The Media Molecule charm and why the other studios didn't hit the vibes for me

TW: rose tinted glasses, bias from my personal childhood experience, nerdy art talk

LBP3 and LBP PSP. The first I've played a lot during my childhood. The second I've managed to play now that I'm an adult. They are good games and they are fun, flaws and all. But they miss a little something, some feeling that I only can get from the big first two. I wanna dive a little into why that is.

I'll focus this post on LBP3 because it's the one I've played most. SABA I haven't played, and Vita has more of a charm as I remember it, but I haven't played it in a long time.

It's weird to me that LBP3 might have been the one from the trilogy I've probably spent most hours on, but I can't name two characters from the top of my head, or can't name two songs from the soundtrack. Meanwhile, during my whole childhood I only had the DEMO, and I firmly have the whole Gardens, King, Queen, and Humpty, interactive music, and Get It Together burnt into my memory. Once went to a friend's house and she had the MGS DLC. That got printed onto my brain too!

Some time ago I made a post about LBP and the implicit nostalgia in the first game, and I mentioned how my girlfriend was already nostalgic for having played LBP1 with me some months before. Similar thing happened with my childhood friend with which I revisited LBP2 story mode last year for the first time since we were little, and we talked about it the other day remembering that day fondly. Can I say that effect will happen with LBP3? Can't say for sure, but I have a feeling that not really.

LBP1's "Introduction" feels like I'm getting into the cosiest world ever. Finishing LBP2 feels like I've saved the universe during midnight and the sun is coming out. LBP3's story is fun, Newton is funny and the levels are rewarding to finish, but it doesn't quite capture me to remain in that world.

Obviously LBP3 is made by a different studio, and you can argue that "well obviously the same material will be developed into completely different works of art by different artists". But let's say, Ratchet and Clank went through a million different studios, would you say any of them feel less like Ratchet and Clank?

So why do I feel this way, and why do I see so many experiences like mine? There are two answers I have to this.

The first one I've already kinda revealed, it is that the original creators of the game took childhood nostalgia and wonder as the main material for their work, while LBP3 focused on making a good story with some connection to the idea of creativity and skipping over that. "LBP is a game about creativity" is what many people say when they ask, and that's probably the way it was explained to and/or understood by Sumo. That is a valid interpretation, but the concepts I mention which made the first two so memorable got lost in translation. LBP3 also feels more inspired in the story of the second game than the first one, and you can say that LBP2 has the core idea a little more hidden, so it makes sense to see it as a sort of telephone game.

The second one is a little more personal: I'd say that Media Molecule always had a connection to alternative culture. In LBP1 and LBP2 you can listen to: 2000s/10s indie, IDM, instrumental hip-hop, jazz, electronic music from small artists, jungle, industrial-steampunk or whatever you wanna call the Davinci theme, etc. The concept artwork reveals a lot of inspiration from the messy art of that era.

That's what I'd call Media Molecule's artstyle, at least on LBP and Tearaway: it's messy. It's not always clean-looking, it's not always pretty (see Victoria and Victoria's Lab, last of which gives me anything but appetite), but always seems to target the feeling that you can interact with what you're seeing.

Now, with that in mind, I can go back to LBP3. Bright colours, sharp and pretty looking. There's not many points of the game in which I feel they risk looking a little ugly, except for Nana Pud of course. And music-wise, it focuses quite often in the cinematic aspect, adding up to the gameplay not wanting to get too much attention.

So that's the best way I can explain it. For LBP1 and 2, Media Molecule had a clear idea of what they wanted to represent and of themselves to put into it. As a sequel made by another studio, I feel like Sumo did their job of making a good game, but I can't get very far talking about it from an artistic point of view. The personality of its aesthetics and meaning seem to me more washed than those of its predecessors.

That's just my opinion. Would love to hear yours, if you've read this far.