Who is the Author today?

 What Persona have I equipped for 2023?

It's my birthday. Well, that is to say the day of me writing this blog is the day of my birthday, the day of release will be a week away as per usual. But the significance is thus: I get to take a load off and do a more relaxed blog about something personal and specific to myself. Just nattering on about the first thing which comes to my mind which is- hey, that is different from my usual day-to-day, I swear! Okay, so maybe there's always a manic energy to my topic selection, but today of all days is one where I want to reflect personally on myself and my own preferences and talk about a trend of how I'm developing as an observer of interactive digital art. And that is a fancy way of saying I want to see what the stuff I like in gaming is today and examine that a little bit, from an objective distance.

First off- wow, I'm really getting into Japanese games lately. Not that I've shunned them in the past or anything, but I've literally jumped from Japanese game series to Japanese game series inbetween religiously watching a couple of Japanese animes thrown in there for good measure. And of course I'm talking about 'games' in the traditional sense, as that Japanese market of today is pretty much dominated by low-tier mobile titles as unfortunate as that is- I've no interest in that sort of faff. (But seeing footage of 'The Phantom X' does make me wonder about myself...) Currently I own every mainline title in the Ryu Ga Gotoku franchise and am looking at slowly swooping up all the side games along the way, I am playing my way through Persona 3 Portable after finishing Persona 4 Golden and crowning it one of my newest favourite games of all time. And I have the 'Tales of-' franchise to move onto after that, and the 'Ni No Kuni' games. Oh, and there's Xenoblade... And Zelda is next month... Does western gaming just not appeal to me anymore?

I think there's a certain edge to Japanese storytelling that rubs off on a lot of their best games which I resonate with so acutely. A lot of these JRPGs are never afraid to veer off the path of the physical and easily defined and bring in aspects of metaphor and thematic significance- placing such narrative concepts at major junction points of the plot rather than just setting them to sizzle in the back as set dressing. Of course, there's always a risk involved in going such a direction, that a narrative can fall apart under such ethereal tassels- expositional scenes can become laboured, plot stakes can wither and become waifish, dialogue can seep into pretentiousness. But the best of the best for what I've played never seem to fall for those easy traps. Persona 4 in particular absolute nailed it's story about a society mired in easy comfortable lies and misconception where the hard truths come abruptly, but carry their natural and transforming completeness with them.

And, of course, I've unintentionally taken a hard stance in the 'subs vs dubs' debate. I'll always refer to the English voice actor for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure antagonist 'DIO' as the source that forever drove me away from dubs, and now I'll accept nothing else but subs. My skin crawls everytime I go to look up a loved clip from Persona on Youtube and hear the English VO, even though all those actors are great and do wonderful jobs; they're just not my Persona protagonists! I like to think I operate with a degree of logic- I think characters who would be speaking Japanese within the game world should have their Japanese VO. Yakuza is a given, that entire franchise is in celebration of Japanese culture. Sekrio, again, stars a Japanese fantasy world based on elements of Japanese history. In Persona all the students are Japanese students, and even further in the games I've played the act of learning how to read and write English are literally ongoing lessons- why would that make sense if they all spoke English fluently to begin with? But then I switch Xenoblade to Japanese VO as well... and Genshin... that game isn't even Japanese... (I still play Final Fantasy with English actors at least.)

Now I already know how much of cliché it is to credit a video game with any sort of positive influence on the real person playing it, because art can absolutely never effect anyone who experiences it and if you do let it do so then you are an irredeemable loser- but I don't care, Persona really has rubbed off some of it's life philosophies on me. Most pertinently for me being the value of creating social links, or their equivalent, with those you meet in daily life. It may be that experiences don't quite pan out the way you imagined, or that meetings are more fleeting than you would have hoped for, but prioritising the time you do have to become close to people means your time together is never wasted. That's some serious life advice that I found drilled into me from playing so much Persona- I consider that valuable and I don't care who judges me for it!

Of course, the reason why stories of this style, with this sort of theming and symbolism, speaks so significantly to me personally is because of my aspirations as a writer; although those are their own headache to manage. I remember not so very long ago talking about my plan to upload a recently completed story up here, one chapter a day, and I've still yet to go through with that for so many reasons. Partially I've been busy, also I'm juggling a lot at the same time, but the truth at the heart of it all is that I'm horridly and pathetically anxious to expose myself like that. It's embarrassing, given that this blog has an audience of no-one- but I can't shake that paralytic feeling, and that is a tomb laying atop the ground of what would be my budding portfolio if only I had the courage to post the damned thing.

Japanese RPGs of the highest quality seem to capture an emotional maturity and wisdom that I wish for, both as a writer and individual. It's the same sort of sage nuance which I maintain made the composition of Undertale such a phenomena to so many people- I think those same people would have been blown away by some of the JRPGs out there if they expanded their horizons a little. And for me that sort of wisdom, and those types of stories, can only really speak to a certain kind of ear that is receptive to speak it- which is why they don't translate so well into loud action shooters and adventure games. That audience aren't there to learn something about the artist's interpretation of the world, they want to have bursts of fun and, usually, skip through all of the cutscenes. (I am deeply cut by cutscene skippers. A crime far more severe than any other.)

As I pen, or type, this particularly self-indulgent diatribe of mine, I'm confronted once again by that gnawing chasm of doubt which plagued me for years stretching far past before I ever even conceived to start this blog. That gnawing doubt of self. It's always that question isn't it? The one we tend to wrestle with, either as artists or just everyday people trying to live our lives. "Who am I?" It's a knobbly proposition to tackle, and maybe the games I like today resonate so completely because they ask the very same questions back. But the further I'm dragged along this rough earth, the more I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that if I'm still hearing this question from every corner- then there must not really be an answer- is there? Perhaps there's a comfort to be found in that, but it eludes me today. At the very least, I don't dread that answer. And maybe that's all I can hope for: Not to dread the future.