How Papers, Please managed to create more memorable characters than Naruto: Characterisation and its relation to Plot and World Building

I recently completed Lucas Pope's Papers Please, thrice, to unlock all endings, and I'm convinced that it is probably the best game I've played all year. Many have praised the plot, but I think it is the narrative and lore that really makes this game exceptional as compared to cutscene-reliant triple As that are still hopelessly trying to imitate film.

2 weeks after completing it, what surprises me is how memories of the characters still linger, and it is even stranger when anyone who has played the game knows we, the Inspector, sometimes have but a few lines of exchange with these people. The more major characters, Jorji and Sergiu, are probably characters I will never forget despite their design being so plain, and their chracterisation and lines they say supposed to be nothing unique and unmemorable. The many side-plots, the prostitution ring, the couple escaping from war, the child murderer, and Elisa, oh Elisa, are epsiodes that will stay in my mind for a long time, ones that will make me exclaim "Ahhh..." when someone mentions them. What works, I think, is the consistency of characterisation, plot and world building (or lore, in some cases). In Papers, Please there are no backstories, flashbacks, because they will be redundant. Stories are opened to interpretation and imagination but I believe any human with a beating heart will imagine a tale that is grim and hopeless within each character and the plot in its entirety. The aesthetics with its gridded, grey and unpolished sight is intentional to create that impact, the lack of music to simulate the laborious work environment (and this world, in general) in all its dullness and sadness, and that mundane work that punishes you with the gritting sound of the fax machine citation at every mistake are all part of the world building. What the characters say do not have to directly relate to what is happening, but there is a strong consistent in the narrative between the characters and the world when someone tells you, please let me through, they will kill me if I go back to my country, or this man promised me and my sister work, but I think he is trying to sell us as prostitutes.

The manga in this article's title can be One Piece, Bleach, HunterxHunter or any long running manga series for all I care, but I chose Naruto because I hate it the most passionately. The majority of characters in many of these series are very much similar to each other, flat, typical and honestly falling into one "manga-character-trope" or another. That is not to say there are no interesting characters in these mangas, but even they suffer from how the ever expanding world that loses consistency with itself slowly detaches itself from the characters. To mitigate this issue, flashbacks are often used to reattach important characters to the world; but mangas have became overly reliant on this single method in introducing characters and their relation to this world. Sometimes the flashbacks do not even make sense, and other times they are just a dread to read as they drag out stories way too much. In recent One Piece chapters, I resonated with the backstory of Senor Pink and Law because their stories melded well with the circumstances they were placed into, but it was Bellamy, the character that did not have his own dedicated flashback chapter that left the greatest impact because his words and action was not only consistent with the current plot, but also previous plotlines in general and even the story of the main character. He became the anti-hero that Luffy did not become because he followed a different role model. In Naruto I had no idea what was going on from Shippudden onwards and everyone that appeared can be classified into a typical manga character category, and the story kind of got way out of hand to make any sense. Random characters get dropped in to supposedly incite emotions or something but I honestly didn't care because their existence made little sense in that world, they were equally uninteresting, and felt less like characters prepared for the story than last minute ass-pulls.

None of the characters in Papers felt like ass-pulls. If I had one complain, they could have been more often, more mixed around like having prostitutes from other rings pass u their cards later in the game (after the first ring is dissolved) without having any actual subplot relating to these special border-passers. Other than that, all the characters felt genuine and fitted well into the world without needing to say much. Elisa for me was the most surprising character. As the Inspector we were expecting to see her for days after Sergiu passes you the locket, she arrives shortly after without the proper documents to enter Arstotzka, but throughout my three runs I was never able to steel my heart to reject Elisa because of one line of dialogue she said. "Please, my family is dead, I only have Sergiu." I remember reading this line on screen and having to walk away from the computer immediately in attempt to dispel the heavy emotions brought out by this line. In the game we are about a month from the end of a long bitter war between two nations, the premise makes clear the circumstances Elisa was in, and there was no need to explain more. 

What worked in Papers is how world building and characterisation perfectly complemented each other - characters can still be wacky and unique like how Jorji is in the game, but even he made sense in the world that Lucas Pope had set up and helps to strengthen the grim and grey theme holding the plot and world together. Such a world makes even the plainest of stock characters, the everyday person holding a forged document, feel understandable, believable and sometimes even relateable It is certainly not a lively world, but it certainly feels more alive than the Narutos out there.

I have an endless list of praises for Papers, Please I hope to post on this blog one day, but it will have to take time; the list is simply too long. 

Valiant Effort: The Great Failure - A Review of Valiant Hearts: The Great War

I try go into every game with the exact same attitude, I will try my hardest to love the game, but at the same time not get blinded by the obvious flaws that impedes the experience. A few years back I forced myself through a school term of work knowing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity was at the end waiting for me during the holidays. I had every reason to love the game, I love Pokemon, loved every Mystery Dungeon up till that point, and that game was the pillar of inspiration I held onto the entire term. I lied to myself for a good 3 days that I was enjoying what the game was putting out for me, but after those 3 days I broke and stopped playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ever since. From that day onward I refused to get hyped for any game, and I feel that skepticism is well justified considering how disappointing many titles I looked forward to failed so terribly in recent years.

So on came Valiant Hearts: The Great War. I was quite excited to play it, and for the first 4 hours all so I honestly quite enjoyed it. But when the puzzles started repeating themselves, all the problems started becoming obvious to me.

This game is terribly dull - not a single puzzle can be considered fun and some like the button QTEs are overly simplistic and annoying. The puzzles are very, very brainless, consisting of mostly QTEs, fetch quests, and reaction puzzles. Any puzzle you are unable to solve is probably due to bad game design; for instance, there was one puzzle in Chapter 3 where you needed to create a diamond shaped object, I handed in a square and was denied, and only the diamond is accepted. The characters' individual 'powers' make little sense, because apparently only the old grandpa with the big ladle can dig through mud but the muscular soldier cannot pick up a shovel and do the same, or why does one character has a pair of pliers that never breaks while all the others can only pick up one use pliers to force the problems unto the player instead of presenting interesting puzzles. This necessity for detailed solutions shows how lack of attention to details game designers gave it. Thankfully the game is very forgiving with checkpoints, and frequent deaths due to unfair situations can be forgiven. Simple and forgiving however, makes a good game for children. 

As a student of history myself, the factoids and trivia is interesting to look at, but honestly does little to the story but you can argue it is there to sell the anti-war message. It gets a little annoying when the aesthetic choices used for the game and the 'facts' section are different, but overall the choice of style is much appreciated. The music is mostly spot on, but when an upbeat tune plays when I'm the Frenchman bombing the Germans I'm not really sure whether I'm getting the anti-war message or not. With remixed classical tunes and some well composed new tracks, I have to say I am a fan of the music in this game.  

The characters are likeable, they have some nice backstories and developments throughout the game but there is nothing exceptional and memorable about any of them. Sometimes the use of French, English, German and Belgian in certain situations between certain characters makes sense, but sometimes they don't. And it will make you wondering why two particular characters are not communicating in French instead of English considering the setting. The Diaries section is an interesting addition, but I would have liked to have more entries for more interesting character development. They are mostly there to summarised what happened, in case you put down the game too long and forgot - I think they would have served greater purposes in storytelling if better implemented. I can't comment much about voice acting, but I really liked how Emile's lines were delivered.

The collectibles contribute absolutely nothing to the story, and I feel they are just added to pretend that there is a replay element when there really is not. If you need a game that has a lot of padding to distract your children, tell them they have to collect all the collectibles and remember some of the factoids to get a present. Sometimes, these trinkets you collect are immersion breaking too - why would you bend down and collect a small trinket amidst gunfire, or running to save someone crying for help? For a 'completionist' run one would have to ignore all logic in situation and try to search for places that these meaningless items are hidden, why such an option is added is puzzling. All it is, I think, is useless padding to make the game seem longer.

The story, love it or hate it, is completely devastated by poor game design. Emotions sessions are padded with boring puzzles that breaks up continuity, and doing the same old chores simply makes one feel frustrated, but not frustrated in the way the story wants you to feel. Bugs and the distraction of collectibles aside, the lack of attention to scenes, characters and puzzle design is especially disruptive to immersion because that makes up the bulk of the game. There is a part where your character is supposed to pick up the pliers from the floor at the midst of battle, if you press the action button but miss the sweet-spot you have to stand on to prompt the action, your character will scratch his chin and think - all in the midst of heavy gunfire - like he does during other puzzling moments. Why was this overlooked? How could this have been overlooked? This constant immersion breaking experience is probably the worst sin this game has committed. I tried killing the dog, throwing grenade at people, but the world seems to ignore it and never had I gotten a gameover screen other than getting the character you control killed. You can't kill anything in this game. Drive the tank in chapter 3 and do the logical thing and fire the cannon at the German soldiers - guess what - nothing happens. Good games send anti-war messages by forcing the player to make painful decisions that would not have been necessary if it was not because of war, and make players regret the decisions they make, make them feel pain for the people they killed and the buildings they destroyed. Turning everyone invincible to the devastating elements of war and battle, or making the characters unable to pick up weapons and gun down enemies to save their own lives when it makes perfect sense to do so, is not the way to deliver the message.

The narrative in this game is so atrocious that the game feels like an afterthought than an integral part of the plot. It seems like the developers were thinking, how do we make this game an arbitrary length long so that it can justify the price tag, instead of thinking of how the game-play can help to complement the story. There is so much wrong with the narrative that I don't think the game should have been made in the first place. It was a very disturbing experience for me, but probably not in the way the developers wanted. I wrote this review concurrently while playing the game, not because I wanted to write a review, but I felt the need for a rant every time the game breaks me out of the immersion. As for the story, I think it is good, the message is good, but it is honestly nothing exceptional and I would have rewritten some parts of the ending just to knit together some game-play elements and the story to better create that devastating sensation felt from the quote uttered at the end "War makes men mad". The game has a message, but it is as though the developers did not understand that message themselves at all. Chapter 4 is probably the best chapter, but the whole game could have been condensed into a much shorter experience to make Chapter 4 feel more impactful - because a bored man can't feel any other emotions, he just feels bored.

I applaud the team for trying to do a non-FPS war game, but as the game stands now it should have just been at most a graphic novel and not a stealth-puzzle game. The puzzle style can work, because there are parts where the interactive elements of the game actually contributes to the narrative, such as the final battle in Chapter 4. Having a good plot is important, but having little to no game-play elements to support that plot almost makes this title a non-game. The experience feels toned down and censored, prepared for mass consumption but cannot be considered a breakthrough because of the extremely poor narrative. Valiant effort, but still not enough effort. 

FFXIV and the changing nature of summons

I have not played this game, largely because it is not out yet. Currently writing a review on Minecraft: Story Mode and I think I should totally turn this " I have not played this game" into a seried on this blog.

So on to Final Fantasy 15 and the Ramuh summon that was revealed earlier this year. As a fan of jrpgs I played many of the classics, like the old FFs and the Tales series, with Golden Sun 1 and 2 being the ones closest to heart. Many of these games lets the players' character summon gods and beasts from various mythologies as their most powerful attacks to deal good damage, and the Golden Sun series' djinn setting and summon system makes it very unique within the sea of jrpgs. But here is the issue I have, these summons don't seem to FEEL powerful. Yes the summons do destroy the sun and earth and solar system in the process of the summoning animation (You know what I am talking about), but in the end the damage shown done by these powerful summons is merely represented by damage on the opposing player. FF15's open world style and way superior graphical fidelity, I feel, has allowed it to let summons mean something. Here are a few things that I think it did right:

Firstly, the use of contrast. Noctis being picked up by Ramuh during the summon shows to us the size of the summoned creature. I remember Ramuh being just a tiny old man when playing FF4 and for whatever damage he does the summon itself doesn't feel powerful. The contrast between the epic summon music and the quiet atmosphere during the summon charging time gives one the sensation that shit is going down when Ramuh appears on the field. Golden Sun does have specific summon animation, but the same tune playing just makes the summon a part of the battle that is nothing special, instead of the "Man invoking the power of Gods" sensation FF15 gave.

Secondly, the use of space and more specifically environmental destruction. In a classic rpg style summons can't really do much to show impact because of the nature of battles, and most of the time when a summon destroys the world and yet your character is still standing there simply breaks the immersion than making it feel epic. In FF15 nearby trees are burnt and the game environment in such an open world setting allows for such an implementation. They need to work a way out on how the summons don't hurt the teammates not picked up by the summons, though.

Now a caveat to this is the reasonable assumption that one will get bored of long summon animations after a few watch. And the way to mitigate this is to switch off animations, but I suspect this game has another trick up its sleeves. And that will be item number three, the use of conditions. Noctis seems really injured before being able to perform the summon, so it may be that summons can only be invoked when certain conditions are met, such as being of low health, or can only be used once per a certain period of time. Firstly this resolves an old problem I have with summons in the old games, how spending 10mp gives you small ball of fire and maybe 50mp gives you the roaring God of Thunder bringer of storm and destruction. The God of Thunder feels nothing more than 5 fireballs, and probably took up that much sprite space on the screen too. Making it hard to call upon summons allows them to feel special, and justifies the use of over the top music, animations, and dealing way too much damage to the opponent and the environment. Making them not so much a part of core gameplay mitigates the problem of seeing them too frequently, and perhaps it can be a thing to fight with normal spells and finish off with a chain of summons (it will be cool if one can use multiple summons and have them animated at the same time too!). Dedicating a specific summoner in the party in the Tales and FF game does help, but when they are just dealing the same damage as other characters are it diminishes the power of the summons so much they become pointless and boring. Summoning, if FF15 manages to pull this off, becomes something that is special again. 

If any other game has already done this, then good for them. I'm simply excited for FF15 and maybe I'll buy a console just for it.