I’ve talked several times in the past about how important story and character are to me in games. It’s just where I focus a lot of my attention, to some extent I’ll overlook genre and gameplay if a game has a compelling narrative and characters that grab me and won’t let go. I guess characters are sort of the point of today’s discussion, specifically the emotion those characters can generate in us.
Compared with the emotions that are stirred in my by older media such as books, films and music games often feel emotionally closed. I honestly can’t think of a situation where a game has actually brought a tear to my eye, whereas I can recall dozens of times that other forms of media have made me well up. Of course compared to other media games are still heavily in their infancy, even the relatively new film industry is nearly 3 times as old gaming; it’s perhaps understandable that they wouldn’t have developed the depth and reach of competing media.
I think part of this is the kinds of stories games tell, and the way they’re told. In general the stories we play paint the protagonist as a hero who must overcome some huge odds to get to whatever their ultimate goal is, whether it be defeat an evil foe or steal some ancient artefact. There’s rarely any kind of background on the character, and when there is it’s frequently some shallow story to make them seem slightly more than a cool piece of moving concept art.
Of course there is one very notable recent exception to this, Heavy Rain. Whilst some may criticise Heavy Rain for the dullness of scenes where you’re at home playing with your kids or taking a shower, these kind of scenes flesh out the characters, making them seem more real. By adding a significant dimension of depth to the character with every-day scenes they make it much easier to connect to them and their motivations, adding a small emotional connection that most games lack.
Of course I may well be wrong, and I’m fully aware that I’m missing out on some games like ICO and Shadow of the Colossus that may grab you almost immediately on an emotional level; sadly I’ve never played them. Do you have any games that really grab you on a raw, emotional level? Or are games still weak in this area?
Severn2j
Silent Hill 2 was a big emotional moment for me, the scene near the end, where you find out what really happened over James wife’s death..
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Other emotional ones were ICO (still the most emotional game ever, imo) and FFVII (not just Aeris death, but large parts of it in general, it was an awesome story).
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Funnily enough, apart from maybe MGS4 (didnt really do it for me, but I get why it did for some), I’m hard pressed to think of any emotional games this generation. Heavy Rain, while a good story, didnt work emotionally for me any more than the movie ‘Seven’ did – great movie, but hardly a tearjerker.
hazelam
if the emotion is anger, then yeah, plenty of games affect me.
if you’re talking the deeper emotions, then not many games have an emotional impact.
there have been a few have have had sad moments, like aeris’ death in ffvii, leaving other survivors behind while you get rescued in sos, to name a few.
i can only recall a couple of occasions when games have brought me to tears.
there’s the ending of mgs3, that one got to me.
and there’s another moment, not really a sad moment though, in fable 2 when you finally escape the spire, and you reach the dock and your dog comes running up to meet you, played through that part of the game several times and it gets me every time.
i remember when molyneux was talking about fable 2 before release and how he wanted to bring emotion into the game, mostly via the dog, for once his game actually lived up to something he said.
jikomanzoku
What with Molyneux’s reputation for feature cull and blatant bullshitting I half expected the dog to appear as no more than a dog skin purse in which to keep my gold florins by release day.
jikomanzoku
Ico and shadow of the colossus. Outcast (superb and thoughtful story and a hugely underrated title imo).
SPOILER ALERT – FOR RED DEAD REDEMPTION.
RDR was great not just the grim, and inevitably violent conclusion for John and theft of the innocence of his son, but also the swansong of the West that it represented. More than both of these aspects though I found myself horrified by the precursory glimpse of the industrialisation of warfare, represented by the Machine gun truck (first time I did that level I tried to get off the truck and walk away – I wanted no part of that) and the knowledge that next year europe would be aflame.
Silent Hill 2 – as severn rightly points out too.
Oddest mention though would go to DEFCON – global thermonuclear war, a PC title which really made my skin crawl.
JaffaMan24
I can’t remember what it was that did it, but I seem to remember getting a lump in my throat at the end of Grim Fandango!!
Radboud
Alpha Protocol is the latest for me…
I literally stood at a crossroads to save the girl or defuse the bomb…
This is because in Alpha Protocol, just like Heavy Rain, the saving is done by checkpoint, the moment you make a significant choice, you pass a checkpoint and can’t go back to your choice, unless you have manually saved the checkpoint before the choice, which can be quite some time before your choice….
I really felt sorry for the girl in question when she was shot because of my choice….
jikomanzoku
hope you can live with yourself, you may not have pulled the trigger but you as good as killed her yourself. What are you going to tell her 16 bit low poly parents? or her 8 bit-16 colour- bitmap grandparents eh? :D
deanimate
Dear god man…not played SOTC?! I sincerely hope you shall be playing the PS3 HD version that looks to be coming out.
I must admit that I was quite pleased when agro *dum de dum* in SOTC. Admittedly I had been trying to shoot him with arrows throughout the whole game.
Such an awesome game. I really hope The Last Guardian can at least equal it’s brilliance.
jikomanzoku
Explosive arrows fired vertically and once you are used to their trajectory and can race Argo into position, still remains fun to this day :D KABAAAM!
Shakugan
Valkyria Chronicles… ‘Tis most emotional… to me