Thematics: Suikoden
Posted by CmdrKing on October 31, 2011Even among RPGs, a misnomer genre descended from dice-aided storytelling guided by dense tomes of lore differentiated by setting, games that truly put a well-developed setting first and focus on how the player characters work in the world around them are vanishingly rare. Whether because the usual tropes are shoved into the framework of an existing setting, or because elements of the setting are simply afterthoughts, it’s exceptional to find a case where the setting and story work symbiotically. The biggest and most consistent of these exceptions is Suikoden, Konami’s long-running and distressingly ignored RPG series. Taking elements from a classical Chinese folk story, each game takes place in a small region of a larger world, following the tale of a hero’s encounter with the True Runes, and subsequently the story of how they are swept into gathering the 108 Stars of Destiny and changing the fate of their nation.