{"id":237892,"date":"2018-09-24T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-24T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/how-video-game-narratives-should-keep-more-information-behind-closed-doors\/"},"modified":"2018-09-24T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T16:00:00","slug":"how-video-game-narratives-should-keep-more-information-behind-closed-doors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jbsgame.com\/how-video-game-narratives-should-keep-more-information-behind-closed-doors\/","title":{"rendered":"How video game narratives should keep more information behind closed doors"},"content":{"rendered":"
WARNING: CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE ZERO ESCAPE<\/em> SERIES, THE DANGANRONPA<\/em> SERIES, THE STEINS;GATE <\/em>SERIES AND CHAOS;CHILD<\/em><\/strong><\/p> Last weekend, I finally finished my playthrough of all six endings to 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors<\/a>, <\/i>as part of the PS4 <\/span>Nonary Games <\/i>collection. Hopping backwards and forwards to piece together a coherent story and find out why Junpei and co are trapped in this massive building was riveting, and despite being busy during the week, it still only took me two weekends to check out all dialogue and all possible finales to the story. And I think I feel confident in saying it is one of my favourite puzzle\/VN games, surpassing titles such as <\/span>Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney<\/i> and almost bumping <\/span>Steins;Gate<\/a> <\/i>from the top spot.<\/span><\/p> I’ve been considering, as I get started with Virtue’s Last Reward<\/a><\/i>, why I was so taken with the story of 999<\/i>. It seemed refreshing and special to me, unfolding in a way I had rarely experienced with games in both of the genres it straddles. I have heard opinions to the contrary<\/a>, but I felt that the story was a neat little package, devoid of extra frills and story beats that detracted from the central purpose of discovering why they were all there and escaping the building. It was lean. It cut the crap.<\/p> Honestly, I feel like a lot of VNs lately could gain from cutting the crap. My very recent experience of trying to slog through <\/span>Chaos;Child<\/a><\/i> is a stark contrast. And as much as I love <\/span>Danganronpa<\/i>, Spike Chunsoft’s sister mystery novel series, I could see some areas where it also fell foul of bombarding me with information that did nothing to endear me to the story.<\/span><\/p> Organically finding out about characters’ backstories<\/span><\/strong><\/p> I feel like games sometimes have an oversharing problem. Especially when you have a cast of thousands (or rather, a cast of a dozen in these mystery gameshow sort of games), providing thorough backgrounds to each character seems like an easy way to build player investment in the action more. But this can be a fallacy. At least, I felt that <\/span>999<\/i> proved it can be a fallacy.<\/span><\/p> In <\/span>999<\/i>, you wake up in a room with not very much idea of how you got there and why you are trapped. After escaping, you meet up with a group of eight fellow captors, exchange code names and are very swiftly on your way to work out the labyrinth of doors in the ship you’ve been trapped in. That’s almost it. Sure, your name accidentally gets leaked by a childhood friend who is also trapped in the building, and some of the more story-relevant traits of the characters are revealed, such as one character being able to read Braille. But we go charging into a game of death without knowing much at all about the characters.<\/span><\/p> You would think that that would be a terrible idea, because without any reason to care for the characters, why would you give a monkey’s about the outcome of the game? But actually, it’s better not to know in this case. The entire reason the characters give each other code names is to distance themselves from each other and get the job done, rather than trying to find personal grievances that could cause the team to fall apart. All that matters is pairing up to solve puzzles and teamwork, and opening up more might cause infighting, the inability of people to pair up as they have to in order to pass through doors, and nobody escaping the ship. Virtue’s Last Reward<\/i> delves deeper into this idea of teamwork being better than playing selfishly, with its entire basis being the prisoner’s dilemma<\/a>.<\/p>