Mencari alternatif untuk narasi balas dendam dalam game

Baru-baru ini, saya akhirnya memiliki kesempatan untuk memainkan epik samurai Sucker Punch Ghost of Tsushima, dan kisahnya tentang invasi Mongol ke Jepang membuat saya berpikir tentang cara permainan membalas dendam. Pada intinya, mengobarkan perang adalah membalas dendam, suatu bentuk balas dendam atas ketidakadilan yang dilakukan kepada Anda. Dengan menantang konsep bushido, gagasan ada cara terhormat untuk berperang, Ghost of Tsushima pada dasarnya menegaskan bahwa untuk membalas dendam dengan seseorang, Anda terkadang harus bertarung kotor, sesuatu yang secara intrinsik lebih dekat dengan gagasan balas dendam kami yang sebenarnya. . Balas dendam adalah saat sarung tangan lepas. Namun secara paradoks, sementara permainan membutuhkan banyak usaha dalam menunjukkan bagaimana pahlawannya Jin tidak senang menyelinap dan menggunakan metode curang, mereka semua merasa sangat baik untuk bermain.

Balas dendam adalah alat yang populer dalam permainan, hanya karena begitu banyak dari mereka mengandalkan pertempuran sebagai mekanik utama mereka. Banyak cara di mana pertempuran terintegrasi dapat terasa sedikit terputus dari apa yang sedang terjadi – pikirkan JRPG, di mana fauna dan flora yang bersembunyi hanyalah fakta dunia yang tidak dapat dijelaskan. Kekerasan dengan motif balas dendam jauh lebih berorientasi pada tujuan, dan bisa terasa seolah-olah kita berada di pihak yang benar. Bagaimanapun, pemain yang mengidentifikasi diri dengan protagonis ingin melihat tujuan mereka terpenuhi. Dalam bukunya “Into the Woods – How Stories Work And Why We Tell Them”, John Yorke menjelaskan bahwa setiap cerita membutuhkan momen-momen yang menghasut, dan balas dendam adalah salah satu contohnya: seorang karakter dengan bahagia menjalani hidup mereka hingga mereka menjadi korban dari ketidakadilan, jadi mereka mulai memperbaikinya dengan menunjukkan musuh baru mereka apa adanya.

Balas dendam memberi kita motif yang jelas, antagonis dan, dalam kasus permainan, pembenaran untuk kekerasan, dan itu bekerja dengan sangat baik terutama karena kita sebagai manusia dapat bersimpati dengan keinginan untuk membalas dendam. Kita mungkin tidak bermimpi membawa kapak kepada seseorang, tetapi siapa yang tidak bermimpi untuk membalas seseorang dengan cara tertentu? Dalam permainan, balas dendam selalu digambarkan sebagai proses yang mengeraskan orang yang sebelumnya bahagia dan puas, baik dalam tubuh maupun pikiran. Ini sangat sering merupakan proses kode laki-laki juga – protagonis laki-laki kehilangan unsur-unsur dalam hidupnya yang melunakkan dia, yang menambatkannya ke kehidupan sosial yang normal, seperti keluarga atau pasangan. Contohnya termasuk Max Payne dan The Darkness, atau Red Dead Redemption. Memutus ikatan kesetiaan antara saudara, seperti di Mafia 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 dan Modern Warfare 2 dan 3 juga merupakan motif yang umum.

Of course there are also revenge stories featuring women, think of Jack in Mass Effect 2, whose character arc is a good example of what we usually hope revenge will bring us: if you help Jack, she will finally find closure and move on with her life to help others. In reality however, that’s actually not how it works. Studies have shown that the more time you spend on making elaborate plans for revenge and the more time you spend following through, the worse it’s going to feel when you get what you want – both because you’ve been hyper-fixated on a negative presence in your life for a long time, and also because it can be difficult to lose that easily identifiable foe.

This is what The Last of Us 2 is trying to illustrate. It’s very effective at showing that revenge is a circle – Abby, the person who gets their revenge, has to watch their back from then on, as their actions have caused them to make an enemy out of Ellie. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of violence for either of them to learn that revenge is ultimately unsatisfying, and as the player enacting that violence, having been told over and over by games that this should be a satisfying process, you can end up oddly dissatisfied, as well. Additionally, for me at least the feeling of violence itself wasn’t horrifying in the way Naughty Dog intended. Still, as ever, the act of finishing a confrontation felt good, perhaps even more so than in other games because it felt a lot more hard-won due to the gritty way combat was presented.

The simple solution then, could be to let go of combat entirely, and many games are doing that already. But I think the problem by now goes deeper. We’ve gotten used to combat. Often we want combat, but it’s the way combat is presented, as an ultimately mechanically satisfying revenge fantasy, that isn’t good for us – it makes us think someone has to win, someone has to be in the right.

So the games I really appreciate are those who try to reckon with that feeling in a way that doesn’t punish players for engaging in the only action they have. The best game I have played to that effect has to be the 2018 God of War, which describes the dilemma of the vicious circle of revenge perfectly. The way you act here is certainly vicious, but it is with awareness that even the one who acts in defence isn’t right – there are no winners, and God of War shows this by allowing its characters on both sides of the equation time to mourn and to apologise to those left behind. It shows that the hardened warrior isn’t just a cool trope, but a deeply flawed, sad being. In the Last of Us 2, Ellie wants to win – by comparison, Kratos really just wants to be left alone.

Another great example for this measured approach to revenge is Four Quarters’ recent indie smash hit Loop Hero. Loop Hero’s gameplay was created before the story was, and since the game wasn’t primarily about fighting, its story shouldn’t be, either, as composer, sound and game designer binch, alias Aleksandr Goreslavets, puts it. “It didn’t feel natural to us to create a story about taking revenge on monsters considering that the game revolved around putting monsters in the hero’s way.

“Secondly, the player only restores the land, and hopes that the Hero will handle the side effects as they remember the world. Therefore, we knew right away that the main character’s goal should be to restore peace, not to kill the villains or monsters.”

You’re trying to recreate the world as it was, and while its three bosses are trying to stop you, fundamentally what you’re doing is not about them – your hero has to accept monsters as part of the ecosystem.

A common way to break a revenge cycle in games is to see it as something villains do. Take Persona 5 Strikers – Joker and his group of friends only get involved in other people’s quest for revenge because revenge, like war, tends to involve innocent people. Here, your task is to be a third party with no stake in the matter who can show the Monarchs the errors of their ways, usually by delivering a sound beating followed by a long chat. It’s an option, but it isn’t as nuanced as actually involving the characters in question the way God of War does.

These examples show that revenge narratives in games can move past the black and white of a hero fighting a villain, but too many of them are still based on the idea that we need to feel like we’re winning something. I think that if games learned to “shoot first and ask questions later” less, it would lead to more nuanced stories, and a greater awareness of the violence they entail.

Sumber: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-04-24-seeking-alternatives-to-revenge-narratives-in-games