I'm sorry, but---
Well, no. I'm not sorry. I refuse to apologize for thinking critically about the books I read and the games I play. So no apologies here.
You lose my good will and generosity when you show a cutaway of the villain thinking to himself, "The empire---no, the whole world will be mine!" and then laughing evilly, especially when the cutaway is entirely unnecessary other than to show us his villainous ambitions. Mr. Sakaguchi, that character was much more intriguing when we weren't quite sure of his intentions, when we were slightly suspicious of the too-good an offer he made to our main character but didn't know enough to peg him fully as a villain. Now we know he's just another cackling, power-mad little tyrant with---like our main character, Zael---not a shred of complexity, subtlety, or secrets.
When groaning out loud and pointing out this scene to my wife, I openly pined for Final Fantasy X, and she reminded me of a line that marks the clearest distinction between the writing of FFX and The Last Story:
"Then pretend I didn't say it."
OH MY GOSH. Seymour! Please come back! Please teach your fellow villains how to be a real character, motivated and grounded in reality! Please teach the villains how to villain!
Saturday, July 27, 2013
Friday, July 26, 2013
The literary magic of Harry Potter
There's a reason the Harry Potter books are so universally read and loved. That these books and Jo Rowling specifically turned out to be so successful is not chance or coincidence.
It is because the books work on almost every level of literary entertainment.
Each book expands the magical universe the story is set in. The characters learn new spells, come across new aspects of the world like creatures or magic, and discover more of the lore of the world. The whimsy of the world is one of the initial books' main attractions. It was the magical society, with as much detail as Rowling put into every page and scene, that we read for at first. It was happy, whirling, whimsical. Simply put, just a fun world to be in. Not a lot of depth---there are about a million criticisms we can level at this world---but a lot of breadth, and for children or the mass market, that is more important. And each book successfully makes the world bigger, more real, more enchanting. And as time and the books went on, the childish aspects of it fell away, and we began to find the world to be much darker and serious than Sorcerer's Stone let on---horcruxes, unforgivable curses, etc.
Each book expanded the cast of characters, and gave the ones we already knew further depth as we learned more about them. The characters, at first portrayed with much the same whimsy as the world, were the reason we loved the book. Everyone Harry met had their own unique personality, and nearly all were sympathetic, understandable, and even mysterious. As the books went on, our appreciation for them deepened, and they began to matter much, much more than the world. Forget about Every-Flavor Beans; the characters turned into the real story. They became the reason we loved to be in that world as the whimsy faded into the background.
Each book contained at least one significant mystery, and it's mystery that draws most readers on. There are questions that need answering, and Rowling always followed through (except maybe in Order of the Phoenix) with a fantastic twist or two that made us want to reread the book and spot all the clues she left for us. Prisoner of Azkaban is the best of the mysteries because of how much that big revelation means in the end, but every twist or revelation was at least satisfying, and often mind-blowing, and the secrets of what turn out to be the most significant characters kept us guessing until the final few chapters of the whole saga (I'm looking at you, Snape). Though every book answered the questions that it posed in its beginning, there were always those larger questions that loomed over the whole saga, whose answers came at perfectly parsed out moments. We never knew too little, nor too much at any given time.
Each book advanced the overarching story in significant and meaningful ways. Looking back, the first three books, which seem like just ordinary sequels in a series, were there entirely to set up the real story that emerged at the end of Goblet of Fire. The story at the heart of the Harry Potter saga is, frankly, Harry Potter himself, and he grows in each book, learns more about himself, his role, his abilities, his legacy, his family, his purpose. It is the story of how he becomes a man, and overcomes the evil and pain that persistently tries to destroy him and every other good thing in his world. It is a classic tale of good versus evil, and every successive book builds on what came before to present that age-old battle in fuller and more comprehensive terms.
The brilliance of all this is how all of these layers are wrapped up into the same story, the same remarkably character-driven story that takes place almost entirely in one setting (until Deathly Hallows, of course, but most of the answers in that book weren't given until Harry was back at Hogwarts). That is a remarkable achievement, and I think readers take it for granted. Each book succeeds in delivering characters, world, plot, and story in rich ways, fulfilling the needs and desires of a wide variety of readers who are attracted to different types of stories. It is a universally loved saga because it appeals to multiple audiences and satisfies multiple tastes.
It is because the books work on almost every level of literary entertainment.
Each book expands the magical universe the story is set in. The characters learn new spells, come across new aspects of the world like creatures or magic, and discover more of the lore of the world. The whimsy of the world is one of the initial books' main attractions. It was the magical society, with as much detail as Rowling put into every page and scene, that we read for at first. It was happy, whirling, whimsical. Simply put, just a fun world to be in. Not a lot of depth---there are about a million criticisms we can level at this world---but a lot of breadth, and for children or the mass market, that is more important. And each book successfully makes the world bigger, more real, more enchanting. And as time and the books went on, the childish aspects of it fell away, and we began to find the world to be much darker and serious than Sorcerer's Stone let on---horcruxes, unforgivable curses, etc.
Each book expanded the cast of characters, and gave the ones we already knew further depth as we learned more about them. The characters, at first portrayed with much the same whimsy as the world, were the reason we loved the book. Everyone Harry met had their own unique personality, and nearly all were sympathetic, understandable, and even mysterious. As the books went on, our appreciation for them deepened, and they began to matter much, much more than the world. Forget about Every-Flavor Beans; the characters turned into the real story. They became the reason we loved to be in that world as the whimsy faded into the background.
Each book contained at least one significant mystery, and it's mystery that draws most readers on. There are questions that need answering, and Rowling always followed through (except maybe in Order of the Phoenix) with a fantastic twist or two that made us want to reread the book and spot all the clues she left for us. Prisoner of Azkaban is the best of the mysteries because of how much that big revelation means in the end, but every twist or revelation was at least satisfying, and often mind-blowing, and the secrets of what turn out to be the most significant characters kept us guessing until the final few chapters of the whole saga (I'm looking at you, Snape). Though every book answered the questions that it posed in its beginning, there were always those larger questions that loomed over the whole saga, whose answers came at perfectly parsed out moments. We never knew too little, nor too much at any given time.
Each book advanced the overarching story in significant and meaningful ways. Looking back, the first three books, which seem like just ordinary sequels in a series, were there entirely to set up the real story that emerged at the end of Goblet of Fire. The story at the heart of the Harry Potter saga is, frankly, Harry Potter himself, and he grows in each book, learns more about himself, his role, his abilities, his legacy, his family, his purpose. It is the story of how he becomes a man, and overcomes the evil and pain that persistently tries to destroy him and every other good thing in his world. It is a classic tale of good versus evil, and every successive book builds on what came before to present that age-old battle in fuller and more comprehensive terms.
The brilliance of all this is how all of these layers are wrapped up into the same story, the same remarkably character-driven story that takes place almost entirely in one setting (until Deathly Hallows, of course, but most of the answers in that book weren't given until Harry was back at Hogwarts). That is a remarkable achievement, and I think readers take it for granted. Each book succeeds in delivering characters, world, plot, and story in rich ways, fulfilling the needs and desires of a wide variety of readers who are attracted to different types of stories. It is a universally loved saga because it appeals to multiple audiences and satisfies multiple tastes.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Characterization in The Last Story
There are moments in the dialogue of The Last Story that frustrate the heck out of me. Yurick telling someone explicitly that his past is "not something [he] talk[s] about much." Then the formal, fangless reply of how the person is very sorry for intruding. And then that person, for almost no reason this far away from the sun, tells him, "You are a fine young man, Master Yurick." That's clumsy characterization of Yurick, an otherwise blank slate of a character. That's far too much self-awareness, and it's not how real people talk. We don't, in the first few minutes of meeting a new person, tell them something about ourselves that generally would require a psychiatrist to inform us of in the first place. This game so far is filled with all sorts of polite, optimistic, and overly self-aware dialogue and I'm just BEGGING to find some edge, some spark of chemistry between the characters, either showing the characters' familiarity with each other or even their interpersonal enmity. As a result of their nothing but civil discourse, these characters are hard to distinguish one from another (and I haven't even brought up their generally similar clothing and hairstyles), and thus hard to care about. You do get some flashes of spontaneity in the midst of battle, but that's not really story, is it?
I think part of the problem is that almost all of your party members are introduced all at once, and in medias res at that. This is not the ideal way to show us who these characters are, 1) because we're in the middle of a battle and we're trying to figure out how the system works and so can't pay much attention to who's saying what, etc., but even more significantly, 2) it is always ALWAYS better to introduce us to the main cast one person at a time. Look at, for instance, Final Fantasy X, whose characterization is so good we don't even think to appreciate it. First we have Tidus as the athlete, and who he is in the world of blitzball. Then shortly after that, we meet Auron, and learn how bad-A he is just from the five minutes we see of him. After Tidus is sucked into Spira, we kind of meet Riku (but that's more of a Chekhov's Fanservice than characterization at that point). And then Tidus is swept away again, this time coming upon Wakka, alone. Finally we meet the remaining three characters, Kimahri, Lulu, and of course Yuna, all at once, but they're such different people with such different clothes and such different roles that by that time it is easy to distinguish between the three. That moment where Kimahri catches the fainting Yuna as she comes down the stairs tells us all we need to know about him, who he is and what motivates him. Lulu is probably the least essential character to the story, and fittingly she doesn't get her very own character intro the way everyone else does. But she's not entirely useless, either, and she does have her place in the story and of course in the battle system.
In The Last Story we're greeted with everyone at once, and in a battle system where you only control one character, it's really hard to get to know how the rest of your party works, who is in what role, etc. I'm seven or so hours in, and frankly you could get rid of half the cast and it would probably not only not harm the story or game at all, it would probably improve it, because we'd know what this story was about and we wouldn't have to always be trying to keep track of everybody. In Final Fantasy X, this is never a problem.
I bring up Final Fantasy X somewhat purposefully, because, apart from being a stellar example of characterization (which it is regardless of whether or not you like the characters or not), both were produced by Hironubo Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy and thus the JRPG. So he should really know better.
Future posts about The Last Story to come: the role of narration in a story, backstory as characterization, and the importance of greater character distinction than simple degrees of personality.
I think part of the problem is that almost all of your party members are introduced all at once, and in medias res at that. This is not the ideal way to show us who these characters are, 1) because we're in the middle of a battle and we're trying to figure out how the system works and so can't pay much attention to who's saying what, etc., but even more significantly, 2) it is always ALWAYS better to introduce us to the main cast one person at a time. Look at, for instance, Final Fantasy X, whose characterization is so good we don't even think to appreciate it. First we have Tidus as the athlete, and who he is in the world of blitzball. Then shortly after that, we meet Auron, and learn how bad-A he is just from the five minutes we see of him. After Tidus is sucked into Spira, we kind of meet Riku (but that's more of a Chekhov's Fanservice than characterization at that point). And then Tidus is swept away again, this time coming upon Wakka, alone. Finally we meet the remaining three characters, Kimahri, Lulu, and of course Yuna, all at once, but they're such different people with such different clothes and such different roles that by that time it is easy to distinguish between the three. That moment where Kimahri catches the fainting Yuna as she comes down the stairs tells us all we need to know about him, who he is and what motivates him. Lulu is probably the least essential character to the story, and fittingly she doesn't get her very own character intro the way everyone else does. But she's not entirely useless, either, and she does have her place in the story and of course in the battle system.
In The Last Story we're greeted with everyone at once, and in a battle system where you only control one character, it's really hard to get to know how the rest of your party works, who is in what role, etc. I'm seven or so hours in, and frankly you could get rid of half the cast and it would probably not only not harm the story or game at all, it would probably improve it, because we'd know what this story was about and we wouldn't have to always be trying to keep track of everybody. In Final Fantasy X, this is never a problem.
I bring up Final Fantasy X somewhat purposefully, because, apart from being a stellar example of characterization (which it is regardless of whether or not you like the characters or not), both were produced by Hironubo Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy and thus the JRPG. So he should really know better.
Future posts about The Last Story to come: the role of narration in a story, backstory as characterization, and the importance of greater character distinction than simple degrees of personality.
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