Or 'to get re-dishonoured again' - redux edition
Showing posts with label Dishonoured. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dishonoured. Show all posts
Monday, 13 November 2023
Sunday, 1 December 2019
How RPG's can bring out a personality
You can't defeat evil with RPG's!
I am an open book. Truly. That book may be little more than a dime-store novella, but it's clear and open none-the-less. I know exactly who I am and the metaphorical lines that I will draw in the sand when presented with ethical quandaries. I know the point to which I am willing and able to stand my ground and to which degree my innate, and overbearing, cowardice takes over. (Hint: it doesn't take much.) How do I know all this about myself? A combination of life-long candidness, too much time on my hands, and a love for that most illuminating of video game genre's; RPGs. (Two of those factors may feed into the other.)
What exactly do I mean by that? Well, me, I'm merely expressing my belief that games which shape themselves around player choice and consequence are ideal for introspective self-analysis. (Arguably in a very 'surface level' manner but y'all gotta start somewhere, right?) I credit this to the way in which many of the most popular RPG games of the age have endeavoured to stick players in scenarios which encourage difficult choices and labour them with little to no baggage, allowing for players to really immerse themselves into their characters in a practical and/or emotional manner. This is the concept that I intend to explore today. (With examples!)
The art of developing a difficult choice in a player driven narrative is both deeply taxing and rewarding. It demands the developer to explore multiple very appealing solutions to a huge problem, exploration that must be exhaustive in every regard. (Which is difficult for the standard person to achieve with their very biased minds.) And it is rewarding in that, when you go beyond the standard 'good' and 'bad' of a decision, you are left with a decision that branches into the personal politics of the player, with the potential to cut very deep from an emotional angle. Such a decision is not only just heavily revealing for an individual, but has the potential to haunt them for long after they put the controller down. (One of highest praises that a storyteller can achieve.) One such choice for me stemmed from a series known for it's difficult choices; TellTale's The Walking Dead Season 1 (spoilers impending).
Although, as I hinted, there are many head-scratcher decisions that divided fan bases, there is one in particular that resonated on a deeply visceral level with me. Namely the scene near the midpoint of the series when players are left deciding what to do with Duck. Duck is the annoying son of your closest friend in the game, Kenny, who's dumb kid antics has already led to one guy getting the chomp and almost endangered the whole party at one point. Despite that, he is still Kenny's Son, and when that kid ends up bitten it is becomes a difficult pill for the old lug to swallow. Even more difficult for his wife, who would rather shoot herself then have to harm her son (which she does.) leaving Kenny in an even more heartbroken state that hinders his ability to do what must be done. At this point the player is given the choice to encourage Kenny into mercy killing his own son or do it for him. I found that this choice in particular always wrestled with me as I struggled with the merciful decision and the concept of stealing away Kenny's last moment with his son. In one way, that is scenario that no father should have to go through, and yet it is also something that only a father has the right to do. Whichever direction that the player eventually falls on the issue, they are left with an insight into how they view such an abnormal situation which they, hopefully, would never have experienced otherwise.
Of course, situations like that work much better when paired with the 'blank slate' character archetype, which comes with it's own difficulties and rewards to bring to life. As puppeteers of the main show, it is fitting for games to put players in the shoes of the protagonist by depriving that leading character of all their back story and previous driving forces, allowing for the person to stick themselves into that blank space. The problem with this is that most great narratives tie story progression to character development, which can be difficult to achieve when your character pointedly possess no personality. Therefore balances must be struck in order to put players in the perfect place wherein they have empty shoes to fill and an emotional journey that promises to twist and jive in the future.
One such example of a game which famously did this to great success was 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic'. That story kicked off with players being shoved into the passenger quarters of a starship under siege by the Sith with no memory of how they got there or who they are. Whilst the 'suprise amensia' trope is painfully overdone in media, here it has a functional purpose (giving the players a blank soul to inhabit) and has a genuine reason for happening with a solid payoff down the line. (Which I will not be spoiling.) Other great RPG's have followed suit too, with 'Fallout: New Vegas' starting with the protagonist getting shot in the head, justifying that amnesia; and all the Elder Scrolls games starts with a nobody who's never achieved anything noteworthy in the lives, allowing for the audience to jump right in and change all that.
Finally, the most important ingredient in this recipe is 'immersion'. This is the way in which the game developers attempt to ground the player and contextualize them within this fictional world in order to encourage players to believe in this world and care what happens to it. This is the best way in which a game can accurately bring out an individual's personality as it can lightly trick them into believing the world in which they inhabit. There is no handbook to creating great immersion, but there are a few notable examples of some games and genre's that pull it off to great gusto.
The 'Immersive sim' genre is full of games that pull off great settings that tend to be, go figure, immersive. These are examples wherein the game is a narrative driven experience for which the player is along for every step of the way, including during the 'in-between' moments at home. Oftentimes these games involve players getting the chance to learn their neighbourhood and become familiar with their environment for an inevitable third act surprise attack. Dishonored had players trek around the Hounds Pit pub, Dues Ex had players regularly visiting futuristic New York and 'Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines' lets you stalk the LA shadows. That little touch of letting players familiarize themselves with their world is a subtle but handy immersive tool, as it gets them invested when their actions begin to change their little slice of that world.
All of these factors come together in the best RPG's in a manner which can, in the right circumstance, help tease out the particulars of one's personality. I say this as an individual who is, and has been, very shy throughout my life. I've always had trouble interacting with others for that initial leap, but once a conversation is started I can rattle off forever. My time with video games is partially responsible for that because they have made me more confidant in my personality and the cocksure arse that I can sometimes be. Which makes for a measurable change in my person from when I was a kid and entirely unable to sustain conversation altogether.
It might seem tenuous and pedantic to attribute such a growth in character to the subtle actions of video game developers and storytellers, but I have learnt never to underestimate the power of fiction to teach us things about ourselves. (Else I would never have discovered my own passion for storytelling.) Even as we play characters up on the screen or on a digital stage, we are playing shadows of ourselves with more shades of truth to them than fiction. That's not to say that, just because you have a habit of going on murder sprees in your RPG games, that such violent tendencies reflects your readiness to do the same in real life (we're not about to 'Jack Thompson' this up); but it does go to show your willingness to exploit an environment with little to no consequence, or explore a antithetical morality to your own. There's always something to learn about yourself in these kinds of games, you only need to pay attention and see.
I am an open book. Truly. That book may be little more than a dime-store novella, but it's clear and open none-the-less. I know exactly who I am and the metaphorical lines that I will draw in the sand when presented with ethical quandaries. I know the point to which I am willing and able to stand my ground and to which degree my innate, and overbearing, cowardice takes over. (Hint: it doesn't take much.) How do I know all this about myself? A combination of life-long candidness, too much time on my hands, and a love for that most illuminating of video game genre's; RPGs. (Two of those factors may feed into the other.)
What exactly do I mean by that? Well, me, I'm merely expressing my belief that games which shape themselves around player choice and consequence are ideal for introspective self-analysis. (Arguably in a very 'surface level' manner but y'all gotta start somewhere, right?) I credit this to the way in which many of the most popular RPG games of the age have endeavoured to stick players in scenarios which encourage difficult choices and labour them with little to no baggage, allowing for players to really immerse themselves into their characters in a practical and/or emotional manner. This is the concept that I intend to explore today. (With examples!)
The art of developing a difficult choice in a player driven narrative is both deeply taxing and rewarding. It demands the developer to explore multiple very appealing solutions to a huge problem, exploration that must be exhaustive in every regard. (Which is difficult for the standard person to achieve with their very biased minds.) And it is rewarding in that, when you go beyond the standard 'good' and 'bad' of a decision, you are left with a decision that branches into the personal politics of the player, with the potential to cut very deep from an emotional angle. Such a decision is not only just heavily revealing for an individual, but has the potential to haunt them for long after they put the controller down. (One of highest praises that a storyteller can achieve.) One such choice for me stemmed from a series known for it's difficult choices; TellTale's The Walking Dead Season 1 (spoilers impending).
Although, as I hinted, there are many head-scratcher decisions that divided fan bases, there is one in particular that resonated on a deeply visceral level with me. Namely the scene near the midpoint of the series when players are left deciding what to do with Duck. Duck is the annoying son of your closest friend in the game, Kenny, who's dumb kid antics has already led to one guy getting the chomp and almost endangered the whole party at one point. Despite that, he is still Kenny's Son, and when that kid ends up bitten it is becomes a difficult pill for the old lug to swallow. Even more difficult for his wife, who would rather shoot herself then have to harm her son (which she does.) leaving Kenny in an even more heartbroken state that hinders his ability to do what must be done. At this point the player is given the choice to encourage Kenny into mercy killing his own son or do it for him. I found that this choice in particular always wrestled with me as I struggled with the merciful decision and the concept of stealing away Kenny's last moment with his son. In one way, that is scenario that no father should have to go through, and yet it is also something that only a father has the right to do. Whichever direction that the player eventually falls on the issue, they are left with an insight into how they view such an abnormal situation which they, hopefully, would never have experienced otherwise.
Of course, situations like that work much better when paired with the 'blank slate' character archetype, which comes with it's own difficulties and rewards to bring to life. As puppeteers of the main show, it is fitting for games to put players in the shoes of the protagonist by depriving that leading character of all their back story and previous driving forces, allowing for the person to stick themselves into that blank space. The problem with this is that most great narratives tie story progression to character development, which can be difficult to achieve when your character pointedly possess no personality. Therefore balances must be struck in order to put players in the perfect place wherein they have empty shoes to fill and an emotional journey that promises to twist and jive in the future.
Finally, the most important ingredient in this recipe is 'immersion'. This is the way in which the game developers attempt to ground the player and contextualize them within this fictional world in order to encourage players to believe in this world and care what happens to it. This is the best way in which a game can accurately bring out an individual's personality as it can lightly trick them into believing the world in which they inhabit. There is no handbook to creating great immersion, but there are a few notable examples of some games and genre's that pull it off to great gusto.
The 'Immersive sim' genre is full of games that pull off great settings that tend to be, go figure, immersive. These are examples wherein the game is a narrative driven experience for which the player is along for every step of the way, including during the 'in-between' moments at home. Oftentimes these games involve players getting the chance to learn their neighbourhood and become familiar with their environment for an inevitable third act surprise attack. Dishonored had players trek around the Hounds Pit pub, Dues Ex had players regularly visiting futuristic New York and 'Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines' lets you stalk the LA shadows. That little touch of letting players familiarize themselves with their world is a subtle but handy immersive tool, as it gets them invested when their actions begin to change their little slice of that world.
It might seem tenuous and pedantic to attribute such a growth in character to the subtle actions of video game developers and storytellers, but I have learnt never to underestimate the power of fiction to teach us things about ourselves. (Else I would never have discovered my own passion for storytelling.) Even as we play characters up on the screen or on a digital stage, we are playing shadows of ourselves with more shades of truth to them than fiction. That's not to say that, just because you have a habit of going on murder sprees in your RPG games, that such violent tendencies reflects your readiness to do the same in real life (we're not about to 'Jack Thompson' this up); but it does go to show your willingness to exploit an environment with little to no consequence, or explore a antithetical morality to your own. There's always something to learn about yourself in these kinds of games, you only need to pay attention and see.
Thursday, 17 October 2019
New and improved
So is this a prequel to Omega Man or...
The other day I was walking down the street, (Huh, unintentional Arthur) and I happened upon a movie poster that really made me stop and stare. This wasn't because the strength of the marketing material, rather the opposite actually. This was a movie that was starring Will Smith, was soon to come out, and this poster was the first I'd seen of it. Even now, with the thing out, I'm still yet to see a trailer. (How little did you guys leave your marketing team with?) It seemed particularly noteworthy given that the movie boasted the enviable gimmick of pitting Will Smith against Will Smith for some reason. (Again, haven't seen a trailer so I don't have context.) However, I was curious enough, from the poster, to look up how and why this movie exists.
I discovered that this film, Gemini Man, was making use of de-aging technology in order to have a modern day version of Will Smith battle against a version of him that looks like he just walked off the set of Fresh Prince. (Okay, he doesn't look that young.) This makes sense giving that the 'wow' tech of modern years has been the systems that can be make actors digitally appear younger in a convincing way. Just look at Disney's attempts in 'Civil War', 'Antman & the Wasp' and 'Endgame'; as well as... Disney's work in 'Star Wars: Rogue One'. (I guess The House of Mouse are really the ones pushing this, now I think about it.) All this got me thinking about the idea of going back and sprucing things up, whether it be an actor's face, an old film's picture quality, or an entire franchise. With that in mind, let's talk about remasters. (No, you're a weak segueway!)
Ask any film fan about their feelings towards reboots and re-releases and you'll likely hear the same response across the board. "I don't why studios keep rehashing the same ideas instead of doing something new. It's just a waste of time, money and talent." (Those same people will then proceed to watch those movies.) There is a slightly different sentiment when it comes to how these things are handled in games. We've yet to get a significant full-blown reboot in the video game market (With the exception of, perhaps, 'Bionic Commando' and 'Sonic Boom'), but we have certainly seen a lot of remasters, re-releases and a few remakes, especially as we're nearing the twilight of this console generation. Gamers are, therefore, more forgiving to some approaches whilst more critical in others.
Firstly, there are the re-releases. These are always a celebrated event when it comes to film. It's the chance for modern movie goers to experience an event in cinematic history that they may have missed out on long ago. Fans can see cult classics like 'Back to the Future', 'The Godfather' and 'Apocalypse Now' on a theatre screen like they were meant to be seen. There isn't a movie fan alive who wouldn't get a little giddy as such a prospect. For gaming, on the otherhand, re-releases are something a lot more cynical. Game releases are never a huge event beyond being the point at which the public can finally get their hands on the software. When those games come back around for a re-release, it's usually just an excuse for the studios to update some minor things and slap it back on store shelves for full price. (In that sense, I guess it's a celebratory event for the accountants.)
We see this for games like 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' and the constant Nintendo reduxes of 'Ocarina of Time'. These are situations in which the company has decided that they need to re-establish their game's value and rake in the same sort of money that they originally saw. This is often the case when a new Console generation has launched and it doesn't support backwards compatibility. (Or it does support backward compatibility and they just knowingly opt out of the process so they can make a quick buck.) Defenders will often point to slight graphical improvements as justification, but I chose the above two games for a reason. 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' is a game that is attempting to impprove upon a highly stylized original product, to very little avail. The only noticeable improvement is a frame rate bump, and that is hardly worth £60. For Zelda, on the otherhand, Nintendo don't even touch the frame rate. (It's part of the charm, I guess.) All they do is touch up the controls, fix a decades old design decision every now and then, and slap a heavy price tag on the box. In gaming, we use the term 're-release' to refer to the laziest form of a company capitalizing on your nostalgia.
Remasters are a slight step up from Re-releases, although their quality can vary greatly. Once again, these usually crop up when a game becomes inaccessible, due to an across-the-board hardware upgrade, and the primary concern is ensuring the product is playable once again. However, game companies sometimes decide that they want to take advantage of the new tech available, or they have to in order to make the thing function, and so we get these 'improved' products labelled 'remasters'.
The problem is that sometimes these 'remasters' get the things we love about the original wrong. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD went the graphical improvement route, only to sacrifice some of the advanced graphical integrity of the original. Sure it looks better when all you do is count pixels, but the artistic merit sometimes suffers. This is because these remasters are usually not handled by the same people who made the original and sometimes not even the same studio. It's like asking members of the public to restore a faded painting, sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you were better off living it alone. One game in which this was certainly the case was the 'Return to Arkham' remasters of 'Arkham Asylum' and 'Akham City'. There are countless examples of the way how almost every character model in the game were uglied in the pursuit of 'graphical improvement'. (With the exception of Harley Quinn, who got so much attention put into her it makes me wonder about the priories of the team responsible.) Just look at the comparison between the different version's of the iconic Hugo Strange interrogation scene from the beginning of 'Arkham City.'
Finally, and most rarely, we have the remake, which is the closest thing to a reboot we have in the gaming industry. This is when a gaming company makes the decision to go back to one of it's beloved classics and rebuild it from the ground up, with new textures, gameplay, story, VA's and just about everything really. To be honest, we see so many changes in these projects that they might as well be called 'reimagineings'. But Hollywood managed to make that term sound excessively wishy-washy so we'll stick with remake. This is probably the easiest to respect out of the examples of re-releases in the gaming market, as it is the process in which Devs put the most effort and thought into and truly do earn that price tag.
Capcom have dabbled in the remake territory before, with the decent 2001 remake of the original Resident Evil and the spectacular 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2. Both these games show examples of games that are deigned to capture the spirit of the original, but still take things in a different direction. Resident Evil 2 (2019) even goes so far so to restructure the fundamental game in order to better fit modern game design conventions. Square Enix also hope to jump onto the bandwagon soon with their Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which ditches the semi-turn based style of the original in favour of a full action game approach. Major story beats have been changed or reshuffled in order to accommodate for a brand new episodic structure which is going to have us RPG fans reliving the story of Cloud until 2025. (At least.) Unlike with movie remakes, these remakes are not attempting to replace the original product, rather celebrate everything that those games got right and present a new way that they could have been handled. (Now for the love of god remake MGS 3, Konami. Please!)
Some may look at these practises and conclude that they are examples of the game industry moving backwards rather than forwards, and in a way they would be right. But art, as a whole, is a medium in which you can revisit the pieces you love time and time again and find something new and special. That makes it as much about looking back as it does about looking forward. And considering how every game is devolving into a 'live-service' abomination of late, it helps to take a look back at the classics of old and remind ourselves why it is that we love games in the first place.
The other day I was walking down the street, (Huh, unintentional Arthur) and I happened upon a movie poster that really made me stop and stare. This wasn't because the strength of the marketing material, rather the opposite actually. This was a movie that was starring Will Smith, was soon to come out, and this poster was the first I'd seen of it. Even now, with the thing out, I'm still yet to see a trailer. (How little did you guys leave your marketing team with?) It seemed particularly noteworthy given that the movie boasted the enviable gimmick of pitting Will Smith against Will Smith for some reason. (Again, haven't seen a trailer so I don't have context.) However, I was curious enough, from the poster, to look up how and why this movie exists.
I discovered that this film, Gemini Man, was making use of de-aging technology in order to have a modern day version of Will Smith battle against a version of him that looks like he just walked off the set of Fresh Prince. (Okay, he doesn't look that young.) This makes sense giving that the 'wow' tech of modern years has been the systems that can be make actors digitally appear younger in a convincing way. Just look at Disney's attempts in 'Civil War', 'Antman & the Wasp' and 'Endgame'; as well as... Disney's work in 'Star Wars: Rogue One'. (I guess The House of Mouse are really the ones pushing this, now I think about it.) All this got me thinking about the idea of going back and sprucing things up, whether it be an actor's face, an old film's picture quality, or an entire franchise. With that in mind, let's talk about remasters. (No, you're a weak segueway!)
Ask any film fan about their feelings towards reboots and re-releases and you'll likely hear the same response across the board. "I don't why studios keep rehashing the same ideas instead of doing something new. It's just a waste of time, money and talent." (Those same people will then proceed to watch those movies.) There is a slightly different sentiment when it comes to how these things are handled in games. We've yet to get a significant full-blown reboot in the video game market (With the exception of, perhaps, 'Bionic Commando' and 'Sonic Boom'), but we have certainly seen a lot of remasters, re-releases and a few remakes, especially as we're nearing the twilight of this console generation. Gamers are, therefore, more forgiving to some approaches whilst more critical in others.
Firstly, there are the re-releases. These are always a celebrated event when it comes to film. It's the chance for modern movie goers to experience an event in cinematic history that they may have missed out on long ago. Fans can see cult classics like 'Back to the Future', 'The Godfather' and 'Apocalypse Now' on a theatre screen like they were meant to be seen. There isn't a movie fan alive who wouldn't get a little giddy as such a prospect. For gaming, on the otherhand, re-releases are something a lot more cynical. Game releases are never a huge event beyond being the point at which the public can finally get their hands on the software. When those games come back around for a re-release, it's usually just an excuse for the studios to update some minor things and slap it back on store shelves for full price. (In that sense, I guess it's a celebratory event for the accountants.)
We see this for games like 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' and the constant Nintendo reduxes of 'Ocarina of Time'. These are situations in which the company has decided that they need to re-establish their game's value and rake in the same sort of money that they originally saw. This is often the case when a new Console generation has launched and it doesn't support backwards compatibility. (Or it does support backward compatibility and they just knowingly opt out of the process so they can make a quick buck.) Defenders will often point to slight graphical improvements as justification, but I chose the above two games for a reason. 'Dishonored: Definitive edition' is a game that is attempting to impprove upon a highly stylized original product, to very little avail. The only noticeable improvement is a frame rate bump, and that is hardly worth £60. For Zelda, on the otherhand, Nintendo don't even touch the frame rate. (It's part of the charm, I guess.) All they do is touch up the controls, fix a decades old design decision every now and then, and slap a heavy price tag on the box. In gaming, we use the term 're-release' to refer to the laziest form of a company capitalizing on your nostalgia.
Remasters are a slight step up from Re-releases, although their quality can vary greatly. Once again, these usually crop up when a game becomes inaccessible, due to an across-the-board hardware upgrade, and the primary concern is ensuring the product is playable once again. However, game companies sometimes decide that they want to take advantage of the new tech available, or they have to in order to make the thing function, and so we get these 'improved' products labelled 'remasters'.
The problem is that sometimes these 'remasters' get the things we love about the original wrong. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD went the graphical improvement route, only to sacrifice some of the advanced graphical integrity of the original. Sure it looks better when all you do is count pixels, but the artistic merit sometimes suffers. This is because these remasters are usually not handled by the same people who made the original and sometimes not even the same studio. It's like asking members of the public to restore a faded painting, sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you were better off living it alone. One game in which this was certainly the case was the 'Return to Arkham' remasters of 'Arkham Asylum' and 'Akham City'. There are countless examples of the way how almost every character model in the game were uglied in the pursuit of 'graphical improvement'. (With the exception of Harley Quinn, who got so much attention put into her it makes me wonder about the priories of the team responsible.) Just look at the comparison between the different version's of the iconic Hugo Strange interrogation scene from the beginning of 'Arkham City.'
Finally, and most rarely, we have the remake, which is the closest thing to a reboot we have in the gaming industry. This is when a gaming company makes the decision to go back to one of it's beloved classics and rebuild it from the ground up, with new textures, gameplay, story, VA's and just about everything really. To be honest, we see so many changes in these projects that they might as well be called 'reimagineings'. But Hollywood managed to make that term sound excessively wishy-washy so we'll stick with remake. This is probably the easiest to respect out of the examples of re-releases in the gaming market, as it is the process in which Devs put the most effort and thought into and truly do earn that price tag.
Capcom have dabbled in the remake territory before, with the decent 2001 remake of the original Resident Evil and the spectacular 2019 remake of Resident Evil 2. Both these games show examples of games that are deigned to capture the spirit of the original, but still take things in a different direction. Resident Evil 2 (2019) even goes so far so to restructure the fundamental game in order to better fit modern game design conventions. Square Enix also hope to jump onto the bandwagon soon with their Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which ditches the semi-turn based style of the original in favour of a full action game approach. Major story beats have been changed or reshuffled in order to accommodate for a brand new episodic structure which is going to have us RPG fans reliving the story of Cloud until 2025. (At least.) Unlike with movie remakes, these remakes are not attempting to replace the original product, rather celebrate everything that those games got right and present a new way that they could have been handled. (Now for the love of god remake MGS 3, Konami. Please!)
Some may look at these practises and conclude that they are examples of the game industry moving backwards rather than forwards, and in a way they would be right. But art, as a whole, is a medium in which you can revisit the pieces you love time and time again and find something new and special. That makes it as much about looking back as it does about looking forward. And considering how every game is devolving into a 'live-service' abomination of late, it helps to take a look back at the classics of old and remind ourselves why it is that we love games in the first place.
Tuesday, 23 July 2019
Modern Morality aka Choice and Consequence
Your fantasies can never be quenched, can they!
A while ago I dived into the topic of morality systems in video games. Times at which the player is expected to go a certain direction or make a certain decision that proceeds to dictate their moral leanings. This was the way that Video Games tried to initiate moral discussions when developers were just starting to get the hang of telling branching stories. But we no longer live in that time of rampant experimentalism. Nowadays, video game storytelling has been whittled down to a fine art, so writers who really want to stand out need to do more than just institute a good/bad bar on your character sheet. In modern video game storytelling, the weight of a player's moral fibre is judged by more than just an 'evil bar' coupled with a bad ending. Discussing morality requires a tad more nuance than that. And so the marketing gimmick of 'action-consequnce' was born.
I'm treating it with some flippancy but I do believe that the way we handle morality in games now is leagues better then the way we used to. At the end of the day, the concept morality is little more than a societal construct, and when you have that in mind then there becomes little weight in wagging a finger at the player and telling them they made the wrong choice. Narrative stories needed to start confronting players with the cold, undeniable reality of consequences. This evolution helped to create some of the most memorable and divisive moments in gaming. Players no longer just argued about 'the good option' and 'the bad option', now they had a springboard to engage in discourse about their fundamental views on the issues. Or at least that is the intention. 'Action and consequnce' can be turned into a meaningless gimmick when half-assed just like anything else in life. The key is to dedicate thought and passion into giving players the freedom to see themselves reflected in the decisions and mistakes they make.
The wider gaming world has very readily adopted the 'choice-consequnce' model and it has become somewhat expected for RPG's to have some form of choice at some point in their narrative. Whilst once this was a huge selling point, worthy of sticking on the back of the box, now it is a requirement for any big budget game. Even Red Dead Redemption 2 had some vague elements of consequence throughout it's story, although that has as much to do with respecting the overarching themes of the series as much as it has to do with ticking that particular box. Modern role playing just doesn't feel the same anymore unless we can make the story our own, diverge from the path that our friends took, and then argue about it with them the next day.
One game that captured the 'Choice/conseqence' craze beautifully, was the excellent: Dishonoured. In Dishonoured, players were put in the boots of disgraced royal protector: Corvo Attano, who was framed for the murder of his charge; Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Who was also his lover and the mother of his child. (Talk about conflicted interests.) The player is then tasked with unravelling the conspiracy that led to her assassination by hunting down those that seized power after her demise, utilizing Corvo's substantial stealthy skillset alongside a whole host of otherworldly powers. Choice and consequence come into the picture in two distinct ways.
The First way is obvious. As you hone in on your targets, you are presented with two possible ways to proceed. You can straight up kill you target and get it all over and done with; or you can pull some strings in order to set up a special event which will also succeeds in eliminating the target. These events can range from having your target kidnapped by their secret admirer, to branding their face with the mark of a heretic ensuring that they will be cast out of the sect in which they reside. There is no morally pure choice to pick, either you kill the target or ruin their life; the focus in on the consequences. Sometime these consequences are left to the imagination of the player and over times you are shown them directly.
The second method that Arkane used to realise your consequences is actually quite brilliant. You see, Dishonored is a stealth action-adventure game, (My favourite sub-genre!) which means that the player can go through levels without being spotted and killing as few or as many people as they so wish. This is wrapped up in the lore through a rat-carried plague that is rampant in the game's setting: Dunwall. Rats are well known to be attracted to rotting flesh and so the game actually keeps track of how many enemies you've killed by proportionately infesting the city. If you are a cold blooded mass-murderer, Dunwall will become a plague ridden hellscape by the final level and even your own allies will start fearing you. This also ties in with the endings that you receive. The higher the chaos you cause, the worse your ending will be. Nice 'anti-violence' message in your game about assassinating people, Arkane.
Now onto somewhat of a contentious figure. David Cage has had bad rap with gamers over the years for making a slew of games that some people would argue aren't games at all. Through his studio, Quantic Dream, Cage and his team have pioneered the interactive storytelling genre, providing games that feel like movies. So what exactly is 'interactive storytelling'? Well, by David Cage's definition, it is a medium wherein in the player is presented with events in a story and they are tasked with making choices to guide the narrative. Sounds like everything I've been discussing today. The trick is that these games feature no actual 'gameplay' like one would traditionally imagine, just choices and the occasional quick time event. Some people would call these glorified DVD games, but I do enjoy the games for what they offer. As long as a compelling narrative comes attached.
Due to the choice-based gameplay that this genre is defined by, consequence is prevalent everywhere. Throughout all of Quantic's games; 'Indigo Prophesy', 'Beyond: Two Souls' and 'Detroit: Become Human', there are numerous moments when action or inaction results in branches through the story. Although the game that everyone remembers for it's consequences would have to be 'Heavy Rain'. Anyone who followed gaming at the time heard all the fuss around 'Heavy Rain' and the fact that, if your character died in the story, they would remain dead. 'Permadeath' was unheard of in this time, so many found the novelty absolutely fascinating. Of course, all those trailers conveniently left out the fact that, in order for a character to suffer permadeath, the player would have to be so hopelessly incompetent at quick time events that they manage to fail a ludicrous amount of them consecutively.
Yeah, the games didn't exactly exude the intense 'life or death at a moments notice' vibe that David Cage seemed to be going for, but the game itself did excel when it came to branching narratives. Big choices had the chance to completely shift the road that your character was on, thus changing the path of the story. This meant that many key scenes featured dozens of possible permutations depending on the route you took to get there. Never before did players feel like they had shaped the events around them quite like they did during 'Heavy Rain'. Following that, many successors would come to pastiche and mature this formula.
One such successor would be supernatural high school simulator: Life is Strange. Whilst you could argue that Don't Nod Entertainment borrowed more from Telltale to adapt their gameplay, I would refute that both owe some degree of their popularity to 'Heavy Rain'. Narrative wise, Life is Strange is a little bit a mess. The story follows the tale of a high schooler, Max Caufield, as she discovers that she has the power to reverse time and... just sort of lives with it for a while. Max goes through the process of reconnecting with her old friend, Chloe, and starts developing their relationship together for most of the game. Only near the end of the game does she realize that Nature is trying to 'final destination' Chloe, and Max must save the town or something, whilst simultaneously dealing with a pervert teacher who is also a murderer. As I said, it's a little bit of a mess.
Where 'Life is Strange' shines is in the strength of it's choices. Whilst it is true, the ability to turn back time kind of takes a lot of the weight out of the decisions you make, some of the most potent consequences you are subject to exceed the range of your powers. (Almost makes you wonder why you even have them in the first pl- okay, I'm not going to get into it here.) On the surface the gameplay experience is very similar to the 'Heavy Rain' brand of interactive storytelling, but the focus on character led drama adds a very personal aspect to the choices you make. Sometimes 'Life is Strange' presents you with a decision you make for emotional reasons rather than pragmatic ones. I find that this makes the consequences of those choice all the more reflective.
Another choice-driven interactive story that garnered attention in recent years is the star studded: Until Dawn. Supermassive Games themed their interactive story around the cliches of slasher movies, so people went in expecting a high body count. What we didn't expect was the heavily reliance on 'The butterfly effect' and all that entails. This meant that the smallest of actions could lead to violent, unavoidable consequences down the line. Some may call this a little cheap, but I see it as a little refreshing. You see, Until Dawn came out in 2015 and by that point everyone had already got a pretty good idea of what this genre entailed. When you go through every scene waiting for a 'gotcha' moment it becomes easy to spot narrative hooks and predict results in advance. Until Dawn threw that all to the wind. Did you throw a snowball at the butterfly? Boom, icicle to the head. Things literally got that random.
But let's step away from interactive story games and move to a game that features traditional gameplay but still manages to deliver doses of potent 'choice/consequence' to the player. Let's take a look at 'The Witcher'. Off the bat, CD Projekt Red were in a good place adapting 'The Witcher', as the story existed in an adult morally grey world. All they had to do was accurately translate that world into the medium of gaming, and I think the general consensus is that they pulled it off rather nicely. 'The Witcher' revolves around the character of Geralt, the titular Witcher. Much like Garrett from the Thief series, Geralt plays the role of an observer to a world in flux. Sure, he takes part in events, even has some 'save-the-world' moments. But for the most part, Geralt just tries to live in the turmoil of warring nations.
Whilst this approach may seem like it precludes significant choice and consequence, in practice it actually paves away for more meaningful decisions. 'The Witcher' is unique in that it presents a high fantasy world, and then tells personal, character driven stories with that world. Geralt isn't leading armies and fighting elder gods, he's hunting monsters that disturb the local town life. He isn't the perpetrator of world changing events, he just gets pulled along by them. I love this subversive approach to fantasy storytelling and think it lends wonderfully to the choices that the player is left to make. They get the chance to see the world from Geralt's level and so it makes it easier for them to make the choices they believe he would make. It's a powerful use of perspective that I'd imagine should be credited more to Andrzej Sapkowski then CD Projekt Red. But those writers did manage to utilize that tool to great effect and so I will praise them both the same.
Finally, I would like to bring up one of gaming's classics. Often referred to as 'The greatest PC game ever made', I'm talking about Eidos' Deus Ex. The original cyberpunk gem, Deus Ex situates players in a world fraught with conspiracy and hyper-surveillance as they try to free the people from the grip of a tyrannical secret organization who is not the Illuminati. (They're in the game too, but this particular ultra-shady secret government isn't them.) Choice and consequence is handled the same here as in any other game, every now and then you are presented with a choice between a number of actions and must pick one. The important thing to note here is the fact that this type of gameplay was completely unheard of. Released in the year 2000, Deus Ex was the first action-oriented game to prominently feature branching narratives as a result of player choice. Players were enamoured by the concept and it's one of the many reasons that the game is still widely loved today. I still see fans arguing over that final choice as though debating warring philosophies; which, in hindsight, I suppose they are.
2011's 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' didn't have the benefit of being the first, but Eidos still found a way to make it's choices stand out. Instead of just giving players clearly marked sections where their specific actions matter, 'Human Revolution' also put players in situations where their inaction can affect the story. Did you stop that terrorist but fail to clear out his hostages beforehand? They're as good as dead. Did you stay your hand from applying lethal force on his men? Then he might be willing to work with you in the future. All this culminates into a ending that put Eidos in an impossible position. They had to provide the player with a meaningful choice whilst baring in mind that this game was a prequel and therefore cannot change the events surrounding the original game. What resulted was one of most igneous set of endings that I've ever seen pulled off by a game. (Which was then ruined when 'Mankind Divided' came along and just picked one of the endings to go off from. But I digress.)
In the modern age of game narratives, traditional depictions of morality is mostly a thing of the past. Light sides and Dark sides are concepts that seem outdated in a world that is more coloured in shades of grey. Although I do sort of miss the old tally-based morality systems, I recognize that these systems worked to constrain storytelling and play styles. That's the reason why so many games that use to champion these systems have since abandoned them. 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' shed it's iconic 'Paragon/Renegade' mechanic, Fallout 4 dropped their 'Karma points' and Respawn have even come out to say that the upcoming 'Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order' will not have any 'light side'/ 'dark side' choices. (Although that may just be hinting at a more linear direction for the game.)
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Going forward I expect to see more clever uses of choice-based gameplay as we move into the next console age. The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk 2077 are two games to keep an eye on for this kind of stuff, their developers love challenging players with unforeseen repercussions. And there's also 'Life is Strange 2' for lovers of Interactive Storytelling and Supermassive Game's upcoming 'Man of Medan' for fans of chaotic consequence. These types of games aren't going away anytime soon and I, for one, couldn't be happier about it. I just can't wait to see how narrative morality evolves in the near-to-distant future. Who wants to guess how long it'll be before 'Ender's Game' happens?
A while ago I dived into the topic of morality systems in video games. Times at which the player is expected to go a certain direction or make a certain decision that proceeds to dictate their moral leanings. This was the way that Video Games tried to initiate moral discussions when developers were just starting to get the hang of telling branching stories. But we no longer live in that time of rampant experimentalism. Nowadays, video game storytelling has been whittled down to a fine art, so writers who really want to stand out need to do more than just institute a good/bad bar on your character sheet. In modern video game storytelling, the weight of a player's moral fibre is judged by more than just an 'evil bar' coupled with a bad ending. Discussing morality requires a tad more nuance than that. And so the marketing gimmick of 'action-consequnce' was born.
I'm treating it with some flippancy but I do believe that the way we handle morality in games now is leagues better then the way we used to. At the end of the day, the concept morality is little more than a societal construct, and when you have that in mind then there becomes little weight in wagging a finger at the player and telling them they made the wrong choice. Narrative stories needed to start confronting players with the cold, undeniable reality of consequences. This evolution helped to create some of the most memorable and divisive moments in gaming. Players no longer just argued about 'the good option' and 'the bad option', now they had a springboard to engage in discourse about their fundamental views on the issues. Or at least that is the intention. 'Action and consequnce' can be turned into a meaningless gimmick when half-assed just like anything else in life. The key is to dedicate thought and passion into giving players the freedom to see themselves reflected in the decisions and mistakes they make.
One game that captured the 'Choice/conseqence' craze beautifully, was the excellent: Dishonoured. In Dishonoured, players were put in the boots of disgraced royal protector: Corvo Attano, who was framed for the murder of his charge; Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. Who was also his lover and the mother of his child. (Talk about conflicted interests.) The player is then tasked with unravelling the conspiracy that led to her assassination by hunting down those that seized power after her demise, utilizing Corvo's substantial stealthy skillset alongside a whole host of otherworldly powers. Choice and consequence come into the picture in two distinct ways.
The First way is obvious. As you hone in on your targets, you are presented with two possible ways to proceed. You can straight up kill you target and get it all over and done with; or you can pull some strings in order to set up a special event which will also succeeds in eliminating the target. These events can range from having your target kidnapped by their secret admirer, to branding their face with the mark of a heretic ensuring that they will be cast out of the sect in which they reside. There is no morally pure choice to pick, either you kill the target or ruin their life; the focus in on the consequences. Sometime these consequences are left to the imagination of the player and over times you are shown them directly.
The second method that Arkane used to realise your consequences is actually quite brilliant. You see, Dishonored is a stealth action-adventure game, (My favourite sub-genre!) which means that the player can go through levels without being spotted and killing as few or as many people as they so wish. This is wrapped up in the lore through a rat-carried plague that is rampant in the game's setting: Dunwall. Rats are well known to be attracted to rotting flesh and so the game actually keeps track of how many enemies you've killed by proportionately infesting the city. If you are a cold blooded mass-murderer, Dunwall will become a plague ridden hellscape by the final level and even your own allies will start fearing you. This also ties in with the endings that you receive. The higher the chaos you cause, the worse your ending will be. Nice 'anti-violence' message in your game about assassinating people, Arkane.
Now onto somewhat of a contentious figure. David Cage has had bad rap with gamers over the years for making a slew of games that some people would argue aren't games at all. Through his studio, Quantic Dream, Cage and his team have pioneered the interactive storytelling genre, providing games that feel like movies. So what exactly is 'interactive storytelling'? Well, by David Cage's definition, it is a medium wherein in the player is presented with events in a story and they are tasked with making choices to guide the narrative. Sounds like everything I've been discussing today. The trick is that these games feature no actual 'gameplay' like one would traditionally imagine, just choices and the occasional quick time event. Some people would call these glorified DVD games, but I do enjoy the games for what they offer. As long as a compelling narrative comes attached.
Yeah, the games didn't exactly exude the intense 'life or death at a moments notice' vibe that David Cage seemed to be going for, but the game itself did excel when it came to branching narratives. Big choices had the chance to completely shift the road that your character was on, thus changing the path of the story. This meant that many key scenes featured dozens of possible permutations depending on the route you took to get there. Never before did players feel like they had shaped the events around them quite like they did during 'Heavy Rain'. Following that, many successors would come to pastiche and mature this formula.
Where 'Life is Strange' shines is in the strength of it's choices. Whilst it is true, the ability to turn back time kind of takes a lot of the weight out of the decisions you make, some of the most potent consequences you are subject to exceed the range of your powers. (Almost makes you wonder why you even have them in the first pl- okay, I'm not going to get into it here.) On the surface the gameplay experience is very similar to the 'Heavy Rain' brand of interactive storytelling, but the focus on character led drama adds a very personal aspect to the choices you make. Sometimes 'Life is Strange' presents you with a decision you make for emotional reasons rather than pragmatic ones. I find that this makes the consequences of those choice all the more reflective.
But let's step away from interactive story games and move to a game that features traditional gameplay but still manages to deliver doses of potent 'choice/consequence' to the player. Let's take a look at 'The Witcher'. Off the bat, CD Projekt Red were in a good place adapting 'The Witcher', as the story existed in an adult morally grey world. All they had to do was accurately translate that world into the medium of gaming, and I think the general consensus is that they pulled it off rather nicely. 'The Witcher' revolves around the character of Geralt, the titular Witcher. Much like Garrett from the Thief series, Geralt plays the role of an observer to a world in flux. Sure, he takes part in events, even has some 'save-the-world' moments. But for the most part, Geralt just tries to live in the turmoil of warring nations.
Finally, I would like to bring up one of gaming's classics. Often referred to as 'The greatest PC game ever made', I'm talking about Eidos' Deus Ex. The original cyberpunk gem, Deus Ex situates players in a world fraught with conspiracy and hyper-surveillance as they try to free the people from the grip of a tyrannical secret organization who is not the Illuminati. (They're in the game too, but this particular ultra-shady secret government isn't them.) Choice and consequence is handled the same here as in any other game, every now and then you are presented with a choice between a number of actions and must pick one. The important thing to note here is the fact that this type of gameplay was completely unheard of. Released in the year 2000, Deus Ex was the first action-oriented game to prominently feature branching narratives as a result of player choice. Players were enamoured by the concept and it's one of the many reasons that the game is still widely loved today. I still see fans arguing over that final choice as though debating warring philosophies; which, in hindsight, I suppose they are.
In the modern age of game narratives, traditional depictions of morality is mostly a thing of the past. Light sides and Dark sides are concepts that seem outdated in a world that is more coloured in shades of grey. Although I do sort of miss the old tally-based morality systems, I recognize that these systems worked to constrain storytelling and play styles. That's the reason why so many games that use to champion these systems have since abandoned them. 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' shed it's iconic 'Paragon/Renegade' mechanic, Fallout 4 dropped their 'Karma points' and Respawn have even come out to say that the upcoming 'Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order' will not have any 'light side'/ 'dark side' choices. (Although that may just be hinting at a more linear direction for the game.)
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