A common refrain I hear is “I have no clue what is happening, but the game is fun”. Did Japanese game writers just drink massive amounts and throw shit at the wall? :D
I don’t think there’s a single JRPG that I can remember the actual plot except the general gist.
Or is there some strange cultural reason these games had labyrinthe writing and just strange plots?
Maybe a JRPG historian can shed some light on this?
Amateur thinker here…
There two ways to keep a game engaging. Some type of story/plot and game mechanics.
When it comes to story/plot, there’s only so many times “the prophesized one appears and begins a quest to save the princess”. So you’ll have Dragon Warrior being you, the descendant of Elric a hero of ancient times, who is then ordered to go save the a king’s daughter… then Final Fantasy where you, are four nobody characters who walk out of the woods with orbs and straight up to the nearest king who says, “Oh shit! You nobodies have orbs? Go save the princess!”.
So with each iteration of a game, somebody takes the time to either “do something different” or “actually invest in giving characters backstories and their own motivations.”
Not a JRPG, but shoutout to 2000’s Polish RTS Earth 2150 whose factions include:
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Strawman blue haired feminists trying to turn the moon into a giant weapon of mass destruction to establish peace and despite that being the only faction portrayed as not evil lmao
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A Mongol empire that controls Eurasia that features heavy Soviet imagery and is ruled by a sith lord who might as well be named Stalin Khan (it is a Polish game, after all)
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…an American faction that claims to be the peak of civilization but is controlled by idiots who follow what their AI tells them to do, causing the war that dooms all life on Earth oh shit oh fuck
American faction that claims to be the peak of civilization but is controlled by idiots who follow what their AI tells them to do, causing the war that dooms all life on Earth
Is that for real? Did that really exist in the game?
Yup! I even checked the wiki to make sure I remembered right because it was too perfect haha
Unfortunately the reason for why their leaders are incompetent and just let their AI assistants decide is different from reality, so I left it out:The UCS is a demarchy, selecting leaders by lottery, which with minimal positions and short terms has resulted in leaders who do what their AI assistants tell them to do. […] The UCS was responsible for occupying the British Isles and starting the war of Earth 2140 that doomed the planet. As President of the United Civilized States, the player’s authority extends to pursuing whatever military objective the AIs order.
It is funny and scary because I can see this happening 🙃
Call remember Dark Reign? I have no idea what the plot of that was other than grammar post apocalyptic it’s but I loved it. My uncle had it on his Mac when I was a kid. This description reminded me of it.
(I’m doing this for no particular reason, don’t @ me)
Global ecological collapse is finally accepted as being real. Governments lose trust and start to fall apart. Corporations are the only entities with the power and organization to fill the power vacuum.
Mass roundups of dissidents have to be dealt with… and are stuck on deep space recon and terraforming ships after having their DNA altered to keep their lifespans to about 25 (I’m not gonna look this up) years.
The corporations merge and become the Imperium. The prisoners sent out to terraform planets manage to organize and revolt and become the Freedom Guard.
While all this was going on, a third faction (scientists) fucked off with their leader to make their own society named after the leader, Togran (I think).
Freedom Guard and Imperium do war, somebody develops a super weapon that can lock up all the water on a planet making it unlivable. Eventually these two faction have a massive battle on the Togran world and the planet killer is used.
YOU… are (possibly) the last surviving member of the Togran, who managed to escape the planet on a ship. After drifting for a while you come across some Togran satellite/ship thing that says, "Mr. Togran made a time travel device, prove your military prowess by playing RTS versions of Freedom Guard/Imperium battles to unlock the time travel device. Then go back in time and kick the Freedom Guard and Imperium’s ass to keep the Togran world from being destroyed.
That sounds delightfully hilarious. It amazes me what game writers come up with. I was going to say I wonder what equivalent literature that is that level of crazy, but thought better because I knew better. But I guess it’s the batshit insane of game writing that is weirdly specific
I remember the plot of Earth 2160 being Boys vs. Girls vs. Robots and I picked the robots
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I can accept a lot of things in this life but I cannot accept someone criticizing Chrono Trigger plot.
Hack writers in a newborn industry filtered through the cheapest available translation service
I feel like this is more of a 2000s JRPG phenomenon than 90s. The 90s gave us Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 2 (4) and 3 (6), the latter of which had (IMO) the best storyline of maybe any video game up to that point.
Xenogears is the first game I can think of that had kind of a crazy plot that got particularly weird in the second half. That was released in late 1998 apparently but I feel like by that time we were already starting to see 2000s zeitgeist stuff take over the more 90s-coded things.
Xenogears is a flawed masterpiece. I freaking love the story and wish they had been giving the time to do the second half properly.
I found Mother more engaging and enjoyed the story more than Earthbound, have you played it?
As far as FF goes I prefer 5 to the game’s either side to it. I find the mechanics of the games more fun than the stories for the majority of the classic games. I feel 6 doesn’t have the character writing to support the large cast, imo they feel shallow/ tacked on.
I’ve tried many times to play Mother but it’s just such a grind. I want to play the new PK Hack remake but I gotta get through Deltarune ch 5 first
Hopefully if you play the remake you’ll enjoy it as much as I do the original.
Only vaguely related, but for stuff like Call of Duty games the story is heavily pinned to action sequences the user interacts with.
Game mechanics influence story. Someone has an idea of a really neat mission for the player, and they brute force it into the story.
Call of Duty Ghosts is extremely egregious with this.
I personally have given thoughts towards certain action bits that would be neat in my COD fanfiction (motorcycle cavalry!) although I do put some effort into dwelling on the world building so that it like… Would make sense.
Although I also come up with action bits based off the story itself.
There’s also the video game design cliche of adding levels that deviate from the game’s primary gameplay style. It’s a valuable cliche that helps add variety to the game so it doesn’t get stale.
It’s probably the reason older FPS games have on-rail or tank sections.
Stories in video games are very functionality driven.
Final Fantasy Tactics, the first half is all about a civil war and the sharp divisions of class in Ivalice, then it just turns into well we need to kill god now.
but why…Because every squaresoft rpg from the late 90’s has you kill god, it was in vogue in the time?
On me for assuming Matsuno and the gang would do better…That’s the real wack part about it, Matsuno’s writing in the early chapters on FFT is straight fire, then idk what happened, maybe crunch, but the rest is rushed and becomes generic jrpg fluff. He did redeem it in Vagrant Story tho
Not gonna lie, parts of FFT’s narrative do read to me as unfinished. Character motives, the mcguffin plot… I am looking forward to Vagrant Story though. Hell yeah.
Vagrant Story is a class act of a game.
I’m thinking of Final Fantasy X and the Kingdom Hearts games when you say this, and I wholeheartedly agree. Not to mention other games that came out during this era, makes Metal Gear Solid almost stand out as coherent and sensible.
With JRPGs (and a lot of Japanese, Chinese and Korean games and shows in general) their plots are based mostly on whatever the writers saw on tv or the cinemas the week before working on the games.
A lot of the Call of Duty missions where based off various action movies!
Yes (Call of Duty was also promoted by the US army).
And my COD fanfiction is just as unapologetically political. Except, very left wing!
CODmmunism
Who doesn’t enjoy militant communist trans women liberating Florida?
I played Wild Arms 2 some time ago and the main antagonistic force of that game turned out to be the Kuiper Belt of all things, except it was explained to be some kind of evil cosmic entity that was going to eradicate all life. It didn’t help that Wild Arms 2 has an atrocious English translation which made things even more confusing
I’m assuming it was Sony’s own? They did do the FF7 one also.
I think there may be a retranslation but don’t quote me on it. FF7 has a re-translation that got back ported to the Playstation also.
Wild Arms 2’s translation is bad on an entirely different level. It makes FF7’s look like Vagrant Story
I haven’t played it but have read that it has a lot of dialogue but is very messy.
I might give the series a try at some stage.
Just don’t go in expecting PS1 Squaresoft. Wild Arms 1 predates FF7 and looks and feels like an evolution of Super Nintendo RPGs
I play everything from famicom onwards so I tend to keep expectations in check. I will give most a try if the battle system is fun.
Breath of Fire was disappointing and I know the 2nd game has a lacklustre translation so I’ve known even the bigger developers can put out games that are average at best for the time.
Depends on the game, I have played a few but most are straightforward plot wise. A lot of the writing is constrained due to file size in a lot of cases, the story can also suffer due to character writing being pretty shallow.
That’s not to say there aren’t some stand outs but the 90’s is a bit of a mixed bag. Cool ideas a plenty but the writing doesn’t always hold up.
I’m also a battle systen/mechanics nerd and that’s where I would get more of the fun when I find the story less engaging.
A lot of the writing is constrained due to file size in a lot of cases
Writing is more constrained in simple fact that, well, they’re video games! The medium involves someone interacting with it. A good story is like a side dish: It compliments the main course (in this case that’s core gameplay loops).
the story can also suffer due to character writing being pretty shallow.
I think in a lot of cases this is down to non-writers writing stuff, as many games didn’t have professional writers work on them. Can non professional writers write good stuff? Yes! Can professional writers write utter crap? Yes!
Look at it like me being an electronics hobbiest tasked with fixing a car, or a janitor tasked with fixing a roof. Not the ideal type of person for the job.
Writing is more constrained in simple fact that, well, they’re video games!
I would say System Shock and the original Marathon trilogy prove you could have better writing but they do cheat making heavy use of logs. It in itself a clever way of working around the constraints.
I think in a lot of cases this is down to non-writers writing stuff. Can non professional writers write good stuff? Yes! Can professional writers write utter crap? Yes!
True, deadlines for translators also factor into the mix.
