"I'll Wait for the Movie": When Good Stories are Buried in Too Much Gameplay

I really felt I was missing a lot by not playing the critically-hyped Persona 4.

That is, until I played the game.

I had heard many a fan's retelling of the narrative's sublime subtleties, numerous plot-twists, sweeping character arcs, and mind-boggling pastiche of the most surreal of Japanese anime conventions.  It all sounded so enticing.  I'm no stranger to epic gameplay lengths, having conquered a few Final Fantasies and Elder Scrolls titles in my time, so the estimated 90+ hours of gameplay (twice that much if you play Persona 4 twice to get the "true" ending) didn't really scare me off.

After all, it's not the quantity, it's the quality.  Right?

In actuality, it's both.  Take the game's introductory sequence of unskippable cinematics... all two hours of them.  That's right, two hours of JRPG-style introduction.

Plot-wise, what's there in the introduction is intriguing.  Your stereotypically effeminate schoolboy protagonist is plopped right in the middle of a bizarro, David Lynchian murder plot complete with domestic awkwardness, public scandals, velvet netherworlds, and crazy jazz fusion music.  There's the groundwork for a truly epic mystery drama: strong characterization (albeit accompanied by stilted American voiceover work) of your new buds and careful plot development that doesn't rush the events.

But Jesus, someone should have rushed the gameplay.  There is no reason whatsoever that an introductory sequence in a video game should take up the entire running time of some of the best cinematic narratives ever crafted.  Metal Gear Solid 4 had extremely long cutscenes, too, but at least the game gave you something to do in between them besides run around narrow corridors and hit the "x" button.

Unfortunately, the introduction serves as a warning for what's ahead, only inversely.  Whereas you begin the game with minimal interaction and maximum storytelling--a very unimmersive combination--you end up with what seems like beautiful storytelling trickling out among a mediocre Sims-style life simulator, countless dungeon crawls, and convoluted battle+Pokemon collection system.

I just couldn't take it.  I sold the game before I got even 10 hours in.

What's worse, those dastardly Japanese storytellers and their many fans compelled me to feel bad for selling the game.  It's like quitting on a really terrific 700-page novel because each page of story is written inside a word-search puzzle.  You're frustrated by the packaging, but you know you'd really get something out of what's inside if only you stuck with it.

It's the modern dilemma of being a gamer nowadays... as games get longer and longer and the stories become more advanced, every person has to make choices that lead to the expected tradeoff of real-world responsibilities (because not every person can juggle a job, kids, night school, a World of Warcraft character, and still have time to game with friends in Call of Duty 4), carefully portioned fun at the controller, and every so often, experiencing a truly memorable story.  What you miss out on, you miss out on, and you live with the guilt and envy of missing something that someone else out there got to experience.  It's almost the same as being an avid reader or film-buff... you can't read every "great" book ever written, you can't watch every "great" movie... but the sore feelings are compounded when you're staring at a 10+ hour (often several multiples of that) uphill climb just to get through ONE epic game story.

At the same time, though, why should I feel guilty?  Isn't it the developers' fault for caving into the demand for "epic" gameplay length, padding out their writers' genius with mounds of repetitive and rather uninvolving gameplay? 

It's the same problem I have with some popular sandbox titles.  I'd really like to find out what's going to happen to Niko Bellic, but do I have to spend just under 30 hours of my lifetime going through what often feels like a laundry list of tasks in order to find out?  Every gamer must ultimately make the cost-benefit analysis as to what seeing that much-anticipated end-game cinematic is worth to them... and it turns out I had just enough patience to find out what happened to our dear Niko.  As for Persona 4, I had just a little too much JRPG deja-vu in those first 9 or so hours to make it any further.  My brain turned off, and the story--the lead, if you will--was buried.

Persona 4 isn't the first game to build a strong narrative atop a shaky gameplay foundation.  Sadly, it's one of the most revered.  Much of it deserves that status.  It was obviously an epic undertaking for Atlus, filled to the brim with fastidiously constructed details, strategic possibilities, and aesthetic delights.  It's a remarkably polished product, and not some hollow shell or quick cash-in.  Persona 4 is a labor of love.

But did there have to be so damn much of it?

So this is my suggestion to aspiring game project development managers:  Take a cue from Portal, and learn to craft with economy.  Instead of wasting countless production hours and a supremely talented staff generating a prolific amount of stuff, make sure that whatever is there counts, and if you're lucky enough to have a brilliant storyline in there somewhere, make sure the fun is generated consistently in service to the storytelling.

This is what often boggles my mind about the geniuses at Bethesda.  They've crafted three truly remarkable RPGs in a row--Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3--and there was barely a wasted moment of storytelling among the hundreds of hours of gameplay contained therein.  They learned from their mistakes with Arena and especially Daggerfall:  A good game has plenty of content, but a great game must be made with an editorial eye.

Otherwise, your audience might as well just wait for the movie... or judging by most film adaptations of video games, the book.

Comments

[Soonmot]

It could just be the difference between JRPGS and Western ones. I lost patience for JRPGs shortly after highschool... 15 years ago.