When I started Mother 3, expecting a video game, a solid RPG-lover's RPG like my beloved EarthBound before it, I was a little disappointed. It had charm from the outset of course, but then it started to mess with the rules. The people I thought might be my main characters weren't who I was playing as. None of the helpful gameplay-tip birdies told me how I was supposed to pull off the rhythm-based battle combos (they vary by background battle music, which is influenced by the enemies you're fighting). My limited inventory filled up with breads and cookies I didn't need to eat within ten minutes of casual fighting. I gained five levels in the same amount of time. I couldn't sell any of the stuff I had accumulated because there were no stores, and the one place that dealt with items just gave them to me for free. To the same end, there was no money. But I soldiered on, and the cute graphics, charming characters, and wacky dialogue made it easy.
Mother 3 is a peculiar beast in that you don't initially realize what it's trying to do to you. You name your characters, the mother, the father, twins, a dog, your favorite thing, and a food you like before the game even starts. Then you control different people as the game's focus hops from a tiny cabin on a mountain to a village town, to a castle and a desert, intermingling bizarre and brilliant dialogue with seriously upsetting plot points, and all the while you're supposed to just continue beating on mechanically altered and ill-tempered creatures wandering the countryside? Every so-often the game switches "chapters," and with it your story focus will jump from the people you know to characters you just met, including an enslaved monkey, a pink-haired telepathic girl, and a clumsy thief with a gimpy leg. Meanwhile, characters you've spent hours with will disappear with no explanation (and the items they had on them) for incredibly large sections of the game, leaving you wondering when and if you'll see them again.
But as you move along you begin to realize that the things that bothered you in the beginning don't matter so much. If inventory is small and items plentiful, why not use them up instead of horde them as we've been trained? If there's no money why accumulate things you don't need? If the characters you're using might leave at any time, why spend time grinding for levels? The answers to the questions are revelatory, and shake the foundation of what it has traditionally meant to be a role-playing gamer: none of it is necessary.
That is amazingly because Mother 3 is not, as you may have heard, just a video game. Oh no—Mother 3 is a piece of fiction first, and series mastermind Shigesato Itoi wanted to make sure you'd hear the whole story. That doesn't mean there's nothing to do, though—nothing could be further from the truth! You do indeed explore dungeons, collect weapons and armor, use all kinds of spells and techniques, and engage in thought-provoking tactical boss fights more focused on status effects and attributes than selecting "fight" every round. But these events occur on carefully placed obstacle courses designed to ensure you get from point A to point B without wanting to toss the game across the room in frustration. "Save Frogs" hilariously pepper the landscape in various incarnations with the frequency of other RPGs' random battles, and to die is to be returned to the last one you ran into, with all the experience and levels you'd gained, fully revitalized, and minus only the items you'd used since said last encounter. The "game," as it were, is secondary to your strictly linear advancement through the chapters, sectioned apart like pieces of a novel to introduce characters, bring them together, and rip them apart.
I know it's hard, but don't fear linearity: there are worse things than page numbers that ascend in sequence.
This is not to say, however, that in his haste to push you through the game, Itoi decided that the things that have traditionally made a game entertaining could be neglected. Far from it—everything from item names and descriptions to the secondary dialogue of secondary characters and tiny touches in the locales you'll visit reinforce the fact that a lot of care was placed into every corner of the world.
I couldn't deny that I was at least charmed by the game. Part of the way in though, when some of the game's elements started to oddly stabilize in a more traditional fashion, I began to feel categorically uneasy—almost angry—that the game had changed after I had just gotten used to its slightly weird take. When money reared its grubby head, I almost felt dirty. I didn't want it—I longed for the simple friendliness of the game's opening chapters. When my party seemed like it might consist of the same people for a while, I started to get antsy: did the game expect me to level these characters deliberately, or might they pack their bags at any time like the ones before them? When I filled out a full four-member line-up, I didn't like that I could suddenly hoard away more items in their pockets: why reserve them when I could use them to move along through the game and back into the immediacy of the story so meticulously crafted? During the one time throughout that I had to "fight around" to gain a few levels and a spell I needed to take down a particular boss, I even felt a little annoyed, despite having previously hoped there would be opportunities for me to level my characters into mini-gods at some point; funnily, even killing the boss made me feel bad, its character so endearing. The game had changed what I thought I wanted from it without me even realizing.
Why this atypical uneasiness at doing things we've always done in RPGs? It comes because, in a poignantly post-modern example of art imitating life, Mother 3 makes you question what it is to play a role in general. The kind of thinking that the game encourages is refreshing, while the mechanics themselves serve not only as a shell for the ones and zeros underneath but as a reflection of the themes you will be introduced to. As the gameplay begins to become more complex, the story follows in those footsteps, and much like the people in the little village who find themselves suddenly aware of the fact they're naked (so to speak), there's no going back to the delightful simplicity of the game's opening segments.
Mother 3 focuses on subject matter literally and literarily unheard of in the realm of video gaming: the concept of family, the idea of fatherhood, the corruption of society, the pains of discovering oneself, the ambiguity of gender, the allure of socialism, and even the temporary nature of human existence (and really, existence in general) are examined under the game's wacky lenses. It is a lot to swallow, but there is more at work here than just the "video game," and Mother 3 forces you into being open to that in the way it structures itself and the way it trains you to look at and experience its world.
There is a metaphor occasionally shared by those who practice writing creatively that to establish a plot point is to toss a ball in the air, and the skill you exact as the steward of story is to know where the balls are and be ready to catch them when they're on their way back down. If that saying is meritorious, Itoi wields a triple-barreled BB gun firing straight into the air on all cylinders multiple times a chapter. Amazingly, ones you'll forget about dovetail back down into waiting hands so gracefully you might even forget about all the shooting that's been going on right up until the ending hours, when handfuls from the beginning start to reappear in occasionally (as the game's tag line says) "strange, funny, and heart-rending" fashion. As you push through the story carrying out your goals you might even feel an occasional sublime sadness: many of the imperative gameplay tasks involve the pitiable ushering away of some of the most likable characters I've seen in any game in memory—recent or otherwise.
The run-up to the final encounters of the game is worth noting as one of the most rewarding to series fans surely in video gaming history (especially considering the notoriously infrequent acknowledgment of the aficionado community throughout the last dozen years), and forced me to stop dead in my tracks and take it all in with a grin. This is of course contrasted by a final hour more emotionally resonant than a considerable majority of video games, which I only say to avoid the assailable hyperbole of pegging it as the most resonant. It is all precisely punctuated by Shogo Sakai's 250-track-plus score, which is frankly a masterpiece of game music composition that echoes carefully the legacy of Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka's revered soundtracks for Mother 1 and 2 while remaining enjoyably unique.
There is much made these days to the delight and lament of message-board moderators everywhere about the public perception of video games as an art form, with common critique being that since video games are a unique experience to every player, they cannot be controlled by the artist, and are as such "not art." Mother 3 offers quite contrarily the idea that because we as people and gamers will gather our own ideas from progressing through this story, we are connected in the appreciation of its composition. One of the most major plot revelations in the game, in fact, is not even narrated to the player, but is offered near the ending of the game as an area you are free to investigate, that you might come to your own conclusions: infinitely interpretable like all successful art, but at the same time exactly what exists on the page (or the screen), established in boundary carefully, and experienced in natural linear progression as designed by Itoi and crew.
Quite contrary to how I initially approached Mother 3, I left it ruminating over what I had really wanted in the first place. I've played Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and Xenogears and everything else. I know what a traditional role-playing game looks like. Until Mother 3, what I hadn't played was a game that left me feeling markedly different than I did going in. I didn't expect Mother 3 to be what it was to begin with, nor what it became after the clusters of hours I've spent with it over the last week. I didn't expect a video game to really make me think, either about myself or about being a gamer in general, but it did. In that way Mother 3 succeeds only as Mother 3 could have: as an experience that pushed me beyond just playing a video game—and into the kind of world I don't get to visit nearly often enough.
It must be noted that Mother 3 was translated and localized to perfection over a period of a couple of years by some of the most professional and dedicated fans on the planet. Without them the game would almost assuredly have not have received an English release in even the most distantly foreseeable future, and this review would have been impossible. The gaming community, and I personally, owe them an incredible amount of gratitude.
Mother 3 is a peculiar beast in that you don't initially realize what it's trying to do to you. You name your characters, the mother, the father, twins, a dog, your favorite thing, and a food you like before the game even starts. Then you control different people as the game's focus hops from a tiny cabin on a mountain to a village town, to a castle and a desert, intermingling bizarre and brilliant dialogue with seriously upsetting plot points, and all the while you're supposed to just continue beating on mechanically altered and ill-tempered creatures wandering the countryside? Every so-often the game switches "chapters," and with it your story focus will jump from the people you know to characters you just met, including an enslaved monkey, a pink-haired telepathic girl, and a clumsy thief with a gimpy leg. Meanwhile, characters you've spent hours with will disappear with no explanation (and the items they had on them) for incredibly large sections of the game, leaving you wondering when and if you'll see them again.
But as you move along you begin to realize that the things that bothered you in the beginning don't matter so much. If inventory is small and items plentiful, why not use them up instead of horde them as we've been trained? If there's no money why accumulate things you don't need? If the characters you're using might leave at any time, why spend time grinding for levels? The answers to the questions are revelatory, and shake the foundation of what it has traditionally meant to be a role-playing gamer: none of it is necessary.
That is amazingly because Mother 3 is not, as you may have heard, just a video game. Oh no—Mother 3 is a piece of fiction first, and series mastermind Shigesato Itoi wanted to make sure you'd hear the whole story. That doesn't mean there's nothing to do, though—nothing could be further from the truth! You do indeed explore dungeons, collect weapons and armor, use all kinds of spells and techniques, and engage in thought-provoking tactical boss fights more focused on status effects and attributes than selecting "fight" every round. But these events occur on carefully placed obstacle courses designed to ensure you get from point A to point B without wanting to toss the game across the room in frustration. "Save Frogs" hilariously pepper the landscape in various incarnations with the frequency of other RPGs' random battles, and to die is to be returned to the last one you ran into, with all the experience and levels you'd gained, fully revitalized, and minus only the items you'd used since said last encounter. The "game," as it were, is secondary to your strictly linear advancement through the chapters, sectioned apart like pieces of a novel to introduce characters, bring them together, and rip them apart.
I know it's hard, but don't fear linearity: there are worse things than page numbers that ascend in sequence.
This is not to say, however, that in his haste to push you through the game, Itoi decided that the things that have traditionally made a game entertaining could be neglected. Far from it—everything from item names and descriptions to the secondary dialogue of secondary characters and tiny touches in the locales you'll visit reinforce the fact that a lot of care was placed into every corner of the world.
I couldn't deny that I was at least charmed by the game. Part of the way in though, when some of the game's elements started to oddly stabilize in a more traditional fashion, I began to feel categorically uneasy—almost angry—that the game had changed after I had just gotten used to its slightly weird take. When money reared its grubby head, I almost felt dirty. I didn't want it—I longed for the simple friendliness of the game's opening chapters. When my party seemed like it might consist of the same people for a while, I started to get antsy: did the game expect me to level these characters deliberately, or might they pack their bags at any time like the ones before them? When I filled out a full four-member line-up, I didn't like that I could suddenly hoard away more items in their pockets: why reserve them when I could use them to move along through the game and back into the immediacy of the story so meticulously crafted? During the one time throughout that I had to "fight around" to gain a few levels and a spell I needed to take down a particular boss, I even felt a little annoyed, despite having previously hoped there would be opportunities for me to level my characters into mini-gods at some point; funnily, even killing the boss made me feel bad, its character so endearing. The game had changed what I thought I wanted from it without me even realizing.
Why this atypical uneasiness at doing things we've always done in RPGs? It comes because, in a poignantly post-modern example of art imitating life, Mother 3 makes you question what it is to play a role in general. The kind of thinking that the game encourages is refreshing, while the mechanics themselves serve not only as a shell for the ones and zeros underneath but as a reflection of the themes you will be introduced to. As the gameplay begins to become more complex, the story follows in those footsteps, and much like the people in the little village who find themselves suddenly aware of the fact they're naked (so to speak), there's no going back to the delightful simplicity of the game's opening segments.
Mother 3 focuses on subject matter literally and literarily unheard of in the realm of video gaming: the concept of family, the idea of fatherhood, the corruption of society, the pains of discovering oneself, the ambiguity of gender, the allure of socialism, and even the temporary nature of human existence (and really, existence in general) are examined under the game's wacky lenses. It is a lot to swallow, but there is more at work here than just the "video game," and Mother 3 forces you into being open to that in the way it structures itself and the way it trains you to look at and experience its world.
There is a metaphor occasionally shared by those who practice writing creatively that to establish a plot point is to toss a ball in the air, and the skill you exact as the steward of story is to know where the balls are and be ready to catch them when they're on their way back down. If that saying is meritorious, Itoi wields a triple-barreled BB gun firing straight into the air on all cylinders multiple times a chapter. Amazingly, ones you'll forget about dovetail back down into waiting hands so gracefully you might even forget about all the shooting that's been going on right up until the ending hours, when handfuls from the beginning start to reappear in occasionally (as the game's tag line says) "strange, funny, and heart-rending" fashion. As you push through the story carrying out your goals you might even feel an occasional sublime sadness: many of the imperative gameplay tasks involve the pitiable ushering away of some of the most likable characters I've seen in any game in memory—recent or otherwise.
The run-up to the final encounters of the game is worth noting as one of the most rewarding to series fans surely in video gaming history (especially considering the notoriously infrequent acknowledgment of the aficionado community throughout the last dozen years), and forced me to stop dead in my tracks and take it all in with a grin. This is of course contrasted by a final hour more emotionally resonant than a considerable majority of video games, which I only say to avoid the assailable hyperbole of pegging it as the most resonant. It is all precisely punctuated by Shogo Sakai's 250-track-plus score, which is frankly a masterpiece of game music composition that echoes carefully the legacy of Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka's revered soundtracks for Mother 1 and 2 while remaining enjoyably unique.
There is much made these days to the delight and lament of message-board moderators everywhere about the public perception of video games as an art form, with common critique being that since video games are a unique experience to every player, they cannot be controlled by the artist, and are as such "not art." Mother 3 offers quite contrarily the idea that because we as people and gamers will gather our own ideas from progressing through this story, we are connected in the appreciation of its composition. One of the most major plot revelations in the game, in fact, is not even narrated to the player, but is offered near the ending of the game as an area you are free to investigate, that you might come to your own conclusions: infinitely interpretable like all successful art, but at the same time exactly what exists on the page (or the screen), established in boundary carefully, and experienced in natural linear progression as designed by Itoi and crew.
Quite contrary to how I initially approached Mother 3, I left it ruminating over what I had really wanted in the first place. I've played Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and Xenogears and everything else. I know what a traditional role-playing game looks like. Until Mother 3, what I hadn't played was a game that left me feeling markedly different than I did going in. I didn't expect Mother 3 to be what it was to begin with, nor what it became after the clusters of hours I've spent with it over the last week. I didn't expect a video game to really make me think, either about myself or about being a gamer in general, but it did. In that way Mother 3 succeeds only as Mother 3 could have: as an experience that pushed me beyond just playing a video game—and into the kind of world I don't get to visit nearly often enough.
It must be noted that Mother 3 was translated and localized to perfection over a period of a couple of years by some of the most professional and dedicated fans on the planet. Without them the game would almost assuredly have not have received an English release in even the most distantly foreseeable future, and this review would have been impossible. The gaming community, and I personally, owe them an incredible amount of gratitude.