Jimquisition: Crying Through The Laughs

[Cid Silverwing]

I think people keep missing the forced laughing shit in Final Fantasy X.

Tidus and Yuna did it as an incredibly awkward attempt at cheering up despite the whole doomsday business with Sin and the Final Summoning and all that jazz. Then they started laughing for real and... No one mentions it again?

 

[loa]

Why do people keep bringing up ff7 when talking about drama as if the death of aerith was the most sad thing they have ever seen?
is this really the pinnacle of tragedy in video games? Cause that would be rather pathetic imo.

 

[Archer666]

A shame he didn't mention Nier. It strikes every point he makes and ends up being the best game ever in terms of story.

 

[surg3n]

I never liked Final Fantasy, it's too story based and offers very little player freedom.

In adventure games with heavy plots, yes emotion diversity makes a big difference, but gamers aren't sitting with their maw open, waiting on some emotion being fed to them by some videogame writer. These days gamers can feel a connection with the game they are playing, get that? - PLAYING! - We are playing the game, not the other way around. If some chick gets stabbed, I might feel bad for her, or I might laugh my ass off, I might even mock her a bit.

We have to be able to convey our own emotions before emotions implanted by whatever media. A good game can make you react emotionally, or it can inspire the player to form their own emotions - a good game does not need to shoe-horn emotion into the gaming experience. We make our own experiences in the games we play these days. Maybe you played DayZ and killed hundreds of zombs and saved survivors lives and helped people - then some greasy bandit snipes you in the face from a mile away... if that shit doesn't make you want to cry, Final Fantasy sure as hell wont. The denial of justice is one of the things that can adversely affect mood, that tends to be inflicted by ourselves, other people, random elements - not storyline. Maybe writers need to push the envelope, give characters more depth, give them defects and failures and even embarass them - make them more human... that could be something that M$, Apple, or Sony spend $50mil developing (HA!), or it might just be a character you think is your friend telling you to F-off. We don't think in straight lines, we think in tangents and branches and everything but a straight line.

I guess basicaly my point is that it takes more than some bint getting stabbed to conjure emotional response these days - Hell, we've played GTA4, someone get's whacked every other mission. It takes more than deciding between riches and a dead dog, or just a dog (damn you Molyneaux!). We have to be able to experience the emotions for ourselves, storyline can point us in the right direction, but gaming has evolved, and sandbox gaming especially has evolved exponentially outside the realm of normal boring old RPG's like FF Umpteen.

 

[Xisin]

ehh, i find when people make this argument against characters like cloud or Leon, the expect them to be happy. why? clouds life is complete shite literally from sun up to down shite mentally scarred shite. why would they be happy, i understand tidus or zadane they never had to be a super soldier engineered for battle having to work for a company that is destroying the planet then having them lie to you and having your girlfriend killed, or under a beyond corrupt murderous government. oh im sorry should they smile should they be jokey, no one asks this of Bruce Wayne or wolverine.why not be happy though all that melancholy that they have the moral compass to do the right thing. and atleast those two dudes have something to do at the end of the day , alot of these characters are left as misplaced murderers in a world that doesn't need them anymore

I understand jims point lightning was a rather good one, but why expect happiness from character who's life is shit. If they do get a bit nicer,like for example wolverine, its nice but you don't expect it and nice but it aint necessarily going to happen to everyone, not everyone who goes though shite just gets happy or even gets better, thats life sometimes people just dont get better. i understand happier stories, but the final fantasy examples were kinda... eh. i could have though of better ones, ryu hayabusa, riku (in the begging of kingdom hearts) and many others.

People call these characters whiny but let me ask you lets take a notoriously dark back story, if you were made as a weapon of mass destruction, and your existence had gotten everyone you had grown to love killed, you were frozen and then revived decided to give everyone a benefit of the doubt and do the right thing for a world who dealt you a bad card, and then though the incompetence of another who is supposed to help you , you almost die and loose your memory just have it brought back by someone who had a hand in your creation showing you how vile your insides actually are, then finding out that being is basically your father, and then having to kill him.

no one, no effing one, would be smiling , his life is a pile of shite on shite wheat and to expect a happy moment is completely insane, showing your complete misunderstanding of the character. they don't have to be happy but learning to be better people is what is important, or descention into madness if that's your thing.

aside from all that jim has a point and the video was funny

I have to disagree with you. A person can not be sad without also, at one point, being happy. It is impossible to always be any one emotion, no matter that person's background.

i didn't say show one emotion , im saying mistaking someone having a life of shite, and being a serious and kinda pessimistic person because of it for being emo and having one emotion is bad.

also that pic doesn't make sense , you never EVER compare pain, no one wins. that pic isn't a justification for any argument

i know these are game characters we are talking about, but there are plenty of real life people, someone of which i know, would try and hurt you ( i don't condone violence because of words by the way) if you even suggested that they way they are now, because the horrible stuff they have been though, is some how wrong because there are people in Africa with no water.

mental scars run deep. not everyone gets better, not everything gets better and you showing people in Africa in another crappy situation in no way shape or form solves the problem.

i understand some of these game characters are whiny sure, that makes sense. the others if they don't wanna smile, fine i don't care , there lives suck, sucked, and for intensive purposes will continue to suck.

Wait...what? I don't recall comparing anyone's pain to each other.

All I said is that a person can not project just one emotion. That even though Cloud and Squall had terrible lives, that would not stop them from smiling sometimes. That's it.

The picture is of people smiling during a bad situation. It's not a Susan Sarandon ad. I don't think you should get that much connotation from any one picture and I'm sorry that you misconstrued it. I certainly am not implying that someone's pain is meaningless because someone else feels it also.

Just saying everyone smiles.

 

[Vanitas likes Bubbles]

I agree but there is one example I can show that disproves this. Spec Ops: The Line is downright miserable from the very beginning but it still managed to poke an emotional reaction from me.

 

[I.Muir]

because I'm a rocket man
Rocket....... man
Burning out my fuse... here... all alone

Space Odyssey is sadder though

 

[Madmonk12345]

I agree but there is one example I can show that disproves this. Spec Ops: The Line is downright miserable from the very beginning but it still managed to poke an emotional reaction from me.

The reason Spec Ops: The Line worked was because every event, no matter how miserable, is a foreseeable consequence of your own actions, making you able to blame yourself, feeling terrible about terrible things. The problem with this is that it requires really good writing; you can't just make a game depressing from start to finish and expect it to work, and must figure out how to prevent the player from ceasing to care about a story that was depressing to begin with. While depressing stories can work, they require better writing than most games are given at this time.

Spec Ops:The Line is certainly a good example to look at for trying to avoid such things however, and if Spec Ops changes the trend of how the writing of the story of games is performed, I certainly won't be displeased.

 

[G-Force]

And I had forgoten how bad the laugh scene from FF X was. I love the game but that really is one of the worst things I have ever seen. Although it is still better than anything from FF Return of the Jedi XII or XIII.

I always felt that Tidus was laughing horribly on purpose as so he could make Yuna laugh. He was willing to make himself look foolish as that was the easiest way to get her to smile.

 

[Raso719]

I think what gets me the most is that people think that this new trend where stories need to be nothing short of perpetual downers is some how more realistic while also believing that that characters being happy, laughing and acting sincere is some how childish and naive.

And it's not just the plot that suffers but many characters are written as shallow and empty gloom machines who do nothing but argue with each other and mope about. They constantly blur the line between anger and despair to where you assume that anger and sadness always go hand and hand yet when someone cracks a joke or a smile we criticize the character for not being serious or for being unrealistic.

So I guess my concern is that this isn't so much a problem with video games but with society itself for being so cynical as to think that doom and gloom is realistic while attacking happy and hopeful stories and characters as being childish. If that is the case then there is something seriously messed up with the world.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I'm glad Jim brought up Final Fantasy X. That game is charged with a variety of emotions but gets a bad rap because everyone would like to believe they would handle the main character's situation better than he did.

 

[XDravond]

Sounds like Jim needs to try some Nakige visual novels. That is basically a whole genre based around that principle, with a light-herated, comedic first act, a heartwarming romantic second act, and a third act that will make you cry.


WARNING! IT'S NAKIGE, WITH AN "A". UNDER NO CONDITION SHOULD ANYONE TRY THE "NUKIGE VISUAL NOVEL" GENRE, WITH AN "U", OR DO AN IMAGE SEARCH FOR "NUKIGE".

Such amount of capital letters needs a search... fires up vpn, virtual machine and so on and then google & bing.... OK that kind "do not" ahem that is just evil..
(checked wikipedia and Nakige="cry game" if the curious wants to know..)


And I do agree with Jim lots of games are just depressed at all times some small gleams of emotional games do exist, not that I can mention them now but still... And good comedy (ie not plain slapstick..) would make a lot more games actually emotional I've read a book (or two) that makes me care since I see both good times and bad times. It can be simply boiled down to: happy go sad and then go happy again, and you're done!...

That "laugh" why? Oh why? Please make me unhear it!

 

[immortalfrieza]

I'm glad Jim brought up Final Fantasy X. That game is charged with a variety of emotions but gets a bad rap because everyone would like to believe they would handle the main character's situation better than he did.

...Which is massive B.S. on their part, since just about everybody from the real world would snap and slip into a deep depression if not outright kill themselves after spending an hour in Spira, and that's if the Fiends didn't get them first.

 

[Kapol]

Jim, did you foresee Graham's answer to the 'what's your favorite guilty pleasure game?' Because you threw in that stupid laugh SOOOO much.

Still, good points on the episode. I agree that when you can't tell how someone feels because... well, they never showed no emotion to begin with, it's hard to care when something happens. I've recently started Gears 3 and didn't realize Marcus was supposed to be upset about the whole dad thing until it was specifically mentioned.

 

[Elephant Walker19]

Whats the game where the pig fried its self?

Illusion of Gaia for SNES - I recently replayed it after beating it when I was like 11 or 12, and I don't remember getting chills from any scenes from it when I was younger. The entire 2nd half of the game (From Angel Village) sets a different pace than the first half.

Thanks.seems fun. will check it out

 

[Noala]

What's the song playing during the first minute or so of the video?

 

[el_kabong]

While this was a good video, I don't agree that you need laughter to generate tragedy. It can certainly help things along and make them more memorable, but brooding characters still illicit an emotional response akin to tragedy with the right kind of artistic touch.

One of the best ways I've seen this done is through discovery moments usually told in flashbacks. Although present in famous films such as Citizen Kane, my personal favorite example of tragedy befalling a brooding protagonist is in Godfather 1 & 2 (spoilers to these movies to follow). Michael Corleone is never a "happy" character. There's a seriousness to him at all times even before tragedy strikes. He's a former WWII veteran who doesn't wish to be connected to his family's mob life. His desire to protect his father and family at all costs lead him to a dark path that results in the murder any perceived threat to his family that he has such devotion to. This includes a few close friends and even his older brother, Fredo, after he was revealed to have given vital information to a party that endangered Micheal, his wife, and his son's lives at the beginning of the second movie.

At the very end of Godfather 2, there's a scene which takes place prior to the event of both movies where the family is preparing to celebrate the beloved Godfather's birthday. While his family chat about the recent Pearl Harbor bombings, Micheal announces that he's signed up to fight for the greater good. Every member of the family is upset by this except Fredo (he's willing to give his life for someone that isn't his "blood", which is dismissed as stupid). The close of the scene shows Michael drinking at his family's table without his family.

What this does is really ties the tragic events of this character's life together and serve as a punctuation to what we've seen, granting context and realization. When Micheal tries to do the "honorable" thing by avoiding the mob life, his family rejects him. When he takes over the family business, it results in the destruction of his family. Ultimately, his idealism is his undoing, which is what makes it so tragic.

 

[SoMuchSpace]

I am so surprised HL2: EP2 didn't get a special mention for making tragedy matter in a bleak, tragic setting.But maybe he didn't do it cause it proved his point wrong.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Respect to FF 8? FF 8 is almost as bad if not more so than FF 13, I honestly can decide which is worse. FF 8 introduced the absurdly stupid Draw system, GF conjunction and the stupidest weapon ever conceived by man the Gunblade.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

I am so surprised HL2: EP2 didn't get a special mention for making tragedy matter in a bleak, tragic setting.But maybe he didn't do it cause it proved his point wrong.

Actually, while I like HL2's story, I didn't find that moment you're referring too a big enough tragedy as I wasn't really invested in that character. It was a bit of a shocking moment, but not a sad one for me at all. So ... no.