........
)As I said, I think, in my first entry I don't pretend to be a hardcore gamer. Rainy summer days or Albany winter storms do sometimes find me indulging in the occasional RPG binge. As boring as it is, I will forever be enamored by both the Zelda and Final Fantasy franchises, mostly because of the narrative nature of the game-play, and the increasingly stunning visuals. While Zelda has remained slightly more static (it develops its own mythology, with each game adding another chapter to the chronicles of Hyrule), Final Fantasy continues to develop the classic myth/fairytale archetypes. I began my intensive research of children's literature a little over a year ago, and the more I research, the more excited I get about how intricately linked the Final Fantasy games are to our contemporary embodiments of folk literature.
But how did we get from "Objective: EAT" as in Pacman to the complex strategies, characters and even subversive political agendas embodied in the Final Fantasy series?
I think this is the basis for a huge research paper (I'll put it in my book of essays on the evolution of Fairytales...)but I'll try to address a few of my initial, only casually researched ideas. I think one of the first answers I might get if I asked that question would be "because we can." This assumes a single sort of gimmicky motive, that is really only about creating the most cutting-edge effects, and constantly driving forward in our efforts to make
things look more and more real. But if that were the case, then what we would have (and I think we do have this to some extent in the development of new first-person shooters) only created more and more realistic and graphic versions of Pacman. The technology would change, but the objective (consuming quickly) would not. In both Zelda and Final Fantasy (and many other RPG's) you are transported to a new world, a new time and introduced to new characters with new ideals. While there hasn't yet been a version of either game where you have a principle role in the outcome of the story (although it was played around with in Final Fantasy XII, and in all of the games, you can complete quests and missions that, while not being integral to the main plot, still offer more levels to the story...often in the form of backstory about a certain character) the stories themselves are becoming deeper and more tangible. I would even ventureto call these stories our modern folk literature.
I am hesitant, however to make the blanket argument that just because the stories are complex and beautiful it means that we should start replacing older literature with them entirely. I feel as though we tend to want to place things in neat little categories, video games vs. books, and seven days out of every ten I would argue that the books need to start conquering more often. Final Fantasy and Zelda should not replace books. But I think they, and other RPG's like them perhaps deserve to be discussed on a level with books, because, like it or not, they are part of children's and young adult's lives. The reluctance to do so is of the same (but more extreme sort as the hesitance in calling children's books or young adult books 'real literature.'
Going back to my original question (I haven't forgotten it...just put in on hold while I try to make sense of the scramble of possibilities this topic presents). How did it get to this? Pacman can safely maintain its standing as a hefty part of pop-culture but I don't know if I could find a way to work it into any literary category. Of course, RPG's like Zelda and Final Fantasy are just as much pop culture as anything else, but the Wizard of Oz was popular when L. Frank Baum was cranking out installments of his Oz saga and now it is regarded as a literary classic.
Will we one day be studying the allegory and sybolism of The Twilight Princess in classrooms alongside Alice in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia? Maybe. And should we? Or should games forever be separated from that crumbling cathedral that is the current world of literature?
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