Tragedy in crpgs

[Kirtai]

Listen to the sample music. It spells tragedy, abandonment, doubt. Tragedy will pervade the game in some fashion or another; you may count on it.

I hadn't heard the music when I made my post but yeah, I see what you mean. It's got the same, almost despairing feeling as the PS:T music.

And I'll have a look out for Nier.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Listen to the sample music. It spells tragedy, abandonment, doubt. Tragedy will pervade the game in some fashion or another; you may count on it.

I hadn't heard the music when I made my post but yeah, I see what you mean. It's got the same, almost despairing feeling as the PS:T music.

And I'll have a look out for Nier.

Quick note about Nier's DLC. So far from what I've played it's completely unnecessary. Mostly just trash mobs in recycled areas for costumes and very strong weapons in a game where you trip over being overpowered even on hard. If this changes I'll let you know but currently just avoid it unless you really want costumes or something.

 

[Jasede]

Ignore the DLC, cash-grab by the publisher.

 

[80Maxwell08]

Ignore the DLC, cash-grab by the publisher.

Just beat it and totally agree. Wow that was disappointing. Didn't even give me the Replicant costume which they freaking used in the DLC.

 

[Cool name]

You could probably get several published papers out of this. It's a pity there's so few games that could be used as a basis though. Are there any others that qualify besides MotB, PS:T and Grim Fandango?

Dark Souls and Hungry Ghosts do fit with the tragedy thingie. Drakengard, Nier's hybrid of a spiritual predecesor and an actual prequel, does fit as well. Pathologic and The Void do most certainly fit. All of the Deception games but the second third do so as well. What else? Uhm. The Fatal Frame games in their 'canonical' mode. The second one in particular is soul crushing.

I am sure there were more. I will see if I can remember them.

 

[Jasede]

Ah, seems like I should check these games out sometime; you're a font of knowledge.

 

[RK47]

CK2.

 

[Kirtai]

Eternal Darkness perchance?

 

[Lorica]

Pathologic is pretty great, but it's one of those games that needs two caveats. The first is that if you bitch about PS:T's actual gameplay ruining a story oriented game through tedium... Well, guard your butthole because you'll be hurting. The game's combat is kind of awful (though appropriately frantic) and most of it is running back and forth over the same ground talking to quest givers/persons of interest. Or worse, clicking on every door in a city block to find the one you can actually interact with based on some vague instructions. Second is that the English version is positively mystifying at times. While I think the bizarre translation sometimes adds to the off kilter vibe of the game, I got through it by consulting a Russian speaking friend who would try to guess what the original Russian text said and retranslate for me. Didn't work out too well.

If you're interested but ultimately turned off by the game play, I'd suggest playing the first few days and then turning to an LP.

However, what makes Pathologic a great mention is that the game mechanics, as tedious as they get, really seem to support the tragic story and themes. The PC has agency--he's not railroaded into a linear story by any means--but you can and mostly will fail during the game, trying to accomplish difficult, arcane errands against an always ticking clock. I never remember feeling like it was a false "gotcha!" kind of failure, either. It was always that I wasn't quick enough, didn't make the right choice, etc. Instead, the failure was anticipated and the game continued based on what you did or didn't accomplish. It's actual failings of the player in the shoes of the character that tend to drive the tragic arc .

 

[Mastermind]

tl;dr Making an actually tragic game poses a huge systemic design challenge for CPRGs. Tragedy is tragic because the hero is inevitably drawn to it - that's what makes it tragic. That's also why games with a fixed protagonist and more or less fixed narrative have been doing tragic or tragic-ish stories for years. Freedom, though, is pretty much anti-tragedy, so it's pretty hard to do tragedy in a genre where freedom is the key component.

This is only a problem because even the "best" c&c games just haven't integrated proper failure into the narrative. Fallout is a good example of this. Instead of allowing you to keep playing as a supermutant if you get dipped and help the master crush your vault (or maybe even retain your mind and choose to become an outcast) you just get a shitty video and game over.

To be fair, much of the problem is the mentality of the modern gamer to whom the only options are victory and reload. Developers probably don't want to spend time working on content the player might never realize exists.

 

[mondblut]

What's important is, did you cry when Aeris died?

Level-draining undead - that's real tragedy in CRPGs.

 

[DalekFlay]

Or look at Dragon Age II. The game is supposed to be this big deconstruction of the standard RPG 'hero', with Hawke being this normal-ish guy who just wanted to a nice fancy mansion for his mom and get some elf/pirate/schitzophrenic/brooding JRPG elf booty, but actually ends up losing his whole family, gets betrayed by a bunch of his friends, loses his home all over again and becomes a fugitive. Well, Codex hates DAII for a number of reasons, but a big one is that you couldn't change anything about it, which includes not being able to randomly kill your party members before they could do the sort of stuff that actually made the game tragic-ish.

Not only could you not kill the blood mage and terrorist, you could barely admonish them.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

IIRC you can even tell a higher authority in Kirkwall that you think Anders is up to something, and they don't do a thing.

 

[deuxhero]

There is also Blade Runner the game, where the best ending you can hope for is, depending on your views, killing a family of replicants, or escaping.

Bonus points for pedophilia as well.

Explanation?

 

[Xavier0889]

Or look at Dragon Age II. The game is supposed to be this big deconstruction of the standard RPG 'hero', with Hawke being this normal-ish guy who just wanted to a nice fancy mansion for his mom and get some elf/pirate/schitzophrenic/brooding JRPG elf booty, but actually ends up losing his whole family, gets betrayed by a bunch of his friends, loses his home all over again and becomes a fugitive. Well, Codex hates DAII for a number of reasons, but a big one is that you couldn't change anything about it, which includes not being able to randomly kill your party members before they could do the sort of stuff that actually made the game tragic-ish.

You cared about all that? I just saw a bunch of women talking about sex all the time, specially the arab pirate, and that's because I didn't wanted to hire the gay men, thank you very much.
Even with those details the game is still tragic, if you catch my meaning

Now seriously, Sanitarium's first 3 acts MUST be the saddest/most tragic game moments I've ever played. The story was so well written and emotionally engaging that when you're in your house with the ghosts of your family, and you find your sister's doll, you actually feel bad. The rest of the game was pretty bland in comparison.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Not an crpg, but one of my favorite games of this generation, was a veritable tragedy from start to finish, The Darkness. One of the best endings, most tragic even, i have experienced in a game.

 

[DalekFlay]

Explanation?

You can get all romantic and run away with a replicant girl who appears to be about 14 years old and is insanely underdeveloped emotionally. It's pretty creepy, but hey it was the 90's.

 

[Karellen]

You could probably get several published papers out of this. It's a pity there's so few games that could be used as a basis though. Are there any others that qualify besides MotB, PS:T and Grim Fandango?

Most tragic game I've ever played is definitely Rule of Rose. The game has some really bad gameplay, objectively speaking, but I've never played a game with a sadder, more oppressive atmosphere. Together with its messed up, creepily buggy combat, the whole game felt like one of those nightmares you can't wake up from. That was a compliment, the game got under my skin hard.

Other than that, aside of games that have already been mentioned, most Yasumi Matsuno games (especially Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story and FFTactics), Shadow of the Colossus. Also to an extent the Legacy of Kain series, which is heavily into the "anti" part of antihero, and does a great job with making it seem like the universe exists solely to make the main characters suffer.

 

[Azarkon]

This is only a problem because even the "best" c&c games just haven't integrated proper failure into the narrative. Fallout is a good example of this. Instead of allowing you to keep playing as a supermutant if you get dipped and help the master crush your vault (or maybe even retain your mind and choose to become an outcast) you just get a shitty video and game over.

To be fair, much of the problem is the mentality of the modern gamer to whom the only options are victory and reload. Developers probably don't want to spend time working on content the player might never realize exists.

Well, yes. Just by stating that it's 'failure' you are already subscribing to a popamole philosophy of C&C - that there is a 'correct' choice and everything else is 'failure.'

Protagonist tragedy, insofar as it is the result of the player’s failure, is not a sustainable game mechanic in an age of spoiler sites and meta gaming. Players perceive their own 'failure' in frustrating rather than tragic terms. Making the wrong choice, being defeated in battle, etc. lead to annoyed reloads. A game that attempts to subvert this behavior by having no reloads only increases the aggravation.

Besides which, it is also not the desirable end of tragedy in the classical mode, which was designed to be a spectator experience, not a personal one. One experienced 'aesthetic tragedy' through watching it befall others in a make belief setting, and obtained catharsis through the third person, not the first. One imagines that to the tragic heroes themselves, the experience of their own destruction is not exactly an enjoyable one. Thus it is that the gaming genres best suited for tragedy are those which maintain a 'third person view' of the narrative, in which the characters to whom tragedy occur are sufficiently distanced from the player's ego that they are treatable as third party actors.

 

[Mastermind]

Well, yes. Just by stating that it's 'failure' you are already subscribing to a popamole philosophy of C&C - that there is a 'correct' choice and everything else is 'failure.'

You are the one contrasting "correct" and "failure". That is the true popamole: simplifying things to the point of nonsense. What I am asking for is the very antithesis of popamole: a game where failure is NOT necessarily the "wrong choice".

 

[Azarkon]

Then it's not failure, is it?

A decision in which being 'defeated' / 'not completing a quest' is ultimately beneficial leads, in an age of meta gaming, to what JE Sawyer calls 'degenerate gameplay' - ie fights in which the player tries to lose.

 

[Weierstraß]

The thing is, by being a game you're inherently giving actions a value in how much they further a player towards the goal of the game.

 

[tuluse]

Everyone go play the Blade Runner game right now so you can see how C&C can work in a system with no "good" endings.

 

[lophiaspis]

The thing is, by being a game you're inherently giving actions a value in how much they further a player towards the goal of the game.

Hence why gameplay-focused videogames are unsuited to most kinds of narrative, and the form most appropriate to digital storytelling is true interactive movies like Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead, which focus on non-gameplay interaction over gameplay.

Edit: And the Blade Runner game, thats a good one!

 

[Captain Shrek]

The thing is, by being a game you're inherently giving actions a value in how much they further a player towards the goal of the game.

Hence why gameplay-focused videogames are unsuited to most kinds of narrative, and the form most appropriate to digital storytelling is true interactive movies like Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead, which focus on non-gameplay interaction over gameplay.

Edit: And the Blade Runner game, thats a good one!

This is a ridiculous claim.