Melancholia and the End of the Modern RPG

All stories end. It's only natural. Without an ending, even the best-written story would be incomplete, unsatisfying. Want to drive a reader insane? Rip out the last few pages of a novel he's reading (without his knowledge, or the ruse fails completely!). Observe him reading the book. Witness the screaming and hair-tearing that occurs once he reaches the (missing) end of the book. Too cruel is this punishment, for a reader. My point being, endings are important.

The fantasy novel presents an interesting case. Now, most modern fantasy novels are crap. Shameless derivatives of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (antecedent of the "high fantasy" genre) or Robert E. Howard's Conan (father of the "Swords and Sorcery" genre) or other such classic works. Let's discount all those. Truely great fantasy literature (those mentioned above, C.S. Lewis, Mervyn Peake) draws a reader into a fully-realised alternate world, be it a familiar one metamorphosed into a mythic space-- as in much of Neil Gaiman's work-- or a wholly alien and fantastical one like the world of Abarat in the Clive Barker's series of the same name. One does not read books like these as much as one visits the worlds described in the books for a while. A fictional vacation, so to speak.

As such, the ending of a fantasy work, while ostensibly wrapping up the story of the novel, also signifies the reader's point of departure from the fictional space of the world. Let's put it this way- you only get to visit the world for a limited period of time. You aren't privy to the events that took place prior to the beginning of the story and the events following the "end"-- which of course is only a marking point (unless its an apocalyptic novel, in which case the "end" really is the End!)-- are closed off too. So if you, like me, tend to get absorbed into a work, the end of a fantasy novel is a melancholy thing. Of course, an ending is essential- no fantasy world, no matter how engaging, is worth staying in forever- but at the same time a feeling of sorrow is experienced at the passing of the story. One could read the same book again, of course. And more often than not, authors, too unable to leave their creations be, create sequels. But there has to be some point of finality for every story.

Such is the case for the modern Role-Playing Game. These games, which have their origins in the Dungeons & Dragons board game (and thus represent a 2nd degree derivative- D&D being inspired by fantasy literature), go even further than fantasy books by literally allowing you to become a character in the fantasy narrative. You're not just reading about a hero vanquishing ancient evil- you are said hero. This creates a feeling of immersion far beyond any other form of media, which goes far in explaining how people can get so fully caught up in RPGS, or Massively Multiplayer RPGs in particular, that they never come out. But MMORPGs are a specialised case of RPG-- one in which the story doesn't really have an end and only YOU can choose to end your own-- and I don't play them so I don't have anything more to say about that. I'm talking about single-player RPGs here. The kind that where you inhabit a fictional world for a time, and then leave at the end of the story. Some (many!) RPGs posit worlds so boring that you feel nothing leaving them (Dungeon Siege, I'm looking at you).

But the very best RPGs, like the best fantasy stories, draw you deeply into their world. I recently completed the game Final Fantasy X- the first PS2 installment of the most famous console RPG of all time. I had played the game for just short of 70 hours at that point, over a period of 2 years. That's a long time! It was a pretty incredible experience, overall. The game's far from perfect but it's really, really good. The game has a mostly engaging set of characters and a unique, beautifully realised and rendered world. It's familiar enough to be recognised as a Final Fantasy title and yet unique enough to have its own, distinct voice. I had a triumphant feeling at having achieved the task of completing the game, but at the same time... sorrowful. It was a bittersweet victory, at best. This has as much to do with the storyline of the game as its immersiveness, though.

*Oh yeah, from this point on, I'm going to be discussing the story and ending of the game. You've been warned.*

Final Fantasy games traditionally have had deep (for a game!) and broody storylines. The heroes are more conflicted than your average RPG (well not anymore for the series made broody characters an RPG staple), the villains more ambiguous. Final Fantasy X could easily compete with Final Fantasy VII for the title of the broodingest (yes I made up that word) Final Fantasy game ever, despite having a rather happy-go-lucky jock of a protagonist and rather bright, colourful settings (at least for the first half of the game). The game, from very early on, establishes that your quest is one that must end with a sacrifice. Someone must die to save the world. Of course, being a Final Fantasy game, there are numerous plot twists and in the end, it's not the character whose fate it was to die that actually does so.

You see, at the end of Final Fantasy X, you cease to exist in the game's world. That can be taken to mean two things. Taken literally, it means that you, the player, stop to be an active participant in the game's narrative and are locked out of viewing any future history of the world. That, of course, is how any computer game with a narrative ends. But more importantly, the game's storyline has the main character-- the one who you control from the very beginning of the game til the end-- disappear from the game world as well.

This is interesting. It's possibly the very first time that an RPG game has directly addressed the issue of the player's role within the story and world of an RPG. The storyline of the game has the protagonist-- Tidus-- being sucked into another world, which seems to be his world a few thousand years in the future. There he gets caught up in a quest to save the world and develops into a heroic figure. Through the course of events in the game, he also comes to realise that he's not quite real- being somewhat of an apparition dreamed up by the spirits of some dead folk. And that saving the world will result in his destruction. Of course, what with him being the hero of the game, he goes through with it anyway. At the end, he really does disappear into nothingness. And the player, too, leaves the world of Final Fantasy X.

While Tidus is arguably a rather poor stand-in for the player, given his rather distinct personality (the best player stand-in characters have flat or non-existent personalities- allowing the player to inhabit the character with his or her own personality. Half-Life and Half-Life 2's mute protagonist, Gordon Freeman, is a good example of this). Perhaps its better to say his journey in the game is analogous to the player's. However, his journey ends as a curious inversion of the player's journey within the game. After all, its the world of the RPG that ceases to exist when the player turns off his (or her) PS2, isn't it? Or is it really the player who ceases to exist in the world of the game? If we choose to believe-- as the graphic novelist Grant Morrison does-- that works of fiction inhabit their own spheres of reality (in a figurative sense), then that isn't such an unbelievable notion at all...

Back to the game. Interestingly enough, the game set a precedent by being the first Final Fantasy game to have a sequel- FFX-2. I'd regarded FFX-2 as a sort of crassly commercial attempt at making money off those who played the first game, especially given its odd shift to a light-hearted tone after the heavy, positively depressing storyline of FFX and emphasis on cutesy costume play. And I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the game apparently has a secret ending where you can revive Tidus from his state of non-existence (though this is foreshadowed by a short video clip of him seemingly being re-born at the very end of Final Fantasy X, following the credits sequence). But having completed Final Fantasy X, I do feel a yearning to find out what happens to the world of the game and the characters within it. Of course, I could just imagine up scenarios for them (like fan-fiction writers do) but I'd rather not write about other people's characters when I can make my own. But that's neither here nor there. So yes, I might actually play FFX-2.

I suspect that Final Fantasy X wouldn't have nearly the same kind of effect had it been made on any platform previous to the PS2. The sights and sounds of the world, which couldn't have been created before the PS2 came along, go a long way in creating the illusion of inhabiting the world of the game. The same goes for the game Dragon Quest VIII, which I'm playing now. The graphics, beyond superficial beauty, play a large role in creating the impression of a living world inside your TV. Extrapolating further, I wonder what kind of vivid RPG worlds we'll see on the PS3 and the recently-launched Xbox 360?