On Bathrooms in RPGs

by Acid Rain 

The heroes arrive at last at the sacred shrine, having traveled through giant mazelike tunnels, wading through pools and waterfalls and streams, battling sea serpents and piranha fish with more HP than your entire party combined. Inside the crystalline cavern, however, all is still, and harplike music plays softly. The hero removes his helmet and bows his weary head in homage to the water spirit who dwells in this silent, holy place. For a single perfect moment, the party is still and reverent. Then the cute little kid in your party cries, "Hey! I have to go to the bathroom!"

Why does this never happen? Setting aside for a moment the suggestion that even the comic relief characters possess some tact-- which is a whole different editorial-- perhaps the matter is worth consideration. After all, characters rarely ever go to the bathroom at any point in the story. Few RPGs even have places with bathrooms (save for a few notable exceptions such as Breath of Fire III, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII.) When bathrooms do exist, they almost always serve an actual function somewhere in the plot. This would seem to indicate that the programmers put them in because it was necessary, not because they simply wanted to. Bathrooms seem to be overlooked in RPGs except when the plot calls for them and reminds us that they should be there.

It is odd that such a basic human function, one which exists in all major societies around the world, is so noticeably missing from most RPGs. It seems like a glaring omission which the programmers ought to have noticed. After all, they must get up to use the bathroom hundreds of times while programming and planning the RPG. Do they simply never think to include this detail of their highly personal lives in their work? Is it a delicate Japanese sensibility of which most foreigners are unaware? Is it a result of the same simplification which causes overnight inn stays to take five seconds in real time and readable bookshelves to hold only one book each?

I believe that the omission of bathrooms in RPGs is largely an apologetic attempt on the part of the developers to make up for the fact that you have to go through the sewers. One is always going through sewers in RPGs. If it's not a sewer, it's a ventilation duct-- sometimes both in the same game-- but more often than not, it's a sewer. Why our deeply admired heroes are always wading through refuse is beyond me. It's a standard RPG convention, but an unnecessary one. Just because Crono and Alex and Quistis and Fei all had to go through the sewers doesn't mean that the next RPG has to have a sewer dungeon. Do we, as gamers, really want to look at the drab brown-grey graphics which are either thankfully blurred or disgustingly realistic? Perhaps once, long ago, the thought of our idyllic heroes trekking through gobs of the most disgusting matter known to man was a relief, because it brought them down to a human level where we could identify with them as people instead of revering them as demigods. But in this day of progressive RPGs where the main heroes are often tormented and baffled and all-too-human to begin with, what function does it serve?

Sewers aside, why has the search for greater realism in RPGs not extended to bathrooms? Final Fantasy VIII and IX, hailed by many as masterpieces of realism and complex interaction, had no bathroom references, whereas their "more stereotyped" predecessor Final Fantasy VII contained several. One would think that true realism involved portraying every aspect of life, from the glossy to the gritty, and that this would include those pesky trips to the bathroom which are an undeniable fact of life. Surely even the most escapist fantasy would not attempt to deny the harsh truth that people, even heroes, must go to the bathroom sometime.

Perhaps it is an offshoot of the general media trend to ignore bathrooms when portraying life. In films and novels, characters rarely have to go to the bathroom except as a plot device to further the story. There are usually no random interruptions of dialogue while one of the characters goes to the bathroom. In real life, it is not always so clean and simple. I paused to go to the bathroom while writing this editorial, and I feel confident in predicting that if you, the reader, had to use the bathroom right now, you would do it. I believe the media industry as a whole should pay closer attention to the dynamics of bathroom usage. Even when the product is pure fantasy, it is important to stick to the fundamentals of the human condition or there will be no way for the audience to relate to the character being portrayed. Ignoring the basic truths of life damages the integrity of a story as a whole; it becomes something alien and impossible to relate to, and therefore meaningless to its audience. It is therefore important to make sure that characters would have a chance to use the bathroom, preferably off-camera. In closing, I would like to cite the advice of my friend. "The first rule of Bathroom Club," she said, "is: you don't talk about Bathroom Club." I disagree with this rule, for the reasons cited above, and I am going to be a pesky bathroom liberal and break it as well as the second rule, "you don't talk about Bathroom Club." But the other rules should be deeply ingrained into our psyches, for they ring of truth. "No pants, no shorts, no underwear" is vital, but so is the final rule: "If this is your first time at Bathroom Club, you have to go to the bathroom.