In the recently released Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter often repeated the riddle from the original book: How is a raven like a writing desk? It's supposed to be a crazy question, a sign of how wonderfully mad that Wonderland (or Underland, I guess,) is. But there are answers to this question, both easy and hard ones. That's sort of the problem with the movie, really. It's not nearly mad enough.
I am a Burton fan in general, having watched pretty much all his movies, even most of the produced-only stuff. And I enjoyed nearly all of them. I even will defend the much-maligned Willy Wonka. I won't defend Planet of the Apes, though, because it's the least Burton movie that Burton ever made. So it surprised me that Alice in Wonderland, a movie that should be perfect for style, is the Burton movie that suffered the most from a lack of inspiration. Part of the problem, I think is that both it and Planet of the Apes are more purely fantasy or sci-fi, while nearly every other Burton at least starts in the real world and drifts into magical realism from there.
It got me to think about the reason for speculative fiction in the first place. We group science-fiction and fantasy into one genre fairly often, but they exist for different reasons. Science fiction, at its best, starts with reality and goes from there. It's about how things change. Sure, it often is used for little more than an adventure flick with lasers, robots, and spaceships, but at least I can understand the fantasy. A world like ours only better with a much more dramatic reason to exist? Who wouldn't like that?
Fantasy, though, starts with completely different reasons. Can it just be escapism? It might seem so at first, but why? In real life, if we went to a magic fantasy world, we wouldn't last a day before missing working toilets and refrigerators. So the only real benefit to such a world is the meaning. And that's how fantasy differs from sci-fi. There is little need to tie a fantasy world into reality, but in exchange, fantasy has to be about the why. There must be a meaning, a thematic reason for this alternate reality to even exist.
The original Alice in Wonderland usually is associated with the politics and society as its time. It's a fantasy adventure and a satire. Unfortunately, society has moved on and nobody knows what exactly its satirizing now. But the character is too iconic to do away with. In particular, Alice is one of the most well-known female protagonists in modern history. So remaking Alice means having to come up with new meaning.
Hero, Tim Burton ultimately failed. Without his normal tweaking to the real world, he does little but the standard hero versus villain LotR fantasy variant. It's like the Narnia movie. As religious as this country is, it doesn't really share the same spiritual sensibilities as C.S. Lewis, so we ended up with lines of fantasy monsters running into each other.
And Wonderland of all places shouldn't be like this. Why is there even a need for a good queen versus evil queen battle? Why did it have to end with Alice slaying a dragon? Why the need for all the prophecy and chosen one stuff?
Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie at all. It has the arresting visual you'd expect in a 3D movie that costs this much to make, especially a guy who helped make Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands. Johhny Depp was mostly coasting, but he was entertaining enough, and Helena Bonham Carter was fine as the Red Queen. But it needed to answer why it existed. Most modern interpretations of Wonderland imply that it takes place in Alice's head, and that the challenges of that world prepares her to be a confident, assured young woman in the real world. But even though this movie goes the exact same way at the end, it goes out of its way to insist that the opposite is true. Alice insists throughout the movie that she's inside her own dream, only for it to be dis-proven in the end. So where is the meaning? Is it the Red Queen as reference to the exaggerated, proper world Alice came from? So what's the White Queen for? Who does the nice but slightly crazy pacifist alchemist represent in Alice's head? I know that you have a limited time to make a movie, but something like Wonderland in particular needs to avoid a classic three-act adventure structure.
By the way, the easy answer to the original question is: both have feathers. Well, fine, they did when the book was written, shut up. The hard one, though, is that both are related to death. Ravens live on death and consume it, and writing desks are made of it (wood, paper, the above-mentioned feathers when appropriate,) and it produces death. Any written idea is an idea solidified, an idea dead to the creator. And yet if done right, the idea could cause the little death that is change to others. But it doesn't seek to do that, then after it dies, it stays head.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
My Ideas: Or Maybe Reviews: The More Pretentious Side of Stealing Cars
I feel that I didn't give Grand Theft Auto IV the treatment it deserved. Sure, it had problems. Sure, the series itself hasn't changed that much since 3. And sure, nearly everything that could be said about the series has been said for the last two damn years or so. That...that's sort of a convincing argument, really.
Nonetheless, there is something I recently noticed that I haven't seen so much on our friend the Internet. If it isn't in a sub-thread on tvtropes, it's not a common theory, so here we go.
I'll start by focusing on a character that annoyed the crap out of me when I first played the game. Oh, spoilers coming up by the way. But again, it's been two years, so you had your chance.
The character is Florian, a friend of main character Niko's from the old country, a former member of his military unit, and for much of the game, possibly the traitor that got the rest of Niko's friends killed. But when Niko finally meets him, not only is he innocent, but he managed to completely turn his life around. He's living a peaceful life as an aerobics instructor, and he now goes by the name Bernie. Oh, and he's also gay. Really, flamboyantly gay.
Now, it's nice that a Grand Theft Auto game actually has a positive gay character. And after Niko learned Florian/Bernie was innocent, he befriended him again and helped him on several problems. But I was annoyed that he was such a stereotype. For a former soldier, he is incredibly useless in a fight, forcing Niko to do everything.
But as I thought about it, I realized that there is more to it than that. The game's main theme is about the horrors of war and violence and how people react to it. It's pretty established that those suffering from this past never emerged unscathed. That's true for Niko, of course, who's surprisingly honest about how shell-shocked he is. Most of the other characters are just as affected, but he puts up a persona to hide it. That's my theory at least for Roman's irrational optimism and the gambling addiction it manifests. Of course America is wonderful! Of course the future will be great! They have to be. Because home and the past were too horrible to contemplate, literally. Without that wonderful future to focus on, he'd actually have to think about and react to the past.
Hence Florian. Of course he'd be gay regardless of his history. And going from a conservative society to a liberal city in America with a healthy gay subculture, he'll probably embrace it. But that's not the only reason for his transformation. Florian saw all the terrible, traumatizing things that Niko did. But Bernie didn't. By becoming this new person, a person so completely different from his old life, he can have a happy life. You can see a bit of the old Florian at times, especially when Niko mentions Darko, the man who actually betrayed them. But that's the last thing he wants to be. If he goes back into his old life, his soldier's life, he has to deal with that memory again. For the same reason, it isn't vanity that makes him angry whenever Niko calls him Florian instead Bernie. It's because he ISN'T Florian anymore and he will never want to go back.
On a similar note, I think Dimitri, usually the main villain in the game, was not always the scheming disloyal rat he is revealed to be about a third of the way through the game. In fact, he wasn't even like that until immediately before he betrays the main character. He had his own traumatic past, including prison and life as a crime lord, but his breaking point came when he had to kill his own best friend to preserve his life.
Dimitri couldn't handle doing this or even stand to look at it, especially not while dealing with the man who physically did the deed and suddenly being forced to run an entire organized crime family when he previously could take a dispassionate look at his crimes and balance the books. So he created a new persona of his own: Dimitri the rascal, the rat, the betrayer. There is evidence throughout the game. He frequently blames Niko for his friend's death, never accepting his own responsibility for it. After all, as far as he was concerned, he didn't do it; the Rascal did. And the Rascal doesn't care. Or look at how his tendency to betray ceases to be even rational late into the game, especially in the "Deal" ending path. Even his voice changes after the incident. One might even argue that his constant attacks on Niko personally and those he cares about are an attempt to get Niko to kill him, the ultimate way to hide from the responsibility of his actions. This theory makes Dimitri a much more sympathetic character, or at least one with more depth, and one that is thus fitting for the darker version of Grand Theft Auto that this game strove for.
Nonetheless, there is something I recently noticed that I haven't seen so much on our friend the Internet. If it isn't in a sub-thread on tvtropes, it's not a common theory, so here we go.
I'll start by focusing on a character that annoyed the crap out of me when I first played the game. Oh, spoilers coming up by the way. But again, it's been two years, so you had your chance.
The character is Florian, a friend of main character Niko's from the old country, a former member of his military unit, and for much of the game, possibly the traitor that got the rest of Niko's friends killed. But when Niko finally meets him, not only is he innocent, but he managed to completely turn his life around. He's living a peaceful life as an aerobics instructor, and he now goes by the name Bernie. Oh, and he's also gay. Really, flamboyantly gay.
Now, it's nice that a Grand Theft Auto game actually has a positive gay character. And after Niko learned Florian/Bernie was innocent, he befriended him again and helped him on several problems. But I was annoyed that he was such a stereotype. For a former soldier, he is incredibly useless in a fight, forcing Niko to do everything.
But as I thought about it, I realized that there is more to it than that. The game's main theme is about the horrors of war and violence and how people react to it. It's pretty established that those suffering from this past never emerged unscathed. That's true for Niko, of course, who's surprisingly honest about how shell-shocked he is. Most of the other characters are just as affected, but he puts up a persona to hide it. That's my theory at least for Roman's irrational optimism and the gambling addiction it manifests. Of course America is wonderful! Of course the future will be great! They have to be. Because home and the past were too horrible to contemplate, literally. Without that wonderful future to focus on, he'd actually have to think about and react to the past.
Hence Florian. Of course he'd be gay regardless of his history. And going from a conservative society to a liberal city in America with a healthy gay subculture, he'll probably embrace it. But that's not the only reason for his transformation. Florian saw all the terrible, traumatizing things that Niko did. But Bernie didn't. By becoming this new person, a person so completely different from his old life, he can have a happy life. You can see a bit of the old Florian at times, especially when Niko mentions Darko, the man who actually betrayed them. But that's the last thing he wants to be. If he goes back into his old life, his soldier's life, he has to deal with that memory again. For the same reason, it isn't vanity that makes him angry whenever Niko calls him Florian instead Bernie. It's because he ISN'T Florian anymore and he will never want to go back.
On a similar note, I think Dimitri, usually the main villain in the game, was not always the scheming disloyal rat he is revealed to be about a third of the way through the game. In fact, he wasn't even like that until immediately before he betrays the main character. He had his own traumatic past, including prison and life as a crime lord, but his breaking point came when he had to kill his own best friend to preserve his life.
Dimitri couldn't handle doing this or even stand to look at it, especially not while dealing with the man who physically did the deed and suddenly being forced to run an entire organized crime family when he previously could take a dispassionate look at his crimes and balance the books. So he created a new persona of his own: Dimitri the rascal, the rat, the betrayer. There is evidence throughout the game. He frequently blames Niko for his friend's death, never accepting his own responsibility for it. After all, as far as he was concerned, he didn't do it; the Rascal did. And the Rascal doesn't care. Or look at how his tendency to betray ceases to be even rational late into the game, especially in the "Deal" ending path. Even his voice changes after the incident. One might even argue that his constant attacks on Niko personally and those he cares about are an attempt to get Niko to kill him, the ultimate way to hide from the responsibility of his actions. This theory makes Dimitri a much more sympathetic character, or at least one with more depth, and one that is thus fitting for the darker version of Grand Theft Auto that this game strove for.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reviews: Nit-Picking About Minor Actions of Extreme Violence
So, Grand Theft Auto 4. I almost feel bad about reviewing this one, because WHO HASN'T? It had its volley of exemplary reviews and the immediate backlash, to the point where there's practically nothing left to say.
But in case you haven't heard any of that, here's the quick summary. GTA4 is about the same as every GTA game since the third. It's a 3D action/shooting/driving game inside a larger, fully explorable city. This game play almost all takes place in the city itself, and in between or instead of missions, you can perform various mini-games or optional missions, find hidden items, or just go nuts and shoot people, evade the cops, or jump off buildings for no good reason. GTA4 reboots the series with a graphical update and complete design of New York-substitute Liberty City, and it is praised for its much deeper, serious story that connects with the dark criminal world the game takes place in. It also is criticized for that same story, as the series has always been known for sheer chaotic fun. More importantly, the game includes constant interruptions by your character's "friends," who are incapable of going a day without calling you, usually while you're doing something much more important, and asking you to get food, shoot pool, go to shows, or do other things not remotely related to the missions or the general mayhem. And if you refuse, they like you less and you lose some benefits. Oh, and also the driving is more realistic, and thus much worse for the insane high speed chases much of the game takes place.
But that's the stuff everyone praised or complained about. To make this review remotely worth it, I have to comment on the things that bugged me personally. For starters, there's the fact that all the friend and girlfriend interactions start exactly one in-game hour (about three minutes in real life,) after you make the plan. This is true if you're three blocks away from their house or if you're technically a state away and you have no chance of making the meeting unless you're already flying a helicopter at the time. If you're late, they dislike you even if you're a bit late, possibly lowering the approval instead of raising it. And they don't always show up at the same place! You could be midway to their normal location having prepared for this mess only to find they're on another island completely for no good reason.
The game includes a day planner, letting you know if there is a meeting on, say, six o'clock in three days. It's used about once in the normal game and maybe three other times for optional missions. What's the point? Why not set up these schedules up with your actual friends? And these silly things are so pointless. Going to a bar or getting food is just a time-waster. And you might enjoy the pool, darts, or bowling games, or watching the shows or...stripper lap dances (I won't judge.) But you can just do that anyway! You don't need a friend to help you with them. So why not give these games a point? Instead of generic date/hang out activities, how about there are actual missions, appearing randomly or after enough regular events, to surprise the player? It ties the friends/girlfriends to the plot better, you won't have to do as many irrelevant missions in the main story, and the surprising and fun missions make the player look forward to those silly dates.
This implies that the missions themselves get more interesting. Too many missions are one of a few things: go to a place and kill everyone, chase an escaping person and (usually) kill them, and...that's about it, really, and it's about the same as every GTA game I ever played. Some variety would be nice, or at least more optional ways to complete a mission. Even Crackdown, a superhero-themed copy of the GTA games, had many more options to beat a mission. And one more thing. Since Vice City or so, if you fail a mission, you have a way to restart the mission without driving back to the mission's start point. But you won't do it. You might if you just failed normally, but if you die, you lose 10% of your money (usually 1 to 2 times what you would earn for finishing it,) and if you are arrested, you lose that AND all your weapons! Nobody's going to do that when you can just load your last game. Why include such a useless feature. Maybe penalize the player for failing a random chaotic killing spree, but losing a mission shouldn't give these penalties at this point. We're beyond that.
But in case you haven't heard any of that, here's the quick summary. GTA4 is about the same as every GTA game since the third. It's a 3D action/shooting/driving game inside a larger, fully explorable city. This game play almost all takes place in the city itself, and in between or instead of missions, you can perform various mini-games or optional missions, find hidden items, or just go nuts and shoot people, evade the cops, or jump off buildings for no good reason. GTA4 reboots the series with a graphical update and complete design of New York-substitute Liberty City, and it is praised for its much deeper, serious story that connects with the dark criminal world the game takes place in. It also is criticized for that same story, as the series has always been known for sheer chaotic fun. More importantly, the game includes constant interruptions by your character's "friends," who are incapable of going a day without calling you, usually while you're doing something much more important, and asking you to get food, shoot pool, go to shows, or do other things not remotely related to the missions or the general mayhem. And if you refuse, they like you less and you lose some benefits. Oh, and also the driving is more realistic, and thus much worse for the insane high speed chases much of the game takes place.
But that's the stuff everyone praised or complained about. To make this review remotely worth it, I have to comment on the things that bugged me personally. For starters, there's the fact that all the friend and girlfriend interactions start exactly one in-game hour (about three minutes in real life,) after you make the plan. This is true if you're three blocks away from their house or if you're technically a state away and you have no chance of making the meeting unless you're already flying a helicopter at the time. If you're late, they dislike you even if you're a bit late, possibly lowering the approval instead of raising it. And they don't always show up at the same place! You could be midway to their normal location having prepared for this mess only to find they're on another island completely for no good reason.
The game includes a day planner, letting you know if there is a meeting on, say, six o'clock in three days. It's used about once in the normal game and maybe three other times for optional missions. What's the point? Why not set up these schedules up with your actual friends? And these silly things are so pointless. Going to a bar or getting food is just a time-waster. And you might enjoy the pool, darts, or bowling games, or watching the shows or...stripper lap dances (I won't judge.) But you can just do that anyway! You don't need a friend to help you with them. So why not give these games a point? Instead of generic date/hang out activities, how about there are actual missions, appearing randomly or after enough regular events, to surprise the player? It ties the friends/girlfriends to the plot better, you won't have to do as many irrelevant missions in the main story, and the surprising and fun missions make the player look forward to those silly dates.
This implies that the missions themselves get more interesting. Too many missions are one of a few things: go to a place and kill everyone, chase an escaping person and (usually) kill them, and...that's about it, really, and it's about the same as every GTA game I ever played. Some variety would be nice, or at least more optional ways to complete a mission. Even Crackdown, a superhero-themed copy of the GTA games, had many more options to beat a mission. And one more thing. Since Vice City or so, if you fail a mission, you have a way to restart the mission without driving back to the mission's start point. But you won't do it. You might if you just failed normally, but if you die, you lose 10% of your money (usually 1 to 2 times what you would earn for finishing it,) and if you are arrested, you lose that AND all your weapons! Nobody's going to do that when you can just load your last game. Why include such a useless feature. Maybe penalize the player for failing a random chaotic killing spree, but losing a mission shouldn't give these penalties at this point. We're beyond that.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
My Life: Happy Anniversary
Most of us, at least most of us who live in or care about America, have treated the last day or two as a commemorative occasion for Barack Obama. After his first year of being president, people have asked how that year has been. Has he lived up to expectations? Underperformed? Does he confirm or refute his opponents' fears? What will come from now?
I, however, think about something else this week. As a follower of politics, I also wonder about the Obama administration, but today is another, more direct anniversary. On January 21, the day after the inauguration, I was laid off from my last real job. Not that I blame him for that. I down he even had time to enact policy that would suddenly result in me getting fired in those twelve hours or so, and if the universe was somehow karmically attacking us for electing him, I would be a strange target of it.
So I'll worry less about him and figure out my own progress. This...hasn't been a good year. Sure, I had my fun. I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of TV, and read probably less than I should have. But there are other barometers to success, ones more important than that.
Artistically: Overall, I'm happy with my artistic progress this year. I still did less than I should, but I did do more than most. In April I wrote what is probably my proudest accomplishment to date creatively: my first REAL screenplay. Maybe it isn't my favorite creation of all time, but it falls only behind a few of my favorite video game design documents. And while neither the design documents nor a screenplay counts as a full product onto itself, a screenplay strikes me as at least as an artistic achievement unto itself and not a suggestion on how to make an artistic achievement. I'm less happy with my novel made last November, despite actual plans to sell it. But the idea is fine, and I'm in the process of rewriting it, primarily next month. I only did a page so far, but the new direction is already better, and it was met with approval at today's writer group.
Financially: This was not so good. My income was sporadic at best. The first few months and the last few months were nothing. And when did I find a job, it was a temporary one. Things looked like they improved. I did a week of work in April, a few weeks in June and July, and a few months from August to October. In the meantime, I had unemployment, but no matter how hard I looked, nothing else has come up. In the meantime, I looked for something more fulfilling. I mean finally getting a job that involves video games, writing, or at least something creative. No luck so far.
As for outgoing expense, things went fine until at least September, when my last roommate moved out. Since then, my rent cost doubled, and that I can't afford. I've been putting this off, out of distraction or simply hope that I find a new roommate. Why? Because I know what moving means. It means going from a relatively nice apartment to a room or two. It means putting half my stuff in storage for God knows how long. It means the act of moving. It means things are going to be different, and for the worst. But it has to be done very soon, like the end of the month or so.
Socially: Hoo boy. To be fair, I had reason to barely try this year. The poor, broke, and jobless are not the most appealing people to date. Now I had some luck making friends, or at least hanging out with the ones I have. It's just a shame that too many live like an hour away. Hey, maybe when forced to move, if that happens, it can be slightly closer to them! Yeah, that's not much of a silver lining, but it's something. And at least I know that one way or another, things will change this year. Maybe that means something good, like a job I actually care about or even selling something I've written. Maybe not. But at the very least I know if I don't change things under my own hand, things will change anyway. Because the last, desperate change is to move back in with my parents. And nobody wants that, especially my parents.
I, however, think about something else this week. As a follower of politics, I also wonder about the Obama administration, but today is another, more direct anniversary. On January 21, the day after the inauguration, I was laid off from my last real job. Not that I blame him for that. I down he even had time to enact policy that would suddenly result in me getting fired in those twelve hours or so, and if the universe was somehow karmically attacking us for electing him, I would be a strange target of it.
So I'll worry less about him and figure out my own progress. This...hasn't been a good year. Sure, I had my fun. I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of TV, and read probably less than I should have. But there are other barometers to success, ones more important than that.
Artistically: Overall, I'm happy with my artistic progress this year. I still did less than I should, but I did do more than most. In April I wrote what is probably my proudest accomplishment to date creatively: my first REAL screenplay. Maybe it isn't my favorite creation of all time, but it falls only behind a few of my favorite video game design documents. And while neither the design documents nor a screenplay counts as a full product onto itself, a screenplay strikes me as at least as an artistic achievement unto itself and not a suggestion on how to make an artistic achievement. I'm less happy with my novel made last November, despite actual plans to sell it. But the idea is fine, and I'm in the process of rewriting it, primarily next month. I only did a page so far, but the new direction is already better, and it was met with approval at today's writer group.
Financially: This was not so good. My income was sporadic at best. The first few months and the last few months were nothing. And when did I find a job, it was a temporary one. Things looked like they improved. I did a week of work in April, a few weeks in June and July, and a few months from August to October. In the meantime, I had unemployment, but no matter how hard I looked, nothing else has come up. In the meantime, I looked for something more fulfilling. I mean finally getting a job that involves video games, writing, or at least something creative. No luck so far.
As for outgoing expense, things went fine until at least September, when my last roommate moved out. Since then, my rent cost doubled, and that I can't afford. I've been putting this off, out of distraction or simply hope that I find a new roommate. Why? Because I know what moving means. It means going from a relatively nice apartment to a room or two. It means putting half my stuff in storage for God knows how long. It means the act of moving. It means things are going to be different, and for the worst. But it has to be done very soon, like the end of the month or so.
Socially: Hoo boy. To be fair, I had reason to barely try this year. The poor, broke, and jobless are not the most appealing people to date. Now I had some luck making friends, or at least hanging out with the ones I have. It's just a shame that too many live like an hour away. Hey, maybe when forced to move, if that happens, it can be slightly closer to them! Yeah, that's not much of a silver lining, but it's something. And at least I know that one way or another, things will change this year. Maybe that means something good, like a job I actually care about or even selling something I've written. Maybe not. But at the very least I know if I don't change things under my own hand, things will change anyway. Because the last, desperate change is to move back in with my parents. And nobody wants that, especially my parents.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Reviews: To prove I'm not dead, here's a series that likely is
No, I'm not dead. I've just been busy and a bit depressed. The holidays are great at inspiring both of these things, especially to someone unemployed and who has to move soon because he can't afford the place he currently lives.
This period also was the, at least temporary, end to a much less important segment of my life. My Gamefly account, useful as it's been, has been suspended due to the holidays, or more specifically the influx of games the holidays resulted in. I'm not 100% pleased with Dragon Age and New Super Mario Wii, the first Xmas games I've been playing, but both have been both entertaining and time consuming.
The Gamefly came to an end with Banjo: Nuts and Bolts, the latest of the Banjo Kazooie games that last appeared (in the main series, at least) on the Nintendo 64. It was a series I...huh. I had some affection for. That's the weird thing about Banjo. I remember the games, I enjoyed the games, but while I was nostalgic for the series, I can't say I especially cared for it, either. But we'll get to that element in a minute, because there is a much more crucial issue here: I HATE vehicles in non-vehicle games.
Something like the cars in Grand Theft Auto are normally fine (though the ones in GTA 4 have rubbed me the wrong way, hence why that one's near the back of my holiday games set.) But whether it's the dune buggies in Jak 3, the Mako in Mass Effect, and even Halo's famous Warthog, they just make me seethe. It's not the basic inclusion of a vehicle that's the problem, but the controls of these abominations are almost universally designed to get on my last nerve. If they aren't overshooting turns or getting themselves wedged into hallways or corners, they're taking a slight bump and immediately spinning around or flipping upside down on the first hill. I'm not a car or other vehicle guy in the real world, so maybe some of this is realistic. But I don't care. A vehicle is fine in a close race or when carefully dodging obstacles, not when I have to reset a race for the fifteenth time because a car can't even be trusted to stay pointed in the general direction of the target.
So Banjo: Nuts and Bolts was maybe not the best game for me. It has the same general premise of other Banjo games. The heroes, a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie, explore various platform-centric video game levels to collect umpteen prizes as part of a vague quest to stop the witch Gruntilda. But in Nuts and Bolts, the platforming itself is all but absent, replaced by endless (about 90 of them, all told,) vehicle challenges. Sometimes you use the vehicles the game forces on you, but usually you can get around in machines that the player makes. And the actual ACT of customizing your vehicle is fun (at first.)
But using them is another story. Your fragile little machines are often either too slow to function or so fast that they control like, well, the jet engine on wheels that they often are. Conversely, any vehicle with the weapons or unique widgets needed for a mission is often too heavy and unwieldy to actually use them, at least with skill.
And it doesn't help that this is otherwise a Banjo game. The Banjo series has always aped the Mario series, but to me at least it always missed the point. The levels were huge, beautiful, and full of surprises, but the actual act of exploring them was often either sterile or so excessive to be overkill. In a Mario game, getting a Star/Shine or whatnot always felt like a singular achievement. In Banjo, they felt like items off a checklist. The problem is that as you get farther into a game or the series, each item wasn't just at the end of a series of challenges and possibly guarded by a boss. You had to find a minor NPC, let it ask for help, and accomplish some minor task for them first. Sometimes you had to perform three or four minor tasks, often with their own requirements, just to get one of the 120 primary collectibles (called "jiggies".)
Nuts and Bolts kept up this tradition and took it one step farther by not even integrating the tasks as part of the normal world. Instead, each level just has the help-needed characters standing around and speaking to them triggers a mini-game. To make it worse, each mini-game now has some other requirement, usually a timer or score of some sort. You have to finish each mission within a limited time to even get the jiggy, so it's entirely plausible to successfully finish a mission and still get next to nothing for it. AND there now are trophies that you get for each mini-game mission requiring you to do even better than the requirements for getting the jiggy. And each trophy is worth a quarter of a jiggy, so you have to get all THOSE as well to get everything in the game. AND FINALLY (phew,) the other major collectible in Banjo games, friendly animals called Jinjos, no longer can just be grabbed as you find them. No, that would be too easy. Instead, each one has their own mini-game now, tossing another 50 or so mini-games onto the list, those these at least are pass/fail. It's like Rare took all the complaints about too many collectibles into account but misunderstand the reasons for the complaints completely.
As for the mini-games themselves, they aren't exactly impressive. Most, Jiggy or Jinjo, require to transport some other objects from point a from point b, fight off hordes of enemies, taxi characters around, or win races. Oh, gods, the races. One of the reasons I dislike vehicles in games is the need to have to gallivant around areas while driving or flying through a bunch of tiny rings. This game has so many of these challenges that I easily lost count. There are a few boss fights, but not nearly as many as one can hope, and those few are just about dismantling someone else's vehicle, not a real boss fight. Considering how the boss fights, especially the final bosses, of the earlier games are among their most memorable moments, losing these really felt like a waste.
That brings up the original question of why I bothered playing this game, let alone to completion and near-total collection victory (no way in hell was I getting those 90 trophies, though.) Part of it was the memories. The series never really had the characters or world that something like Mario has, where every element is just so full of life and character. Honestly, except for the rhyming, horrific main villain, everyone's a cipher. But the series has its charms. In particular, it has a sense of humor, a self-awareness of how ridiculous this how is and how none of it can be taken seriously. And the levels themselves are often visually impressive. This game fell apart a bit here as well, with too many levels consisting of one big enclosed room with just a few hallways and side-rooms for variety, but even they were awesome in scope. The first level of the game was much better; an artificial farm surround by walls to hint that the whole thing is just a video game. But the game went beyond that, as the edges of the world had literal gears you can climb on, emulating the old days of platformers, and a flying vehicle could climb higher to see rotating artificial clouds, a "sun" in the form of a giant lamp, and the giant gear that operated this entire reality. And then you could leap into the volcano a mile below for fun.
The game's "hub" world, a massive town consisting of six major districts, was especially impressive. It wasn't a Grand Theft Auto city, no, but the way it expands and connects all of its elements made the whole thing more real than your typical action-adventure experience. It's telling that the very last thing I did before I returned the game was travel to the highest point in town, looked at all the lands I had explored and conquered, and sighed as I surveyed the areas beyond the city. What was that bridge to the east, the manor to the south, the farmlands and ocean that probably took up the free time of programmers for days yet did nothing? As I looked around, the music having muted itself as it traditionally does at high altitudes in a Banjo game, I felt that thrill to explore come over me, a sense of wonder possibly gone forever as the platforming games vanish from the face of consoles. If only I had a vehicle there.
This period also was the, at least temporary, end to a much less important segment of my life. My Gamefly account, useful as it's been, has been suspended due to the holidays, or more specifically the influx of games the holidays resulted in. I'm not 100% pleased with Dragon Age and New Super Mario Wii, the first Xmas games I've been playing, but both have been both entertaining and time consuming.
The Gamefly came to an end with Banjo: Nuts and Bolts, the latest of the Banjo Kazooie games that last appeared (in the main series, at least) on the Nintendo 64. It was a series I...huh. I had some affection for. That's the weird thing about Banjo. I remember the games, I enjoyed the games, but while I was nostalgic for the series, I can't say I especially cared for it, either. But we'll get to that element in a minute, because there is a much more crucial issue here: I HATE vehicles in non-vehicle games.
Something like the cars in Grand Theft Auto are normally fine (though the ones in GTA 4 have rubbed me the wrong way, hence why that one's near the back of my holiday games set.) But whether it's the dune buggies in Jak 3, the Mako in Mass Effect, and even Halo's famous Warthog, they just make me seethe. It's not the basic inclusion of a vehicle that's the problem, but the controls of these abominations are almost universally designed to get on my last nerve. If they aren't overshooting turns or getting themselves wedged into hallways or corners, they're taking a slight bump and immediately spinning around or flipping upside down on the first hill. I'm not a car or other vehicle guy in the real world, so maybe some of this is realistic. But I don't care. A vehicle is fine in a close race or when carefully dodging obstacles, not when I have to reset a race for the fifteenth time because a car can't even be trusted to stay pointed in the general direction of the target.
So Banjo: Nuts and Bolts was maybe not the best game for me. It has the same general premise of other Banjo games. The heroes, a bear named Banjo and a bird named Kazooie, explore various platform-centric video game levels to collect umpteen prizes as part of a vague quest to stop the witch Gruntilda. But in Nuts and Bolts, the platforming itself is all but absent, replaced by endless (about 90 of them, all told,) vehicle challenges. Sometimes you use the vehicles the game forces on you, but usually you can get around in machines that the player makes. And the actual ACT of customizing your vehicle is fun (at first.)
But using them is another story. Your fragile little machines are often either too slow to function or so fast that they control like, well, the jet engine on wheels that they often are. Conversely, any vehicle with the weapons or unique widgets needed for a mission is often too heavy and unwieldy to actually use them, at least with skill.
And it doesn't help that this is otherwise a Banjo game. The Banjo series has always aped the Mario series, but to me at least it always missed the point. The levels were huge, beautiful, and full of surprises, but the actual act of exploring them was often either sterile or so excessive to be overkill. In a Mario game, getting a Star/Shine or whatnot always felt like a singular achievement. In Banjo, they felt like items off a checklist. The problem is that as you get farther into a game or the series, each item wasn't just at the end of a series of challenges and possibly guarded by a boss. You had to find a minor NPC, let it ask for help, and accomplish some minor task for them first. Sometimes you had to perform three or four minor tasks, often with their own requirements, just to get one of the 120 primary collectibles (called "jiggies".)
Nuts and Bolts kept up this tradition and took it one step farther by not even integrating the tasks as part of the normal world. Instead, each level just has the help-needed characters standing around and speaking to them triggers a mini-game. To make it worse, each mini-game now has some other requirement, usually a timer or score of some sort. You have to finish each mission within a limited time to even get the jiggy, so it's entirely plausible to successfully finish a mission and still get next to nothing for it. AND there now are trophies that you get for each mini-game mission requiring you to do even better than the requirements for getting the jiggy. And each trophy is worth a quarter of a jiggy, so you have to get all THOSE as well to get everything in the game. AND FINALLY (phew,) the other major collectible in Banjo games, friendly animals called Jinjos, no longer can just be grabbed as you find them. No, that would be too easy. Instead, each one has their own mini-game now, tossing another 50 or so mini-games onto the list, those these at least are pass/fail. It's like Rare took all the complaints about too many collectibles into account but misunderstand the reasons for the complaints completely.
As for the mini-games themselves, they aren't exactly impressive. Most, Jiggy or Jinjo, require to transport some other objects from point a from point b, fight off hordes of enemies, taxi characters around, or win races. Oh, gods, the races. One of the reasons I dislike vehicles in games is the need to have to gallivant around areas while driving or flying through a bunch of tiny rings. This game has so many of these challenges that I easily lost count. There are a few boss fights, but not nearly as many as one can hope, and those few are just about dismantling someone else's vehicle, not a real boss fight. Considering how the boss fights, especially the final bosses, of the earlier games are among their most memorable moments, losing these really felt like a waste.
That brings up the original question of why I bothered playing this game, let alone to completion and near-total collection victory (no way in hell was I getting those 90 trophies, though.) Part of it was the memories. The series never really had the characters or world that something like Mario has, where every element is just so full of life and character. Honestly, except for the rhyming, horrific main villain, everyone's a cipher. But the series has its charms. In particular, it has a sense of humor, a self-awareness of how ridiculous this how is and how none of it can be taken seriously. And the levels themselves are often visually impressive. This game fell apart a bit here as well, with too many levels consisting of one big enclosed room with just a few hallways and side-rooms for variety, but even they were awesome in scope. The first level of the game was much better; an artificial farm surround by walls to hint that the whole thing is just a video game. But the game went beyond that, as the edges of the world had literal gears you can climb on, emulating the old days of platformers, and a flying vehicle could climb higher to see rotating artificial clouds, a "sun" in the form of a giant lamp, and the giant gear that operated this entire reality. And then you could leap into the volcano a mile below for fun.
The game's "hub" world, a massive town consisting of six major districts, was especially impressive. It wasn't a Grand Theft Auto city, no, but the way it expands and connects all of its elements made the whole thing more real than your typical action-adventure experience. It's telling that the very last thing I did before I returned the game was travel to the highest point in town, looked at all the lands I had explored and conquered, and sighed as I surveyed the areas beyond the city. What was that bridge to the east, the manor to the south, the farmlands and ocean that probably took up the free time of programmers for days yet did nothing? As I looked around, the music having muted itself as it traditionally does at high altitudes in a Banjo game, I felt that thrill to explore come over me, a sense of wonder possibly gone forever as the platforming games vanish from the face of consoles. If only I had a vehicle there.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Reviews: Doom, Boring Boring Doom
So, I finished another National Novel Writing Month this week. I can't say it was my best work. On the plus side, I think I know the problem. I need a better voice for the story itself, for one thing. But I can get into this more next week. For now, I'm going over another video game review. The last game I played to completion was Dead Space.
Dead Space is a survival horror game, and like other games of this genre, it is intended to work both to excite the players through normal game play and to invoke fear as any scary fiction is. Obviously the former affects the latter, but I my response to each element is so different that I will treat them separately.
The game takes place in the far future on a space station on the outskirts of human civilization, in the fine tradition of movies from Alien to Event Horizon. You play Isaac Clark, an engineer and part of a team sent to investigate and repair the station, only to learn that by the time they got there, the place is overrun with monsters and most of the crew is dead.
In terms of game play, it's a pretty decent game. You play the game from behind Isaac's back in a situation nearly identical to Resident Evil 4. You can directly aim at targets to hit specific body parts, and the game uses this cleverly by giving enemies weak points on not just their head, but also their limbs. You can blow off one or more arms and legs, and enemies will react appropriately by crawling at you should their legs be gone or even stagger around blindly without a head! There are the usual advancement and customization options, including multiple selectable weapons, upgrades to your weapons and armor, and money to collect and use for new weapons, armor, and supplies.
Nothing here is original, though the setting is very notable. The space setting includes many areas that are now in a vacuum, giving a limited time that to do your job and escape and altering your sound and game play, while other areas (often the same ones) are in zero gravity and let you leap to nearby walls or ceilings. The end result is a very enjoyable game, one I defeated twice in a row in rapid succession, with only two issues that tend to bother me. The first is yet another game that emphasizes enemy grapple attacks, which require wild button flailing to escape each time and occur far to often. The other is a bad habit of enemies popping out of literally nowhere behind you. I understand this is a clever monster tactic, and it makes sense in a game that already warned you about popping out of ventilation ducts and such, but I never thought the game didn't give you enough visual or sound warning that these things attack you.
But nobody plays survival horrors for the action alone. They have to at least try to scare you, and the game does that. That is where things get tricky, though. I know part of that is a personal issue. As I think I said before, monsters make me giggle. I treat the arrival of Pyramid Head like they greeted Norm on Cheers, and horrible abominations just make me want to make my own designs worse. But there are other kinds of fear in games. There is the classic "startle" fear, where something comes out of nowhere, even if the thing is technically not a threat. And there is simple environmental fears, where an oppressive and hostile location is enough to inspire, if not outright panic, at least a continual dread. This game is good at this element, with everything from ominous chanting and songs over the station intercom and the corpses of dead cultists to entire rooms coated with dripping organic material and the still-living victims trapped in nightmarish forms.
And it's here that I had some complaints. Throughout the game, your run into the rare survivors on the space station, though I use the word "survivor" is very loosely. Most of the survivors are either dying from wounds, driven mad to the point of suicide, or both. After a while, the inevitability of these events ruing any shock value. Oh wow, another crazy person shot herself in the head? Shock. It's not like you can do anything about it. You can't give medical attention, intervene before the crazies kill others or themselves, or even kill them yourself to shorten their suffering. There is even one woman who doesn't do anything or suffer any wound; she just stands somewhere, giggling. And you can't do squat! No dragging her to safety, no helping her recover, you can't even say sorry. Two minutes later all the air is dumped from the area and she's dead anyway.
So why should I care? I can understand that your main character is voiceless and his only back story or personality is tied to a girlfriend who worked on the station and may be in danger throughout the game. But it disaffects you after a while. That's why the similarly-named Dead Rising was much more terrifying to me, despite being the wacky, lighter zombie apocalypse. There were tons of obviously doomed survivors, but there were almost fifty people you could also rescue, but most were not obligatory. You could fail to find them in time or lead them to your doom, and if they die horrible deaths, it's because you failed. After all the years of games, screaming walls of flesh or half-human monsters with spike tentacles growing out of the backs don't scare me. The clock does.
Save for Dead Rising, this was probably my favorite of my recently rated games. It was frustrating at times, but also fun, with an atmosphere that doesn't near that of Silent Hill but at least is a good imitation. But as a scary game, it could have been much more effective just by combining the fear with the game play better and by investing me a bit. What's so scary about dead space without live space, after all?
Dead Space is a survival horror game, and like other games of this genre, it is intended to work both to excite the players through normal game play and to invoke fear as any scary fiction is. Obviously the former affects the latter, but I my response to each element is so different that I will treat them separately.
The game takes place in the far future on a space station on the outskirts of human civilization, in the fine tradition of movies from Alien to Event Horizon. You play Isaac Clark, an engineer and part of a team sent to investigate and repair the station, only to learn that by the time they got there, the place is overrun with monsters and most of the crew is dead.
In terms of game play, it's a pretty decent game. You play the game from behind Isaac's back in a situation nearly identical to Resident Evil 4. You can directly aim at targets to hit specific body parts, and the game uses this cleverly by giving enemies weak points on not just their head, but also their limbs. You can blow off one or more arms and legs, and enemies will react appropriately by crawling at you should their legs be gone or even stagger around blindly without a head! There are the usual advancement and customization options, including multiple selectable weapons, upgrades to your weapons and armor, and money to collect and use for new weapons, armor, and supplies.
Nothing here is original, though the setting is very notable. The space setting includes many areas that are now in a vacuum, giving a limited time that to do your job and escape and altering your sound and game play, while other areas (often the same ones) are in zero gravity and let you leap to nearby walls or ceilings. The end result is a very enjoyable game, one I defeated twice in a row in rapid succession, with only two issues that tend to bother me. The first is yet another game that emphasizes enemy grapple attacks, which require wild button flailing to escape each time and occur far to often. The other is a bad habit of enemies popping out of literally nowhere behind you. I understand this is a clever monster tactic, and it makes sense in a game that already warned you about popping out of ventilation ducts and such, but I never thought the game didn't give you enough visual or sound warning that these things attack you.
But nobody plays survival horrors for the action alone. They have to at least try to scare you, and the game does that. That is where things get tricky, though. I know part of that is a personal issue. As I think I said before, monsters make me giggle. I treat the arrival of Pyramid Head like they greeted Norm on Cheers, and horrible abominations just make me want to make my own designs worse. But there are other kinds of fear in games. There is the classic "startle" fear, where something comes out of nowhere, even if the thing is technically not a threat. And there is simple environmental fears, where an oppressive and hostile location is enough to inspire, if not outright panic, at least a continual dread. This game is good at this element, with everything from ominous chanting and songs over the station intercom and the corpses of dead cultists to entire rooms coated with dripping organic material and the still-living victims trapped in nightmarish forms.
And it's here that I had some complaints. Throughout the game, your run into the rare survivors on the space station, though I use the word "survivor" is very loosely. Most of the survivors are either dying from wounds, driven mad to the point of suicide, or both. After a while, the inevitability of these events ruing any shock value. Oh wow, another crazy person shot herself in the head? Shock. It's not like you can do anything about it. You can't give medical attention, intervene before the crazies kill others or themselves, or even kill them yourself to shorten their suffering. There is even one woman who doesn't do anything or suffer any wound; she just stands somewhere, giggling. And you can't do squat! No dragging her to safety, no helping her recover, you can't even say sorry. Two minutes later all the air is dumped from the area and she's dead anyway.
So why should I care? I can understand that your main character is voiceless and his only back story or personality is tied to a girlfriend who worked on the station and may be in danger throughout the game. But it disaffects you after a while. That's why the similarly-named Dead Rising was much more terrifying to me, despite being the wacky, lighter zombie apocalypse. There were tons of obviously doomed survivors, but there were almost fifty people you could also rescue, but most were not obligatory. You could fail to find them in time or lead them to your doom, and if they die horrible deaths, it's because you failed. After all the years of games, screaming walls of flesh or half-human monsters with spike tentacles growing out of the backs don't scare me. The clock does.
Save for Dead Rising, this was probably my favorite of my recently rated games. It was frustrating at times, but also fun, with an atmosphere that doesn't near that of Silent Hill but at least is a good imitation. But as a scary game, it could have been much more effective just by combining the fear with the game play better and by investing me a bit. What's so scary about dead space without live space, after all?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Rantings: Doing My Good Deed
This discussion actually starts with a review. A few weeks ago, I completed the game Iji for about the fourth time. You may not have heard of this game, and I'd understand, because it's a completely free indie game available, as far as I know, only on computers. Iji is basically a 2-D shooting/action game. You play as Iji, a hapless girl who survived a planetary attack by aliens and turned into a combat-capable cyborg to fight them off. You run around through ten levels, fighting or evading aliens with the occasional boss fight. So far, it's pretty standard. It has plenty of appealing features, including well-animated if simplified characters, an excellent soundtrack, three secrets per level, and RPG-elements like gaining experience and using it to customize your character by improving your maximum health, attack strength, weapons you can carry, and more unusual abilities like strength to kick down stronger doors and larger enemies.
But what really caught my attention in the game were the story and the control you have over it. The game is both incredibly detailed and gritty to an almost nihilistic point. The detail comes from the conversations and the motivations of enemies. Even the final boss is a flawed but relatable figure, earning sympathy despite being responsible for countless deaths. In the meantime, as you progress through the game, you get logbooks from all sides of the enemy groups, from soldiers both in favor of and against their leaders to hackers and criminals seeking to exploit their own forces, to scared and desperate soldiers panicked about their own lives and those of their loved ones.
They also write about you. And these reports, along with the rest of the discussion, change based on your actions. And despite being a cybernetic super-soldier with a morphing weapon, you can happily avoid fights. In fact, if you deliberately avoid killing enough soldiers, you can attract allies among the enemy ranks, form nonviolence pacts, and even avoid entire boss fights! The game keeps track of all your kills, and if you follow a pacifism run, you can end up with zero kills at all. Well, you can end up with any direct kills, at least. Conversely, if you blow your way through every alien in your path, not only will the logbooks and conversation treat you as a murderous lunatic, but Iji herself will speaking differently. If you kills enemies in the beginning, she'll actually apologize to the enemies she kills, but this will stop with time, and eventually she'll start screaming at her foes and laughing at their deaths.
All of this contrasts nicely with a similarly-themed video game I recently played, Mirror's Edge, which I believe I already discussed. We have the same skilled heroine fighting against an evil empire, and in both cases while violence is an option, it's neither necessarily nor encouraged. Faith, a skilled parkour enthusiast, can steal guns from enemies and use them, but it slows her down immensely. And if you don't shoot any enemies (not counting a plot point where you have to shoot a truck with a sniper rifle,) you even get an achievement called Test of Faith.
But unlike Iji, it doesn't matter that much in the game. There is no real point in terms of the story. For one thing, death itself is not an issue. No, you don't have to shoot anyone, but kicking them off buildings where they fall to a horrible death is A-OK! That's even obligatory at one point in the game, where she does that to a villain via cut-scene. And the plot won't be affected by your actions either way. They same police will shoot you on sight regardless of how you treated them before, so barring some personal satisfaction all you're doing is making the game harder (and believe me, it makes a few places where you have to fight much harder.)
These two games illustrate a fairly recent gameplay feature called the "Karma Meter." In addition to simply playing to beat the game, the player can alter the flow of the game, or at minimum the ending, based on how good or bad a person you play as. What that entails is based on the game. In Mass Effect, you are a loyal marine out to save the galaxy no matter what the player chooses, and you can be either an idealistic "good cop" or an intimidating "bad cop." Fallout 3, conversely, lets you be a savior who rescues captives, wipes out entire towns of slavers, and sacrifices yourself for the good of others, or a horrible monster capable of blowing up entire cities for personal profit, murdering your childhood friend, EATING people, or enslaving children.
Am I a fan of this feature? Yes, in general, but it comes at a price. I believe I spoke of the range between linear storytelling and free-form, totally customized gameplay. Neither is bad, but the simple fact is that every branch of a linear story, that story can't be as concise. Letting the player choose, for example, to betray a friend at a crucial moment can have significant impact in both ways, but you just won't have as much time or development cost and space to plan each ensuing path as you could if one path was the only choice. But making excellent stories on both paths is viable. In three of my favorite ideas, one has a normal "bad ending" and a more complex "good ending" by accomplishing special tasks, another has branches towards good, evil, and simply crazy routes, and a third game potentially alter reality based on your actions so the events of the game are either a crusade to save the world or the hallucination of a psychopath.
But a good karma meter needs some standards. First of all, a karma meter needs to be sensible. Fallout 3 has that problem with a few choices. In one instance, killing a man who murdered an entire city full of innocents and is willing to destroy another town simply due to bigotry will result in...negative karma? The technical reason is the character was a more sympathetic one earlier and their karma state couldn't be changed afterward, but it breaks suspension of disbelief and makes the entire game's ethic system seem compromised. Even Iji has a few issues. Your pacifism run prevents you from killing anyone directly, but to accomplish it, you must set a trap that kills someone and help an ally kill another even though you don't fire that last shot. You can also kill people by indirectly sending vehicles or shrapnel at enemies or standing near other targets when an explosive attack flies at you, letting them be damaged by it as well.
The second standard is how much it affects the game if you stick to it. In Iji, the pacifism has almost no effect on the ending. At most a line or two changes, but the rest of the game shows the fruits of your action. Fallout 3 is another positive example. NPCs will comment based on your actions, and some characters will even give you free supplies. The main radio station in the game will also comment on how good or evil your actions were in their various missions and introduce you based on your overall good or evil rating.
The last standard is much harder and is tied to the system's complexity. If a system tracks just one thing, like your kill count, that's fine. But many systems track everything from thievery to murder on the same scale. Usually murder costs you more, but the results are still just numbers. You could go on a city-wide killing spree, and if you give pittance to a few beggars it might balance the scaled, even if you then kill that same beggar! Arguably, certain actions should knock you below maximum range and no actions should correct it, or at least only the noblest actions should correct it. But then what about reform? Can't even the darkest of people get the chance to make things right, at least in the escapism of a video game?
As the system gets more complicated, it requires more effort, but the rewards will be more than worth it. If you care enough to give the game the choices, you should give those choices the respect it deserves.
But what really caught my attention in the game were the story and the control you have over it. The game is both incredibly detailed and gritty to an almost nihilistic point. The detail comes from the conversations and the motivations of enemies. Even the final boss is a flawed but relatable figure, earning sympathy despite being responsible for countless deaths. In the meantime, as you progress through the game, you get logbooks from all sides of the enemy groups, from soldiers both in favor of and against their leaders to hackers and criminals seeking to exploit their own forces, to scared and desperate soldiers panicked about their own lives and those of their loved ones.
They also write about you. And these reports, along with the rest of the discussion, change based on your actions. And despite being a cybernetic super-soldier with a morphing weapon, you can happily avoid fights. In fact, if you deliberately avoid killing enough soldiers, you can attract allies among the enemy ranks, form nonviolence pacts, and even avoid entire boss fights! The game keeps track of all your kills, and if you follow a pacifism run, you can end up with zero kills at all. Well, you can end up with any direct kills, at least. Conversely, if you blow your way through every alien in your path, not only will the logbooks and conversation treat you as a murderous lunatic, but Iji herself will speaking differently. If you kills enemies in the beginning, she'll actually apologize to the enemies she kills, but this will stop with time, and eventually she'll start screaming at her foes and laughing at their deaths.
All of this contrasts nicely with a similarly-themed video game I recently played, Mirror's Edge, which I believe I already discussed. We have the same skilled heroine fighting against an evil empire, and in both cases while violence is an option, it's neither necessarily nor encouraged. Faith, a skilled parkour enthusiast, can steal guns from enemies and use them, but it slows her down immensely. And if you don't shoot any enemies (not counting a plot point where you have to shoot a truck with a sniper rifle,) you even get an achievement called Test of Faith.
But unlike Iji, it doesn't matter that much in the game. There is no real point in terms of the story. For one thing, death itself is not an issue. No, you don't have to shoot anyone, but kicking them off buildings where they fall to a horrible death is A-OK! That's even obligatory at one point in the game, where she does that to a villain via cut-scene. And the plot won't be affected by your actions either way. They same police will shoot you on sight regardless of how you treated them before, so barring some personal satisfaction all you're doing is making the game harder (and believe me, it makes a few places where you have to fight much harder.)
These two games illustrate a fairly recent gameplay feature called the "Karma Meter." In addition to simply playing to beat the game, the player can alter the flow of the game, or at minimum the ending, based on how good or bad a person you play as. What that entails is based on the game. In Mass Effect, you are a loyal marine out to save the galaxy no matter what the player chooses, and you can be either an idealistic "good cop" or an intimidating "bad cop." Fallout 3, conversely, lets you be a savior who rescues captives, wipes out entire towns of slavers, and sacrifices yourself for the good of others, or a horrible monster capable of blowing up entire cities for personal profit, murdering your childhood friend, EATING people, or enslaving children.
Am I a fan of this feature? Yes, in general, but it comes at a price. I believe I spoke of the range between linear storytelling and free-form, totally customized gameplay. Neither is bad, but the simple fact is that every branch of a linear story, that story can't be as concise. Letting the player choose, for example, to betray a friend at a crucial moment can have significant impact in both ways, but you just won't have as much time or development cost and space to plan each ensuing path as you could if one path was the only choice. But making excellent stories on both paths is viable. In three of my favorite ideas, one has a normal "bad ending" and a more complex "good ending" by accomplishing special tasks, another has branches towards good, evil, and simply crazy routes, and a third game potentially alter reality based on your actions so the events of the game are either a crusade to save the world or the hallucination of a psychopath.
But a good karma meter needs some standards. First of all, a karma meter needs to be sensible. Fallout 3 has that problem with a few choices. In one instance, killing a man who murdered an entire city full of innocents and is willing to destroy another town simply due to bigotry will result in...negative karma? The technical reason is the character was a more sympathetic one earlier and their karma state couldn't be changed afterward, but it breaks suspension of disbelief and makes the entire game's ethic system seem compromised. Even Iji has a few issues. Your pacifism run prevents you from killing anyone directly, but to accomplish it, you must set a trap that kills someone and help an ally kill another even though you don't fire that last shot. You can also kill people by indirectly sending vehicles or shrapnel at enemies or standing near other targets when an explosive attack flies at you, letting them be damaged by it as well.
The second standard is how much it affects the game if you stick to it. In Iji, the pacifism has almost no effect on the ending. At most a line or two changes, but the rest of the game shows the fruits of your action. Fallout 3 is another positive example. NPCs will comment based on your actions, and some characters will even give you free supplies. The main radio station in the game will also comment on how good or evil your actions were in their various missions and introduce you based on your overall good or evil rating.
The last standard is much harder and is tied to the system's complexity. If a system tracks just one thing, like your kill count, that's fine. But many systems track everything from thievery to murder on the same scale. Usually murder costs you more, but the results are still just numbers. You could go on a city-wide killing spree, and if you give pittance to a few beggars it might balance the scaled, even if you then kill that same beggar! Arguably, certain actions should knock you below maximum range and no actions should correct it, or at least only the noblest actions should correct it. But then what about reform? Can't even the darkest of people get the chance to make things right, at least in the escapism of a video game?
As the system gets more complicated, it requires more effort, but the rewards will be more than worth it. If you care enough to give the game the choices, you should give those choices the respect it deserves.
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