Let’s Play Anime! Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness
I have always found the visual novel genre of video games to be a curious one. Without delving much into the history of a near-40 year old Japanese-born video game genre, it certainly is one that has grown in both prominence and popularity in the west over the past couple of decades. Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness feels like a culmination of a genre that has struggled to find its footing across western shores.
Early attempts to introduce the visual novel remain notable.
Snatcher on the Sega Mega-CD still resonates with many today
(remaster/remake please), but it was the Nintendo DS that really turned
western heads to the concept with the arrival of
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in 2005, closely followed by Hotel Dusk just a year later. The genre
has since flourished somewhat with
Telltale Games' The Walking Dead series, but these aren't visual novels
in the strictest sense. The latter in particular is more of a living,
breathing interactive comic book with controllable characters. Nevertheless
their contribution, easing Western audiences into both the visual novel genre
and in many cases anime itself, which by the mid-2000s had finally settled
fully as an entertainment medium after the initial bubble of the 1990s burst
at the turn of the millennium.
Fast forward ten more years, and the once-only-imaginable happened: A traditional Japanese-developed visual novel, fully translated into English, based around a leading anime production, was released on Western shores across all video game platforms. Yes, even Xbox One, where it made its debut in Japan as a timed exclusive, which is surprising given Microsoft's machine amassed lifetime sales of under 115,000. Interestingly, the Xbox One version was never localised for the west, where it no doubt would have fared better.
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And so Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness is indeed a visual
novel in the true sense, given there is approximately fifteen hours worth of
text and still images, with the only interactions being the choices you make
at key junctures. With its various endings, both good and bad, plus all the
different routes that can be taken throughout with varying effects on both
main and supporting characters, PPMH is an extremely comprehensive affair.
Absolute credit has to be given for the localisation which is for one great
and secondly given a chance in the US and Europe to begin with. If this had
been the 1990s (in the UK at least) it is likely this game would never have
ever been heard of.
Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness presents two original
characters, Inspector Nadeshiko Kugatachi and
Enforcer Takuma Tsurugi, in an extensive tale set in the anime's canon,
in parallel with the hit Production I.G. series. Set in the year 2112,
police work is completely different. The always-online system
Sybil monitors the mental state of all citizens to calculate the
possibility of them committing any criminal activity in the future. As a
result the crime rate is pretty much zero, with even people classed as
undesirable punished for crimes before they're even committed. Some of these
people, who of course have a knack for thinking like criminals, becoming the
police enforcement as the public face of Sybil, known as the
Public Safety Bureau's Criminal Investigation Division. These 'enforcers' also need supervision by PSBCID Inspectors, which is
where our characters come in.
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Little is given away about
Nadeshiko Kugatachi, having lost all of her memories in an accident (somehow
qualifying as a police inspector?!) and Takuma Tsurugi, who became an enforcer
for CID hoping to one day find his long-missing childhood friend. Interesting
resumes for sure, but these original protagonists are the anchor to the
game's story, and given the limited nature of interaction on offer (press
'button' to continue, read, and press 'button' again), it is thankfully a good
one.
Facing potential criminals based solely on probability from a computer
certainly raises debate, as does the decisions you make for each respective
character; do you pick what you would do, or what they should do? The
over-arching villain Alpha, PPMH's most interesting and intriguing
character, raises plenty of ethical questions that spread doubt about the
Sybil system and its purpose. He affects both characters in different ways
throughout as they also begin to question their own purpose within the Public
Safety Bureau.
The choices you make determine how much your
character walk the line between, in Nadeshiko's case, keeping her mental
instability enough to regain her memories but not enough to become a latent
criminal herself. With these multiple outcomes on offer, the tightly written
dialogue driving it forward, and even voiced by the anime's cast, PPMH serves
as an introductory piece to the anime franchise, given it occurs around the
first quarter of the first series.
PPMH certainly won't appeal to
everyone; don't expect any puzzles to solve a la Danganronpa or any quickfire
movements that appear in The Walking Dead, instead PPMH is as much a novel as
the graphic ones on your Kindle, with added visuals with limited animation.
Without the story, deep characters to be empathised with (or not) and again
true-to-the-franchise visuals, Psycho-Pass Mandatory Happiness would be an
empty shell of a video game. Its just as well those are the very aspects that
carry it through into many hours of entertainment.
