| Nuvendil said: I think that you have made a fundamentally flawed assumption: that suspension of disbelief is achieved by "tricking" the player with elaborate explanations and realistic visuals. This is not the case. The key word in the traditional term is "Willing." Willing Suspension of Disbelief. We know fiction isn't real, that it's not real. No amount of elaborate backstory will draw us in by tricking us. Suspension of Disbelief isn't something I, as a writer, cause. It is something the reader or player volunteers as their end of a sort of contract. They agree to provide their attention and the writer agrees to provide a story worthy of that attentiveness. Therefore, the issue many JRPGs have is that their writing is either poor or just doesn't cross cultural bounds. Bad writing, regardless of it's elaborateness, will not maintain suspension of disbelief in the reader. Because it fails to hold up the writer's end of the deal. And then the issue of cultural bounds: games heavily rooted in Japanese culture - Persona (from my understanding, not a player of it myself), Youkai Watch, etc are rooted in Japanese culture, folk or otherwise. It's got little to do with realism; unrealistic stories have drawn in western and eastern viewers/players/readers for centuries. But it has to be internally consistent and engaging. Failing to be those, the Willing Supsension of Disbelief will be broken. |
Good point. Many other good points have been made in this thread, but this is the first that considers some issues.
Interesting thread.
If it hasn't been done yet, I'd add a point of mine that applies both to western and eastern productions: when a franchise is planned exclusively to sell, and anime/cartoons are designed to sell merchandising and games too, or games are designed to sell merchandising and anime/cartoons, they often become soulless. Professional writing can't replace inspiration, it can help to transform an inspired work into a usable script for movies or games and it can produce good scripts for games where the story is not important, but when the story is important, most people will be able to tell whether it's inspired or designed.
That's why I hated the first Transformers series, a few decennia ago, and I considered He-Man quite crappy too, they weren't inspired, but designed to sell merchandising, and Transformers were particularly bad. Current Transformers movies have far better FX and filming quality, but they are still designed, not inspired. Well, other Mattel stuff, like Barbie-related one, is even worse, but that's beating a dead horse. 
