Atelier: Beyond Practical and Theoretical Lives

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Japan, 1997. You have just finished Dragon Quest VI. You love how the developers keep on retelling the same story without changing the gameplay mechanics and with better graphics. It is a simple hero’s journey to fight the demon lord. You can’t get any better than that. You want more, so you go to a video game store to rent something else for your new PSone. A game catches your eye. Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg. You are not sure why your hand has grabbed the case, but it is unusual to see something that so proudly talks about item creation as a selling point on the back.

You rent the game, plop the disk in, and the introduction plays. In Salburg, heroes have embarked on an epic journey to fight monsters terrorizing the kingdom. Countless legends and tales have retold their stories and glorified their acts. But for most people, these adventures are of no concern to them. They want to live peacefully, drink, and be merry.

This is the story of one such denizen named Marlone, better known as Marie. Marie has been flunking her exams in the alchemy academy. Her professor, Ingrid, has decided to make her open an atelier — an alchemy workshop — in order to put her on the spot and improve her alchemy skills.

You control Marie and help her find her way through the world of alchemy. Marie is a supporting protagonist: She is not able to deal much damage in battles alone, but she can hire adventurers to protect her. She can also craft new attack and healing items to have a better chance at winning battles. But the battles aren’t why Marie is an alchemist. There are forests and mountains to go to if she wants to forage for better materials. The more dangerous and further from town these dungeons are, the more likely Marie is able to find items that let her craft something that shows Ingrid she is worthy of the alchemist name. She has five years to accomplish all of this.

Atelier Marie isn’t a rollicking adventure but a simulation with role-playing game mechanics. It’s far different from all the video games you have played. Star Ocean, Arc the Lad, and Chrono Trigger are all great games, but they don’t fit in quite the same category as Atelier Marie. Playing as a normal college student in a world of sword and sorcery isn’t something you would ever consider possible in a video game.

But Atelier Marie is doing it. The year is 2017 and nothing about Atelier nontraditional approach to RPGs has changed since 1997.

This is why the franchise still has a small, adoring fanbase after all these years.

But that’s not the way I found the franchise. That may be the history of roleplaying games for many people, but that’s not the history of how I met the series and fell in love with it.

I first discovered the Atelier franchise when I barely spoke a lick of English. Nobody except TV shows taught me English until I moved to Singapore to study. I was not ready to join an English-speaking society and felt a deep and immense culture shock. Not many Singaporeans wanted to talk to an Indonesian Chinese kid, and everybody glared at me wherever I looked. They probably thought of me as being too smart and pretentious for reading books in school. In reality, I was only good at Math and I wanted to get better at English. If I was asked to read a book aloud for class, I would feel dizzy and my voice got strained as if I were choking myself.

In order to stave away the boredom and loneliness, I played video games. All types to forget that my English was poor and that I had nobody to talk to.

Atelier Iris 2 was one of the first video games I remember playing. It’s a typical linear RPG with no frills whatsoever. But the graphics were adorable and the language was easy to read. If I didn’t know a word, I’d take out my small pocket Oxford Color Dictionary — I still have it today beside me — and look up what the word means.

Unfortunately, I cannot distinguish alchemy from the image of Viese Blachimont, the heroine of Iris 2. She wore a cute red robe and had this giant silly hat; she was also very cheery, which made her one of my first video game crushes. While this goes against the typical image of the dreary alchemist up in the tower, Viese pops up when someone mentions the word “alchemist”. It helped me remember words better and I had fun learning English that way.

This habit of looking up words in video games benefited me the more I played RPGs like Planescape: Torment. My English, while still flawed, now had a verbose flair and I was able to read most young adult books at ease.

It was a decade later, when I moved to America, when I played my second Atelier game, Atelier Totori. My English was virtually indistinguishable from native speakers and I had been told numerous times that my writing and speaking skills surpassed even native people. The flattering thought entertained me until I entered college in Chicago. That’s when I realized even if I was speaking perfect American English, I would never be able to talk to anyone. People were talking about shows I’d never heard of — Mad Men was never popular, Game of Thrones was restricted to 21 year olds only, and I don’t watch Naruto — so I was left alone again. Americans went about their ways and I was left to my devices, a newly bought PS3 and a TV, for the evening when I got off college.

Atelier Totori was not like any RPG I had ever played. I couldn’t think of many games where you play as a young girl frolicking on vast fields gathering herbs. That young girl’s name is Totooria Helmond, or Totori for short, and she wants to become a certified adventurer-cum-alchemist. She also wants to find out where her mother has disappeared to after all these years.

As Totori, you spend most of the game trying to find new recipes, craft the best items, and unlock the best traits for equipment to help you in battles. Battles in this game are usually extremely short: you either win or lose a minute in, depending on the skills your characters have and more importantly the items you currently can use at your disposal. This is easily the least interesting aspect of the game. Rather, you are encouraged to explore and gather items by rummaging through bushes and picking up ripe fruits from trees. Sometimes, Totori has to go far away from her hometown to find the best items and this drains characters’ stamina. She also has to think about the items she has gathered too because they can deteriorate in quality if she doesn’t return to her atelier soon. Totori has three years to reach a certain rank in the adventurer’s guild in order to pass the license exam as well. She has little time to dillydally around. Planning what to do next is far more important than mastering the battle mechanics in this game.

So just like Atelier Marie, this game is less about the fighting and more about finding a way to fit all these chores into what feels like a hectic schedule already. The game reminds me how we use lists in real life. We don’t go shopping for groceries without a list in mind. Totori rarely goes to a field she’s been to without hunting for something in particular too. If she is missing some kind of item for a recipe, she can also substitute them for something else. This allows new desirable traits to show up in the item. Juggling with these variables as well as managing your time take a lot of practice. A friend had once commented that this game was like returning to engineering class for him. Learning how to delicately tinker with the alchemic mechanics and getting a Eureka moment is satisfying, especially when you get to hear Totori exclaim in joy.

But you can’t always lock yourself in your atelier and be the cutest mad scientist forever. You have to go outside and earn money by accepting quests from the guild or the bar. There are only two towns in the game: the fishing village of Alanya and the bustling capital city of Arland. Because of this, you get familiar with the people living in these towns. There are numerous cutscenes with the locals just going along with their lives. The quests you do for the adventurer’s guild or bar are requests from people around town. They want specific items or pests to be exterminated. Everything Totori and her friends do is helping common folks one way or another. The towns become more special when you see the party members mingle with the locals. Seeing Melvia gulp down a glass of beer with the customers in the bar at Alanya gives a different aura to the small village. Mimi visiting Totori’s home and meeting her sister for the first time shows her not just opening up but the different class and family distinctions between her and Totori. The party members aren’t characters with dark backstories but normal people trying to live life. These everyday routines are what makes the game special to me. They don’t add much to gameplay, but they make the world more lively and cast more diverse.

Becoming an alchemist means you are crafting potions and gathering herbs for other people. It is a respectable vocation and has a place in Arland’s society. While some jobs like a knight might feel more important than stirring chemicals in a cauldron, alchemy is an important aspect of the economy. Trying to help Totori fit right into the society of merchants and artisans is a far more fulfilling experience than the many video games I have played over the years.

I played the game for twenty hours without a break and the sun was up. It was time for me to go to college. Maybe I too can find a way to fit into society. Maybe I can find something that will help me integrate into American education well, not just as a worldly international student but as someone useful who has found a place in society. I exited my apartment to face that bright future.

But that was not to be. No matter how much I tried, I felt that my English words weren’t American. For all anybody cared, I could have been speaking Indonesian because not a word of mine entered the minds of my classmates. I was enrolled in several writing classes and everybody talked about House of Cards. When they asked for what I thought, I didn’t know what to say except “it’s a good show”. What else could I say when I hadn’t watched the show? I had no idea Netflix was a thing until I moved to America — in Singapore, the service barely worked — and I felt discouraged to explore it. I just gave up and listened to people talk about their favorite scenes while they eyed at me as if I was encroaching into their personal spaces.

So all I did was retreat back into solitude, weary from receiving platitudes from teachers. I looked everywhere for solace: novels, anime, and friends. But everyone and everything were not enough against this crippling loneliness. I searched the small PS3 library and found nothing. Then, I heard there was a translation of Atelier Ayesha, but it was botched. I thought of it as a glimmering light of hope. But there was no way I could play any Japanese game with an English dub and insufferable bugs introduced by the localizer.

That’s when I decided to learn Japanese.

Why did I go through the pains of learning a language through a video game again? I learned English to be a useful member of society, but now I was learning Japanese for something else. For my own self. I never thought of learning anything for myself at all. If it isn’t useful for anybody, learning anything was a peculiar, almost self-gratifying action. You are helping no one but yourself.

So learning Japanese to play Atelier Ayesha was the first selfish act of learning I had ever done. I felt guilty, but I was also excited when I finally got decent enough to play the game in Japanese.

Ayesha is looking for her sister who has been spirited away when she meets a more experienced alchemist who tells her of a recipe that might find her. She thus embarks on a journey around the world, even at one time getting on a hot air balloon to explore the floating islands beneath the horizon.

I don’t really recall the story, truth be told. I was excited that I was playing a video game I’ve always wanted to play in Japanese. For the first time, I felt like I was doing something with my knowledge even if it was for myself. I didn’t think about my classmates who gossiped about me, my professors who pitied my state, anything else but the words floating on screen. Here was something I not only understood but could interact with.

If Ayesha said, “I need to find a certain plant to make an item”, in Japanese, I could lead her to the spot where she can gather a bunch of them. If some townsmen wanted Ayesha to exterminate some wolves bothering their farms, I could read the dialog and learn where the wolves roamed about. Then, I could prepare my characters with weapons and items that have their own Japanese instructions to follow before fighting and felling them in one swoop.

I didn’t realize that I was progressing through the game so smoothly that I forgot to look up an English walkthrough. And I reunited the two sisters at last without a problem.

I thought to myself, so this is what it’s like to learn something for yourself.

I wanted more of that experience, so I looked into playing the older Atelier games that weren’t translated. The verdict? Most of the games aren’t very good.

The early games have balancing issues and bizarre flags to trigger in order to advance the story. I have found myself reloading the game because I either got my party obliterated by higher level bandits or I will have to use my Sierra adventure game thinking cap in order to find out how to cause certain events to happen. They were not well designed and I had to use walkthroughs to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Even though the games would irritate me now and then, I would stumble upon scenes and moments that reminded me why I learned Japanese for the series in the first place. The NPCs in towns are all fully-voiced, the graphics are cute and quirky, the music is overpoweringly nostalgic and folksy, and I feel like I’m window-shopping along with the alchemists in the towns. Reading scenes of girls shopping, raising children, and friends drinking as a core gameplay mechanic is fun. There is even a visual novel spinoff to Atelier Lilie where you raise a homunculus fairy to speak and it is very cute.

So I began wondering when the developers of Atelier, GUST, got the idea to make games about cute girls gathering herbs. Their first game, Story of King Ares, is a barely functioning Fire Emblem-styled SRPG for the PC-98 with the most Conan the Barbarian-esque graphics you’ll ever see. Falcata, their next game and their first one for the Playstation One, is a war simulation where you control tribes and battle bandits to rocking music by the Thunder Force 3 composer. It’s clear that GUST had their hands over simulation and strategy, but they made a curious departure from war to something more down-to-earth for their next RPG Atelier Marie. Was it because there were already many fantasy games dealing with dragon-slaying they felt like they had to create a new niche? Or were they tired of the fantasy genre in RPGs and wanted to shake it up?

We may never know, but the series is firmly in the realms of something I like to call “post-fantasy”. It depicts a world after the fantastical politics and wars have been done with. What would such a world look like?

The answer can be found in what I find the most memorable scene in Atelier Elie to me. A playable character in Marie gets married and Elie watches the proceedings. The scene by itself is nothing special compared to later parts of the game, but it is more than just a nice touch to its predecessor. It is foreshadowing to how far Atelier as a franchise will go into crafting a vision of a society where people trade with and help each other.

You could say that I wasn’t really looking for the games to play, but I was searching for that experience again. I wanted to feel useful in such a society. Atelier was the mirror for those dreams. It didn’t matter if being an alchemist amounts to very little; it serves a special place in society and that’s where I wanted to be. The alchemists of Atelier might look like they’re being selfish studying books after books, but their modicum of knowledge goes beyond the practical and theoretical.

That utopian vision of society has been carried to the latest series, the Mysterious games. In Atelier Sophie, the titular character observes the town’s surroundings for inspiration to create new items. Sophie can also “listen” to the essence of objects to understand her creations better. In Firis, you can barter with traveling merchants while exploring huge maps that never seem to end. Firis has never gone outside her cavern hometown and is excited by the different landmarks and towns all over the world; she wants to tell everyone back home about the recipes she has learned and the people she has met. The franchise is still going on, despite the poor sales and setbacks the franchise has recently tripped over.

By the time I played these games, I had graduated from college and was forced by visa limitations to move back to Singapore or Jakarta in a few months. I wasn’t sure what to do with a degree in fiction writing and so did my family. I wasn’t interested in using Japanese to translate — there was not much money in it anyway — and the literary scene hadn’t really settled in Southeast Asia yet. There was no way I could even get an unpaid internship in a publishing firm. The future looked hopeless for this useless graduate.

But out of selfishness, I played video games anyway. I wanted to see this utopian vision of society in spite of the uselessness of video games, utopias, and learning languages. There will never be a society where merchants and artisans can live in harmony. Alchemists aren’t even real. Just fiction.

And yet, there are people who believe in this fiction to do something greater. The developers could have made another cute and fluffy JRPG, but it wouldn’t be memorable. It wouldn’t be their vision. It wouldn’t be the product they desire to create and share with everyone in the world. So they brought in new talent from art and music department to make that vision happen.

In fact, I have always felt Sophie is what Marie has always wanted to be and Firis what Totori should have been. However, due to budget and time constraints, GUST has never had the opportunity till now to really create these worlds. With new staff, they are able to create the games they always wanted to make without compromising their vision.

Most of these tiny details will be missed on by many people who are looking for a typical RPG in an Atelier series. However, they are the sole reason I obsess over these games. The Atelier games are a celebration of life and everything good in society and technology. It is a peaceful yet wondrous world and nothing like this exists anywhere else. It is useless because it sprouts from the active imaginations of these idealists who love designing fun video games.

Only a word like “atelier” is fitting for a worldview like this. The word describes a workshop or studio, especially those used by artists. It is a place of study and meditation on one’s own works so far. This is also where artists begin their own personal journey to attain knowledge and find a place in the world. Artists look at the colors of the world and paint their depictions in their ateliers.

Nobody knows if this perspective is useful. It might even be harmful because it’s not merely naive optimism but a sincere belief that you can trust human nature to do the right thing. We are brought up by society to distrust people and be full avowed pessimists. You follow orders and trends of society. Nothing more and nothing less will be asked for you. To otherwise endorse that selfish yet sincere belief might put you in the wrong side of history.

I belong on the wrong side of history because I play video games and don’t think they are silly little things. I know I am being selfish when I broke off the chains of society and decided to better myself instead. I’m not going to be a lawyer or a doctor as my family wanted me to be. I want to study more useless things like other languages and love the unnecessary frailties of life.

I belong to a niche of dreamers who want to fit into society without changing anything about ourselves. We have to be our own alchemists and figure out what concoctions can create our places in societies. Whatever they might be, there will always be an atelier waiting for us to create that panacea of meaning.