. This means psychologically believable characters. It means fewer stereotypical characters, more well-rounded characters. Characters with personalities. A sense of past and a sense of future, for every character. And it's necessary. Even with a game like Oblivion, it deepens the experience, the sense of realism, the immersion in the world. Complete immersion is imperative to a sandbox game, and it's impossible without decent writing.

Does narrative belong in all games? No. Does it belong in a lot of them? Most definitely. And is writing important? Hells yeah. Of course, I'm a writer, but the point still stands. Virtual reality is the Holy Grail of video games. Complete immersion, and it will be impossible without decent writing.

On Roleplaying Games: Are JRPGs Roleplaying Games at All?

I was reading an article in The Game Design Reader by Greg Costikyan, "I Have No Words & I Must Design," and he brought up a very interesting point. Roleplaying games are no longer what they were. That is to say, most roleplaying games, and specifically JRPGs, at the current moment are not roleplaying. Take Final Fantasy X-2 as an example. I am not playing the role of Yuna, Rikku, or Paine. Nothing about them as a character was dictated by me; I can't affect them as a character in the least. Instead, I am overseeing their actions. I dictate how they fight and how they grow as characters-- in terms of battle, not emotional growth-- but I don't feel that I am any of them. I am not playing a role in the game, unless it's the role of God. Therefore, one could say that FFX-2 is not a roleplaying game.  I wonder if this is a situation peculiar to JRPGs, or whether the divide between JRPGs and Western RPGs is one that I've caused in my game choices.

Fable: The Lost Chapters, for example, is one hundred percent a roleplaying game. I can choose the growth of the character in every way. I AM the Hero of that story. I choose who to marry, what quests to take, what clothes to wear (perhaps I should be a transvestite!), whether my character is straight or gay, whether my character is good or evil. Dragon Age: Origins is another example. I create the character; I play the role of the character; the character is me. There is still some distance. The character is still a character. I create her and she is different and separate me, but I act as her by performing actions that I believe she would perform. This is a sharp contrast to our example of FFX-2, where Yuna is going to perform the actions she believes are right regardless of my input as a player. I can choose how she performs those actions, but not whether she performs those actions.

I think this takes FFX-2 and many, though not all, other JRPGs out of the running as RPGs existed in their original form, meaning a game in which the player takes action by playing the role of a character they've invented. It means that rather than a roleplaying game, most JRPGs could be said to be an interactive drama, or cyberdrama, as coined by Janet Murray in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Many experts in games deny that cyberdramas can be successful. Was FFX-2 successful? Wildly. Is it a cyberdrama rather than a RPG? I would say yes. There isn't enough wiggle room in regard to characterization for it to be anything otherwise. Was it fun? Ignoring some occasional objectification of women, yes. Was it a game rather than an interactive novel? Undoubtedly. And that distinction does have to be made, since many articles on the subject of cyberdramas doubt that what would be left after the creation of a cyberdrama would be a game anymore, but rather it would be an interactive novel.

What is an RPG? Costikyan says that "Roleplaying occurs when, in some sense, you take on the persona of your position. [...] 'Computer roleplaying games,' so-called, are nothing of the kind. [...] That is, they have the trappings of roleplaying: characters, equipment, stories. But there is no mechanism for the player to ham it up, to characterize themselves by their actions, to roleplay in any meaningful sense" (Costikyan 207). Costikyan relies a little too much on roleplaying as a social experience-- I generally like to do that sort of thing in private, thanks-- but I think that his definition of an RPG stands. Which is why I say that many JRPGs are not roleplaying games at all, but instead cyberdramas.

This is all likely to be highly debatable. After all, pretty much anything is debatable if you get around to it. (No, the sky is NOT blue. It's actually sort of gray, with hints of blue-gray in-between and a sprinkle of white clouds. Why do you ask?) But it's certainly interesting to consider. What constitutes a roleplaying game? What constitutes a fantasy cyberdrama? I know where I stand, at least. Where do you?