Case Study #4 - Skies of Arcadia

Woops. Busy busy + no internet means I'm feeling a bit backlogged with my journal-ly blog business. Need to get up to speed on what I've done XD.

Skies of Arcadia: Legends

Released (EU): 2002
Platform: Nintendo Gamecube
Genre: RPG
Publisher: SEGA

Skies of Arcadia's premise seems ridiculous. Steam-punk sky pirates, flying ships through the air on a quest for magic stones to foil the plans of a pretty sinister empire? Pretty high-fantasy really. The only thing there that's remotely real is the pirates part. However, this game is one of my favourites, and was rather highly praised all around. One of the main reasons in my opinion is because of its believability.

Vast, open world inspired by the life of piracy

Regardless of how far-fetched it might have seemed, the whole world fits together and that made it believable. To make something believable it doesn't necessarily have to look or be realistic. It more or less comes down to the consistency of the world. One thing I found with Skies of Arcadia was how consistent it actually was. 

The main characters are pirates, but the interesting thing about them is that they're not all BAD pirates. They are divided into factions and you play as the good kind, although they pillage and steal - that's what makes them pirates - they do it in good cause. They're known as the Blue Rogues and the main protagonist that the game centres around is Vyse. He looks pretty steam-punk, and he looks like a pirate albeit with a bit of a fantasy twist on it, yet in the character's appearance itself you can see the lack of malice. He wears an lens which, although is actual a practical item that allows him to see far off objects, is clearly meant to resemble the typical pirate eye-patch.

The main point I want to make about this, and it goes for the majority of the other characters in his crew, is that he looks like he belongs in the world in which he lives.

Fina, Vyse and Aika

One note to make is that Fina, on the left in the above image, does not resemble a pirate. That's because she's not, although she does join Vyse on his quest. She also comes from a vastly different place to Arcadia, meaning she struggles to understand Arcadian customs. While not much is known about her culture, it can easily be established that she is much more peaceful than the Arcadian lifestyle offers.

Although some of the characters might not look real, their personalities as a whole are believable and they are engaging and ultimately that draws the player into identifying with these characters despite the extravagant world in which they exist. It is partly to do with the kind of situations they are thrown into as well that adds to the connectivity between player, characters and world. Vyse pretty much wants to protect his friends and family, help other people and stop a corrupt empire from destroying their lives. 

This game is an excellent example of a game that takes direct inspiration from a culture, in this case being piracy, but turns it into something new and exciting, an ultimately fictional culture because, obviously, sky-pirates don't exist and people don't live on skyward islands. BUT it is all inspired from the pirate lifestyle. Younger players could relate to the mischievous nature of the teenage Vyse and his friends even though they aren't pirates themselves. Perhaps from Skies of Arcadia it can be assumed that culture may or may not influence player identification with characters so long as these characters suit the world in which they live.