A Post of Two Topics

This post is a post which comes in two parts: structural coherence and some sort of engagement with the Laurie reading.

Firstly, Fallout 3 (and structural coherence). Despite being a sandbox game in which you can pretty much kill anyone you like (and the grey and gray morality scale is present), you can't kill kids. Not that this is a bad thing, but it really takes away from the structural coherence of the game. I'm not entirely sure why I am complaining about not being able to kill kids. Perhaps this is more telling of me, personally, rather than of game immersion itself.

Despite this lack of structural coherence, we can still pretty much say that Fallout 3 is overall quite an immersive gaming experience. We can see this in lots of games: for example, the Final Fantasy games are notoriously structurally incoherent, choosing instead to lead you down narrow, linear paths with choices which aren't really choices, complete with a myriad objects which are there purely for aesthetic value, yet having (for me, at least) quite a good deal of immersion. I think, having being brought up on video games, I simply can put aside the fact that some video games just like to dictate what you can or cannot do more so than other games.

Which leads me to Ico, and its spiritual successor, Shadow of the Colossus. Both games are highly structurally coherent; their victories come because of the fact that they break so many conventions within video games which we have come to know and love.

This is a screenshot from Ico. As we can see here, (the character) Ico is hanging off a windmill. He is hanging off a windmill. While there have been more games like this since (and probably games which were like this have probably been), this was new. Windmills were not interactive things in any of the other games I played in my childhood. They were background decor. Ico just leads you out onto a grassy patch and goes "If you stay here for too long, black, smoky ghosts will start coming for you and the girl you're leading around. Use what you have and try to figure something out. By the way, there is a windmill there." It was crazy. I remember at one point, I was stuck on the game because I didn't realise that you had to use some sort of piston (which looked as if it were connected to a water wheel or something?) in order to allow you to jump higher and then walk along the rooftops and just trust me when I say this game is so good and is worth looking at in closer detail.

Awkward Segway

So I feel I should probably engage with the reading from this week a little bit. Laurie mentioned Final Fantasy VIII in her thesis, more specifically stating that the player functions as an external force. I disagree. The game directs you to embody the character, Squall. The player is only afforded access into Squall's internal monologues, the other characters have to explain themselves (and their feelings) to you and, by extension, the player. Also, Squall is almost exclusively the avatar the player actually controls: the remaining parties members simply follow him around. Pointedly, you are not allowed to remove him from your party except in a few specifically scripted instances: for example, parts in which you need two parties in order to progress through a puzzle (Squall always leads one party [which happens to be the main party that fights the main antagonist]), but also (perhaps more importantly) in the dream sequences in which the player controls Laguna Loire. Clearly, then, in Final Fantasy VIII, the player gains agency through Squall, not independently of him.

In fact, Final Fantasy VIII lampshades the notion that, in Japanese RPGs, the player is acting independently of the characters, before subverting it in one stroke: in the 'dream realm', when Laguna, Kiros and Ward are lampshading the fact that they are, in fact, being controlled by external forces (Laguna at one point notes that "the fairies are back again" when the player begins to control him), within the diegesis of the game, the 'fairies' are Squall and his party members (who give Laguna increased strength and abilities through spiritual connections, it's all very magical and psychic). Thus, Final Fantasy VIII rejects the notion that the player acts as a 'god' figure who directs characters to act, and equates the player with Squall.

-Paul H