Restless Ones

Final Fantasy VII is often sited by many gamers as the first game to actually draw out tears as a reaction to the on-screen story.  I was an important achievement in video game story telling when when the loss of a character whom the player had grown emotionally attached to provoked such a response.

While I have never played Final Fantasy VII I think I may have found it’s equivalent in the relationship driven story-telling of Persona 4.

After about 73 hours of play time I have finally reached the conclusion of Persona 4’s story arc and can now look back and examine the experience.  Through the many twists and turns that the main story took there is one moment that stands out as the most emotionally thought provoking to me.  Towards the climax of these story the player is faced with the unexpected loss of a character whom they had not only spent much of the game drawing closer to but is also the most innocent of bystanders in Persona’s conflict.  This loss moved me emotionally but it did not end there.

Immediately after this loss occurred the player was quickly drawn into a dire situation where they, as the leader, must make the decision whether to hastily take revenge or to calm down for a moment and reassess what exactly should be done.  I found this very compelling.  With the wounds of loss as fresh as they possibly could be, the player’s character is pushed to it’s limits and their true colors are set to be revealed.

It is rare for me to find a game these emotionally compelling (I think that Chrono Trigger was the last game I found as such) but it gives me great confidence in the medium as an art form.  Going in I knew little about Persona 4 but coming out it has established itself as one of the best RPG’s that I have played.

Another take:  Persona 4: Reflecting The Self

This is a follow-up to my previous post about Persona 4.

As I continue to play my way through the story of Persona 4 (it is a surprisingly long game) I find myself discovering more things about myself reflected in this little, on screen avatar.

One of the things that makes the Persona series slightly unconventional in the realms of JRPG’s is that is splits it’s time between the traditional RPG dungeon crawling and a social simulator akin to Japanese style dating sims (a bizarre genre in it’s own right).  Through these scripted interactions with a vast cast of game characters I find that the decisions I make are not simply me carting around an empty avatar from one interaction to the next.  Instead I find that I have been projecting different aspects of my own personality onto the way An Reuzakis (my avatar’s accidental name) behaves.  Not only that but I also discover that I have shaped An into the person I would like myself to become.  Strong-willed, persistent, knowledgeable, and kind.  These are not only characteristics that have assigned to my avatar but also characteristic that I work to cultivate in my own life.

They are a bit harder to develop in the real world but but playing them out in a fictional role helps in realizing how they may be played out in real society.