MadCap's Game Reviews - Halloween 2013 Special

"This is not your story..."

What if your life was nothing more than a script? A predetermined set of conflicts and resolutions to be played out to a final conclusion? What if you had no control over any of it? That you were meant to play these events out to the end regardless of any outside factors or interference?

And what if you were the only one in the entire world who didn’t know what was happening?

And worse…what if even that was something that was callously taken away from you?

The paint begins to chip...

Pokémon:  False Red is a ROM hack of the FireRed and LeafGreen versions for the GBA.  It plays out exactly as those games do in terms of mechanics…but it had had some alterations made to it that are not quite what one would expect from a game in this universe.  We enter into the life of a young boy named Fire (or a girl named Leaf, if you choose that option).  He’s ten years old and eager to begin an exciting journey in the world of Pokémon, specifically in the Kanto region of the Pokémon world where the original first generation games (Red, Blue, and Yellow) and some of the third generation (the aforementioned FireRed and LeafGreen) were largely set in.  However, we have not come back to the Kanto that was so beloved by fans of the series.

Starting in his room, the first thing that draws Fire’s eye is a SNES.  “This was his.”  How very strange…his, not mine.  Not some generic, chipper line about the SNES.  Just, “This was his.”  And a sign by the stairs stating only two words:

“Come home.”

Fire is haunted by these words, surely, but we get no visible reaction (as he’s in that tradition of silent protagonists) as he heads downstairs and sees on the TV a boy standing on a mountain, but who is he?  And then turning to his Mother…who claims that all boys leave home someday just like her son!  Bizarre…perplexing…even creepy, some might say.  After all, Fire is her son…right? RIGHT?!

It’s snowing outside…it’s always snowing.  No explanation, no mention, it’s not even a feature that gets discussed by the NPCs.  But it’s there.  A quick glance at the Pallet Town sign reveals that this is “His hometown”.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is something right out of creepypasta.  And a really effective one at that.  But so far as I have been able to find, this isn’t based on a creepypasta in the same vein as the “Creepy Black” or “Tarnished Gold” creepypastas.  In fact, the closest I could find to it was “Glitchy Red”, which – while similar – isn’t quite the same.  It doesn’t stop there with the unnerving atmosphere and the signs everywhere demanding the same thing – “Come home”.  This atmosphere is maintained throughout pretty much the entire game, which otherwise runs exactly as Pokémon FireRed does.  The exceptions being in the dialogue, which is fairly easy for a ROM hack to see changed, considering the original game had no voices for characters. Just text…and how chillingly well it is used.

This is no better demonstrated than with the Rival character, Gary.  Immediately upon meeting him in Oak’s Lab, he calls Fire out as not being Red…wonders why he looks so much like him, and claims that this is not Fire’s story.  Even after being defeated, he vows to stop Fire from stealing Red’s story, no matter the cost.  It seems that Professor Oak doesn’t even take notice of this…until you take a look at his computer and read the message “I’m sorry.  We couldn’t find him.”

And, outside of his rival, Fire finds himself blasted by others for having the same appearance and doing the same things as Red.  The Nurse Joys at every Pokémon Center drop their traditional farewell for “Please don’t come back.”  The posts in the Gyms all refer to the Winning Trainers as “RED” and “Green”.  The strange man in the Gyms encourages Fire to “give up” at every turn.  Characters will wonder why Fire’s bothering to catalogue Pokémon when someone else already did it.  Even some compliments that Fire gets are mean spirited and backhanded.

Now, anyone who has played the Second Generation games (Gold, Silver and Crystal) or has played their Fourth Generation remakes (HeartGold and SoulSilver) will know that the true final battle of the game is not the Elite Four, but is a mysterious trainer named Red who stands at the peak of Mount Silver awaiting any challenge brave enough to make their way up the mountain, a mountain where it snows quite often…and how very interesting it is that it seems to snow everywhere in Kanto in False Red.

This, in combination with how many NPCs tend to speak of Red, leads us to the implication that he has died at some point after defeating the Elite Four and travelling to Mount Silver, and was never found.  Is he missing? Is he dead? No one seems to know, but given Fire’s journey and his striking resemblance to their fallen hero, most of the people are very unhappy.  To them, he’s a copycat, but it’s more than just that in this world.

Again, the sign posts.  The strange flavor text about items and objects in the world.  And those two words, repeated again and again.  “Come home”.  And it is indeed everywhere.  Anyone playing the game would be hard pressed to find a sign that doesn’t have those two words. And what does Fire say about this? Nothing.  He’s a silent protagonist, nothing more, but that only leaves us to ponder the horror of the thing ourselves.  Just what is going on here?  Is Red dead? Is he missing? Is he the sinister hand behind all of this?  And if Fire’s not Red, then who or what is he?

Well, the short answer is that there is no answer.  No clue, no reason for any of this being.  At the end of the game, once Fire has stopped Gary in his insane tirade to stop him from “taking Red’s story”, Professor Oak arrives and announces that both he and Gary are done playing – “This is not a game.” And with that line, Oak takes Fire back to register his Pokémon for victory…and the save file is erased.  Fire’s journey for all it meant and didn’t mean, for all he achieved and all ground that was retreaded, comes to an end…with no record of it ever having happened at all.

So…what have we learned? What is this besides some mad hacker’s skill at editing a game’s graphics and dialogue?

My theory is that the game is a metaphor, a living avatar of the series of games and its relation to the fans.  Consider the Pokémon games in general.  Most players will substitute their own name for Red’s or Gold’s or any of the other protagonists.  In the end, though, it isn’t our story. Just as the original Red and Blue were Red’s story.  Not that anyone who plays a Pokémon game would ever have a second thought about slapping their name on the player character and playing through it.  To us, it’s just a game.
 

A game that, when you get down to it, has the same plot repeated again and again.

A young trainer journeys out into the world to become the best like no one ever was.

So it’s nothing more than a script…a predetermined set of conflicts and resolutions to be played out to a final conclusion, and with no real control of any of it.  But this time, the events don’t play out quite the same.  Outside factors and interference stop that, in the end.  The entire world knows it’s happening, and it stops it, forever.

Is Red dead? Missing? The story may never have really been his to begin with.  His image, everything he is, taken over and controlled by someone else.  The Player, as the game recognizes at the end…is responsible for it all.  The one who has taken Red’s face and his path in life and made it entirely their own for their own entertainment. It brings some weight to it all, leaves us to really ponder just how many lives have been overwritten in these games and in others we’ve played…how we have been the real monster the whole time.  Did the Warden really save all of Thedas from the Fifth Blight? Did Jack ever save Rapture? Did Link ever really defeat Gandorf? 

And did Red ever really become the best like no one ever was?

He may very well have never had the chance…because of every player out there who ever picked up a Pokémon cartridge. 

That may just be rampant speculation about the meaning of the game.  Crazed and unsubstantiated.  But as for False Red, I can’t say I dislike it.  The atmosphere is really good and with GBA graphics, no less. It’s chilling, unnerving, and did actually make me ponder a possibility – something which games rarely do.  I will say, though, that I was a little disappointed with the ending.  While I’m all for the breaking of the fourth wall, the ending seemed rather sudden and out of nowhere, and gave no real resolution, though that might just feed back into the game’s cruelty in general (after all, it’s not your story).  Apart from that, it’s a chilling walk that makes us wonder if the real antagonist in video games…is really…us?