So on Saturday I indulged in my weekly Mother 3 play session--
("Oh God, she's talking about Mother 3 again, you sneak up behind her with this piano wire while I slip this cyanide into Mackey's coffee.")
Please let me live. I don't know when I'm going to be so motivated to pick a game's brain ever again. Mother 3 is unlike any RPG I've ever played--and for the simplest reasons. This, more than anything, is what fascinates me about the game. Shigesato Itoi realises that the easiest way to get people to love your characters is to treat them like human beings. For some reason, woefully few of his fellow RPG designers have picked that up.
It's rare to find an RPG cast that everyone can relate to on a human level. Mother 3's world-saving brigade casts ground-shaking magic and racks up experience points and throws giant staples at enemies like any other JRPG (okay, the staples, not so much), but Itoi wants us to feel close to them. So he draws us in by being realstic about the one thing that unites even Superman with the common Earthling: family.
Here there be spoilers.
(Oh and don't feed Mackey any cyanide. Thank you. His parents appreciate your restraint.)
Parents don't mean much in JRPGs. They usually exist as target practise for bad guys, a catalyst to turn fresh-made orphans into Super Saiyans. In instances where they do survive, they stand blankly in front of the kitchen sink all day, every bit the same plastic "house" accessory as the ever-ticking clock, the endlessly-burning fire and the assembly line coffee table with the book nailed to it.
Or, sometimes a parent exists as a shadowy legend that the hero is destined to chase (sidenote: DragonQuest V did a wonderful, wonderful thing by casting you as an aspiring hero who travels along with his Pop, then grows up and makes more traveling/slime-fighting babies). In short, mom and dad are a springboard to get the main character out of the house and on the road. The standard shonen game hero is usually fine with this, even though he's a little punk who's barely off the tit and has probably never spent a night away from home. In fact, he's rarin' to go without a backwards glance.
JRPGs never grew up, much as fans like to think they went through a growth spurt with Final Fantasy VII. Realistically, they share a lot in common with young adult fiction. The story isn't supposed to be about parents, right? It's supposed to be about the kid, the adventurer the audience is supposed to relate somehow. Parents are old and slow. They're uncool.
But moms and dads are cool. All right, so "cool" might not be a great descriptor, but as you grow older, you start to appreciate the dedication your mom and dad have towards one another. The bond between two people is a deep and ancient thing that has held society together since the dawn of humanity. If you're lucky enough to have two parents who still love each other after years of living together, you're witness to something special. It's not as exciting as a rampaging dragon that only you can stop, but it's still one of the most powerful forces on Earth.
It's Itoi's exploration of this bond that makes Mother 3 special. In the game's first chapter, Lucas vacations with his grandfather, mother and brother in the mountains. Mom (Hinawa) sends a carrier pigeon to tell Dad (Flint, stuck at home) that they'll all be coming home that evening. A forest fire begins a chain of bad juju that prevent Hinawa, Lucas and Claus from coming home. There's one brief scene where Flint, unsure about his Hinawa's whereabouts even after the fire is put out, retreats inside their house and reads over the note she sent. Even with mere sprite graphics and Flint's silence, you can clearly feel what he's thinking.
Eventually, Flint gets the inevitable bad news: Hinawa died to save Lucas and Claus from a nasty creature altered in an experiment and set loose in the mountains. Flint loses it completely, seizing a burning stick from the fire pit his sons are warming themselves next to and pummelling fellow villagers who try to comfort him. He breaks down further when Claus goes missing, and as the game progresses over three years, Tazmily's villagers remark that Flint does nothing except visit Hinawa's grave and search for Claus.
People freak out when their significant other is killed. They maintain fruitless searches for children long after others have given up and moved on. The loss of Hinawa and Claus irrevocably changed Flint the way it would change any human being--so why is this the first time a JRPG has conveyed such a sad but common occurence so powerfully? Why is this the first time, in my recollection, that a JRPG husband has had such a strong reaction to the death of his companion?
I'm holding hope that more game developers will begin to look at their family for inspiration instead of bothering with more corrupt Churches and Governments.
Related Links:
The Reason Why Mother 3 Never Came to America
Mother 3 Makes Me Feel Human Again
OST: Mother