I watched James Cameron's fantastic True Lies recently. Near the end, Arnold Schwarzeneggar hangs down off the skids of a helicopter as he chases a runaway limousine that's careening down the rails of a never-ending bridge and his wife happens to be a terrified passenger in the limo's backseat. The driver is a lead-footed corpse who just got shot to death, which is why the car is out of control. Arnold's job of course, and the helicopter pilot's, is to get close enough to the limo to pluck the damsel up out of the sunroof and bring her to safety.
Too often games put us into the shoes of Arnold, the trooper's shoes. We get to be a big bad machoman blowing away legions of criminals and mercenaries. Why can't we be that helicopter pilot for once? Flying games are fun. Everybody knows this. And I want a modern flying/driving game that has rescue rather than combat at its core. (Or if not purely rescue, than some other non-violent utilities.)
Choplifter did something along these lines. You swooped down to daringly rescue hostages and prisoners in the middle of a combat zone. I wanna do that, and also maneuver a helicopter over the sun-roof of an out-of-control limo. This mission is complete when your partner-- who is hanging upside down off the skids-- touches his hand to the distressed damsel's hand.
There's some other scenarios out there in the universe I'm pretty sure. Maybe for another mission you can maneuver the chopper into a good position for your door-gunner/sniper to take out some terrorists who have ensconced themselves in various urban high-rises, and who are being very wiley and evase. See how easy it is to resort to violence as a game point? Violence is so solid, and direct, and discrete, and full of accomplishment, and full of tension. The key idea here is that you play as the pilot, not as a shooter. Bonus brownies to a developer who pulls off a modern chopper-pilot game without any secondary violence.
For other scenarios you can try to pursue fugitives who are on foot or driving like mad. Maybe sometimes, or all the time, you have a giant retractable magnet mounted on the underside of your chopper, which you can use to pluck the perp's vehicle right off the pavement and deliver them to the sheriff.
Hell, Dead Rising was a brilliant action game that focussed on a photojournalist. If somebody can make that a great game, somebody can make a great helicopter game. You could even sometimes (or all the time), be a news chopper trying to swoop down on the next big scoop. You could be the coast guard, trying to lower a hook down to a bunch of poor unfortunate shipwrecked people who are about to be eaten by sharks, and....it's really windy, which makes it hard to stay stable. Maybe you are trying to get into position for some Coast Guard agents to fast-rope down onto several small agile pirate boats, as they try to speed across the open ocean and fire missiles at you. Or maybe sometimes you just need to try to keep a spotlight trained on a tricky moving target.
And throughout all this, we need helicopter piloting controls that are at least as satisfying and fantastic as in Grand Theft Auto IV, which really for all its successes and failings, had absolutely fantastic helicopter controls. I'm talking criminally-overlooked helicopter controls.
I want that.
10.26.2009
Redundant Controls
I recently booted up Prince of Persia only to find that the beautiful title screen art was sullied by the gigantic sentence "PRESS START BUTTON". Do we need an instruction telling us to press the button labelled "START" if we want to start?
Game developers have done everything humanly possible to make their games more like movies, and less like games. They've busted out trashy scripts, bad acting, terrible direction, inept camerawork, elaborately cheesy plot "twists", all in a vane attempt to be more 'cinematic'. I wish I could say they busted their asses, but they barely lift a finger in most cases so the results are garbage. But despite all this, they still muck up their beautiful title screens with nonsense like "PRESS START BUTTON".
The subtext of the sentence might be this: go ahead, it's ok to press the start button now. We're presently not in the middle of an ornate "cut-scene" or any long-winded exposition. Yes, we will eventually grab hold of your face and shove it down into this masterpiece of a game here, but we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Right now? It's ok to press START. You won't be missing anything. Our little title screen animation is finished. Nice while it lasted eh?
Maybe the subtext is that don't want their game to be confused with a movie, because their narrative elements and composition is so dramatic and mind-blowing! they're game is so incredible that it might be mistaken for a movie. If it weren't for the PRESS START MESSAGE plastered over the title screen, a crowd of curious movie-lovers might slowly accumulate on your couch waiting for you to pressing PLAY on the DVD player.
Isn't it ironic that the button for games is "START", while the button for movies is always "PLAY"? Think about those words for a moment. It's just further nightmarish proof, positive, that the gaming industry has its priorities horribly, horribly wrong.
Just as a sidenote: the "SELECT" button function has been redundant for decades, possibly centuries. Obviously instead of pressing a "SELECT" button, you can simply use your directional pad to move your cursor between the various choices available at the outset of a game (one or two-player, etc). Instead of pressing "START", you could simply hit one of your action buttons, A or B, to start the game. But there's something cute about naming a button after what it does. The "ESCAPE" key on a computer keyboard comes to mind, and I have this vague inkling that decades ago, in more primitive times when computer machines and code were big new untamed beasts, the key was much more meaningful than it is today.
Game developers have done everything humanly possible to make their games more like movies, and less like games. They've busted out trashy scripts, bad acting, terrible direction, inept camerawork, elaborately cheesy plot "twists", all in a vane attempt to be more 'cinematic'. I wish I could say they busted their asses, but they barely lift a finger in most cases so the results are garbage. But despite all this, they still muck up their beautiful title screens with nonsense like "PRESS START BUTTON".
The subtext of the sentence might be this: go ahead, it's ok to press the start button now. We're presently not in the middle of an ornate "cut-scene" or any long-winded exposition. Yes, we will eventually grab hold of your face and shove it down into this masterpiece of a game here, but we'll get to that, we'll get to that. Right now? It's ok to press START. You won't be missing anything. Our little title screen animation is finished. Nice while it lasted eh?
Maybe the subtext is that don't want their game to be confused with a movie, because their narrative elements and composition is so dramatic and mind-blowing! they're game is so incredible that it might be mistaken for a movie. If it weren't for the PRESS START MESSAGE plastered over the title screen, a crowd of curious movie-lovers might slowly accumulate on your couch waiting for you to pressing PLAY on the DVD player.
Isn't it ironic that the button for games is "START", while the button for movies is always "PLAY"? Think about those words for a moment. It's just further nightmarish proof, positive, that the gaming industry has its priorities horribly, horribly wrong.
Just as a sidenote: the "SELECT" button function has been redundant for decades, possibly centuries. Obviously instead of pressing a "SELECT" button, you can simply use your directional pad to move your cursor between the various choices available at the outset of a game (one or two-player, etc). Instead of pressing "START", you could simply hit one of your action buttons, A or B, to start the game. But there's something cute about naming a button after what it does. The "ESCAPE" key on a computer keyboard comes to mind, and I have this vague inkling that decades ago, in more primitive times when computer machines and code were big new untamed beasts, the key was much more meaningful than it is today.
10.06.2009
Betrayal as a Climactic Plot Point
What's with the fetish for being betrayed by characters who were sympathetic and friendly for almost the entire duration of the game? Sudden betrayals by long-time friends, on the flimsiest and most unexpected motivations, are a bizarre but commonplace part of narrative games. What gives? And what can we do about it?
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
FarCry 1
The support character Doyle, loyal to you throughout the game and voiced extremely well by the voice-actor Cornell Womack, suddenly turns on you at the very end. For what? Money, he says. He was only supporting you so you could do his dirty work.
Was it not enough that the game literally pits 30,000 gunmen against you? A legion of pirate mercenaries who want your head? The one friendly character has to betray you too, and then you have to execute him, and then you have to listen to your character make a heartless one-liner about killing your old friend. Pathetic.
FarCry 2
Had a big-boasted "Buddy System", where several characters of unique national origins (including several women) will come and save your life when you're in a pinch, provided that you have made them your buddy by rescuing them from hostage-takers. So far, so good. True: as characters these buddies were completely ruined by terrible voice direction--the voice acting was so uniformly stiff and vacuous that it has to be attributed to a single voice director or lead designer, rather than to multiple individual actors. Yet as game devices, the buddies were great. They swoop in with pistols blazing just as you collapse into a bloody heap in a hail of enemy gunfire, and they drag you to safety. What a sight for sore eyes, in a shooting game like FarCry 2.)
Then... what happens at the climax of the game? The game pits you against them, and you have to murder them one by one in a small arena, just to proceed. And it's not like some evil Roman emperor coerced you all into combat for his own amusement. No. The characters suddenly and genuinely wish to kill you. It's personal. After beating the game and reading the wiki I'm still confused about how the game's multiple-possible-endings work out (as a function of your choices in the game), but let me just say it was a pretty stupid plot development.
Mirror's Edge
One of your few prominent friends in Mirror's Edge, the incredible parkour game with a striking Swedish design aesthetic, turns against you. I'll give Mirror's Edge a pass though. First of all, I loved the game so much, but second of all her betrayal had some minimal amount of a real human element, and I actually find myself sympathizing with her motivation.
"I want to live, Faith-- not just survive," she explains, when the penny drops. The only way she sees to live a real life is to betray you and all her other associates and abandon the stressful business that you two previously partnered in. She sounds angry, tired, surrenderful, rather than villainous, even though she's fully resolved to sacrifice you for her own sake. So be it. There was enough subtext that the betrayal wasn't a train wreck out of left field. (Can this game do no wrong? It still warms my heart every time I try to criticize it.)
Crackdown
I loved the basic premise of this game! Here is the backstory, as understood at the outset: "This city has a big crime problem. The gangs have gotten out of control. You are a superhero cop, so get out there and destroy these gangs! Lift up automobiles and throw them at the gangsters. Leap off a skyscraper toward a bunch of gangbangers on the sidewalk, crack the cement when you land, and start kicking them in the face . Break the chain of command of the mafiosos, take out the head honchos!"
Perfect. Except at the end of the line you find out that your very own police agency allowed the gangs to come to power, in order to justify their own authoritarian crackdown. This is a somewhat common motif in dystopian fiction, and it's a politically relevant plot twist, so some part of me wants to let it slide. But like Doyle in "FarCry", the voice of your police chief was so VERY WELL ACTED, and very well established as a friendly character. Subverting the entire premise of the game is cheap and gimmicky, and completely pointless. The crackdown on crime was a self-sustaining narrative backdrop: "Use superhuman abilities to stop a crime wave." Excellent. Give us a break with the betrayals and twisted revelations!
FarCry 2 Again
Yes, FarCry 2 managed two gigantically stupid betrayals. So while your friends gang up to gleefully murder you altogether like it's a team sport, the violent sociopathic arms dealer who you have spent your entire journey trying to assassinate suddenly gets on the good foot, teams up with you, and sacrifices his life to save a group of refugees.
Come again? It's a reverse betrayal. I appreciate the idea in fiction that sometimes a mission you have been sent on by your superiors or caregivers sometimes bites you in the ass or reveals itself to be a sinister plot against you or against civilization at large. Great. When you're a hired gun, you have to be ready to find out that your employers don't really have a transparently virtuous goal in mind. But the asinine reverse betrayal of The Jackal in Far Cry 2 demonstrates that the problem is not limited to simple betrayal in a narrative, but inexplicable and inconsistent revelations about certain characters, sudden betrayals being only one instance of that.
"Find the Jackal, and kill him. He's somewhere among a thousand square miles of African savannah and jungle." That was supposed to be the game's premise! It's brilliant, it's simple. It's totally Heart of Darkness, it's totally Apocalypse Now. ...Except if Kurtz had a mood swing at the last minute and joined the Peace Corps. That's right. If only your commanders had better intel from the get-go and could have prepared you for the contingency that the bloodthirsty privateering terrorist and arms dealer The Jackal would jump into the good fight once you finally find him.
The developers or publishers evidently do not realize that the original supposed premise "Go into the jungle, and take this crazy bastard down" had MOMENTUM. It has power in simplicity. It is raw. It aligns with Apocalypse Now, an amazing classic film (which was based on Heart of Darkness.) It did not need to hobble and lean on the junky crutches of a lame "turn-around".
As bad as it was, it would have been more excusable if not for the other ridiculous betrayal they crammed into the narrative (see above).
BioShock
The BioShock team was definitely hellbent on creating the most ridiculous narrative betrayal ever in gaming history. The character who has been guiding you throughout your harrowing journey turns out to (exactly like Doyle from FarCry) have been misleading you purely for his own nefarious ends. Now that's par for the course. But it gets even worse. It turns out that you-- the player character-- are some kind of clone, or something, and your entire existence was pre-ordained by this evil deceiver, and every step you took on your journey was already programmed and brainwashed into your DNA, including the sensational and by all appearances completely coincidental accident (a plane crash) that started you on your journey, bla bla, bla. Wow, what an epiphany. You're really blowing my mind.
System Shock 2
Ah, the predecessor to BioShock, and vastly frightfully better than BioShock in every conceivable way.... and another "guide" character turns out to be a deception. (And this character is also a well acted one! Why the pattern? Are the well-acted ones the only ones that are memorable?) The deception earns a redemption by being so unique among game betrayals, so much so that I don't want to spoil it here.
OK I'll spoil it. You find that your wonderful guide character (who was a helpful voice on your radio) has killed herself, and she has been replaced on your radio by an evil sentient computer program, though I can't remember how much of the relationship was real and how much of it was a corrupt simulation by SHODAN. Yes, I know, all of this sounds incredibly corny if you haven't played and enjoyed the game, but when I found the good Doctor in the chair, in the projection/simulation room, with her gun on the floor nearby, it inspired anger and dread in me, connected wholly to the fictional villain rather than to the game's developers (as in all previous examples).
So....What Then?
The "epiphany betrayal" is nothing new or unique to games, but game developers and writers have taken the ball and run with it. It's an adventure-movie cliche that some character's superficially guides another character through a long journey, only to reveal that they were letting the adventurer do their own dirty deeds for them. ("I will show you how to complete steps 1, 2, 3, 4, ...100, so you can obtain the majestic and precious XYZ. Then I can steal it from you and leave you for dead right when you bring it to me!")
There is nothing that makes a betrayal inherently more dramatic or profound than some other interpersonal plot point. A breakdown in a relationship is much more likely to result from incompetence, cowardice, or some other basic imperfection, than from malice. An epiphany betrayal is an immature and inept overture toward drama. The artists are not crafty enough to see that it cancels out and negates previous conditions that already had more dramatic potential.
I've recently been watching a lot of Hong Kong action flicks by the director Johnny To. Many of them involve brotherhood-type groups of police officers, criminals, hired guns, and so on. Drama comes in when the characters are torn between harshly conflicting loyalties (and/or are forced to risk their own lives for the sake of their friends, often-times with some amount of reluctance). Their bonds of loyalty and admiration are tested, but never broken, except by the most vile and torturous forces (see Triad Election if you like watching that kind of thing, which I don't) . In one crazy scene (not in Triad Election), a low-level mobster is savagely beaten by a (slightly hesitant) enemy who wants him to reveal information that would compromise his crime family. The beaten man can only stupidly repeat the poetic lines of the blood oaths he took when he was initiated into the clan, all the way to the verge of death. As he lies dying, his attacker receives a cell phone call and learns that his own boss has temporarily joined forces with the dying man's boss. He hangs up the phone, promptly apologizes to the dying man, gives him aid, and they go onward to try to complete their new joint mission-- the formerly beaten man survives.
Now something about that is tacky, I know. It's partly the product of some superficial cultural meme about everlasting loyalty that goes back to ancient times, and of the mythos of crime families, and all this. But the point is, when you establish friendship and loyalty, that is a dramatic device in itself. Situations that strain those relationships are dramatic. A complete betrayal, for reasons that blindside you out of absolutely nowhere, is just stupid and gimmicky.
The weird thing about it isn't just that the betrayals of video game plots are completely inconsistent with the established story, but that the developers seem to think that "throwing a wrench into the mix! Completely upheaving the player's/viewer's understanding!" is mandatory for a good climax. Afterall, the friendship that was established over many hours of gameplay sufficed for those many hours of gameplay. There is no reason to ruin a good thing, artificially, with an incoherent betrayal, when there are already natural and man-made forces at play that can destroy your friendship from the outside, and which necessitated your friendship in the first place.
Would Lethal Weapon have been a good movie if Murtaugh suddenly put a gun to Riggs' head because the criminals paid him off? No. The idea that every game plot needs a "plot twist!" like that qualifies as a mental disease at this point. A betrayal is the BEGINNING of a good story about enemies (see: The Count of Monte Cristo, not the end of a story about friends.
The truly sad realization here is that the game writers at issue don't seem to realize that friendship, as a thing that exists in this indifferent/hostile/imperfect world, can be a perfectly dramatic entity in itself and does not require a betrayal to have a lasting effect on the player. The realization kind of creeps me out.
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!
FarCry 1
The support character Doyle, loyal to you throughout the game and voiced extremely well by the voice-actor Cornell Womack, suddenly turns on you at the very end. For what? Money, he says. He was only supporting you so you could do his dirty work.
Was it not enough that the game literally pits 30,000 gunmen against you? A legion of pirate mercenaries who want your head? The one friendly character has to betray you too, and then you have to execute him, and then you have to listen to your character make a heartless one-liner about killing your old friend. Pathetic.
FarCry 2
Had a big-boasted "Buddy System", where several characters of unique national origins (including several women) will come and save your life when you're in a pinch, provided that you have made them your buddy by rescuing them from hostage-takers. So far, so good. True: as characters these buddies were completely ruined by terrible voice direction--the voice acting was so uniformly stiff and vacuous that it has to be attributed to a single voice director or lead designer, rather than to multiple individual actors. Yet as game devices, the buddies were great. They swoop in with pistols blazing just as you collapse into a bloody heap in a hail of enemy gunfire, and they drag you to safety. What a sight for sore eyes, in a shooting game like FarCry 2.)
Then... what happens at the climax of the game? The game pits you against them, and you have to murder them one by one in a small arena, just to proceed. And it's not like some evil Roman emperor coerced you all into combat for his own amusement. No. The characters suddenly and genuinely wish to kill you. It's personal. After beating the game and reading the wiki I'm still confused about how the game's multiple-possible-endings work out (as a function of your choices in the game), but let me just say it was a pretty stupid plot development.
Mirror's Edge
One of your few prominent friends in Mirror's Edge, the incredible parkour game with a striking Swedish design aesthetic, turns against you. I'll give Mirror's Edge a pass though. First of all, I loved the game so much, but second of all her betrayal had some minimal amount of a real human element, and I actually find myself sympathizing with her motivation.
"I want to live, Faith-- not just survive," she explains, when the penny drops. The only way she sees to live a real life is to betray you and all her other associates and abandon the stressful business that you two previously partnered in. She sounds angry, tired, surrenderful, rather than villainous, even though she's fully resolved to sacrifice you for her own sake. So be it. There was enough subtext that the betrayal wasn't a train wreck out of left field. (Can this game do no wrong? It still warms my heart every time I try to criticize it.)
Crackdown
I loved the basic premise of this game! Here is the backstory, as understood at the outset: "This city has a big crime problem. The gangs have gotten out of control. You are a superhero cop, so get out there and destroy these gangs! Lift up automobiles and throw them at the gangsters. Leap off a skyscraper toward a bunch of gangbangers on the sidewalk, crack the cement when you land, and start kicking them in the face . Break the chain of command of the mafiosos, take out the head honchos!"
Perfect. Except at the end of the line you find out that your very own police agency allowed the gangs to come to power, in order to justify their own authoritarian crackdown. This is a somewhat common motif in dystopian fiction, and it's a politically relevant plot twist, so some part of me wants to let it slide. But like Doyle in "FarCry", the voice of your police chief was so VERY WELL ACTED, and very well established as a friendly character. Subverting the entire premise of the game is cheap and gimmicky, and completely pointless. The crackdown on crime was a self-sustaining narrative backdrop: "Use superhuman abilities to stop a crime wave." Excellent. Give us a break with the betrayals and twisted revelations!
FarCry 2 Again
Yes, FarCry 2 managed two gigantically stupid betrayals. So while your friends gang up to gleefully murder you altogether like it's a team sport, the violent sociopathic arms dealer who you have spent your entire journey trying to assassinate suddenly gets on the good foot, teams up with you, and sacrifices his life to save a group of refugees.
Come again? It's a reverse betrayal. I appreciate the idea in fiction that sometimes a mission you have been sent on by your superiors or caregivers sometimes bites you in the ass or reveals itself to be a sinister plot against you or against civilization at large. Great. When you're a hired gun, you have to be ready to find out that your employers don't really have a transparently virtuous goal in mind. But the asinine reverse betrayal of The Jackal in Far Cry 2 demonstrates that the problem is not limited to simple betrayal in a narrative, but inexplicable and inconsistent revelations about certain characters, sudden betrayals being only one instance of that.
"Find the Jackal, and kill him. He's somewhere among a thousand square miles of African savannah and jungle." That was supposed to be the game's premise! It's brilliant, it's simple. It's totally Heart of Darkness, it's totally Apocalypse Now. ...Except if Kurtz had a mood swing at the last minute and joined the Peace Corps. That's right. If only your commanders had better intel from the get-go and could have prepared you for the contingency that the bloodthirsty privateering terrorist and arms dealer The Jackal would jump into the good fight once you finally find him.
The developers or publishers evidently do not realize that the original supposed premise "Go into the jungle, and take this crazy bastard down" had MOMENTUM. It has power in simplicity. It is raw. It aligns with Apocalypse Now, an amazing classic film (which was based on Heart of Darkness.) It did not need to hobble and lean on the junky crutches of a lame "turn-around".
As bad as it was, it would have been more excusable if not for the other ridiculous betrayal they crammed into the narrative (see above).
BioShock
The BioShock team was definitely hellbent on creating the most ridiculous narrative betrayal ever in gaming history. The character who has been guiding you throughout your harrowing journey turns out to (exactly like Doyle from FarCry) have been misleading you purely for his own nefarious ends. Now that's par for the course. But it gets even worse. It turns out that you-- the player character-- are some kind of clone, or something, and your entire existence was pre-ordained by this evil deceiver, and every step you took on your journey was already programmed and brainwashed into your DNA, including the sensational and by all appearances completely coincidental accident (a plane crash) that started you on your journey, bla bla, bla. Wow, what an epiphany. You're really blowing my mind.
System Shock 2
Ah, the predecessor to BioShock, and vastly frightfully better than BioShock in every conceivable way.... and another "guide" character turns out to be a deception. (And this character is also a well acted one! Why the pattern? Are the well-acted ones the only ones that are memorable?) The deception earns a redemption by being so unique among game betrayals, so much so that I don't want to spoil it here.
OK I'll spoil it. You find that your wonderful guide character (who was a helpful voice on your radio) has killed herself, and she has been replaced on your radio by an evil sentient computer program, though I can't remember how much of the relationship was real and how much of it was a corrupt simulation by SHODAN. Yes, I know, all of this sounds incredibly corny if you haven't played and enjoyed the game, but when I found the good Doctor in the chair, in the projection/simulation room, with her gun on the floor nearby, it inspired anger and dread in me, connected wholly to the fictional villain rather than to the game's developers (as in all previous examples).
So....What Then?
The "epiphany betrayal" is nothing new or unique to games, but game developers and writers have taken the ball and run with it. It's an adventure-movie cliche that some character's superficially guides another character through a long journey, only to reveal that they were letting the adventurer do their own dirty deeds for them. ("I will show you how to complete steps 1, 2, 3, 4, ...100, so you can obtain the majestic and precious XYZ. Then I can steal it from you and leave you for dead right when you bring it to me!")
There is nothing that makes a betrayal inherently more dramatic or profound than some other interpersonal plot point. A breakdown in a relationship is much more likely to result from incompetence, cowardice, or some other basic imperfection, than from malice. An epiphany betrayal is an immature and inept overture toward drama. The artists are not crafty enough to see that it cancels out and negates previous conditions that already had more dramatic potential.
I've recently been watching a lot of Hong Kong action flicks by the director Johnny To. Many of them involve brotherhood-type groups of police officers, criminals, hired guns, and so on. Drama comes in when the characters are torn between harshly conflicting loyalties (and/or are forced to risk their own lives for the sake of their friends, often-times with some amount of reluctance). Their bonds of loyalty and admiration are tested, but never broken, except by the most vile and torturous forces (see Triad Election if you like watching that kind of thing, which I don't) . In one crazy scene (not in Triad Election), a low-level mobster is savagely beaten by a (slightly hesitant) enemy who wants him to reveal information that would compromise his crime family. The beaten man can only stupidly repeat the poetic lines of the blood oaths he took when he was initiated into the clan, all the way to the verge of death. As he lies dying, his attacker receives a cell phone call and learns that his own boss has temporarily joined forces with the dying man's boss. He hangs up the phone, promptly apologizes to the dying man, gives him aid, and they go onward to try to complete their new joint mission-- the formerly beaten man survives.
Now something about that is tacky, I know. It's partly the product of some superficial cultural meme about everlasting loyalty that goes back to ancient times, and of the mythos of crime families, and all this. But the point is, when you establish friendship and loyalty, that is a dramatic device in itself. Situations that strain those relationships are dramatic. A complete betrayal, for reasons that blindside you out of absolutely nowhere, is just stupid and gimmicky.
The weird thing about it isn't just that the betrayals of video game plots are completely inconsistent with the established story, but that the developers seem to think that "throwing a wrench into the mix! Completely upheaving the player's/viewer's understanding!" is mandatory for a good climax. Afterall, the friendship that was established over many hours of gameplay sufficed for those many hours of gameplay. There is no reason to ruin a good thing, artificially, with an incoherent betrayal, when there are already natural and man-made forces at play that can destroy your friendship from the outside, and which necessitated your friendship in the first place.
Would Lethal Weapon have been a good movie if Murtaugh suddenly put a gun to Riggs' head because the criminals paid him off? No. The idea that every game plot needs a "plot twist!" like that qualifies as a mental disease at this point. A betrayal is the BEGINNING of a good story about enemies (see: The Count of Monte Cristo, not the end of a story about friends.
The truly sad realization here is that the game writers at issue don't seem to realize that friendship, as a thing that exists in this indifferent/hostile/imperfect world, can be a perfectly dramatic entity in itself and does not require a betrayal to have a lasting effect on the player. The realization kind of creeps me out.
9.19.2009
A Game We Need: A Sprawling Parkour Beat-Em-Up
What we need is a game that mixes the parkour of Mirror's Edge with the fluid fighting dynamics of Batman: Arkham Asylum with the urban mayhem of District B13 and Hong Kong gangster movies.
Instead of the stealth / combat split in Arkham Asylum the game would be split between evasive parkour when you're trying to traverse or escape an area and then combat when you're confronted or cornered--or simply when you just feel like dishing some out.
It would take place in first person like Mirror's Edge, for that added oomph. All or most of the fighting is hand-to-hand, because weapons only slow you down. You can dodge and fight your way through a legion of goons while escaping an apartment building. There can be a restaurant shoot-out where you dive behind the bar as a team of gunmen open fire. While they're reloading you dive out to knockout as many as you can before they complete their reload (as signalled by some kind of "DANGER!" icon, arcade style, or simply by tense music) and you dive back again for safety. You should obviously have to run and slide underneath a Big Rig at some point (how did Mirror's Edge miss this?). The spirit of it all would be similar to ONG-BAK , which combined martial arts with athletic escape/chase sequences.
Another fight between you and a small mob can take place on train tracks or a freeway while dodge the oncoming traffic.
I want the immediacy and parkour of Mirror's Edge, but with more enemies and a more developed hand-to-hand fighting system. Later on you can use jiujutsu, which was developed to attack the joints and other vulnerable targets of guys wearing ancient combat armor, against armored SWAT officers. The instant 180 degree spin move of Mirror's Edge should be coupled with attack functions, like punches or kicks, for that good old fashion roundhouse.
The Missed Opportunities of Mirror's Edge
Furthermore the parkour engine could be more developed than Mirror's Edge. That game never required you to use any hanging maneuvers on ledges to descend dangerously great heights. It never required you to press yourself up against the inside of an elevator to avoid gunfire while the doors closed. It never required you to precariously shuffle across the window sills of skyscrapers. Though the game focused on eluding the police by using rooftops and so forth, none of it ever had the brilliance or urgency of Jason Bourne's escape from the hotel while the SWAT team moved through the building in The Bourne Supremacy. The game never includes any actual use of the "kung-fu pop-up with your legs while laying on your back" or "Backwards-roll to standing position after being knocked on your butt" moves. They were included as executable maneuvers, but never had any purpose. Mirror's Edge also never incorporated the "Foot-first Submariner" as I call it, which you can see in Das Boot. A character dives foward feet-first through a small hole with the aid of some kind of hand-hold above the entrance to the hole, somewhat like jumping feet-first into an enclosed tube slide. Jackie Chan did a similar move to get through a small opening above a doorway, but I forget the movie. All of these movies would have meshed easily with the simple control system of up/down movements.
Games like Dynamite Cop, Mirror's Edge, and Final Fight are the main influences I have in mind.
Obviously there should be lots of broken tables, chairs, glass, and railings, as you lay the smackdown and run for your life. That goes without saying. You can even be cornered inside a small plant shop. The mobster goons come inside and put themselves between you and the door. "The only way out of here is through us," they say. So then you dash toward them, side-step, and jump straight through the shop's plate glass display window.
I have no idea what the reason is for having to escape. "Reasons" are pretty overblown anyway these days. Game developers talk about narrative, but because they are game developers and programmers rather than talented directors or authors, their storylines and dialog are usually inept. I would love it if the story was kafkaesque. You simply wake up one day and everybody in the city wants to pummel you. Then as you make your violent and haphazard escape, you only anger more and more parties still, including organized crime.
That's what I want.
Instead of the stealth / combat split in Arkham Asylum the game would be split between evasive parkour when you're trying to traverse or escape an area and then combat when you're confronted or cornered--or simply when you just feel like dishing some out.
It would take place in first person like Mirror's Edge, for that added oomph. All or most of the fighting is hand-to-hand, because weapons only slow you down. You can dodge and fight your way through a legion of goons while escaping an apartment building. There can be a restaurant shoot-out where you dive behind the bar as a team of gunmen open fire. While they're reloading you dive out to knockout as many as you can before they complete their reload (as signalled by some kind of "DANGER!" icon, arcade style, or simply by tense music) and you dive back again for safety. You should obviously have to run and slide underneath a Big Rig at some point (how did Mirror's Edge miss this?). The spirit of it all would be similar to ONG-BAK , which combined martial arts with athletic escape/chase sequences.
Another fight between you and a small mob can take place on train tracks or a freeway while dodge the oncoming traffic.
I want the immediacy and parkour of Mirror's Edge, but with more enemies and a more developed hand-to-hand fighting system. Later on you can use jiujutsu, which was developed to attack the joints and other vulnerable targets of guys wearing ancient combat armor, against armored SWAT officers. The instant 180 degree spin move of Mirror's Edge should be coupled with attack functions, like punches or kicks, for that good old fashion roundhouse.
The Missed Opportunities of Mirror's Edge
Furthermore the parkour engine could be more developed than Mirror's Edge. That game never required you to use any hanging maneuvers on ledges to descend dangerously great heights. It never required you to press yourself up against the inside of an elevator to avoid gunfire while the doors closed. It never required you to precariously shuffle across the window sills of skyscrapers. Though the game focused on eluding the police by using rooftops and so forth, none of it ever had the brilliance or urgency of Jason Bourne's escape from the hotel while the SWAT team moved through the building in The Bourne Supremacy. The game never includes any actual use of the "kung-fu pop-up with your legs while laying on your back" or "Backwards-roll to standing position after being knocked on your butt" moves. They were included as executable maneuvers, but never had any purpose. Mirror's Edge also never incorporated the "Foot-first Submariner" as I call it, which you can see in Das Boot. A character dives foward feet-first through a small hole with the aid of some kind of hand-hold above the entrance to the hole, somewhat like jumping feet-first into an enclosed tube slide. Jackie Chan did a similar move to get through a small opening above a doorway, but I forget the movie. All of these movies would have meshed easily with the simple control system of up/down movements.
Games like Dynamite Cop, Mirror's Edge, and Final Fight are the main influences I have in mind.
Obviously there should be lots of broken tables, chairs, glass, and railings, as you lay the smackdown and run for your life. That goes without saying. You can even be cornered inside a small plant shop. The mobster goons come inside and put themselves between you and the door. "The only way out of here is through us," they say. So then you dash toward them, side-step, and jump straight through the shop's plate glass display window.
I have no idea what the reason is for having to escape. "Reasons" are pretty overblown anyway these days. Game developers talk about narrative, but because they are game developers and programmers rather than talented directors or authors, their storylines and dialog are usually inept. I would love it if the story was kafkaesque. You simply wake up one day and everybody in the city wants to pummel you. Then as you make your violent and haphazard escape, you only anger more and more parties still, including organized crime.
That's what I want.
1.19.2009
Terrible Covert Art
Look at these two different versions of the Ico cover art and compare them in your mind.
(American release):
(Japan/Europe release):
Notice anything strange? Notice how the game that was released for Japan and Europe has the greatest cover art of all time. It's a direct homage to de Chirico.
When I see that box art, I want to buy the game. The composition has an unusually subdued color scheme, which makes it immediately interesting. The image places you in a plausible yet still bizarre architectural setting. The setting is grandiose but eerily devoid of life. The place seems ominous and daunting, but only ambiguously: there aren't any direct or visible threats anywhere but you want to flee it all the same. The visuals give you no clue about who you are. Instead the entire focus is on WHERE you are. And wherever that is, the obvious key is that you don't want to stick around, and more importantly than that you have more than just yourself to look out for.
Notice how the game that was released for North America has some of the worst box art I have ever seen. It has no ambience. It has no atmosphere. It's a jumble of amateurish superimpositions. The focus is on the hero, who appears to have no personality whatsoever. The scenery has no emotional or artistic significance whatsoever. The visuals tell you precisely who you are but absolutely nothing about where you are or what you're doing.
So even though I believe Ico had the greatest box art I've ever seen on a video game, the business people don't want me to buy it. In a different era, you might suppose that the publishers want to market not to people who would recognize a di Chirico painting, but instead to either children or to parents who know almost nothing about videogames but who might buy a game for their child on impulse if they see a playful/combative character on the box (which the bastardized US box art displays). But this is the age of the internet, and even before the internet, kids who played games read game magazines, and knew what they wanted, box art be damned.
Example 2: Mirror's Edge
Here's the Mirror's Edge cover art (at least in North America):
Now here is a piece of concept art that developers made at some point in their creative process:
Now THAT would have been way better covert art. The face cover tells you nothing-- except that the heroine is some kind of corny badass with an eye tattoo. But the city-scape cover tells you EVERYTHING. It tells you that your heroine is dauntless. She's casual and assured even when she's standing 60 stories over the street. It tells you what your mission is: to traverse those rooftops, at dangerous heights, and to deliver that yellow pouch. It puts you in the aesthetic of the game, which is oddly sterile looking white architecture with bold splashes of primary colors. (It could be better if Faith (the heroine) was running instead of standing at ease, since she's a parkour courier, but that's OK. The way she's at ease communicates just as much.)
The Batman movies, and the Batman animated series often used a similar shot of Batman standing high on a skyscraper or gargoyle, watching over the night-time city. They never show you a pointless and inscrutable close-up of Batman's face, since that is boring and tells you nothing.
The insistence on showing pointless character shots, without any situational context or setting, is a weird trend. It's dishonest because it's uninformative and inaccurate. It's pretentious because it tries to suggest that there's something truly appreciable about the character's face, when in fact there isn't anything appreciable-- the marketers/developers are just being fools. Furthermore it's an unartistic cop-out because it does not convey anything at all about the vision of the game. And further still, it's contradictory because as much as the developers want a "character-driven!" image or story and therefore attempt to reveal the nature of their character with a useless face shot, they still refuse to hire competent voice actors and voice directors (and dialog writers) for their characters.
Example 3: Exiled
This is a movie, not a game. But bear with me.
What is that garbage? Well, that garbage happens to be a promo shot of one of my favorite movies of the last few years. Here's what it looked like over in the eastern hemisphere:
Notice anything? Yes, that's right. The first one sucks. Somebody stop the madness.
(American release):
(Japan/Europe release):
Notice anything strange? Notice how the game that was released for Japan and Europe has the greatest cover art of all time. It's a direct homage to de Chirico.
When I see that box art, I want to buy the game. The composition has an unusually subdued color scheme, which makes it immediately interesting. The image places you in a plausible yet still bizarre architectural setting. The setting is grandiose but eerily devoid of life. The place seems ominous and daunting, but only ambiguously: there aren't any direct or visible threats anywhere but you want to flee it all the same. The visuals give you no clue about who you are. Instead the entire focus is on WHERE you are. And wherever that is, the obvious key is that you don't want to stick around, and more importantly than that you have more than just yourself to look out for.
Notice how the game that was released for North America has some of the worst box art I have ever seen. It has no ambience. It has no atmosphere. It's a jumble of amateurish superimpositions. The focus is on the hero, who appears to have no personality whatsoever. The scenery has no emotional or artistic significance whatsoever. The visuals tell you precisely who you are but absolutely nothing about where you are or what you're doing.
So even though I believe Ico had the greatest box art I've ever seen on a video game, the business people don't want me to buy it. In a different era, you might suppose that the publishers want to market not to people who would recognize a di Chirico painting, but instead to either children or to parents who know almost nothing about videogames but who might buy a game for their child on impulse if they see a playful/combative character on the box (which the bastardized US box art displays). But this is the age of the internet, and even before the internet, kids who played games read game magazines, and knew what they wanted, box art be damned.
Example 2: Mirror's Edge
Here's the Mirror's Edge cover art (at least in North America):
Now here is a piece of concept art that developers made at some point in their creative process:
Now THAT would have been way better covert art. The face cover tells you nothing-- except that the heroine is some kind of corny badass with an eye tattoo. But the city-scape cover tells you EVERYTHING. It tells you that your heroine is dauntless. She's casual and assured even when she's standing 60 stories over the street. It tells you what your mission is: to traverse those rooftops, at dangerous heights, and to deliver that yellow pouch. It puts you in the aesthetic of the game, which is oddly sterile looking white architecture with bold splashes of primary colors. (It could be better if Faith (the heroine) was running instead of standing at ease, since she's a parkour courier, but that's OK. The way she's at ease communicates just as much.)
The Batman movies, and the Batman animated series often used a similar shot of Batman standing high on a skyscraper or gargoyle, watching over the night-time city. They never show you a pointless and inscrutable close-up of Batman's face, since that is boring and tells you nothing.
The insistence on showing pointless character shots, without any situational context or setting, is a weird trend. It's dishonest because it's uninformative and inaccurate. It's pretentious because it tries to suggest that there's something truly appreciable about the character's face, when in fact there isn't anything appreciable-- the marketers/developers are just being fools. Furthermore it's an unartistic cop-out because it does not convey anything at all about the vision of the game. And further still, it's contradictory because as much as the developers want a "character-driven!" image or story and therefore attempt to reveal the nature of their character with a useless face shot, they still refuse to hire competent voice actors and voice directors (and dialog writers) for their characters.
Example 3: Exiled
This is a movie, not a game. But bear with me.
What is that garbage? Well, that garbage happens to be a promo shot of one of my favorite movies of the last few years. Here's what it looked like over in the eastern hemisphere:
Notice anything? Yes, that's right. The first one sucks. Somebody stop the madness.
Tattoos and Characterization
Ah: tattoos and video games.
I love Mirror's Edge and can't stop playing it, but Faith's tattoos really irks me, from a creative or compositional standpoint. If we look at Faith's pants and shoes, and watch her do what she does for 5 seconds, we know more about her than her ridiculous tattoos will ever tell us. That's because our actions define us, and people know us even through seeing ONE OUNCE of our actions. Whereas tattoos are just who we wish to be. They're like idols. They're like fetishized shrines of identity. Tattoos are what you want when you *want to* see something when you look in the mirror, BUT WHICH YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SEE because you either lack an appreciative vision of yourself or you are a fraud.
I mean come on DICE!! The bottoms of her pants are TIED, and she has SPLIT TOED SHOES. That is who she is, and it's goddam brilliant. The tattoos are just a brain fart.
The weird thing about Faith's tattoos is that the developers made them so that we would know something about her-- when actually they tell us nothing other than that Faith needs visible reassurance of her own identity. Their reasoning is something like: "she likes technology/computers; THEREFORE she should inject a picture of one into her arm." Which is just a weird argument when you think about it. (And it's especially weird in context of the game's association between technology and the surveillance state.)
Tattoos that memorialize particular events or entities make sense to me, like a military unit tattoo or something. Tattoos that are supposedly an expression of "who a person is / feels like" make almost no sense to me. Why would a person need or require external reminders about a fundamental part of their persona? The whole thing seems to imply that their persona is not fundamental at all, but is more like an adopted decision that gains meaning simply through arbitrary commitment (like a bad marriage), which is why they need/want a depiction of it close to them at all times and for all the world to see. It's like people are insecure about their own souls, which baffles me.
I'm willing to accept that people get tattoos for the same reason they do a lot of other things: they like the look of it. But more often than not tattoos seem, to me, to be some kind of echo chamber of identity. Any virtue which the tattoo supposedly represents should already be completely obvious to the world and to the person themselves. Shouldn't it? Therefore making the image redundant at best, and a little desperate-seeming at worst. The inky representation just rings hollow, since it's just ink--it tries to DO, to BE, and to SAY things just by going through the motions. WELL SIR, NO DICE.
I love Mirror's Edge and can't stop playing it, but Faith's tattoos really irks me, from a creative or compositional standpoint. If we look at Faith's pants and shoes, and watch her do what she does for 5 seconds, we know more about her than her ridiculous tattoos will ever tell us. That's because our actions define us, and people know us even through seeing ONE OUNCE of our actions. Whereas tattoos are just who we wish to be. They're like idols. They're like fetishized shrines of identity. Tattoos are what you want when you *want to* see something when you look in the mirror, BUT WHICH YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SEE because you either lack an appreciative vision of yourself or you are a fraud.
I mean come on DICE!! The bottoms of her pants are TIED, and she has SPLIT TOED SHOES. That is who she is, and it's goddam brilliant. The tattoos are just a brain fart.
The weird thing about Faith's tattoos is that the developers made them so that we would know something about her-- when actually they tell us nothing other than that Faith needs visible reassurance of her own identity. Their reasoning is something like: "she likes technology/computers; THEREFORE she should inject a picture of one into her arm." Which is just a weird argument when you think about it. (And it's especially weird in context of the game's association between technology and the surveillance state.)
Tattoos that memorialize particular events or entities make sense to me, like a military unit tattoo or something. Tattoos that are supposedly an expression of "who a person is / feels like" make almost no sense to me. Why would a person need or require external reminders about a fundamental part of their persona? The whole thing seems to imply that their persona is not fundamental at all, but is more like an adopted decision that gains meaning simply through arbitrary commitment (like a bad marriage), which is why they need/want a depiction of it close to them at all times and for all the world to see. It's like people are insecure about their own souls, which baffles me.
I'm willing to accept that people get tattoos for the same reason they do a lot of other things: they like the look of it. But more often than not tattoos seem, to me, to be some kind of echo chamber of identity. Any virtue which the tattoo supposedly represents should already be completely obvious to the world and to the person themselves. Shouldn't it? Therefore making the image redundant at best, and a little desperate-seeming at worst. The inky representation just rings hollow, since it's just ink--it tries to DO, to BE, and to SAY things just by going through the motions. WELL SIR, NO DICE.
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