Of Happy Endings : Memories Off - Sore Kara~

I guess what really makes love novels so popular is their ability to involve the reader in the plot, in other words, make one feel as though one is experiencing the events in the story first-hand.
But sometimes it is inevitable that what the character does in the story differs from what the reader would actually do when faced with a smilar situation in real life. This gives rise to the many instances where the reader (or even spectators of TV dramas) to sigh in disbelief or even curse out loud at the perceived stupidity or childishness of the characters involved.

Perhaps it was playing on these reasons that we have the advent of games such as Memories Off 3 : Sore Kara after the Memories Off anime series. Some call it interactive story-telling, some refer to it as participative love novels, but they all refer to the same thing - a chance for you to have a say in what the main character does in the plot and hence possibly influence the ending of the story. However, just like the real life decisions that such games try to simulate, these decisions are often marred in shades of grey instead of the ideal clear cut black and white, and yet, they carry very significant consequences ( well, in the game at least =P). I guess this is what gives such game their appeal. Maybe there's some truth afterall in the saying that human beings are not meant to be in utopia, as mentioned by Agent Smith in the Matrix movie - For those who do not remember, the failure of the robot's very 1st version of the matrix where a utopia was simulated was a result of human "crops" were unable to accept their existence in a perfect world.

Ok, back to the topic.

Due to the nature of the game, it's very easy to get sucked into the story as you feel a kind of "ownership" towards your own character(hmm, perhaps there is some link to the job ownership concepts introduced by Byham and Cox in Zapp! The Lightning of Empowerment afterall).



This inevitably results in strong emotional attachment to the characters in the story. Whether this is good or bad is controvertible, and it depends a lot on how you "play-out" the game. I have personally messed up the endings of a few games before like Fantasia Sanguo 2(until now, I'm still in denial and have yet to stop blaming CS for lending me a copy of a pirated version that's full of glitches =P). But luckily for me, I've so far been rather successful with MO3 and have already explored quite a few happy endings already. Maybe I'm more sensitive towards Japanese Schoolgirls' feelings than otherwise xD. Having said that, poooooor CS *gloats*

At any rate, one also wonders if these kind of games might provide a fatalistic perception to gamers about real-life relationships. Forgive my immaturity, but just let me off for this once for stereotyping that most people who play this game generally lean towards "nerdy, semi- antisocial" tendencies(that includes me and CS too i guess =P). More often than not, individuals from this group of people either tend to have "limited" insight into interaction with the opposite gender or they are fed up or are haunted by past experiences with the complexities of boy-girl relationships(BGR). Well, if so is the case, might just make matters worse.

Personally, I admit to being quite distraught at certain points in the game and on one occasion, I even had to take a break from the game to go bug Eunice's neighbor Stephie for advice =P.
OK. So the player is offered unlimited number of game saves, but still I'm not comfortable with using too much of those, as the more I resort to that, the more I would feel myself to be a failure in "life". Perhaps it's the man-being-incompatible-with-the-ideal argument all over again.


At any rate, this game was lots of fun for me, and posed quite a few points about life that I'd spend more time pondering over. I've had my fair share of happy endings from playing the game thus far, and just as the sad parts can really get you down, the happy endings are just.. well.. Happily Ever After*goood mood*. Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe I'm just have a knack for virtual relationships afterall =P


Let me end this post with a thought that I've gotten while playing this game.

People say that happy endings do not exist in real life. But I feel it's just a problem of the frame of reference people use to view life.

For instance what if we consciously pick when to end a story in real life, like ending the story of your 1st start up company when it earns it's 1st million, or like ending the story to your love life as soon as you manage to woo the most popular girl in school? Then your life will always be filled with happy endings, wouldn't it? Contrast this with the common practice of "Oh, my venture into business was a failure. I had to close down after 3 years in operation". What happened to the story about how he managed to start his business despite all odds? What about the story about how he met and is now going steady with this girl that he met while starting up his business?

Sure, life doesn't end there as they do in novels or computer games such as this one. But..

"Choose your happiest points in life to be the ending to your story. What happens next.. is another story.." -Tan Jo ;)