[GameCareerGuide presents here an abridged version of the work of Christopher Chong. This is an excerpt of his thesis for his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Nottingham's Department of Music, in which he dissects the import of the music in the RPG classic Final Fantasy VII. You can download the whole thesis here.]
Final Fantasy VII is one of the most successful and best-loved video games in the role-playing genre as recognised on various Internet review websites such as Gamespot and IGN and in publications such as Game On! The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time (2006). The video game role-playing game (RPG, as it is generally known as a genre), has been central to the Square Enix Co., Ltd. game development company since the release in 1987 of Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
The company produced more video game RPGs under the Final Fantasy brand as well as under other names such as Chronotrigger (1995) and 1997 marked the release of their first three-dimensional video game RPG production on the Sony Playstation games console with Final Fantasy VII.[1] It is study within this video game as a model that will form the basis of this presentation of music and its narrative role within the role-playing game genre.
Role-playing skill is an important part of social cognition, communication, and interaction, and reflects an underlying empathy -- the ability to imagine oneself in the shoes of another person -- in the role-player.[2]
The process by which a human engages with a computer or video game console involves interfaces between the visual, aural and physical senses. In order to 'play' a game, the person must use this sensory information and react physically in accordance with rules set up within the programming code resulting in gameplay. The video game as a form of new media can be described as a popular form of computer program which is predominated by interfaces requiring the manipulation of a character. There are many established genres within the term 'video game' that describe and distinguish between the experiences and alternate realities that they simulate. The view of video games as simulations, as proposed by Aarseth (2001), is a useful perspective in understanding their unique narrative functions without the assumptions traditionally associated with narrative structure and theory derived from literature. Similarly, traditional music analysis may impose structures that are not relevant to a particular interactive ludic space. The role-playing genre in video games alerts us to the presence of the game player in multiple spaces and conceptual domains, of their existence digitally as a character in role and as a player controlling that character by virtue of control pad or joystick.
Sephiroth: You are just a puppet...
You have no heart...
And cannot feel any pain...
Do you understand?
Cloud: I don't want to understand.
To the main player-character, Cloud, the knowledge that he was created five years before this encounter renders his supposed memories as mere illusions. All we can hear are the tolling of bells that usually precede the musical theme of Sephiroth, 'Those Chosen by the Planet'. Confusingly it does not appear after the above dialogue in FF7 and it is in this confusion that the player can truly relate to the player-character they control. The dynamic nature of this relationship allows the player to drive the player-character like a vehicle for temporal control over the discourse of the narrative. Similarly, through this shared view and character agency, music is given a continuously meta-diegetic status which allows for the completion of the feedback loop between player, joystick and audio/visual stimulus. Although Cloud's nemesis is referring to the fact that he is a tool through which a Planet destroying prophecy will be fulfilled, his use of the term 'puppet' is not far from the truth in terms of his existence within the semiotic system of the video game.
Perhaps it is interesting to say that the interactor steers the player character... steering, rather than playing, suggests that the player character is a sort of vehicle from which a world can be seen and otherwise experienced... this character both constrains us... and also opens up possibilities.[3]
If we consider the video game character to be part of a drama, the player-character is the actor and the player is then the interactor, functioning somewhere between audience and the player-character. Unlike a film, the agency experienced is not that of the actor, but of the player himself. This means there is less need to convey how the actor is feeling as the player can experience events first hand, however in Final Fantasy VII, Cloud retains some ability to speak in order to influence how the player should feel. First hand engagement through the constraints of the player-character, player-character dialogue with non player-characters and the selected music track playing are the only factors that can effectively control how the player experiences the narrative.
We can classify multiple levels upon which our semiotic video game subsystem is acting within the Final Fantasy VII ludological space. This will help us to form an understanding as to how audio in a game relates to narrative discourse and what role it has in matters of control over agency both of the player and the player-character. In ludic systems, narratives are created on four levels of temporal structure including a discourse level, performance level, simulation level and at the base, a generative substrate.[4] Each level depends on the one below it and presents itself in some form in the level above it. The generative substrate, comprised of all the programmed systems of logic in the game, is realised as a simulation experience in the level above. By interacting within the simulation the player accesses parts of the narrative through their actions. These actions then appear in the form of events on the performance level. Above that, events combine to form the narrative plot experienced as narrative discourse, usually in an episodic manner. When applied to human speech, this structure equates speech with the generative substrate and its organisation as language as the simulation level.
[1] Square Enix Co., Ltd., 'HISTORY | SQUARE ENIX' (2007), http://www.square-enix.com/jp/company/e [accessed 25 April 2007].
[2] Keith Hurley quoted in Nephew, Michelle, 'Playing with Identity', in Williams, Hendricks and Winkler, Gaming as Culture (North Carolina, 2006) p. 121.
[3] Montfort, Nick, 'Fretting the Player Character', in Harrigan, Pat and Wardrip-Fruin, eds., Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (Massachusetts, 2007), pp. 140 - 141
[4] Lindley, Craig A., 'The Semiotics of Time Structure in Ludic Space as a Foundation for Analysis and Design' [e-journal], in Game Studies: The international Journal of Computer Game Research, 5/3 (2005), [unpaginated text]
