1249: Platinum

Finally finished Ar Tonelico Qoga as much as it is possible to finish it tonight. I saw every ending, got every PSN trophy (including one that required me to go back and replay a good three hours due to an inadvertent mistake I made, and that ABSOLUTE COCK of a “find every treasure chest” trophy) and generally had my money’s worth several times over.

All told, the experience took me in excess of a hundred hours altogether. Given that I exhausted literally every piece of content that game had to offer, I’m happy with that. Were there more content, I would have probably continued, but as it stands, I feel very satisfied with what I’ve experienced.

A hundred hours is a long time to spend on a single piece of entertainment, and there was a growing movement a while back in favour of shorter, more easily-digestible games. To be honest, I can see the appeal — it’s nice to sit down to play something and know that you’re almost definitely going to finish it — but at the same time there’s something immensely gratifying in a game that takes this long to exhaust the possibilities of.

A hundred hours isn’t actually a particularly long period of time to be required to see everything in a role-playing game, however. Persona 3 and 4 each take approximately a hundred hours to finish normally, let alone collecting all the Personas, completing all the sidequests and levelling up enough to beat The Hardest, Most Irritatingly Cheap Secret Boss in the Known Universe. If you delve into all that extra content, it’s entirely possible you could add at least another 50-100 hours on top of that base figure. I must confess to having never actually finished a Persona game in this manner — generally, by the time I get to the end, I’m exhausted and ready to move on to something else. This is a compliment to the game’s story, incidentally — Persona games are deliberately emotionally exhausting, and the palpable sense of relief you get from beating the final bosses in them remain among some of my favourite moments in gaming.

Where’s the sweet spot? And what was it about Ar Tonelico Qoga that made me want to see absolutely everything it had to offer, regardless of how long it took?

Well, in part, it’s because everything I did felt like meaningful content. Sure, I had to repeat some story bits several times over, but there were differences here and there that kept me paying attention. Nothing felt grindy; my characters hit level 99 naturally while I was doing other stuff, so it was pretty rare that I’d find myself running around in circles waiting for enemy encounters. Similarly, crafting was a pleasure, because the enjoyable combat meant that I’d been inadvertently stocking myself up on ingredients without realising it over the course of the whole game and thus never had to go hunting for anything in particular. And when I did craft something new, I was rewarded with one of the many delightful intra-party scenes where the characters discuss whatever the hell it is they’re putting together this time, and Aoto can embarrass himself in some new and exciting way. (“Every man’s number one fantasy is a drill!”)

I can’t help comparing and contrasting with my experiences in something like Skyrim, which I played and sort of enjoyed for about 35-40 hours or so, then gave up on without getting anywhere near the conclusion of the main plot. It just wasn’t interesting. It didn’t draw me in. I felt like I was walking around a diorama rather than a living world; a model populated by mannequins who all said the same thing rather than a world filled with actual people.

Your average JRPG’s worldbuilding is all an illusion, of course — if anything, most JRPG worlds are even more static than those seen in Western RPGs, but a great deal more character is added by making every single character unique, regardless of their relevance to the overall narrative. This is something that Ar Tonelico did consistently well throughout — NPCs would change what they said according to the point in the story where you visited them, allowing for the exploration of some completely irrelevant but fun little mini-stories in the process.

Anyway. That’s that. Now I have to decide what’s next. While I’m mildly tempted by The Last of Us, I find myself wondering if I’ll feel like I got my money’s worth if it’s over in 10 hours or so. Perhaps I’ll wait until the price comes down a bit, as I have no real interest in the multiplayer modes. In the meantime, I have a pile of shame the size of a house to start on, and doubtless you’ll hear all about what I’m going for next very soon.

1245: New Game Plus

I’m currently 90 hours or so into Ar Tonelico Qoga, an RPG that is, by all accounts, quite short (about 30-40 hours or so) under normal circumstances. And yet for some reason I’ve been inspired to not only try and get all its endings, but to literally see everything it has to offer, leading to the grossly extended playtime just mentioned.

This is not something I generally do unless I really like a game, so it’s considerable praise from me to Ar Tonelico Qoga that I’m doing this. I never went back and finished Dragon Age Origins with a different, well, origin, for example, nor did I ever go back and play through Knights of the Old Republic as a Dark Jedi rather than the poncey Light Side-type person I normally do. I liked those games, sure, but they didn’t grab me by the Feels in the same way that the Ar Tonelico series has done fairly consistently over the course of three games, despite the fact that both Dragon Age and KOTOR are objectively “better” games in terms of mechanics, production quality and all manner of other considerations.

I’ve been trying to determine the reasons why Ar Tonelico in particular has resonated with me so much that I want to seek out everything it’s hiding. Longtime readers may recall that I felt much the same way about Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, a game which was almost universally panned by the press (though not quite as much as its predecessor) that I actually ended up loving.

The reasons why these games resonated with me so much are many. Chief among them is the fact that I genuinely adore both the setting and the characters. Neptunia’s cast is silly and full of tropetacular stereotypes, but, crucially, is well aware of what it’s doing and consistently pokes fun at itself. Ar Tonelico, meanwhile, simply has an astonishingly well-realised world with some incredible backstory and lore. And, unlike many Western RPGs that include an in-game encyclopaedia of completely irrelevant information, Ar Tonelico’s lore is woven into the tapestry of not only the individual games, but the overarching narrative that runs across the three games in the series. Each game stands by itself, but playing all three gives you a thoroughly deep understanding of the situation that humanity has found itself in, and the quirks of this strange world’s unique culture.

Aside from the narrative, setting and characters, though, another reason I have found such enjoyment in the Ar Tonelico series is that I’ve never once felt like I was grinding through content, plodding through “filler” material solely designed to artificially bump up the playtime. Granted, I artificially bumped up the playtime to a certain degree myself by deciding (foolishly) that I’d seek out each and every treasure chest in the game for the measly promise of a bronze PSN trophy, but even while doing that, I begrudged the game anything it was doing — though I must admit that after I hit level 99 with all my characters, I began to wish there was a button to turn enemy encounters off.

I’m not going to lie; not everyone will enjoy the Ar Tonelico series. If you can’t stomach big-eyed teenage anime girls and Japanese voice acting with a lot of melodramatic screaming and crying, then this series probably won’t do much for you. If you enjoy those things, though — or if you can at least look past them — then you’ll find one of the most interesting, emotionally engaging JRPG series that I’ve ever played, and one that, across its three games, has some of the richest content I think I’ve ever explored in the genre.

I’ve got five more endings to get. I’m closing in on the first of these, and the last four should be pretty straightforward to get. When I’ve seen everything the game has to offer, I’ll be genuinely sad to leave the game world behind, because not only will I be done with Ar Tonelico Qoga, I’ll be done with the series, too; not to spoil anything, but the “true” ending of the third game all but guarantees that there won’t be a fourth game.

Still, stranger things have happened, particularly in the world of Japanese games.

1241: The Trouble with Rule 34

Lest you’re unfamiliar with one of the most notorious “Rules of the Internet”, Rule 34 states that “There is porn of it. No exceptions.” In other words, if it exists, someone, somewhere, somehow has generated some form of pornographic version of it. It may be “official”, it may be a fan work, but one way or another there is some sort of pornography based around absolutely anything you can think of.

My issue with Rule 34 is not that it exists, nor the fact that it’s true in an alarmingly high number of cases. No, my issue with Rule 34 is somewhat more psychological in nature.

Let’s back up a moment. Currently I’m playing Ar Tonelico Qoga on PS3, a game that features a mechanic in which characters take their clothes off in order to become more powerful. (It is justified in the game’s lore, to its credit, but yes, it is totally fanservicey.) Consequently, you spend a hefty amount of time in the game looking at the cast in their skimpies — particularly the female characters.

And yet do I want to see them actually completely naked? Do I want to see them — if you’ll pardon the explicitness for a moment — getting fucked roughly from behind or covered in jizz? Well… no, not really.

Why not, though? I find the characters themselves attractive — enough to want to spend virtual time with them, enough to genuinely agonise over decision points that require me to pick between them, and enough to project my own feelings about various issues and people onto them — so why don’t I feel the need to look at erotic material featuring them?

Well, the simple answer is… because of all the reasons I listed above. In a good character-led game (or movie, or TV series, or book, or whatever) you develop a close, intimate bond with the characters involved. In many cases, you spend a significant portion of time with them, and usually at a point in their life that is somehow meaningful or important in some way. This “important” moment could be anything from coming to terms with something small they’ve been in denial about for a long time, or it could be saving the world alongside them. Either way, you’re there with them, and you feel close to them. All right, maybe you don’t, but I do.

Consequently, unless you’re the sort of person who has a somewhat… physical relationship with your closest friends, to suddenly throw nakedness and banging into the mix can be somewhat… jarring. If my virtual time with these people has been, up until this point, entirely non-sexual (or at least, not explicitly sexual), I find it a bit weird to suddenly see them in this whole other way, and not at all comfortable in many cases. Kind of like, say, if I had a sister, suddenly saw her naked and got turned on in the process. (I don’t, haven’t and wouldn’t, before you rethink your friendship with me.)

Which is kind of weird when you think about it, sister stuff aside. (Kind of wish I hadn’t mentioned that now.) Being physically intimate with someone else is… well, the clue’s in what I just said. It’s intimate. If you’re very close with someone you love, chances are you want to have sex with them. (Sometimes you want to have sex with people you don’t love, but that’s an entirely different matter.) And yet I have no desire to look up erotic images of, say, Finnel from Ar Tonelico Qoga (pictured to the right), even though she’s a character I feel close to and can relate to in many ways having spent the last 56 (at last count) hours of gameplay with her.

I wonder why this is? It’s perhaps the fact that a lot of pornography (“real” or otherwise) is presented from a third-person perspective, making the viewer feel somewhat detached from the action. (Exceptions do, of course, exist.) Taking this interpretation to an extreme, I could probably argue that looking at an erotic image of, say, Finnel getting banged would feel like I was watching someone else having sex with her, rather than finding the image of her naked body in any way arousing, or feeling like I was the one in a physically intimate situation with her.

An exception to the feelings I describe above comes in the realm of eroge — visual novels with erotic content. In this case, the lack of “discomfort” I feel at seeing the characters in compromising situations is perhaps more understandable — it is, in many cases, in context. It’s not out of character for the protagonist of a visual novel and his loved one to want to indulge in some nookie to show how much they’re into each other. In many cases, the actual sexual content is teased and built up to with sexual tension — for all its faults and ridiculousness, I found that My Girlfriend is the President was actually very good at this, for example; the ero scenes were undoubtedly erotic, but I didn’t find them satisfying because of that — no, I found them satisfying because they marked a turning point in these characters’ relationships, or saw them showing a side of themselves that “the public” didn’t see.

In other words, in these cases, the sex doesn’t feel out of place or out of character because of the context. It makes sense. The relationship between the characters (and between the characters and player) is built on the understanding that these are people for whom sex is A Thing, and that they’re probably going to want to do it at some point. With that expectation in place, it somehow feels less awkward. (Until someone walks in on you watching an H-scene, of course.)

Perhaps I’m alone in this, and everyone who loved Final Fantasy VII as much as I did when I was younger is happily wanking away to contextless animated GIFs of Tifa giving Cloud a soapy titwank. I don’t know. And I have a strange feeling no-one would admit to it even if they did!

1232: Knell of Ar Ciel

I haven’t posted about Ar Tonelico for a while, and having just witnessed the “bad ending” of the third game (ooh, it’s bad) I feel now may be a good time for a progress report on my thoughts thus far before I jump in and try for the other endings.

Ar Tonelico Qoga, as the third game is known, is a peculiar beast. While it’s the most outright “perverted” of the series — the previous two games had plenty in the way of innuendo but stopped short of being overly fanservicey, a couple of scenes where the heroines were clad only in towels aside — it’s also probably the most open-minded of the three with regard to the subject matter it tackles. This is a game that revels in sexuality in all its forms as one of its themes, and if you feel somewhat uncomfortable playing it, I feel I know Gust’s work well enough by now to say that it’s probably intentional that you feel that way.

Let me qualify the above statements a little. Insofar as the game is “perverted”, one of its core gameplay mechanics involves the female “Reyvateil” characters (essentially glass-cannon mages if you want to assign them a traditional RPG party role) stripping off their clothes throughout the course of battle. While, yes, this is gratuitous and unnecessary and etc. etc. (for the record: I am an unabashed (well, mildly abashed) pervert and have no issue with pervy fanservice in my entertainment) they do at least make an attempt to justify the reason for this happening to a certain degree in a narrative sense: Reyvateils are artificial human-like life forms that are basically equipped with Wi-Fi (bear with me) and communicate wirelessly with the titular tower of Ar Tonelico in order to produce the magic-like effects of their Songs. By stripping — or “purging”, as the game calls it — the Reyvateils are able to get better reception, so to speak, and can absorb more magic from the tower. This translates, in gameplay terms, to the “Burst” gauge, which represents how powerful the Reyvateil’s spell will be if you set it off right now, increasing at a much more rapid rate according to how few clothes she is wearing. (They stop short of her getting fully naked, I might add — after purging three levels of clothing, she’s down to her skimpies, and purging a fourth time triggers her powerful (and surreal) “Flipsphere” über-attack, at which point her clothes magically reappear.)

Read all that back again, and I’d forgive you for never wanting to give this game the time of day. A game whose female characters strip off in exchange for increased magical capabilities? Sounds like some sort of Male Power Fantasy™. And perhaps it is.

Thing is, though, Ar Tonelico Qoga is far more interesting and intelligent than just pretty girls getting almost-naked. For starters, it’s worth noting that after a certain point in the game, all the male characters will strip off at a moment’s notice too — performing each character’s best attack causes all their clothes to fall off and for you to get a good look at what each of them are packing underneath their armour. Doctor Hikari Gojo’s fundoshi in particular is a sight to behold.

But no. It’s not even about characters getting naked. Much like the previous two games in the series, the really interesting stuff comes about thanks to the “Dive” mechanic — a system whereby you can increase the power of the two Reyvateils by taking a wander through their “Cosmosphere” — a multi-level psychic world that exists within their subconscious. By exploring the two heroines’ Cosmospheres, you learn a great deal about them — facts that simply don’t come up explicitly in the game’s “normal” plot, but which can help inform your reaction to things that go on once you know them.

As is par for the course in the series, each level of the two heroines’ Cosmospheres focuses around some sort of problem that they are having — be it a difficulty coming to terms with who they are, the strange influences other aspects of their personality have on them, or simply something they’re having trouble admitting or dealing with. By interacting with the Reyvateil and the other characters in her Cosmosphere, the protagonist Aoto forges an incredibly strong, incredibly intimate bond with the heroines and gets to know them in a way that no-one else in the world does.

This leads to some really interesting scenes, many of which are touching on territory I can’t recall exploring in a game before. And unlike the gaudy excesses of the strip-centric battle system, they’re handled sensitively and with care; clearly composed by someone who knew what they were talking about.

I’m trying not to spoil anything here for those of you who are reading this and intend to play through this fascinating game, but I feel I should give one example to highlight what I’m talking about, and that is the character who, in one of her Cosmosphere levels, essentially “comes out” as being a submissive or “bottom” with somewhat masochistic tendencies. Given what you know about this character by this point, her confession is not altogether surprising, but what is surprising is that it is actually referenced and explored through more than simple innuendo.

“Don’t take off the chains,” she says after a convoluted, embarrassing and humiliating sequence of events for her, where Aoto is about to give her her freedom. “I feel safe when I’m in the chains, so long as you’re there.”

I’ll confess to not knowing anything about BDSM and related sexual preferences, but I found it fascinating to see this character opening up about her secret passions and desires like this. It wasn’t treated as a kind of “wish fulfilment” scene for male players, either; it was simple, to the point and helped me to understand one aspect of this particular character. In short, it’s the sort of thing I’d like to see explored in more games; sadly, it’s abundantly clear that very few “triple-A” producers would greenlight a game that delves into such subject matter, though thankfully there’s always the “lower-tier” games such as Ar Tonelico willing to step up to the plate and try something new.

As guilty as I feel for what occurred in the bad ending, I should probably go to bed now and absolutely not try to get a better ending now. Right? Right. Suuuuuure.