The Real Reason I Didn't Like "Breath of Fire IV"

The night sky here has a rather orangish cast, what with all the light-pollution. You can't see any stars, or any planets. Can't even see Venus. It might just be overcast these days, though. I can't remember the summer sky. That's the thing with me: I've got no visual memory whatsoever. I'm good with words, and with numbers, but ask me where I've put my specs, and I'm lost. Same thing when they put in the new trees across the street: I saw the paving disturbed round their trunks, and presumed they must be new, but I had no recollection of a treeless Burrard Street.

Oh--on the subject of trees, and of memories--remember that Cthulhu tree, the one to the right of my window, with the reachy green tentacles? Well, it isn't looking so monstrous any more. Most of its leaves have gone, revealing bits of old dustbags and crime-scene tape tangled up in the branches. It's more like a zombie tree now, or a mummy tree, than a Cthulhu tree. All that ragged plastic, it looks just like grave-wrappings. The crime-scene tape adds a certain horrorshow ambience. Very Alfred Hitchcock, especially when those bare branches are loaded down with birds.

Old films--did you ever see Why Jones Left Home? It was made in 1902. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it. From what I can gather, it was just another rubbish comedy short, of the sort that was popular back then. And yet--and yet, it opened the doors to a thousand terrors. It established an awful precedent, which, more than a century later, has yet to be stamped out. See, Why Jones Left Home features the first gratuitous vomit scene in film history*. It starts out innocently enough, with Mrs. Jones stepping out, leaving her husband to care for their baby. He does a bang-up job, feeding the wee rotter, and bouncing it about on his knee. Then--oh, dear!--the baby repays his kindness by spewing over his head, which is immediately followed by an early example of gratuitous violence (Mrs. Jones returns, and, for some reason, beats her husband with a broom. One supposes this is why he left home. Christ, who wouldn't?)

It's all been downhill from there. You can hardly put on the telly these days, without seeing someone puke. Every film I've seen lately has had vomit, even the ones you wouldn't expect to have it. Romance films, even. I picked some soppy romance over 28 Days Later, in hopes of avoiding the chunder, and was subjected to some blonde actress boaking right into the camera. I've still not watched Space Cowboys, because of an especially horrible motion-sickness incident, and every time I see Stand By Me, I have to hide under the blanket for a good five minutes.

It's not just films, either. It's everything on the telly, everything from cartoons to documentaries. Sitcoms--you'd think sitcoms would be safe, what with their family-friendly timeslots, and so forth, but, no. Even the news can't be trusted, nowadays. I was watching the Channel Four news the other night, the eleven o'clock edition, and people were vomiting over the side of a boat. That was even worse than ordinary TV vomit, because it was real.

I'm not just saying all this as a vomit-hater, either. I'm not saying there's no excuse for onscreen hurling, ever. Much as I hate it in Stand By Me, I'm the first to admit that it belongs. And, since I'd read the story before seeing the film, I knew it'd be there, and when to hide my eyes. I've no complaints regarding Stand By Me. I've got to draw the line somewhere, though, and this gratuitous shit, this is it. I mean, vomit's become the new scream, the new gasp, and the new frown, not to mention the new sob, whimper, squeal, and groan. It's the default reaction to everything, if you believe what you see on the telly:

MULTIPLE CHOICE SITUATIONS, WHERE MY ACTUAL REACTIONS WERE A), THE PROPER REACTIONS WOULD'VE BEEN B), AND THE STUPID TV/FILM REACTIONS ARE C)

1) You take a shortcut down an ill-traveled alley, and stumble upon the corpse of a homeless man. Part of his cheek has melted to the asphalt, forming a sort of malodorous paste. You:

a) run away, in case someone comes along and thinks you had something to do with it;
b) report him to the police;
c) vomit.

2) A beloved family member has died unexpectedly. You:

a) have a giant fight with your boyfriend, ostensibly because he's bogarting the videogames (but really because you're angry, and want to hurt someone);
b) send something nice to the surviving family;
c) vomit.

3) You come to work one morning, and find that crackheads have overturned all the furniture, stolen everything valuable, and barfed all over the floor. You:

a) trash the place a little more out of sheer exasperation, knowing you'll be the one cleaning it up, anyway;
b) ring the police;
c) vomit.

4) You are in extreme pain, for some non-stomach-related reason. You:

a) try to get your mind off it by reading, playing videogames, or doing crosswords;
b) see a doctor;
c) vomit.

I mean, really. If you believe what you see on TV, no time's a bad time for boaking. Your dog dies? You barf. You get a little drunk? You barf. You see a dead body/an ugly baby/your parents having sex? You barf. It's just too much. And now--and this is the really egregious bit, the reason I bring up this whole miserable subject, in the first place--and now, it's creeping into videogames, as well.

Traditionally, games (well, the sorts of games I like, any road), have been a vomit-free zone. An emetophobe's safe haven. Oh, there've been a few close calls--Locke hanging over the side of the ship in Final Fantasy VI, or Roger Wilco getting poisoned by a mutant spaceburger in Space Quest II--but even then, you never saw anything. I could get my fill of skin-crawling horror, of ghouls and zombies and machine-guns, without having to worry about exploding stomachs. When I played Resident Evil, and monsters were crashing through every wall and window, I wasn't scared. I knew they only wanted to eat my brains. In Silent Hill, when the blood came streaming from Lisa's eyesockets, and then she melted right through the floor, that was OK as well. Parasite Eve, with the window-crashing dinosaur, and Xenosaga, with the disturbing robot sex (or whatever that was--I didn't want to speculate too closely), those were all right, too. There was a lot of dying, and screaming, and dripping flesh, but nobody blew their lunch.

And then, there came Breath of Fire IV. It's been more than a year, now, since I played that, and I've still not recovered. Oh, it was dreadful! The vomit wasn't terribly realistic, or accompanied by disturbing sounds, or anything like that. It wasn't the way it was presented, but that it was presented, at all. It didn't belong. Breath of Fire IV isn't an overly visceral game, generally speaking. When you kill a monster, it sort of folds itself up and disappears. It's a completely bloodless affair. In the American version, they've even cut out a scene where someone's beheaded in silhouette. (Having played the Japanese version, I can attest to the essential harmlessness of that scene, and all. There isn't even a monochromatic arterial spray. The vorpal blade goes snickersnack, as it were, and then a head flies past. It's like the end of the big fight scene in Kill Bill, only red instead of blue, and with a flying head.)

Yet, in spite of this general pusillanimity, when it comes to the old ultraviolence, the game's producers felt it was quite all right to have one of the main characters, without any warning whatsoever, heave up a pool of bloody sick, then fall face-first into it. I mean, Jesus Aitch! The guy doesn't turn pale first, or gag, or retch, or put one hand over his mouth. He doesn't bend at the waist, or cough, or otherwise indicate his distress. One minute, he's standing there, in the ruins of some worthless forest, and the next--blaaaargh! I just about died, seeing that. If Breath of Fire IV had better graphics, I probably would've.

At any rate, the floodgates have been opened--thanks a million, Capcom--and I expect we'll be seeing lots more of that sort of thing. Even We Love Katamari had a vomit reference in. I do hope folks'll warn me, if they happen to notice anything I wouldn't like.

I didn't mean to get off on that whole tangent, though. I was talking about trees, and then I was going to make fun of this guy I once dated, who was into sado-masochism. Ah, well. Sod him. Sod trees. And sod, above all else, vomit in videogames.

* To the best of my knowledge.