And just as importantly, what's next? Right now, we're in a vampire renaissance. The damn bloodsuckers are nearly inescapable. We've got Twilight, True Blood, the books thereof, with the Vampire Diaries...present as well. Even Buffy has returned in comic book form. Sure, zombies are holding their own, and they're kicking butt in the video game industry, but the story's never about THEM. It's about the humans surviving them and how; the zombies are just an obstacle. Vampires, on the other hand, are characters. They talk, they think, they have ambitions, and they can form romances. And dear Lonnie do they.
But what's the appeal, exactly? What makes vampires so interesting? Frankly, why aren't we talking about all the dragon, unicorn, demon, angel, troll, faerie, etc. fiction out there? I think there are a couple reasons, and a couple why some of the above will make their return once we get utterly sick of vampires (it has to happen eventually! You know, for a while!)
1: They're physically appealing. In other words, they look at least sufficiently human. That's pretty important. You can create a touching romance between any species, but if it's to an orc or mind flayer, you won't get many teenagers excited about it. Now, they don't have to be human ALL the time. Look at werewolves, AKA vampires' wingmen. When they're not slavering monsters, they're buff dudes and chicks.
2: They're dangerous. This brings me to the point I made in the last blog. Oh, he's so big and scary, and my life is in danger around him! But he's a gentleman, a man of honor and chivalry, unlike those other monsters. And he struggles against his natural desires to do evil, using only the power of our love! It's interesting how this metaphor changed over the years. Before, it was a matter of temptation. Vampires were beautiful, but if you gave into your desires to be with them, you would be killed or worse, enslaved for eternity. Now, they're the "bad boys." It's a story of redemption, to put it pleasantly. Effectively, the vampire is tempted by humanity now. And as I mentioned before, it's almost always a female human and male vampire. On the rare time I see it the other way, the female vampire's obvious physical superiority isn't really a topic, and the female vampire (Fempire? Vampirette? Vampiress?) is not a penitent atoner or noble teatoller. If anything, she's clueless about the very option. See Jessica from True Blood. She didn't give speeches about being "vampyre," she just doesn't get anything about her own nature yet.
3: They're complex and well-recognized. This leads to the "myth speech" every vampire story needs sooner or later. You know how it goes; once the vampire becomes well known, the human protagonist asks a friendly vampire how the whole vampire thing works. Because there are just so many concepts of a vampire, not all of them work, and many of them contradict other ones. So the vampire teaches the clueless human, and thus the clueless audience, how it goes down. Do vampires need to drink human blood, or will animal blood work? How do stakes and sunlight work? What about sillier things like garlic and more spiritually specific things like holy symbols? Do vampires really turn into bats and mist still? Do vampires not show up on mirrors or security cameras? Are they obsessed with counting things (yes, that was a real myth, and yes, Sesame Street's pretty much the only one to keep that one?) This is a big, very important speech, and woe betide you if your characters break the rules without a very good reason.
But let's face it. No fad lasts forever, and while I'm sure there will always be vampires in fiction, I doubt we'll always have multiple shows and hit movies and comics and...I don't know, probably vampire breakfast cereals somewhere. If there aren't any, somebody's missing an opportunity here. There will always be a next big thing, and it's just a matter of what that big thing is. Option one is ignoring fantasy entirely. Sick of vampires? Bring in the aliens! Science fiction is a pretty minor thing in television, but it's never been absent completely. Recently, we have V, superhero themed shows like Heroes and the upcoming No Ordinary Family, and the occasional cyborg a la Bionic Woman. In movies, it's inescapable. We have the lovable aliens in Avatar and District 9, the lovable robot on Wall-E, and about three million superheroes, nearly all of them based on genetics or robotics technology. They fit the criteria. Most are originally human, are part-human, or are aliens close enough to basically be human. Even the giant Red Lobster platters on District 9 manage to evoke sympathy. Most are vastly more powerful than normal humans, or at least have the technology to do so. And concepts like extraterrestrial life and scientific advancements have so many possibilities that they might as well be the "vampire myths" speech.
But it can't always be science fiction. The range is still too limited, and the stories risk becoming passé as real science advances. Fantasy is universal and ancient, and it always has an element of mystery and thus danger than science fiction offers.
I suspect that in the eventual feature, two creatures will eventually get recognition and may even (briefly) surpass the vampire/werewolf duality. The first are demons (and possibly angels for the same reasons.) Obviously, they're the next tier of "evil monsters" after vampires. I mean, after cannibalistic corpses, beings made of pure evil is the only way to really go. Of course, we learn they're not REAL evil, at least not universally. This brings in the convenient controversy that vampires lost somewhere around the Buffy era. Nothing provides free advertisement like people yelling how people shouldn't see your work! Danger's right there, of course, both to your body and your soul, and temptation is equally built right into the system. The only problem is how deep you want to go with the complexity level. Namely, if not all angels are good and not all demons are evil, what exactly does that mean for Satan and God? Are they nuanced (to put it lightly) as well or simply asleep at their respective wheels? Yes, controversy sells, but you can only have so many.
The other option I'd consider are a bit of a tougher sell; the fae. The problem is that according to the mainstream, faeries are harmless fun. They make cookies, help out Santa, or fly around Peter Pan. That's going to be a tough image to break. But that's what makes it perfect for a deconstruction. Imagine a horror story where the characters learn they are in danger of faeries and scoff at it. Then they meet a redcap, and...The thing is that faeries are pretty damn dangerous. They have incredible magic power, most are ageless, they exist in a reality alien to our own, and most importantly, they don't exactly "get" morality. Here's how a faerie thinks: take a child, a perfectly innocent child with all their imagination and capriciousness, remove any sense of empathy, and give them a love of pulling pranks. At best, they just don't give a damn about us. At worst, they're the disturbed child and we're the flies they're pulling wings off of. And if we think they're harmless, even silly? Then we won't expect it. They are also complex, with different species, complex politics, and unusual strengths and weaknesses like trouble with iron (a great weakness in our plastic world.) And they're beautiful by definition; there's a reason they're often called the Fair Folk. Maybe there's a cute Lord and/or Lady who is "cursed" with a conscience. It makes as much sense as expecting camaraderie from the monsters that eat us.
There are other options, but if you're going for originality and plausible success, these are the creatures that I think will do it. Now it just takes someone with the determination, innovation, and most importantly money to make one a reality.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Reviews: Demons, Angels, Living Hair, the Undead, and Other Commentaries on Gender
It's an...odd time for the role of gender in pop culture, at least from my geeky perspective. Take two things I've recently played or read. On one hand, we have Bayonetta, a semi-recently released action game in the same genre of Devil May Cry (not surprisingly, since they have the same designers,) but with the notable difference that the cocky, confident, incredibly powerful protagonist is female. On the other hand, there's...the nearly unthinkable. See, I wrote a vampire-based novel recently, and I decided I needed to do some research. I was coerced into reading...sigh...Twilight. At least I could discuss the book with actual experienced now. Anyway, the Twilight novel's protagonist, Bella Swan, is the exact opposite of Bayonetta. Never mind monsters, she can't deal with a stroll through a forest, handle a blood drive, visit another town, or even walk ten feet without nearly killing herself.
We have two nearly completely different models of the female ideal, and I have to wonder: is either remotely a good thing? Should we even bother to use them for such a purpose, or should we dismiss them as one dimensional cardboard cutouts, too alien to be compared to our reality, or worse yet, given the dismissive label of "just entertainment" and thus without artistic merit in any way? It's easier to ignore the messages, but that gives both of them less respect than it deserves. Besides, as a Buffy fan, i can't really justify ignoring other uses of speculative fiction for feminist messages.
Let's start with Bayonetta. She comes from a long line of female protagonists, the descendant of Samus Aran and Lara Croft. She differs from them mostly in her sexual nature. Certainly, most video game women are extremely attractive (though in fairness, most male video game characters are intended to be as well,) and don't wear much, but they otherwise are happy shooting, impaling, or punching their way to victory. Bayonetta doesn't pretend to be unaware of her sexuality, and it reflects in her every action, from the way she walks to her in game taunts to her use of weapons to the fact that many of her most powerful moves briefly turns her naked. Well, technically she's always naked, since her clothing (by default a standard catsuit) is actually made of her hair, as are the demons she summons. It's a weird game.
Bella, meanwhile, reflects the now clichéd Vampire Romance Dynamic. You see it in nearly every modern vampire story, and there are a lot of them. I could probably write an entire article on that alone, but the short version is you start with a human woman (and it's always a woman,) suddenly in a relationship with a vampire man. It's a scary situation. After all, this vampire is so much more dangerous than you, with his strange needs and hungers that you, the female protagonist, can't understand. And he's so much bigger and stronger than you, and he could easily overpower you at any time if he just wanted to. But! Unlike many of his kind, he is a gentlemen who knows that he must be respectful and polite at all times. In fact, he must be this gentlemen, as it's the only way he can fight against the primal urges all beings of his kind have. And so he welcomes you into his world, showing all the incredible and wonderful things he can do, though he also must sometimes protect you and keep you from seeing the worst that his big, scary world has to offer.
Ick. I don't WANT to see the obvious gender dynamics in place in these stories, but they're just so blunt. It's unnerving. Just as the real world slowly works its way to a more balanced place, where women can be as competent as men (and just as importantly, where men aren't expected to be sex-addicted territorial alpha-types,) a fantasy version pops up that takes all the old stereotypes and makes them into a new ideal. Not that all stories who use this Dynamic are equal. Buffy, to use the obvious example, is special specifically because she avoids the implications of her weakness. She's more than a match for most demons and vampires, and at worst she is portrayed as equal to her vampire love interests. Similar, while I'm still working through True Blood, I was interested from the first episode when the female half of the Dynamic saves her eventual vampire love interest from a gruesome fate. And how does she save him? By almost strangling a guy with a chain. Sure, the Dynamic shows up soon after, but at least Sookie wasn't about to lose her own strength in the process.
Bella, of course, is the definition of this Dynamic. Not only does she need the protection of her vampire love interest against supernatural threats, she barely can exist in the regular world without her help. She would have died or worse at least twice in the first couple hundred pages of the book alone. The series also goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sexuality, or at least sex. Sure, it can't shut up about how beautiful Edward is, but any actual sex is off the table. It mostly relates to how vampire semen is toxic and would kill a human or something like that, so Bella can't sleep with him until she turns into a vampire, which he won't do, but then they eventually have sex anyway, but only after they're married (of course,) four books into the series, and...you get the idea.
So for all the differences between the two heroines, are we just talking the classic virgin/whore dynamic? Well, not exactly. For one thing, as sexually provocative as Bayonetta is, she has as much sex in the first game as Bella has in the first book. She's only had one game so far, so who knows if that changes, but in the first, she never gets past light flirting with a single guy; admittedly, it helps that he wants to kill her for the first half of the game. The problem, at least from a cursory glance, is the way the two take such extremes with what women should be. Either a role of passive emotional center to her man, the crucial piece needed to make him good in a dangerous world, or as an independent entity brazen in both her power and her sexual identity.
And to be fair, neither character completely matches her own ideal, though one undergoes actual characterization while the other regresses. Bayonetta starts as a bastion of self-interest, needing nobody but her information and item providing sidekicks/worshipers, but as the game progressives, she develops actual affection for her quasi-love interest and for a small child she has to protect. Okay, "strong woman learns to care for others through romance and motherhood" is not a great message, either, but at the same time, she is just as competent saving the world and fighting evil (well, evil-ish, they're mostly confused angels.) Bella, meanwhile, starts out at least showing signs of curiosity and the ability to solve a mystery. She only decides to turn her brain off after entering a relationship with a vampire. Even before, though, she is such an aggressive non-character. She hates the town she moves into, she hates the school, she hates her friends, she has no interests except for generic "reading," she just exists. At least Bayonetta has some interests beyond whittling a few notches in the celestial hierarchy.
I guess that's the answer. When making any character, you can't toss an archetype on them and call it a day. Give them interests, give them hobbies, give them activities beyond what their current adventure would call for. And if you make a female character, focus on this even more. It reminds me of a rule I discovered when I was younger and my creative talents were just starting to develop. Modern culture still is dominated by white male protagonists, but I find that working with minority characters is easier and more rewarding. With the dominant image of our society, you can get away with making them "the moron", or "the jerk," or "the loser." But such a simple, negative stereotype applied to a moron would look racist, sexist, or what have you. Do the same with a positive stereotype and you look like you're making a perfect token character. Neither is acceptable for any serious art, and so you're obligated to make a deeper character, one with faults and virtues.
Oh, right, this is a "Reviews," article, isn't it? Well, I'll make that part quick. Even ignoring the empty protagonist and the well-publicized creepy relationship she has with her chauvinistic stalker boyfriend, Twilight is a frustrating read. It starts out reasonably enough if you enter it without any presumptions, but by the time the relationship starts, the novel quickly regresses into a plot-free static. I was overjoyed when actual evil vampires arrived, but even they were defeated while Bella was conveniently unconscious. Bayonetta is a more traditional video game narrative, but it suffers from its own kind of extremism usually found in Capcom games (despite this one being made by Sega, albeit with old Capcom developers.) Every action you take is judged and graded, from individual fights to the entire level, and every deviation from perfection is penalized. Have to die and continue? Penalty! At least you still get an infinite number of them this time around. Use an item? Points lost! That's fair enough, since the only people who'd care that much about their score are the really hard-core fans. Everyone else will probably accept they won't get quite as many points as the perfect run types. The only real issue I have comes from the quick-time events, commonly call "press a button to not die." These show up all over the place, and if you miss the split-second command, you lose a continue and your score is ruined. These are game design philosophies that do not work well together. Still, I'd rather return to Bayonetta's world than Bella's any day of the week. Being male and all, it would be impossible for me not to.
We have two nearly completely different models of the female ideal, and I have to wonder: is either remotely a good thing? Should we even bother to use them for such a purpose, or should we dismiss them as one dimensional cardboard cutouts, too alien to be compared to our reality, or worse yet, given the dismissive label of "just entertainment" and thus without artistic merit in any way? It's easier to ignore the messages, but that gives both of them less respect than it deserves. Besides, as a Buffy fan, i can't really justify ignoring other uses of speculative fiction for feminist messages.
Let's start with Bayonetta. She comes from a long line of female protagonists, the descendant of Samus Aran and Lara Croft. She differs from them mostly in her sexual nature. Certainly, most video game women are extremely attractive (though in fairness, most male video game characters are intended to be as well,) and don't wear much, but they otherwise are happy shooting, impaling, or punching their way to victory. Bayonetta doesn't pretend to be unaware of her sexuality, and it reflects in her every action, from the way she walks to her in game taunts to her use of weapons to the fact that many of her most powerful moves briefly turns her naked. Well, technically she's always naked, since her clothing (by default a standard catsuit) is actually made of her hair, as are the demons she summons. It's a weird game.
Bella, meanwhile, reflects the now clichéd Vampire Romance Dynamic. You see it in nearly every modern vampire story, and there are a lot of them. I could probably write an entire article on that alone, but the short version is you start with a human woman (and it's always a woman,) suddenly in a relationship with a vampire man. It's a scary situation. After all, this vampire is so much more dangerous than you, with his strange needs and hungers that you, the female protagonist, can't understand. And he's so much bigger and stronger than you, and he could easily overpower you at any time if he just wanted to. But! Unlike many of his kind, he is a gentlemen who knows that he must be respectful and polite at all times. In fact, he must be this gentlemen, as it's the only way he can fight against the primal urges all beings of his kind have. And so he welcomes you into his world, showing all the incredible and wonderful things he can do, though he also must sometimes protect you and keep you from seeing the worst that his big, scary world has to offer.
Ick. I don't WANT to see the obvious gender dynamics in place in these stories, but they're just so blunt. It's unnerving. Just as the real world slowly works its way to a more balanced place, where women can be as competent as men (and just as importantly, where men aren't expected to be sex-addicted territorial alpha-types,) a fantasy version pops up that takes all the old stereotypes and makes them into a new ideal. Not that all stories who use this Dynamic are equal. Buffy, to use the obvious example, is special specifically because she avoids the implications of her weakness. She's more than a match for most demons and vampires, and at worst she is portrayed as equal to her vampire love interests. Similar, while I'm still working through True Blood, I was interested from the first episode when the female half of the Dynamic saves her eventual vampire love interest from a gruesome fate. And how does she save him? By almost strangling a guy with a chain. Sure, the Dynamic shows up soon after, but at least Sookie wasn't about to lose her own strength in the process.
Bella, of course, is the definition of this Dynamic. Not only does she need the protection of her vampire love interest against supernatural threats, she barely can exist in the regular world without her help. She would have died or worse at least twice in the first couple hundred pages of the book alone. The series also goes out of its way to avoid any hint of sexuality, or at least sex. Sure, it can't shut up about how beautiful Edward is, but any actual sex is off the table. It mostly relates to how vampire semen is toxic and would kill a human or something like that, so Bella can't sleep with him until she turns into a vampire, which he won't do, but then they eventually have sex anyway, but only after they're married (of course,) four books into the series, and...you get the idea.
So for all the differences between the two heroines, are we just talking the classic virgin/whore dynamic? Well, not exactly. For one thing, as sexually provocative as Bayonetta is, she has as much sex in the first game as Bella has in the first book. She's only had one game so far, so who knows if that changes, but in the first, she never gets past light flirting with a single guy; admittedly, it helps that he wants to kill her for the first half of the game. The problem, at least from a cursory glance, is the way the two take such extremes with what women should be. Either a role of passive emotional center to her man, the crucial piece needed to make him good in a dangerous world, or as an independent entity brazen in both her power and her sexual identity.
And to be fair, neither character completely matches her own ideal, though one undergoes actual characterization while the other regresses. Bayonetta starts as a bastion of self-interest, needing nobody but her information and item providing sidekicks/worshipers, but as the game progressives, she develops actual affection for her quasi-love interest and for a small child she has to protect. Okay, "strong woman learns to care for others through romance and motherhood" is not a great message, either, but at the same time, she is just as competent saving the world and fighting evil (well, evil-ish, they're mostly confused angels.) Bella, meanwhile, starts out at least showing signs of curiosity and the ability to solve a mystery. She only decides to turn her brain off after entering a relationship with a vampire. Even before, though, she is such an aggressive non-character. She hates the town she moves into, she hates the school, she hates her friends, she has no interests except for generic "reading," she just exists. At least Bayonetta has some interests beyond whittling a few notches in the celestial hierarchy.
I guess that's the answer. When making any character, you can't toss an archetype on them and call it a day. Give them interests, give them hobbies, give them activities beyond what their current adventure would call for. And if you make a female character, focus on this even more. It reminds me of a rule I discovered when I was younger and my creative talents were just starting to develop. Modern culture still is dominated by white male protagonists, but I find that working with minority characters is easier and more rewarding. With the dominant image of our society, you can get away with making them "the moron", or "the jerk," or "the loser." But such a simple, negative stereotype applied to a moron would look racist, sexist, or what have you. Do the same with a positive stereotype and you look like you're making a perfect token character. Neither is acceptable for any serious art, and so you're obligated to make a deeper character, one with faults and virtues.
Oh, right, this is a "Reviews," article, isn't it? Well, I'll make that part quick. Even ignoring the empty protagonist and the well-publicized creepy relationship she has with her chauvinistic stalker boyfriend, Twilight is a frustrating read. It starts out reasonably enough if you enter it without any presumptions, but by the time the relationship starts, the novel quickly regresses into a plot-free static. I was overjoyed when actual evil vampires arrived, but even they were defeated while Bella was conveniently unconscious. Bayonetta is a more traditional video game narrative, but it suffers from its own kind of extremism usually found in Capcom games (despite this one being made by Sega, albeit with old Capcom developers.) Every action you take is judged and graded, from individual fights to the entire level, and every deviation from perfection is penalized. Have to die and continue? Penalty! At least you still get an infinite number of them this time around. Use an item? Points lost! That's fair enough, since the only people who'd care that much about their score are the really hard-core fans. Everyone else will probably accept they won't get quite as many points as the perfect run types. The only real issue I have comes from the quick-time events, commonly call "press a button to not die." These show up all over the place, and if you miss the split-second command, you lose a continue and your score is ruined. These are game design philosophies that do not work well together. Still, I'd rather return to Bayonetta's world than Bella's any day of the week. Being male and all, it would be impossible for me not to.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Reviews: Behold The Same Damn Place!
I knew I forgot something! Well, more accurately, my delay was a combination of the leg thing, having a temporary job, and writing a novel (well, the first draft. And that's going to spawn at least another blog post,) keeping me busy. I'll try to play catch up in the next week or two, because I have ideas to burn. Starting with this one!
Due my continued being poor-ness, especially with the medical bills still an issue, I've been focusing on renting video games except for a few I got for my birthday last month. And I didn't beat them yet, so I'll worry about them later.
The latest game I rented was Bioshock 2, the not nearly as great sequel to one of the best games of 2007. I'm not saying it's bad; just a sequel not nearly as inspired as the original. The gameplay takes a step forward, but at least two steps back. But it's the story and setting that bothered me the most.
I'll start with the gameplay. The actual controls, at least, are better. The game lets you dual-wield your normal weaponry and magic-emulating plasmid superpowers. Not only does it get easier to select powers, but it's much easier to combine effects. Shock-stun an enemy and crush them in a melee weapon! Charge a super attack while simultaneous shooting enemies! And while there are few new weapons or powers, the ones they get are very cool. The improved versions of old powers lets you dominate enemies to make them long-lasting allies, summon robotic minions, create improved traps, or many more. The camera is replaced with one that records moving pictures (and mercifully doesn't require you to collect more film.) And the spear gun that lets you pin enemies to the wall? Priceless.
Beyond that, though, I wasn't impressed. The big problems include how linear the game became. Unlike the original, once you beat a level, it's gone. You can't return to collect recordings or items you missed, finish up with Little Sisters, or just visit particularly scary or compelling places. And speaking of the Little Sisters, while they cut the number of actual Sisters to only 12, once you collect one, to actually make full use of them, you have to let them collect ADAM from dead bodies while fighting off hordes of enemies who magically find you at that exact time. That barely sounds fun once. 24 per playthrough? This is MMORPG-level tedious.
The game just lacks creativity or even an ability to maintain its own theme. Take the enemies. There are only three new enemies in the game, all rare monsters, so you'll be fighting the same crazy people with melee weapons, guns, and occasional spider or invisibility powers as the last game. And the new guys are a bigger and stronger splicer and effectively two new types of big Daddies. That's EXACTLY what the game needs: more big, melee-heavy enemies that absorb a tons of fire. Why not create some monsters that actually use the potential of genetic engineering? Flying enemies that dive bomb or strafe you? Walking electric fields? Confusing enemies that create illusions or blind you?
And despite the game's premise that you're playing a Big Daddy yourself, albeit a prototype with different powers, you never once feel like one. Most of the weapons look bigger, but they rarely can kill enemies more effectively. The only weapon that really feels Big Daddy-esque is the giant drill weapon. And defensively, you feel far weaker than the first game. I barely last two seconds against enemy attacks. Sure, by the end of the game, I was walking death, but mostly because I was surrounded by three robotic or mind-controlled minions at all times. In other words, it came from the plasmids, nothing Big Daddy-related at all.
But forget all that. Despite the weaknesses, I enjoyed playing the game, just not as much as the original. It was the story and setting that bothered me the most. As scary and/or disturbing as the splicers and Big Daddies are, the really scary thing about the game is the city of Rapture itself, a ruins to fallen ideals populated by brilliant but misguided people who don't deserve the horrific fate of what they have become. A sequel was inevitable, but you can't simply repeat the scary thing in a horror game, but that's exactly what they've done. They just took a half dozen new loonies to replace the ones that screwed everything up last time and pretended that they were always there. Nice try, recordings of Andrew Ryan suddenly interested in new main villain Sofia Lamb! I'm not buying it!
Not that the game's plot is all bad. Once you get past the other new guys WHO WERE ALWAYS THERE and actually confront Sofia Lamb and the main plot-head on, it actually is affecting. Sure, the morality system is barely better than the original, but at least it shows some room for subtlety. And the game's only truly chilling moment, which I'll leave a gap before mentioning on the off chance anyone ever reads this and wants to avoid spoilers...
...appears here when you briefly see the world through a Little Sister's eyes and realize how truly horribly Raptured ruined these girls for personal gain.
But beyond that, the story just didn't grip me. It doesn't even really fit the setting. Sure, a communal government based on socialism is the logical mirror to the original games objectivism, but the latter fits the resulting city and the mad splicers scavenging for power far better than the former. What in the game is remotely for the common good? It's just people killing each other for ADAM all over again. Even the main villain's plan is less altruistic and more standard mad scientist.
I guess none of this would bother me as much if not for the fact that I at least feel I could do better. I had an idea for a sequel since the original came out, so I might as well share it. The trick is remembering that in a horror story, once you introduce the terrifying element, you can't just do it over and over again. That path leads to slasher horror sequels. You have to take that element and tweak it; expand it into a new world that makes it scary again in a whole new way. Compare Alien to Aliens, for example, or how Silent Hill 2 replaced the cult with a new and more personal story and was all the better for it.
In my version of Bioshock 2, shortly after the first game ends, the investigation of the plane crash and results of the ending (good is my canon version,) results in the public at large discovering the now nearly uninhabited Rapture. Soon, both the United States and the USSR have gotten their hooks into the place, both vying for the power that ADAM represents. A few years later, the water is drained, the old bodies disposed of, and Rapture is up and running again! Nothing could possibly go wrong!
With both unfriendly nations present, Rapture is basically Berlin Wall-era Germany underwater. The place is split into two sides, but there is a neutral zone between them and some groups, mostly engineers, are allowed to work in either location. It's the only way the electrical and hydraulics, which weren't built around the bisected city, can work. You play as one of those low-level grunts, too mundane for the leaders of either side to care. All of the sudden, we have political parallels to Ryan's libertarianism in the first game, but it makes perfect sense that they're there. All the men from Washington and beyond, Ryan's greatest fears, are there. And they're about to screw it up just as badly as he did.
That's where the horror of this game comes in. The player knows exactly what's going to happen to New Rapture, especially as the signs of disaster appear. But the characters remain as steadfast in the righteousness of their actions, as insistent that it can't happen again, not with the power of Uncle Sam/the people's will/God on their side! The suspense and horror of the inevitable builds, and by the time you hit the last third of the game, when Rapture again lies in ruins, things are all the more grim because you personally know many of the splicers and know for a fact that when your home went to hell, you did nothing (not that you could.) It allows for a broader ranger of moral options as well. Do you manage to talk you neighbors out of sending their daughter to that new school the government set up? Do you abandoned desperate refugees simply because they're from an enemy nation? Do you risk taking more plasmids early on knowing that, in the longer time frame of this game, you could actually start going mad before the conclusion?
This is a horror game with the ambition of the original Bioshock, one worth buying and not simply renting when you're done with Bayonetta. Which, conveniently, will be my next review! Or at least half of it.
Due my continued being poor-ness, especially with the medical bills still an issue, I've been focusing on renting video games except for a few I got for my birthday last month. And I didn't beat them yet, so I'll worry about them later.
The latest game I rented was Bioshock 2, the not nearly as great sequel to one of the best games of 2007. I'm not saying it's bad; just a sequel not nearly as inspired as the original. The gameplay takes a step forward, but at least two steps back. But it's the story and setting that bothered me the most.
I'll start with the gameplay. The actual controls, at least, are better. The game lets you dual-wield your normal weaponry and magic-emulating plasmid superpowers. Not only does it get easier to select powers, but it's much easier to combine effects. Shock-stun an enemy and crush them in a melee weapon! Charge a super attack while simultaneous shooting enemies! And while there are few new weapons or powers, the ones they get are very cool. The improved versions of old powers lets you dominate enemies to make them long-lasting allies, summon robotic minions, create improved traps, or many more. The camera is replaced with one that records moving pictures (and mercifully doesn't require you to collect more film.) And the spear gun that lets you pin enemies to the wall? Priceless.
Beyond that, though, I wasn't impressed. The big problems include how linear the game became. Unlike the original, once you beat a level, it's gone. You can't return to collect recordings or items you missed, finish up with Little Sisters, or just visit particularly scary or compelling places. And speaking of the Little Sisters, while they cut the number of actual Sisters to only 12, once you collect one, to actually make full use of them, you have to let them collect ADAM from dead bodies while fighting off hordes of enemies who magically find you at that exact time. That barely sounds fun once. 24 per playthrough? This is MMORPG-level tedious.
The game just lacks creativity or even an ability to maintain its own theme. Take the enemies. There are only three new enemies in the game, all rare monsters, so you'll be fighting the same crazy people with melee weapons, guns, and occasional spider or invisibility powers as the last game. And the new guys are a bigger and stronger splicer and effectively two new types of big Daddies. That's EXACTLY what the game needs: more big, melee-heavy enemies that absorb a tons of fire. Why not create some monsters that actually use the potential of genetic engineering? Flying enemies that dive bomb or strafe you? Walking electric fields? Confusing enemies that create illusions or blind you?
And despite the game's premise that you're playing a Big Daddy yourself, albeit a prototype with different powers, you never once feel like one. Most of the weapons look bigger, but they rarely can kill enemies more effectively. The only weapon that really feels Big Daddy-esque is the giant drill weapon. And defensively, you feel far weaker than the first game. I barely last two seconds against enemy attacks. Sure, by the end of the game, I was walking death, but mostly because I was surrounded by three robotic or mind-controlled minions at all times. In other words, it came from the plasmids, nothing Big Daddy-related at all.
But forget all that. Despite the weaknesses, I enjoyed playing the game, just not as much as the original. It was the story and setting that bothered me the most. As scary and/or disturbing as the splicers and Big Daddies are, the really scary thing about the game is the city of Rapture itself, a ruins to fallen ideals populated by brilliant but misguided people who don't deserve the horrific fate of what they have become. A sequel was inevitable, but you can't simply repeat the scary thing in a horror game, but that's exactly what they've done. They just took a half dozen new loonies to replace the ones that screwed everything up last time and pretended that they were always there. Nice try, recordings of Andrew Ryan suddenly interested in new main villain Sofia Lamb! I'm not buying it!
Not that the game's plot is all bad. Once you get past the other new guys WHO WERE ALWAYS THERE and actually confront Sofia Lamb and the main plot-head on, it actually is affecting. Sure, the morality system is barely better than the original, but at least it shows some room for subtlety. And the game's only truly chilling moment, which I'll leave a gap before mentioning on the off chance anyone ever reads this and wants to avoid spoilers...
...appears here when you briefly see the world through a Little Sister's eyes and realize how truly horribly Raptured ruined these girls for personal gain.
But beyond that, the story just didn't grip me. It doesn't even really fit the setting. Sure, a communal government based on socialism is the logical mirror to the original games objectivism, but the latter fits the resulting city and the mad splicers scavenging for power far better than the former. What in the game is remotely for the common good? It's just people killing each other for ADAM all over again. Even the main villain's plan is less altruistic and more standard mad scientist.
I guess none of this would bother me as much if not for the fact that I at least feel I could do better. I had an idea for a sequel since the original came out, so I might as well share it. The trick is remembering that in a horror story, once you introduce the terrifying element, you can't just do it over and over again. That path leads to slasher horror sequels. You have to take that element and tweak it; expand it into a new world that makes it scary again in a whole new way. Compare Alien to Aliens, for example, or how Silent Hill 2 replaced the cult with a new and more personal story and was all the better for it.
In my version of Bioshock 2, shortly after the first game ends, the investigation of the plane crash and results of the ending (good is my canon version,) results in the public at large discovering the now nearly uninhabited Rapture. Soon, both the United States and the USSR have gotten their hooks into the place, both vying for the power that ADAM represents. A few years later, the water is drained, the old bodies disposed of, and Rapture is up and running again! Nothing could possibly go wrong!
With both unfriendly nations present, Rapture is basically Berlin Wall-era Germany underwater. The place is split into two sides, but there is a neutral zone between them and some groups, mostly engineers, are allowed to work in either location. It's the only way the electrical and hydraulics, which weren't built around the bisected city, can work. You play as one of those low-level grunts, too mundane for the leaders of either side to care. All of the sudden, we have political parallels to Ryan's libertarianism in the first game, but it makes perfect sense that they're there. All the men from Washington and beyond, Ryan's greatest fears, are there. And they're about to screw it up just as badly as he did.
That's where the horror of this game comes in. The player knows exactly what's going to happen to New Rapture, especially as the signs of disaster appear. But the characters remain as steadfast in the righteousness of their actions, as insistent that it can't happen again, not with the power of Uncle Sam/the people's will/God on their side! The suspense and horror of the inevitable builds, and by the time you hit the last third of the game, when Rapture again lies in ruins, things are all the more grim because you personally know many of the splicers and know for a fact that when your home went to hell, you did nothing (not that you could.) It allows for a broader ranger of moral options as well. Do you manage to talk you neighbors out of sending their daughter to that new school the government set up? Do you abandoned desperate refugees simply because they're from an enemy nation? Do you risk taking more plasmids early on knowing that, in the longer time frame of this game, you could actually start going mad before the conclusion?
This is a horror game with the ambition of the original Bioshock, one worth buying and not simply renting when you're done with Bayonetta. Which, conveniently, will be my next review! Or at least half of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
