I recently completed Valkyrie Profile, the original PS version, after a leaving it long in limbo since I played the majority of it in Fall 2006. It reminded me of the role of writing and narrative in games, and I think it represents something rather unique and compelling. Instead of a story of characters that one plays through, as the collector of souls, all one really knows about the characters in Valkyrie Profile are their ending moments, their deaths, regrets, and sorrows. It’s actually quite stark and brutal, and not something I’ve seen in any other game. Perhaps one might write them off as being too dramatic, sort of dramatic opera style deaths, but nevertheless I found them rather compelling. The bold questions the game outright asks about human suffering, of pain and loss, “Who is the one who remains? and who is the one who departed?” It’s quite bold. Few narratives of any type, ask such questions out right, rather they chose to depict such questions through their stories and characters.

I find that these vignettes offer a much more reflective view of a character, and open up the question of what it is to die. A question that is silent in our youth saturated, live for the moment culture. Clearly death is something plenty of games have tried to work into their narratives, and Final Fantasy 7’s death of Aeris is the oft referenced one. What it is fascinating is that while that death produced shock, as it was the death of an innocent, sudden and shocking, the characters of Valkyrie Profile are from a wide range of backgrounds, several being far from ‘heroic.’ It’s strange that a game whose overall story is that of preparing noble souls to do battle for the gods, allows such non heroic figures to be recruited by Lenneth Valkyrie, but this also speaks to her status as being part human.

But it represents something unique in game writing, the down and out suffering ignoble deaths. Though their souls live on to fight with a Valkyrie, they don’t quite become ‘heroic’ in the typical sense of a down and out character who finds their nobility. Though it’s true there is little character development, I find these small portraits quite compelling, and they seem to offer the idea that perhaps even the wretched and weak are worthy of something other than the lives they have led as human beings. Without going into the metaphysical or religion questions, it is something I’ve never seen a game do, or most of popular culture, to which most games belong. Indeed, the moment of death, and the exposure of human frailty and suffering is not something games death with, and for many games shouldn’t. They should remain the fantasy distractions that take us away from the daily realities of life, a escape. Indeed games should serve this function, but much like literature or great film, I see why no reason that escape cannot allow us to open up these issues and from within them come back to our daily world with some new insight into the sufferings of others, and that we too must someday die.

A game that poses the question of death, indeed this recently was just dealt with in the graveyard. In that case it was about the player understanding the frailty of old age, but it also represents a peaceful death, in a place of death. It’s quite contained, and I think that is it’s main flaw. In attempting to be a simulation it doesn’t allow for much beyond it’s context. Valkyrie Profile maybe a fantasy, and function within medieval and mythological tropes, but focusing so much on the moment of death, with such a variety of characters and from such a variety of backgrounds makes the question all the more real, in that it reveals that death strikes may come at any time to anyone, from the ugly criminal, to the innocent girl, to the successful professional.

Perhaps the dialogue isn’t a great literary masterpiece, and the overall story arc is forgettable, but the theme is poignant. Everyone must face death.