The scene was tense. You and your party had just fought through to the center of the Forgotten City for a two-fold purpose. Aerith, a mysterious flower girl from the slums of Midgar, whom you had befriended, has run off into the Ancient ruins for some unknown reason. You must find her. On top of that, your arch-nemesis, Sephiroth, must be halted in his attempt to collect a Black Materia. Finally, you reach your destination and your heart leaps with joy when you find Aerith praying at an alter. She looks up at you and smiles, her face innocent and pure, like an angel guiding and protecting your ragtag band on their important mission.
Suddenly, a rush of wind sweeps over you and your eyes flinch for a moment. When you’re able to take in the situation, you see Sephiroth swoop down and impale Aerith through the torso before you can even react. You don’t know what to do or think. You sit in disbelief, speechless at the events that have just transpired.
That was one of the first scenes in a video game that actually pulled at my heart strings – realizing that Aerith (then known as Aeris in the original North American version of Final Fantasy VII) had been killed right in front of me. You had spent perhaps hours and hours leveling her up, honing her skills and abilities to become the perfect compliment to your party. Now, through a twist of evil genius, the Final Fantasy gods had taken her away from you. How did you feel?
For many, this was the first time a game made them cry. Others, perhaps, felt anger, betrayal, or, dare I say it, satisfaction. Her death in Final Fantasy VII had impact and meaning both in that game world, and in the gaming community worldwide. Yet, by today’s technical standards, that game was hardly the graphical masterpiece it was at the time of release over a decade ago. Are games today capable of conveying better emotion – with realistic character models and facial features – or is that iconic scene, and those like it, more than the sum of their parts? Are there more things at work here than just representing character emotion through the graphical components of a game?
Indeed, there are. I’ll state my opinion right here – realistic graphics do not necessarily, in and of themselves, illicit raw emotion in the player. They could, yes. In fact, there’s no reason they shouldn’t. But gamers feeling emotion came long before hyper-realistic graphic engines were mainstream, as in the case of Final Fantasy VII. Even farther back than that – early console role playing games such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and The Legend of Zelda attempted to bring players face-to-face with their softer side. Back then, they didn’t have the awesome graphic capabilities we have now. No, instead of visual stimuli alone, they used a combination of techniques to bring out that emotion.
I was in GameStop the other day browsing, and during the short time I was in there, the employees were asked about three different games by three different customers. Every single question revolved around the graphics of these games. “How are the graphics?” “Is the game realistic?” In fact, this is an unfortunate trend I overhear quite often wherever I come into contact with other members of the gaming community. It seems that, to the typical gamer, graphics trump all. They want bigger and better graphics each new game, each new gaming system. This isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a lot more aspects that go into producing a great game than graphics alone. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say that every successful or critically acclaimed game would not be that way if it weren’t for a combination of development techniques, not just the visuals.
No, it’s a combination of music, sound effects, voice inflections (in more recent times), lighting, mood, character animations and, yes, overall graphics, that spark emotions in the players and that is why games that didn’t have the best visuals based on today’s standards have stuck in our hearts all these years because of the strong emotional impact they had on us. There have been very few titles since Final Fantasy VII that have hit those notes with me, and none of them were AAA mainstream, sell-a-million-copies-in-the-first-week games.
I’d like to see more emphasis placed on mood and story in non-RPG titles. First-person shooters have the nasty habit of being hyper-realistic, yet only bringing out the emotion of “nerd rage” as the players litter each other with virtual bullets and trash-talk over Xbox Live. Many of the high-selling games as of late seem to lack story and, as a result, any emotional connection with the player. The visual impact of Gears of War 2 is amazing, yet the story was severely lacking in many gamers’ opinions. Too much focus is given to visuals and not enough to the other aspects of the game – arguably the more important aspects.
Titles in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras seemed to be able to make us feel with just little character sprites and amazing soundtracks. I suppose this could stem from the fact that we didn’t expect it out of those sprites – we didn’t expect them to be realistic. When they ended up impacting us in such a way, it really stuck in our minds. Today, we have excellent realism, so you would expect a greater sense of emotion being transferred between the characters in the game and the players, yet you don’t. Perhaps now we expect it and are let down far too often, so it doesn’t even bother us anymore.
The conclusion of the matter is this: There is no reason why today’s graphically intense titles can’t convey a strong emotion to the player, much like gamers around the world experienced with Aerith’s death. On the other hand, modern technology gets overrated quite often. Its not needed in the least to be able to make the player feel more than the excitement of killing someone else’s virtual avatar. Those who think it is are just fooling themselves.
