RPGs and Historical Legacies
Dice rolls and turn-based battles
RPGs this week, each a different flavor to the other. Neither historical per se, at least explicitly. But each represents a different flavor of RPG: the CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game), a genre born in the idea of rendering tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons on computers, dice rolls and all; and the JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game), a genre that took the video game world over completely it seemed, for a while, and left a generation with memories of turn based battles, mages of different primary colors, job systems if you were particularly hip, and delicate featured adolescents saving the world.
The CRPG of course is more than just dice rolls; it typically features Scottish dwarves, too. As much as some might argue the genre never went away, it did really; but the last decade and change has been a heck of a comeback. If you are interested in the CRPG (or "Western RPG" as it used to sometimes be called, such was the ubiquity and success of the JRPG), your options are varied, far beyond the CRPG-influenced fare that makes up... a lot of modern gaming. You can play either of the excellent Pillars of Eternity games, the fun be-the-bad-guy spin of Tyranny, or enjoy a mix of classic and cutting edge with Divinity: Original Sin 2. This is all before you start thinking about revisiting some of the classics, in their enhanced or original form.
I think it is difficult to escape the legacies of these genres, really. If you have played games for a while, RPGs feel a certain way. And whatever feeling that evokes for you creates a context. For me, the CRPG feels like sitting at a computer as a child, figuring out how the menus worked. As a historian, I can't help but find myself trying to periodize the medium, too. If the CRPGs are of the 1980s, what does it mean that I'm playing one now?
But does that periodization even work, anyway? Games offer a fascinating proposition because it's not just content or theme, it's function: the RTS enjoyed a golden age when a large chunk of game players were using desktop PCs to play, and began to struggle as consoles took over the medium's userbase and imagination. The same dynamics created the FPS as king of the console in the early 2000s, but that was only really possible after Bungie figured out how to make playing a shooter using a controller feel "right", as they did with Halo: Combat Evolved. CRPGs can often feel... nerdy. But of course, they were supposed to, by design. The games were originally conceived to recreate the atmosphere of a night with friends rolling dice, weaving stories, and working around Jenny's friend who showed up wearing a cape, for some reason.
JRPGs then... how do they feel? What context do they evoke? Well, for me personally, the baseline becomes Final Fantasy games on the Playstation. For some it's games on a Nintendo machine. For a lot of people it's one game in particular: Final Fantasy VII. JRPGs were a lot of things, originally, that CRPGs were not. They were VERY 90s, and felt so at the time: exciting, cutting edge, interesting, labyrinthine but not too complicated. They were very Japanese, despite the frosted tips and other assorted weirdly white or white-adjacent hairdos of so many of the main characters, and therefore to Western audiences at least, exotic. They also felt extremely MODERN; they lived on consoles, not computers. And of course, again, they were Japanese.
In the 1990s, and in video games in particular, Japanese aesthetics and gaming ideals were dominant, at least for the discerning aesthete in games spaces. And Japan itself felt like the future: a place where people got high speed rail everywhere and bought cheeseburgers by hovering a mobile phone over the checkout till. Most of us back in the troglodyte-infested West didn't even have mobile phones yet. For young people in particular, newsreel images of Tokyo didn't seem THAT far away from the fictional supercities of Japanese video games and anime.
But that was a long time ago. The growth of video games as a capitalist enterprise and a cultural world has seen Japan cede much of its prominence as the global center of video game culture as the West gradually shed its myths of sad sacks playing in the basement. Everyone plays games.
I think about things like this when I play video games. I mean... it's why I started this substack, and it's why I work on History Respawned. I'm an historian, I can't really shut it off. You know what I'm talking about. Whether or not you use it in your dayjob, your experience with games is part of something you can't shut off either. It's why you're reading this.
So anyway - I've been playing two RPGs in the last week. In and of itself it's a weird choice of course: these games theoretically demand all of your time until you're done, and it's going to take a while. But here we are. I've been playing Mechajammer and Persona 5 Royal.
They're very different! Mechajammer first. Well. It's... Mechajammer is not quite what I wanted it to be. That's not really the game's fault, it is what it is. But I've found it rougher going than I wanted it to be. The trailers were all super cool music and interesting art styles and somewhat retro gameplay. I got all that! I also got a game made by people who apparently think the opening to Fallout 2 was too easy. Mechajammer is HARD. And it's not clear what I'm supposed to do. Beginners guide on the Internet tell me I should be using the notebook in game to keep track of things.
I mean. Taking notes yourself because the game isn't going to tell you anything? That really is old school. And I'm not sure how much longer Mechajammer and I are going to hang out. The game ends up feeling aspirational: what if I was the kind of guy who just buried himself in this unflinching game that wants you to spend time with it and not just skip to the next task or tick a box or follow an arrow to the next NPC to then click through the dialogue and move to the next thing...
I have begun describing this week's other RPG. Persona 5 in its own way is subsersive - all the Persona games, and the Shin Megami Tensei games from which they have emerged, are that - but it's a world away from Mechajammer. Both games have branched out from the original family tree, further in opposite directions. Persona 5, especially early on, is very directed: go here, do this, talk to this guy, repeat. You also get a clear sense of what you're doing and why.
They also feel very different. Mechajammer in its early stages works against its own art style a little bit. It's difficult to do dark and dank without feeling dark and dank. Persona is all splash and color and talking cats that angrily insist they're not cats. Are we even comparing CRPGs and JRPGs anymore, really?
Well, yes. And comparing Persona 5, one of the most successful JRPGs of the last few years with Mechajammer, an indie title that is an intentional and deliberate deep cut from the CRPG hardcore, creates lots of inconsistencies. But hey. Those were the games I played this week.
Thanks for reading! Listen to Andrew Bird and Iron & Wine do their thing before you go. See you next time.