So my partner and I were discussing motivation to complete video games last night. He says that he often has trouble to finish a game since his main motivation is often stuff like treasure hunting and exploring, so when it comes time to go deal the big baddie the final blow, he finds he has absolutely no motivation to do so since beating the final boss does nothing but show you the end scene of the game and then you're done. I've personally watched him play through entire games like FFXIII, Xenogears, Cave Story (the wii release) and many more, spending countless hours finding every single treasure in the game and uncovering every secret of every map, save before the final area (or right before the final room) and then never touch the game again.
As he was telling me this, I was thinking about my motivations for beating a game and instantly thought about Metroid: Fusion. If you read my last post, I talked about how in one of the final scenes, when the computer reveals itself to be Adam and asks, "any Objections, Lady?" before sending you off to the final scene, it fills me with a sense of objective. I find myself, the player, actually wanting to go do the computer's bidding. However, after thinking about it for awhile, I've realized that there's more to it. The SA-X. The SA-X is the X-virus clone of Samus in her fully-powered form from Super Metroid. Throughout the game, Samus periodically encounters the SA-X. Each time you meet it, you are not powerful enough to defeat it, so you can only hide and hope it doesn't see you. In these scenes, an excellent, chilling effect is achieved by cutting the music and replacing it with ambient, sounds and making the footsteps of the SA-X extremely audible (view this short video to see what I mean). Because of this, a reaction of real fear is instilled in the player as they watch Samus hiding just out of sight of the echoing footsteps of the unstoppable SA-X.
The SA-X is a constant object of fear throughout the game and Samus' fear is shared by the player. Because of this, when it comes time to destroy the SA-X, the player has the same feelings as Samus herself must feel and destroying the SA-X is one part revenge for all those times it scared us and one part mission objective to push the game forward. This sharing of emotions is something rare in video games that we don't often feel. When faced with the final boss in countless games, I'm only doing it because I've come so far that I might as well finish it.
Another game that has a similar effect as the SA-X is Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. This is both a frustrating feeling and a fear effect that makes the point where you finally kill him doubley satisfying. Another is the Dahaka from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. It chases the prince throughout the whole game. If you collect every health-upgrade in the game, you are rewarded with a water sword and get to fight the Dahaka and kill it; another extremely satisfying battle after being chased by the creature throughout the entire game.
An RPG that comes to mind that achieves a parallel motivation effect that is not as much fear-induced as Fusion, RE3 and PoP: WW is Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth is certainly a character to be feared as you walk through the gutted halls of the Shinra building, blood and sword marks decorating every corner. But the main motivation that players are imbued with is one of revenge when Sephiroth kills Aeris in the legendary cut-scene (particularly if it's your first time playing the game and you were actually investing time in powering Aeris up for your party). From this point onwards Sephiroth is known as the king of jerks who killed one of your party members beyond the capabilities of a Phoenix Down, and you are pissed off.
The ability to appeal to the player's sense of motivation to work through a game and not just the character's story-driven motivations is something that I feel is not considered on a emotional level often enough. When a game developer is creating a game they think about what the player will be able to do: Level up, collect new weapons, collect treasure, develop strategies, learn battle systems and hone their reflexes to master it. But how often does a developer actually instill the player with a sense of mystery of what will happen next, or make the player feel as angry as the character's might feel at the death of a character or the destruction of a city. It's a difficult task, no doubt, but an extremely valuable aspect to consider.
Any other moments in games that readers can think of where they felt emotionally motivated to accomplish a certain task in a game?
One more that comes to mind is resurrecting Crono in Chrono Trigger. He is your typical silent protagonist throughout the entire game, but he still feels very much like the leader. When he shockingly gets destroyed by Lavos at a pivotal point in the game, you are left in as much disbelief as Marle must be in. How the hell did my main character just die? Because of this, when you find out that there is a way to revive Crono, you want to jump on the task immediately.
I'd love to hear of more situations like this if you can think of any.
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ReplyDeleteI play single player games entirely for the story. Any treasure or item to be had is usually only grabbed if the process of doing it is fun(which tends to vary between games) or if it is an item pe...rceived to be necessary to advancing in the game. Over the years, I've generally just made it a point to go beyond the "main road" because older JRPGs made it impossible to beat the game if you didn't. It's rarely because of the intrinsic value of owning the item itself.
ReplyDeleteIf games don't make me emotionally invested on their own what usually happens is that I tend to pick up queues that they're trying to do so and trick myself into believing it. For instance, the story presentation in the original God of War is mediocre but I can see what they're trying to get at and so I'm putting myself in a revenge mindset.
Sometimes I even do it when there's no story at all. When I play Civ IV I imagine the glorious rise of the mighty Incan Empire and the rewriting of history as it brings about a new utopia - particularly so if I've founded a religion.
If a game is entirely unappealing to me on a story/emotional level I tend not to have the motivation to finish it. Here we find Demons' Souls, Infamous, Fallout 3...etc
As for scenes where you're motivated to do stuff in a game...all of Dragon Age? Oh and Sin and Seymour in FFX. You want those shitheads to go down =P (revenge seems to be pretty big in gaming >_>)
It's interesting that you cite Demons' Souls as a game that you don't feel emotionally compelled to complete. I realize it's a drastically different experience for many players, but an emotional motivation was my #1 reason for completing that game. Since enemies were a real danger in that game, I was sincerely terrified of new ones since I didn't know how they might kill me. It was also a sense of frustration and wanting to overcome the game that kept beating me time and time again.
ReplyDeleteI don't think my heart has ever beat quite as hard nor have I been so short of breath as when I finally beat King Allant.