Pilgrimage through the classics: Earthbound

Recently I've been trying to build my knowledge of classic video games. It's sort of a pilgrimage I've been making, trying to get to some sort of juicy epicenter of game design knowledge that might guide my future desicions, and my most recent stop on the journey was a little SNES game called Earthbound. Also known as Mother 2 by those with more knowledge of the Mother Saga, this game was one that my uncle talked about several times during talks we had at Christmas and family get togethers, but until recently I lacked the technology to play it. It is an important hallmark in the line of RPGs, but more importantly this game should be observed for the great ingenuity it showed in a time where RPG norms had barely had time to establish themselves.

This game bore an innate ability to put the player off in the best of ways, with a certain rhythm that simultaneously confused you and amused you. A gamer that was playingthis game after coming off of a title like say, Chrono Trigger, would be shocked by all of the ways that Earthbound makes fun of it's own genre. All of the dialogue situations with NPCs were no longer stale and transactional. They would berate you for trying to walk into houses unnanounced, shop keepers would heckle you if you spoke to them and then exited dialogue without buying anything, and besides this conventional dialogue with the NPCs at times was just plain odd. It was almost meta-game in this sense, stating that "this is a fantastical world, why should all of the people be conventional boring shmucks?" Beyond this it served to make the world seem a little more real, like it wasn't just some sort of entity that existed to tell the story of the main characters but rather a living breathing world that we were tresspassing in.

The other thing that was wildly different than other titles of the time was Earthbound's music. The soundtrack of this game ranges from the typical cheery town tunes, to quirky non-sequitur beeps and boops while dungeon exploring, to some downright unsettling boss music, and then a few pieces that are fairly touching despite being limited to a midi sound board. It was a story telling element that often put the gamer out of place, and left them intrigued as to what they should expect from their surroundings. I think that perhaps the greatest example of the power of Earthbound's music come in the last boss fight where you fight Giygas, the incarnate of evil. You stand no chance against him but to have Paula use the "Pray" ability (which I don't know about other gamers habits but I barely knew it existed despite having it most of the game). You watch your characters get trashed as common combat tactics yield nothing, and nothing accompanies your demise but a strange crackling, like a brain going mad, and then it happens. As you pray, it cuts to your friends you have made throughout the game and they begin to pray for your safety, and over the strange crackling a melody comes through. This tune probably only containing about 5 different notes, and yet it conveys sadness, concern, desperation and the slightest undertone of hope while everything goes to madness.

There were many things that Earthbound fell short on in it's gameplay, such as seeing your character during battle, as well as a balanced levelling system where you didn't spend hours grinding as soon as you found a new area, but despite all this it was a very endearing game. The reason I've been thinking about this game is that it lacks so much in graphical capacity and in some cases gameplay, and so it is forced to carry itself on it's charm, mostly. It's important to take note of because we live in an era where even the most meager studios can churn out a title with great graphics and a flashy combat system. At this point there has been enough titles where you can grab a passable idea for combat system and game execution, modify it and make it your own and continue from there. In order to transcend a competition of biggest explosions and flashiest graphics we have to go back and see what made games great before we had big explosions and flashy graphics. Because while most anyone can make an adrenaline pumping thrill ride, it takes certain care in design to immerse your players into the action and invest them in the outcome of the game, give them some stake in what becomes of your protagonist. It's an element of game design that needs to be observed in order to further video games as a form of art as well as entertainment.