This article contains significant spoilers to Raging Loop. It is exceptionally cheap on a variety of websites, and I strongly recommend playing it.
All images in this article have been taken from the game's Steam page
The work of Jorges Luis Borges is at once whimsical and disquieting. Borges' predilection for the short form in his fiction belies the density and profound impact of his intensely woven narratives. Initially presented as whimsical, proto-magical realist flights of fancy, increasingly enmeshed in rich and quixotic fictive knots, Borges precise short stories quickly wrap the reader in an anxiety-inducing wreath of extradiegetic consequences. One of Borges most celebrated stories, The Garden Of Forking Paths, is an excellent example. It starts as an easily identifiable spy/war narrative, if characteristically opaque. Yet Borges seems more drawn to the story within the story, which is fixated on the compelling notion of an infinitely complex novel and an infinitely complex labyrinth, both one and the same, with every possible path within the narrative and every parallel choice and selection presented. Borges' story predates both notions of parallel universes and hypertext fiction, both of which are fundamental to comprehending video game narratives.
In the same volume, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, less a traditional narrative and more frame story utilised to describe a fabricated encyclopedia, produced with unimaginable time and resources, documenting a world (Tlön) and a culture and a philosophy that does not exist. In doing so, the narrative bleeds out from it’s fictive world, and begins to germinate beyond its confines.
Perhaps the most interesting paragraph, thrown away almost with incociance, explores the fiction of the people of Tlön;
Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete.
The story is both compelling and yet faintly disturbing. The notion of a world so familiar and yet so alien can only create cognitive dissonance for the reader. That these ideas are simultaneously fundamental and yet inconceivable. With every narrative variation made conceivable and laid bare, there exists something which both elucidates and obfuscates. The privileged notion of the author is destroyed and replaced with a new tradition. All paths are canonical, and all paths are essential to understanding the narrative.
This notion of both thesis and antithesis both being not only integral to the structure of the narrative, yet also presenting the curious and ultimately liberating idea that all disparate and even contradictory narrative strands and dead-ends are in fact canonical, is one that has been explored and practiced extensively. What was ultimately a thought experiment, a flight of philosophical fancy, has proven to be the genesis of a range of texts in a variety of media. Perhaps the most well defined (and well represented) is the visual novel, a genre of video game popularised in Japan. The visual novel itself has its antecedents. Hypertext fiction, playful text based adventures such as The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, as well as Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. In each instance,a selection of narrative nodes are linked through a more or less numerical system. The user is afforded a range of (typically) limited choices. One almost universal characteristic is that these texts will include both ‘true’ or ‘good’ endings, and many more ‘bad endings’ narrative dead ends , compelling the user to return to an earlier node in the narrative. It is almost inconceivable that users will be able to traverse Scorpion Swamp (Jackson, 1984) with a favourable outcome the first time they engage with the narrative. Instead, the many deaths and nodally encoded dead ends become essential tools in uncovering the fewer true ends. Upon replaying, the user can use their own experience to avoid inevitable death, and to progress towards a more favourable inclusion. In short, the bad ends here are necessary to uncover the good ends, and therefore should be considered canonical through their metanarrative importance. In some cases, game books draw attention to this ludonarrative dissonance. J.H Brennan’s underrated Grailquest series consoles and chides the player through an extradiegetic perspective, drawing attention to the world of the fictive. The postmodern implications of multi-nodal narratives have long been explored, and it is through this playful deconstruction of traditional narratives and audience/producer/text relationships we find most interesting here.
The visual novel, typically referred to in Japan as adventure games, but here referred to by the term commonly used by Western audiences, are at their most simplistic level a digital reconstruction of an adventure gamebook. They tend to lack the extravagances of a text parser, like the aforementioned Hitchhiker's Guide and Adventure. Visual novels can often be characterised by very large word counts (at times exceeding one million total words) and often very few player decisions. When plotted out on paper, a visual novel resembles a series of forking paths, leading to a number of bad, and several good endings. Paths may be selected through simple choices, or a flag system, where an invisible set of values will be attributed to certain choices. One popular sub genre of the visual novel is the bishoujo or ‘beautiful girl’ game, where a player will essentially use their ability to manipulate the narrative to select an often sexually explicit ending featuring the girl that they prefer. Bishoujou games can be more system heavy than traditional, ‘pure’ visual novels, forcing the player to keep track of a number of statistics and numerical factors more akin to a simulation game. These games are often called dating games, and two popular examples are Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial and Love Plus series.
Regardless of their generic designation, visual novels are often priced highly, and for the audience represent a heavy investment in both money and the time spent reading them and exploring their hidden intricacies. With a few notable exceptions, it is all but expected that the player, upon achieving their desired ending, will restart the game and pursue a new romantic interest. In this sense, an intricate interplay between text, producer and user is presented, with the user eschewing notions of authorial intent. The narrative is not concluded until every conceivable scenario has been conquered.
But how to diegetically explain these disparate and contradictory narrative paths? The simplest solution is to draw no attention to it at all. Each new scenario begins in an identical way, before branching off in new and exciting directions. The player summarily suspends their disbelief, and the producer provides the tools to explore a series of structurally similar yet narratological discrete paths. Much like the work of Borges, this hyperreal narrative parrallell between perpetual chastity and extratextual polygamy provides existential unease. When all paths have the potential to be explored, both eradicated and reinforcing the previous, the player is arguably presented with a power comparable to the producer. Yet an increasing number of producers sought to explore the potential of making all nodal paths both canonical and diegetically situated.
So how is such a feat possible?Interestingly, the fort and boundaries of the videogame lend itself well to such narrative situations. It is certainly not the first example, but YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of the world takes the form of an eroge (erotic game) bishoujou game. However, it's narrative conceit is diegetically encoded, allowing the player to not only utilise a range of diegetically important mechanics to manipulate the narrative, but also making the ‘conquering’ of each romantic interest a requisite for completing the story. Utilizing themes of parallel worlds and quantum mechanics, YU-NO’s ridiculously convoluted narrative draws attention to the conventions of the eroge. By making all choices and all endings canonical, YU-NO’s monolithic narrative explores the implication of this unease, and requires a lengthy analysis at a later date.
The work of Uchikoshi Kotaro can in many ways be considered both a succession and a refinement of the concepts presented in YU-NO. In games such as 999, Virtue's Last Reward and Ever 17, Uchikoshi explores the nightmarish implications of quantum narrative labyrinths. Typically in an Uchikoshi narrative, the player character will, through successive contact with bad ends, will break free from the prison of narrative itself, gaining cognizance of the fictive confines which bind them, and gaining agency through metanarrative deconstruction. Uchikoshi’s dense and fascinating ludonarrative constructs and deconstructions once more require greater exploratory analysis.
This brings us to Raging Loop (2015). Raging Loop most comfortably fits into the death game subgenre of visual novels. It is ultimately similar to other visual novel death games such as Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape series and the Danganronpa series. It’s central narrative conceit revolves around a typical mystery narrative trope of a diverse range of unlikeable characters trapped by contrived forces in a remote village. The narrative follows an outsider, who, through a series of unfortunate events finds himself trapped in this village at the exact time an age-old ritual is about to transpire. With each villager assigned a certain role through apparently supernatural means, they must either clandestinely kill off the other villagers, or use deductive reasoning to work out the killers, and then execute them. It is very possible, and indeed more than likely that a non-murderer will be executed during this process. Chaos ensues, and the group dynamic collapses under mistrust and hatred.
However, far from being a straightforward visual novel with no form of interaction, like Umineko: When They Cry (though Umineko’s central narrative conceit also involves a convoluted and endlessly self-perpetuating metaphysical narrative loop), Raging Loop integrates its ludic structure as a metanarrative device. In this sense, it is very similar to the self aware structure of games such as YU-NO and Virtue’s Last Reward. Put simply, upon death (reaching a ‘bad end’), the character is booted unceremoniously back to the start of the game to try their luck once more. However, from a very early point in the narrative, it is made clear that the protagonist is able to retain memories of his previous attempts, which then allow him to progress, through trial and fatal error through the primary narrative arc. These loops are further lampshaded through the conceit of a cuddly (if slightly threatening) mascot character who converses directly to the player upon death situations. He will explain exactly what has happened, and, more often than not, will explicitly point the player in the direction of the correct narrative node in order to continue the narrative. Progress is eked out through obtaining ‘keys’, which function as the aforementioned flags so prevalent in visual novels, albeit (extra?) diegetically explicit.
By drawing attention to the nature of the ‘loop’ (the game even buntly makes intertextual reference to the film Groundhog Day by way of explication), it addresses and embraces the traditional problem of ludonarrative dissonance brought up by many narrative video games. The contrapuntal ridiculousness of the super-cool smoking sheep in shades, almost always appearing immediately after a grueling and graphic description of evisceration not only keeps the atmosphere light, but also imbues a sense of playfulness often missing from games of this genre. The is helpful, considering not only the significant length of the game (an extradiegetic chibi-mascot version of Uematsu cheerfully warns the payer at the start of the narrative proper that the game is “obscenely long”!), but it’s often oppressive and cloying subject matter.
In Zero Escape and Danganronpa,the narrative is structured around a rigid and even fastidious structure of rules, and the penalty for breaking these rules is ultimately death. Raging Loops death game conceit is even more convoluted than either of these games. The complexity of the rules is such that it functions as both an elucidating narrative device and a dense, hermeneutic veil. In a manner somewhat analogous to the courtroom battles of both Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, much of the ludonarrative thrust of the game occurs in a series of narratively contrived ‘feasts’, where the town’s populace will crowd in a central, confined location, and, at great length, will discuss who should or should not be the next character to be executed. Broadly, these rules are based on the absolutely fascinating parlour game/psychological experiment Mafia/Werewolf, created by Dmitry Davidoff in 1986. A detailed summary of the game itself can be found here.
The intertextual reference to another game in a different medium creates another delightful extratextual level of communication with the audience. That it is a visual novel, a genre often arguably almost devoid of ludic elements, making reference to a deduction based parlour game with a focus on human interaction is even more fascinating. The importance of the ludic, of win/lose conditions and even interactivity in videogames is highly suspect at best, with many action games winnable through persistence and metanarrative application as opposed to any discernible engagement with any ludic or metabolic system, but I digress. The importance of the ludic in videogames should be dispelled, but it will be done so in a later article.
Beyond the rules of the game and the death scenario, Raging Loop is a narrative about myths, legends and the power of narrative itself. It demonstrates a tacit realisation that words and stories have more power than base signification,and that they can affect and influence the very fabric of society. Unlike many visual novels that fixate on escapist fantasies of private schools, fantastic realms, and, yes, hypersexualised adventures, Raging Loop is a far more restrained affair. The town of Yasumizu is ostensibly poor and run-down, a depiction of rural deprivation more at home in hard hitting independent dramas and social realist films than a mainstream videogame. With the myths and legends associated with religion holding such power,a bitter power struggle arises to control the story itself. Much like Borges, the game straddles a binary between whimsicality and disquieting philosophical caverns of metaphysical despair. It’s quaint depiction of social-realist and magical-realist conventions regularly clash, and with significant results.
Perhaps the most significant way in which Raging Loop fully utilises the possibilities of its nodal narrative is through the persistent and sheer malleability of its characterisations. As the narrative progresses, characters will shift significantly, taking on a multitude of different roles and archetypes. Of course such a convention is hardly new or noteworthy in itself. The Proppian notion of the ‘false hero’, or the heroic figure who is revealed to be anything but is well documented, and even the simple process of a ‘character arc’ itself demonstrates a significant and destabilising shift. What makes these arcs particularly interesting, from a narratological perspective, is where the change is such that an entirely new and even contrapuntal role is assumed. The ‘Persona Swap’ narratives as evident in films such as Bergman’s Persona, Lynch’s Blue Velvet, and the epiphanic liebestod of Hitchcock’s Vertigo all revel in the impermanence of both narrative, it's archetypes and the fractured ‘self’. Likewise, possession narratives as diverse as The Exorcist and Ghostbusters 2 demonstrate the innate anxiety and ghastly thrill intrinsic to relinquishing one’s free will. Much like the Danganronpa series, in particular Danganronpa v3, Raging Loop sees characters shift wildly, their free will determined by the nodal path being explored at the time. Characters who are ultimately hostile and antagonist wolves can also serve as the Proppian role of helper, romantic interest,or comic relief, depending on how the world line is subtly manipulated. And characters have roles placed upon them by their lineage, by their location,and through the signification afforded by the rules of the feast. Much as in the work of Borges, Raging Loop elucidates convoluted narrative by a bizarrely interlinked interlinked selection of extratextual narratives. Much of the joy of reading this game comes not from the minutiae of the procedural elements, but instead through the delight and anxiety in seeing these characters come ‘unstuck’ from their diegetically situated roles.
As the character ping pong wildly in between different world lines, selecting information and grilling people for additional information only then does the narrative itself begin to make sense. The convoluted system of signification here forms a robust system archetypal legerdemain, with the very substitution of identity reinforcing both diegetic identity and the player’s extradiegetic ability to identify with the cast of characters. With each character being dictated by a seemingly arbitrated designation, that shifts and changes on subsequent loops, a sense of objective narrative continuity and totality is subsequently stolen from the player.
This concept reaches its logical conclusion in two significant ways. Firstly, at the very end of the narrative's many, many loops, it is revealed that the protagonist has been lying about his true name and therefore his very identity for the entirety of the narrative. In doing so,he breaks a contract,and disrupts the initially seemingly arbitrary yet ultimately fastidiously overwrought and interconnected system of significations. However, the most significant way in which Raging Loop negotiates the ramifications of it’s hypertext narrative labyrinth is through the protagonist’s complete and utter level-headedness in the situation. Unlike a Lovecraftian hero shrieking in abandon at glimpsing into the cosmic abyss, the protagonist of Raging Loop takes a frankly happy-go-lucky approach to the existential horrors of the looping phenomenon. Not only does this mean Raging Loop avoids much tiresome hand-wringing, it also serves to underline and reinforce its status as a story about stories, and of fictional characters achieving a state of autonomy of the machinations of the narratological labyrinths that lead to their diegetic confinement. Raging Loop’s confidence with the intrinsic nature of visual novel narratives goes beyond the postmodern, grand guignol histrionics of Doki Doki Literature Club! And Co., instead quietly traces the constantly eroding delineation between the fictive and the real, drawing attention to the inherent joy of the limitations of the medium itself.
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As a postscript, Raging Loop is also just as fascinating for its representation of genuinely rural working class and underclass characters in a Japanese media product. In British media in particular, the working class are frequently confined to gritty social realist dramas and equally gritty and exploitative crime texts. It is genuinely refreshing to read a postmodern visual novel on the nature of free-will, identity, narrative and the notion of collective consciousness that features almost exclusively working class characters in a rural setting, and for this reason alone, it should be celebrated.