So, one of the main game ideas I want to look at has to do with mixing the ideas of faith and control in a game setting. Basically the gameplay element will consist of the main character being able to interact with the "faith" of others which by the large appears to him as an orbs of yellow light in the general vicinity of the person it belongs to.
Obviously, for this to be a compelling game, I should go into this with a deep understanding of faith and how people and people-groups interact with faith.
It seems to me that games have done a great job of illustrating the mechanics of faith. They have systems in Civ V and other games that uses "faith" as a resource that directly influences the gameplay or use religion as a context for a character or an expansive lore. But there seems to be no games taking on elements of "faith" which forms the heart of religion.
I mean you see stuff like Bioshock Infinite which really did nothing to explore religion and more used religion as a set of symbolic set pieces easily replaceable with Objectivism of Rapture, or some other out there philosophy. I think one game that came very close to exploring faith (and one of the reasons why it's my favorite game of all time) was FFX. You cant deny that faith was at the heart of the narrative. We had Yuna struggling to hold to her faith and follow through the tenants of her religion despite knowing it would lead to her ultimate demise, we had Tidus the outside who is thrust into a new world and is forced to confront his own beliefs when seeing evidence of Aeons and the passage of time all around him, and Wakka who turns to religion and faith as a mechanism to shield himself from the loss of his brother and the despair of living in Spira.
When I say it only "almost" addressed faith in a crucial way was that it let go of a chance to explore faith not only through narrative, but also through gameplay. I think this could have come into play most strongly at the part of the game when Yuna decides with Tidus to reject the final summoning and defeat Sin on their own. At this point, Yuna had renounced her previous faith in her religion (though still maintaining her faith in her desire to save the world but that's beside the point). There SHOULD have been a direct consequence as a result of this choice in terms of gameplay. Something as simple as an inability to summon during this interval, or only being able to summon very weak versions of her Aeons would have been an extremely compelling metaphor that would fit perfectly with the arc of the story and lore. Hell, Yuna literally prayed to the Faiyths to summon physical manifestations of the faith and souls of those who gave their lives fighting Sin. It would have driven the point home HARD, and a regaining of her abilities to summon when she expressed her commitment to defeating Sin by her own strength and a re-channeling of her faith could have served to supplement the gameplay through the narrative arc. Leaving the power level of the Aeons consistent with before here would underline the point that that was what Yuna truly wished to do all along, and having them come back stronger from the transition would illustrate that her faith was no longer fettered with the hesitation that her ultimate sacrifice in lieu of her burgeoning love of Tidus had inspired.
Wakka too could have been improved not in terms of changing any aspects of gameplay temporarily or not, but simply by exploring the effects of how everything that he believed was far from what he had been taught. He expresses distaste and confusion when seeing the actions of Maester Seymor at Operation Mihen, which is an understandable response, but at Zanarkand and Yuna's decision, he follows in a way not befitting his own character. He declares earlier that he would do whatever Yuna wished and follow in her stead, but this half hearted declaration said in a more resigned tone then anything is not a sufficient basis for his following Yuna and Tidus without SOME kind of great personal turmoil in reconciling or abandoning his faith. His happy-go-lucky persona would not be able to deflect contemplation on actions that go against everything that he declared himself to believe for the sake of his acceptance his life with his dead parents, brother, and the explicitly stated 2 failed pilgrimages he and Lulu were privy to before they embarked again with Yuna.
I want to explore the idea of faith because in Games there is an over saturation of Faith bursting out of their testicles Paladins or complete atheistic apathy with not only no middle ground, but no struggle with faith or transition and loss and renewal of faith which seems to make up such a core of humanity's interaction with faith.
I guess that's all for now. I'll flesh out my actual game idea and stuff on Friday.
Peace Brah.
I don't think that Civ V used faith in interesting way. Personally, I felt that it was just tacked on and was but another resource I had to keep track of.
ReplyDeleteFor FFX I think that the ability to summon and cast spells and whatnot can be interpreted to be an innate skill. Yuna can summon aeons, but it is never stated that it is because of faith towards a particular religion that she is able to do that. Rather, I think that it is just because of her interactions with powerful spirits and that religion was put onto this rare and powerful ability after the fact.
For incorperating faith as a mechanic... I think it would work a lot better if you tried to use it in the context of an individual's mental state. Like you can talk about how faith can give fulfillment and give community but that it can blind you to the truth and how living with doubt can be difficult and etc. However if you try to incorperate it in a large scale, you'll get like less synergy because like getting more faith equalling +1 to happiness is not very meaningful.
Civ V is an example of using religion and faith in terms of mechanics and resources. I didnt claim that it was interesting. As for FFX stuff, the story directly contradicts what you are saying canonically. BRAHHH
ReplyDeleteFor the Civ V thing, religion and faith were just window dressing words for another arbitrary resource. You could have replaced "faith" with "banana drive" and the overall meaning would be the same.
ReplyDeleteFor the FFX thing, I don't think that it's ever explicitly said why Yuna and other summoners can channel aeons and others can't besides some vague reason about being "chosen by the faith". Tidus himself is an odd entity because he came from a time before Yevon and all that nonsense existed. If we define faith as a measure of trust in a religious institution, then faith isn't shown to be all that importaint in FFX through gameplay, which implies that it isn't a necessary component for power in summoning aeons.