Sincerity in games and from creators
blog time
One factor in a game's story that I find deeply compelling is sincerity. Sincerity from characters, absolutely, but in some ways sincerity from a game's creators is more important.
But what exactly do I mean when I say this? Well, the obvious definitions "free of pretense, honest, genuine" are good starting points but I should just use an example. Final Fantasy XIV, the acclaimed MMORPG, is a deeply sincere game. Few characters exist in the realm of deceit, even villains are genuine in their villainy. Characters speak plain their intentions, feelings, motivations and inflect their beings with that sincerity.
Beyond the game world, the creators speak with a frank sincerity that I connect with. Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P), the game's director and producer puts his worldview out there for others to dialogue with, plainly and with confidence.
“The world is always full of mysteries,” Yoshida said via email. “And, even in real-world affairs, some unbelievably sorrowful incidents do happen. They may not necessarily be from some overwhelming threat; they could be horrors born from personal ideology, or tragedies caused by a concentration of power, or things that arise as a result of beliefs based on religion or education. So as we clumsily try our best to understand and overcome various barriers between ourselves, we’re still a long way off from where we want to be.”
He's really just going for it when talking about the Endwalker story and how our reactions to the tragedies of our world align with how characters in the game deal with the designed tragedies of their world. It's not perfect, characters fail and falter, or it may take years to reach a pay-off as characters try. But they keep trying, they take that next step.
One quote that pops up a lot when discussing the philosophy of XIV is this one from Ardbert during the Shadowbringers expansion, "If you had the strength to take another step, could you do it?"
There is a deep hope for the future throughout FFXIV's main storyline, even as it attempts to balance the pain that has occurred with the courage one needs to keep going.
FFXIV is, let's not kid ourselves, also severely goofy. Swathes of the game are light-hearted adventures and silly affairs. The Hildibrand questline is the ultimate example of this, with players helping the agent of enquiry deal with all sorts of bullshit. You fight the interdimensional swordsman Gilgamesh and his pet chicken Enkidu, Hildibrand dies several times(?), he's perhaps a zombie right at the start of it all, and the developers frequently use his quest chain to test new technology and push their engine in new ways.
Beyond the Manderville wackiness, there's a level 50 Primal fight against a bunch of Moogles and their Primal - Good King Moggle Mog XII - set to music that shares more than a passing resemblance to This Is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The game is happy to swing back and forth between these two extremes, as well as enjoy a range of tones in-between. The developers know there is room in the world they made for everything to be in it, and they know that if they approach all those disparate tones sincerely that it'll work. And it does!
The difficulty of insincerity
Let's talk about Forspoken, because I enjoy picking on games that didn't do well. Forspoken came out in early 2023 to middling reviews and a pretty poor response from the Internet Discourse writ large. A lot of people picked on the game's writing, tone, quips, and characters. I think this may be a bit overblown, but I do think the game regularly undermines itself and comes across as artificial and insincere.
The main character, Frey, is transported to a magical world called Athia from New York City. She gets there and basically spends the entire game making fun of how absurd everybody talks and acts.
In the above video, Frey, still quite new to this world, is put in shackles and brought in front of some folks in ornamented clothing. Guards hold spears at the ready, and Frey makes fun of how Cuff speaks and then of the whole affair.
Cuff, "I would humble thyself and answer their questions."
Frey, "I got this. I'm used to repping "thyself.""
Cuff, "I don't think you comrepehend the gravity of your situation."
Frey, "I've gotten myself out of much tougher scrapes than this, thank you very much." okay but have you??? You're being held at spearpoint in front of people in wild headgear and you're not on Earth
Frey, "So why don't you shut your shiny mouth and let me do the talking?"
Councilman Jennesh, "Look at her! She speaks with invisible beings! Is she in cahoots with demons?"
Frey, "What? No! And who uses "cahoots"?"
Councilwoman Dax, "I would like to hear the answer to Councilwoman Bellette's question, child."
Frey, "my name is Frey Holland. I do not know how I got here[...] and all I want is to go home."
Councilwoman Dax, "Her vestments are strange. Where is she from?"
Frey, "Hell's Kitchen."
Councilman Jennesh, "You see? She is hellspawn--how else could she survive the Corruption?
Councilman Treahy, "Please... How did you emerge from the corruption of Junoon unscathed?"
Frey, "I wouldn't exactly say "unscathed"--"
Councilman Jennesh, "'Tis because she and the Corruption are one and the same! We must execute her immediately!"
Some time passes in the scene and Frey is sent to the Tower of Binnoi (a prison)
Frey, (upon learning she is going to prison) "What? Oh hell no, I'm not getting locked up again! Let me go! Let me go! Don't touch me, asshole!" Frey attempts to fight the guards off, and is summarily stopped cause they have spears and are trained to some degree.
This scene has Frey make fun of words used by Cuff and a Councilman, argue about her not being put to death and generally be a little pissant about the whole thing. The writers are constantly lampshading the world they've built, leading to the whole endeavour feeling insincere and like it's all one big joke for players. "Isn't it funny that we wrote these characters to say words people don't say like "thyself" and "cahoots" - not to mention "vestments," the scene's writer is saying. The tone should be serious! Our main character could be facing serious corporeal punishment for believed transgressions and she is going off about words that feel archaic to her.
As a complete aside, the whole scene kind of doesn't work given that it happens pretty early in the game, and we know its not how this story will end. Like what's the point of threatening story-driven death (vs player-controlled death) or prison to this character?
But anyway, Forspoken's problem is that it continues to have this insincere character push up against a sincere world facing genuine calamity and all she can do, for a major part of the game, is make fun of how these people talk or argue with Cuff. I can see this story working, this world connecting with people more, but I don't see how you do that through the eyes of a character who is more than happy to make fun of the world she is in.
Game developers need to maintain some level of consistency of tone within their games. If you want to be irreverant and lampshade stuff, that should be the majority of your game's tone. If you want to be serious and make players take things seriously, you can't have a few voices - especially prominent ones like your protagonist - making fun of it all.
The Simpsons did the opposite of Forspoken in the Season 8 episode "Homer's Enemy". Which sees one Frank Grimes begin working at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant alongside Homer. Grimes, or Grimey as his friends called him, exists as an audience surrogate. He constantly calls out the absurdity of the show, Homer's ability to live through ordeals that would kill a "real" man, and ultimately (spoilers for a 25 year old episode of TV) dies trying to do things Homer does with ease (and without dying). The episode works! It's never replicated again in the run of the show, Grimes is "real" in a way that nobody else in the show is. But if you dumped Homer into an episode of, say, Succession it would feel at complete odds with the entire town of the show.
Sincerity in fiction requires creators to believe in the stories they're telling! You can't get someone to invest in a $70 dozens-hour long video game that doesn't believe in the story it's attempting to tell. It's like running backwards around a race track. Yeah, you'll get to the finish line but it isn't going to count when everybody else is running the other way.
Creators, I implore, don't lampshade yourselves! Suspend our disbelief and go whole hog! Make someone who just got dumped into a magic world and is throwing magic fire from her fingers freaked out about that instead of making fun of the way people talk! And if you have the range and capacity to do it - do serious and silly stuff, but don't go mixing the two at differing degrees and without considering how a player will read that.