A friend sent me this thoughtful essay, and asked if I would post it here because I actually have an AT-related blog, and I was happy to oblige. See my comments after the essay itself.
---
When Lyner brings back the Hymn Crystal Purger, Leard tells him to give it to "the Reyvateil he trusts the most". And of course, because it's a dating sim, the player has to choose which girl he wants to get on the good side of. Dating sims inherently set out to pit the girls in competition with each other and make you choose.
But the choice of who should extract shouldn't be based on who the player likes best, or even whom Lyner seems to have the most reason to trust. We're talking about the fate of the world, which is a bit more important than a love triangle; the more important consideration is doing what has to be done. On the practical side, a certain amount of trust between partners has got to be necessary for a Reyvateil to successfully extract, yes. But I trusted both Aurica and Misha. And casting a spell to save the world shouldn't be a matter of a popularity contest, or whom I liked better; there are various factors regarding who would be better at it-- who's "levelled up" more in their skills, or who is most compatible with the spell.
Furthermore, though, who says that getting to extract the crystal is a treat that would really earn the girl's favour? Shouldn't we ask who is willing to volunteer to do such a thing, and who wants to defer? I chose not the one I liked best, but the one I thought would benefit more from being chosen. To Aurica, it meant the world: all her life she'd been told she was inferior, and finally someone said to her, "This is the most important job in the world, and I choose you." Finally someone thought she was capable of handling something important-- and not just any average task, but something on which everyone's lives depended. Such a choice could absolutely change her life, could be the fulfillment of all of her hopes and dreams. So I chose Aurica.
I'd like to play through it again choosing Misha, to see what it's like and to see more of her backstory-- yet I think I'm going to have trouble bringing myself to do that to Misha. Surely the last thing she wants is to have the higher-ups in Platina ordering her to go sing for them. She spent her whole life being told, "Misha, you have to do this; Misha, you have to sing that. Misha, our fate rests on you; Misha, you have an obligation"; and she's sick to death of it. After Lyner came along and cared about what she wanted to do with her life, wanted to take her places and give her presents, after she came to see him as someone who could understand her hopes and fears and treat her like a person with the choice to follow her own volition, the last thing she probably wants is to hear about her obligations to save everyone with her endless singing from him, too!
It seems that being chosen to extract the Hymn Crystal Purger would be a terrible burden for Misha, and a dream come true for Aurica. I don't think it's fair to choose any other way. Yet it's not necessarily reflective of my personal choices or my trust in the girls. I don't want the game to record that I've favoured Aurica over Misha by choosing her, or that I trust Misha any less. I want Misha to be happy, not to feel let down by Lyner's ignoring her yet again. I want Lyner to go and have a talk with her and tell her that he cares about her feelings, and that that's why he's not choosing her.
It's one of the few situations in Ar Tonelico with the potential to make everyone happy; but the choice is framed in such a way that it spoils the potential that could have been. Dating sims seem hell-bent on making some of the girls miserable, which is a shame. There is so often a better way.
---
As for my thoughts... I personally think it's very true, and I think that Lyner never asks these things, never gives anyone a choice but just rolls along with what he's going to do anyway, is the cause of a lot of the plot's problems. Lyner never asks "well, what would you like?" He waits for everyone else to ask or else he steamrollers over them. And it really feels like he almost never talks to anyone about the kind of things he really should be talking to them about, like "Aurica, how do you feel about the fact that I dive into Misha?" or "Misha, I don't want to burden you with this responsibility, and it would make Aurica so happy. I think this is best for everyone, and it's not that I don't trust you, so ignore what my dad says. I'm choosing for my own reasons."
Letra - Eldharia ~Inori Saku Mori~
2 months ago
8 comments:
I mostly agree with that, but I also I'm scared of what it could have happened if Aurica didn't grew strong enough to handle the extraction and singing of the Purger (that everyone should know by now what happens if a Third Gen without enough power tries to sing a "Extract" type hymn and doesn't has enough skills to handle the song).
I also agree with that logic. However, Lyner admits many times to Shurelia that he doesn't think before he acts...and he apologizes for it profusely. So, it's not surprising that such things didn't occur to him.
Also, the fact that the vast majority of talk topics, involve him starting a response with "Huh?", shows me that he really isn't thinking at all. And that's just in normal conversation.
As aquagon mentioned, if Aurica wasn't strong enough to handle the Purger's power (extract type song), the result would have been horribly tragic.
Yeah, thundercloud82 has a point. Just as the Reyvateils develop to overcome their personal problems, Lyner develops from someone who never thinks to someone who realizes he needs to think.
I do wish the game hadn't framed the choice to the player in quite that way, though. It was Leard who was making it all about "who you trust the most", and he is supposedly a thinker who should know better, and someone who values thinking (especially with as much as he rags on Lyner for not thinking). Like Aquagon says, it might be more important to go with a Reyvateil who has enough power than "whichever girl Lyner trusts the most".
*nods* I do agree with you, basically, in that it's the framing of the choice that was flawed; it shouldn't have been a choice that you were being encouraged to make based on who was your favourite, but on who was suitable for the task. And Leard really should have known better.
I don't mean to be a downer, but I disagree on some points.
I think dating sims force you to choose not because they want the characters to compete, but because they want to make things hard for the player. Good dating sims, and good RPGs in general, will tug on your heart strings, by giving you difficult choices between characters you care about. That decision is part of emotional involvement in the experience, and if everyone can have what they want, it's not really the same. It's not about one character vs another, it's about you vs yourself.
Theoretically, trust should be a really important part of the decision on which Reyvateil to ask to help against the virus. Song magic is inherently emotional, and harmonics may be even more so. On the other hand, as Aquagon points out, it could be possible for Aurica to be destroyed by the extraction, so it might make sense to just take the safe road with Misha. Back to the first hand, though, I don't recall the dangers being detailed very deeply by Shurelia or other characters at that point in the game.
As far as Misha WANTING to sing, I don't think of that that being an issue. Whenever I had her in my party, she complained that I wasn't making full use of her abilities. She may not like being locked up to sing Chronicle Key, but it seems like she wants to be useful, and she wants to be wanted, just as much as Aurica. I think having Lyner ask her for just about anything would make her happy, if he would just say that he wanted her help.
In real life, it's usually easier (and preferable) to reach a consensus, but stories need conflict to exist. The characters dealing with their problems and growing from them is the most interesting part of the story, and if you avoid those problems, aren't you missing out on a better story? If you don't make decisions, are you really getting as much out of a game?
I think the problem being posited in the original post (which I agree with) is being forced to make a decision you wouldn't want to make, and having that decision alter events in the game based on it meaning something you didn't want it to mean.
For example, say my mother asks me if I invited Friend A or Friend B over to help with my physics homework tonight. I invited Friend A because she's better at physics than Friend B. But then my mother assumes that I'm attracted to Friend A more than Friend B, and goes around telling everyone that I really like Friend A, even though actually, I like Friend B/I like them both/I don't like either of them that way. Basically, the choice didn't mean what my mother thought it did, but now everyone is treating me as if I made the choice for a particular reason (my emotions about my friends), when I actually made it for a very different one (practicality).
I love games with difficult moral choices, but I don't like being forced into a role based on my decisions when my decision wasn't anything to do with wanting that role, but meant something else entirely.
For example, if a game gives me the choice of whether to help Friend A or help Friend B, the game may want to treat me as if I have stronger feelings for Friend A if I choose to help her. And that may be the right thing for it to do, based on context, but there may be other factors involved; and if those factors are much larger and more relevant than the issue of whether I might like the person, such as, say, whether someone else will get hurt if I pick one of these choices, or whether I'm physically capable of doing what one of them wants me to do, or whether I have responsibilities like work or family commitments that make it easier to help one over the other, then I want the game to acknowledge those too, not just assume "oh, you must like A/B more because you helped them". Sometimes we have complex reasons for helping people.
Well, if I had to make that decision for real, it would be heart wrenching. On one hand, I want to give Aurica the chance to prove to herself that she's much better than she thinks she is. On the other hand, singing the Purger could kill her. From Misha's p.o.v.; she wants to be helpful (she still likes/loves Lyner afterall) & not letting her take the task could bother her a lot, as well as make her think Lyner has no interest in her anymore. The way this decision is put forth is bad, agreed.
From my p.o.v. (if I were in Lyner's place) it basically asks "Do you love Aurica enough to risk loosing her forever?" ...Or "do you not take the risk, thus saving her from a possible bad fate, while reinforcing her negative feelings about herself and forcing both of you to work even harder to help her & choose Misha for the task?"
As a huge Aurica fan, I can't make a choice like that easily. There's way too much at stake.
We must keep in mind that it is a dating sim in some respects, so decisions are naturally going to affect who the main character likes more and which girl likes him more. That's the idea. Problem is that this decision is structured such that it causes emotional torment to the player. Provided the player knows all of the details before deciding.
It's true that RPGs and dating sims have to emotionally put the player in a tough spot, just as stories have to have conflict. But there's a lot of room for them to be well-designed or poorly-designed. Critique of a particular plot point isn't the same thing as saying that no emotional conflict should've happened; there could have been a well-designed emotional conflict instead.
One thing that is often said about role-playing games (though it's disputed), and is even more true of dating sims, is that the player is supposed to feel like they are in the role of the hero. Thus it's important to take the player's own feelings and reasons and allow them to project them onto the hero. Thus, Lyner's reasons are equated with the player's reasons.
In this case, perhaps the game asks the player to base their choice on something that the player might very easily think is a bad criterion. Then, the player is forced to either choose for a reason they believe is a bad reason, or to choose for their own reasons and have the game project a completely false intent on the hero that they are supposed to be identifying with. A better design would be where the game does not assume a certain reason of the player (e.g. not telling Lyner to choose the one he trusts most, but not specifying a reason and thus allowing the player to mentally fill in the reason that they actually chose), or else structures it so that the choice has an obvious reason (e.g. a choice of which girl to go on a date with, not which girl you're asking to save the world).
There are plenty of ways to cause the player emotional conflict without causing a rift between the player's actual feelings and what the game portrays the hero's feelings as being. In a game that's so much about feelings as a dating sim, it's pretty important to encourage the player to identify with the hero and feel just what he feels, I would say.
Post a Comment