The Joy of Being There

Sometimes I wonder why I even like video games so much when I value narrative so highly.

Narrative is always getting lambasted in games. Even games with legitimately good stories catch flak for it on a knee-jerk reaction basis. A frequent jab you see is "good for a video game," sometimes followed up with a "which means terrible anyway" or something along those lines.

Don't even get me started on Zelda games.

But I even like the worlds of games that I can admit have badly written or paper thin stories, like Mega Man, of which several people have noted or proven on the internet recently. So what is it about games that draws me in over movies or books?

Nobody would ever poke fun at this analysis, right?

I think, for me, it's because books and movies know exactly what they are. They have a mission to tell you a story or show you something, and they go about doing that the way that they always have.

Games are different, though. The story is told through interacting with the world, and the medium is essentially entirely new. Books have been around for eons, and so have stage plays. But games? The closest thing we had until video games were toys, board games, card games and the like. All of a sudden we have things that are similar to interactive movies, but still substantially different at their core. Because of that, the way each game draws you into its world is entirely unique.

This changes the game. Pun intended.

Like, why do I like the world of the original Donkey Kong Country games so much? It's about a damn monkey trying to find his bananas. But the art style - the fusion of lush jungles and mechanized dystopias in the first game, that slight hint of the consequences of industrialization, the fantastically oppressive atmosphere of the enemy's home turf in the second game, and the fantasy Canada of the third game (not being ironic here, really) - coupled with the music, holy crap, the music.

This is what sells me on its world. It creates an atmosphere and tone and even a narrative completely separate from the actual really stupid narrative being told. I listen to Life in the Mines or Hot-head Bop and am transported right back to this oddly transcendental place.

DK traverses a mineshaft. Life in the Mines plays here. It seems so simple, but the atmosphere is incredibly thick.

With Mega Man X, for me, it's the act of growing stronger. It's a simple freedom fighter story mixed in with a bit of humans vs. robots with a touch of a slightly dystopian future. But you are in it, as Mega Man X, and, later on in the series, also as Zero. That simple act of putting you in the character's shoes adds so much to that world. Blasting through Boomer Kuwanger's tower to that heroic rock anthem tells its own story. X is a God damned hero fighting for justice.

And then there's the ominous, slightly sad, yet still upbeat infiltration of Sigma's fortress, the stage in which your mentor Zero dies and passes on the torch to you. Music plays such a big part in selling the world of a game, more than it can in a movie. I feel like a soldier probably did marching to a battle anthem against the enemy in this particular game.

But then games that actually have a focus on narrative take it to a whole new level. Star Ocean 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. It's basically off-brand Star Trek, but I like it way more than I do Star Trek. Why? Again, because I'm there. I get to bring Claude from town to town and talk to people. I get to build relationships between characters with private actions. I get to sit there and make stew or chicken for my party to eat, and level up my cooking in the process.

A simple sci-fi story is made infinitely more human through a simple skill crafting and relationship system. And the ever important musical score, which in this game makes the journey into a dreamlike, sometimes heavenly adventure, is again imperative to setting a certain atmosphere. These things come together to add depth to the narrative that the narrative by itself never could have.

Training yourself to make your own items makes the game immensely personal - er, wait, bad example.

There. See all the wholesome things you can pursue? You can even write novels and sell them if you want to. It humanizes the party you spend so much time with, and makes the otherwise relatively simple plot more compelling because of it.

I think this is why I love video games despite their admittedly lackluster stories, and why I get so mad when people say story isn't shit in games. Or is shit. Funny how both of those mean the same thing. Slang is a helluva thing.

It's because story is everything to me, and it manages to remain so despite the fact that the line-to-line dialogue and narrative backbone is inherently weaker than it is in other mediums. I feel as connected to many incarnations of Hyrule as I do to Westeros or Middle Earth, and there's infinitely less dialogue and depth to Hyrule.

I can only wonder what games will do once standards for narrative improve. I love their worlds so, so much, and the interactivity is why I keep coming back to them as my number one hobby and form of amusement.