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rionaleonhart) wrote2024-05-24 05:32 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2024-05-24 05:32 pm
Entry tags:
Maybe It's A Dream, Maybe Nothing Else Is Real.
Here is a meandering and spoilery entry about Omori. I thought at first that it was going to be about how silent videogame protagonists can be given a sense of character, but then it ended up being about how player action - or, in the case I'm thinking about, player inaction - impacts on videogame storytelling.
Whilst I tend to find silent protagonists uninteresting, I do really like characters who fuck up and fall apart and can't trust their own perception of reality. Sunny of Omori falls into both categories, and it turns out my love of terrible guilt-ridden fuckups is stronger than my need for a character to have dialogue.
One detail that I thought helped to get the protagonist's characterisation across: the game will sometimes ask 'Do you want to [do X]?' as a subtle indicator that the protagonist really doesn't want to do X. Usually, when you examine a photo, you just pick it up automatically. I'm fairly sure the game asks 'Do you want to pick up this photo?' once and exactly once, and it's when I'd worked out from context that neither I nor Sunny was going to want to see what this photograph depicted.
It's hard to think of how the precise experience of picking up that photograph could translate into any other medium. I entered the room. It was dark and corrupted, and there was no way out. There was a photograph on the floor. I knew I would need to pick up the photograph to progress. I had started to suspect, from the pictures I'd picked up a moment before, what would be in the photograph. I did not want to pick up the photograph.
There was an armchair in the room. If I sat in the armchair, the corruption in the room disappeared; the unsettling soundtrack disappeared; Sunny's injuries disappeared; the photograph disappeared. It was just a boy sitting in an ordinary, bright room, and everything was fine.
I sat in that armchair for a long time.
Eventually, I told myself I had to press on. I got out of the chair; the room turned dark and unsettling again. I went over to the photograph and tried to interact with it. The game asked me if I wanted to pick it up.
I hesitated. The game hadn't asked me that before I'd picked up any of the other photographs.
I said 'no' and went back to the chair. I'd thought I'd braced myself to go over and get the photograph. But I hadn't braced myself to say I wanted to pick it up; I needed more time for that.
It's interesting to think of how different players will have experienced that room differently. I'd put myself pretty deeply into Sunny's mindset by that point, so I stalled and stalled before picking up the photograph. When I eventually did grit my teeth and pick it up, seeing it hit pretty hard, even though I'd guessed what to expect by that point. I wonder how different the experience feels for someone who just enters the room, walks straight to the photograph and picks it up.
Anyway! Yes. I'm thinking about this because a manga adaptation of Omori is beginning soon, and it struck me that, however it chooses to adapt that moment, it's impossible for it to adapt my specific experience of that moment: making the choice to sit in a chair doing nothing for several minutes, because I personally - not just the protagonist - was afraid of what came next.
It could, in theory, show Sunny hesitating to pick up the photograph. But the experience will never be quite the same. You can tell me that a character stalled for several minutes, but the reader can't live through those minutes in the way the player can; adding several minutes' worth of Sunny stalling to the manga would destroy the story pacing.
I suppose the reader can technically live through those minutes, come to think of it, if they set the volume down for a moment because they don't want to read any more! It's still not quite the same experience, because you're stalling by leaving the world of the story rather than stalling within the world of the story - it changes the story of Omori slightly that I was stalling while inhabiting Sunny, so I was also causing the character to stall - but that's an interesting thought.
That was a lot of rambling about one specific moment in a videogame! I'm just fascinated by the way the interactive nature of videogames can allow players to alter the way a story is told in small ways, even if the game isn't technically presenting them with a story-branching choice.
Whilst I tend to find silent protagonists uninteresting, I do really like characters who fuck up and fall apart and can't trust their own perception of reality. Sunny of Omori falls into both categories, and it turns out my love of terrible guilt-ridden fuckups is stronger than my need for a character to have dialogue.
One detail that I thought helped to get the protagonist's characterisation across: the game will sometimes ask 'Do you want to [do X]?' as a subtle indicator that the protagonist really doesn't want to do X. Usually, when you examine a photo, you just pick it up automatically. I'm fairly sure the game asks 'Do you want to pick up this photo?' once and exactly once, and it's when I'd worked out from context that neither I nor Sunny was going to want to see what this photograph depicted.
It's hard to think of how the precise experience of picking up that photograph could translate into any other medium. I entered the room. It was dark and corrupted, and there was no way out. There was a photograph on the floor. I knew I would need to pick up the photograph to progress. I had started to suspect, from the pictures I'd picked up a moment before, what would be in the photograph. I did not want to pick up the photograph.
There was an armchair in the room. If I sat in the armchair, the corruption in the room disappeared; the unsettling soundtrack disappeared; Sunny's injuries disappeared; the photograph disappeared. It was just a boy sitting in an ordinary, bright room, and everything was fine.
I sat in that armchair for a long time.
Eventually, I told myself I had to press on. I got out of the chair; the room turned dark and unsettling again. I went over to the photograph and tried to interact with it. The game asked me if I wanted to pick it up.
I hesitated. The game hadn't asked me that before I'd picked up any of the other photographs.
I said 'no' and went back to the chair. I'd thought I'd braced myself to go over and get the photograph. But I hadn't braced myself to say I wanted to pick it up; I needed more time for that.
It's interesting to think of how different players will have experienced that room differently. I'd put myself pretty deeply into Sunny's mindset by that point, so I stalled and stalled before picking up the photograph. When I eventually did grit my teeth and pick it up, seeing it hit pretty hard, even though I'd guessed what to expect by that point. I wonder how different the experience feels for someone who just enters the room, walks straight to the photograph and picks it up.
Anyway! Yes. I'm thinking about this because a manga adaptation of Omori is beginning soon, and it struck me that, however it chooses to adapt that moment, it's impossible for it to adapt my specific experience of that moment: making the choice to sit in a chair doing nothing for several minutes, because I personally - not just the protagonist - was afraid of what came next.
It could, in theory, show Sunny hesitating to pick up the photograph. But the experience will never be quite the same. You can tell me that a character stalled for several minutes, but the reader can't live through those minutes in the way the player can; adding several minutes' worth of Sunny stalling to the manga would destroy the story pacing.
I suppose the reader can technically live through those minutes, come to think of it, if they set the volume down for a moment because they don't want to read any more! It's still not quite the same experience, because you're stalling by leaving the world of the story rather than stalling within the world of the story - it changes the story of Omori slightly that I was stalling while inhabiting Sunny, so I was also causing the character to stall - but that's an interesting thought.
That was a lot of rambling about one specific moment in a videogame! I'm just fascinated by the way the interactive nature of videogames can allow players to alter the way a story is told in small ways, even if the game isn't technically presenting them with a story-branching choice.
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Yes, absolutely! It's really interesting to think about what different media can or can't do when telling a story. Videogames have their weaknesses - they tend to be inaccessible on several different levels, and it's hard to tell a well-paced story in a game - but they can also do some very cool things.
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The difficulty in Omori is mostly fine, I'd say! I found a couple of the boss fights fairly challenging, but they're challenging in a 'look up a good strategy and maybe level up a bit more' turn-based combat way, not the 'whoops, your reflexes aren't good enough and you can't level up if you want the good ending' Undertale way.
If you play the game, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts!
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But what if I enjoy it and, consequently, have nothing to say?
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(Anonymous) 2024-05-25 07:47 am (UTC)(link)I think it's interesting that silent game protagonists often can feel very devoid of character. There's often an attempt to give some character through very, very occasional dialogue choices but it still often can struggle to convey a person.
As you know, Persona games like their silent protagonists, and many of the Shin Megami Tensei games also use silent protagonists. This is used really unusually in the Digital Devil Saga duology: Serph is your pretty standard silent protagonist, with really very little emotion or personality. (I should add that, presuming you're unfamiliar with these two games, characters having little emotion or personality is genuinely a plot point with Reasons.)
At some point in Digital Devil Saga 2, you get some flashbacks to a very important past event. In this scene, Serph is not a silent protagonist and while there are generally hints for a player to pick up on, he's uh... not how you would imagine the protagonist you've been playing all game to be. Again, there are plot reasons for this. It makes a really interesting effect, especially for what it does with Heat as well - who we are used to being, again, somewhat different to the reality we see in the flashback. I thought it was a nice unique way of dealing with the premise.
See here to see what I mean: https://youtu.be/o1v_vVZx6W8?si=CBPjYm9og_zJCIeA&t=136 (watch til about 7:15 for the full force of what I'm explaining here, until about 3:30 to get just a bit of it) This is spoilery for all of the DDS games, though.
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I can get easily spooked by videogames entirely because of their interactive nature. In a book or a film, it wouldn't bother me in the same way. I was recently playing - and enjoying - The Painscreek Killings, until I reached a point that seriously startled me, and I had to look up if I could expect more of that as I can't be surprised by certain things or it makes me too spooked to play. (One of my hang ups, for instance, is I have to know when I#m playing a point and click adventure if my character can die as I can't handle being startled by that - if I know, I am considerably more careful and save happy.) I found that I'd be able to cope with the bit that had scared me, knowing mechanically how it worked, but there is a section later on that is an absolute no-go for me at the end (explains why I'd heard the ending was controversial!). I guess technically I could avoid it as there's an option to just walk away when you think you know the answer, so conceivably a player may leave never knowing they'd missed an actual ending. But it's certainly a different experience to play than watch or read - I could handle WATCHING the ending, but playing it, no. Which is sort of a shame as I was otherwise enjoying the game, but I know what I can and can't handle. (I'll elaborate on the nature of this if you're interested, but since it's a game spoiler I won't unless asked.)
-timydamonkey
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Thank you for the DDS video link! Wow, that must be incredibly disconcerting if you've spent a while inhabiting this character.
(One of my hang ups, for instance, is I have to know when I'm playing a point and click adventure if my character can die as I can't handle being startled by that - if I know, I am considerably more careful and save happy.)
This is really interesting! I find it terrifying if it's possible for a character to die because of my actions and the story to continue - this is why I had to stop playing the Dark Pictures Anthology; I just couldn't handle the stress of my actions determining whether these characters lived or died - but I'm generally fine if a character dies and then you can just try again.
That wasn't always the case, though! As a kid, I'd make my brother play games so I couldn't watch, because I couldn't handle the guilt of personally being responsible for the death of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Please do expand on your Painscreek Killings experience; I'm very curious now!
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(Anonymous) 2024-05-25 11:13 am (UTC)(link)It is very disconcerting, though it has been somewhat hinted towards before! It makes sense in context as the character we play as is essentially a reconstruction from the mind of a naive child, but getting to see actual Serph is... definitely a thing. Also, whenever I see that scene, he makes me think of Light Yagami for some reason!
Okay, so, The Painscreek Killings! [ENDING SPOILERS FOR PAINSCREEK KILLINGS TO FOLLOW] It's billed as a game where you're in an abandoned town and have to find out who killed a certain woman, with what, and why, and get a photo of something to write a news article about it. Gameplay primarily consists of wandering the town (very slowly if you're me) exploring abandoned buildings, findings keys and codes and diaries and being able to slowly unravel exactly what was going on in this town. It's not just one death either: though you're tasked to find out about one, you learn that there are multiple, you get diaries from 3 or 4 different time periods and it's all about connecting all the events together and learning about characters. Knowing one of my great fear responses is music, I'd muted the music for the game and had something calm on in the background while I did my excellent exploration.
Anyway, at one point I had to investigate a very creepy house of somebody who had clearly angered somebody and been murdered. On the way out of the house, I saw a creepy figure across the river (the house was at the riverside) who turned to face me when I adjusted my vision slightly. I stared at them. I took a photo of them. They continued to exist creepily. I tried to decide if I could avoid ever going to that area of the game again. And I noped out of there. Nooo. This is what I looked up: I had worked out who it may be, but I wanted to see if it was going to keep on giving me freaky sightings of people. I learned what was going on with this and could cope as I then knew what places to expect them to appear and that they wouldn't actually do anything.
(Apparently there was also a point where power cuts out in a building that you're in, but fortunately for me I started exploring that building right at the place which triggers the power cut and hadn't had any lights on, so I genuinely didn't notice and just assumed the power was out the whole time. When I watched someone play the game later, there was actually a rather scary audio cue which fortunately my muting had helped me avoid, or I'd probably have noped out then.)
Anyway, without spoiling who did what, it turns out that at the end of the game, when you find one specific clue, the game without prior warning disables your save ability (it does tell you at the time), then a health bar appears and the killer appears with a weapon and tries to murder you, there are some visual cues of what to do if you run to the right places to trigger them, and you've got to run for your life from a murderer whose intent is to kill you on a very specific path. I don't do adrednaline-filled chases, especially not in my normally leisurely paced almost walking simulator. I knew there was a run button, I don't think I ever used it as I'm investigating every nook and cranny; why would I? Also, the controls are... not great, which is fine when there are no action sequences, but crummy when there is one. So it's now sat firmly in my "not finishing this game" pile.
Some people really like the end as it's surprising. Some hate it for the sudden genre change, especially people like me who would not pick up a game involving chases if they knew about it!
END PAINSCREEK KILLING SPOILERS
In reference to the original post, I've just remembered the bit after you watch the video tape in Silent Hill 2 and you just get that minute or two of music, slow pan around James and everything other than that is just still and quiet. No player agency in that part, but still something a film or book could never quite portray the same.
-timydamonkey
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I'd say it was because of how driven I was by my morbid curiosity at this point but I, rather embarrassingly, somehow didn't understand what was happening in the Black Album photos very well the first time I played that part of the game. Nobody I've watch play it seems to have had that issue though so I was probably just being weirdly bad at parsing visual storytelling there.
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Also, great insightful thoughts about the manga! Reminds me of the Yume Nikki manga, which opted to add a lot more lore to the YN universe when changing mediums.
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Also, hello; it's nice to meet you! And I spotted while checking your profile that your account was newly created, so welcome to Dreamwidth!
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(Anonymous) 2024-05-30 02:13 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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Last thing mainly cause I think the unknown in canon of if the friends forgive Sunny & Basil or not is a strength of the game (though I prefer them have time to process it & then forgive them. Cause damn my child Basil deserves a break (& I say Basil in specific cause unlike Sunny, Basil isn't moving & would have to deal with it more directly then Sunny)).
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I think you're probably right about that. Even if I'm curious about everyone's reactions, it makes sense that the game doesn't show them to us; it drives home the fact that the resolution of this story is Sunny building up the courage to let go of this terrible secret, regardless of what the consequences are. Whether his friends forgive him or they don't, the important thing is that Sunny has taken that step at last, and that's ultimately what frees him and Basil: not forgiveness, but having the truth known.
I personally hope they do the good ending rather than the knife ending because the good ending feels more narratively satisfying to me; I'm concerned that the knife end might feel a bit unfinished! But I haven't played through the knife ending myself - I've only read a summary of it - so it's possible I'm just missing context that would make it feel fitting as a conclusion.
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