Maybe It's A Dream, Maybe Nothing Else Is Real.
Here is a meandering and spoilery entry about Omori. I thought at first it was going to be about how silent videogame protagonists can be given a sense of character, but then it ended up being about how player action - or, in the case I'm thinking about, player inaction - impacts on videogame storytelling.
Whilst I tend to find silent protagonists uninteresting, I do really like characters who fuck up and fall apart and can't trust their own perception of reality. Sunny of Omori falls into both categories, and it turns out my love of terrible guilt-ridden fuckups is stronger than my need for a character to have dialogue.
One detail that I thought helped to get the protagonist's characterisation across: the game will sometimes ask 'Do you want to [do X]?' as a subtle indicator that the protagonist really doesn't want to do X. Usually, when you examine a photo, you just pick it up automatically. I'm fairly sure the game asks 'Do you want to pick up this photo?' once and exactly once, and it's when I'd worked out from context that neither I nor Sunny was going to want to see what this photograph depicted.
It's hard to think of how the precise experience of picking up that photograph could translate into any other medium. I entered the room. It was dark and corrupted, and there was no way out. There was a photograph on the floor. I knew I would need to pick up the photograph to progress. I had started to suspect, from the pictures I'd picked up a moment before, what would be in the photograph. I did not want to pick up the photograph.
There was an armchair in the room. If I sat in the armchair, the corruption in the room disappeared; the unsettling soundtrack disappeared; Sunny's injuries disappeared; the photograph disappeared. It was just a boy sitting in an ordinary, bright room, and everything was fine.
I sat in that armchair for a long time.
Eventually, I told myself I had to press on. I got out of the chair; the room turned dark and unsettling again. I went over to the photograph and tried to interact with it. The game asked me if I wanted to pick it up.
I hesitated. The game hadn't asked me that before I'd picked up any of the other photographs.
I said 'no' and went back to the chair. I'd thought I'd braced myself to go over and get the photograph. But I hadn't braced myself to say I wanted to pick it up; I needed more time for that.
It's interesting to think of how different players will have experienced that room differently. I'd put myself pretty deeply into Sunny's mindset by that point, so I stalled and stalled before picking up the photograph. When I eventually did grit my teeth and pick it up, seeing it hit pretty hard, even though I'd guessed what sort of thing to expect by that point. I wonder how different the experience feels for someone who just enters the room, walks straight to the photograph and picks it up.
Anyway! Yes. I'm thinking about this because a manga adaptation of Omori is beginning soon, and it struck me that, however it chooses to adapt that moment, it's impossible for it to adapt my specific experience of that moment: making the choice to sit in a chair doing nothing for several minutes, because I personally - not just the protagonist - was afraid of what came next.
It could, in theory, show Sunny hesitating to pick up the photograph. But the experience will never be quite the same. You can tell me that a character stalled for several minutes, but the reader can't live through those minutes in the way the player can; adding several minutes' worth of Sunny stalling to the manga would destroy the story pacing.
I suppose the reader can technically live through those minutes, come to think of it, if they set the volume down for a moment because they don't want to read any more! It's still not quite the same experience, because you're stalling by leaving the world of the story rather than stalling within the world of the story - it changes the story of Omori slightly that I was stalling while inhabiting Sunny, so I was also causing the character to stall - but that's an interesting thought.
That was a lot of rambling about one specific moment in a videogame! I'm just fascinated by the way the interactive nature of videogames can allow players to alter the way a story is told in small ways, even if the game isn't technically presenting them with a story-branching choice.
Whilst I tend to find silent protagonists uninteresting, I do really like characters who fuck up and fall apart and can't trust their own perception of reality. Sunny of Omori falls into both categories, and it turns out my love of terrible guilt-ridden fuckups is stronger than my need for a character to have dialogue.
One detail that I thought helped to get the protagonist's characterisation across: the game will sometimes ask 'Do you want to [do X]?' as a subtle indicator that the protagonist really doesn't want to do X. Usually, when you examine a photo, you just pick it up automatically. I'm fairly sure the game asks 'Do you want to pick up this photo?' once and exactly once, and it's when I'd worked out from context that neither I nor Sunny was going to want to see what this photograph depicted.
It's hard to think of how the precise experience of picking up that photograph could translate into any other medium. I entered the room. It was dark and corrupted, and there was no way out. There was a photograph on the floor. I knew I would need to pick up the photograph to progress. I had started to suspect, from the pictures I'd picked up a moment before, what would be in the photograph. I did not want to pick up the photograph.
There was an armchair in the room. If I sat in the armchair, the corruption in the room disappeared; the unsettling soundtrack disappeared; Sunny's injuries disappeared; the photograph disappeared. It was just a boy sitting in an ordinary, bright room, and everything was fine.
I sat in that armchair for a long time.
Eventually, I told myself I had to press on. I got out of the chair; the room turned dark and unsettling again. I went over to the photograph and tried to interact with it. The game asked me if I wanted to pick it up.
I hesitated. The game hadn't asked me that before I'd picked up any of the other photographs.
I said 'no' and went back to the chair. I'd thought I'd braced myself to go over and get the photograph. But I hadn't braced myself to say I wanted to pick it up; I needed more time for that.
It's interesting to think of how different players will have experienced that room differently. I'd put myself pretty deeply into Sunny's mindset by that point, so I stalled and stalled before picking up the photograph. When I eventually did grit my teeth and pick it up, seeing it hit pretty hard, even though I'd guessed what sort of thing to expect by that point. I wonder how different the experience feels for someone who just enters the room, walks straight to the photograph and picks it up.
Anyway! Yes. I'm thinking about this because a manga adaptation of Omori is beginning soon, and it struck me that, however it chooses to adapt that moment, it's impossible for it to adapt my specific experience of that moment: making the choice to sit in a chair doing nothing for several minutes, because I personally - not just the protagonist - was afraid of what came next.
It could, in theory, show Sunny hesitating to pick up the photograph. But the experience will never be quite the same. You can tell me that a character stalled for several minutes, but the reader can't live through those minutes in the way the player can; adding several minutes' worth of Sunny stalling to the manga would destroy the story pacing.
I suppose the reader can technically live through those minutes, come to think of it, if they set the volume down for a moment because they don't want to read any more! It's still not quite the same experience, because you're stalling by leaving the world of the story rather than stalling within the world of the story - it changes the story of Omori slightly that I was stalling while inhabiting Sunny, so I was also causing the character to stall - but that's an interesting thought.
That was a lot of rambling about one specific moment in a videogame! I'm just fascinated by the way the interactive nature of videogames can allow players to alter the way a story is told in small ways, even if the game isn't technically presenting them with a story-branching choice.