CW: Suicide, Self-Harm (Basically all of Doki Doki)
Doki Doki Literature Club deconstructs the elements which constitute a traditional dating sim and take it to their logical extremes. In these games, you typically have a plethora of girls (or boys, or pigeons) which the player is able to romance, and they are all viable options. There is no character who will not reciprocate your love if you choose the right dialogue options - as is typical with regards to linear storytelling in games. However, in Doki Doki, these girls aren’t just a normal level of in love with you. They are in love with you to the point where they will change the games files in order to increase their chances of being with you, they are in love with you to the point where they hate themselves for it and will stab themselves multiple times or be found hanging from a ceiling. It’s disturbing not because of the occasional obscene and cryptic text, but because it subverts genre expectations and makes it so your decision to pursue a character affects everyone. The NPCs are not content to be sidelined in favor of another, they can and will tell one another to “shut the fuck up”.
So, by playing the game you are effectively enabling this behavior. You, the player, are the object of their affection. Not even you the character, as Monika makes clear, you, the fourth-wall-breaking, player. You are responsible for everything that is happening for being too damn lovable, because that’s the way the game is programmed, and that’s what’s always going to happen if you play it. This concept is driven home especially well by the game early on, foreshadowing the shift in tone which occurs a couple hours in. Sayori, when confessing her love to the player (which we later find out also drives her to commit suicide due to code modifications made by Monika) constantly talks about how she knows that you have her best intentions in mind and that whatever you want is what is best for her. This made me uncomfortable when I was playing for a multitude of reasons. It makes the player think about their status as player and the disconnect which occurs in this interaction, before MC (the in game male) stops reacting of having dialogue at all in the second act and is completely usurped by the player. Beyond the fact that I don’t even know what best is me in my own life, the player has next to no input on the actual narrative of the game regarding Sayori. Sure, you can choose which girl you want to romance which leads to the incorporation of different sequences, but she will always commit suicide (barring the endings which require having already played the game or having it spoiled in order to achieve). So, even if I wanted to give Sayori advice or choose what I consciously believe would be the most emotionally resolving situation, my input is entirely limited to which words to pick in a poem or which girl to read it to first. Even the decision to tell Sayori whether you love her doesn’t ultimately have much effect. The player is left helpless watching this play out, and feel a disconnect with the character in the story which causes palpable discomfort. By playing the game, you feel as though you are complicit in the deaths of all of these girls because it is explicitly clear that you are the object of their affections, that you are the reason that they are doing this. And that’s emotionally draining, for the game to tell you that you are accountable for their suicides. So, is the primary way to win (if we define winning by minimizing harm done to diegetic characters) by not playing the game? Not exactly.
Additionally, as previously alluded to, both Save the Date and Doki Doki contain endings which basically require prior knowledge of the game in order to achieve (I know because I looked them up). In Doki Doki, you have to see all the optional cut scenes in the game in order to get the “good” ending, which requires loading multiple save files in one playthrough and appealing to all the different girls. So, someone just playing the game will never see this ending. Once you know that it is possible to delete characters because Monika tells you, you can also delete her before starting the game, and her role will by more or less fulfilled by Sayori. Again, the only way you would know to do this if you have already played the game and are told that it is possible to dig into the game files. Both of these add additionally player agency to the game, but are predicated on already having completed it and received the other endings. That makes both of these experiences inherently revisionist. You are already aware of the game’s narrative and are using your prior non-diegetic knowledge in order to create an experience which you may believe to be more ideal.
This is the central mechanic around which Save The Date is based. When going on the dates, they will literally all end in death, often in ways which cannot be helped through player interaction in anyway. However, after the deaths occur, you can load a save and prevent them by stopping Felicia from ordering a dish with peanuts or telling her to duck before a gunshot enters a burger joint. These new options are available, predicated on the assumption of the player’s instinct to always try and be the hero, but they must then explain themselves and how they were able to foresee the situation. This mechanic of quick loading and the creation of new dialogue options presents a question of what player knowledge means for the experience of playing a game and how it affects the experience. You can try to revise the story however many times you want, but going on the date is always going to result in Felicia’s death, regardless of how well you use the mechanics and how much systemic knowledge you gain trying to save her. The only diegetic way in which she doesn’t die is if you don’t go on a date with her, and she goes out with someone else. The game tells you that this is the bad ending but, considering that we don’t know much about her at all, the player can even question whether the game’s explanation of how we ought to feel is congruent with how we actually feel. The game makes you hyperaware of the disconnect between the diegetic version of yourself which exists in-game and you as you exist in the real world, and attempts to get rid of the distinction by making the player character narratively indistinguishable from yourself. You can also get the OmG HaCkZ ending and go off to your magic sky castle by changing a line of code, but this requires outside knowledge or in-depth investigation of the game files.
The two games assigned for this lecture, Doki Doki and Save the Date, may be my favorite we’ve played so far in this course because of the way in which they encourage discourse regarding what it means to be the play and complicity in the narrative. When I finished Doki Doki, I had this emotionally confused and puzzled feeling which I don’t think I’ve had since beating To The Moon in high school (which gave it for a totally different reason, mind you), and I’m glad that they were assigned in this course because they are really fantastic.
Kommentarer