I play games for a lot of different
reasons two master systems to experience
great stories to see beautiful artwork
come to life and sometimes to try to get
a handle on why I don't want to play
those games but if there's one thing I
love more than anything about videogames
it's getting absorbed in their world's
world building is the one thing that I
think games can do better than any other
narrative medium film and television
will always have an edge in terms of
delivering a tight plot because their
pacing can be controlled precisely by
the director game stories move at a
different clip for every player and even
if they railroad everything they'll
probably be too long for the plot to be
satisfying anyway books and songs will
almost always win out when it comes to
exploring the psychology of people and
characters because they're constructed
entirely from words without any of the
structural limitations you get when you
focus on crafting believable dialogue
for actors visual novels and text
adventures can let you get inside
character's thoughts to an extent but
they can't linger on inner monologues
like books can what games can do is
create an unparalleled sense of place
they can present worlds that feel not
just alive but fully tangible when a
game world is made right
even if the extent of the world is just
a few corridors in a fancy skybox it
feels like it could stretch on forever
there are a lot of games that exemplify
this strength Fallout New Vegas makes
its world feel lived in through Shan
defecation and if you don't know what
that term means you should check out
this video by mr. B Tong Mass Effect one
turns space into a vast frontier before
the sequels turned it into a theme park
from software poured so much detail into
every area of their games that I bet you
know the twisting streets of yharnam
better than your own hometown
but there's one developer that's been
out shining all of these triple-a titles
for years with a fraction of their
resources and for most of their history
they've been doing it in relatively
simple top-down RPGs that company is
Nihon Falcom and if you don't know their
name by now you should way way back in
the 1980s Nihon Falcom pretty much
invented the action RPG
Dragonslayer they didn't do it alone
they were market contemporaries with
Namco's arcade hit the tower of druaga
but they codified basically everything
that defines the genre and makes nerds
argue incessantly about whether zelda
qualifies or not hack and slash Kombat
puzzles and character growth Dragon
Slayer is a landmark title no doubt but
it's also basically unplayable by modern
standards aside from its importance in
establishing the genre today's dragon
slayers most prominent legacy is the
separate series that split off from it
Dragon's Lair to Xanadu spawned facts
Anna do one of the most critically
acclaimed action-adventure games on the
NES along with several full sequels
including Tokyo Xanadu which released in
Japan just last year and is currently
looking for an American publisher exceed
please the fifth game in the series
source Aryan also spawned a crapload of
sequels including an Asian market MMO
which is how you know you've really made
it
then there's the sixth Dragon Slayer
game The Legend of Heroes which went on
to spawn a sub series of more
traditional RPGs the sixth century in
that series was Sora no Kiseki or trails
in the sky which formed the basis of a
sub-sub series the kiseki games which is
at this point eight games long on its
own and it's that sub sub series that
we're going to be talking about today
that whole intro got a little well
convoluted but only because Falcom makes
a lot of great games I didn't even get
around to talking about East's or
brandish or goo roomin the trail series
has a lot going for it
deep positioning based combat elaborate
customisation systems and great music
like some of the best in the whole genre
but its biggest draw obviously since
that's what this video is about is its
world unlike a lot of other JRPG
developers who tend to create brand new
worlds for every single game they make
Falcon likes to set multiple games in
different parts of the same world and
unlike Western developers they tend to
make all of their games contemporary to
each other where the stories of the
elder scrolls and fallout spans
centuries or even millennia Falcom
series tend to play out over the course
of a few years and this allows for a
very different kind of storytelling than
you see in well pretty much anything
else on the JRPG market I mean yes
there's quite a bit of interpersonal
drama and invoking of ancient prophecies
in the scripts of these games but
there's also a lot of focus on the pile
takes religion and economics of the
Sumerian continent this is thought that
you'd expect to see in a tactical game
like Fire Emblem Valkyria chronicles are
the works of Yasuo Matson oh not a
linear character driven party-based RPG
but it really works when I played
Valkyria Chronicles and Final Fantasy
Tactics I wanted more than anything to
be able to walk around in the worlds
that they painted for me to interact
with them in some way outside of battle
the trails series lets me do that and
it's a hell of an interesting world to
explore the trails series provides
multiple perspectives on a world in the
midst of great upheaval 50 years prior
to the start of the first games ámoreá
was your typical european analog fantasy
supercontinent warring States mostly
dominated by monarchies and aristocracy
monsters roaming the lands a bit of
magic at the fringes of reality and a
whole lot of knights on horseback
fending off all those threats but then
everything changed a scientist by the
name of Epstein in the middle of
researching ancient artifacts from a
long dead civilization discovered a new
form of power herbal energy which is
basically magic that can be harnessed
through crystals embedded in clockwork
to generate light or move large
machinery or even cast magic spells in
this universe you can buy pocket watches
that shoot fireballs the science behind
it's a little hand wavy but it doesn't
really matter how exactly it works what
matters is the impact it has the advent
of orbble technology sparks the orb
already 11 except that it happens a lot
faster because ancient technology has
created a sort of blueprint for what can
be done with orbble energy and ordnance
those are the magic pocket watches
Sumerian society goes from being
basically pre-industrial to having
rifles airships and the internet inside
50 years and that's a scary prospect
imagine what would have happened if we
jump from the technology of the 1700s to
our current level of advancement in just
one person's lifespan
well actually you don't have to imagine
that because Falcom has done it for you
and the answer is chaos rapid
advancements and transportation have
totally transformed the state of trade
turning merchants into economic
juggernaut and that's to say nothing of
the companies making this tech and where
once news would take months to travel
now it can do so in hours
minutes where 50 years ago upward social
mobility was virtually impossible now it
almost seems to be the norm and for the
people who've been in charge forever
that's really scary
you've got non democratic nations ruled
by aristocracy and royalty that are now
dwarfed economically by mega
corporations and that are rapidly
advancing to current levels of
communications technology and like I
said you can buy watches that shoot
fireballs it only took the printing
press and guns to upend most of Europe's
monarchies so something's gotta give and
that's not even considering the drastic
shifts in the status quo between nations
countries with small populations that
should be nonentities according to
conventional military doctrine have
become effective superpowers purely
because they have better scientists huge
empires can now be seriously threatened
by tiny nation states and then there's
the bracer guild and Jaeger Corps
private military forces essentially that
are now powerful enough to upset the
balance of just about any conflict
augments have allowed for the creation
of tanks and airships but they also
allow for individual soldiers with the
right aptitudes and training to
absolutely dominate on the field of
battle and a lot of those people have
joined these mercenary groups it's a
messy exciting time that presents
seemingly boundless possibilities for
storytelling but the same can be said of
fallouts post apocalypse or the
religious conflicts of aivalis or well
pretty much any game world what makes
Sam Maria so much better than its
competition a good concept for a setting
is only part of the equation and even
fleshing out all of the details like
trade routes resource locations and food
sources which the trails series does pay
enough attention and you'll know the
operating procedures of half the
companies in Sumeria only gets you
halfway
the real secret to making a game world
feel truly alive
and tangible is the people in most RPGs
I'd wager that the average player
distinctly remembers their party the
antagonists send a handful of
interesting or plot vital NPCs and
everyone who doesn't have an interesting
quest line or a social link associated
with them or who doesn't complain
incessantly about movie theater air
conditioning just kinda fades into the
background I'm going to use Fallout New
Vegas as an example because it has one
of the best worlds of
any game I've ever played and it still
falls short of what the trail's series
delivers and New Vegas has some great
characters your companions are a motley
crew of memorable faces with interesting
personal storylines and who can forget
the likes of no bark Noonan or fantastic
but there are a whole lot of folks
wandering the wastes who are just NCR
soldier towns person a and most of the
named NPCs are pretty flat as well
take for example Chet the first
shopkeeper you meet in Goodsprings
what can you tell me about him I guess
nothing but maybe if you've got a really
good memory or you looked at the wiki
like a filthy cheater you know that he's
got a bit of a gambling problem but what
about renown the first shopkeeper you
meet in trails in the sky well he's
known protagonists Estelle and Joshua
since they were kids
and he's Estelle's hook up for
collecting new Strega sneakers he knows
her dad and he likes to keep abreast of
the news also his mom bloom is worried
about the fact that he's still single at
30 and being a bit of a busybody she
started going around propositioning all
of the available girls in town trying to
find him a wife which bothers him to no
end and also elicits a variety of
entertaining reactions from those ladies
and you might not even know that's going
on you have to go to his shop and
actively decide to talk to him and his
mom to get that information and you
don't just do it once every time you
complete a major quest renown and his
mother will have new dialogue about this
ongoing story and that's true of every
NPC in the entire series not that
Reynolds mother is trying to hook him up
with them but that every time a major
story beat occurs they have something
new to say and sometimes it'll be about
what your characters have done if that's
something newsworthy like stopping a
robbery or pointing out a local landmark
that you should go to but mostly it'll
be their own mundane concerns in the
events of their day-to-day lives which
is so much more interesting and
realistic than cardboard cutouts who
stand around parroting your good deeds
back at you or spouting exposition about
the world they live in that both you and
they should already know every town in
every one of these games is bustling
with people who have their own [ __ ] to
worry about thank you very much be that
a small feud they're having with their
neighbor or the long hours they put in
at work or their kids struggling to
balance schoolwork and making fresh
hell even the kids have personalities
and ambitions for when they grow up and
these aren't just backstory details
they're side plots that play out in
parallel to your own story plots that
you won't even be aware of unless you
ask what makes people real people so
interesting in the first place is the
fact that everyone has a mind like yours
and is leading their own equally complex
life they have their own relationships
with the people around them their own
goals and aspirations and no other games
that I've played capture that like the
trails series does even persona which is
renowned for its character interactions
falls into the writing trap of having
interesting things happen to its NPCs
only when the protagonist is around that
kid who wants to [ __ ] his teacher the
little girl whose parents are getting a
divorce
none of their [ __ ] gets resolved without
your intervention more or less everybody
in the trail series deals with their
life off-camera and most of the time
they sort their problems out on their
own without any need for your help
despite that basically being your job as
a bracer in half the games and their
stories are still interesting and
entertaining and leave you rooting for
them even though you don't really
interact with them at all and that's
just the NPCs who stay in the towns you
visit there are a ton who you'll bump
into again and again during your travels
while they're either off on a business
trip or on vacation or just out
adventuring like you there are these two
tourists who pop up in every game in the
series one on a fruitless quest for love
and the other trying to keep his buddy
out of trouble and it puts a smile on my
face every time I bump into them and
then there's this era Socratic girl
who's run away from an arranged marriage
because all she wants to do is fish
along with the butler who keeps trying
to find her and just barely misses her
none of this is any more technically
complex than the dialogue system in a
basic [ __ ] RPG like Dragon Quest it
requires a lot more light work on the
part of the writing team and maybe some
script hooks for setting flags to change
certain lines but with a slight shift in
priorities and smart resource allocation
it's not much more expensive to
implement at least not in a classic
style RPG like this you can take a
fraction of the budget for the tales of
Ceres skits or one cut scene out of
Final Fantasy and use it to give the
faceless masses in their towns names and
things to do beyond standing around
and sharing the load for plot thumps
it's a lot pricier to implement that
volume of dialogue in a modern Western
RPG where they insist on every line
being voiced but I'm sure RPG developers
will realize what a colossal mistake
their obsession with voice-over has been
any day now right and failing that you
could implement these personal touches
to NPCs on a smaller scale and still
have it work this sort of Shann defied
dialogue is like a secret sauce and it's
very potent it lets a world that looks
like this feel exponentially more real
than a world that looks like this or
this or this and you don't need to apply
all that much of it to sell the illusion
in fact the likes that the trails games
go to might be overkill gun bars number
is the limit on how many interpersonal
relationships a human being can maintain
at any given time based on the size of
our hippocampus and it's a pretty small
number ranging from 150 to 250 depending
on various factors beyond that number
we're simply not capable of processing
other people as people and keeping track
of their interpersonal relationships in
the long term which is kind of scary
because that's the number of patrons I
have right now I'm reaching a point
where it'll become physically impossible
to remember all of the people who
support me which is kind of shitty the
back stories of these NPCs take up some
of that processing power while you're
playing the game so all you really need
to do to sell this is think up lives for
30 or 40 NPCs to live and they don't
have to be hugely complicated or
detailed they just have to fill out what
you'd expect someone to tell an
acquaintance about their day and
intersect with the story of another
character in that same vicinity if you
can do that much and give townsperson a
character's dialogue that merely
suggests they have something more going
on behind the scenes the average player
will just fill in the blanks
subconsciously I mean Xenoblade boils
most of this down to a chart and
sidequest dialogue and even that goes a
hell of a long way towards selling its
world and the people in it of course the
more you put into it the more real a
world feels so I think the overkill
committed by the trail series is
ultimately worthwhile I love the feeling
of going up to a random person in some
obscure part of the map and being
rewarded with new interesting dialogue
and I don't want that to go away just
because Falcone could totally get away
with doing less
that's not the point of this video the
point is that they do world building the
best out of pretty much everyone the
nations of Zoomer iya feel like real
places that I've been to and I can't say
that for a lot of other game worlds but
other Studios could step it up with only
a fraction of this effort and make
worlds that feel at least as real as
what we see in East's or brandish I'm
not asking for every NPC in Fallout to
have interpersonal drama that they go
home to every night I'm just asking for
them not to be cardboard cutouts or to
be more sophisticated cardboard cutouts
that do a better job of tricking me
because there are a lot of fantastical
game worlds out there and I want to be
able to feel like I've lived in them
like I haves a Maria and if you want to
add another game world to your travel
itinerary I highly recommend picking the
trails games up you can get the earlier
Legend of Heroes trails in the sky
series on Steam for pretty cheap and it
goes on sale all the time and the follow
up trails of cold steel is available on
Vita and ps3 with the sequel coming this
fall XSEED hasn't paid me to promote any
of these games I just want all of them
to sell super well so that more will be
localized like half the series isn't
even here yet although if XSEED wanted
to pay me in the future I wouldn't
object link no wait I'm supposed to do
that and I read that and if you want to
pay me I wouldn't object to that either
a lot of cool people already have on
patreon you can see their names on
screen right now if you are one of these
people or one of the others who I can't
remember because science thank you from
the bottom of my heart but maybe you
don't want to go in that far all at once
I totally feel you on that front patreon
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more comfortable you can just hit the
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you can follow me on Twitter at G 0 FF 2
for regular updates about my life and
sometimes video stuff if you want to see
more video stuff right now and maybe
hear me prattle on about game world's a
bit more than my Hitman level analysis
might be up your alley
or if all this talk about fantasy world
politics and economics got you a little
hot under the collar you might enjoy
learning a bit more about Spice and Wolf
specifically about the fan
tastic Opie that leads into the first
season but no matter what you want to do
next
Oh like and leave a comment oh thank you
for watching and thank you for sticking
with this all the way to the end as
always this is Jeff thew professional
[ __ ] signing out from as a Morean
airship