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Spoilers: Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, Shin Megami Tensei:
Nocturne.
I'm playing a few RPGs at the moment. On the PS2 I'm playing Ys:
The Ark of Napishtim and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, and
on the Nintendo DS I'm playing the Game Boy Advance game Mario &
Luigi: Superstar Saga. What does this have to do with anything?
The answer is simple: They all have mute characters. Since their
humble beginnings on the Nintendo Entertarinment System, many RPGs
have made use of the mute character, almost to the point of
detriment.
The main problem with a mute character
if the abstract feel of it all. Generally, there isn't any feedback
from the lead character throughout the game, even during the most
emotional of moments. This leads to a sense of detachment. Think
about it: events of dire importance are happening throughout the
length of these games, and the hero is just.... standing there. It
really hampers the suspension of disbelief that is critical in games
like this. Efforts to explain mute characters don't help either. I
don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather have Adol in Ys
screaming “Get back!” to the innocent girl standing
helplessly before the Wandering Calamity than a message reading along
the lines of “Adol tells Isha to stand back.”
While there is no way to make mute
characters as enjoyable as the fully developed characters that we see
in games like Final Fantasy, there are ways to make them much
more enjoyable than they are at present. One of the most effective
ways to bring mute characters to life is through physical expression,
otherwise called body language. Nintendo does this better than anyone
else. Look at their Paper Mario series and Mario &
Luigi: Superstar Saga for example. Mario – And Luigi in
Superstar Saga – doesn't have any dialog during the
course of the game. However, it's easy to imagine him playing an
important part in dialog due to the wide variety of expressions he
brings to cut scenes. Whether he's waving his hands in a desperate
attempt the get someone to listen, falling on his face at a
particularly stupid statement by an NPC or crossing his arms over his
chest and tilting his head in thought, Mario comes to life on screen,
becoming more expressive than some characters that actually do
speak.
Compare that with Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, where the
hero just stands there during story sequences. One would expect that
when his friend gets the Magutsuhi drained out of him by Mantra
warlord Thor, the hero would have a few things to say about it, or at
least show anger somehow. Instead, he just stands there, looking
somewhat indifferent to it all. Heck, the camera doesn't even pan to
the hero to get a reaction shot! This is a very ineffective way to
relay a story, as it detaches the player from what's going on by
making it seem of little to no consequence to him.
And that's the point with this editorial. The most essential
element of an RPG is immersion. Without it, all that's left is
running around in dungeons fighting monsters and level grinding.
Personally, if all a game has is combat and exploration,
action-adventures and FPS games are much better at that than RPGs
will ever be. RPGs that don't immerse you in their story are useless,
and expressionless main characters are counterproductive to the
immersion which is the lifeblood of an RPG.
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