Our Man in Japan -- MegaTen and Tokyo
DeanRaker - Columns - Comments - 07/10/04
By Shou Suzuki (a.k.a. Kitsune)
Everyone Has an Agenda
Throughout, I wish to be clear that I have a purpose. I cannot call myself a fan of this series: I've enjoyed it a great deal of the games and it ranks very high in the RPG ladder, but I wouldn't buy them indiscriminately, nor would I rank them among my personal all-time favorites. But I am attracted to it for its singular vision of spirituality and its accomplished game design. Nocturne has some virtues that seem to be universally agreed to be the foundation of a good game, but others don't translate unless you view them from the perspective of a Japanese audience. Assuming Atlus keeps their schedule, Nocturne will be released in North America in September, with Digital Devil Saga, another game in the same mold, in November. Nocturne will be competing with Fable and Square's Eternal Hype-Sucking Machine, the accessible and overtly pretty Star Ocean 3. Even in Atlus's court, there's some stiff competition from Nippon Ichi's hardcore-love-magnet, Phantom Brave, and this just a month before Nocturne hits. Then there are other RPGs like Baten Kaitos, Shadow Hearts 2, Pokemon Red Flame/Green Leaf and Fullmetal Alchemist. Not to mention blockbuster releases like Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 3 and Gran Turismo 4.
But maybe the time is right for a North American Nocturne. Some franchises that were once Japanese-only have had a chance to flourish recently, such as Advance Wars and Fire Emblem for the GBA. Then there's Dance Dance Revolution, which had been tearing up Japanese arcades for years; hopefully Taiko: Drum Master will be able to communicate the same charm later this year. Virtua Fighter 4 saw Sega finally manage to attract and engage a larger audience. This July sees the first time ever that one of Namco's "Tales" game--usually one of the hottest games of the year when they're released in Japan--will actually see an un-neutered, proper translation.
Of course, some things are best kept to Japan. Does the world really need to be exposed to the questionable "phenomenon" of simplistic, vomit-worthy Dragon Ball fighting games topping the charts? Couldn't we have kept Xenosaga and Ultimate MUSCLE to ourselves? The release of a peripheral-based game like Steel Batallion earned Capcom some critical chops, but couldn't the dirty little secret of how little they support their network code for vanity projects like that and El Dorado Gate have been kept a dirty little secret? But I certainly believe that Shin Megami Tensei does not deserve to be a dirty little secret relegated to this set of islands in the Pacific Ocean.
The Far East Western
One reason the games have never appeared with any great success on Western shores is ironically because of their Western appeal. Some games like Shin Megami Tensei operate on gameplay tropes that would seem familiar to PC gamers: first-person perspective all the way throughout; a flexible party similar to Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Baldur's Gate or Might & Magic; creation of characters via distribution of points to various stats, choosing alignments that correspond roughly to the D&D settings of good, evil, neutral, lawful and chaotic, which has an impact throughout the game; long, non-linear campaigns set in complex worlds; choosable dialogues with a wide moral spectrum of characters who may be friend or foe depending on your leanings throughout the game.
Strangely enough, it is these types of elements, combined with the games' complexity, that might be responsible for them not being translated. Japanese audiences "grew up", so to speak, with the very basics of PC RPGs. They prefer these mechanics, hence the RPGs released in Japan that correspond in so many ways to PC RPGs. But they almost never get translated because, in part, it is assumed that console RPG players in other countries would prefer the more Final Fantasy-type RPGs. This is a self-defeating prophecy, however: the more that are released, the more the appearance of a demand at the exclusion of other types of RPGs. Then there are the reviews that tend to extend praise only to RPGs with high production values and a focus on storyline. The only thing in Nocturne which is remotely similar to the familiar Final Fantasy tropes is the way enemies and allies stand in a line facing each other in battle.
Whereas console RPGs in Japan span a wide selection of tasty flavors--partly due to the difficulty in producing the high production values of a Final Fantasy-esque game--other kinds of RPG are actually more pervasive. In truth, Nocturne is part of a wide array of games that would broaden and challenge the conceptions of what people normally think of when they think of console RPG.
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