The Attempt To Escape From Pain Creates More Pain

Before I say anything, I wanna say that I’m happy for that team and think they made a very cool game. very little if anything I am writing here is a judgement on the game itself or the quality of the experience therein. It’s good! if you play it, I think you’ll have fun.

But while I’m often interesting in talking about games, I’m also interested in how we talk about games. This is what made Horses fascinating to me and it’s draw me out to write again. Because as the night went on and Geoff Keighley talked about the power of indie games like Expedition 33, I couldn’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable. Something felt off, y'know?

In watching Expedition 33 get subsumed into Keighley’s mainstream machine and the narrative picture he wanted to paint about 2025, I couldn’t help but frown. 2025 might be the year where indie games and alternative sub-genres outshine a flagging AAA space but I think we need to be honest about what drew Keighley to Expedition 33 and drove him to drag that game first and foremost into the narrative he was trying to build. Because when Geoff Keighley mentioned “indie games” what he really means to say is “indie games of a certain scale and aesthetic.” This is what many people mean!

So I want to talk about RPGs and I want to maybe talk about budgets and I want to talk about respectability. Because for as impressive a story I think Expedition 33, it hardly a mistake that the indie RPG that supposedly redeems the genre is one which, national identity or not, chases so hard after AAA games and Hollywood…

Talking about JRPGs can be weird because people like to over-complicate what the genre’s “deal” is. Because there was a time, particularly after the death of adventure games, where JRPGs rose up to almost solely occupy a space as “the games that tell stories” there’s a kind of romanticism that comes up when some people talk about the genre. That’s understandable but it perhaps overplays the depth of the stories that are told in JRPGs and really in video games generally. Most games stories are pulp and hardly revolutionary.

It’s okay to admit this. Good, even, to understand that you could have gone to the movies at many points this year and probably watched something with a bit more meat to the bone than whatever video game you were playing at home. it doesn’t make games less beautiful. Still, a lot of people in games (players or developers) struggle when confronting this matter.

the difference rests in the audience, their anxieties and the craving that many people have for games to somehow be the *most* special or *most* beautiful medium when I don’t think art works that way. if that bothers you, I don’t know what to say. I just don’t agree.

We all *do* agree that games are art but when some of us confront the fact that very often there’s often better art found on our bookshelves, it can lead to a paralyzing fear. it’s fine though! and life just gets easier once you acknowledge this is often the case and embrace that games cannot simply be a medium that exists by themselves and only judged by their own rules. they exist next to all other works and it’s totally okay for us to talk about them in relation to other art. that’s a pretty normal thing do.

i think there’s a drive from many people who love games to try to insist that they are somehow more important than other art but I do think many of gaming’s most popular stories would fit in snugly on the shelf of an airport bookstore. for me that’s beautiful but I think for many readers my saying that will ignite a bit of ire in their heart.

and throughout the 2000s, video games have grappled with this fear, experimenting with all kinds of ways to invite praise and seeking a certain kind of respectability. this usually means intimating films many years after they’ve done something. AAA games in particular often chase after other mediums instead of trying to sharpen *games* themselves. they try to be less like a game.

games do this thing where they kind arrive at things a decade late, most often in terms of emulating the movies. Children of Men pioneers some new long camera shots and twelve years later, God of War boats about never taking the camera of Kratos. So it goes on and on in ways I’m not gonna really catalogue. indeed, the Sony prestige model is the perfect touchstone for the kind of anxiety I’m talking about. the ongoing quest for “playable cinema” that fails to understand that how oxymoronic of a term that is.

and yet we seek it insatiably.

This is the snag with Expedition 33 which colors so much of the conversation about the game. For all the craftsmanship and all the ways I see, in the artists who made it, kindred spirits… I cannot help but also see a game gripped by this yearning.

You might think that unfair of me to say but remember that I’m not really talking about Expedition 33 the video game. so if you wanna talk to me about how the story changed you life, I think that’s great! I can totally see how that could happen with this cast of characters in a way that maybe it didn’t for another RPG. this is a well made piece of work and if it affected you, swept you off your feet, or whatever you are not wrong to have felt that way. though I might caution you to avoid saying something like “there’s never been a story like this!”

what I am really talking about is Expedition 33 the Rhetorical Object and what i see first and foremost is a game of certain luxuriousness and richness. people have grasped that quality and made it a kind of rallying cry. see? see? even with less budget we can still make One Of These and have it feel suitably AAA. It can hit That Threshold.

we can be Like Them.

That last part is where I stumble. Yes, this is an “indie” game insofar as it wasn’t backed by a major publisher but its sensibilities, the kind of production it is trying to emulate and embody is distinctly that of a high budget, mass market AAA product. and much of the conversation about the game has not really been about the story itself (which is often compelling but also has a back third and conclusions that I think I actually not particularly good) but how a “small indie team” managed to create what was nominally a AAA game. because that’s what Expedition 33 is.

i don’t think the artists sat down and said “okay, how can we make this look respectable?” but I think it clearly has thoughts about what leads to mass appeal and they just happen to align with the kinds of tenets and discussions I’ve heard in conference rooms. if you don’t think people talk about games in terms of awards, sorry but yes they sometimes do!

and remember: games can “do” many thing things at once and art very often does things that the artists and creators may not intend! and players or other public figures (marketing men, YouTube culture warrior types) can absolutely turn games into symbols that the creators did not intend for them to be. games are often two things: a text and a conversation. that’s just how this works. so even if the developers of E33 didn’t intend for any of this, that doesn’t stop it from happening. sorry that just how art works. it does stuff!

because Expedition 33 is a game of suitably lush stylisms… though not too lush that we can’t also have a bit of photoreal alpha-graphics here and there… whose story is backed up by the performances of many skilled actors, a few of them Hollywood figures, all underscored by a highly *produced* orchestral score. many people (not all of course but in a sane work I wouldn’t need to make that disclaimer because of course not all! maybe not you even!) were drawn to this game not because it was an RPG but because it looked so much not like what their mental image of an RPG was. this was “respectable.”

“I could tell folks about it and they could look up a picture and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed.” is a kind of sentence that pops up around the game sometimes. because if gamers are one thing, they are often extremely embarrassed by the games they play.

a lot of these folks will say things like “most jRPGs tell bad stories” or some such nonsense and if you’re a reactionary reader might think “Harper, didn’t you.. not that long ago.. say that games stories aren’t great” and kinda? but the sentiment is different. when folks say “man this game is great FOR A JRPG” or “that game surprised me! it’s so exceptionally more mature than other games” it’s a starting position born of genuine disdain. one which *is* embarrassed it’s a position marked with many issues (among them racism) that I can’t agree with. i think games are often silly but I don’t think*less* of them.

good criticism starts from a position of respect. don’t approach works like some fandom fanatic blind to their flaws and shortcomings but also on the other hand definitely don’t start from a mindset assuming they’re garbage not worth your time.

meet them where they are and extend a hand. you’ll find that even the most pop art, the most trope-y things, can grab your heart. and even if they don’t do something that deep and life-changing, this is just a more fun and healthy starting point to take with any game.

I have been playing Trails of Cold Steel in my spare time during this holiday season and in general I don’t think this game, which is far from the best Trails game even, is doing anything much worse or better than Expedition 33. at least not in a sense that makes it inherently less worthy of my time. it’s probably gonna piss people off but I think often they are doing similar things. they employ similarly journeyman writing approaches. they operate on a same kind of broadness even if they are telling different stories. and in this, I actually commend Expedition 33. for all the anxiety I see in the game’s production design, the tone and feel does match other RPGs.

but that’s the snag isn’t it? when you boil it down, Expedition 33 is just another RPG. (something I say with love!) it’s not really any more respectable a story than any other in the genre. it’s equally broad as anything else within the space and contained in that broadness I think there’s a very real kind of humanity to be found but you can find that same humanity here in Cold Steel or Lost Odyssey or many other places. I found great reserves of it within Octopath Traveler 0 recently! RPGs kick ass. it’s just a good format and in embracing the genre, Expedition 33 can be inspiring. hell, I think a 7/10 RPG will put any prestige games to shame. the form is just that potent

which is to say that Expedition 33 is… a video game! lean in close and you will find it is a similar shape to most other games of this type. compelling, sure! revolutionary? industry changing? I’m not sure.

but Trails of Cold Steel looks and feels “of the genre” and engages more blatantly in some tropes whereas Expedition 33 does not always. and even when that games does The RPG Stuff it looks like the Big Boys, carries itself like the Big Boys. and so I cannot help but read, to some extent, the conversation around that game and the resulting awards adulation through anything other than a respectability politics lens.

a lot of people turn their noses on JRPGs! I outlined a recently example of this in my Horses blog mentioning how Ian Bogost, a kind of model games academic, often colors his criticisms of video game story telling with Orientalism. Japanese RPGs and their stories, when he mentions them, are inherently less worthy of being considered “serious games.” this is blatantly false but I think many people feel this way. there’s a kind of embarrassment with RPGs (particularly Japanese works) for their broadness and brighter aesthetics, for their tropes and forms. so many… though not all… people coming to Expedition 33, I think, are folks who felt chagrined by RPGs but by virtue of the game’s AAA qualities. it felt safe to them.

take that with all the implications you can. what made it felt safe? well, it was like a movie. it was more obvious western even though it was working in the same emotional space as the rest of the genre, etc etc..

If you look a certain way, embody certain aesthetic markers of “quality”.. people fundamentally treat you differently. this is true not just in life but with art. Last night, as Larian revealed their new Divinity game’s trailer (which… hell yeah brother let’s go!) I watched a scene of highly detailed gore. Flesh teared, snapped, burned. Lusciously, gorgeously and on the main stage there was a moment where folks at the Game Awards simply watched animated torture. meanwhile, visual novel makers or art game developers have their games banned from storefronts. what gives?

I guess they just don’t look quite so good anyway y'know?

This is the same thing that catches me with Expedition 33. looking a certain way, meeting a certain kind of quality, made it an easy choice for awards but it is also a game that Keighley could not ignore sucking into the machinery of his prestige celebration. it was easy to! the game made it easy by seeking those AAA markers and signifiers. it’s undeniably a good game but it also looked the part. and because it looked the part, it’s not just an RPG anymore but *the* RPG that’s redeeming a genre which is not particularly in need a redemption.

and so the attempt to escape the pain of being locked in a genre… creates more pain for the genre. more frictions, more contortions as the game is subsumed by capital forces and becomes a symbol. you too could be respected like this if you just made you games look like ours. the art exists but another thing is also birthed. help, i’ve been turned into a marketable plushie! help, I’m not longer just a decent RPG but an object lesson about production.

thank you Unreal Engine 5, I couldn’t have done it without you.

finally, I can be the thing I’ve always wanted to be.
I can finally be “one of the good ones”