Happy New Year, all! No better way to start a fresh new year than by immediately souring it with nitpicky complaining, so let's get right down to business!
When you get down to it, even though the relationship/legacy of a character’s father is 1 of the most used--and the most frequently unnecessary--narrative tools in RPGs (and practically all other forms of fiction), there’s a pretty damn limited set of dimensions that this father-child dynamic usually takes on.
Generally, everything boils down to a question of what the father is, both unto himself and in relation to his child, rather than who. RPG fathers are important for their legacy, the facts of their existence, their actions in the world, the whats rather than the whos like who they are and who they have been to their son or daughter. Pop’s significance to a narrative comes in forms of being a motivational figure for the protagonist to avenge (Greil and Ike from Fire Emblem 9), or an impressive icon whose legacy the hero is expected and/or struggling to live up to (James and the Lone Wanderer in Fallout 3), or an antagonist whose legacy the hero is expected to resist and overcome (Jecht and Tidus in Final Fantasy 10)...or hell, sometimes it just boils down to goddamn eugenics, in which Dad’s basically only important for what family line or species he is (Cecil and KluYa in Final Fantasy 4). And sometimes it’s all of these things crammed together in a confusing, poorly-written, badly-conceived messy jumble, because fucking Xenogears just has to be fucking Xenogears.
It’s a very lazy trend overall in the genre, because it allows the game to shamelessly milk Dad Drama* without having to actually create and write a relationship between father and child that extends at all past this single narrative point. These fathers can be as distant as you like, have as little physical presence as you like, and you can still get your money’s worth out of them. Half the time, they don’t have to even really exist as characters, just plot points who can count themselves lucky to have gotten even a few lines in (Suou in Xenosaga, Wazuki in Chrono Cross, the Human Noble father in Dragon Age 1). At other times, their connection to their kid stays unknown or irrelevant for so long that even if they ARE an actual character, there’s still really no development of a specifically father-child relationship to be found (Hauser in Wild Arms 4, Kratos in Tales of Symphonia, Jeralt in Fire Emblem 16). You don’t have to know anything more about paternity than a whiptail lizard who briefly glanced at the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s entry for “Father” to more than meet the standards RPGs have set for depicting fatherhood in their stories.
Frankly, it makes me wonder sometimes if there’s anyone writing for RPGs who’s actually especially comfortable with their own relationship with their dad. This bizarre combination of fixation, and constantly keeping the portrayals of that fixation at emotional arm’s length, doesn’t feel like it comes from someone who’s really secure about the subject.
It’s also a rather distinctly male-oriented perspective on the connection of a father to his child, as far as I can tell. I mean, obviously every case is different. Still, I think by and large, an obsession with living up to or opposing Dad and/or Dad’s legacy/expectations, and this thought that what Papa is to oneself being the most essential part of the father-child relationship, rather than who he and his kid are to one another and who they have made each other into through their shared love and communication, is far more a signature perspective of sons than daughters. Unsurprising, of course, given that society is generally much more insistent on questions of a father’s legacy, lineage, and emotionally distant/absent respect applying to sons than daughters. And stupid societal expectations of men not adequately opening and expressing themselves emotionally to other men doesn’t help the matter any.
Not to say that this father-child dynamic is strictly found in male characters, of course. Chris and Wyatt in Suikoden 3, Maduin and Terra in Final Fantasy 6, Cassius and Estelle in The Legend of Heroes 6-1, there’s plenty of examples of female characters with plot-relevant fathers in this same narrative mindset. Some are even really good and well-crafted--Virginia and Werner in Wild Arms 3 are among the finest that video games can offer on the matter, for example. But even when it’s a daughter, if her relationship with her dad is defined by these what factors that don’t require any real, personal relationship with him, it still feels distinctly like a father-son dynamic.
It’s not that there’s NO deviation from this box that RPGs have placed paternal relationships within, but it has gotten to the point that I actually felt pleasantly shocked to recently witness the relationship between Lita and her father in Ara Fell. Lita and her dad have an actual, honest-to-Saranrae character story of a father and a daughter with an emotional, normal relationship. Lita is a young woman whose adventurous and initially brash personality is at odds with her father’s desire for her safety and stability. Through conversation, conflict, and circumstance, they reach a point at which Lita’s father accepts that he cannot, and shouldn’t even if he could, keep her sheltered from the world. His acceptance and his encouragement is part of Lita’s journey to come into her own, and helps her to move forward with her adventure. Her old man isn’t of narrative value for his ability to die dramatically or get horny for other species or be a villain or any of that stuff. Lita’s father is important to Ara Fell for being a father to her. Who he is to Lita, how his relationship with her is a part of her character, that’s what matters. And somehow, this simple, believable, relatable portrayal of a normal relationship where a father is protective of his little girl, then eventually accepts and encourages her independence and ability, feels almost alien to the genre. Their bond, their love, isn’t just that of family as some obligation-based concept--their bond and love is that of family which has lived as family, and that really stood out to me, and it’s a weird state of affairs that it did.
It’s unfortunate that RPGs are like this. I’ve felt for a long time that the “Oh my GOD look look look it’s DAD!” card is hugely overplayed in RPGs, but maybe I would feel differently if these games didn’t so drastically limit themselves in what a story-relevant father can be.
* Dare you to read those last 4 words aloud in a crowded room.
Sunday, January 8, 2023
General RPGs' Paternal Relationships' Limited Dimensions
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Fathers usually seem to be tricky to implement into narratives. They tend to fall into three categories: glorified hero, deadbeat loser, or villain. Note that heroic and loser fathers are two sides of the same coin (one presents a legacy to live up to and maybe surpass, the other one to avoid). Often, stories circumvent these archetypes by making the father dead or non-existent. Crono from Chrono Trigger must have had a dad, but only his mother is ever seen, with the dad never even being mentioned.
ReplyDeleteThe heroic fathers present a clear narrative dilemma: if they're so great, why aren't they saving the world instead of the protagonist? Trails in the Sky goes very far out of its way to construct a plot that centers around preventing Estelle's dad from doing just that (he still ends up saving the day, anyway). The two typical solutions to this issue are to have the father be dead or to make him into the villain. Fathers can make for good villains, in my view, but Star Wars turned the case where the hero doesn't know his dad is the villain into a cliche. Now, everyone sees that twist coming a mile away.
I don't really mind these limited options. Any one of the common father figures (hero, loser, villain) can work with the right writing. I think that Estelle's relationship with her dad works fine (maybe play the sequels? The first game is only a third of that story). Honestly, with a case like Ara Fell, I don't even notice or barely remember the protagonist's dad. That can be the problem with having fathers outside the usual archetypes. They don't serve much purpose in the narrative and can be excised (like Chrono Trigger did with Crono's non-existent dad).
The solution to having more interesting fathers in RPGs appears simple to me: make the protagonist a father and focus on his relationship with his child. Unfortunately, Japanese writers, in particular, seem to be fundamentally opposed to having heroes above the age of 18, while western writers don't feature many fathers as heroes, either. The original Nier stars a father in its Gestalt version from 2010, although you're stuck playing the hero as a brother if you get the Replicant remake that came out in 2021. I like how Nier handles the father's relationship with his daughter, as it felt a little different from the typical offerings that we usually get.
Yeah, we definitely need more parents as protagonists in RPGs. It was a good move when Lufia 2 did it, I think it was a great characteristic of Fallout 4's plot and purpose, and pretty much everyone agrees that Geralt's story and character in The Witcher 3 is high quality. Admittedly Fire Emblem 14 dropped the ball in its own careless take on potentially making Corrin a mom, and Dragon Quest 5 was more interested in failing by leaning into the Dragon Quest rather than capitalizing on its own good ideas, but overall, there's a good track record of parent protagonists whose parental roles are story-relevant. More cases of this are needed.
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