How many times have you been to prison? None? Eight? Speaking personally it’s the former: never been, don’t plan to go. And I’m certainly not judging you if you’ve been eight times… just don’t burn my house down. How many times have you been incarcerated in a computer game? I’m willing to guess as many as eighteen thousand times (*belated slight exaggeration warning*). Now, of those times, what proportion was while playing a Japanese RPG? Let’s say 80%...because that will support my argument, and a low number will not. One further calculation, and then I promise we’ll have some fun: how many of those JRPG’s were a Final Fantasy game? I’ll leave you to answer that one yourself, but do ponder it as your eyes traverse the terrifying blank gulf between the end of this paragraph and the beginning of the next...
Deus Ex has a scene in which, emerging from the subway, your protagonist finds himself surrounded: there’s soldiers; policemen; those ABC-AT-ST-ED-209 things from various sci-fi intellectual properties with the chicken legs and, to top it off, an angry, ruby-eyed cyborg. All are pointing guns at him, and all are eager to whisk him away to the local nick (I would say *spoiler warning*, but if you’ve still not played Deus Ex...well, really, what are you thinking? Are you thinking?) I have a great fondness for Deus Ex, largely because during my time in university halls I introduced it to the boys on my floor, who promptly sat alone in their rooms, night after night, twiddling their joysticks whilst the girls sighed and talked about what a bunch of wankers we were. Flash back to that subway entrance: hopelessly outnumbered (although rarely outdressed), Denton takes a nonchalant look around: ruby-eyed cyborg says something along the lines of ‘yew arrrre comink wiz uz, now, yizz?’ Two options are presented. The sensible one is ‘Yes, of course, Hans McForeigner; shall we do the cavity search now or can that wait until we get to the base?’ The rather more mental and by far better reply consists principally of screaming ‘FUCK YOU, YOU BIG AUSTRIAN ROBO-MONKEY! LET’S DANCE!’ whipping out your pistol, beginning to pull the trigger before being promptly rendered into a gooey pulp by a volley of bullets, missiles, dodgeballs and lasers.
It's a bit less dramatic in the picture...
But you know what? You had the choice. I’m not saying for a moment it’s a fair choice, because there’s no way to survive the second option without some godly GEP gun skills, or possibly just God mode. But as a last trenchcoated symbol of defiance, it kicks mountains of arse. Technically the narrative cannot progress without choosing the first option, but I like to think that someone, somewhere out there went with the second option, nodded philosophically as Denton’s bloody gibs bounced off a bystanding hobo, then quietly turned off the PC and never played Deus Ex again. As far as they’re concerned the game is a brief, hopeless struggle against ‘the Man’ which can only end in defeat and explosive life termination for the little guy.
As it happens, choosing the first option does indeed lead to Denton waking up in a cell, only to be given the convenient chance of escape, yadda-yadda, friends become enemies, so-on so-forth until I’m dead from old-age and weary cynicism. And it pisses me off a great deal. It’s what I like to call, in a handy acronym I coined myself if you can believe it, the ‘Captured-by-the-Enemy-and-Taken-to-a-Seemingly-Inescapable-Jail-Only-to-be -Conveniently-and-Improbably-Given-the-Chance-to-Escape-and-Find-a-Treasure-Chest-on the-Way-Out-Containing-All-Your-Confiscated-Loot’ conceit (or the CBTEATTASIJOTBCAIGTCTEAFATCOTWOCAYCL conceit, for short). In the Deus Ex scenario it seems almost excusable, at least within the context of the game universe- Denton is just one man, and in this case one man outgunned, sure to be perforated by many a projectile for non-compliance. In the Final Fantasy universes, though, it makes less to no sense.
The Final Fantasy option to jail...
The main character of any of the recent FF games will, it has often been observed, be a whiney, spikey blond haired, skinny, short-arsed little twat. I can live with that; apart from the spikey blond hair and skinniness it’s like looking into a mirror. The thing that kicks over the crutches I had been using to suspend my disbelief is that these characters often wield a sword as big as sixteen toddlers superglued together, generally fling magic about as if it’s going out of style, and par for the course command mighty, elemental demi-gods who will think nothing of destroying a solar system to poach an egg. And yet (how common a scene is this?) there will inevitably come a point in the game when they are sauntering along only to find themselves surrounded by soldiers- the very same soldiers, mind, which they regularly slaughter by the thousands to work up an appetite for lunch. One of your big, burly warrior characters will reach for his pole-axe, or raise his gun-arm, or start to unzip his flies, but our whiney, blond haired twat will place a warning hand on the burly chap’s arm, as though to say ‘hey sweetie, let’s not make a scene, eh?’ Then the soldiers will part, a cackling thespian villain will step forward, twirling his Dickensian baddie black moustache, and say ‘Mr Bond, my employers would like a word with you...’
And you always just go with them. ‘Off we go to the inescapable hellhole then chaps! Not to worry, I’m sure there’s a secret passage somewhere! Chin up!’ Fuck off. How about this for an option: ‘Tell your employers from us...’ and then you whip out your sword, crack out a limit-break and Omnislash the cretin right between the eyes. Maybe I don’t want to go to prison; perhaps I prefer the ‘blaze of glory’ demise. But a JRPG can’t offer that option, because there’s no way the enemy can beat you down if you don’t want to go down (unless they’re one of those lame-ass superstrong, ‘can’t kill me because I’m part of the plot-development’ characters, but I’ll save that grudge for another day). Logic is backed into a corner: you just killed three hundred T-Rex’s and a medium-sized moon- what are a load of rent-a-soldiers and a lisping, mustachioed sidekick villain really going to do to hamper your progress?
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