I got sick about dystopian chaotic worlds that don’t work - where the hero’s journey is about saving the world from some impending ruin, or about preventing a starving dystopian city from being blown up.
In Trails, the conversations you have with NPCs remind you that while you’re on the trail of some bandits or suspicious people, other people are not evacuating, sheltering in fear, etc; they’re living their lives, keeping up to date on modern trends, making travel plans to other countries.
So, so many worlds just don’t have space for characters to have those thoughts. It’s always fear around impending disasters, or how to respond to a fight, or grim poetry about how much the world has fallen into darkness.
It especially hurts that some people live so much of their lives in these fictional worlds that they start to believe people would be like that when they go outside. Worlds like the one in Trails, even if they spend a lot of time being boringly polite, are a nice call back to reality.
This isn’t quite in line with your question but it’s adjacently meta:
the first time you fall to your death in Bastion the (amazing) narrator says “…and then he fell to his death. … Ahh, I’m just foolin’.” and then you respawn on the platform because videogame.
Marathon (1994) has several call outs to the player when the AI giving you mission briefing calls the PC out for not caring and just wanting to shoot things. There’s a lot of meta commentary in that series.
I like the simple messages you get in Quantum Conundrum every time you die. They’re not super serious things, but just things that the main character will never get to experience as they grow older, ranging from mundane things like not getting a drivers license to more realistic teen/immature young adult fantasy of eating a whole can of whipped cream as a meal.
Portal and Portal 2 are packed with passive aggressive remarks. One of my favorites:
Well done. Here are the test results: You are a horrible person. I’m serious, that’s what it says: “A horrible person.” We weren’t even testing for that. Don’t let that horrible-person thing discourage you. It’s just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother’s decision to abandon you on a doorstep.
The worst part is, in Super Mario 3D Land, at least, if you even see the invincible leaf, it locks you out of getting all the stars on your save file. The game doesn’t even have the courtesy to tell you.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has one of the most interesting world in stories inside and outside of gaming. I hope we will see many more stories set in that world.
The hook alone is great.
Spoiler for the prolog and trailers.Around the end of the 19th century the whole world broke apart and a part of Paris (called Lumiere in the game) was thrown into the sea. And this giant “Paintress” started painting the number 100 on an enormous monolith and each year she counts down. And everyone who is that old or older evaporates into ash and flower petals.
So the people started sending out expeditions to find out wtf is going on.
Spoiler for the rest of the game.The world is actually a magical painting the Paintress’ son made when he was a child. For him, his sister and their parents to play in. But when he was an adult their other sister was tricked by “the Writers” into setting a fire which killed him. In her grief the mother fled into the painting because it was the last bit she had of him. Fearing she would stay in there until she died of starvation the father went in as well to get her out. As she wouldn’t relent he started erasing the painting and she tried to prevent that. Every year painting the age of the people she wouldn’t be able to save from him onto the monolith. So we actually have this world of magical Painters and Writers who are at war with each other and it is hinted that there are Musicians as well. And who knows what other artists with magical powers exist in this world. I’m imagining Programmers joining the fray in the future. The possibilities both inside any art pieces and outside in the “real” world are endless.
Playing Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires. Made a whole bunch of vocaloid custom characters + Teto, my final goal is to assemble all of them to conquer China. Also Miku is using a weapon that has an attack where she tosses someone to the ground and snaps their neck which is really funny.
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