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More Adult Stories, Please!
By: Miles Cressman
In the older days of RPGs, it was more of an afterthought to write completely engrossing tales that weren’t rife with cliches, in both Japanese and Western RPGs. Many games went for the middle-ground and presented completely identical medieval-themed plots that could have been picked out of the Lord of the Rings idea-bin. Most of these storylines were very childish in nature, presenting only the bare essentials for a good story. I fondly remember when I first played Final Fantasy I for the NES and looked over the plot that I barely understood (forgive me, I was five and stupid) for its engaging gameplay. Even when I played the great epics of the time such as Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan) I only remembered bits and pieces of their grandiose storylines. Around that time, many games began to be targeted towards more adult gamers. With this shift in appeal, RPGs had to become more complex and more geared to attract a wider variety of consumers. The aforementioned titles oozed with complexity and narrative flair (while receiving bare-bones translations from Ted Woolsey, bless his heart) that I would not even begin to imagine until I replayed them years later. Though I never played them, PC RPGs began to shift towards something much more than basic heroes and damsels-in-distress. Thus began the era of mature RPGs.
When the PlayStation promised many things for its eruption into the gaming forefront, many game developers pushed the limit for what was acceptable and what was not in a game storyline. Final Fantasy VII gave us one of the most memorable character deaths (though there had been many beforehand, none had been done in 3D), as well as a darker nature to the overall tone of the game. Planescape: Torment came out for the PC a year later, giving adult gamers one of the best-told storylines in the annals of gaming history. In that same year, Japanese RPG fans received Xenogears, which dared to throw in multitudes of religious references as well as criticism of certain sects of the Judeo-Christian religion. While this may have received flack from some gamers, the inclusion of such controversy drew in an underground appeal for the game as well as its sequels years later. Though there had been some M-rated RPGs on consoles, they were only branded the ratings due to excessive blood but not necessarily mature content. This would change in 1999 with the oft-criticized Koudelka. Essentially a survival-horror RPG, it gave RPG fans what was so great about titles such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill (surrealism, the paranormal, and a generally spooky atmosphere with a dash of the occult) and combined it with complex characters and an enthralling plot.
Things were different in Japan. Since their standards are culturally different than ours, mature titles as well as RPGs were produced for the market by the bucketload for hungry Japanese gamers.Series such as Shin Megami Tensei would never see the light of day across the Pacific for many years to come. I may not be able to name them all, but many of the games released over there were censored for the US due to mature or controversial content. In 2001, with the release of Shadow Hearts for the PS2, gamers again were treated to a survival-horror RPG. It wasn’t just its survival horror elements that were particularly intriguing, it was its unabashed inclusion of religion, the occult, cannibalism, homosexuality, and many other taboo subject matters that you wouldn’t hear of or even see in a traditional RPG translation. In fact, many of these matters are thrown out (see: Persona 2 Eternal Punishment) out of fear that the consumer base at large would evade the game because of them. However, many of the great, adult works of fiction include these subjects all the time and are even lauded for their approaches to them. Atlus released Shin Megami Tensei III as well as the Digital Devil Saga series for the PS2 which both featured amazing, albeit mature, storylines that again featured many of the taboo subjects that Shadow Hearts put forth only two to three years before. Gamers ate it up (pun intended), even if all three titles were not commercially successful.
I will say that I do not always bash light-hearted RPGs for their somewhat infantile plots. I will also say that an RPG does not need to have a mature plot to be a good RPG. I enjoyed the amazing time-traveling and dimension-splitting odysseys of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, explored picturesque lands in Legend of Mana, and dealt with a really nasty five-o’-clock shadow in Okage: Shadow King. However, the RPGs that truly held my attention and provided journeys into enigmatic lands, dog-eat-dog universes, or even into the personal demons of one man’s mind will always be what I look for in an RPG. Many developers walk a fine line between juvenile and adult as far as story goes, and I think that while there are a plethora of bubblegum RPGs, there are not enough that say, “I want tequila, not grape juice.” I think that in order for storylines to evolve and change over time, and to eschew the billions of cliches, RPGs need to continue to appeal to adults and reach out to the limit with new storyline ideas. It can be done, game developers, and there will always be an audience ready to watch them unfold.
-- Miles Cressman
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