Chrono Cross's Use of a Silent Protagonist

The incompetence of Chrono Cross at every level of its writing and conception is well-documented, particularly by myself.  And yet, even though its greatest flaws are easily listed and discussed, and have been many a time by many a person, the minor mistakes it makes through the course of its story are not given all that much attention, even though they cumulatively drag the game’s quality down just as much as its infamous blunders.  In fact, even after over 20 years of hating this game, 1 of the regular-sized but nonetheless substantial mistakes of Chrono Cross only just now occurred to me: the decision to make Serge a silent protagonist.

Now I’ve criticized the concept of the RPG silent protagonist many times before, and to be sure, inflicting Serge with a permanent Mute status ailment did the storytelling of Chrono Cross no more favors than it did with Vahn in Legend of Legaia, or any given protagonist in the Etrian Odyssey series--or Chrono Trigger’s Crono himself, for that matter.  But the problems created by forcing a strict non-personality onto Serge actually go beyond that which afflict most games as a result of their mute heroes.  The thing is, you see, is that Chrono Cross is way too personal a story to Serge to be able to work without his verbal and emotional participation.

Consider the relationship between the main plot and the main character in, say, Wild Arms 1, a fairly standard example of an RPG with a silent protagonist.  Protagonist Rudy Roughknight comes from humble yet not fully understood beginnings, and, through a series of escalating circumstances, finds himself becoming gradually but inextricably involved in a sprawling quest to save the world from a great villainous threat.  There are reasons revealed to us along the way for why Rudy is especially suited for defending the world from those that threaten it, reasons involving his true origins which tie him in certain ways to the story as a whole...but though he is adequately personally involved, his participation in Wild Arms 1 is still largely a case of his having happened to get caught up in a series of major events, and his choosing to step up and do his part for the greater good.  This is the most typical case of RPG stories, particularly involving a silent protagonist--the main character has some ties to the unfolding events of the story, because being a random bystander from start to finish isn’t as compelling, but by and large, the machinations of the game’s villains and the story events set in motion do not revolve around the protagonist’s existence.

Plenty of other games, however, tell far more personal stories which are completely and totally derived from the protagonist’s existence, actions, and beliefs.  Absolutely no part of Planescape: Torment would have occurred sans The Nameless One, for example; it’s a game entirely about him, his legacy, and his personal journey to accept mortality.  Tales of Berseria, meanwhile, possesses a plot whose every fiber of emotional character and themes are iconized by protagonist Velvet Crowe, and its sequence of events are entirely her personal quest for vengeance.  Sometimes it’s more of a half-and-half situation--Dragon Age 2, for example, is a story of the social conflict and turmoil of the city of Kirkwall over a few years, as a representative sample of the simmering cultural conflicts of the land of Thedas as a whole.  But just as much as it is that overarching plot, it’s also the story of how the hero Hawke confronted and overcame these conflicts and more to become the city’s champion, and what it cost her/him to do so.  Final Fantasy 7’s another example of this mix, wherein a lot of shit goes down in its plot that amounts to larger forces at work that protagonist Cloud heroically reacts to, but also a ton of the game’s story is inextricably tied to who Cloud is and his personal psychological issues, and only moves forward through his action and presence in events specifically designed for him and him alone.

And unfortunately, this more personal story is the approach that Chrono Cross’s plot takes.  I mean, think about it.  The vast majority of the game’s events revolve around Serge in some significant capacity, as does at least half of the lore events that occur as preamble to the game’s story.  Serge isn’t just some random hero-to-be kid who finds himself transported into another reality early into Chrono Cross--once he’s in Another World, he’s almost immediately attacked by the minions of antagonist Lynx, who is specifically targeting Serge and will continue to do so for the first third of the game.  And why is that?  Because Serge’s DNA is the key to opening a door in Chronopolis, which is a fluke chance that resulted from a sequence of events in Serge’s childhood that made him a living plot mcguffin.  These events also had the result of separating Serge from his father for the rest of his childhood, and (supposedly) giving him a phobia of cats--both facts being relevant in that his father’s body is used by overarching villain FATE to create Lynx, who is only someone’s Inkbunny OC because FATE wants to take advantage of Serge’s fear of felines.

Eventually Serge finds the Frozen Flame, it swaps bodies between him and Lynx, and he winds up, eventually, back in his own home dimension (Home World) whilst in the body of a villain.  For the next 60% of the game, his task is to save his companion Kid and stop the real Lynx in his old body (since Kid is too dumb to know the difference), which, upon success, eventually leads into a bunch of poorly conceived, poorly explained, utterly pointless, and at times self-contradicting nonsense regarding multi-timeline-spanning Skynets being tricked by dinosaurs whose reality got aborted and also Schala and Baltahasar and Lavos are superfluously tacked on in the clumsiest possible way.

But aside from all the jumbled idiocy that is the core of Chrono Cross, that’s a largely personal plot to Serge.  As a house key given human form, he’s the essential crux of nearly every major plot movement for 90% of the game.  As a result of this, the kid is lost in an alternate universe that is just similar but different enough that it must surely be maddeningly frustrating, is hunted by an enemy he had no idea existed, loses his body AND is trapped within the body of an evildoer (one which ain’t exactly easy to disguise, either), loses his friends in the process, is finally able to return to his Home World but now in the body of a monster which makes him more alien here than he was in Another World, and when Miguel finally has an opportunity to dump some exposition on him by the truckload, Serge finds out that his father’s disappearance was due to his dad being transformed into Lynx, the villain that had been out to get him all along, meaning that Serge is currently hanging out in his own dad’s body.

Not only that, but the majority of the most important figures in the game have a very strong connection to him.  Lynx is, of course, a strong contender for poster child of Unnecessary Paternal Ties Syndrome, but even if Chrono Cross doesn’t seem to really actually care all that much that the villain is technically the same matter that was the protagonist’s dad, Lynx is still fixated on Serge as the necessary component of his plan.  Kid turns out to have some nebulous and weird tie to him across time and space.  Plot-vomiter Miguel was his dad’s buddy and also has been hanging out in the middle of nowhere and notime for like 15 years specifically so he could spill his lore guts to Serge and almost forget that he had his own kid.  Harle is the only significant person who isn’t stapled onto Serge by destiny, but (for some truly inexplicable reason) she becomes emotionally attached to him as she guides him to Chronopolis.

So yeah, Chrono Cross is a story where nearly every important thing that happens is centered around Serge, and he’s exposed to and undergoes events and situations which have strong personal, emotional relevance to and impact upon him, AND the most important people pushing events forward are all extremely connected to him.  And he isn’t saying a thing about any of it.

Fear from being hunted by an unknown villain?  Confusion and wonder at being in an alternate world?  Existential grappling with interacting with a world in which he died?  Homesick yearning to return to the world he knows and the people he cares about?  Deepening friendship and/or love for his ally Kid?  Personal torment at being trapped within a body not his own, one so radically different and also reviled by most who know it?  Anguish at losing his new friends as they see him only for what’s on the surface, including Kid herself?  Frustration and loss at returning home only to, thanks to his new body, be a greater stranger here than in the other world?  Forming an emotionally meaningful connection with his new ally Harle?  Amazement at discovering that there’s life on other planets, and that it’s goddamn cute as the dickens?  Learning the truth of his father’s disappearance and the reasons for all that has happened to him?  Sorrow at the fate of Miguel?  Squicky weird unsettled feeling at realizing that it’s his own dad’s scratching post and yarn balls he’s been swingin’ around for over half the game now?  Elation at finally retrieving his own form?

Not a word about any of it.  Square created 1 of the most personally-relevant-to-the-protagonist stories in its entire history, and then made that protagonist UNABLE TO ENGAGE WITH IT.

It’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Link communicates nothing more complicated than a grunt of exertion in any given The Legend of Zelda title, but at least with those, he’s only involved inasmuch as he’s stuck in a vaguely recurring destiny, and the ways in which the plot involves his personal life (such as following his uncle in A Link to the Past, or his lifelong friend Zelda’s being taken in Skyward Sword) are usually surface-level, straightforward “Gotta Go Do Hero Stuff Now” ways.  And it’s bad enough when Silent Protagonist Ryu 2 has nothing more than a few sweat drop sprites to display as a reaction to any part of his personal obligations which move the plot forward for 35% of Breath of Fire 2, but at least the game’s story eventually dissolves into a standard “I’m Just Hero-ing For The Hell Of It Now” situation afterward.  But this?

Imagine if Velvet wasn’t able to voice the rage and pain behind her quest for vengeance, or help Laphicet form his identity as a being through hundreds of conversations.  Imagine if The Nameless One had no lines of complex, brilliant dialogue through which to refine his journey for identity and mortality.  Imagine if Cloud had no more tools through which to communicate his confusion, turmoil, and realizations of his own weaknesses than a few stiff pantomimes.  Imagine if Hawke never showed a reaction to her/his family’s and city’s ever tumultuous fortunes, if Fei could do no more than nod dumbly at the fact that he’s the centerpiece of 6 different absurdly complex world-stakes plots all going on simultaneously in Xenogears, if a story so reliant upon the strong and affectionate bonds between the protagonist and her siblings as Fire Emblem 14’s was restricted by being unable to actually show the interactions between Corrin and said family.

It doesn’t even make sense by Silent Protagonists’ own poor logic, for Nalinivati’s sake.  While a few notably excellent exceptions exist, the whole point of burdening an RPG with a silent protagonist is, traditionally, out of some misguided, functionally pointless, and usually outright wrong idea that it makes the protagonist more relatable to the player.  In spite of the evidence of literal thousands of years of human storytelling,* RPG writers cling to this absurd notion that a blank slate is easier to relate to for a human audience than a protagonist who displays, y’know, actual humanity.  But as we’ve established, Serge’s existence and role in the events of Chrono Cross is anything but a blank slate.  This ain’t some monotonous Dragon Quest hero stumbling through a tofu-only sandwich on processed white bread in narrative form, where conjuring a personality and backstory out of one’s own imagination for him is a desperate act of self-defense by the audience’s mind as it fights to stay conscious.  Serge’s circumstances and history are aggressively unique, stupidly over-complicated, and rely heavily on irrationality.  It doesn’t matter if he’s as speechless as a game industry executive asked to specifically detail how NFTs are going to improve the player’s experience; Serge is not the kind of main character that invites this imaginary scenario of the player relating to the Silent Protagonist.

While far from the game’s worst qualities, the decision to make Serge a gagged spectator to his own story is insane.**  Yeah, it’s possible to pull off a Silent Protagonist who doesn’t lower the quality of an RPG based around their personal story--Severed accomplishes this, as does Transistor, and if my old theory about Frisk is true, you could make an argument that Undertale sort of manages it, too.  But it takes a distinct level of narrative skill and knowledge of exactly what you’re doing to pull something like that off.  Chrono Cross, on the other hand, can’t even handle normal, foundational writing conventions adequately--it sure as hell didn’t need to handicap itself further.

















* Yes I stole this from a Robot Chicken Halo sketch, no I’m not ashamed.


** Insane, but not unexpected.  This IS the game whose writers outsourced 90% of their job to an accent version of Babelfish in terms of the cast.

A fact which, by the way, only worsens the situation with Serge.  Under normal circumstances, the rest of the cast may be able to pick up a bit of a silent protagonist’s slack by interpreting him to the player.  For example, in Wild Arms 1, when Rudy’s true nature is revealed, there’s a moment in which Cecilia admonishes Jack for being too harsh with Rudy, pointing out how scared Rudy looks as evidence that the kid himself didn’t know.  With sprites that were somehow less sophisticated than those of the previous console generation, there was certainly no way we as the audience could have discerned that fact otherwise, but that’s the benefit of an involved and functional surrounding cast--they fill in some of the blanks that the stupid decision to go with a Silent Protagonist create.  Hell, almost the entirety of Transistor’s storytelling is based around this kind of thing.  Transistor aside, it’s not usually a great narrative device, of course--it feels a bit like that stupid thing that shows and cartoons and movies do where someone on the phone just repeats everything they’re being told so the audience can get the necessary information, even though no human in history has ever had a conversation like that.  But it’s better than nothing.

But unfortunately, even that crutch is unavailable to Serge, because the party of Chrono Cross is impersonally distant, have effectively no interactions with the plot as it goes on around them since their reactionary dialogue has to be substance-less enough for the accent system’s purposes, and each member gets essentially 2 very tiny scenes of character development to themselves, most of which don’t have any relevance to the main story.  As a result, we rarely see anyone around Serge engage with him to the point that we could glean any insight whatsoever into his feelings or mental state.

Fire Emblem 14's Unofficial Gay Fates Mod is Delightful

I’ve been trying to write this rant for a while now, and I always get stuck with it, because I keep trying to be a verbose grandstanding idiot about it, going on about the noble creative endeavors that RPG mods can be as works of love, creativity, and a desire to correct costly mistakes, and blah blah blah.  And all that is absolutely true and some of it’s even true for this particular mod, but in the end, it’s not what’s goddamn relevant.  What is, is the fact that Fire Emblem 14’s Unofficial Gay Fates mod is simple, delightful fun built on fans’ love for the game’s characters and the self-indulgence of shipping the hell out of all of them.  And damn it all, I like it for that, and so will you.

An expanded continuation of an abandoned mod that caught my eye some years ago,* the Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod is pretty simple and straightforward in concept: it adds social links Supports, both whole new ones altogether and also new S-Rank conversations for existing ones, written by a myriad number of fans who have collaborated on this project.  A lot of new Supports, for that matter.  And this takes many forms.

Now of course, this is most obviously represented by pairs of characters who didn’t have any kind of support connection in the original FE14 now, with this mod, able to form meaningful friendships, and even** become romantically involved.  This, of course, is going to most often be true for same-sex couples, since the characters already had a ton of heterosexual options available in the vanilla game.  Also, character pairs who had supports that had no romantic S rank before may now have this cherished Let’s Bone rank (which again is most often true for same-sex pairs), and characters who could romance Corrin heterosexually may now also get their gay on should Corrin be of their own sex, with the final romance interaction appropriately altered to represent Corrin’s gender (which in at leat 1 case involved actual re-writing beyond just pronoun switching (more on this case below)).  There’s, like, dozens of entirely new support conversation chains that the mod adds which end with romance.  FE14 was already packed full of potential love stories, but with the Unnoficial Gay Fates Add-On, you can just go absolutely hog wild with it.

Fanservicy?  Oh it’s fanservicy.  It’s fanservicy as fuck.  This is self-indulgence to an extreme within a franchise that is already unhealthily indulgent about such things.

But hang it all, it’s still fun.  This isn’t some game company gracelessly pandering in the hopes of making a cheap, sleazy buck off of its audience.  We, the audience ourselves, are the ones creating these indulgent scenarios.  Not out of some crass hope of hitting the lowest common denominator selling point, but because we actually like the work’s characters, and want to have more content of them to enjoy.  I think fanservice is a hell of a lot less deplorable when it’s massaging characters’ potential out of love than when it’s twisting characters’ essence out of greed.

And that love and gentle treatment shows in this work, because honestly, the overall level of writing to be found in this mod is solid.  Now I haven’t read all of them, and there’s some variation from 1 fan writer to the next...but overall, the characters are represented well, the scenarios in which they engage with one another and become friends and lovers are decent and at times even inventive, and the emotional progression generally checks out well (within reason; we’re still talking about going from 0 - 69 in just 4 conversations).  And most of them even still feel authentic to the general method and ambiance of the game’s original material.  Not ALL of them, admittedly, because some of us just can’t help being overly verbose garrulous windbags no matter what we do, resulting in conversations that are like 3x longer than anything you’d normally have found in the game, but eh.

Yes, I contributed some of the Supports in this mod, so yes, a lot of the last 2 paragraphs was me shamelessly patting myself on the back.  I don’t care.  I like what I wrote, and I like the characters I wrote for.  The world forgives show- and game-ruining narcissism from the likes of Dan Harmon and Randy Pitchford; I think I can be forgiven a little pride here and there.  I’ve still got a ways to go before I see David Cage in the mirror.

Beyond being genuinely enjoyable and giving the player a chance to do more shipping in an afternoon than their local FedEx hub, it should be noted that this mod DOES have its higher purposes.  Yes, its draw is primarily for the simple fun of it, but I wouldn’t be making a rant about it here if that truly were all there was to it.  The Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On also fixes some mistakes that the original FE14 made.  Remember my list of Fire Emblem 14’s romances?  After I celebrated the best the game had to offer and lamented its worst, I also listed out certain love story options that really should have been available to the player, such as the popularly desired Ryoma x Scarlet (given that they have an actual personal connection in the main story, which you sure as hell can’t say about most of the various shipping possibilities in the game), or the option for characters who very clearly, canonically already have romantic and/or sexual interests in their own gender to romance Corrin regardless of gender (how insane is it that Soleil’s only able to romance Male Corrin, yet her interest in him is based on closing her eyes and pretending that he’s a girl?).  Quite obviously, this mod corrects these mistakes of negligence, allowing for several romantic relationships whose absence in FE14 was a notable error.***

Additionally, I’m just pleased overall that FE14 now (unofficially) has a good number of homosexual relationships available to its characters.  I was really annoyed over how incredibly tiny a first step FE14 was for the series (and the publisher, for that matter) into realistically representative romance options, and I sincerely think this is what Fire Emblem 14 needed. And while you can certainly make the argument that giving every character multiple same-sex relationship options is overkill, that overkill is still a hell of a lot better than the previous state of inadequacy.  It’s not like you HAVE to engage in teh gayz with every character if you don’t want to, and even if it’s obvious where the main focus of the mod is, like I said earlier, there’s plenty of new heterosexual couples added in, too.

Also, I know it’s not a huge thing, but it’s a bit of a relief that Peri now has more than just 1 single romantic option that actually helps her grow and develop past being a mental-age-stinted murder-hobo.  And just for a little extra fun, this mod also incorporates a different one which makes Lilith a playable character, complete with her own Supports, which is nice, honestly, because she kinda got dropped and forgotten by the original game, and definitely deserved better.

The Unnofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod really displays just how much its community genuinely enjoys and cares for the characters of this game in ways that go far past the self-indulgence of shipping, too.  The mod also adds quite a few unique conversations between potential mothers and children (which, in the original game, were only represented by a single stock conversation per child), unique conversations between potential same-sex fathers and their children and between siblings created through male same-sex romances (so the mod opens up and then provides an entire new branch of parent-child and sibling interaction Supports),**** and even a bunch of purely platonic Supports between various other characters, often a first generation character and a second generation character who might have cause to have interactions and a connection.  You’ll come for the shipping, but you’ll stay for the tremendous expansion on the cast’s interrelationships.  And again, while I haven’t seen them all by a long shot, what I’ve experienced has been consistently good quality.

Worth noting is also the care and skill which the leader of this project, Babysauce, or Chicken McNuggies (depending on whether they prefer their name on GameBanana or Youtube), has transcribed these conversations into the game.  Not only does Babysauce transcribe all these conversations into the game--which by itself is a huge feat, considering there is, at the time I write this, 367 Supports***** that have been added or changed by the mod, and at least a few of them are pretty damn long--but they also add textual effects where appropriate.  It’s not just 2 people standing there exchanging text boxes; there are times when the mod’s conversations are almost like a Tales of skit with how effectively they’re executed.

Additionally, Babysauce has added a feature from Fire Emblem 13 that was cut from FE14: the use of characters’ spoken lines in their Support conversations.  In FE13, conversations would apparently (I still haven’t played it) use some basic, pre-packaged vocal lines for each character that, while not actually speaking the lines in the text box, would roughly represent the intent/mood of the dialogue.  A character might say, for example, “My heart flutters when mine eyes behold thy sublime countenance, oh cherished beloved,” in the text box, while the vocal line “WOOO YEAH BRO THAT’S THE GOOD SHIT” plays over it to emphasize the character’s positive excitement.  Exaggeration for humorous effect aside, though, it’s a cute quirk of the Support conversations that does add to their quality in FE13, and the fact that Babysauce has now used FE14’s existing voice acting lines recorded for battle scenarios is just 1 more feather in this mod’s cap.

And it’s worth a decent bit of respect, too, because it means that in addition to transcribing all these dozens and dozens of new conversations, Babysauce is also taking the time to review them for appropriate moments to add these vocal effects, too.  The amount of care and effort that’s been put into this mod is staggering the more I think about it.

Now, it’s all fine and dandy and well and good and nice and spiffy and peachy that this mod exists, and is a lot of fun, and is well done, but of course, not everyone’s got the know-how and tech wherewithal to go around modding their 3DS games.  Or maybe everyone actually does, and it’s just me who’s a slack-jawed moron.  But either way, the great thing about The Unnofficial Gay Fates Add-On is that you don’t actually HAVE to install it to enjoy its content.  Because, as it turns out, Babysauce has also gone and uploaded a video of basically every Support added by the mod to Youtube!  So you can even experience the joy of your favorite ships from the comfort of your own technological disinclination!

So if you like Fire Emblem 14’s cast, but were left in any way wanting about who could hook up, or you’d be interested to see the family dynamics of its first and second generations expanded upon, or even just want to see what happens when I try my hand at silly stupid sappy fanfiction,****** you should check out The Unofficial Gay Fates Add-On mod.  It’s earnest, skillful, and a heck of a lot of fun!















* Unassuming Venusaur’s Same-Sex Marriage Patch, to give proper credit.


** Ha!  “Even.”  As though the shipping isn’t entirely the reason for it.


*** I’m quite pleased that I got to be involved in 1 of these corrections, that being (re)writing the S Support I felt was most mistakenly left out of the game, Camilla with Female Corrin.


**** Children are linked to their fathers in this game, so the child character of Mitama, for example, is always the daughter of her father Azama, while her mother could be any of Azama’s Supports that can reach S Rank.  With this mod, though, Azama could potentially get together with, say, Silas.  Mitama still exists, whether through a surrogate mother or some magical conception-to-birth means, but obviously the stock conversations she could have with her mother are not viable.  But this mod also adds a unique Support, in that case, between Mitama and her second father Silas--it really goes all in on these.  Similarly, since child characters are linked to their fathers, male same-sex pairings in this game leads to 2 child characters who are now siblings--in the example I gave, Sophie, as Silas’s daughter, is also now Mitama’s sister.  And the mod also provides a unique Support between Mitama and Sophie in this scenario which reflects their connection.


***** In fairness, I would assume that the many, many Supports that originated in Unassuming Venusaur’s progenitor to this mod had most of the work done for them.  But Babysauce has still done probably more than half of the total conversations in this mod, I would say.


****** Oh you all KNOW I’m too shameless not to share these things with you directly.  AND share my thoughts on them as if anyone cares.  Enjoy, maybe!

Camilla x Corrin (S Rank): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rflb6JCnaHw
For most gay Corrin S conversations, a simple matter of pronoun-switching is all that’s needed, but Camilla’s specifically involves referencing a scenario--Corrin, a man, and Camilla, a woman, going on a vacation to a hot springs resort together--that just doesn’t have the same social context when it’s between 2 women, so some additional care was called for.  I know this is all a bunch of silly fanfiction, but I’m all the same very pleased with how I’ve reworked this conversation to stay generally in line with the original, but have Corrin’s concern about appearances make a bit more sense.

...And then use that slight alteration as a springboard to add juuuuust a bit of character stuff for Camilla and her obsession with Corrin.  Because Qi Jhong help me I just can’t stop myself.


Mitama x Selkie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQMkdkLB_M
Mitama is my spirit animal and I fucking love her.*******  And Selkie just never ceases to amuse me.  I’m most proud of my Camilla x Corrin S rewrite, but I definitely had the most fun and personally like this Support the most of these.


Mitama x Ophelia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSelw-egmi0
I just have a certain fondness for burdening Mitama with quirky, disruptive, and arguably mildly insane characters, it seems.  Camilla x Corrin is the one I’m proudest of, and Mitama x Selkie is the one I had the most fun with (not that I didn’t enjoy writing all of these, mind you), but objectively, I think the best overall of my Supports is probably this one; it just seems to flow right and bring them together very well.


******* YES I AM AWARE OF THE IRONY OF MY LIKING THE CHARACTER ALL ABOUT HAIKUS, THE FORM OF POETRY DEFINED BY COMMUNICATING WITH STRICT BREVITY.

General RPGs' Characters Walking Toward Something They're Shooting At

It is with full sincerity that I tell you that I struggled with myself over whether this rant should just begin and end with the single sentence, “It’s stupid.”

Because why should I elaborate?  You already know why it’s stupid.  And if you don’t, if you cannot already guess everything I am about to say, then the only explanation is that you’re 1 of the goons in the writer’s room who perpetuates this trope, and I know no one on any of those staffs is reading this blog.

But fuck it, we’ll do this the proper way.  I’m still not over the novelty of seeing words magically appear on a screen that say the thinky-thinky things my head makes inside, after all.  But I’m keeping it short.  Even I have better things to do than dignify something this transparently dumb with a long treatise.  And lest ye forget, I’m the guy who once wrote a critical rant about helmets in RPGs based on Dungeons and Dragons.  So just keep in mind how low that bar is.

There are a lot of advantages to ranged weapons.  Longbows had enough power to penetrate the most advanced, heaviest armor the middle ages could produce--that’s a hell of a lot more than you could say for a guy wielding a sword.  Crossbows are so deadly that the Catholic Church actually banned them in warfare for a little while, on the grounds that they were so unfairly effective killing instruments that God Himself found them hateful--and that’s a quote.*  Spears may dull, axes may rust, clubs may break, and swords do all of those things and more, but as long as you can find some rocks, yes just goddamn rocks, a sling's gonna be a reliable armament, and damned easy to reproduce if it does break.  And of course, the typical star of ranged weapons, firearms?  Handheld ones can be easily concealed, and large-scale stuff like canons can penetrate not just armor, but even vehicles and defensive fortifications.

But the 1 most important advantage to a ranged weapon, the most basic, intrinsic virtue it possesses that even the most slack-jawed drooling dipshit on Earth ought to be able to see, is the fact that they’re, you know...ranged.  You do not have to take the time to approach someone to attack them if you have a bow.  You do not have to deal with whatever close and personal offenses the other guy has available to him when you’re holding a blowgun loaded with a poison dart.  If your opponent has a sword and you’ve got a gun, and he’s more than 7 feet away from you, then congratulations, you win the fight as long as you yourself don’t muck it up by aiming wrong.

Which is why Thane’s death in Mass Effect 3 is utterly idiotic.  Thane, armed with a pistol, is facing off against Kai Leng, who is armed with a katana.  They start off in close quarters as a matter of circumstance, but at a certain point, Thane manages to knock the glee club ninja back about 15 feet or so.  And what does Thane do then?  He fires at Kai Leng, while RUNNING TOWARD HIM.  Completely out of the range of Kai Leng’s outdated wasn’t-even-a-major-weapon-of-warfare-in-its-heyday-so-stop-jizzing-your-pants-about-it-Japan katana, got Kai Leng unobstructed in his sights, possesses a lifetime’s experience of perfect marksmanship as the galaxy’s top assassin, and knows he himself is on death’s door from a terminal illness in his lungs...and Thane intentionally moves toward his enemy.  And oh hey, what a surprise, the man whose lungs are working at 10% capacity and who isn’t armed with a close-quarters weapon gets mortally stabbed immediately thereafter.  It’s almost like throwing away the advantage of range when you have a ranged weapon wasn’t a stroke of tactical genius!

Of course, the situation wasn’t helped by Shepard and company being hit with a heavy dose of Voyeuristic Paralysis Syndrome during the whole fight.

And speaking of Shepard himself being dumb, this isn’t even the only time Mass Effect 3 pulls this idiotic shit.  As long as you don’t have the good sense to download the real ending to Mass Effect, Shepard will, in the Destroy ending, choose to walk into an explosion.  Yeah, the dumbass is faced with the task of destroying a computer console--that’s an inanimate target, mind you--with his pistol, opens fire as he walks toward it, and keeps advancing AS IT EXPLODES.  Kai Leng at least would have attempted to close the gap himself, but the only way that Shepard could suffer damage in this scenario would be to knowingly place himself within the explosion.  And that is exactly where he chooses to be.  It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on and doesn’t have time to turn around--the damn fool actively flinches in his pace as he sees parts shatter and bursts of flame go up from it!  And it ain’t like he could possibly think that his attack isn’t having an effect and thus he needs to get closer for more damage, because, again, he’s REACTING to the explosions from the damage that he is CAUSING to it.

Now, even if I personally love the game besides the horrible ending, a lot of people hate Mass Effect 3, so you may be thinking to yourself that this moronic cliche is only a problem for “bad” RPGs.  Yeah, not so.  I’m fairly sure that almost everyone agrees that Horizon 0 Dawn is a solid title with good writing, and it pulls this exact same stupid shit!  When Rost is squaring off against Helis, this battle starts with Rost being, I dunno, a good 20+ feet away from Helis, with Rost scoring an arrow in Helis’s back while Helis is armed with only a knife.  What’s Rost’s next move?  Why, to hurriedly scramble toward Helis, closing the gap between them so quickly that he only has time to fire off 1 more arrow (which Helis blocks) before he has to engage in hand-to-hand combat with him.  Now Rost ain’t stuck in the last stages of a terminal illness like Thane was, but for Pharasma’s sake, he’s got a chance for several more free shots before Helis can get to him!  Just because the jerk can block 1 arrow (which isn’t relevant since Rost is moving toward him even before that happens so it didn't affect his decision to do so), that doesn’t necessarily mean he could block 2 or 3 more, and even if he can, the worst that comes of that is that Rost still has to take him on with his spear after getting those free shots.  It’s not even like Rost could be worried about hitting Aloy, because Helis stupidly drops her instead of using her as a body shield.  No, he just goes as fast as he can to a distance where his enemy has a chance to kill him, and what do you know, it gives his enemy a chance to kill him.

OOOOOH but it’s so much more dramatic for Rost to rush into close quarters, so much cooler for Thane to do a shooting sprint, so much more cinematic for Shepard to stride headfirst into flaming shrapnel.  Who cares about competent storytelling or character consistency when there’s the chance for extra glittery flare in an action scene, right?

It’s not just an RPG problem.  Oh man is it ever not just an RPG problem.  This dumbass trope rears its empty head practically once a week in other video games and shows and cinema; hell, it might be more reasonable for me to get on my knees and give heartfelt thanks that it’s actually fairly infrequent in this genre.  Nonetheless, it’s a damned stupid cliche, it’s obvious that it’s damned stupid, and creators really need to stop using it.













* I’d kill to see someone crash any given stupid faux-Christian protest rally with all those “God Hates (Insert Marginalized Group Here)” signs and whatnot with his/her own sign proclaiming “God Hates Crossbows.”