General RPG Theory: Developer Large Battleship Studios's Games as a Collective Meta-Story

Major spoilers for Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA in this rant, and I’ll also be speaking with the assumption of knowledge of Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, so, y’know, be warned.  You should probably play the games before reading this.  On the other hand, reading this rant might pique your interest in them, and they're tragically deprived of attention and recognition, so hell, if it means the possibility of more people checking Large Battleship Studios's works out, maybe the price of a few spoilers isn't too high.  I'll leave the choice to you, I suppose.



Back when I was in high school, my English teacher had my class read J.D. Salinger’s 9 Stories, a collection whose last story (Teddy) incorporates concepts from Hinduism like enlightenment and reincarnation, which, having only just read Hesse’s Siddhartha the previous year, I latched onto with fascination.  We were, of course, eventually tested on our 9 Stories unit, and I remember that I was in the middle of the essay component when a stroke of insight hit me--it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps all of the 9 Stories were also tied to the same Hinduist concepts that Teddy more overtly displayed, and that the collection as a whole actually represented a single soul’s journey across lives to reach the enlightenment that would allow it to escape the cycle of reincarnation, with each life being more self-actualized and closer to true understanding until it finally achieved enlightenment with Teddy.

How valid an interpretation of the collection this may be, I couldn’t say--although my teacher really liked it, and I’ve heard that Teddy was chosen as the end of the collection specifically to balance out the brutal and hopeless A Perfect Day for Bananafish that begins the collection, so there may be something to it.  But what mattered to me was that it was a genuinely marvelous moment in which a new level of understanding and capacity for me clicked into place, and I suddenly comprehended an entirely new level of meaning that stories could hold.  A story could be more than the sum of its parts, could exist on a level beyond a self-contained universe of plot and purpose--it could also be a part of a greater whole of its fellows, a cog in a grander machine.  A tale formed only when stringing smaller stories together by their greatest themes and concepts; a universe that could only come into clarity by the joint light of smaller universes in sequence.

Yes: I had had my eyes opened to the fact that individual narrative entities can transcendently amalgamate, and achieve a Yo Dawg of storytelling.

What’s the point of all this jawing and patting myself on the back for getting a good grade on an essay over 20 years ago, you ask?  Well, to entertain myself, for starters, but more importantly, to establish the concept that sometimes a creators’ works, taken together, can tell their own collaborative story above their confines rather than within them.  And also to establish that I really, really like the idea and am always eager to find examples of a meta-level story of this sort.  And we’ve done all this preamble to establish this, because I think I may have recognized something of this sort in the works to date of Large Battleship Studios.

I’ve yapped about LBS and its titles several times now, but as a quick refresher, Large Battleship Studios is an extremely obscure RPG developer headed up mostly by 1 fellow, who goes by Saint Bomber.  Its games are generally very indulgent, but highly intelligent and emotionally complex RPGs, and while each is very much its own entity, they all share some significant commonalities.  You can depend on an LBS title to be packed with amusing banter and referential humor, and a huge focus on romance, nearly always between women--they’re made for huge yuri fans by a huge yuri fan.  Their lore is intricate and unfolds with the elegance of a well-written mystery, the casts are ferociously well- and constantly-developed, and each narrative masterfully knows when to use comedy to lower your guard for an emotionally killing blow, then use comedy again to help you recover from what it just did to you.

But 1 of the most noteworthy and standout shared traits of the LBS canon is a very significant, recurring theme and examination of trauma.  Lingering trauma from the past, trauma created by the events in-game, PTSD, emotional wounds that still weep, the trauma of loss, of rejection, of suffering, of imprisonment, of despair, of terror; coping mechanisms, those who have found ways to live with the scars in their hearts, those who can’t...the enduring pain that shapes us, and whether we carry it or it carries us, is an ever-present and huge part of Large Battleship Studios titles, perhaps to a greater degree than any other RPG can equal.  These are the stories of a creator who has gone through hurt and carried it with him, and channeled it into art and creation, while observing the similar anguishes of others and incorporating them into his stories, as well.

And that’s interesting, and valuable to analyze and comprehend, with each story that Saint Bomber creates.  As I’ve mentioned each time, I have an enormous fascination with and respect for every RPG that Large Battleship Studios releases, and this relentless exploration of trauma within its casts and stories is a major part of that.  But as I was playing the newest LBS release, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and experiencing the ways that trauma is portrayed through its protagonist Simone and her fellow cast members, the ways in which lasting damage is made evident, explored, and handled in AAAVXA made me look back at how the previous LBS titles approached this major theme, and I realized something:

Saint Bomber’s games don’t just individually tell stories about trauma.  Each one’s approach and use of it also, when all taken together in sequence, represent a progressing path to recovery from it.  The games are not just by themselves about the battle to overcome trauma, they are collectively showing that journey, too.

It starts with Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle.  This RPG represents the first step to healing one’s heart and mind, and that is the realization that one is affected by trauma to begin with, that it has a hold over one.  Duchess Catherine comports herself for much of the game quite lightly, and without seeming to think overmuch on the darker things within her and her past, and while after a point it's an unavoidable conclusion that she's carrying a lot of pain and brokenness, it's something she can't seem to touch yet without it overwhelming her.  To let herself really square up to it reduces her to the helpless child she was while going through her torment.  The game involves a discovery (if only for the player) of this hurt, but it's too raw to directly confront or put names to--it can only be salved, with what joys of love her life can be filled with. Catherine is, in the real world, still trapped and unable to escape from that which is hurting and breaking her.

But the game also contains the earliest hope for someone who is harmed and trapped: that there's at least the possibility that life will be able to be good and fulfilling someday. There is the hope that this situation is something that can one day be in the past, rather than the present (as evidenced by the fact that the entire fulfilling and joyous potential life that the game displays is actually a prophecy Catherine has dreamt for herself).  Before any action to bring resolution can be taken, the first step to healing is to know that there is something to heal from, and to believe that recovery is possible.  With its light but insistently assessing touch at Catherine’s still-tender psyche, and the game’s nature as a promise to herself of what can someday be, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle represents this first step aptly.

The journey continues with Quantum Entanglement.  A survival-horror in which protagonist Marine and her girlfriend Gabby rely on one another not only to survive, but to hold themselves together and keep going in the face of extreme fear, stress, and horror over the death they’re constantly confronted with along the way, QE is a confrontation of trauma by (re)living it in real time.  As such, it represents an advancement from Catherine’s situation of only being able to very slightly touch the wound in her psyche before recoiling in pain--the terror and revulsion are here, unavoidably acknowledged and struggled with, and thus in QE trauma is defined, which allows one the courage and fortitude to fight it.

Additionally, methods for responding to and handling emotional injury now make their first real appearance in LBS titles.  Marine and Gabby, and ODSA, are a warring dichotomy between facing the trauma for what it is, and defense mechanisms that bury or otherwise avoid it in some way--memory wipes, branching timelines more like the end of a frayed rope than an expanding tree, different and sometimes mentally concurrent selves, these are good analogies for things like repression and compartmentalization. Up to this point in Marine and Gabby's life, the procedures (akin to avoidance strategies) of ODSA have been working, but now the traumatic situation will be avoided no longer, and they have to confront it, accept what it’s doing to them, and fight through it.

As terrible and overwhelming as the disaster that Marine and Gabby must survive is, nothing can be handled and defeated before it is known, and both the mental tools which begin the process of dealing with trauma, and the unavoidable necessity of undergoing that process, make themselves known.  The deep-rooted pain that was recognized in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is now defined in Quantum Entanglement, and the process to reach the dreamt-of point beyond it has now begun.

The game that follows is A Dragon’s ReQuest.  Although they're painful and she doesn't often, protagonist Hinoki seems far more able to acknowledge the agonizing incidents in her past in more frank and whole detail than Catherine was, and not just understand that they do affect her in the present, but also consciously recognize at least some of how they do so. She represents having progressed, through Quantum Entanglement's frank facing of the darkness and fear, to the point that one can carry the weight of one's damage--even as it still harms!--and still accomplish great things in spite of its hold. Her trauma still colors her ability to see and process the world and other people, like how she almost spontaneously grasped at the straw of Payola perhaps secretly being her mother.  It’s an impulse thought of want and pain that comes to her seemingly out of nowhere in the conversation which shows that her traumas are still influencing her, but ultimately, Hinoki can function in her life, and even function well enough to do great things (in this case, undertake a world-saving RPG quest).  Great a heroine though Marine really is, what she accomplished in Quantum Entanglement was all in reaction to, and triumphing against, the traumatic incident thrust upon her.  And being able to fight back against one’s trauma, and see landmarks of victory in their quest to overcome it, is important.  Hinoki’s achievements and triumphs, on the other hand, are outwards; she works toward and achieves goals unrelated to the burdens of her own pains.  She is living a functional life that, if still colored by her trauma, is not defined or halted by it.

As such, A Dragon’s ReQuest represents a stage in the ongoing voyage of recovery at which one has progressed enough to be able to look at, and contemplate, one’s trauma without having it overtake one, and while it still weighs upon the sufferer in inescapable ways which may, unwanted, make themselves known, it no longer defines all that one is and does.  It’s an important milestone in the journey of healing that ADRQ displays, to be at a point where one knows that one can live a functional life and accomplish goals that exist independent of the scars within one.

Finally, we arrive at Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  Although there are moments when they overcome her, Simone not only knows about many of her points of trauma and their triggers, she can openly address them and relay them to others, and speak of trauma as a subject with some knowledge and candor. Simone has accepted that she carries lasting pain, and that that's not going to change, but she's also taking steps to not just live with it, but to move forward with her life in ways that don't need to specifically account for it.  Her living a late adolescence now, for example, is a way of building psychological foundations that she didn't have a chance to do back during that actual period.

If A Dragon’s ReQuest showed us a point in the journey of recovery in which one functions and succeeds in spite of their trauma, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA strides forward still to display a moment at which one is beginning to function and succeed simply on one’s own terms, without the trauma always having its hand upon one’s life.  In ADRQ, Hinoki managed to function and achieve while she carried the weight of her damage on her back, but in AAAVXA, Simone is at a point in which her harm and hurt are forced to walk on their own--still there, sometimes even getting in her way, but the rest of the time forced to merely stand beside or even behind her as she lives her life.  It’s a point in which the effort, time, and work that have gone into the healing process are demonstrable--even if there are still some parts of it that are blackouts for her, Simone knows her trauma in the qualified way that comes with things like research, therapy, social support structures, etc.  The tools and methods she’s using to deal with her pain are not just basic coping mechanisms, they’re ones specifically suited to her.

The journey to healing is not over by the time we reach Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA--it may, in fact, never truly be finished--but this game does show us a healthier, more positive place on that journey in which real progress has been made and one has been armed with tools and knowledge that allow one to meaningfully handle one’s trauma.  The creation of a true and free Alouette in the game is a symbol of a renewal of the self and a real step forward in which the past is finally just that: an element that happened, that will never not be a relevant part of one, but doesn't have to be something that derails the present and future.

It may even, in fact, be that the game is meant at times to look at the person who comes out of a bad experience and rebuilds herself as potentially greater than she could otherwise have been.  Saint Bomber posed a question to me after reading my initial rant on AAAVXA of whether the game was, as I said, a celebration of anime and an exploration of trauma, or whether it might instead be a celebration of trauma and an exploration of anime?  Which of course could just be him yanking my easily distracted chain, but as I'm loathe to disregard any bone he tosses my way about his intentions or thoughts in making these games, I've reflected and come up with multiple instances in AAAVXA in which Simone is better suited to be a heroine and a healer because of her traumatic past than she possibly could have been otherwise.  So while I don't know whether the game as a whole truly represents a celebration of trauma per say, there's definitely a case to be made that AAAVXA is, in addition to a reassuring triumph that there can be a time when the past is truly the past, a dipping of toes into the idea that there can be genuine good that comes of it, and celebrating that fact.

And that’s it, for the moment.  There’s more to come from Large Battleship Studios, but for now, this is the general impression I’ve gotten of a gradual journey of recovery that Saint Bomber’s titles could describe when taken as a collective whole.  I’ll be interested to see what the next title’s overall nature will contribute to this meta-story!