So, as I mentioned yesterday, I’m playing Chrono Trigger. This is, at least, my sixth time playing through the game. If that doesn’t suffice as a neon-glowing statement of fanboyism, I don’t know what does. This is more or less my first attempt at a relatively academic blog post, so please, bear with me. For whatever reason, when I play Chrono Trigger, I always play the beginning of the game the same way, even though I know how the events will pan out. I’m not using spoiler tags or anything here because the game is 13 years old at this point, and if you play games and don’t know a damn thing about this game, there is something very wrong with you. In all honesty, this is the first two hours of the game, so if people have any experience with this game, this is the part they encounter.
So as Crono, you enter the Millennial Fair, and you hear Lucca is setting up her new machine at the back of the fairgrounds, and proceed to make your way there. However, in front of Leene’s Bell, you run into a girl and her pendant goes flying. Here is where your actions begin to come under scrutiny. At this point, I always talk to the girl first to make sure the pendant. I wait when she wants candy. I leave the lunch alone. I take the cat to the little girl. Say it’s all my fault in court. However, when it comes time for Crono to fall victim to the judge’s gavel, I always get thrown in jail.
I understand that the event is scripted, and that no matter what, I will be hitting the pen as a result of the plot. However, as I sit there in the trial and watch the jurors account for me as “not guilty”, and see the judge still sentence me to three days of solitary confinement. I can’t help being struck by pangs of dissonance. Despite the fact that I know that I have to spend time in the slammer, I can’t help but feel defeated when I do, regardless of my verdict.
It may have something to do with the first time I played it, where I was destroyed by a totally “Guilty” verdict. That time, I grabbed the pendant first, got impatient waiting, ate the lunch multiple times, etc. Yet, I came away thinking “In this game, I can change the past. Next time, I’ll change how I play it.” So I did, again and again, and now I find myself here.
In my paper on games and narratives (ha! I’ve finally mentioned it!), I began to explore the idea of applying Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm to gaming. Stealing Wikipedia’s line, the theory states that “all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling… and so human beings experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives”. The way we judge narratives is based on fidelity/rationality, or coherence/probability. This begins to tie in to the oft-discussed topic of ludonarrative dissonance, which Michael Abbott describes very well by saying “The world is alive with possibilities, except when it isn't. The world responds to my actions, except when it doesn't,” (in regards to Fallout 3).
Chrono Trigger is a game trying to tell the story of a ragtag band of spunky heroes trying to save the world (or, everything Squaresoft put out up until about… well, still). I want to experience everything the game has to tell me, or has for me to play. I want to enjoy the story and the gameplay. The reason I begin to feel this dissonance is when Chrono Trigger stops being a game and starts telling the story. You can almost imagine the narrator saying, “Regardless of his actions, Crono was thrown in jail…”. As the gavel swings down, and the judge sentences Crono, Fisher would feel the narrative fidelity/rationality snap under pressure. Suddenly, the story we’re being told is no longer coherent with our world view. We know that if a jury finds you not guilty, you walk free. If O.J. Simpson can walk free, Crono should too. I'm feeling all sorts of narrative static, because this “interactive experience” decided it wants to be a scripted chain of events again, and because these events are not the norm of what I hold true. Granted, we have to suspend our disbelief to some extent, such as when fighting monsters or using magic, but this apparently universal concept of justice seems to be shattered.
I know Yakra did it, but in the end, I’m still always pissed.
