Final Fantasy I: An Exercise in Character/Player Connection

I've written before about the idea that, in order for a game to tell its story well, it must do so in the most interactive way possible.  I don't agree with that.  If you want to know why, feel free to read the article.  Essentially, outside of the extreme danger of the idea that a medium must take advantage of its uniqueness in order to be good, there is an inherent connection between the player and their characters in a game that takes place regardless of any special interactive tricks or even story.  And the best example I've seen so far is the first Final Fantasy.

Yes, this Final Fantasy.

Yes, the one that started it all.  I doubt all that many of you have played it, since most of the franchise's attention these days seems to come from how great/overrated VII was or how amazing/boring XIII was (seriously, each game is so polarizing), but it really is an interesting game.  For one, as a big fan of the franchise, it's interesting to see the relatively simple roots of the series; the gameplay is basic, the story is about as simple as it could be while still moving forward regularly, and the four main characters don't have a single line of dialogue.  Yes, not a single line.

The reason for this is because the game lets you choose which classes you have and what they are all named.  You could have a party made of four black mages if you wanted, and name them Harry Potter, Gandalf, Luke Skywalker, and Twilight Sparkle to live out your magic crossover fanfiction fantasies.  That would be stupid and you would die a lot, but you could do it.  Point is, by allowing the player to choose the characters like this, Square gave up the ability to ascribe particular personalities to them, and as a result the characters themselves are simply a vessel for the player's interaction with the game world rather than the fully-realized and complex characters of later Final Fantasy games.

But you know what interested me most about Final Fantasy?  I loved the characters anyway. Those four warriors of light endeared themselves to me in a way that no other game has; perhaps not as intensely as the more fleshed-out characters of other games, but still in a way that none of those characters have.

Especially this one. Freaking Cait Sith.

I didn't care about their personal struggles, because they didn't have any.  I didn't relate to any of them, because there was nothing to relate to.  And to be honest, the story and world were far too cliche at this point for me to really care about them.  I know this game is responsible for most of those cliches, but the elves live in the city of Elfheim?  Really?  The overall narrative and world of the game was the only thing it had going for it outside of the basic gameplay, and thankfully it kept moving at a good pace and was interesting enough to be engaging, but it was still very simple and was obviously little more than a base on which RPGs have been building for decades since.  Really, the story, world, and characters did very little for me in terms of connecting me to a developed and interesting narrative.

And yet I cared about the characters.  Why?  Simply because they were mine.  These were four warriors that I had chosen and named, that I had essentially created.  I chose their identities, and I led them into battle.  My characters succeeded based on my direction and skill, and they failed when I did.  They grew and leveled up, becoming more and more powerful because I led them to.  When they were upgraded to their more powerful forms by Bahamut, my heart lept, and whenever they were killed in battle, it sank.  In other games I cared when the story put the characters in peril, but in this one I cared about my own actions and its effects on my characters in the context of basic gameplay.  It is far from my favorite Final Fantasy game, but to this day it is still the only one in which I level-ground all my characters up to level 99, because I simply cared to see them succeed.

And this guy?  Hardcore
in the higher levels.

So... where did that come from?  How could I care more about these blank slates on a battle-to-battle basis than the characters that captured my imagination in VII, tugged at my heartstrings in X, and enraptured me in VI?  In the absence of actual characters, the bond between me and those four warriors was solidified by my interaction with them.

You can get quite attached to your
family in Fable II, and this man sure
punches you in the gut for it.

This is one of the base unique things about video games; there is an inherent connection between player and protagonist.  It is the only medium in which one can use the word "I" to refer to the main character of a story.  I remember when I was playing Red Dead Redemption, my girlfriend had not yet played many games (which has been fixed since then, to wondrous results), and she got confused because I said something about how my family was in danger until I did what was required of me.  Now after playing Fable II, she understands; the main character of a video game is your character.  Their identity is defined as much by yours as it is by theirs.  And in the case of a game like the first Final Fantasy, the lack of proper character development just increases the extent to which this is true since almost the only defining element of their identity is yours.  The same concept has been used to large extents with the idea of the Silent Protagonist, but more on that later.

The thing to take from this is that, if games like the first Final Fantasy have anything to say about the storytelling power of video games, it's that interactivity doesn't have to be utilized in full to be effective.  The very existence of interactivity in the context of a story connects the player to the characters in a way non-interactive mediums never could.  As much as it is necessary and encouraged for this medium to find new and exciting ways to use this incredible storytelling tool, we must keep in mind that the very presence of it is enough to tell stories in ways we've never even dreamed.

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