Tales of Catharsia

It's a pet theory of mine that everyone has one single "favorite" of something. The one of something that is just the stellar example, the one that sets the bar for everything else, never gets old, and every time you go back to it it feels as comfortable as an old lover. Maybe it's a false theory, but it's applicable in many situations. This is one such.

A long time ago I spent a lot of time with a game called Tales of Symphonia. It was a rough patch in my life, I won't lie. So I had every reason to drown out my own thoughts and emotions with this game. Instead of dwelling on the shit that I dealt with in my life, I just forgot about it. I did that for a long time with this game in particular. It's a lengthy adventure, and I probably beat it 7-8 times. Not 100%, I couldn't be arsed to do that, but from beginning to end.

I played it to the point that the thought of playing it would make me nauseous. So I stopped. Now that I felt I knew the characters intracitely enough, their thoughts and feelings as the story progresses, what it must be like, I dropped it and honestly never thought I'd come back to it.

Fast forward a few years. I get an itch to learn how to play games, and god dammit that fucking java software is not working with me. And I need to know what the best games are made of. And before I know it, I'm trying to find a copy of Tales of Symphonia, having given away my other copy. I'd honestly thought I would never play it again.

Amazing what a few years will do to a game.

So I find a new copy, someone finally trades one in at Gamestop and I'm on that like white on rice. And I guess that little pet theory of mine applies here more than I thought it would. I slip back into the game like putting on an old, well-worn glove. Sure, it has a few loose ends here and there I forgot about, but overall the experience is very familiar. It's somewhat comforting, the ability to get my mind to be numb for a few hours. Not that I can't do that with any other game, but it's different with this one. Maybe it's because with other games, I just want to finish them, but with this one, I already know what the end is like, and I can just take my time...and enjoy the ride.

Yeah, it is a JRPG. Japanese Role-Playing Game for those of you not in the know. Kind of infamous for repeating tropes and loads of grinding. Well, I've been playing on Hard mode with none of the convient power-ups a new game + offers, so yes, I've had to grind a bit. But the battle system is real-time, as opposed to that turn-based bullshit, so it's actually fun. And the storyline, while linear, is well-developed and interesting. It doesn't have that same feel of choice that Dragon Age or Mass Effect and I wonder where that sort of thing went. I suppose you could say Final Fantasy has that sort of a storyline, but turn-based battling sucks. I dunno, it just doesn't seem like games sit down to tell you a good story too much anymore.

Not to say there isn't any element of choice to the story, but it is essentially linear. You can choose who you fight with and there are a few dialogue options that affect the other character's affection for the main character, but it won't change the ending. It just changes who the main character spends his life with after the game, pretty much. And the canon ending is really fucking obvious. Basically, it's the opposite of Mass Effect 2's "do it right or you die" sort of thing. You can't fuck up the story by choosing the wrong dialogue.

That doesn't make it a bad game by any means. As I said, the story is well-developed and interesting, enough to the point that even knowing what happens, I still don't mind playing it. It's like how I can play through Poenix Wright a few times before losing interest. But it must not be a commonly liked thing, or else why isn't anyone doing it very much? Of course, I can hardly call myself representative of the entire population.

I've decided that the key to a good video game is well-developed characters. Let's look at some other examples. Psychonauts was awesome. Psychonauts had awesome character development. The Mass Effect series had great characters. Phoenix Wright has wonderfully written characters. Even Silent Hill 2 has those little things you learn about each character to add to the experience. The focus isn't on those characters, but the thought is there. Portal? A lot of work went into the main antagonist, GLaDOS. And the protagonist's shoes were filled by you. The rest of the work is done by the increasingly disturbing environments you are put through. The World Ends with You hits you a lot like Tales of Symphonia because the characters are put through a lot and you, as the player, can imagine what it's like.

But then you take the plethura of multiplayer stuff and add it to the mix...I dunno. Multiplayer is fun, but it gets boring. I've played Call of Duty and I just get...bored after a while. It doesn't really seem to matter if I do well or not. I'm just not much inclined to continue playing. And I doubt CoD's single player has much to offer. It's not like they have a lot of incentive to make it great anyhow. Everyone jusy buys the damn thing so they can shoot people and swear them out. Damn noobs.

At the same time, maybe it's me that's wrong. There's a reason a lot of those games I mentioned before weren't commercial sucesses, although some of it I suspect/attribute to lack of advertising. Any game with advertising sells well unless it has retarded DRM. So maybe it's not the characters that make the game. Maybe it's the all the shoot-y, spastic gameplay or...I dunno. There's no one golden rule, of course, but it'd be nice to figure out what people like Valve and Bioware are doing to pump out such spectacular hits.

Pump pump.

Want to tell this author what you think, but you don't want anyone else to see it? Think she's full of it and need to set her straight? Want to worship the ground she walks on? Well, good luck with that last one, but you can email Chrys at catharticgamer@yahoo.com and at least tell her what you think.