RPGs: Virtual Novels or Virtual Fairy Tales?

by Ender1501 

Submitted by:	Ender1501@aol.com (Ender1501)
Spelling	1
Grammar	2
Coherency	4
Strength of Arguments	2.5
Presentation	3
Originality	3
Penalties	0
Total	15.5
Grade

I just finished reading Shadow of the Hegemon by Orsan Scott Card. During the duration of my reading, I played through several RPGs (implying that I play video games very fast, not that I'm a slow reader). As I played and read I came to an interesting revelation, RPGs aren't as diversified as everyone wants to believe. There are world conflicts in Final Fantasy VIII. True hatred between the protagonist and antagonist occurs in almost any RPG. The problem is that none of these elements are really brought in on a grand scale. In the book, the evil Achilies was hopping from Russia to India to China, all the while exploiting all the nations he worked with. In the end, the nations of Asia are joined with some of the nations of Europe and the rest of the world is sent into a state of fear. When was the last time you saw something like that in a game?

Now you'll tell me that that may be true, but almost every RPG you've ever played has had a true hatred between the forces of good and evil. I can tell you for a fact that you haven't seen true hatred. "He's going to destroy the world. I'll kill him before that." Sound familar? That isn't true hatred. That's necessity. It's a way of life, to destroy that which will destroy you before you are destroyed. Basically, justifying his own possible death with self-defense. True hatred is summoned from something deeper. Bean almost had such a hatred towards Achilies. But in the end, Bean found the strength to show mercy. The only RPGs that I've seen where mercy was bestowed on former enemies were Final Fantasy VIII and both Suikoden games. If any gaming companies want to beat out such great works as those of Card's, they need to start bringing in new elements and new extremes for pre-existing elements.

What annoys me in the end, though, is that people seem to think that these aspects of story-telling are included in gaming. Such is not true. Many hardcore gamers are sick of hearing that games are for kids. Maybe if these problems, and others like it, were addressed all those sayings would just disappear.

Notes:
This was an intriguing idea for an editorial, but its execution was flawed. First of all, this editorial had some spelling mistakes, and, somewhat ironically, these were the author and a character from the book that he tried to elevate over the RPG genre.

What brought this editorial down was in the strength of the arguments. He argues that the elements of true hatred, mercy (except for FFVIII and Suikoden), and exploitation don't exist in RPGs. However, this is far from the case. FFVI and VII featured true hatred, mercy was shown in FFIV, FFIX, and Chrono Trigger. Exploitation of nations was done in Seiken Densetsu III, and those are just examples that came off the top of my head.

In addition, comparing one author to an entire genre isn't fair in the first place, as the sci-fi/fantasy genre has its fair share of authors who don't live up to the standards set by either Orson Scott Card or the RPGs out there.