Looking Back: Phantasy Star 3

With so many great video games coming out these days, it's easy to set aside the games of the past and embrace the advances in technology, storytelling, and technique that are being applied to games.  However, every now and again I spot something in a game that I feel might've been done once before.  Perhaps it was done better, perhaps it was done worse, or perhaps it was just done in a way so original that I haven't seen it done since.

In this article, I'm going to look at one example: Phantasy Star 3.

I always forget about the nipple lasers until I look at the game cartridge again.

One of my favorite games of the past is Phantasy Star III.  In fact, the Phantasy Star series, at least up until the second attempt at being online, is my favorite RPG series of all time.  Three, however, did something unique.  It took place across several generations of your original character's descendants, but at the end of each "stage" you'd pick which character yours wanted to have a relationship with, which would give you a completely different offspring than if you chose the other one, as well as a different set of skills and fighting abilities for your "next of kin."

I...don't think I've seen that since then, really.  I mean, Assassin's Creed "kind-of" does this, since you're looking at different points in history, but really, there isn't too much difference, gameplay style, between the characters that I've seen.  There wasn't an assassin who was simply too big to sneak along so he had to simply ambush people in alleys.  There was no female "vamp" assassin who lured victims into dark corners before poisoning them.  In the end, the game didn't really explore how different family members can be from one generation to the next.

This is too bad, because telling an epic story where you have to change fighting styles, techniques, and team members because the story goes on so long is a brilliant idea, and relegating it to "well, in the sequel you'll play as their kid" is a bit of a cop-out.  ...but on the other hand, I can't really think of too many games where you even do that.

However, I think it would be quite easy to do something like that again.  A huge deal in the Mass Effect series was seeing how decisions you made influenced future events.  This was also a major deal in The Walking Dead, as some minor comment I made in the first episode might come back and hit me out of nowhere in the last episode.  There's obviously something about feeling like your story influenced things that people like, so why not do it across generational lines?

Imagine, if you will, a huge storyline with a great threat that's only beginning to make its appearance known.  It could be one lone scout ship as part of an advancing fleet, a cult trying to wake up an ancient evil, or a long-forgotten AI that only has access to a small part of its memory.  Your character explores the world, influences decisions and actions, and battles the forces trying to destroy everything, and then that's it.  The threat is vanquished, and you and the character you spent the most time cultivating a relationship with live happily ever after...

...until it comes back.  The magic sword you pinned it to the ground with has kept it from rising, but its evil has spread through the ground, tainting water supplies and plant life.  The magical prison in the desert that holds it faces constant wear from weather, and needs reinforcement as the runes start to fade.  Perhaps you killed the alien leader, but a new general has risen up and taken command of the forces, and a new superweapon is being built.

But by now years have passed.  You're no longer the strong warrior you once were.  You have new responsibilities you can't discard simply to go chase rumors of your enemy coming back.  Fortunately, you have a child.  It might be a son, it might be a daughter.  Maybe they take after their mother and use magic, maybe they take after you and use a heavy weapon to cow their foes into submission.  Perhaps you were a masterful rogue and they also enjoy a good rooftop run, or your wife, the healer, managed to slip in some concern for others so they wind up being the sneakiest medic who ever lived.

Or maybe Captain America and Rogue hooked up, so now you have a flying girl with super strength and Cap's shield.  Awesome.

Now it's their story, and they have to leave the home you built for them and go through the world, at which point you get to see the changes you influenced.  Maybe that small border town made peace with their enemies and both sides now prosper through trade.  Maybe you convinced them to bolster their forces, and they're now a military station stuck in a never-ending war, maybe you convinced them to provoke their enemy without making any preparations, and all you find now is rubble and grass.  It's a result of something you did.  Those little electronic lives are on your head.

You could even carry equipment over.  Your character owned a legendary sword that had space for five small magic gems in the hilt, but you were only ever able to locate one.  If you pass that sword on, your child might find the next gem and get an entirely new power out of the weapon.  Or you taught your child what you could from a tattered copy of a spell book with several pages missing, but on their journey they find a few more pages in a city far away, tucked in a museum.  They can now build on the teachings you gave, and pass something new on to their children.  That is, if their children use magic, anyway.

You could build an entirely new team of characters to adventure with.  Some could be the offspring of your former comrades, some could simply be brand new people, some could even be the children of your enemies, if you showed them mercy.  Maybe the daughter of that evil sorcerer you talked out of raising the dead to invade your home is also aware of the growing threat and they send their only offspring to help.  Maybe that's who your kid falls in love with.  Anything would be possible, because you're still in control of the story!

There would be so much potential in a game series like this, and it would just build from the success games with choice systems already have.  Instead of simply "good" and "evil" paths, you get more gray areas that have real effects.  If you weren't successful in politics, perhaps you become a merchant in high esteem, or a member of the royal guard, or maybe the owner of the largest pear orchard in the land.  Your child would have skills and talents and advantages that stem from that.

Now, I realize that a lot of people really like customizing their own character and playing a certain type of character all the time, and perhaps having the game shift character types so you go from a powerful mage to someone who wields a broadsword and has a lot of muscle mass from pushing plows around isn't that appealing, but a skilled game developer could make it work, I think.  Since you're essentially playing "god" anyway by making these choices, perhaps the game would give you options to pick from as you "build" your child, letting you decide where the strengths and weaknesses are.

I want to see more games take this approach, and I'd be first in line to pick up a modern epic RPG that took place across several hundred years following one family line, even if it did take several sequels to let the story get as big as it needs to.

Quick caveat:  The Castlevania series is pretty renowned for doing something along these lines since the Belmont family clan has been fighting Dracula for a rather ridiculously long time, and the family tree has even gotten a bit overlapped, if my understanding of the latest game is any indication.  However, you never got to really control what the next generation of Belmont was like, and it seems like the linear timeline of the games has become a bit twisted.