Thanks for the constant support guys! My next video is going to explore Steiner/Beatrix and Duty in Final Fantasy 9. Might be taking a month or two off from reviews to do one-off videos while I have a ton of time to tackle subjects I've wanted to for years.
I really appreciate how considerate, respectful, and analytical you are in your videos. You don't throw insults, demean developers, other opinions, or the games you analyze both good or bad examples. You make great compelling points and overall made a wonderfully engaging video. I also love how you discussed how culture is too quick to shrug and cast aside older art without understanding or context of their limitations or development. Wonderful content, keep it up.
I always like a game starting with an urgent "no bullshit" situation, when I start a game I want to know and test what I'm playing, any other game that overstates its welcome with the opening (even if justified from a narrative point of view) won't be gaining any points from me. Dragon Quest VII's opening with three hours of nothing still haunts me to this day.
Can I have your take on something? I'm currently making my own JRPG-style game, but instead of having a linear story told within the game like a traditional JRPG normally would, it's more akin to Dark Souls or Majora's Mask, where instead of the story of the game revolving around the player characters, it's the player's characters simply existing within that world, going for a more "You're in this world, it doesn't care about you, but have fun discovering it regardless" sort of thing where the player's thoughts and feelings are organically crafted through interacting with the game's world. I'm doing it like this because I personally find it much easier to craft a small number of stories than a large overarching one that fits with the gameplay, that, and I have 24 playable characters that the player is only allowed to choose four from at the beginning, and trying to craft individual scenarios for each and every one of them is a development nightmare. Granted, there *is* a main story within the game, and certain storylines will trigger depending on who you select from the 24 characters, but it's much like how Majora's Mask handled it's main story of Link and Skull Kid, it's a simple premise that serves as the backdrop for the other more compelling storylines found within the game. Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee did an excellent video on this kind of structure called "Forget linear storytelling, give me more immersion storytelling." and it was that video that made me change my direction with the game, because I actually did have singular narrative in mind but I found it hard to make it work with the gameplay, so I essentially stripped it down and went that route instead.
quite frankly, I think contextual mini-narratives in a larger disinterested world, when done well, fit the medium better than heavy-handed traditional storytelling. It's no doubt tough, but in a genre that is at its core about exploration and discovery, this method can elicit more rewarding discoveries. It's obviously preference and structure dependent - ff9 and terranigma were astounding and two of the more poignant/clever jrpg stories but accomplished that through traditional methods. I'd be very curious to hear more and to test it out eventually. Good luck!
Great topic! It brought to mind one thing that often bothers me with jrpgs...the trope of a universal worldwide religion/mythos. There's usually no diversity in beliefs unless there's some cultist group focused on adoring and resurrecting the ancient evil one that you probably have to fight later. And every myth is true because that world has a single contiguous belief system that is only opposed by apathy and ambivalence to "the old ways." I think the first Grandia dipped its toes into a bit of divergent beliefs but not much. I kinda crave to see a game world with a variety of beliefs and a bit of mystery to if one or any (or all) is true because that's such a huge aspect of the real world human experience. I can understand that it's easier to build a world with a "solved" mythos but it's such a trope nowadays.
Arc Rise Fantasia on the wii may have a shitty dub and may look like a Tales clone, but its honestly such a sleeper hit. Story deals with a bunch of differing religious perspectives and secularism.
Final Fantasy XIV is wicked cool with its setup. You are the hero chosen by the godess of Light to vanquish the evil dark God before it consumes all... But eventually you learn, they aren't gods at all, but warring entities created by the players' ancient organization that they have no memory of, and it remains to be seen if they even have wills of their own at all or if they're just malignant focii of a eon-spanning feud between an ancient and broken people.
I think you make great points, especially the one about being dropped into the conflict early. Unfortunately, my biggest immersion block is my own old age and lack of patients. When I played Dragon Warrior for the first time (thanks Nintendo Power) I talked to every NPC multiple times and often wrote down their clues, and was happy to do so. Through my teens, I read every line of dialogue I could find to get a feel for the settings, the moods of the towns. Now, I just can't immerse myself in goofy cartoony settings and graphics. I enjoyed Dragon Quest 8 and 11 for their gameplay, but I just don't have any spare fucks to give to the characters or worId. I can't stand slow dialogue and\or empty filler dialogue. When I played through Octopath Traveler, I was disporportionally angered by the delay between one dialogue box disapearing and the next showing up to the point that I mostly skipped conversations all together and just followed quest markers. I had quite a bit of fun with the game, but I couldn't tell you what it's about. If you give me a game now, like the NES classics where you must talk to everyone and pick up on sometimes subtle hints to figure out how to advance, I simply can't play the game, at least not without a gamefax open the whole time. On the other hand, when I replay through my childhood classics from the SNES and PSX, I do still tend to enjoy the reading part...
Bro my problem with dragon Quest 1 and 2 is that the games are basically grinds,however the first is quite short so i don't have many complains, dragon Quest 2 is bigger but there literally Isn't a story only a good first cutscene but that's it,no Banter,comedy nothing you just go from place to place
I still think Immersion needs agency to work and you just cannot have that in a narrative. To be Immersed you need to be a part of the world, thus you make the choices and define who you are and what it is you do. JRPG's don't do that. I mean sure you have variables like the Private Actions in Star Ocean... but as enjoyable as they may be, those decisions don't really come with any meaningful consequences. You can be mean to Rena all you want but she will still heal you in battle and fight alongside you regardless, it all feels fake to you, the player because there's no real impact to you personally, rather the character you control. Compare this to Bannerlord where I decided to undertake a quest to fence stolen goods from a gang member, later on I became a vassal and because of my criminal deeds, my influence points get drained each day, so I am unable to chlim any feifs of my own or get any rewards because of one thing I did before. On the other hand, my relation with the guy I did the quest with went up so I can hire more troops from him. Ultimately though, I made a terrible decision because considering what it was that I wanted to do with my character, that criminal act didn't do me any favors, it just made the game harder for me. Now if I wanted to be a criminal and actually build up my rep with the gangs, it would have been beneficial as I could recruit better troops for my gang wars. That's what Immersion is, when you personally make a choice and deal with the consequences of that choice as well as reap the bounties, no game does this better than the Mount & Blade games because those games are sandboxes where you have 100% control over what you do and how the game plays out for you. JRPG's are linear, you do what the game tells you to do, you play the way the game wants you to, for that reason its immersive qualities are limited. There are many JRPG's where I just want to strangle the protagonists for making stupid decisions. Legend Of Heroes Trails In The Sky is especially guilty of this. I do not relate to those characters at all, they are way too goody goody for my liking and the decisions they make are just irrational to me, the moment where they refuse money at Ruan takes the cake for me. If it was up to me, I'd take the money, they give the fat ass noble the finger because that's how I do things, I'm a rude, crude guy with an attitude. Now If I had the choice to decide who my character is, what my character is like and actually roleplay as a character I personally defined, it becomes so much more immersive because I have to make everything from scratch. If I want to be a good guy, I better not rob villagers... but at the same time when a moral challenge comes my way, I need to stick to my guns regardless. The best games reward both actions but they can also penalize players for them too. I think what people take from a story is ultimately connectivity. Unlike Immersion where you are mentally involved, with connectivity is all about being mentally stimulated with the material presented to you. Narrative involvement is uncommon in JRPG's and when there is narrative involvement, it is still very limited in how much you are given. This is because Narrative is linear by nature. It has to be linear in order to be cohesive and impactful. Therefore I think that narrative driven games shouldn't strive to be immersive, they should instead strive to connect the player to the world and the characters, therefore they need to make the world interesting and the characters either relatable or admirable so that the player cares enough to willingly connect themselves to them. That's the reason why I hated Trails In The Sky but loved Grandia 2. I couldn't give a rat's ass about Estelle, Joshua or Liberl. They were stale to me and I couldn't relate to, or admite the characters. With Grandia 2 however, I could instantly relate to and admire Ryudo and the world as well as its themes grabbed my interest, that is why I love it so much, not because it's immersive. I do agree though that having an interesting world with tonnes of lore is very important, that is why Warcraft 3 has the greatest videogame story in my opinion because there's so many layers to its world and so many races/factions each with their own societal values as well as individual values among them to mix things up. What I will add however is that part of the reason why the game's story works so well is because it offers multiple perspectives. You get to play as different people on different sides. Like imagine if you got to play as Luca Blight in Suikoden 2, Warcraft 3 let's you do just that, albeit in a slightly different circumstance, scenario and individual. Even the bad guys go through struggles and development and that's what makes Warcraft's universe feel so real and human, therefore it's so easy to connect to.
I deeply respect everything you've said here and I think you already know my thoughts on this but, point blank, narrative immersion does not require agency. There are a plethora of storytelling techniques designed specifically to immerse a player/reader in the world (we can look at how oral storytelling evolved to trace some of these techniques and further examine why agency isn't a requirement) and JRPGs have variously utilized damn near all of them. There's a ton of literature on narrative techniques and I can recommend some if you'd like (it was going to be my area of my study in college before other stuff got in the way). Also, personal frustrations with character's decisions or reactions to an impetus (which I will always concede is amplified in JRPGs specifically and video games broadly) shouldn't affect immersion (though we can certainly analyze or pinpoint writing that could've more effectively communicated a decision - but let's be honest, someone will always find a flaw so the mere act of disagreement with a direction/motivation shouldn't alone rip one out of a story/world but this is obviously preference/taste). I also suppose a major problem is how oddly nebulous (as I stated in the video) the term immersion has become - it's either romanticized as some constant unbreakable transcendent state a reader/player enters or dismissed as some unachievable joke of a concept (you're not doing this but plenty have). Both are silly but unfortunately taint the discourse about it. It can be an on-going or in-and-out affair with the story of a game, perhaps even momentarily ruptured by some inherent problem or poor dialogue/delivery. We'll probably have to agree to disagree but as usual I appreciate the thoughtful response Terry!
@@HighLevelReviews Very true. The term immersion is just a noun from the verb of "to be immersed" in, which is merely a way saying "to be engrossed/absorbed in". You can be immersed in a book, in a game of chess, in drawing, playing an instrument. The most annoying facet of careless use of immersion as a critique or as a praise is how thoughtlessly it's often applied - with no thoughtful groundwork addressing the speakers assumptions on what is or is not immersive relative to what they personally enjoy spending time on. I am deeply immersed in novels - usually so much so I forget I am even reading. I stop seeing letters and my brain just reads on autopilot, and translating it to what amounts to a daydream of vivid sensory approximations. JRPGs have often been similar for me, which is why the minimalism and abstraction of older JRPGs creates more immersion for me than the more explicit presentation of newer entries in the genre.
