Saturday, January 24, 2009

They Only Met Once

What we found out is that each of us is a bro, and an athlete, and a princess... and an onnagirai, stripper, crossdresser, and... some sort of bear thing? Plus the dude who seems to be an empty shell. I guess that doesn't really answer anything. Sincerely yours,
There's two things I want to point out about Persona 4.

It has the emotional maturity of a John Hughes film. It's pretty obvious in this case because of the similar setting and themes, but we're staring at a bog-standard high school coming of age story; not just standard in its themes but also its structure and presentation. Game designers should be pushing more comfort zone boundaries and offering a deeper analysis, especially in a game like this where the game is going to sell to the same group of people regardless of its content.

However, it has the emotional maturity of a John Hughes film. Standing next to the Porky's standard of the video game world - whether that's the incessant whining of a 15 year old Final Fantasy protagonist, or the precocious and unrealistic maturity of a 16 year old Final Fantasy protagonist - it's a huge leap forward in the same way Hughes's films were. For as little as it pushes, it's much further and harder than its contemporaries. Especially contemporaries in the same genre.

2 comments:

K. M. said...

I should really see more classic John Hughes films, shouldn't I? If I'm really to claim that I'm old enough to feel ways about stuff.

The Suikoden series manages a surprising amount of emotional maturity at times, and I don't think it's a coincidence that they also focus on older characters far more than any other Japenese RPGs that I can think of. I wish some games that don't have enormous casts of characters would give this a shot.

Joe said...

Suikoden also has the advantage it was written by a real writer before it was written by a scenario planner.