I Don't Want to Save the World Anymore | Extra Punctuation 

I remember Red from OSP talking about how villains trying to destroy the world is ironically considered more child friendly than a murderer trying to kill a single person. She asserts that because the human mind technically isn’t equipped to grasp the true size of the world, the audience will subconsciously give up and check out emotionally and therefore won’t feel like that’s as awful as pointing a gun at a single person. Same deal as “If ten people die it’s a tragedy, but if 300,000 people die it’s a statistic.” That's probably is why writers like to default to “save the world “. It comes with less emotional baggage to navigate than having to save people the protagonist personally cares about because that would require delving into a character’s actual feelings such as anger, love, grief and fear which is far more difficult to write well.

Mr. Socky is such a breakout character.

still one the best parts of disco elysium: you're just trying to figure out what's going on, who are these people, why are they talking so much, why is everything so loud and bright, and good god could i use a drink

dude I just beat persona 5 last night and when that game presented me with the first phase of its final boss I was like "well this can't be the actual end, it's not in the sky and we haven't had a scene where every side character cheers on the main characters from afar to power them up" and lo and behold 20 minutes in the future we are indeed in the sky being cheered on by not only all the side characters but the entire actual world's population. one of those moments where I was kind of disappointed to be proven right

Don't forget the trope of the villain of JRPGs wanting to destroy the world in order rebuild or reset it like some kind of malfunctioning router.

I actually liked p4 because it felt like you were protecting not the world, but the small town you grew to love filled with the people you met along the way. It still falls into the "killing god with the power of friendship" thing but feels a bit more personal (pun not intended)

"I Don't Want To Save The World Anymore" sounds like a great title for a book or song.

In Japan, the "Power of Friendship" special attack that always happens in these games is called 'genkidama', after the Dragon Ball Z attack. It's a classic trope and I think a shorthand for a cultural more of acknowledging the people that got you there vs. the 'Western' individualistic trope of the final showdown being only the main protagonist and the antagonist.

If Persona taught me anything Its that the thing I like most in video games, is doing anything else besides the objective just dicking around in the world living the highschool life I never had was way more engaging than beating the final boss, but shooting god in the face to save christmas was pretty hype not gonna lie

Yhatz is a rare breed of video game enthusiasts that actually care about how the media can be used to enhance the narrative experience

The other important point about "save the world" plots, is that it isn't really a credible threat. Especially if you aren't at the end yet, it's structurally inconceivable to actually fail to save the world; and even if you do, it won't last very long. You can't end the story without...well, ending the story. But you *can* kill individual characters. Or have their dreams crushed. Those threats are very credible, and thus carry considerably more narrative weight with the audience.

there was a video from "Moon Channel" on this topic, which I saw recently, that explores the historical and cultural origins of this trope. I highly reccomend it because it is extremely interesting, and also proposes some compelling justifications for the trope's usage in some specific cases.

I think that Moon Channel's "Why Do You Always Kill Gods in JRPGs?" is a really interesting look at why these themes are more present in Japanese games from both a deep historical (how the culture treats Gods and Godhood) and modern view

The more I hear about Yahtzee’s likes and dislikes in the medium of video games the more I think he is like that one teacher who has really high expectations and definitely a couple unfair soft spots, but also is so hard on you out of a place of actual wanting you to be better. The “you” in this context is of course the gaming medium as a whole. Also Yahtz you should play Devil Survivor if you want a fun new way of experiencing an “End of the World” game where it’s fleshed out much more then before. However, I would say play DevilSurvivor1 for Story/Characters and plays DS2 for Gameplay because DS2’s characters are a bit weaker and it’s plot is basically Evengeligan(Can’t Spell) but with demons instead of mechas.

That final point also brings to mind those games where the plot wants to instill some sense of urgency in you, while the world is constantly inviting you to ignore the Big Problem (not always the end of the world, but at the very least the end of your character) and wander around caring about others and/or engaging in hobbies or whatever.

The final point about the story rightly bulldozing everyone's problems is mainly why I liked Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins so much. She's always giving you shit for going out of your way to help people, and if you complain about it she'll point out that stopping forward progress to save or help any individual person is stupid because you're on a time sensitive mission and if you fail that person will die anyways.

I've had an issue with drama being just "someone dies". When folks warn of spoilers, it's usually just someone dies. Drama can be much more. Disappointment, uncertainty, faith, lying, mistakes, failure despite odds in one's favor, even "simply" love/the FEELING of joy. You can do a lot with a little. Small scale doesn't mean small stakes. Personal stakes are often lost in big adventures, and personal stakes are what, we the probably average humans playing, can better identify with.

The sad thing about the Silent Hill 1 example is that the story didn't need to escalate to "God wanting to destroy the world." Harry had enough motivation to explore Silent Hill because he was just looking for his daughter. The final boss being the last obstacle of reuniting with his daughter would have been enough.

The Ink Spots: "I don't want to set the world on fire" Yahtzee: "I don't want to put out the world that is on fire"

Probably the exact reason why Yakuza 7 (like a dragon) is one of my favorite jrpgs. It's conflict is so much more smaller in scale, yet Ichiban's imagination lifts it up to be just like the world's end plots and he drags us along with it, but now you actually give a shit instead of indifference to unimaginable scales.

I really like when save the world plots focus on how the stress of that monstrous task wears down on the main character. Mass Effect 3 is a good example of this.

Funny, your description of JRPG’s almost fully describes mainline SMT games, except the fact that you typically have to murder your friends and/or they start to murder each other

I seriously recommend Moon Channel's recent video "Why Do You Always kill Gods in JRPGs?" alongside Adam Millard's recent video "RPGs Were Never About Roleplaying" to really dig in to the precise observations that Yahtzee is getting at in this Extra Punctuation - the first covers the kill-God trope in scholarly depth, and the second speaks to the ways and places that Yahtzee feels that JRPGs (and RPGs in genrral) get it right. I'd be doing a diservice to those videos by giving a further synopsis - just check them out if you're interested in the topic of this video!

To be fair most of the good jrpgs like p4 and others work well because they start the scale super small. P4 didn't need to add the extra god thing but i believe it uses the ideals of its narrative to make strong characters that have something worth fighting over thing wimds up with them saving the world.

I think it's also worth noting that "save the world" plots express an influence of Power Creep, as does "killing god" plots. When the core game loop consists of: Kill Monsters, Get Stronger, Repeat until final boss ... you kind of make power creep not only unavoidable, but pretty much the goal of the game. The real issue with power creep is relativity. As the protagonists fight monsters and grow exponentially more powerful with each conflict, the world they live in isn't changing to match them. Sooner or later, you end up with stories about battles between characters so powerful that The World is as fragile as an eggshell by comparison and it becomes the last remaining vestige of stakes that the storyteller can implement against the audience or the protagonists. Enter the Superman problem, where nothing can actually hurt Superman (or else he was never all that Super) and he actually has to hold back most of his power because punching with all his strength might ingite our atmosphere and create a shockwave that levels Metropolis. Throwing The World in front of the metaphorical Trolley is just about the only reasonable link back to the godlike protagonist's own connection to Humanity ... except it isn't at all, which is Yachtzee's point. A focus on power in a power fantasy tends to obscure the true interpersonal drama of characters by making normal human experiences feel insignificant by comparison, but it's actually an illusion. I would argue that select installments of the MCU actually handled this problem really well. Civil War didn't really have a threat to the world and it was one of the most compelling stories the film saga has, because it simply focused on the flaws and virtues of the avengers themselves and how those differences brought the characters into direct conflict, both to defend their ideals and also from ways they couldn't overcome some of their darker, more selfish impulses. Save the world plots usually are a crutch, and power creep is usually the problem that crutch is trying to solve. It's a case of taking the first obvious answer and running with it, rather than doing the work of asking how to end the story with a confrontation more directly relevant to the protagonist's goals and motivations.

I just love that he conveyed the metaphor of drawing lines in the sand both literally and entirely visually 😂

Hearing Yhatzee describing shounen tropes in the context of JRPGs is entertaining as hell

What’s funny is how persona 3 is almost entirely a “save the world” type plot, yet I still feel it handles the concept the best. The interesting factor of it is how the characters respond to such overwhelming adversity in comparison to most jprgs where the squad defeats god with the power of friendship like it was an ordinary Wednesday.

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate this man's turn a phrase, I mean, who else could have come up with gregarious fueled deicide?

Re: discourse about the use of JRPG, Jim Stephanie Sterling has a thorough video explaining the topic. The term isn’t inherently racist but it has been used as a derogatory term in the industry. Phil Fish used it in a pretty racist way saying roughly “JRPGs are bad, *you people* just make bad games” for example. Overall it has shifted in sentiment to be more positive in recent years but it’s also less descriptive as a genre name now, so it’s a mixed bag.

I’m more fine with the “defeat god with the power of friendship” thing in P4 and 5 in part because friendship is a major gameplay mechanic. Edit: if anything I wish they would lean more into it, like including a fail-state if you didn’t level up your confidants enough. But I can also easily understand why Atlus didn’t think it was a good idea to include a fail-state that would require you to replay a 70-100 hour game to overcome.

Come now, Yahtzee, you know full well the world-ending threat doesn't *completely* sweep away Attractive Female Party Member #2's daddy issues - you have to resolve those to unlock her ultimate weapon, which is part of the requirements for getting her final special ability at level 69, which makes the final dungeon really just a lot more fun.

One reason I loved Yakuza Like a Dragon is because of how it goes against the standard JRPG formula. The last boss is just an ex-boxer.

The idea we as a species can’t care about as much about the entire world as we can a single person because our brains aren’t physically capable of comprehending the idea a place as large as the world exists is genuinely kind of terrifying.

The point on saving the world being an excuse for lazy writing made really hit home for me, and made me realize that pretty much exactly that is one of my main gripes with the Secret Invasion Marvel show - so many interesting ways they could've taken the premise with subteruge and spy-narratives, yet they went with preventing the end of the world and the potential for a nuclear apocalypse.

"General cultural osmosis" is the first time I have heard a perfect term for the phenomenon of just knowing random things from the internet, even though you don't necessarily seek them out.

Finished Suikoden 1 and 2 recently. It was refreshing that those games whilst having godly themes in its deeplore and that it mainly pushes the plot. Theyre really just games about trying to end a massive war enveloping the continents they take place in. No dropping all the story threads near the end to kill god in a central universe tornado. Just, you've taken down an empire, brought peace at last, but look at all it cost to do so.

Persona does the power of friendship in an always entertaining and fun way, so I never get tired of it especially since you end up truly loving the characters.

If I had a bunch of super talented artists on a team coming up with crazy monster designs 24/7 I don't think I would be capable of stopping them from adding a Statue of the Gods or God Kefka at the end of the game.

Even in the Persona 5 example you have the big denouement with the evil politician, and it could've ended there and been totally satisfying. He didn't need to be taking orders from anyone else or be the puppet of some larger entity. But they felt the need to pay off Mementos and turn it into another god killer.

The 3 main Xenoblades are excellent subversions of "Teens save the world through the power of friendship". Probably helped by Shulk, Rex, and Noah being characters of their own as opposed to blank representations for the player to fill in

If you can make it through Final Fantasy 6, I think that's an example of a "using the power of friendship to kill god" done really well. It really earns the friendship, and fleshes out the god as a legitimate threat you actually care about stopping. The final boss has a legitimate and _very obvious_ impact on you, your characters, and the entire world. Seeing it through to the end is more about the catharsis than "saving" the world.

I forget who talked about it, maybe Overly Sarcastic Productions or The Gamemaker's Toolkit or Extra Credit, but there's a lot of good stories that *aren't* about saving the world. They're about some small community and small, highly personal goals held by the main character or other people they meet. Low stakes has a totally different emotional range from "save the world", but it tends to feel even more important. Save the world is so big and bombastic that it can't make room for the nuance and deeply personal motivations of someone who just wants to build a nice house, or pass their classes with their friends, or explore an cool environment. If the world isn't in danger, then the plot has permission to be about something else.

It reminds me of Discworld. Early novels were so desperate to have a world-threatening villain. Then later one's got a bit more relaxed about it, and it made the books so much better.

Planescape: Torment was so compelling for this reason. The central question--what can change the nature of a man--is all you're trying to explore. Levelling up and fighting and travelling and exploring are all just ways for you to examine the question from many sides. What a remarkable game that was.

Amusing how you feature an image of TTYD in the thumbnail where saving the world is more of a roundabout way to the goal of saving the princess. The whole game it's about saving the princess (oh and stopping the bad guys) but it also happens to stop an enormous entity of evil from coming to rule the world in Darkness. I like a plot that may have grand consequences but really it's more of a side effect of the personal goals.

Both Takuto Maruki and Izanami have pretty much similar goals in fact to an alarming degree. They don't want to destroy the world but destroy reality because humanity would rather live in the ideal world they each want to live in. I guess they ran out of ideas in the idea bucket. But the final bosses of not just persona but megami tensei as a whole is meant to be a representation of an abstract concept. It makes sense for the boss to be god or god-like. Despair, Chaos, Sins of the Past, Suicide, Mass Media, a stolen future from the youth. It requires a bit of meta analysis to actually understand why some JRPGs fall back on this trope and what JRPGs are doing with the trope and are they actually using it to present a story or idea. A trope is a trope because it works. But a trope done badly is not the fault of the trope but the execution.

I actually don’t mind soo many JRPG stories ending in “Kill God” but honestly I think for most of those stories it’s a bit too easy, as in There’s not enough death. Fighting god shouldn’t come without sacrifice and even if characters do “die” they always come back. I’d love to see more games just say fuck it, half your friends are dead now live with it.

I want to save the world if only games would give me a world worth saving.

I would argue that Persona 5 Royal's final semester changes from "using the power of friendship to kill god" to "using the power of self-actualization to tell Jesus that he doesn't need to sacrifice himself for us and the whole concept of heaven is kinda dumb and creepy anyway."

There's a JRPG called "Hero must die" where the premise is it takes place AFTER the hero protagonist has already killed the big villain and saved the world but dies in the process. As a reward for his heroism they are given 5 extra days to live by guardians of the afterlife in order for the hero to basically use their overpowered end game stats and limited time to decipher what to do in their final days. They can use their power to try help with other threats but obviously they can't fight everything in that time, they gradually "level down" as the days progress bringing them closer to a final death and they have numerous NPC they can choose to spend time with. You get a different ending depending on who you spend time with and what you choose to do before you snuff it for good. It's certainly a different way of doing the similar JRPG mix of turn based battled and some social elements but essentially cutting the time of each run immensly and making the startegy be about which abilities you wish to loss as you get weaker instsad of grinding to get more powerful.

One of my favorite things about Nocturne was that (despite still killing god at the end) it's not about saving the world but on figuring out the best way to rebuild an already destroyed world

Gods in the JRPG sense normally represent an unfair social system, the creation of which isn't the fault of any one particular villainous person. God killing is basically overthrowing the unfair system. Although I do feel that blaming unfair social constructs on Gods entirely absolves the society of blame and responsibility

HE WASNT EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO SHAVE, BUT HE COULD USE THE FORCE, THEY SAY!

It's so weird how in Pokémon the first generations often had their "gods" legendary pokemon as secrets with close to no story and then they became central to the villains' plot in gen 3. Often used as weapons to destroy and reshape the world.

'This is real darkness. It's not death, or war... Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart, Harry.' - Disco Elysium

One of my favorite JRPGs where you don’t fight god can be summed up as high schooler gets into morally grey conflict with PETA in NYC

Outside of videogames, Mistborn: The Final Empire is my favorite book where a group of friends band together to kill a god, but then that's just the first book in the trilogy, and the series itself is now up to 7 books.

This right here is my same issue with super hero movies lately. A lot of em seem to think for a super hero to be super they must be doing something on the level of saving the world or universe. I would love lesser stories that focuses on characters more.

For anyone wondering about the JRPG thing, it comes from a recent interview from Naoki Yoshida. He works for Square, mainly as the director and producer of FF14 and its expansions, but he also worked on FF16 which is why he was being interviewed. This is what he said: "this is going to depend on who you ask, but there was a time when this term first appeared 15 years ago, and for us as developers the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term. As though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers, the term JRPG can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past." And, yeah. I don't know how many of you remember, but I do remember in the early 2000s when JRPG was like a punchline for a bad joke. So I absolutely see where he's coming from, even if I use JRPG the same way Yahtzee does here 0:47 Personally, I don't think I get to decide if it's racist or not, as I am not one of these Japanese developers. But I absolutely get where they're coming from and I will say, for my part, it's worth thinking about and while I probably will still use the term for now, I don't mind replacing it with something better if that comes along.

I love the 'villain' of Persona 5 Royal for this reason, as you touched on here. What he wants is literally to make the world a better place and to make everyone happy and not have to suffer. Not even in a authoritarian way, he comes at it from his own pain and is sincere in his goals. The reason he fights so hard is because of that. You could just as easily argue he is actually the good guy and trying to stop him is evil and it would mostly work. The reason you have to fight him is because you disagree about the free will of the matter, also what people can actually gain from painful experiences. He even agrees with your arguments during the fight. He just points out that his concern is for those who are not able to overcome things due to no fault of their own, his own love interest was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and ended up in a coma. His downfall is more about a conflict of interest, his own ego and perspective, and the inherent corruption that level of power threatens. I know I'm not adding anything but a lengthy amen, I just wanted to expand on that specific example because it is such a good one. So many stories I experience stick with me a month at most. His story I will likely remember until I die.

This is why I love Ys. Adol doesn't save the world. Dude just gets lost on an adventure.

I feel like this is a case of "critic brain", where you've had so much experience with a medium, that you start to develop a tolerance to common tropes and ideas that are "merely functional" if you're 40 and have seen them all before, but are mind-blowing and resonant if you're 12 (i.e. the target audience) and have sofar only ever played Mario Kart. Basically everything Socky said was completely correct.

So I think I found the actual quote from Yoshida, and it seems the headlines you're quoting actually misrepresent what he said. He was saying back when the term first came around a lot of the devs in Japan thought it was discriminator, but he doesn't think it is currently. They saw it as painting them into a corner that Japanese could only make JRPGs or something.

This is so much a staple of the RPG genre as a whole that it's laughable he likens it to JRPGs specifically. Are you not saving the world from the white frost in Witcher 3? From Alduin in Skyrim? From Dagon in Oblivion? From the Reapers in Mass Effect? From Cochise in Wasteland 2? From the Darkspawn in Dragon Age Origins? From Thaos in Pillars of Eternity? From Eothas in Pillars of Eternity 2? From The Sorrow/The Changing God in Tides of Numenera? From the Bhaalspawn in Baldur's Gate? From Jack of Blades in Fable 1? From Diablo in Diablo? From the Guardian in Ultima? From Hyperion in Borderlands? From the Heart of the world in Darkest Dungeon? From the Void in Divinity Original Sin? From Malak in Knights of the Old Republic? From Qian Ya in Shadowrun Hong Kong? From Chara in Undertale? And these are only the ones I personally have played, mind you. Of course there are exceptions, the Fallout games spring to mind, but saving the world and fighting some sort of divine figure is of course a trend in a genre entirely predicated on the concept of escalation.

This is why the scouring of the shire is so important in lord of the rings, yes we’ve saved the world, but now we need to fix what we actually care about, even if we’ve grown and no longer fit cleanly into our old lives.

Funny, I just watched a video essay that explains the god thing in JRPGs and other japanese games. There's a whole spiel on how deification or real life figures and their fall out of favour when the system changes influences the trope: basically the "god" isn't God in the western/middle eastern sense but more like "the man", be it tradition or an external corrupting force that took over.

"Using the power of acquaintanceship to assassinate Jehovah" really tickled me 🤣🤣🤣

Maruki is a damn good antagonist, certainly, in that he's not even a villain. he's just doing what the protagonists were doing but on a grander scale, and with good intentions. he is a hero by his own right, and the conflict doesn't come from good vs evil, but philosophical differences on what happiness should be and where it should come from. hell, i agree with him. if it was me and not joker making the decision, i'd allow maruki to alter reality.

Smaller scale stories are usually what I prefer over larger ones. My favorite game and jrpg is The World Ends With You, where the conflict is about the protagonist and his partner trying to survive in an uncaring afterlife and return to life. There’s plenty of great jrpgs that don’t end in killing god though, Yahtzee just doesn’t explore the genre due to lack of interest + being a reviewer tied largely having to play mainstream new games.

I love that the voice of the sock puppet is also the voice of Malcolm Sturb

I love how the sock puppet has the same voice as Malcom Sturb

I will have to defend Chrono Trigger because all the plot revolves around a powerful menace living through all the ages you visit that affects your present and the future. It enhances the typical time travel history. But in P4 and P5 they just pull the God figure on the last minute.

You hit the nail on the head in your Persona 4 criticisms. The murder mystery storyline is well told, interesting, and keeps you engaged in who the real killer is the whole time, alongside having great characters. Even the Marie 3rd semester storyline, while not my favorite character or dungeon, at least gives you some personal investment because of her involvement in the story and her relationship to the protagonist. It's a shame that the actual ending is just another crappy god you have to kill off.

I think "JRPG" as a phrase is mostly seen as offensive by some Japanese game devs specifically, where "JRPG" really does just mean "RPG made in Japan" and not the specific classic format Yahtzee describes. (I almost feel he is slightly *too* specific but that's just me.) Some Japanese devs have said they feel "pigeonholed", as in they aren't "allowed" to just make an RPG, because it has to be a *JRPG* specifically. In that sense, I totally agree about "JRPG" being used far too broadly. Like, no one who isn't high off of whatever they found under the sink could call Final Fantasy XVI a "JRPG" and be serious.

"Sad man gets more sad" is probably the most hilariously appropriate summation of SH2's major plotline movement I've ever come across. Brilliant.

It's why LISA is so fantastic. While it may not be a JRPG, it's heavily influenced by one and yet, LISA is all about a man who's more than WILLING to let the post apocalyptic world he lives in die out, because he selfishly (and selflessly) secretly takes in the last living girl on the planet as his own daughter as a second chance for him, to redeem himself of his dark past and denies the world it's second chance by doing so.

I think that the idea of calling a JRPG being racist probably comes from a recent misunderstanding by Americans about British people calling a Chinese takeaway just "a Chinese" and them calling it racist making them think about other things. In this case, it's really not. As you point out there are lots of things that the Japanese bring to their RPGs which mean they are very identifiable, it's like British comedy, you can always tell that it's British comedy

That's why I enjoy Suikoden as a series - it's a a collection of tradesmen, mercenaries, warriors, thieves, rogues, wizards, etc that band together to fight oppressive government trying to force their will into their country. It's a grounded notion, and even the 'true runes' - powerful maguffins in a sense, grant power but also come with many downfalls to being chosen to wield it. You never fight an omnipotent 'god' but rather people who've acquired a form of power and are consumed by it. I find those stories more captivating.

There's a JRPG that recently came out called Atelier Marie Remake and the slogan is literally "I'm done with saving the world" so it greatly contradicts with the usual JRPG tropes that you mentioned in this video LMAO 😂

One of my favorite old reddit posts about great other video game plots, was the story of a protag with braces in any sort of post apocalyptic situation and their doing anything to try and find a dentist to take them off. 10/10 would story write and dev this game

Really just wanna say how glad I am that P4/5 is a recurring thing in the Yahtzeeverse after he played both

There was a great trigger anime which presented as heroes saving the world but then you eventually understood the world was a gregarious reflection of the inner world of someone suffering from anxiety, depression and the feeling of powerlessness. the real thing the heroes are actually saving is just one soul and for some reason this makes the stakes feel higher or at least more real than the saving the world.

Nice to see a cameo by Victor Casin in the ZP universe.

Spoilers for a forgotten Persona - The Persona 2 dualogy, while still dealing with a world-destroying threat, absolutely destroys the "Teenage Froendship Saves the World" troupe to the point that there's a second game with a 20 and 30 year old party with a single teenager who is part of why, again spoilers, the teenage friendship play failed and reality had to be reset. Hell, the characters in Eternal Punishment have the journey of "The world is a massive mess. We're a mess. Let's make the best of what we can and be true to ourselves instead of denying it." I'll go one step further. The Game 1 protags get captured, and you have to have your new party face their own demons or the old crew will remember and want to help. If the power of "froendship" is in play for all of them, the final boss gets buffed, not you

That feeling when you realise that one of your favourite stories follows the classic jrpg pattern

I've recently been playing through the remaster of Langrisser 1 & 2 on the Switch, and it fits all the tropes of the JRPG except it doesn't necessarily force the "kill god with your friends" ending. On my first playthrough of Langrisser 1, my main character (somewhat suddenly I must admit) became a little corrupted with power. Turned on his friends, killing each and every one of them in the process of world conquest, then because the threat of an evil god still being there, then the "good god" shows up to attempt to stop the main character, who then also subsequently gets murdered. He just decides to end life itself - and it's not spun as an early game over or anything, it's just a route that can happen. And you know what? Turning on the power of friendship in a game that seems so built around it just felt sweet. And I kinda enjoyed being the destroyer for a change.

At the risk of opening a can of worms, this is why I quite enjoyed Chibnall's run on Doctor Who: it wasn't always about saving the universe. It could be about saving _a_ life or keeping someone from changing the time stream in a small but significant way. The big bad taking revenge on a city. I needed a break from the speechifying about how great the Doctor was. Same with superhero films. Can we just... save New York?

It would be nice to play more jrpgs with lower stakes. Breath of Fire 3 ends with a fight against "God" but their goal is more of a Dr. Maruki situation where the world will be fine whether or not they win.

I should have bookmarked it to link here but literally just a couple weeks ago I watched a fantastic deep dive into exactly why JRPGs have that very common structure that looked at it through the lens of Japanese historical experience and culture, particularly "leveling up" (a theme that goes back to Confucianism where ascension to divine status is possible through constant self-improvement and testing) and the constant rise and destruction of "false gods" from Emperors to state religions to the US military forcing open the ports, rise of nationalistic fervor bluntly scorched by atomic bombs, and most recently the ascension of technology sideswiped by economic inequality and a corporate environment that results in karoshi. In that context, the "universal theme" of JRPGs makes a ton of sense.

Of course it's beyond Yahtzee's capability to actually find what people have said about jrpgs and why it's offensive. It's not just a vibe, at least originally, it was one interview where they were talking about the fact that "jrpg" as a term was rarely used in Japan until much more recently than we use it in the west, and as a result it has connotations we aren't aware of. But of course leave it to Yahtzee to talk out his ass about something he doesn't even give a shit about.

Killing god with the power of friendship will never get old

Sir, you do good work and make nice videos.

Hi-Fi Rush did the my friends are my power pretty well and it didn't feel like a crutch to complete a young adult story. Dork- I mean chai earned that closure and I hope future games can draw from stories like that to just develop more satisfying endings.

Something I remember about the "Teenagers use the power of friendship to kill God" trope in JRPGs is that there's also a specifically Asian/Japanese angle to the whole trope, and I highly recommend the video "Why Do You Always Kill Gods in JRPGs?" by Moon Channel to look more into that aspect of theming.

Most of the Atelier games don't have the "save the world" thing, IIRC. Even if some games had, usually it takes place somewhere in the middle rather than the final and it's back to doing stuff like government tasks to prove that alchemy is worth giving a shit, or spending days in summer.

While I admit the argument is sound when it comes to the common story telling trope of "Save the World" that doesn't mean it can't be written well. Persona 4 is a excellent argument for this as well. Normally the Protagonists go on a near world wide journey, the point of this is both to show scale of stakes but also to get you invested in the world itself. Persona 4 kinda separates itself from that because it takes place in one town which is honestly really clever. You get to know the way of life of how the citizens and your friends live day to day life as you try to protect it from one killer in both a fight of philosophy but one of survival as well with "save the world" as more of a added benefit to the plot. In other RPGs such as Earthbound you mentioned the story telling is more focused on THE WORLD itself rather then the party members and it works well. You explore the world of EagleLand and other various diverse areas and begin to care about the many flavor text heavy citizens and places because you got to spend so much time with them. However I will agree that Persona 5 very Lazily tackles this trope with the whole... "Holy Grail" final villain. Honestly I would have been fine with the final villain being the Politician and his group of minions being the final boss because it feels more in tune with the story they were telling about how Power must be handled responsibly and abusing it can lead nations to ruin. So I will agree saving the world can feel like a lazy plot device, however I will disagree on the point that it depends on the writer and the game in which it's used. Sometimes Saving the world can be an excellent plot if the characters and world itself are developed enough for you to care about them and become invested in them. It's one of the reasons why RPGs and JRPGs are popular to begin with.

I think this is part of the reason why I like stuff like Obsidian's games. They do have the general idea of saving the world (or in Outer World's case the solar system), but they usually show that along the way there that your actions do have consequences that negatively impact other people, both good and bad, and when you do reach they're conclusions (assuming you aren't doing an evil run in they're games), they are usually morally gray and leave you wondering if you did make the right choices in the end (excluding South Park: The Stick of Truth). Also they're games usually take the time to develop it's characters, and given the way those games are structured they don't always feel like they're taking a back seat to everything, at least for me anyway

Funny since Persona is a spinoff of the broader SMT franchise, in which you generally betray and brutally murder at least some of your friends, destroy god with the power of literal demons that only joined you through persuasion or threat of violence, and impose your own will on the universe regardless of what everyone else wants.

Yahtzee doing an adenoids voice akin to Jeremy Clarkson's is just beautiful