February 27, 2020

That Time I Tried Getting into Sword Art Online


I mean, granted, I didn’t try very hard.  But there was an attempt.

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet has been out for a good while.  I know that much.  And yes, there was a point where I was interested in giving it a try -- poking my head in not just to add a new game to my collection, but to have my very first, hands-on experience with the entire Sword Art Online franchise.  Turns out I was too much of a coward to take the plunge.  Reviews implied that letting it slip by wouldn’t hurt me too badly in the long run, so I did exactly that.  Plus, I had other, better stuff to play.  I assume.

As fate would have it, Fatal Bullet had a little resurgence recently.  Another version with extra content -- and, more importantly, a free demo on the Switch.  I’m not exactly keen to spend money on a SAO installment (though I’ve certainly combed far greater depths), but “free” is a price I’m willing to pay, no question.  There was also the allure of a character creator. How could I say no to another opportunity to make my favorite all-purpose OC, Lariat?  So I downloaded the demo, and…barely made it past the tutorial before I shut it down mid-cutscene and deleted it from my SD card.  Gotta make room for more Fire Emblem content, you see.


Speaking strictly about Fatal Bullet’s first strike?  The character creator -- as is often the case -- is functional.  That’s the nicest way to put it; you’d think that the devs would know instinctively how meticulous their target audience is when it comes to building the perfect waifu/husband, and would supply a breadth of options, sliders, accessories, and the like.  No such luck.  Though in its defense, maybe I’m being too harsh.  Lariat, as I’ve said before, is supposed to do The Commodores justice and be “built like an amazon” -- an imposing warrior who switches between being a boisterous beauty and a steely, stalwart soldier. 

Fatal Bullet’s creation suite, at best, only lets you make an anime teenager.  A tall one, granted (if you max everything out, you’ll stand at 185 cm, or about 6 feet), but maturity’s in short supply.  Probably because most of the customization options are recreations of canon girls like Asuna, Leafa, Sinon, and the like.

I feel like knowing who they are is high-caliber cursed knowledge, but whatever.  Being an anime fan with an internet connection is a gateway to countless forbidden truths.



The second strike, obviously, is the gameplay.  Fatal Bullet goes in hard with its virtual reality MMO (or one of them, at least), Gun Gale Online.  As a new player, you get to make your alternate self and dive in to enjoy firefights and scour the digital earth for loot.  I can’t imagine how interesting or exciting it might be to actually venture into a game world like that -- I’m sure that the GGO spinoff anime is a good example of the dynamism possible in future games -- but speaking strictly as someone only controlling the game with twin sticks and buttons?  Like the creation suite, it’s functional, but not much else.

It works, I guess, but nothing about its opening grabbed me.  That’s unfair, I know -- dirtbag move, judging a game solely by its tutorial -- and near as I could tell, there’s nothing especially wrong with its gunplay.  But the starting environment’s pretty dull, there’s not a lot of flair to combat (and with this being a shooter, I was wary there wasn’t much), and I had lingering concerns about the AI challenge.  The game made a hullaballoo about taking on a big enemy robot in an open room, yet the meager shooter instincts I have told me to take potshots from the cover of the doorway -- and thus I didn’t need to bother moving dodging, or even entering the room.  Fun.  Well, there is a grappling hook mechanic, but I tested it out when I had a chance.  Could I use it to string gun combos together, or otherwise gain a positional advantage by shooting from midair at or en route to the grapple point?  At that juncture, the answer was no -- which got a big awwwwww out of me.

So what was the third strike, then?  You can already guess.  The minute it started being Sword Art Online was the minute I lost the will to go on.


While I’m not super-familiar with MMOs, I know enough to make me give SAO, GGO, Fatal Bullet, and everything in between a sidelong glance.  For one thing, it’s still baffling to me that the canon had a major incident involving people getting trapped in an MMO to the point where scores of innocents needed rehab and there was an actual body count, yet you’ve still got gamers lining up to play the next MMO in line.  (EA, Activision, and Ubisoft are licking their lips as they take notes.)  More immediately, Fatal Bullet makes me suspect the experience is plenty borked. 

So what you’re saying, game, is that minutes after the first login, you can venture into the same area as someone who’s been playing for months, if not years -- with all the gear and skill that that implies -- and they can harass you as they please?  Is there no such thing as a starting area?  Why are high-level players even bothering to venture near beginners?  Is it a commonality for epic or legendary loot to show up a stone’s throw from the spawn point?  If so, why?  What good will that do a beginner?  Are there no safe zones where low- and high-levels can meet without engaging in combat?  Shouldn’t the latter be off elsewhere, putting their big numbers to better use in raids and dungeons and whatnot?


Having watched Gundam Build Divers -- both the original, vanilla season and the first season of Re:RISE -- I get the feeling that these MMO-based shows keep forgetting that their characters are (mostly) just playing a game, not actually existing in that digital world.  GGO gives off airs of being a lawless, ruthless world where anyone can ram a barrel against your skull at a moment’s notice…which would be fine if it were an actual, physical place.  But it’s not.  It’s a game, the success of which is half-dependent on giving players customer satisfaction.  Who’d want to play a game where you can run into acolytes of the gank squad when you’ve barely learned the controls?

I don’t know.  I feel like I’m misinterpreting and misrepresenting the world of GGO because I’m looking for ways to hate on it.  So I’ll focus on what really made me give up: the shot of Kirito and every single member of his harem in one place.


(This is not the full harem.)

It really did leave me aghast.  So many girls.  So many.  It’s been a hot minute since I trashed the demo, but a second look at a stream archive for reference confirms there are six…no, seven canon characters -- one of which is Kirito’s kinda-sorta relative, and another is his digi-daughter.  Another one is a game-only creation, I hope, while the other two depend on your creative input.  Also, there are two guys there, I guess.  But still, damn.  Also, also, shout-outs to Kirito in a scene or two beforehand asserting his dominance by T-posing storming the scene and getting ready to run you through with a lightsaber.  In a shooter.  Yeah, I know it’s canon, but to reiterate, damn.

I don’t want to deal with this character.  That says a lot, because to the game’s credit -- which is probably the last time I’ll say it in this post -- it presents Kirito as a reasonable, well-meaning guy.  Maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad.  I can’t decide if it’s more cloying to have him be the god-king with a bad attitude, or a wannabe bro who’s just plain better than you.  Either way, the well’s been poisoned by the black swordsman, and the mere sight of him is enough to make me throw up my hands.


That said, Kirito in Fatal Bullet is more of the final straw than the all-out catalyst of a rage quit.  Maybe this is purely a SAO thing, but it already felt like my OC was making the slide toward Mary Suedom at the expense of the story’s credibility.  Its verisimilitude.  Suspension of disbelief, if you prefer.  As soon as you start the game, you just so happen to meet an esteemed, uber-skilled player who now knows you by name.  And you just so happen to get a rare AI partner who sees you as its master.  And you just so happen to get a grappling hook that, seemingly, no one else does.  There’s hitting a jackpot, and then there’s GTFO levels of odds.

I mean…is this just the legacy of SAO?  Is this its influence, flowing through everything in its canon like the blood of the gods?  Call me naïve, but I thought that one of the key components of a good story -- game or otherwise -- was conflict.  A clash between peoples, natures, ideologies, whatever.  And while that’s technically still true of SAO, from the perspective of an outsider looking in, there’s all this guff that distorts the purity and honesty of conflict.  Ridiculous advantages.  One-in-a-million encounters.  Friends in high places running interference if need be. 

I’ve thought about getting further into SAO for months now, since it keeps getting new seasons, spinoffs, content, what have you.  But again, the well’s been poisoned.  It’s pointless for me to sit down and probe a franchise that A) I have no chance of liking, and B) has already been worn down to a nub by a phalanx of online critics.  Its sins are numerous, small and large.  Its foibles are legendary, from its overpowered hero to its dismal treatment of its leading ladies (multiple attempted rape scenes, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!).  I’ll acknowledge that the franchise has its fans -- for some reason -- but for each one of them, there’s someone else justifiably bleating about how it’s truly, legitimately awful.

Given all that, is there anything else I can say about SAO, as a coward who’s too scared, worn out, and/or lazy to absorb everything for himself? 

The answer is yes.

*sigh* Let’s talk about wish fulfillment.


As a wannabe writing hero, I try my hardest to avoid some common, infamous pratfalls in storytelling.  That means I do what I can to keep the wish fulfillment from getting out of hand, from the conceptual level to the actual execution.  This MC has the power to see the world’s proverbial source code, is a good fighter, and smart enough to solve any mystery!  Oh, but he’s also a socially-inept creeper who’s become an insomniac thanks to his always-on power to relive the deaths of others every night, and clashes with superhuman cultists whose abilities are miles ahead of his basic punches and kicks. 

This MC is huge, strong, and tough, so she can overthrow society and live out all her fantasies!  Oh, but being a giant woman means her life is in complete shambles by way of her being too large to function properly in the real world, with tons of hate thrown her way for the crime of being alive.  This MC finds a stone that gives him super fighting ability and pyrokinesis, so now he can become the hero he’s always dreamed of being (and fight on par with other elemental heroes)!  Oh, but he’s already tried and failed being a hero with the crippling survivor guilt to prove it, and his sanity slowly erodes until a complete psychological breakdown as he continuously confronts his inability to save the people near him from certain death.

The moral of the story is “don’t be one of my characters”.  You will be miserable.


With that said, I understand that wish fulfillment is prevalent.  Pervasive.  Perpetual, even.  I can go on a tear about how all my characters and stories are wish fulfillment-proof, but even if I am nightmarishly close to my productions, I know there’s a bizarro version of me that can argue why my stuff is wish fulfillment.  And you know what?  That’s fine.  There’s a lot of content in a lot of stories that audiences will want to latch onto.  Just because there’s some of it doesn’t mean that that’s all there is to a story.  Star Wars, Harry Potter, plenty of Marvel characters (movies, comics, whatever) -- even if there are desirable aspects to their lives, it’s fine as long as it doesn’t completely override the purpose of the story.

From what I’ve experienced secondhand, SAO in general does the long jump across the line of what’s acceptable and what isn’t.  Even if its faults are the result of the stigma, reputation, and memes, all three of those gained traction because the source material botched its execution.  Kirito being talented, righteous, lucky, and inundated with cute anime girls makes whatever message or narrative SAO is trying to peddle that much harder to take seriously.  If there’s supposed to be a physical conflict (such as it is) in the canon, how is it supposed to have weight and impact when there’s no illusion of potential failure?  What is his conflict, his struggle, besides playing the hero for his waifus? 

In theory, SAO’s problems should have sunken it from the moment it first showed up.  Yet here it is, as a part of the collective consciousness for who knows how much longer.  Why?  Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this: people actually like wish fulfillment.


There’s another aspect of wish fulfillment worth keeping in mind here: projection.  As important as it is to have good, engaging, challenging fiction, I know there are people who don’t want that all the time, every time…or even any time.  It’s not about seeing a hero go on an adventure and struggling to overcome conflicts within and without; it’s about being able to insert oneself into a story, and experiencing the highs and catharsis that only a world of fiction can provide.  Making the challenges anything above superficial throws a wet towel on that escapism.

Maybe that’s the secret to SAO’s success.  Not that it hasn’t gotten better over the years, or that it can never be better -- you know, overcoming its weaknesses to turn naysayers into loyal fans.  Then again, it already has loyal fans, and plenty of them.  Not strictly because of the wish fulfillment and projection, mind; between the premise and the execution, there’s something for people to latch onto.  I’m obviously not one of them, but this is a franchise that deals heavily in the exploration of virtual worlds gone awry.  If it were a real-world scenario, I’d be down to explore for myself -- assuming I wouldn’t be in mortal peril at any point.  To reiterate: I’m what scientists call “a huge coward”, you see.


Not to conflate two storytelling aspects/goals, but I think I understand the appeal of Kirito.  Projection, wish fulfillment, self-insertion, whatever -- that’s possible as long as there’s something relatable.  Something that a reader, viewer, etc. can grasp.  Someone who challenges the audience can’t be as relatable as someone who doesn’t.  Well, not as easily.  I’ve griped on this very blog about bland protagonists, safe protagonists, heroes who are heroes in name only, and more.  But despite my gripes, they keep on coming and they keep on coming and they keep on coming.  If the end goal is relatability by any means necessary, then it’s no wonder.

Speaking personally?  Maybe that’s what’s holding me back as a writer.  It’s not that I don’t have relatable characters, but my protagonists are all universally, strictly atypical.  It’s what makes them interesting and compelling, but their lack of normalcy -- their physical, mental, and spiritual quirks that make them larger-than-life figures -- means that I’m fighting an uphill battle every time.  I mean, the level of contrast from story to story (and sometimes in the same story) is stark.  Who’s more identifiable: the teenage girl who cares for her friends and family, and has lingering body image issues?  Or the cadaverous bookworm who loves libraries and tracks down serial killers in his spare time?


I’d say that the shining lesson from SAO is that people don’t want their protagonists to be extraordinary…except Kirito is extraordinary in multiple ways across multiple games.  He’s OP as hell, which I guess is also part of the allure.  So maybe the lesson here -- the one that writers “should” “take to heart” -- is that audiences want characters and stories without struggles.  Stories are entertainment, and there’s nothing entertaining about conflict, stress, and exertion.  So why make characters go through that?  At most, conflict in-universe should be arbitrary.  Fleeting.  Superficial.  Fights exist only for spectacle.  Arguments only exist for easy drama.  Character faults exist only for sympathy.  And/or easy drama.

I’d say this is 100% me talking out of my ass, but I’m not so sure.  Anime and manga fans know how the market’s seen a deluge of what’s known as the isekai genre.  Commonly, a character gets dropped into another world -- typically a fantasy world, typically with RPG elements, and typically with lots of cute girls that grapple onto the lead.  Some of them are good, some are bad, a HUGE percentage of them are derivative; regardless of quality, the sheer quantity of stories featuring what might as well be Kirito’s second cousin twice removed doesn’t say good things.  Need a good laugh (or cry)?  Go browse the archives of anime blog Tenka Seiha, and see how many times its writer has to make the same complaints.  Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until the universe’s nigh-certain collapse.

The ride never ends.


The question is, should the ride end?

SAO, for better or worse, has scarred our DNA with the mark of its… “dignity”.  That can never, ever change.  Here’s the thing, though: even if one of the most popular franchises around continues to exert pressure on an industry at large, it’s not the be-all and end-all.  There’s more to anime, manga, light novels, visual novels, video games, and more than purely following in SAO’s footsteps.  There are dozens, if not hundreds of bangers out there right now, showing the power of a good story -- tales with compelling characters, heart-shaking struggles, and a proper understanding of the craft. 

SAO may have stumbled ass-backwards into the spotlight, but as long as there are heroes out there willing to put in the work, we’ll always have something good to balance out the bad.  And who knows?  Maybe someday, I’ll be throwing one of my works on the right side of the scales.


Who else but me is willing to write about a crow-man hybrid who was imprisoned and executed millennia ago after creating the Earth -- effectively making him God -- and having been resurrected (poorly) now fights against other, immortal beastmen in an effort to protect the yet-unborn human race from invasion?  While also being bound by handcuffs he can break for a short time, even if it means he risks breaking down into a pile of semi-autonomous limbs?

...

... 

...Huh.  Maybe this is why I’m not popular.  On the other hand, it’s Cody as a birdman, with the flamboyance of Jack Sparrow.  What’s not to love?


Yeah.

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