Should action games have quiet sections?

Does the boom boom go well with the shush shush?

Games are all about action, right? Swinging in to save the day, blasting through rooms of waist-high objects, murdering hundreds yet still calling yourself the goodguy and maybe even looking a little bit over your shoulder for the front cover. (But not too much over your shoulder, you have to maintain the plausible deniability that you don't care about the attention) But of course, not all games are about constant action and, in fact, even the one's that are sometimes might not show action all the time, sometimes there are careful balances to be struck between when a game goes full violence and when it lets the tempo rest up a bit. And when we're talking about games, with their length, we leave enough room for these experiences to be more flexible with their pacing than one might expect an all-out shooter to typically be at first glance. But should a game that is dedicated to action allow for moments of quiet and calm, or does doing so detract from the package of the game in general? And whilst acknowledging that every game is obviously going to be it's own case-by-case scenario: what effect does action and it's proliferation have on the experience of the player?

To provide an example of such an 'effect' as well as demonstrate the difference in approach I'm talking about; I want to touch on two great open world games. Sleeping Dogs and... well, any Rockstar game can go here, although I should probably stick to just the open world ones, as they all share the trait I'm about to discuss. Rockstar allows their open world games to have times of action and times of characterisation, either for the city or the starring characters, whereas Sleeping Dogs sets a mandate of at least one action scenario in every single mission. I find this keeps things moving for the easily bored, but conversely makes things incredibly predictable. In GTA you can genuinely have a mission where you are introduced to an area and important people you'll need to get to know, such that you could spend a whole mission talking or listening to exposition. In Sleeping Dogs, you cannot have a mission without either a car chase (or race), a gun fight or a fist fight. (Usually more than one of those, but it's always got to be at least one.) What this means is that it becomes really hard for the story to surprise you at any point with any development, because as soon as someone says "Can you take me shopping?" or "Would you like to attend my wedding?", you know straight away that something is going to happen that will turn everything on it's head. Predictability robs all power from spontaneity, which I think hurts the lingering appeal of a story. 

I pulled back on saying 'all Rockstar Games' because of the follow-up example of a game that is even more full throttle than Sleeping Dogs. Because you see, as an Open World game, Sleeping Dogs needs to not be throwing death and suffering at you at some points, there has to be open world no-action driving sections for the sake of simply going places. But an action shooter like Max Payne, nah that can be as action packed as you want. (Just as most action shooters are.) Barring cutscenes, you're pretty much always spraying lead at someone whilst diving slow-motion through the air and it captures a very action movie-esque sort of atmosphere. I personally always looked upon Max Payne 3 as the Die Hard video game we never got (that top-down abomination does not count.) The toss up is that it can make you desensitised to the explosion that is action, requiring the game to use other methods to keep players interested. Something which most games achieve by changing up the challenge (new enemy types, harder sections, increased stakes), and others fail at.

Then, to shift gears once again, we have a sort of game which is built around action but could contain plenty of other content in it as well. I've picked Fallout for this example, but pretty much any RPG title could fill this space. We're talking games wherein it's just as likely that you'll spend a play session chatting or walking to places, as you might spend it gunning down bandits in the wasteland. These games can, when handled right, still maintain that adrenaline which action brings even to the last stages of the game, just from how segmented the action moments are. A title I'm playing right now which is wonderful for managing this balance would be Death Stranding, which normalises it's robust delivery framework so much that when you go awry and bump into a Beached Thing, it's never a comfortable encounter that you're familiar with. And in entertainment being uncomfortable is preferable to being bored. 

But what about games where action is the very last thing you manage, and not in the way that Death Stranding does it (where action is a surprise which could be lurking around every misstep) but in such a manner that approach the conflict gameplay willingly but sparingly? Of course, I'm talking about the Persona games here, wherein most of the game is spent living the life of the protagonist and choosing where they develop their skills and whom they kindle friendships with. The latter half of the game is the RPG fighting, and though much of what you do on the outside does improve those duelling skills, the draw of the audience is more towards living these lives and getting closer to these fictional people. The drawback of games like these is that the core spine of the gameplay, the actual RPG fighting, can start to feel like a mere obstacle between you and progression, because that's just not what you signed up for. Balancing this with making combat fun and varied becomes even more of an issue than it is for the full action games.

When it comes to the genre called 'action', I feel it's always important to maintain and develop the core of the action gameplay, but that doesn't mean it can't be just as important to have other dalliances too. The sorts of games that aren't focused on creating rounded experiences like that need to really nail their action premise in order to not feel vapid and empty, something which the Far Crys of the world can fall short of. I think that might be why we can have a game as beautiful and pulsing as Cyberpunk 2077, and still feel like we're walking around an unfinished Alpha. Life is more than just constant conflict, and though games are an embellishment of the life experience, avoiding the calm before and after the storm is an easy way to disconnect the audience from the world you've built. Again, unless the game is specifically designed to meld around that design, such as with your average FPS game. 

That being said, I do understand people who don't like any deviation from the straight action of the game as they feel it's just a waste of time. Red Dead Redemption 2 has it's detractors for that very reason, where time spent not shooting things and rocketing through the storyline can be aggrieving when the game is asking you to soak in atmosphere and enjoy the arcade-simulation of cowboy life. As such it largely comes down to taste, and that can be different for everyone. Some people like to spend as much time in these fictional worlds as humanely possible, whilst others want to power through at a break-neck pace so that they can onto the next one in no time flat. The only question is which kind of gamer you want to be.

I think there's always a place for quiet in action games, as the very concept of disparity is inducive to competent pacing. Even all out action first person shooter games, with all their chaos and explosions, can sometimes be best served with their moments of peace, or even just quieter variations of that action. (Such as how in 'Halo: Reach' one of the best missions is the stealth one) For me, the ability to take your audience on a journey is the prerequisite to all great entertainment and pacing is the key instrument through which you can work this magic, which is why no matter where I am in life, how busy everything else is, how little free time I personally have, I'll always make space for the Death Strandings and Red Dead Redemptions on my play docket.

In defence of: linearity

Down the only road I've ever been down.

Every now and then there develops a trend in the world of gaming. Usually it spawns from something good and imaginative, just like any cliche, only to become repetitive and overused in no-time flat. In the early 2010's this was the fabled 'Multiple ending'. For a good few years it was genuinely considered lazy not to shoehorn some sort of branching ending into your game, even when such was completely superfluous to the main story. If you don't believe me on that, do you remember how Call of Duty Black Ops 2 had multiple endings? That's right even the big boy in the playground, Mr "Too big to fail", succumbed to the trend of passionless multiple endings for fear of looking silly amongst his peers.

It was all pretty ridiculous when you think about it, as imbuing a story with multiple endings doesn't automatically give that story depth. (Just look at Black Ops 2.) Usually, all this amounted to was the player having a slight choice thrown towards them near the end that'll slightly changed the ending cinematic. (Ohhh, how branching!) It never should have caught on in the first place, but there were so many big games successfully pulling it off that creatively bankrupt publishers felt it their civic duty to conscript developers into manning low effort rip offs. Games like GTA V, 'Deus Ex: Human Revolutions' and Dishonored, all featured multi-choice endings and all enjoyed some sort of critical and/or commercial success. However, in my opinion the one which really sold the concept to the world was Mass Effect 3. Say what you will about that ending, the main game was nothing short of a gaming cultural phenomenon. Everybody knew that Mass Effect was wrapping up in a grand way and people were just buzzing about the 'every choice matters' promise that many convinced themselves had been made. Replicating that would take effort, most publishers realized, but multiple endings could achieve the same effect simply and with gusto.

During this whirlwind of a fad, there was one obvious casualty amidst the gaming archetypes of the age. Namely, those games that choose to go for a single ending. This was the age in which such a direction in design was considered a crime towards creativity, and all those that were guilty of such would be labelled with that most damning of brands; 'Linear!' I'm being serious, look back on games of the early 2010's and check reviews from all the trusted critics. Almost all of them would bring up the phrase 'Linear' and use it as a pejorative to throw at the game. Afterall, games are all about empowering the player, so if you don't account for that one time they punched a jellyfish in the face and bring it up in the ending, you're stifling the player's freedoms! (Or at least, that's what I assume the logic was.)

The thing which always got to me was the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong with being 'Linear' with your story. In fact, usually that isn't a sign that you lack the creativity to expand out your story, but more that you posses the focus to fully realize your intended story. Many great games from around this time were all out attacked for their linearity despite handling it incredibly deftly. Sure, there's some overly noir moments in 'Max Payne 3', but the linear story was a blast. (I still maintain that game was the closet we ever came to a good Die Hard game). Assassin's Creed Brotherhood met with some grumblings in this regard despite being arguably the best written (and in-arguably the best paced) entry in the series. And even 'Bioshock: Infinite' only managed to get people to say that the story was 'good, for a linear title'.

Everytime I saw a review like that I would just grimace and bear it, confused by this mass hysteria that I fundamentally didn't understand. Even back then I could see how multiple endings for video games rarely lived up to the promise they made, if not now then in the future. Who remembers the GTA V ending? (Spoilers) That ended with Franklin being given the choice to off Trevor or Micheal in order to save himself. (And, of course, there was the option to rally against the man handing this ultimatum and risk everyone. Guess which ending everyone choose.) Whilst this initially looked interesting, in hindsight it was really rather shallow as the only ending which makes any remote sense is the one in which they kill off Trevor. You know, the guy who's insane antics got them in this position to begin with. The other two endings felt nigh-on nonsensical (Like the one in which Micheal opts to kill himself rather than be saved by Franklin.) or a bit too cleanly wrapped for a tale about 3 murderous bankrobbers. (It's a setup.)

That isn't even the worst of it. Just look at those games that were praised for offering those genuinely distinct endings which inexplicably granted real power behind the player's decision; Like 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution'. That was a game which placed itself in a precarious situation by being a prequel, in that it came from a franchise renowned for it's branching endings and yet would have to adhere to the state of the world in the original Deus Ex. To solve this, the writers ended up focusing on a supremely important but underexplored portion of the original game's lore, The Illuminati, and focused that final decision around them. This allowed for a final choice that gave the player the power to change the world in significant ways without retconning anything. (Supremely clever!) So what was the problem? Well, 'Human Revolution' was a huge success and warranted a sequel. So what did Square Enix do? Simple, they invalidated their own endings and choose one for the player in order to facilitate a franchise. (One which they then bundled with the narratively underwhelming 'Mankind Divided') So that shows you how much those 'multiple choice endings' are worth when it comes up against making money.

At the height of all this nonsense, there was one legendary linear narrative driven game that proved how one could follow a single storyline and still be caught up in the moment. (Something that shouldn't have needed to be proven, but here we are.) This of course being the story of Neil Druckmann's The Last of Us and way it used the setting of a post apocalypse to tell... well, the kind of story that the post apocalyptic genre was created to tell. (It's actually surprising how many zombie stories mistakenly make it about the zombies.) This absolutely shot through the gaming award shows of the age and won award after award for storytelling, all without giving us a red, green, blue scenario at the end. In fact, the game even has the guts to have the protagonist enact a highly controversial action at the end of the story that players have no recourse to prevent. Allowing for a powerful moment to remain powerful instead of doing what Rockstar did with GTA V. (That finale would have actually been somewhat poignant without the choices.

Obviously I disagree with the labelling of 'Linear' as a pejorative and feel that more modern games shouldn't be afraid to tell one story that they know how to tell. Nowadays the problem isn't quite as widespread as it used to be, it's almost a novelty to get multiple endings in a triple A game today; but Horror games are still very much beholden to it. (Even 'Fnaf: Help Wanted' had multiple endings. That was just a VR game, for god's sake!) I'll always maintain that it is stupid and contrived to artificial force any storytelling element into a narrative that doesn't require it, and the sooner that lesson takes hold in the industry the sooner we can start improving the net quality of video game storytelling.