"A culture's teachings, and most importantly, the nature of its people, achieve definition in conflict. They find themselves... or find themselves lacking."
Came across this quote while reading/watching a Let's Play of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, and it struck me. It's meant to be more of an indicator of the philosophy of the character who speaks it than a standard truth persay, but it does make sense in a way. You can learn a lot about yourself from how you deal with conflict... or how you don't deal with it.
(Why am I going through a Let's Play rather than playing the game itself? Because I'm lazy and the game isn't on Steam. And also cause I mainly got interested in it in the first place cause of the story, considering that it's touted as a regular example of a Chris Avellone game... and after going through Planescape: Torment I suddenly have this desire to
It occurred to me that there's games with stories that make you think about life and other stuff, like this one, and then there's games whose stories that don't necessarily inspire the same level of thought but are fun just for their aesthetic presentation or sense of epicness. I tend to put stuff like the Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts games in the latter category; the plots tend to make you think in the sense of being complicated or convoluted and thus requiring you to try and make sense of what happened, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't really matter so much why stuff happens. Most of the time, it's just the writers putting in events into the story to make it look cool and flashy, or leaving stuff out so that people can wildly make theories for the sake of making theories. I used to be pretty obsessed with the theory making discussions myself.
As far as games go, there's a few stories that that stick out to me in the interesting to think about category. Probably spoilers if you aren't familiar with the games. I'm mainly writing this out for my own amusement.
- Planescape: Torment, the obvious one. The question, "What can change the nature of a man?" is so often quoted from this game online that it feels a bit too common now to see the game get praised all over the internet for its greatness. What I really liked, though, was how each of the party members are linked to The Nameless One in their torment because of their own nature - and how necessary it was for them to eventually embrace that torment rather than escape from it.
- Persona 2: Innocent Sin/Eternal Punishment. The overarching plot of both games is pretty much a cosmic game between two Jungian entities from the collective unconscious that is kinda reminiscent of the debate between God and Satan from the book of Job, only a bit more secular and psycho-Japanese. Philemon comes across as a God-like figure who happens to be on our side but treats us as nothing but pawns in his game at the same time. Which I guess might sound accurate to some people.
- Xenogears/Xenoblade. The two games look drastically different in setting, but they're made in the vision of the same director and share a common theme in the final goal being to defeat "God," or at least the creator of mankind in that sense. Shares an emphasis with Persona 2 on the idea that humans should ultimately determine their own fate - part of me feels like maybe this is just something that the Japanese are obsessed with, cause it seems to come up a lot in other mediums like anime/manga too.
- The Longest Journey/it's sequel, Dreamfall. A subversion of the whole "chosen one" cliche that turns up in a lot of classic fantasy stories - and if you continue on to the sequel, what happens in the long run after the main character loses her sense of purpose as "the hero" after believing in a lie for so long. April Ryan is probably my favorite female character in a game. I didn't really care so much for the other two playable characters in Dreamfall (and Zoe was technically the main character there), but as foils to April's character and her plight, they worked.
- Gemini Rue. Deals with the issue of identity in a world where memories can be destroyed and created at another's discretion. Are we defined by our memories?
- Final Fantasy Tactics. The beginning and ending highlight the contrast in roles between the main character and his best friend - one is forgotten in time, and the other is remembered as a hero. But the disparity in the sacrifice (of integrity) that each makes brings up the question of who experienced the real tragedy. There isn't really that much to debate here, to be honest though, since the game is pretty clear in its presentation who it sees in the wrong.
I kinda wonder if this is meant to convey some kind of general moral lesson, since I get similar vibes from the director's other games (FFXII and Vagrant Story) also. I'm playing Tactics Ogre on the PSP right now - hoping to see if it adds anything else, seeing as how it's a spiritual predecessor.
- Starcraft. Before Starcraft II came out and tried to pull off an out of character redemption plot thread, I always liked how Infested Kerrigan was portrayed in the first game (in her words, "I'm pretty much the Queen ***** of the universe.") Her transformation from a hero into a major villain was fascinating to watch - was it a product of her forced biological transformation, a desire for revenge, or the discovery of the power that she was capable of?
..that's more of a rhetorical question, cause it seems kinda obvious by the end of the game that Kerrigan just loves having control and power over everything. She probably was just forced to keep it to herself when she was still a human and had all those neural inhibitors preventing her from doing anything out of line. It could be said that Brood War was the first time she really had total control over her own faculties, and so in a sense her true character came out when she started backstabbing everyone.
- I know I tell everyone that Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time, but I have trouble thinking of much else to the story [without including Chrono Cross and its deconstruction of the benefits of time travel]. Most of what I can think of has to do with how Lavos is portrayed as a planet-killing parasitic villain, when at the same time it's technically doing what it has to in order to live. Are there species worth killing because of how detrimental their existence is to other life?
... I'm looking at you, damn mosquitoes.
Be back after finishing KOTOR II/Mask of the Betrayer/Tactics Ogre/Portal 2 and maybe some Fallout/New Vegas. But I need to stop obsessing over games so much.
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