After one false start a few months ago, I finally overcame critical momentum on Mother 3 and pushed through to the end.
Unsurprisingly, it was a fantastic game.
I'm not going to write an exhaustive analysis of this game, as probably none of you have played it and there are people who are much smarter than I (and are substantially better writers), such as Pitchfork over on this blog, who have already done so (Aside: I wouldn't recommend reading that post unless you've played Mother 3. You won't get much out of it, and you'll spoil the heck out of the game). What I will do, however, is mention my perspective on why the game hasn't been localized yet (and may never be), and tell you why I still like EarthBound better.
Besides the fabled Half-Life 3, there is no other demand from video game fan culture (whatever that means anymore) than a North American localization of Mother 3. Many of the folks demanding an official translation and release have never played the game; at most they have some experience with EarthBound or maybe even the Wii U Virtual Console release of Mother, and want to take a crack at the third game in the series. That's perfectly reasonable, and I was squarely in this camp a few weeks ago. After playing the fan translation found here, I kind of get why the Big N has been so mum in the face of all the pressure (Aside #2, much love to the team who did this translation. It's an amazing service they've done for the world).
There's a mystical race in Mother 3 known as the Magypsies. They are guardians of a powerful force that resides within the game's setting, and they are said to live for millennia and have mysterious powers. Here's what they look like:
These characters clearly display both masculine and feminine features, and most refer to themselves as females.
They are also portrayed as very basic, and predominately regrettable, stereotypes of LGBT folks. Pitchfork draws a parallel to the Crows in Dumbo, and I think it's a pretty good analogy.
These characters would be difficult to accept for most members of an American audience, who would (broadly speaking) fall into one of two categories. 1) I don't want to see gender fluid/homosexual characters in a video game, or 2) These queer characters are very offensively portrayed.
As if this isn't enough of a problem, there is a scene where one of these Magypsies awakens Lucas' inner psychic abilities. Unfortunately, this scene is saturated in sexual innuendo, which becomes even more uncomfortable when you consider Lucas' clear status as a minor. Look, I'm also no expert in Japanese culture, but I know enough to realize that something like this would probably be interpreted as a joke to the native audience, but would undoubtedly cause controversy in the United States.
If one were to think carefully enough, they could find ways to make minor changes to the game's scenario or script to make it less offensive to an American audience. But remember who we're talking about here. Nintendo of America is very adamant about maintaining a "family friendly image", and it's hard to imagine a localization that includes the Magypsies in a way that fits into whatever they mean by that.
I'm not saying it will never happen, but I feel like I sort of understand why they've refused to acknowledge the fans' demand for an official translation, and have uncharacteristically allowed the fan translation to continue to exist for several years now.
Okay, enough politically correct boringness, let's get into why I still prefer EarthBound.
In my GIPL micro-review of Undertale, I mentioned that EarthBound was a great game that told a good story, while Undertale was a great story told through a good game- this applies to Mother 3 as well. While EarthBound is a celebration and deconstruction of video games, late 80's-early 90's American culture, and the Hero's Journey, Mother 3 is a story of a family, both in the nuclear sense and in the village sense, that is broken beyond repair, and how the individuals in the family react to their brokenness. Mother 3's story is much more substantial and nuanced than EarthBound's.
The characters in Mother 3 are also quite an improvement over EarthBound's. Duster, and particularly Kumatora are incredibly interesting. That's not to mention Claus, the best character in the game. Even Lucas has some nice development, especially when compared to his EarthBound counterpart, Ness.
So how do I still like EarthBound better overall? Games separate themselves from books, movies, etc. by letting the player participate in an active experience rather than passively observe. Although Mother 3 told a well-crafted story with stronger characters and a more well-defined message, the experience felt more passive. At the risk of sounding like a basic white girl, Earthbound focuses more on the journey rather than the destination. It's all about the little moments that you, the player experience. It's about reuniting two separated sesame seeds lost in a desert. It's about completing a self-aware dungeon. It's about guiding Poo through his harrowing spiritual training. And it's about a final boss fight that's too perfect for me to even touch on in this blog. Mother 3, like Undertale, has its fair share of great moments, but they are superseded by the primary narrative. I'm certainly not saying that Mother 3 would be just as effective as a book or film, but it didn't create as many memorable moments that I, the player, actively was a part in.
Maybe that doesn't make sense. Hopefully it makes more sense if you've played these games. And if you haven't...why are you still here?
I loved Mother 3, but it doesn't reach into that upper level of greatness that EarthBound occupies in my brain. But seriously...why are you not playing these right now?
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