Promises kept

 Promises made

The other day I penned a blog talking about the rigorous betrayal of promises broken upon the altar of lies. The consequences, the lingering stink of breaking oaths. The inevitable drunken festering of staring eyes, and pointing fingers that inevitably blossom next- the poppy harvest of composting dreams. But what if I just throw that on it's head and talk about the total opposite. Promises kept. "Why, that's got to be the font of endless positivity, right?" Well, well, my hopeless optimistic friend, you might think that but I counter- what about a threat? That's a promise too, is it not? And a threat kept is a danger realised. Do we celebrate merely for the prophesized reaching fruition? Of course not, we scream and panic and cry and woe the day that Paramount ever decided it was going to be their turn to spit on the institution we call video game TV shows.

Halo is indeed going to be receiving it's season 2. As little as we all want to accept it, there's not a dang thing any one of us can do. The show created by a team of people who actively laughed at the source material and believed themselves to be such an 'heightened' form of creator that they could rewrite the very basic essence of everything the games were- they've got themselves a sequel. So now our helmet-less, rebel-rousing, sexual war crime committing, Master Chief can disgrace the name of his position once more with a narrative deeply confused about what Halo was originally about. It's space military fiction with a touch of space fantasy rubbed on top. (A lot more space fantasy as 343 took over, but I was told we had time before the story went down the Halo 4 pit.) Now they have got themselves a new showrunner, but if that will lead to any improvements I don't know. The show already put itself in a bizarre trajectory and even being teased with an actual Halo installation for once isn't enough to wash all that gunk out of mouths. But hey, they promised a season 2- and here we are.   

You know who else was a fan of making promises? CDPR. They made quiet a few in the lead up to Cyberpunk, albeit many in implication. Afterall, they didn't technically say there would be significant choice and consequence throughout the game, they just presented a level with tons of it and coined that ignoble get-out-jail-free-card "And that's just one mission!" They've made great strides since then living up to the spirit of the advertisements. Still it's quite astounding it took several years after launch for an actual crime system to be implemented into a game that had a line of adverts that literally led with "In Night City; what makes you a criminal?" Two years of post-game support, apparently. But on the otherside of all that we can actually say that the promises kept, or rather 'made up for' have gone a significant way to repairing CDPR's quite tarnished reputation and image.

Still is there any boon quite as fundamentally effective, quite as world breaking, as the decision to actually add in the missing train stations to the world? Because that very first shot we ever saw of the game running 'in engine' was of the Monorail rolling above Night City. It's exclusion kind of felt like a slap across the face. Bringing it back after all these years kind of feels like that final moment of truce being declared before the first villain of the anime arc turns around and embraces the protagonist. Enemies to Friends. You know how it goes. There's apparently some work also thrown into making the bike handling a little better and throwing in Romance-partner hang-out sessions- but who cares about that when I can ride above the denizens of brokeville and laugh at that lowly ineptitude compared to my high flying ways! Grovel for me, ants- GROVEL!

Where was I? Oh yeah: Grand Theft Auto VI. Now that game isn't out yet, so the only promises we can talk about is the promise that Rockstar has made to the industry in general by warrant of it's station. You see, for all of their painful backwards overprotectiveness regarding past developers sharing stories and hunting down harmless fan-made mods for their single player games- Rockstar are trying to maintain this magical image of theirs. This image of the 'mysterious big developer' who comes by generationally to totally rewrite whatever direction the industry is currently heading in and remind them what a true superstar is. Because as big as the games industry has become, as overwhelmingly popular as some of the best games of all time are- no one else in gaming is pulling 100 million Youtube views in 48 hours. It just doesn't happen unless you're Rockstar.

As much as it's becoming hip for Right Wing Social Media creeps to virtue signal about being unable to stand the franchise because of it's flagrant romanisation of violence against the police- (yes, that's real. Elon said he couldn't bare to shoot a cop in GTA V and now they're all conjuring up falsehoods about virtual blue-live solidarity.) the truth is that Grand Theft Auto is one of those culture phenoms that shapes culture in a variety of ways. Everything that exists about Grand Theft Auto VI seems to indicate that Rockstar have once again upheld their unwritten bargain with society itself, to ride as it's zeitgeist with every new entry. Whether or not the actual game itself is fun or a mismatched hodgepodge of openworld cliches butting heads in a desperate attempt to appear 'innovative'- well, we have couple of painful waiting years to find out. But as of so far- in marketing alone the company have done their part.

And do you wanna know who else kept their promise this year? Square Enix- in their promise to make that atrocious looking NFT 'game' they peddled during the height of that short lived trend- 'Symbiogenesis'. Remember that mess? After the crypto market fell off a cliff and every NFT market was systematically arrested for being various levels of illegally scammy- one would expect outstanding NFT projects to be quietly swept under the rug and all marketing to become gaslighted phantoms of a bygone era. But not Symbiogenesis- oh no! Not only is Square still making the project, but they've already started releasing some to the Etherium chain. And to put some icing atop the cake- to match their soulless and impressively bland art style, according to 'Decrypt.Co.' they've even been named as though entirely by an AI. We're talking NFT characters with names like 'Condiment', 'Wart', 'Egg', 'Starvation' and... 'Cockscomb'? Hmm... got brave with that last one, did they? So if you were wondering whether or not Square were interested in putting effort into this revolutionary, industry redefining concept of theirs... umm, no. They're not. Good day.

A promise made is a vow. And sometimes we don't really want to see what happens on the otherside of that proclamation. In some ways the yearning to see the fruition is itself the meat of the meal- as though purpose is defined by the struggle to achieve it. But given how that sounds like the sort of drivel that spikey haired, Welsh-dubbed, JRPG protagonists would wax-poetic over just before climbing up the last staircase to kill god- or worse, something that Kojima would say on his Tw-X account, I'm choosing to spit in the face of that. A journey unfulfilled is a waste of the single most precious commodity this life gives us- time; and those that can't reconcile the thrill of an escalator taken in place of a arduous hike might as well be philistines waving their fists at the construction of the Library of Alexandria, wishing we'd all just go back to the age of purely spoken knowledge. Or whatever the Philistines were moany about, I can't be bothered to look it up.