Content Warning (Depression, Self-Harm)
When I played Doki Doki Literature Club, something immediately stuck out to me, I knew more than the character that was supposed to represent me did. Not only did I know more, I found myself sometimes disgusted by his actions. Early in the game, he voices his opinions and often times I found them gross. The way he treats certain characters or reacts to certain things left me unsettled. I don't like the snide comments he would make about Sayori or the choices he makes that are not choices for me. He doesn't choose to check on Sayori when she goes home early. One thing that stood out to me was reading the various poems. My character very rarely understood the poems themselves, however I could see the signs that were there about the various characters. For example Yuri writes a poem recanting a story about feeding a raccoon a piece of bread. However the story is really a metaphor for Yuri's self harming. I could see the symbolism in the poem, but I couldn't do anything as I watched my surrogate tell her that he couldn't understand it. Sayori writes a poem about picking sunshine out of her brain, that our player character can't understand. It seems to be about how she is always taking the happiness inside her and is always giving it away without being able to keep it for herself. She is always giving, but never putting any care into herself, and we see that in the reality of her situation.
These moments of disconnectedness from my character, where they can't see when I can, brings an interesting form of Dramatic Irony into the game. I can see the twist coming, but my poor character can't. He doesn't understand what's wrong, but I do. This disconnect between and the PC becomes even greater when the game resets as it is clear to us but not to him whats happened. In the end, there is only one place where the person the character is talking to is Me me and not surrogate me, and that's Monika's talk at the end. These scenes which make me the player feel worse and more worried about what's happening are only followed by a greater lack of choice in the game. This removal of player agency only further contributes to the disconnect from player character to player.
I find the story telling inherent in this idea interesting. It's watching something horrible happen that you can see coming but are powerless to stop. It creates (or created at least for me) a visceral feeling that I have rarely felt before. What are you guys opinion? Did you relate at all to the protagonist? Did you feel shocked by what happened or could you get a sense of what was coming before it came? Why does a game play into the likely audience and make an assumption as to who they are and what they might think?
The detachment of the player from the character I think was intentional on the part of the creators. In most games there is a very active attempt on the part of the gamers to make the main protagonist as identifiable for their target audience as possible to increase immersion. But by emphasising the difference between player and character Doki Doki is better able to allow its metaplot to come to the forefront. The main character is not the protagonist, it's the player, and that's why the most interesting and memorable parts of the game is when Monika interacts directly with the player instead of the parts of the beginning where the player is essentially watching a low quality romance novel…
Honestly I thought the protagonist had game. He made the girls who struggled with insecurity feel more confident in their abilities. He was even nice to Natsuki, who, as we all know, was annoying, immature, and rude af. Furthermore, in my play through, he went to Sayori's house to check on her and vowed to support her, even though he didn't understand what she was going through. He had no romantic or sexual motivation to do so (in my play through)-- he cared about her as a person. True, he was kind of a dunce when it came to understanding the poems, but I don't understand the issue you guys seem to have with his morality.
i think that this "disconnect" that we experience is not there just by happenstance. When the game turns away from a dating sim, to a "horror" game the object of the game switches. The object is now to see how these characters interact and if possible save them. And I think that by forcing the player to see what is coming, it creates a better sense of dread and fear. While other horror games try to scare you with this sense of impending doom towards the "player character" DDLC "scares" you by creating an doom that you are not able to really stop, you cant go back into the previous room and you cant walk backwards to try and hid…
Echoing earlier comments, I also felt frustrated by the PC's apparent lack of social and critical intelligence. As you said, his basic inability to recognize obvious symbolism -- as well as his frequently offhanded, sexist treatment of the other characters -- alienates (I would hope) players. However, I suspect Dan Salvato may have deliberately satirized problematic gender tropes that often appear in manga and anime. Not such a stretch given we've already seen how DDLC deconstructs and subverts common narratives and genre conventions. As a player, you may be meant to feel disconnected. In fact, that disconnect is an integral part of Monika's motivation: she just wants to engage with a real person, something beyond an archetype. I mean, if…
I don't know how similar my playthrough was to yours, but I think I picked up on similar issues. For one thing, the player character is really mean to Sayori, especially at the beginning, and this brings up the issue of character voice specifically. Some of the phrasing is really mean, even if what the character is trying to say is not inherently something that will make someone feel bad. So even if this could be a story about someone similarly minded to us, it may be specifically a story about the worst parts of us.