if you followed game websites or saw promo videos or whatnot in the late 2000s i feel certain you've read or heard a certain phrase many times. a phrase that was a battlecry of game narrative writers, and a memorable and punchy tagline to boot,
"your choices matter"
as is often the case with these kinds of sayings, i find the verb used rather ambiguous, though if you play the kinds of games this was said about, it's clear enough what the meaning is: the game, and possibly its sequels, acknowledges your choices. there are mechanical and narrative outcomes designed in response to the choices presented, and you will know what they are. in a sense, i think this easily starts to feel like it pares down a complex narrative into a series of things to see, especially when you realize how many players are wont to optimize systems before they even understand them. not that these were usually very hard to figure out. "well, next time i'll just do the opposite thing to find out what happens!" as a result, the game tends to also become very obvious about what the developers think is important.
this isn't to specifically criticize those games, but i don't think it's a coincidence this aligned with sony and microsoft codifying "achievements" as a system level function expected in every game. these markers of progress through a game and completion of various aspects are even more straightforward about what the developers think is relevant, or at least what they can measure. see every ending! defeat 100,000 enemies! find all the weapons! (but enough about drakengard,) people still pour their hearts into making new games, but the expectations of delivering "the good stuff" constantly and presenting a clear path to completing everything became even more obviously expected from games. and look, i'm saying all this from my own experience-i got all the achievements in dragon age on xbox 360. i think it's the only game on the platform i've actually done that on. so maybe i'm passing judgment on that game in particular. "dragon age origins - i thought it was pretty fun!! (also leliana was cute and whatever the achievements were weren't really annoying to do!)"
anyway, these days i find it much more enjoyable to think about the opposite. a game where your choices don't matter. the game doesn't care. here's a bunch of systems: you don't have to figure out how any of them work, you don't have to do most of them at all to progress the game, but if you'd like to use them, here they are! atelier marie made me think of this, as i've recently discussed, but because of that it made me think back to my reigning champion of "games that don't care":
legend of mana
legend of mana starts off with some pretty normal choices for an rpg. does your character look like a boy or a girl. what's their name. what weapon do you want to use. and then goes into some weirder and more subtle ones. choose a part of this map you like. now, put down the mailbox somewhere on the land. the mailbox turns into a little house and you start controlling a character. soon you get to put more objects on the ground. you talk to characters and they'll ask if you want them to come with you. they'll fight with you and are often a part of the story aspects of quests, which are the main things that cause you to get closer to the end of the game, but the vast majority of quests in the game are optional. and everything else that comes up is also optional.
this game's often associated with saga series head akitoshi kawazu, who's credited as the producer, and it does have elements not particularly unlike some of those games, but in an interview from the ultimania with a wonderful translation on shmuplations he's not really mentioned as having any particular creative input here, and a huge portion of the creative leads were other people coming off of working on saga frontier. they talk about having wanted to implement many ideas they'd thought up during the production of the previous game, and some of their creative motivations, which of course leads me to my favorite part:
(Koichi) Ishii: Speaking of SaGa Frontier, actually, I remember having lunches with Takai then and talking about the next game we wanted to make. “Let’s do something with TOTAL freedom!”, we said.
(Hiroshi) Takai: Yeah, and we’re both kind of contrarians at heart, so instead of a normal RPG, we were talking about making a game where you wouldn’t do anything. (laughs)
"total freedom." "a game where you wouldn't do anything." these are compatible ideals, and also nonsensical ones. any game has rules and limitations; it's the kinds of choices you have that define what the game actually is. legend of mana almost never tells you what to do, or where to go, and the combat is generally pretty easy and not too complex. i almost feel like the game is the inverse of saga, where you make choices and the game just kind of mediates them unpredictably. in legend of mana the design is more like, you pick a friend and wander around to see if something happens. eventually the game will probably ask if you want to do something, like suddenly go on a quest you didn't know about or play music for the elements. and if you say no then you know all you're really missing is...the thing you chose not to do. the game doesn't care. there's only one ending. your choices don't matter.
your choices do matter, though. to you. fa'diel is a dreamlike world of fragmented stories and weird and sometimes dislikeable characters. and sometimes it's slow and awkward to figure out how to get more items or quests to progress in the game! but those small choices and small moments are the essence of what brings a person to love fa'diel, and that in turn is what legend of mana is. its freedom presents not a world that you build yourself but one that the game invites you to participate in the creation of. your care for this world depends on you: what you've decided to do, whose stories you've decided to share, and the little details of your pets' names or the cool weapon you made. and yes, correspondingly i think this game doesn't have much to offer to a person who's not interested in engaging with its methods of expression. i can understand why this game is boring or even frustrating to people, because sometimes it really does feel like the last thing it wants you to do is something.
to me there's no game like this. there's plenty that have a good amount of the same vibes, like marie as i mentioned, steambot chronicles, or the two most recent zelda games. but none of them have both a narrative i love so much (though i'll get into that next time) and such a compelling sense of "nothing" for me. though i think because it's so exaggerated in legend of mana it's become the game that really crystallized that feeling for me and led me to recognize it more easily from others. that "nothingness" is not something missing, but a space left for you to put pieces of yourself into the game. in doing so, you're sharing in the experience with the creators who thought of it all in the first place. and you won't stay the same self. when you come back, you'll have something new to add once again.
i'll write more later!
