|
(Caution: This editorial contains spoilers of films and tv shows, not RPGs!)
My favorite TV show just ended. I just watched its very last episode. It ran nine beautiful seasons. My life, as I know it, is over.
But enough about me! Lets talk about RPGs!
Specifically, why I never see Season 9 episode 4 of "As Time Goes By" happen in any RPGs. I'll give you the quick synopsis: Jean (played by the ravishing Dame Judi Dench) takes in a drifter named Davina who she found right on her doorstep. Lionel (Jeans husband, played by the Walter Matthau-esque Geoffrey Palmer) thinks that his wife has just let in a thief, so Jean defiantly hides 40 pounds in plain sight predicting firmly that Dave will not take the money. Come the end of the day, Lionel finds the money missing and understandably hes quite satisfied that he can 'I told you so' his wife. But when he hears Jeans footsteps approaching, he pulls out his wallet in a flash of realization and places 40 pounds of his own money in the hiding spot just so Jean does not need to confront the ugly realities of life.
Now, Im sorry, but that was an "awwww" moment. It was so sweet how when Lionel could have lorded over his wife and proven how right he was, he couldn't bear to see broken Jeans naïve belief in the goodness of human nature. That is love. Wow, that is intimacy.
Why can't we see intimacy like that in RPGs? After all, this is the genre thats built on great stories and great characters. Yes, RPGs have had love, but theyve always featured simplified romanticized puppy love, not this real intimate knowledge of ones partner like the one Lionel had. I mean, I don't expect intimacy to be perfectly executed or a work of art, I don't care if its only in a cutscene, but why haven't RPGs explored these subtler facets of human emotion? Even if they tried and failed Id be happy, but just try, just show us that youre reaching, that youre attempting to capture something beyond whats merely come before!
And of course, intimacy doesn't even need to be portrayed exactly like that. Why not portray the intimacy of a couple waking up together in the morning? Or not needing to ask how the other one likes their coffee done? I don't know if any of the lesser known RPGs have explored this, Im not too well versed in the entire expanse of RPG-dom. If they are, let me know and I shall track them down, because intimacy between two characters in love would be such an amazing thing to witness in a videogame.
Or heartbreak. Love and intimacy isn't the only facet of human emotion that I can't recall encountering in the stories of the games I play. I don't want a side-story break-up that can be written off. I mean the real, up-front, gut-wrenching heartbreak that happens when the two main characters separate. Theres this one scene towards the end in Somethings Gotta Give where Jack Nicholsons character confronts the absolutely beautiful Diane Keaton after she had seen him with another, younger woman. At the end of the encounter, she takes his hand and thrusts it against her chest, asking tearfully "Do you know what this is? This is heartbreak!"
There's a whole gamut of subtle, yet amazingly complex and ultimately fulfilling human emotions that I wish RPGs would attempt to explore in their storylines, their cutscenes, and their character design!
What about simple, intense, unadulterated annoyance? Not hate, but a real incompatibility between two people. Not dislike, or misunderstanding, but simply something that could never have been and never could be.
What about intense attraction, not love but lust? An undeniable physical magnetism that doesn't claim to be anything else but sexual compatibility? Friends, with benefits?
What about the ticking down of the biological clock? What about the desire for family, for children, for babies. The want to be a father or a mother, or the moment when a fiance and his betrothed would argue between 3 children or 2 children and a dog?
How about frustration? How about a realization of true failure? How about being the only one whos single among all your married friends? What about desperation? What about fear, not of objects or creatures, but of ideas and concepts and situations? I'm sure that I couldn't begin to conceive of all the different feelings that make up human experience!
But Im not saying that I want all of these emotions in a single game. Im not saying that they have to be perfect, nor that they need to be revelatory, nor that they need to be the next thing since sliced bread or even that they will be! I know its a challenge to do and I know its different but whats to stop RPGs from portraying a story where the male lead and the female lead break-up instead of make-up? Whats to stop them from having two people wake up next to each other and feel complete? Whats to stop them from investigating more fully all the different experiences that make up our lives?
I just want to be challenged by RPG stories in the same why that "As Time Goes By" challenged me to understand the relationship between an old British couple. I just want RPGs, now that they've been able to show us how detailed their portrayals of our visual world can get. I want RPGs to try, just attempt, maybe fail and maybe succeed, to show us how detailed their portrayals of our emotional world can be.
I can't help it because thats what the relationship between Jean and Lionel was: complex, full, and challenging. In came Jean and she saw Lionels 40 pounds and was so happy because her belief that Davina was confirmed. Lionel grinned and admitted calmly that he had been wrong, that his wife was right, and that Davina wasn't a thief. Then Jean found another 40 pounds close by, the exact same 40 pounds that she had actually left: Davina hadn't really stolen after all, and Jean claimed to have figured out the truth: that it was perfectly clear that Davina had left 40 pounds of her own money to thank them for their hospitality!
It turned out that Lionel was a smart man. For all he was flabbergasted and confused and embarrassed at being so wrong, he just nodded his head and agreed with his wife because he knew that if Jean knew the real truth of what he'd done, he'd never hear the end of it. And, of course, also because he loved her.
|
RSS feed
iTunes