Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Persona 4: Don't Trust This Game!
Warning: This article contains spoilers about PS2 RPG Persona 4. It can't be helped. Don't read further if you with to be unspoiled. And yes - I am playing it again. It turns out that my Playstation 2 is okay, but somehow my disc became damaged. Bummer, but I was able to borrow a friend's copy. And now he's going to be torn over whether or not to read this article, as he loaned me the game before he'd finished the game himself...And now, if it weren't for the Internet, I'd possibly believe that I was done with Persona 4 right now. Oh, I'd have suspicions - there are some tip-offs that all was not right in the world in spite of a fairly satisfying conclusion. There's a plot thread that was never picked up (why you and two others received your power to enter the other world prior to obtaining your Persona ability), and the suggestion that there may be a time in the future when you are all called once more to stop someone from starting the murders all over again. And there's the fact that you achieved max rank in the Judgment arcana - and unlocked a new Persona - after the "final" boss was defeated.
But I was in a hurry in the real world, and I didn't realize that the game itself was conspiring against me and trying to fake me out and prevent me from playing through the final act.
Earlier in the story, there was another option to take on a "bad" ending in the game, but at that time it was simply a confusing maze of dialog you had to navigate. It was actually a pretty dramatic scene - you had the "murderer" trapped, and you realize that except for a kidnapping charge, he's probably going to get off the hook. Nobody can prove anything, and he's probably going to get an insanity plea anyway. You and your friends have the opportunity to dispense justice, right then and there. One shove into the big-screen TV, and the shadows in the next world can finish him off.
At this point, it's clear there's something else going on, and that there's a game-changing decision to be made. Unfortunately, how to resolve it isn't clear, unless you recognize that the theme of the game is about the discovery of truth through the layers of deception. Talking your friend down from committing indirect murder isn't enough - and the game makes it fairly obvious when you've taken the wrong path and should try again.
On the other hand, the false "good" ending of the game doesn't make it clear that a decision is being made. The game itself pushes you to accept what appears to be a reasonable resolution. While I was suspicious there was more to the story than what I had seen, I thought I'd missed a decision earlier in the game - but for the life of me couldn't figure out where. And again - the ending was fairly satisfying and positive. These days, from a meta-gaming perspective, it was simply a set-up for a possible expansion or sequel.
But this was a trick. After a long sequence of hunting down your friends, and having the game "helpfully" reiterate your goal and not allowing you passage anywhere outside the goal, it announces you've achieved your goal and offers to take you to the ending sequence. In fact, it tries three times to conclude the game.
This bugs me, yet also fascinates me. The game is our vehicle into this world. We have to trust the game. We have never at any point established an adversarial relationship with the game itself. We really can't. The game world doesn't exist without it. We've had decades of experience learning to live within the frustrating constraints of games much like this, putting up with limitations and plot-hammering. Persona 4 is no exception. There are roads we can't take, and doors we can't open, which we accept because the game simply won't let us go there. We trust it out of necessity.
And then, as it turns out, the game is in cahoots with the true "bad guy." Er, girl. Well, more of an archetypal trickster. The one who orchestrated both the potential for the world's destruction as well as the hope of its salvation. Whatevah. The game is in league with her, and actively tries to conceal the final chapter of the game from the player.
This isn't the first time. A far more egregious example of this was in the Infocom text adventure, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Each time you'd try to go to the engine room aboard the Heart of Gold, it would stop you, telling you it was too dangerous. The only clue that anything was up was that the messages were different every time. Since adventure gamers love to keep poking around with things to see what the game will tell us, eventually the solution was revealed: you simply had to be persistent. No keys, no big inventory puzzles. You just had to ignore the game's warnings and threats and keep repeating your action until the game relented. This was metagaming at its weirdest. The game lied to you, and broke conventions without warning.
At least in Persona 4, it's easy enough to simply chalk up this final chapter as a "secret" or "bonus" section of the game - a new dungeon, epilogue, and boss battle. After all, I have put 90 hours into this freakin' game and received a hero's ending. This is gravy. And at least the game doesn't explicitly lie to you. It just encourages you to believe that there's nothing further to see here, and that you should move along.
But - it breaks the tools you are used to relying upon, without telling you. It breaks its own rules that you, as a player, have no choice but to live by. After all, I *DID* try and return to the food court before visiting the last of my friends, and found it impossible only five minutes earlier. Why should things change now?
But was there a better way to hide this "true" final ending? A way that doesn't rely upon the player suddenly developing a paranoia about his tools? A non-metagaming solution?
Probably. Probably a thousand other ways. Given the limitations of this sequence, the designer's hand hand was forced at the end - anything else would have been a tip-off. The game has never, until this point, forced you to manually make your way back home to the Dojima residence once you've concluded a quest or action like this. Leaving you in a lurch and even suggestion that you walk home manually would have been big flashing neon light that something else was going on. And suddenly the hidden choice would have been turned into a non-choice.
So what really needed to happen, in my mind, was an additional sequence. An additional choice. One that existed within the context of the game world, not within the metagame. A final confrontation with Adachi, or a serious conversation with Dojima or Teddie which can potentially lead to the revelation of one more path.
We shouldn't ever be required to distrust our tools. That's just playin' dirty.
Labels: Adventure Games, Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:01 AM (Permalink)
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I can think of a couple of games that have tricked me this way before.
Chrono Cross on PS1 had multiple endings, but it played a dirty trick. Unlike the game it was a sequel to, where the criterion to determine the ending was at which point of the game you went to beat the final boss, in CC killing the final boss got you the worst ending, which was cruel black screen. Instead you had to soothe it with a melody. There were clues something was amiss - the black screen, the fact the spell elements were unusually associated with notes during the final fight - but connecting the dots was not exactly trivial and frustrated many a player.
The action-RPG games in the Castlevania series are also fond of this kind of stuff. It started with a game called Symphony of the Night, in which you could perfectly win by beating the apparent bad guy, though since he was the previous game's hero that naturally made for a bittersweet ending. However by exploring a really remote part of the castle (the boss could be reached the normal way with a mere 70% map coverage IIRC) you could find an object that, when worn, allowed you to litterally see the puppetmaster behind the apparent final boss, and beating him granted you access to the entire second half of the game - a second, hidden castle housing the real villain, the real map total amounting to 200%! Probably the boldest misdirection I've seen.
I suspect Persona inherits this from the same visual novel genre it gets most of its school life bits from though. Some of them are famous for their obscure event triggers.
Chrono Cross on PS1 had multiple endings, but it played a dirty trick. Unlike the game it was a sequel to, where the criterion to determine the ending was at which point of the game you went to beat the final boss, in CC killing the final boss got you the worst ending, which was cruel black screen. Instead you had to soothe it with a melody. There were clues something was amiss - the black screen, the fact the spell elements were unusually associated with notes during the final fight - but connecting the dots was not exactly trivial and frustrated many a player.
The action-RPG games in the Castlevania series are also fond of this kind of stuff. It started with a game called Symphony of the Night, in which you could perfectly win by beating the apparent bad guy, though since he was the previous game's hero that naturally made for a bittersweet ending. However by exploring a really remote part of the castle (the boss could be reached the normal way with a mere 70% map coverage IIRC) you could find an object that, when worn, allowed you to litterally see the puppetmaster behind the apparent final boss, and beating him granted you access to the entire second half of the game - a second, hidden castle housing the real villain, the real map total amounting to 200%! Probably the boldest misdirection I've seen.
I suspect Persona inherits this from the same visual novel genre it gets most of its school life bits from though. Some of them are famous for their obscure event triggers.
# posted by 
: May 13, 2009 2:45 PM
: May 13, 2009 2:45 PM
Portal does this to some extent as well. (SPOILER ALERT) Of course, Valve is very good at making seamless in-game pretenses for guiding players through and between levels, so it's very clever of them to have the omniscient voice guiding you from one level to the next betray you, and it comes very close to being a betrayal from the game itself, much like the Hitchhiker's Guide example.
Orson Scott Card (author of Ender's Game, among other things) has a rule about writing that I think applies here: you can break any rule or convention you like, but you have to be willing to pay the consequences.
For this sort of thing the consequence is that most players may never see the extra work you put into the real ending. Or, that when players look up the answer in a walkthrough, they may be so frustrated that they don't finish playing the game, and don't buy any more of your games either.
I personally loved HHGG because of those sorts of puzzles. If such a puzzle was used in the middle of Zork, for example, I would have been frustrated, but HHGG is filled with that kind of unconventional puzzle, so to me it fits. My brother always hated puzzles like getting the Babel fish, or not getting eaten by the dog, because they're puzzles you can't solve on the first go around.
For this sort of thing the consequence is that most players may never see the extra work you put into the real ending. Or, that when players look up the answer in a walkthrough, they may be so frustrated that they don't finish playing the game, and don't buy any more of your games either.
I personally loved HHGG because of those sorts of puzzles. If such a puzzle was used in the middle of Zork, for example, I would have been frustrated, but HHGG is filled with that kind of unconventional puzzle, so to me it fits. My brother always hated puzzles like getting the Babel fish, or not getting eaten by the dog, because they're puzzles you can't solve on the first go around.
Matt, IIRC POrtal just kills you without any pretense of a fake ending if you follow Glados' orders, right? In that sense it's not really a misleading ending, only a plot twist.
# posted by : May 14, 2009 9:43 AM
: May 14, 2009 9:43 AM
Yeah, I don't put Portal in quite the same category, either. They really build her up as a character and establish a pattern early on that she isn't to be trusted. So I'd say Portal is an example of how this kind of thing SHOULD be done. They manage to do it without cheating.
You could make arguments about easter eggs - but in the case of easter eggs, they are supposed to be purely "bonus" material.
The Symphony of the Night trick sounds like cheating to me. I have that game for the XBox 360 (I don't have many Live Arcade games, but that's one of them), but I only play that one sporadically.
You could make arguments about easter eggs - but in the case of easter eggs, they are supposed to be purely "bonus" material.
The Symphony of the Night trick sounds like cheating to me. I have that game for the XBox 360 (I don't have many Live Arcade games, but that's one of them), but I only play that one sporadically.
Oops, my apologies, I didn't mean to spoil SotN for you. Figured there's be a prescription since it's really old, I don't own any console from the latest generation so I'd forgotten about the downloadable oldies.
It's not that much like cheating though, that is if you're familiar with the castlevania series, because some normally emblematic recurrent bosses don't appear when they should, letting you suspect something's wrong, and even the ending encourages you to search further.
Naturally for all the SotN successors it's become normal to expect them to pull the same kind of trick so the surprise doesn't quite work anymore. None of them goes as far as making the bonus segment 50% percent of the game, but hidden "true" bosses have become a bit of an habit.
It's not that much like cheating though, that is if you're familiar with the castlevania series, because some normally emblematic recurrent bosses don't appear when they should, letting you suspect something's wrong, and even the ending encourages you to search further.
Naturally for all the SotN successors it's become normal to expect them to pull the same kind of trick so the surprise doesn't quite work anymore. None of them goes as far as making the bonus segment 50% percent of the game, but hidden "true" bosses have become a bit of an habit.
# posted by : May 14, 2009 12:37 PM
: May 14, 2009 12:37 PM
Don't worry about it. The statute of limitations on spoilers runs out when its original platform becomes 2 generations old, IMO... :)
Horror games are built on this sort of distrust between player and game. Shattering expectations induces tension.
I don't like it, and I don't think it's good design, but it can serve a purpose in corner cases like a psychological game that tries to mess with your mind.
Of course, even then, it's ideal to establish a pattern of betrayal, rather than pull a fast one at the end.
Still, I'm not a fan of games that pull that sort of trick.
I don't like it, and I don't think it's good design, but it can serve a purpose in corner cases like a psychological game that tries to mess with your mind.
Of course, even then, it's ideal to establish a pattern of betrayal, rather than pull a fast one at the end.
Still, I'm not a fan of games that pull that sort of trick.
wow, was that necessary to write or say. You feel tricked? What, it just means more endings and more things to explore, and findout from other players...It's more to see, and something you can catch the next time if not the first. It's a surprise aspect, plus they're like easter eggs. You're being rewarded extra. Your flippin out man!
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# posted by : December 27, 2009 1:30 PM
: December 27, 2009 1:30 PMLinks to this post:
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