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« on: April 05, 2016, 10:01:04 PM »
I have been thinking about how these two things meet or make up for each other or eclipse each other. I want to have an open-ended discussion about this and what you think
This is sort of relevant because the thing that gets me thinking about this is Paper Mario. Because what Paper Mario used to be and what everyone's complaining it no longer is, is delivering great storytelling in the context of a world that had already been built...
Because good worldbuilding can make up for a lousy story. Pokémon's best story is Black & White and even that is just kind of okayish, but tell me you've never thought about what kind of trainer you'd be if they existed, or what kinds would be readily available in the area surrounding where you live. Star Wars didn't have the best acting or the most bulletproof story even in the original trilogy alone, but you want to know how blasters and lightsabers work, you wanted to know what the Jedi were like (before the prequels revealed they were mostly a bunch of boring old guys who sat around in a room talking about nothing). Harry Potter; just, Harry Potter.
I feel like worldbuilding is at its most compelling when it is strong and the story kinda sucks, because everyone likes to patch up plot holes, make up headcanons, or outright make up their version of the story. You don't want the worldbuilding to go to waste.
But something weird happens when the story is really good, at least for me. I kinda just stop caring about the worldbuilding a little. Chrono Trigger should by all means have worldbuilding worth talking about. Prehistory was a fight for survival between humans and lizard people. What was the industrial revolution like? In 1000 AD people have refrigerators and running water but no cars or trains, and none of these things existed in 600 AD. Monsters, a post-apocalypse populated by robots Zeal--holy crap, Zeal. And yet... I never think about that stuff. I dug up what I just said on the spot to talk about how good the world is, but when I think about the game that's not what I think of. I remember the characters and the moments and the bosses. I haven't played Cross because I don't feel like I want more of the world, and the story tied itself up well enough. The worldbuilding didn't go to waste.
Going back to Paper Mario, I wonder what people would think of Thousand-Year Door without any prior Mario games existing at all. Some kind of flying thing delivers a letter to the player character... a stretched-out green version of the player character reads it to him and before you know it you're at a port populated by some kind of walking blue balls with bandannas, and talking to a pink blob thing with a mining helmet and fighting a god-knows-what. Imagine what the Glitz Pit would be like. A huge amount of what's great about Paper Mario is seeing a believable living world made out of the elements in the main series, seeing Goombas who aren't just Goombas. But you know they are Goombas.
It's a unique feeling because it's practically all story made out of worldbuilding that had already been done... and I wonder if one game could create the same feeling. You can see the partner Yoshi and never see the standard ones in Paper Mario 2, and you don't think "what an odd-looking fellow" and assume it's a one-off character design like Wonky or Dazzle. You know it's a Yoshi. That's the feeling I'm talking about. That feeling is the core of what I want to figure out by talking about this. Why it's so cool to see the creatures of an already established world applied to a good story/good characters, and why it doesn't feel the same when the good story and characters are there from the beginning. Undertale has a ton of monster designs but since it's doing the worldbuilding and making characters for the story at the same time, monsters of a given appearance come off as one-of-a-kind. Undyne comes across as more like Undyne The Fish Person rather than Undyne, a fish person. The cast of Homestar Runner is a great example of that--they don't look like a bunch of different races, they look like a bunch of character designs probably unique to the individual. There's more people like Pom Pom out there, but the Brothers Strong look nothing alike and are directly related.
My thoughts about all this are clearly not all in order. That's why I want to talk about it.