Brave Adventurer!

Valikorlia

   During the many, many years I grew up in my small town, my life was peppered with reading. During middle school I had read the first and second books of The Wheel of Time. In grade school, a teacher used to delight in reading us The Hobbit on Fridays before our parents came to pick us up; at an early age stories of adventure and daring were well-ingrained in my childhood.

   I tend to find it funny then, that as I grew older I tended to gravitate more away from epic fantasy and towards other genre of fiction, particularly pulp heroes and deconstructions thereof being among my favorite. That's not to say I don't have an appreciate for what the genre offers, merely my opinion has massively distanced itself from the general consensus. I hate Tolkien, and I hate when people try to talk to me about it at parties.

   If the The Legend of Zelda was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood being filled with him exploring caves like some sort of intrepid adventurer, than Zelda in regards to my childhood has come full circle.
   The Legend of Zelda was, at the very least, the reason for me to wanting to explore as a little kid. Growing up in an incredibly rural area meant I was surrounded by lots of countryside, but it was that game specifically that got me out in the world as a kid.
   My first real experience with roleplaying was watching my two older brothers and a ton of their friends lay the foundation for what would later be the longest campaign they ever played in Dungeons and Dragons it also had the effect of spurning on my early fascination with storytelling; and not just playing a role but being able to decide what that role was.
   Growing up in such a rural area might have made me predisposed to hiking and exploring. My favorite games tend to be things with more of a focus on exploration and experiencing an area than outright in-your-face challenge.
   I really mean it when I say rural. The town I grew up in is not unlike the small towns the protagonist of a road movie or some 80’s TV show where a guy is a cop and also a ninja might drive through and solve someone’s problem. It’s a very much one-note place, even today it’s become unfortunately more a tourist destination than anything else.

Legend of Xanadu II

   Videogames might have then, also inspired my disenchantment with growing up in a place like that.
The side-effect of the digital age is something both of my brothers and I talk about quite frequently.
We’ve had to deal with interconnection more than either of my parents did growing up. Many of the ways we started hearing about the outside world we’re very much double-edged swords. I was exposed to new opinions and ideas frequently, but I was also constantly aware of how other people had more, larger opportunities to grow.
   I didn’t ever even have a single art class to ease my frustrations with, or help curb my procrastination. I think back on it now and I realize it’s no wonder that I escaped more into roleplaying than I really did anything else. For a few hours a day I had an outlet where I could be someone else.
   A game called Valikorlia took up my days and nights, and definitely influenced the way I criticize storytelling in Videogames.
To start: it made me realize that in even the best roleplaying games, I’m still/always a part of a pre-set story path. Regardless of being the last Dragonborn or whether I’m forcing myself to play someones shitty D20-equivalent spinoff about whatever the hell a Grey Warden was supposed to be; I am still in a design of someone else’s narrative.
   I’m not asking to be able to abandon a galaxy and run off to play space pirate or anything; what I want is an experience that gives the player room to affect things.
In the simplest terms, Shin Megami Tensei has sort’ve played Wi this, whether you're a hipster teen saving the world or a moody..teen…again (always teens!) remaking it in his image. Along the way, the game is generally peppered with simple, dual option choices that have a great tendency to massively affect the flow of the game.

Shin Megami Tensei IV

    There’s a point In the latest entry in the game, Shin Megami Tensei IV, (itself worthy of an article) around midway into the game where you’re presented with a decision by an ally. Players familiar with the game will know what I’m talking about; it’s been the only decision I’ve experienced in a long time I had to make in regards to a digital world where I actually set my 3DS on my lap and had to think about it for several minutes.
   Another way I’ve started to look at this moment in relation to the story is it accomplished something many games can only claim to. It forced me to set aside the game world and examine my characters role in it from a position of that actual character, and what I was trying to accomplish.
Examining the story I’m presented with is another thing that doesn’t happen enough in RPG’s.
   GOTY-2012 darling Dark Souls makes the player do it without dialogue trees in the way it presents its general plot as a part of the world, and not as the world to exist as an excuse of the story itself.
Anyone whose ever played a tabletop or individual roleplaying game might be familiar with this feeling. When your group, or your future, depends entirely on a single action. It’s a feeling I think many games lose because they equate the idea of those decisions as being context-less and important in themselves. Everything becomes a yes no answer instead of letting decisions grow organically.
You are suddenly asked to make decisions. Asked to a fire a gun, instead of put in a situation where you can decide on your own terms to pull the trigger.

Katsuya Terada, Dragon Warrior

   Loaded under the pretense of the player being capable to decide which direction the story is going to go in, you’re spirited forward from set-piece to set-piece operating under the idea that what you do matters. Whereas the simple alignments of Shin Megami Tensei work for it’s black-and-white worldview, a lot of the problems other games have stem from the way players are rewarded or punished for those decisions. You’re expected to deal with a world that blurs moral lines but constantly stifled with a morality system that doesn’t. It, for me, leads the feeling of being forced into another persons story instead of being allowed to direct one.
   It seems in the realm of videogames, players are either transient ghosts or corporeal gods, never allowed to exist within the confines of the story nor acknowledge their role in it.
I have taken part in adventures, but seldom been allowed to experience one.