Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front of the heroes.
Some examples of generally-great games that might fail this test:
- Silent Hill 2: A game well-known for plumbing the depths of the human psyche. But it’s missing any real moments of levity, leading players to pretty much be on guard the whole time.
- Monkey Island: Undoubtedly a funny game. But since it breaks the fourth wall so much, and revels in its own illogical deus ex machinas to fit the “hero cannot die” tropes, it’s never going to make the situation feel tense or at risk even when it tries to (and Telltale did try).
- Call of Duty: Though a dudebro series, one can’t deny the series has occasionally had some great storyline twists. Many of us may not remember them years later though, because as cool as characters like Captain Price are in the moment, they don’t form a lasting impression as someone “complete” with flaws and weaknesses, in part because the storyline is often rushing you forward with action rather than poignance.
- GTA: As a crime drama, pretty much everything is falling apart all the time in GTA, whether it’s the plan, the heroes’ relationship, or the entire city. There’s moments of humor for sure, but little in the game makes you feel “awesome” or heroic, like your violence is achieving something.
Some games that prevail:
- The Walking Dead: While it is a serious game like Silent Hill, it’s more often going to have meaningful, positive and tender moments to settle from the horrors the characters are going through, as well as allowing players to creatively express themselves even if that means having Lee say something boisterous or silly to the other survivors.
- Yakuza: Sort of the posterchild for these emotional oscillations even within individual side quests. One might start through a silly situation where a man is throwing snow cones in the air, and end with using diaper fabric to simulate a snowstorm - so that a terminal cancer patient has a perfect sendoff in her final hours.
- Final Fantasy: Thinking of the one I’ve played the most, XIV, but plenty of the others have had the heroes cross-dress to get back their taken party member, perform in plays for children, before having to dive into hell and confront their dark past, or consider ending an entire civilization to save the world.
- Ace Attorney: The passion for murder tends to run hot. But, Ace Attorney is good at introducing ridiculous characters that tend to soften the blow. They may take premises as simple as security guards or journalists, and find every way they can to exaggerate their appearance and mannerisms. On the other end, the emotions behind proving the state and prosecution wrong about your innocent defendant are always worthwhile. Even when you do your best, the game delivers some poignant and well-written sad endings as well as many good ones.
- Metal Gear Solid: Though diving hard into the “Tacti-cool”, strategic warfare theme, MGS has always leaned hard into silly and highly characterized moments that have made the hard-hitting ones more impactful, as a result winning it lifetime fans.
- Borderlands: Thought I’d throw another Western developer on here. I haven’t played many of the others, but Borderlands 2 at least mastered the idea of having characters be flippant and silly 80% of the time, but getting you to really care when the jokes drop. A certain few moments around Handsome Jack come to mind in particular.
I’ve definitely seen that Japanese developers are often better at this form of emotional openness, but this is something that I’ve wanted to explore a bit more as a prompt; whether people agree this is a good goal for story/theme development, what causes some publishers to stumble in this approach, and especially what indie games people aren’t aware of that pull this off particularly well.
I didn’t quite get that feeling with Breath of the Wild, but I’ve certainly had those moments where the theme of a ruined world absolutely ruined my emotional stakes, so I can understand it.
The opening lines of Nier Automata are nihilistic and signal 2B’s desire to just get death over with. Nothing in the whole game’s story brought this feeling back in the other direction, and as a result of an adventure spanning a gray and brown “Abandoned city and death” the optimistic ending absolutely didn’t hit with me. Hard to identify why my response was so different from everyone else’s.
The pointlessness of a fight amid a ruined world is also what makes me not care about a lot of uber-dark Soulslike games. I don’t see much of what I’m saving in most of those, and learning the lore behind all of Dark Souls’ endings reinforces that feeling.
The Souls games is another good example I considered bringing up. I’ve only played Bloodborne so far and while I did enjoy it one of my criticisms is that it’s pretty monotone. Even the few NPC’s there are tend to not be very likeable. Everything is dark. Everyone is bad. It’s not even clear whether anything the player experiences is “real” even within the game world, or whether anything the player does accomplishes anything. While I haven’t played the other games I get the impression that they are similar.
I can also think of games that only lean into one side or the others but they do it in a way that I dont mind. “Cozy” games have made an entire genre of this, like Animal Crossing.
Or games where the tone of the game is always dark, but the player and player character both know that there is an “outside” world they can escape to. Resident Evil, Portal, BioShock, etc.
You brought up Metal Gear Solid because it has moments of levity within a gritty military espionage setting, but I think it’s also helped by being set in the real world. If I remember correctly, the end of MGS2 has a boss fight on the roof of a building in Philadelphia and we are shown in cutscenes that the streets below are filled with normal people going about their business, completely unaware of the threat. It’s a reminder of what the player character is fighting for.
Uncharted is another series worth discussing. The first 3 games all kind of blur together in my memory so I could be mistaken, but I remember the first game felt too isolated. I don’t think you really spend much time in a non-hostile environment: it’s all either jungles or ruins or the enemy base. 2 and 3 did a better job of putting Nathan in more mundane and civilian settings: museums, tourists sites, cities, etc. There’s moments where you need to put away your fun and act like a normal person, and that contrast makes the action sequences hit that much harder.
Yoko Taro let the answer to the player, even in the good ending is for you to decide why is worth living.
spoiler
If you find the 2B flight unit you can read the message she left for 9S. “The time I was able to spend with you It was like memories of pure light”. To me this message is 2B answer for the question of what is worth living. Another thing, the OST for the main area of the earth, the cozy ost, is named Rays of light(I think is the same name in japanese) and to me is referencing the “memories of pure light”