Putting the RP in RPG
Spoilers follow; proceed with caution.
Chrono Trigger is one of my favorite video games. It does almost everything well — story, characters, battle mechanics, music, you name it. Of all its memorable moments, though, the one that really stands out is when it kills off your main character.
Until that scene, I thought my attachment to Crono was tenuous at best. We never get a sense of his personality or desires; not only does he never speak, but the game’s plot is driven by coincidences and the actions of others, so we rarely see him act meaningfully either. As with many silent protagonists, my empathy was limited by his genericness. In short, there was nothing for me to latch onto.
My real sympathies, it seemed, were with the other characters. I found myself playing with Marle and Lucca as much as possible, even when they weren’t the most practical choices. How could I leave the two hilarious, brash tomboys at the End of Time in favor of a fat old robot and a histrionic frog?
At Crono’s death, though, the strength of my attachment to him was made clear. I found myself unexpectedly devastated. When the cutscenes ended and the “Who’ll you replace?” screen came up sans main character, I probably came as close to crying as a video game will ever take me.
Of course, this is not Aeris kicking the bucket in Final Fantasy VII. You can get Crono back — and I did — so there was no lasting harm done. The amazing thing, though, is that the game got me to care about its nondescript spiky-haired protagonist at all. Why did that happen?
Recently I came up with what I think is the answer: I was role-playing.
True, I loved Marle and Lucca as characters, but the real reason that I kept them in my party was because I felt like they belonged there — they were my friends, after all. When Crono died, I was upset because I took it personally: not only did “I” die, but I had let down everyone else. When I was asked to select a new party, I was uncomfortable because — well, it just felt wrong controlling someone else. It wasn’t me.
It sounds incredible to say, but I don’t think that any RPG before or since has actually gotten me to role-play like that. I never felt like I “was” Ryudo in Grandia II or Max in Shining Force any more than I felt like I “was” Mario. In those games, I never acted in a certain way because I thought it matched my character’s disposition; I was just the guy moving the plot along, making things happen behind the scenes to reveal more of the game.
Chrono Trigger was a sea change in how I understood player-character relationships. As someone who came to video games without any pen-and-paper RPG experience, its stellar characterization gave me an idea of what role-playing could be.
This post is a contribution to Corvus Elrod’s Blogs of the Round Table. The other entries for this month are available below:
This is why silent protagonists are silent, right? To make it easier to project yourself onto them?
Dave: Yeah, that’s the argument. I’ve always felt like the silent protagonist was counterproductive — any ability to project oneself onto the character is offset by the awkwardness of his one-sided relationship with others. That’s where I think Half-Life loses its immersive quality.
As with literature and film, it’s easier for me to identify or empathize with a protagonist who has opinions and desires than one who is a blank slate. In the domain of video games, though, role-playing someone may be easier when that character is silent.
Good point! It’s weird, but I don’t even remember this plot point from Chrono Trigger. This reflects poorly on me, for sure, but maybe it also points at some natural variation in the levels of “silence” that we require from our protagonists. For me, Crono is too much of a blank slate to evoke much emotion even at that crucial moment, apparently. On the other hand, the voice-acted, motion-captured characters of Final Fantasy X and onward leave too little to the imagination… for my taste. I guess the happy medium for me is somewhere around FF2-9, where the text-only dialogs allowed just enough space for me to interpret characters more or less sympathetically.
(And finally, because I’m apparently the Citation Bitch these days, James Paul Gee has a must-read discussion of this in /What Video Games Have to Teach Us…/. He calls it “Projective Identity.”)
You forgot about the main character’s death? I mean, I’m biased because I liked the game a lot, but that seems like quite a plot point to miss! :-p
You make a good point about the variation in how we prefer our protagonists. Combined with the emphasizing/identifying vs. role-playing distinction I made above, we could probably go a long way towards analyzing why certain characters resonate with some gamers and not with others.
Thanks for the Gee recommendation. I have a while list of game-related books I want to read, but sadly I haven’t made time for them yet. One day!
I know! It’s crazy! Clearly it’s time to give CT another try.
I think my favorite part of Chrono Trigger (truly the golden age of SNES RPGs) was the multitude of single character subplots. Marle was a little short, I felt, but every single other character had their own subplot which was not only extended and fun, but fed back into the main plot in a significant way.
Seven people is just large enough to have a true Squaresoft Party RPG, but just small enough to avoid selling anyone significantly short.
I enjoyed the subplots as well, William, though I have to admit that all of the characters didn’t resonate with me equally. I didn’t much care for Ayla’s backstory, for example, but Lucca remains one of my favorite RPG characters. I especially enjoyed the various ways Magus’s story can play out depending on your in-game actions and the ending you get. There’s a lot to love in Chrono Trigger!
Peter, don’t feel too bad. I forgot too. My entire memory of the game was heavily overshadowed by Earthbound, which has it’s own points that I won’t get into for the sake of a short post.
But that’s an orange to Chrono Trigger’s apple. A very delicious orange, might I add.