Growing up, I wouldn't had called myself a dedicated gamer by any means - I thought the world of video games primarily consisted of Mario and sports. However, as I grew older, I found a new world of video games that I did not realized existed: a) JRPGs and b) Visual Novels.
After playing through Persona 4 Golden and a few other similar JRPGs, many of my friends in the gaming community were able to start confidently recommending games to me as it was apparent these two genres quickly became my favorites. I enjoyed the feeling of being immersed not only in the story itself, but also invested in the lives of the characters within them as well. The Persona series wow'ed me from beginning to end - and I wondered if I was ever going to have a similar feeling of playing a game for the first time like I did when I began my adventures in Iwatodai (P3P), Inaba (P4G), and Shibuya (P5).
I had heard the name "Danganronpa" tossed around before multiple times by friends, but had no idea at all what it was (going to take a guess and say I am far from the only one who felt that way). However, once I did some research and found out it was a Visual Novel, it became another game that high key intrigued me - a Japanese mystery game through the way of building relationships? Nice. It was from that moment on that I knew the Danganronpa series dangled an experience before me like no other game franchise I'd played before (as much as I'd love to recommend this game to everyone, if you don't like reading...probably pass because there's a boatload of dialogue).
In an attempt to put it shortly, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc follows a group of high school students as they live out their days in Hope's Peak Academy, each one of them representing the "ultimate" (or best) of a certain field or industry. "The game stars a large group of students and a mysterious teddy bear named Monokuma who tells them at the start that they're all participating in the ominous-sounding Killing Game. To escape the place they're trapped in, they must either survive until the end when only two students remain, or worse, murder another here, and successfully make it through a class trial without being convicted by their peers. In the latter's course of events, everyone else is executed. Also, the game's about making friends too, and bonding with your acquaintances in the dastardly setting" (McCarthy, 2017).
If reading that small summary was your first time hearing about Danganronpa, I'm sure you probably think I'm nuts to like a series with such a twisted tale! It is hard to talk about this game without dropping spoilers, but what makes this game memorable for me is the theme of hope vs. despair. In a game that seems to be filled with despair, the main protagonist emerges as a beacon of hope:
"If the world outside is void of hope, and if despair is contagious, then I'll just have to infect everyone with my hope. Living in despair isn't really living at all!"
"As long as you have that hope, you can keep moving forward no matter what trouble you may fall into."
"You said that despair is as contagious as any disease. But the same is true of hope. All you have to do is look at us to see how true that is."
Hope is a GOOD thing - a feeling to look beyond, a feeling of perseverance, a feeling of optimism, the determination to keep pressing on even when the odds are against you.
Through the small and big things in our lives, we all hold a sense of hope (for me, personally, that hope comes from my faith in Jesus) that keeps us pressing on - that gives motivation to keep looking forward toward a new day. At the end of the Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc when all of the other students are beat down, the main protagonist encourages them by reassuring them that hope exists...by showing them that there is a reason to keep pressing onward. This causes everyone to find a reason to move forward past despair, and their hope is restored. They want the future to be better than the present they are currently living in.
Post-apocalyptic games are interesting because there is a hope to them that I don't see in other games - characters working toward an outcome or change they wish to see in their own worlds. When I think of different games I've played over the years, it's even more interesting to see how that hope is communicated...and I think that's really special to experience when playing a game the first time around. Try to soak that in the next time you play a game for the first time; it's pretty amazing.
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