Steins;Gate and Ludonarrative Harmony

Warning: Minor plot spoilers ahead.

While playing through Steins;Gate for the first time, I wondered when I would have to make my first binary choice, as is often the case with even the best visual novels. I waited and waited for that dialogue option to pop up. Do you want to go to the maid cafe or the electronics store? Will you comfort Kurisu Makise or Mayuri Shiina? I waited and waited for that interaction, for that choice, but it never came. Then, in a moment of fridge brilliance, it clicked. I'd been making those choices all along without realizing it.

For a visual novel, Steins;Gate has the perfect gameplay system for its narrative. I'm not going to preach about ludonarrative dissonance or mechanics as metaphor, but Steins;Gate is worth a special mention. The central plot point is a simple one: What if you could send a message through time?

The 'Phone Trigger' System.

The 'Phone Trigger' system is at the core of Steins;Gate. Throughout the game you receive messages, e-mails and phone calls, and it is up to the player to decide how to respond. Or maybe you don't respond? Maybe you don't answer the phone? The interaction from the player is minimal but those small interactions have big narrative consequences, just like how a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world can cause hurricanes.

Time travel is a difficult literary device to implement and even some of the best examples, like the films Twelve Monkeys and Groundhog Day, do little to explain the phenomenon. Steins;Gate goes above and beyond in its approach, dedicating a large amount of time to explain multiple time travel theories. It is presented so well that a phone stuck onto the side of a microwave seems like a perfectly feasible time machine.

"99% science (reality), 1% fantasy."

The offbeat cast of characters is what gives Steins;Gate its emotional core, and at the center of that is self proclaimed mad scientist Okabe Rintaro. As the plot progresses, Rintaro transforms from an arrogant, and slightly useless, goofball into a responsible and mature adult. It is one of the best examples of character development in a videogame. Rintaro experienes horrific things as he leaps through time, over and over and over, trying to save the people he cares about, trying to undo all his mistakes. Rintaro, and the other Future Lab members, aren't perfect, they make mistakes. None of us are perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. If you could send a message to the past and undo those mistakes, would you? If you did, would you learn from those mistakes? Or is sending that message just another mistake you wish you could undo?

That is the choice of Steins;Gate.