The leitmotif in reverse

First, some definitions. From Merriam-Webster, a leitmotif is "an associated melodic phrase or figure that accompanies the reappearance an idea, person, or situation, especially in a Wagnerian music drama." In essence, it's a piece of music that makes almost as a kind of theme for a certain character or piece of action, and repeats to reinforce that idea in the viewer's mind. The appearance of the Valkyries in one of Wagner's operas, for instance, is associated so strongly in a lot of people's minds with that particular piece of music (you know the one… it's the "kill the wabbit! Kill the Wabbit! KILL THE WABBIT!" music!) that they're inextricably linked.

This is obviously a concept that has carried over to videogames as well. I've made the comparison between some videogames and traditional melodrama based on a number of core conceits in both, as well as their use of music. What's interesting though is that nearly all videogames of a certain nature (I'm of course not talking about sports games or rhythm music games or anything like that) employ the idea of the leitmotif, but instead of signaling a character theme (beyond the occasional "villain's theme"), they signify the entrance to a new setting.

This is especially true of Nintendo. They pioneered this idea first, of course, with Super Mario Bros. The music that one associates with that game is tied inextricably to the setting in which the music is played. The floating arpeggios of the underwater levels, the creepy shuffling of the underworld, the bouncy overworld music. All of these things point to the setting, not to Mario himself. Mario's just a cypher, a means to an end – the setting is the dominant element.

This is true of most of Nintendo's major franchises. It's just as true of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, Kirby, etc. etc. etc. Nintendo, for all of their "mascots," have never been overly interested in character. The only ones where this isn't necessarily the case would be the occasional bits in Zelda that delve into the side characters (never really Link himself), or the upcoming Metroid: Other M. Otherwise, the places the character travels to are given precedence, and that idea is reinforced by the music as well.

There's maybe a few reasons for this. Nintendo as a company has always been more interested in what the player is doing in a game rather than what they, as the developers, need to present them. That's why, up until very recently, cutscenes and complicated, cinematic storytelling were nearly completely absent from their games. Mario in particular is still a pretty "pure" videogaming experience, and the character of Mario isn't supposed to mean anything. He's just a guy, and that's all you need from him. He's supposed to be you. This design philosophy has carried over into nearly all of their other franchises as well. Link and Samus famously don't speak, because you're supposed to be the one who is engaged in the "conversations," filling in Link's responses with your own. This certainly gives credence to the people who are worried about Samus talking in the new Metroid game, as it seems to run anathema to Nintendo's design philosophy.

In fact, I would say that only recently (in the last ten years) have we seen games start to engage in the process of dealing with characters, and I'd say that with only very few exceptions, games still do a better job of introducing settings than characters. In my recent Alan Wake review, I mentioned that the game did an adequate job of presenting the landscape, but faltered in the character-building and storytelling department. The problem for this may be attributable to Nintendo, in a weird way. Game developers are (or should be) extremely comfortable presenting settings – they've been the backbone of games since World 1-1. But there really are very few templates on how to present a character in a videogame without resorting to aping cinematic tropes – that is, presenting characters through cutscenes and static dialogue rather than through gameplay.

Obviously, the elephant in the room here is the RPG, which has been focusing on characters for twenty years or more now. What Squaresoft did with Cecil's character in Final Fantasy IV is still almost ten times better than what they've done with characters since then; or consider any of the well-crafted NPCs in the Fallout series. Often, these games even have traditional leitmotifs, and in the case of a game like Final Fantasy VII, they follow the epic template of a Wagnerian opera almost to a fault – they're sweeping and concerned with the grand scope of the proceedings, and this can occasionally get the better of their ambitions.

I'm not here to say which approach is "better," but it seems to me that when we look back at this generation, we're going to see a generation that lost its focus. The PS2/Gamecube/XBox era was definitely an era of transition – in many ways, the N64/PS1 era was still resolutely traditional, albeit in 3D – in that the more cinematic aims of developers were finally able to be realized, for better or for worse. This generation, however, has had the battle lines drawn more clearly – Nintendo is still offering their central design conceits that they've held onto for the past thirty years, while games on the PS3 and 360 have essentially refined what was perhaps not the greatest foundation to start with anyways. The stereotypical "HD" game is, more often than not, as much of a multimedia spectacle that attempts to marry the basest elements of gameplay to Herculean efforts to shoehorn in story and character and fully-realized facial graphics and what-have-you, and I just don't care about that anymore. I'm all in favour of progress, but I'm in favour of progress for videogaming that utilizes its own set of rules, its own history. Videogaming doesn't exist in a vacuum – I'm more than aware of that. And that's not to say that some cross-contamination won't happen – it already has.

But I sincerely believe that developers need to reexamine what is important to them as the creators of this particular type of media; are they here to give us videogames, which definitely have their own set of standards (or should, at this point)? Or are they here to give us "multimedia experiences"? If they were upfront about that, if they knew exactly what they wanted to do and considered every element of their development, then I could give said "multimedia experiences" a pass. Hell, there have been some fantastic games that have been pretty poorly designed in terms of the traditional videogame experience – Red Dead Redemption comes to mind – but I have a tough time caring about an industry that, seemingly, has turned its back on history and what I believe to be well thought-out and complete game design.

I started this piece off with some talk of music, and I think that music fits into this discussion as well. I think it's more than fitting that in a medium that has provided some of the most well-known melodies in the world, we have games that can't even be bothered to do that anymore, opting instead for orchestral bombast or ambient "mood-setting," all in an effort to closely mirror similar developments in films. That's the leitmotif in reverse – a piece of music that signifies nothing at all.