Maybe It's A Dream, Maybe Nothing Else Is Real.

[rionaleonhart]

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.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Oh, that's interesting! And I see what you mean! All storytelling media comes iwth specific opportunities and strengths that aren't in others, and I think the experience of making the choice is a big one in video games.

[necrophilia]

Where did you play this game? I am quite interested in it now. It isn't as obstructively difficult as Undertale, is it? (I never played Undertale because I am anti-hype, but knowing what I do about the boss battles, I doubt I would have enjoyed that aspect regardless.)

[(Anonymous)]

So I heard you like thoughts on silent videogame protagonists and action versus inaction!

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.

-

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

[i_wish_to_remain_nameless]

Huh, I didn't even know you could do that with the chair in that room.
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.

[marginaliana]

Wow, this is fascinating.

[frenchtoasted]

Liked this a lot! It's interesting to think about that, in contrast, I just went right for the photo (after exploring the room for hidden stuff and story events and such). Partly it's because when I'm invested I can't wait to unlock more story (even if it's rough or sad, I can't even turn off a crappy movie or show if I've been watching it for a time because I have to know what happens) but also...it's because a big part of what makes me anxious is about "not knowing", if that makes sense? Like I'd rather know if someone is mad/disappointed/etc. rather than have that tension on my mind. I think that kinda translates into "well I just want to find out what's going on and rip the band-aid off" rather than wait and have it hang in the air. Before your post, I didn't think about how that kind of outlook changes how I'd approach a story beat like this.

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.

[lokifan]

Oh, fascinating!

[abyssal_sylph]

Yea, while I am excited for the manga, I also can't help but be very nervous for how it'll handle the story. Personally I kinda hope if they only go for one ending they'll do knife ending. Or if they do the good ending they don't show the reactions of the others.

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)).