Friday, February 5, 2010

Dante's Lovely Day

You may have already seen the upcoming TV spot for Visceral Games' Dante's Inferno, set to air during the Super Bowl. I think it's okay, though I'm kinda tired of marketing campaigns stealing some of my favorite songs—in this case, Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine"—for bullshit game ads. This isn't a new phenomenon—last year, DeVotchka's "How It Ends" was pimped in a Gears of War 2 ad, and shortly after that, Sigur Ros' "Saeglopur" in a spot for Ubisoft's Prince of Persia reboot.

There's no use in simply complaining about this kind of stuff; it's becoming the norm. So rather than simply bitch I thought I'd offer a suggestion to EA regarding the campaign: If you're gonna use Bill Withers, go for broke and use his best song.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Red vs. Blue: Choice and Mass Effect 2

Having completed Mass Effect 2 just this afternoon, I've naturally come away with a lot of thoughts about the experience. The gamer part of my brain thoroughly enjoyed it, and it has—after some stumbling in the original Mass Effect—become my favorite sci-fi experience in the whole of vidja-gamez. It's visually stunning, very well written, and a much more competent shooter than its predecessor.

That being said, Mass Effect 2 presents the same problems that games have been bumping into ever since "choice" and "morality" were ushered in as perennial E3 buzzwords—while the game does offer you a series of choices and the potential to be a Right Cruel Bastard (renegade) or a Really Swell Fella (paragon), there's very little nuance to go around. And like many other titles—most of which are settled squarely in this most recent generation of games—Mass Effect 2's moral choices are often clearly demarcated into "good" and "bad" columns, which I'll get to in just a minute.

Before we move on, Mass Effect 2 spoilers and blah blah ahead blah blah mind the gap blah.

Just in case you're not familiar, let's set this up proper: Character interaction and dialogue in Mass Effect and its sequel are handled by a simple exchange of statements. In any given conversation, the player is presented with a selection of statements, retorts, or actions, electable by way of a circular dial controllable with the analog stick. The protagonist, Shepard, rarely goes rogue and speaks of his own accord—with the exception of key cutscenes and those moments in which dialogue and action are inextricably blended, the player directs all of Shepard's words.

Choice and consequence are key themes in the Mass Effect series, but emphasized particularly in ME2, a game marketed with the claim that you can screw up and you may not survive if you make the wrong choices and your comrades will die if you fail. All of these claims are most definitely true, and boy howdy, there are a lot of choices in the game, with costs and benefits on both sides of the decision-a-tron. If you blow up the refinery, you'll kill a lot of people, but you'll track down your target. Elect to save them, and you risk blowing the mission, but at least you didn't slay any innocents.

The difficulties with choice and morality in Mass Effect 2—indeed, with most games that embraces choice and morality as active elements of a game's core design—are that no matter how manifold or well-developed the consequences of your actions may be, the player can always count on the engine to clearly distinguish the good from the bad. Mass Effect 2 does this by sometimes deliberately marking dialogue options in blue or red—paragon or renegade, respectively—but in almost all other instances, the player can expect the following standard: Paragon options are on the upper half of the dialogue dial, while renegade options are on the bottom. In this way, the "moral choices" set before you are as deliberately explained as they were in Sucker Punch's inFamous, which was direct to the point of appearing patronizing.

But unlike inFamous, the substance of the choice—in this case, the words being spoken—aren't as cut and dry in ME2. Topics of conversation vary from interpersonal disputes to condoning genocide, and the situations themselves? Tremendously nuanced. Shepard's responses to these circumstances have the capacity for nuance, but are undercut by the game's insistence to clearly categorize available dialogue options.

One key example is Jack, the borderline-psychotic that lands with the crew of the Normandy relatively early into the game and serves as one of Shepard's many potential romantic interests. Jack's abrasive, a no-bullshit kind of person who has been through too much terror and experienced too much violence to ever mesh gently with the rest of the crew. She has little patience for weakness.

Jack, more than the rest of the Normandy crew, should have presented a challenge; where most everybody else on the ship responds to politeness, support, and understanding, Jack rejects such sentiments. But as with the rest of the game, the player need only select the top options on the dialogue dial to lock in Jack's favor.

The clear structuring of ethics and choice in Mass Effect 2's dialogue is somewhat justified. Lots of players know that they want to be a paragon or renegade from the start, and want to ensure that every choice they make gets them closer to that goal. The game itself reinforces this by allowing Shepards with pure-good or pure-bad ratings greater options in dialogue; players who mix and match are restricted from these dialogues. And for most people who simply want to play the game, complete the quest and get that coveted 100% win with no crew deaths, that works fine.

The trouble comes for those players who want Shepard to live and act as they would, examining situations and making judgments on a case-by-case basis. It's clear from the start how the dialogue dial's placement of paragon and renegade responses work—this information even appears as a tip on the loading screen—but what if the "good" response appears illogical, stupid or generally unpalatable to the player? Going with your gut in Mass Effect 2 isn't rewarding. By endgame, you're stuck with a little from column A, a little from column B, and none of the perks that come with piling all of your eggs in one basket.

Another side-effect of the structure is a general disassociation from the text. Clear demarcations mean you don't have to think about what your Shepard is saying, or about who he's saying it to, or the mutual history between the characters. And once you get into the habit of chasing down your full-rank paragon or renegade rating, you barely have to pay attention to what's being said at all. Top or bottom, then slap X to skip through the remaining dialogue.

The alternative to all of this, then, is to randomize dialogue placement, right? Shake things up, make players understand what they're saying before they say it—inject a little danger, consequence, and intention into the choices that they make. But this solution has some problems, too. Placing the onus on the player to evaluate these decisions may increase the potential to play as his or herself, but restricts their ability to play as Shepard—to know what he knows about the people he's speaking to, the circumstances they're under, and the consequences of his words and actions.

It goes deeper than that, however. Responses in ME and ME2 are listed as simplified, truncated versions of Shepard's actual uttered response—that is, what is listed as "You're being too hard on yourself" could potentially prompt Shepard to say "You were right not to save those orphans, they were all jerks anyway." Without a 1:1 description, players operating without the top-good and bottom-bad rule could potentially stumble into a line of dialogue they didn't intend.

No matter which way you run with it, interaction in Mass Effect 2 has a habit of revealing its own machinations to the player. Whether you're looking for it or not, play enough and you eventually begin to understand how the system works, and how to craft your responses to suit your goals based on the rules enacted by that system. It functions well enough on a practical level, but it kinda spoils the potential of interactive storytelling—that feeling of being a part of something and really, truly not knowing how your place in it all will impact the whole.

It's not so much a failing of the developer—Mass Effect and its sequel are two of the most ambitious titles to date in terms of interactivity—as it is the limitations of the medium. So long as writers must craft content and dialogue must be recorded by living and breathing VO actors and actresses, the level of nuance in games like Mass Effect will always be curtailed by practical concerns such as budget, available disc space, and perhaps most importantly, production schedules. We can pump metric assloads of cash into our games and exponentially increase media capacity, but if we want our stories written by storytellers and our dialogue voiced by real people, time is the scarcest resource.

All that being said, however, Mass Effect 2 was pretty fucking sweet.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

From the "It Can't Possibly Be Real" Files

In college, I took an Editing and Publishing course in which we were tasked with creating a mock catalog for our little mock publishing house as our big project for the class. We wrote a bunch of descriptions, shitloads of copy about 20 or 30 books, and it would've been fine but for that tint of fakeness that fake things tend to have when you know they're fake (or faked them yourself). I get a similar vibe from the following copy:

Someone is dog-napping the canine citizens of Chem City, Texas! Two tween girls overcome danger and conspiracies as they set out to solve the crime and administer justice with the help of a magical bracelet. As the girls battle the Mob, a punk gang and a crooked cop, they learn something about friendship, courage and the importance of hanging with the right crowd.
I don't even really want to link to the source. I mean, I will, but I'd prefer not to. I don't want to spoil what simply must be the most perfectly cliche-ridden paragraph ever written.

Sappin' My Sentry

Briefly, another game-induced dream: After hours and hours of Team Fortress 2 this weekend, rocking a spy-checker Pyro in 2Fort, I had dreams last night of an impostor Aaron Linde running around, talking to my friends and pretending to be me and such. Naturally, the only course of action was to set him on fire with my Backburner, follow up with the Axecutioner, et cetera. Do you have any idea how weird it feels to immolate and chop up, y'know, you?

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Shut Up and Talk

It's been awhile. Nevermind any commitments of actually returning to regular posting -- I've been busy, and will likely be busy again. Come to think of it, I'm still busy. I shouldn't even be writing this, or sleeping. I should be working.

But as it happens, I've been struck by something, and I need to vomit words somewhere about it. Sadly, Twitter only allows so many characters, and I'm much too inefficient a writer to be so constrained. Being that what follows concerns Shigesato Itoi's immortal Earthbound, I'll try not to tie that statement into a joke at Tim Rogers' expense.

So, Earthbound. I've talked too much about this game during the course of my career. Come to think of it, I've talked too much about this game period. I've been on podcasts about it, even faked my way through some investigative goddamn journalism over it. I wish I could stop. I wish I could stop. I can't stop.

One of my favorite things about the game is how it morphs into something new every time I play it, presenting itself ready for another romp and dissection. In my most recent travels through Onett and beyond, I found myself obsessing over the transition made by Ness and crew from fleshy humans to cold, steely robots near the end of the game. They do this because, as you may have heard, meatsacks can't make a leap through time intact, don't you know. The decision, like most major plot pitstops in Earthbound, is made unceremoniously. Why sure, I'd love to have the essence of my consciousness extracted, planted into a robot and sent hurtling into the past to square off against an intergalactic, shapeless, incomprehensible horror, a being of such infinite malice that you can't wrap your mind around his very existence. Wasn't I fighting hippies and animated trees some four or five hours ago?

Yes, the game does jump the shark a bit in terms of gravitas near the endgame, but that's always been something I rather liked about Earthbound, and not what had gripped me about that particular moment in the narrative. Rather, I was hung up on Earthbound's peculiar inability to determine whether or not its principle cast were mute or not.

There's really nothing worth dwelling on about The Mute RPG Hero, it's a worn out topic. Yeah, lots of heroes didn't talk in games back in the day, big deal. Where Earthbound is significant is how silent the heroes feel by virtue of the fact that, occasionally, they do talk -- but never to one another. They address the party, be it only Ness, or Ness and Paula, or Ness and Paula and Jeff. Poo, being the last party member to arrive during the course of the narrative, is never spoken to. The threshold, it seems, is this: If you're not an active member of the party, you're an NPC and may address the group. But once you're a part of the battle menu, shut your goddamn mouth and get to adventuring.

These are characters with backgrounds. Even if they're somewhat weakly developed, they're only as superficial and as fleeting as the rest of the game tends to be—characters don't stick around long in Earthbound. But beyond the introductions of the principle cast members—Hi, I'm Jeff, I came to help you because I heard your prayer, let's get this show on the road, destiny, et cetera—nary a word is spoken between them.

There are a few exceptions, though, and one particularly interesting one. In the Deep Darkness, near the entrance to the Tenda Village, the party encounters a ruined pile of what used to be a helicopter, commandeered by Pokey on the top of the Monotoli Building. When you examine it closely, Jeff actually speaks, and explains to the party that he simply can't fix it. Jeff's not remarking on his departure, as Poo does when he leaves the party temporarily to study a new PSI ability—he simply speaks his thoughts. In Earthbound, that's ridiculously rare.

So what are Earthbound's rules? What would compel Shigesato Itoi and his scenario scribes to keep the cast silent when faced with incomprehensible horror but pipe up when someone has to fuck off with a PSI study buddy or remark on a ruined helicopter?

Part of me likes to romanticize the idea, and suppose that Ness and company—in the face of destiny and irrefutable prophecy—never thought to question the challenge before them or wonder aloud, "Why the fuck am I supposed to do this?" That's not how a kid's mind works, the romantic part of my brain asserts. When a time-traveling bee warrior tells you to defeat a space tyrant, you just do it. But this is a very unlikely explanation.

Rather, it's probable that Itoi and his designers never established a hard-set rule. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough time to work on developing interpersonal connections and relationships between the party members, except for those moments of crucial exposition—like "I can't fix that goddamn helicopter." But that notion, that specter of deliberate design choice that hovers over the title, is what makes Earthbound a joy to revisit, no matter how old and stupid I get, no matter how small my attention span shrinks.

On an unrelated note, why in the hell does every M-rated game have to be showered in naked tits these days?

Monday, December 29, 2008

A Piece of Today

Is it the name? I guess it makes sense that a song called "'84 Pontiac Dream" seems appropriate when paired with cars—makes a great driving song, too.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

The Secret Lives of Games Journalists

Two weeks ago:

Ashley: God, I need to buy his gifts. And yours!

me: Nein! No gifts for me.

Ashley: Yes!

me: Nein! I hate everything. I hate things. I mean, I don't, but pretend I do as to dodge the possibility of you getting me a present.

Ashley: But it's your birthday too.

me: Hey, wait, here's an idea. You and Anthony pose for a picture wearing the most gentile, suburban clothing possible -- like, sweaters and shit -- in that standard portrait pose, where you're both looking away from the camera and smiling all big and shit.

me: And email that to me. That'd be an awesome present.

me: Gift me your embarassment!

Ashley: Anthony is down with that.

me: Wait, what?

Ashley: We're totally going to do it. Anthony is excited.

me: Seriously? You have to wear really gaudy clothes, though. Christmas sweaters, if at all possible.

Later that day:

Ashley: We're going to get like, real pictures taken. Like at a studio.

me: ... You're fucking shitting me.

December 18, 2008:

That's right -- Anthony Burch and Ashley Davis, of the internet. Maybe the holidays aren't so bad.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Don't Ask Questions

It's funnier if you don't know. STRAW. (And those glasses!)

Monday, December 8, 2008

By Lamplight

This is sort of what I was talking about yesterday, although unlike G-Cans, this isn't a real place—not yet, anyway. It's a proposal for a park commemorating the Tangshan earthquake in China, 1976. The swing lanterns, according to some fellow what wrote about it, are intended to symbolize hope and remembrance.

I'd like to tie this into gaming some how, but really, I've just been thirsting for visually stimulating things lately, imagery that straddles the membrane between reality and the not-so-much. So maybe I'll just post crap like that every now and then—if, by my own definition, I must tie stuff into gaming, let's simply suggest that this imagery could serve well in a game of some sort.

Now that I think about it, Chrono Trigger had one hell of an iconic lamp -- every now and then I'll spot a Victorian lamp and think of Gaspar and his bowler, the subtle nod and the "Hey."

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Monuments

I know for a fact that G-Cans -- the cavernous subterranean tsunami discharge system beneath Tokyo's suburbs -- is real. I know people who know people who've been there. I've even touched one of them! (She didn't appreciate it.) But it only takes so many years of untempered consumption of visual media before you start to think that almost every breathtaking image was conceived in the deepest dreams of an art staffer.