The strange appeal of School-based games

Saved by the bell

When you're the one in School, the only thing you can possible think about is getting the hell out of there as expediently as humanly possible, but the second you're spat out the otherside of education into the harsh and unforgiving world, it is that very comfort of scholastic structure that you find yourself longing for. Which may lead into one of the reasons why so many out there find the school-based style of video game so very appealing to their sensibilities; because it reminds them of a time where it felt like anything was possible and the world was boundless. Both things which, as anyone above school age will tell you, are not preeminent truths of the world. But to the point; isn't it strange that such a theme is present in some of the most popular and/or beloved games of their genre; is there something transcendent, or simply just profound, hidden in the formula of the school system? And no, when I'm talking about this style of game I'm not lauding up games like 'Yandere Simulator', I'm more talking classics like...

Life is Strange. I know I have my issues with DONTNOD and every single one of their games, and the original Life is Strange is no exception to that rule, but I would have to be delusional not to see the profound effect that series has had. Heck, it's got three games and a spin-off related to it's characters; that has to count for something! Only the first Life is Strange, and the spin off, is school based, but it remains a favourite in many people's eyes for it's characterisation of a young girl going through the year of her Art School university whilst struggling with fantastical powers and the doom their coming has hastened. DONTNOD made heavy use of the typical power tropes that arise around School structures in order to explore sensations of being outcasted and popularity dynamics in a lesser sense, and explore relationships and how younger people connect on a deeper, and consequentially more painful, level to one another. I think they didn't really did anything meaningful with that position; but I am in the vast minority, it would seem.

One such game I have a much easier time getting behind is the Rockstar classic Bully, because of course. Bully is a game that takes the typical open world formula of Grand Theft Auto, completing missions across a slowly expanding world as your social prestige and means increase, and shrinks it into a tightly packed town dominated by Bullworth Academy. Here Rockstar explores the tropes of school society again, although through their typical hyper exaggerated lens that blows up this image into school factions defined by their tropey identity, which are toyed about with throughout the narrative as hardcore competitive gangs might in other Rockstar games. Bully painstakingly goes through each aspect of School life to make it work as an open world game, from having a time-table for which ignoring it earns you the ire of School Prefects that will hunt you down as Police would, to attending lessons that present you with minigames which award abilities that upgrade the open world exploration experience for completing them.

Bully presents a fantasy where the player, a delinquent who has been kicked out of every school they've ever been to, is a scrappy underdog in a world of liars and cheats where School is an extension of the hard streets outside. It feeds into that fantasy of school life that some like to indulge in, which mixes the comfort of living in a world of structure with the thrill of being that wrench in the system who stands up to the motes of power and 'breaks the wheel' to quote that one series. There's less an examination of actual School life in Bully, and more a use of it as a blanket on which typical GTA worlds are projected; but given how attractive those worlds of crime already are, the translation prints out perfectly and then some. There's something honestly a little insightful about portraying the social hierarchy of school-life as a literal microcosm of adult society which helps make the Bully package just infectious with it's charm. That's probably why people have been eager for a sequel for so very long now.

But of course, this idea could not exist in my head for a whisper of a second without Persona soon following suit. The ATLUS spin-off from their much more existential JRPG franchise, Persona has blown up into their main money maker on account of the premise and execution being just so darn approachable. You don't have to get into some strange new universe where people have cat ears on their heads, or it's entirely acceptable to have half your body covered in blue paint; instead you're lured into a seemingly normal scholastic world that is slowly turned on it's head by the introduction of over worldly elements in a manner not so dissimilar to the set-up for 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure'. Which is fitting, because apparently Persona was inspired for some of it's choices by the good work of JoJo. Which makes sense; the way these games use Personas is actually quite similar to how Araki uses Stands.

It's the school setting in particular which is perhaps the biggest hallmark of Persona in it's distinction from Shin Megami Tensi; because whereas you can expect your big JRPG battles to play out with the very familiar and fun 'weakness'/'strengths' elemental combat system which ATLUS rock, the downtime for these games are almost just as, if not more, important than the action. You attend school on the daily, plan out your extra-curricular activities, work on building yourself as a person, and grow closer to the community all around you. It's a recipe for self improvement that feels utterly idealised when read out as a laundry list, but when gamified like ATLUS does it, that concept becomes approachable and heartfelt. The terrestrial school-kid setting of Persona humanises the setting and the characters so that they feel real and their struggles become just as real. Identifiability is really the key here.

By and large we keep coming back to this sense of 'grounding' that the school trope brings to the stories it's implemented in. Because attending and learning at school is a sort of experience that most everyone can relate to, and thus requires less of a investment to become attached to. If you want to then use that setting to tell some mundane story about school life or an exaggerated commentary on societal cliques; the way forward has been smoothened by the intrinsic personal connection that the player has immediately established with their setting. Of course with that comes risk, as some people find the setting to be too mundane or pastiche; but for the moment it would appear that the general winds of fandom have blown to favouring these styles of story for the moment; which is why even as companies like ATLUS expand their horizons with other styles of games, it's the tantalizing promise of a Persona 6 which has most of their western fans frothing at the mouth.

There's definitely an art to nailing this style of presentation and a balancing game stringent on the genre you're working with. I happen to think that the Bully version of this trope is perhaps a tad annoying with the whole 'truancy' system, and I think Life is Strange is just generally hammy in most of it's significant direction choices (particularly the supernatural stuff; but Max being a cookie-cutter 'not like the other girls' protagonist didn't help things) and Persona is my Golden boy because of course it is, I love that thing. But everyone who is a fan of school-set games have their own compunction, whether because it reminds them of the structure of school life that they love, or see games as a wish fulfilment for how they wished a personally turbulent part of their lives would have gone; there is something special here for everyone. Unless you hate school-based games and wish ATLUS would spend their efforts on literally anything else. Those people exist too. I see you.

Life is Strange: True Colours

 And that's why I love you

I have a very interesting relationship with Life is Strange, DONTNOD's claim to fame. If by 'interesting relationship' you mean a guilty-like seeped in waves of mediocrity that has me forever torn between wanting to go back to it and wanting to delete it from my memory banks. I think I've touched on it before, but I honestly couldn't impart my full opinion on LIS in an orderly fashion unless I literally did a full blown episode by episode breakdown to show you the waves of my sanity slowly melting away as the series went on. Although to be brief, I was intrigued by the premise and found the characters to be fine at the very start, as the episodes went on the premise slowly opened up but clearly fell by the wayside in favour of characterisation which bordered on trite at times, and that final episode was a total degradation of any sort of coherent narrative when it comes to the premise, making it abundantly clear that the team had no idea what they were doing when they started and the whole 'mystery' they proposed in episode 1 was made on ill faith. But I still like it.

Maybe it's the Stockholm effect. I was with the game episode by episode for so very long that after the fact I can't imagine my life without it, if I played it any longer I'd start wearing beanies and develop a music taste informed solely by bands who make so few sales that they have to live out of their touring bus. (The second they can afford a motel room they're dead to me!)Whatever the case I can't exactly say that LIS is a bad game, because I actually think it was very competently made and actually proposed some pretty cool narrative concepts at times that I don't regret going through. I just think the team dropped the ball in the home stretch and thus sort of sullied the memory in doing so, at least in my mind. I still think back to the game fondly, however, and when I see a new game on the horizon I'll take the time to give it a good 'ol look.

And yet somehow I didn't get around to playing 'Before the Storm' or even the dully named 'Life is Strange 2'. (You know, the one which shared neither any characters nor any creative threads with the first title and thus did not at all earn the moniker '2'? Didn't play that game.) So I guess my lingering good will and fond memories didn't extend to any degree where it counts, but luckily for DONTNOD I appear to be the anomaly amidst their fans, because they're brand of game development seems to be treating them well. In the wake of the oversaturation and subsequent death of Telltale games ("Do you believe in the resurrection, Latavious?") DONTNOD became the de facto seneschals over all things choice-based story game related, and though every single fibre of their being is owed to the path paved by The Walking Dead Telltale game, we look now to them for keeping the genre alive. Funny how life works out sometimes, isn't it?

Thus I'll admit it's in the pursuit of seeing the state of the choice-based story genre which I used to invest so much in that I've tuned onto the wavelength of this 'Life is Strange: True Colours' game in the hopes that it can be all I wanted the original to be. And as a dropped off fan of this series, I'll say that the team have managed to get me back through the door and interested; I want to know what's going on and am willing to actually play the game in order to find out. (That's right, DONTNOD, I tried to get out but you kept pulling me back in; bully for you!) I see genuine potential in what we've seen so far and think that both the overall story and individual set pieces could be simply insane if the team take as full advantage of this as I know they want to. 

True Colours follows Alex Chen, another teenage girl imbued with otherworldly abilities that will absolutely not got explained by the otherend of this game. (At least the storytellers might be smart enough not to tease about the mystery this time) And what is this ability, you ask? Max from the first game could freakin' turn back time to a limit degree, if she had a little more ambition to her should could have been an S-tier Stand user! Well this Alex character has the superpower of Empathy- and what? No it's not that stupid, she has the ability to see the 'aura' of those around her (represented in bubbles of different colours. Get it?) and thus ascertain the emotions that they are feeling at any given time. She sees this as a 'curse' and it- No wait, I'm sorry that is just basic empathy and a decent perception for reading others turned into a superpower... Yeah, on paper this is a hard sell.

In actuality Alex is looking into the truth behind her brother's apparently accidental death, which serves as the impetus to learn her power as she sees the secrets that others want to keep quiet. The interesting part, and something that has me reeling at the possibilities, is where she taps into the more 'empath' parts of her power and can feed extreme emotions in order to unravel them. One example we saw was of a woman fraught with anger, whom Alex 'bewitched' and made her emotion so powerful that is was actually manipulating and effecting reality around her, something which the protagonist commented could be dangerous enough to kill her! That's actually a ripe tool for some interactive story telling elements where you can let players really enter the deepest emotions of those around you and swim around their worlds, it makes for a decently unique and fecund storytelling opportunity that the team have lined up for themselves.

Of course, this new DONTNOD protagonist wouldn't be worth their salt if it weren't for the 'hipter' edge that they are contractually obligated to conjure up, and so this teenager also doubles as a singer, and her key art even features her with headphones around her neck and is that a flannel shirt I see teased in the background? What I'm saying is, prepare for a an almost oppressively obscure smattering of licenced indie songs in the soundtrack full to the brim of- wait, they licenced Radiohead? Seriously? Well damn, guys, now I can't even make the hipster jokes anymore, they're an actually established band! They at the very least better be a slew of characters with painfully outdated 'young people' jargon in their lexicon to rival the heights of 'hella girl' Chloe Price.

Apparently this is the brand new venture for the award winning Life is Strange formula, and I have to say I'm liking what I'm seeing. The premise seems promising, the world looks pretty and the soundtrack has Radiohead, what else could you want? Of course, Square decided to sully this announcement with the reveal of a 'remaster' for Life is Strange 1, which I'm not going to lie looks a little gross. How does 'remastering' the look of that game, which could certain use a visual improvement, evolve into giving the characters too much makeup? I'm being serious, Max looks like she's bathing in eyeliner before every scene, as though her entire contrived 'indie artist' personality wasn't already enough. Everyone else takes it a little easier with the face paint, but they're still just so shiny. Where went the subtlety and soft colours of the original design ethos, which matched the mellow soundtrack and the sleepy no-where-America town of Arcadia Bay? And why does Max looks like she's a box of talcum powder away from auditioning at the circus? (Why they gotta do my main girl like that?) Ah well, the new game still looks- £50 for preorder? Wow- sorry, my eyes were watering for a moment there. Full retail price, huh? Yep- that's totally fine. (Oof, that's gonna hurt the ol' wallet)

Modern Morality aka Choice and Consequence

Your fantasies can never be quenched, can they!

A while ago I dived into the topic of morality systems in video games. Times at which the player is expected to go a certain direction or make a certain decision that proceeds to dictate their moral leanings. This was the way that Video Games tried to initiate moral discussions when developers were just starting to get the hang of telling branching stories. But we no longer live in that time of rampant experimentalism. Nowadays, video game storytelling has been whittled down to a fine art, so writers who really want to stand out need to do more than just institute a good/bad bar on your character sheet. In modern video game storytelling, the weight of a player's moral fibre is judged by more than just an 'evil bar' coupled with a bad ending. Discussing morality requires a tad more nuance than that. And so the marketing gimmick of 'action-consequnce' was born.

I'm treating it with some flippancy but I do believe that the way we handle morality in games now is leagues better then the way we used to. At the end of the day, the concept morality is little more than a societal construct, and when you have that in mind then there becomes little weight in wagging a finger at the player and telling them they made the wrong choice. Narrative stories needed to start confronting players with the cold, undeniable reality of consequences. This evolution helped to create some of the most memorable and divisive moments in gaming. Players no longer just argued about 'the good option' and 'the bad option', now they had a springboard to engage in discourse about their fundamental views on the issues. Or at least that is the intention. 'Action and consequnce' can be turned into a meaningless gimmick when half-assed just like anything else in life. The key is to dedicate thought and passion into giving players the freedom to see themselves reflected in the decisions and mistakes they make.

The wider gaming world has very readily adopted the 'choice-consequnce' model and it has become somewhat expected for RPG's to have some form of choice at some point in their narrative. Whilst once this was a huge selling point, worthy of sticking on the back of the box, now it is a requirement for any big budget game. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 had some vague elements of consequence throughout it's story, although that has as much to do with respecting the overarching themes of the series as much as it has to do with ticking that particular box. Modern role playing just doesn't feel the same anymore unless we can make the story our own, diverge from the path that our friends took, and then argue about it with them the next day.

One game that captured the 'Choice/conseqence' craze beautifully, was the excellent: Dishonoured. In Dishonoured, players were put in the boots of disgraced royal protector: Corvo Attano, who was framed for the murder of his charge; Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Who was also his lover and the mother of his child. (Talk about conflicted interests.) The player is then tasked with unravelling the conspiracy that led to her assassination by hunting down those that seized power after her demise, utilizing Corvo's substantial stealthy skillset alongside a whole host of otherworldly powers. Choice and consequence come into the picture in two distinct ways.

The First way is obvious. As you hone in on your targets, you are presented with two possible ways to proceed. You can straight up kill you target and get it all over and done with; or you can pull some strings in order to set up a special event which will also succeeds in eliminating the target. These events can range from having your target kidnapped by their secret admirer, to branding their face with the mark of a heretic ensuring that they will be cast out of the sect in which they reside. There is no morally pure choice to pick, either you kill the target or ruin their life; the focus in on the consequences. Sometime these consequences are left to the imagination of the player and over times you are shown them directly.

The second method that Arkane used to realise your consequences is actually quite brilliant. You see, Dishonored is a stealth action-adventure game, (My favourite sub-genre!) which means that the player can go through levels without being spotted and killing as few or as many people as they so wish. This is wrapped up in the lore through a rat-carried plague that is rampant in the game's setting: Dunwall. Rats are well known to be attracted to rotting flesh and so the game actually keeps track of how many enemies you've killed by proportionately infesting the city. If you are a cold blooded mass-murderer, Dunwall will become a plague ridden hellscape by the final level and even your own allies will start fearing you. This also ties in with the endings that you receive. The higher the chaos you cause, the worse your ending will be. Nice 'anti-violence' message in your game about assassinating people, Arkane.

Now onto somewhat of a contentious figure. David Cage has had bad rap with gamers over the years for making a slew of games that some people would argue aren't games at all. Through his studio, Quantic Dream, Cage and his team have pioneered the interactive storytelling genre, providing games that feel like movies. So what exactly is 'interactive storytelling'? Well, by David Cage's definition, it is a medium wherein in the player is presented with events in a story and they are tasked with making choices to guide the narrative. Sounds like everything I've been discussing today. The trick is that these games feature no actual 'gameplay' like one would traditionally imagine, just choices and the occasional quick time event. Some people would call these glorified DVD games, but I do enjoy the games for what they offer. As long as a compelling narrative comes attached.

Due to the choice-based gameplay that this genre is defined by, consequence is prevalent everywhere. Throughout all of Quantic's games; 'Indigo Prophesy', 'Beyond: Two Souls' and 'Detroit: Become Human', there are numerous moments when action or inaction results in branches through the story. Although the game that everyone remembers for it's consequences would have to be 'Heavy Rain'. Anyone who followed gaming at the time heard all the fuss around 'Heavy Rain' and the fact that, if your character died in the story, they would remain dead. 'Permadeath' was unheard of in this time, so many found the novelty absolutely fascinating. Of course, all those trailers conveniently left out the fact that, in order for a character to suffer permadeath, the player would have to be so hopelessly incompetent at quick time events that they manage to fail a ludicrous amount of them consecutively.

Yeah, the games didn't exactly exude the intense 'life or death at a moments notice' vibe that David Cage seemed to be going for, but the game itself did excel when it came to branching narratives. Big choices had the chance to completely shift the road that your character was on, thus changing the path of the story. This meant that many key scenes featured dozens of possible permutations depending on the route you took to get there. Never before did players feel like they had shaped the events around them quite like they did during 'Heavy Rain'. Following that, many successors would come to pastiche and mature this formula.

One such successor would be supernatural high school simulator: Life is Strange. Whilst you could argue that Don't Nod Entertainment borrowed more from Telltale to adapt their gameplay, I would refute that both owe some degree of their popularity to 'Heavy Rain'. Narrative wise, Life is Strange is a little bit a mess. The story follows the tale of a high schooler, Max Caufield, as she discovers that she has the power to reverse time and... just sort of lives with it for a while. Max goes through the process of reconnecting with her old friend, Chloe, and starts developing their relationship together for most of the game. Only near the end of the game does she realize that Nature is trying to 'final destination' Chloe, and Max must save the town or something, whilst simultaneously dealing with a pervert teacher who is also a murderer. As I said, it's a little bit of a mess.

Where 'Life is Strange' shines is in the strength of it's choices. Whilst it is true, the ability to turn back time kind of takes a lot of the weight out of the decisions you make, some of the most potent consequences you are subject to exceed the range of your powers. (Almost makes you wonder why you even have them in the first pl- okay, I'm not going to get into it here.) On the surface the gameplay experience is very similar to the 'Heavy Rain' brand of interactive storytelling, but the focus on character led drama adds a very personal aspect to the choices you make. Sometimes 'Life is Strange' presents you with a decision you make for emotional reasons rather than pragmatic ones. I find that this makes the consequences of those choice all the more reflective.

Another choice-driven interactive story that garnered attention in recent years is the star studded: Until Dawn. Supermassive Games themed their interactive story around the cliches of slasher movies, so people went in expecting a high body count. What we didn't expect was the heavily reliance on 'The butterfly effect' and all that entails. This meant that the smallest of actions could lead to violent, unavoidable consequences down the line. Some may call this a little cheap, but I see it as a little refreshing. You see, Until Dawn came out in 2015 and by that point everyone had already got a pretty good idea of what this genre entailed. When you go through every scene waiting for a 'gotcha' moment it becomes easy to spot narrative hooks and predict results in advance. Until Dawn threw that all to the wind. Did you throw a snowball at the butterfly? Boom, icicle to the head. Things literally got that random.

But let's step away from interactive story games and move to a game that features traditional gameplay but still manages to deliver doses of potent 'choice/consequence' to the player. Let's take a look at 'The Witcher'. Off the bat, CD Projekt Red were in a good place adapting 'The Witcher', as the story existed in an adult morally grey world. All they had to do was accurately translate that world into the medium of gaming, and I think the general consensus is that they pulled it off rather nicely. 'The Witcher' revolves around the character of Geralt, the titular Witcher. Much like Garrett from the Thief series, Geralt plays the role of an observer to a world in flux. Sure, he takes part in events, even has some 'save-the-world' moments. But for the most part, Geralt just tries to live in the turmoil of warring nations.

Whilst this approach may seem like it precludes significant choice and consequence, in practice it actually paves away for more meaningful decisions. 'The Witcher' is unique in that it presents a high fantasy world, and then tells personal, character driven stories with that world. Geralt isn't leading armies and fighting elder gods, he's hunting monsters that disturb the local town life. He isn't the perpetrator of world changing events, he just gets pulled along by them. I love this subversive approach to fantasy storytelling and think it lends wonderfully to the choices that the player is left to make. They get the chance to see the world from Geralt's level and so it makes it easier for them to make the choices they believe he would make. It's a powerful use of perspective that I'd imagine should be credited more to Andrzej Sapkowski then CD Projekt Red. But those writers did manage to utilize that tool to great effect and so I will praise them both the same.

Finally, I would like to bring up one of gaming's classics. Often referred to as 'The greatest PC game ever made', I'm talking about Eidos' Deus Ex. The original cyberpunk gem, Deus Ex situates players in a world fraught with conspiracy and hyper-surveillance as they try to free the people from the grip of a tyrannical secret organization who is not the Illuminati. (They're in the game too, but this particular ultra-shady secret government isn't them.) Choice and consequence is handled the same here as in any other game, every now and then you are presented with a choice between a number of actions and must pick one. The important thing to note here is the fact that this type of gameplay was completely unheard of. Released in the year 2000, Deus Ex was the first action-oriented game to prominently feature branching narratives as a result of player choice. Players were enamoured by the concept and it's one of the many reasons that the game is still widely loved today. I still see fans arguing over that final choice as though debating warring philosophies; which, in hindsight, I suppose they are.

2011's 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' didn't have the benefit of being the first, but Eidos still found a way to make it's choices stand out. Instead of just giving players clearly marked sections where their specific actions matter, 'Human Revolution' also put players in situations where their inaction can affect the story. Did you stop that terrorist but fail to clear out his hostages beforehand? They're as good as dead. Did you stay your hand from applying lethal force on his men? Then he might be willing to work with you in the future. All this culminates into a ending that put Eidos in an impossible position. They had to provide the player with a meaningful choice whilst baring in mind that this game was a prequel and therefore cannot change the events surrounding the original game. What resulted was one of most igneous set of endings that I've ever seen pulled off by a game. (Which was then ruined when 'Mankind Divided' came along and just picked one of the endings to go off from. But I digress.)

In the modern age of game narratives, traditional depictions of morality is mostly a thing of the past. Light sides and Dark sides are concepts that seem outdated in a world that is more coloured in shades of grey. Although I do sort of miss the old tally-based morality systems, I recognize that these systems worked to constrain storytelling and play styles. That's the reason why so many games that use to champion these systems have since abandoned them. 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' shed it's iconic 'Paragon/Renegade' mechanic, Fallout 4 dropped their 'Karma points' and Respawn have even come out to say that the upcoming 'Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order' will not have any 'light side'/ 'dark side' choices. (Although that may just be hinting at a more linear direction for the game.)
.

Going forward I expect to see more clever uses of choice-based gameplay as we move into the next console age. The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077 are two games to keep an eye on for this kind of stuff, their developers love challenging players with unforeseen repercussions. And there's also 'Life is Strange 2' for lovers of Interactive Storytelling and Supermassive Game's upcoming 'Man of Medan' for fans of chaotic consequence. These types of games aren't going away anytime soon and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it. I just can't wait to see how narrative morality evolves in the near-to-distant future. Who wants to guess how long it'll be before 'Ender's Game' happens?