1496: Triple-Gritty

I’ve been playing an upcoming triple-A release today (it’s still under embargo, I think, so I probably shouldn’t name it directly) and although I’ve been enjoying it enough to play it for most of the day, it’s caused me to finally pin down the reason why I’m less and less interested in triple-A games in my own free time — i.e. when I don’t have to play them for a review or feature or whatever.

It’s the aesthetic and mood. They’re all going for the same thing — that gritty, moody, self-consciously “mature” vibe that, if not handled correctly, can come off feeling a little adolescent. There are numerous tell-tale signs:

• Someone says “fuck” quite early in the game, then people won’t stop saying it. Even in situations where saying “fuck” quite so liberally would (arguably) be something of an anachronism, once a game opens the fuckgates, there’s no stopping the stream of profanities belching forth from its characters lips like a never-ending tide of effluvium. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with swearing, but swearing for swearing’s sake — especially in a setting it doesn’t quite feel “right” with — isn’t the shortcut to “maturity” that some writers think it is.
• There’s at least one gratuitous sex scene, optionally during a mission that takes place in a brothel or similar house of ill repute. Look! Our game has tits in it! Incidental characters are fucking! Please like me!
• The main character has a gravelly voice and an optional habit of describing things using tortured metaphors. And people complain about JRPG heroes being angsty. Seriously.
• The main character will occasionally spout one-liners that Arnie would be embarrassed to say. These will often come up in situations where laughing just doesn’t quite feel appropriate. And we all know the secret of comedy is ti—
• It’s never fantasy, always “dark fantasy”. I blame Dragon Age and The Witcher for this. Both great games, but they started the whole “dark fantasy” thing rolling in earnest and now it won’t stop.
• You’ll spend at least half an hour not knowing who anyone’s name is. The intro sequence of the game I was playing today suggests the protagonist is supposed to know who his companion is, but I had no idea what her name was until after… events unfolded. I don’t necessarily need Yakuza-style captions introducing every character’s first appearance, but just a simple piece of dialogue where the characters call each other by name will do.
• You’ll realise halfway through an awesome setpiece that you have no idea how you got there. This may be a personal thing, but in dark, gritty triple-A stories I tend to have a much harder time following the story and remembering what was going on. By the time I got into the second main mission of the game I was playing today, I’d forgotten why I was there and how it tied in with the previous mission.

There are probably more, but I’ll leave that there for now. I realise similar accusations can probably be levelled at the types of games I like, but I’d actually argue there’s more diversity in anime-style RPGs than there is in the self-consciously mature triple-A space. Compare something like Atelier Rorona (hand-drawn look; low-key, slice-of-life mood; strong emphasis on moe) to even its stablemate Ar Tonelico (more traditional anime-style look; more epic storyline; humour interspersed with in-depth explorations of real issues) or something like Final Fantasy XIII (CG look rather than anime; angsty characters; ridiculously over-the-top story and effects) — all very different subsets of the same basic thing, while Western triple-A tends to go for the “realistic or bust” approach for the most part.

Note I’m not saying this is inherently bad; just that I find it a bit tiresome after a while. And playing [REDACTED] today has kind of driven that home a bit. I think I need to spend some time with Atelier Rorona to wash all the grit off tomorrow.