The Wolf Among Us Season 2 is still real!

Something like that

Telltale are a studio that tried to do something transformative for the medium and make it sustainable. They took the narrative-based story-game model and moved it on from Visual Novels, and even Point-and-Click Lucasarts games, and move that same world into exploration based 3D environmental... point-and-click. Okay, it's largely the same; but the presentation had pizazz! I'd like to say they did a great job with half their goal, but given their surprise folding a while back it's clear they never quite cracked sustainability. But in the time they were alive they made some absolute banger games. The fantastic Walking Dead games, the hilarious Tales from the Borderlands, Life is Strange (Not directly 'developed' so to speak, but DONTNOD would be nowhere without them) and many smaller hits and misses in-between. With their library I think everyone has their favourite. That one story, with the right presentation at the right time which just transcended the confines of the game and became an obsession. That series you'd needed more from. For me that series was The Wolf Among Us.

Now a lot of that comes from the source material that Telltale based their game around. 'Fables' tells an endlessly enticing 'American Gods' style story of various fantasy fairy-tale characters living in the modern day real world as faded husks of their glorious namesakes. Bums, deadbeats, hookers and thugs; most former princesses and princes plucked from their happily ever after into the harsh reality of a cold world that doesn't care for anyone. The Wolf Among Us, as I recall, serves as a prequel to the comic series, showing us this world through the lens of the Sheriff of this secret community of Fables living in the middle of New York, called Bigby Wolf- literally the Big Bad Wolf from stories such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs. He navigates a noir-themed world of debauchery and homicide while trying to reconcile the monster he once was with the protective figure he represents nowadays, all the whilst keeping his true form in check.

It's hard to quite convey all the reasons why Season 1 of this game hit all the right notes for me, but I think the biggest key lies in that very first episode. You see, the first episode is dripping the style and mood of your typical Noir-themed world, with long shots bathed in heavy shades occasionally cut with a brilliant stark primary flash, a spiralling narrative of a world that always seems that bit more depraved the further you peel back, and of course, the rugged and hard-faced Sheriff who comes across as the hard edge of the law but wears a large heart on his sleeve. (Although I suppose that last point depends solely on how you play him. Bigby can just as easily be every bit the arse that everyone seems to think he is.) But more than the presentation, I think the key for me came from an ostensibly accidental stunt that Telltale themselves pulled when making this series. They delayed the second episode.

And when I say 'delayed', I mean by a lot. We weren't talking days, we were talking months. And when you have the first episode end on a cliff-hanger like that; you best be working on resolving things post-haste. (I refuse to spoil the ending of Episode 1 because I know people haven't played it and you need to) I remember being in that community and tearing my hair out over the implications of that finale and where on earth the story could go. Torn between grief and intrigue, all from a single episode of this series. That fever pitch which built, like hot air culminating in an enclosed space, just burst through that veneer of trepidation and carried away my heart in the carnage. I fell for the series, utterly and totally, and I needed to know every thing that would happen, see every which twist of the tale and meet every twisted caricature of the fairy tale heroes we all know so well. I adored The Wolf Among Us Season 1. And now we have a release window for Season 2.

Unfortunately it's 2023.

But let's focus on the positives, such as the brand new trailer which shows honestly to goodness rendered footage and it looks good! Really Good. I always thought that the stylised art of the original game made sure that it held up extremely well, but the limitations of the engine running it are still obvious, and making the thing look smoother, pop it's colour saturations better, and use thinner outlines to achieve greater detail for the animations to flex demonstrates tangible steps up. Also am I incredibly glad that the apparent 'leaked screens' that have been floating around for the past couple of years that seemed to show a drastically redesigned Bigby were false; the whole 'mountain-of-meat' aesthetic doesn't really fit the Noir presentation outside of maybe Hellboy. But even that comic used long, thin character designs to offset the general size of it's protagonist.

Also, what a surprise it was to see the creative team moving away from the Grimms Fairy Tales source for characters. I mean there already was a bit of that in the first season, with prominent character 'Bloody Mary' obviously being based on the old children's horror story around... Mary Queen of Scots, I think? But having Dorothy and gang from The Wizard of Oz is a step up even from that! At his rate I'd say it's only a matter of time before Alice Liddel shows up, if such a prospect wouldn't end up being so much of a predictable cliché. Although, if they decide to adapt the right Alice... No, I should stop. As much as I would kill for a surprise crossover between Fables and American McGee's Alice, that's a pipe dream too far even for me. But the point is we're seeing variety, and that may come from necessity due to limited choice, or just a desire to pull from wider source, but whatever the impetus I see the promise as exciting!

And then we have the set-up of the trailer itself. Cliché, kind-of-hammy, but a great reintroduction to simple snippets such as the fact Bigby has the same Voice Actor. (Hell yeah!) The whole 'anger management' setting is a bit eye-roll worthy, although I do find it funny to think Snow herself enrolled him against his will. (Does that make Snow his official boss now?) But it gives us a natural way to show him Wolfing out, and considering those were some of the most hype moments from season 1, (the Dum and Dee scene in the Alley will forever be one of my favourite moments in any narrative game ever) I'm not really going to start complaining. I just pray, in my heart of hearts, that Telltale haven't forgotten about that little story hook which was dangling at the very end of Season 1- because I've been hanging onto that fishing line for too long for them to cut me off and start a new thread. (I'm not asking for a whole overarching plotline, but just a bit of recognition would be nice.)

It's been two years of silence but Telltale is back and The Wolf Among Us is back, I could care less for anything else that studio is working on because this is the flagship for me right now. With a whole year of waiting to look forward too, I'm just clasping my praying hands together and entreating all divine ears still open that this game, of any game, be good; because I really need a little faith in my favourite pastime to be restored around about now. Coming out swinging with such a big sequel like this is a gamble for new Telltale, but if it pays off, by golly, they will shoot back into the industry on a pedestal of success so resplendent it will be like they never left. So the absolutely best of well wishes to the Telltale team, I am routing for every single one of you.

The Expanse: a Telltale Series

 There's a subtitle I never thought I'd see again.

Do you know what I hate? Being led on by a string. It's perhaps the most dehumanising process a fan can be tricked into prior to a game coming out, as what can begin with a genuine excitement might quickly descend into a robotic process of rising and clapping on command like clockwork. You announce the game, and it's all great with the sunshine and roses, and then you come back a whole year later and talk about it again and I'm supposed to be the same rapid raving mess I was 12 months ago? No, the situation has changed, maybe I've changed, and perhaps you announced the game just a tad early. It sucks, because you want to be excited all the time, but that can't always just happen on a dime. And why am I mentioning this, because I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to feel any excitement at all by the time we hear more about The Wolf Among Us 2, or if I'm going to just grunt in satisfaction that 'something' is finally here. (And no, merely saying "you'll hear something soon" isn't enough. I'm grumpy.)

But at the very least I can be somewhat interested in the fact that Telltale, the video game company who was said to be dead, seems to be back in business. That is to say, they were killed off via bankruptcy after a string of unfortunate decisions topped off by a gamble gone sour at the exact wrong moment. When they were shut down, Telltale were very much embroiled heavily in the gaming market with their titles seemingly everywhere, only for them to just slip away in the space of a week to the shock of everyone, not least of all their employees. Outside help was called in to finish the rest of Telltale's hanging commitments to fans, and I just assumed that would be the unceremonious end to their journey. They had showed up, made interactive storytelling fun for a while, milked the formula a little too hard, and then got hit by a freakin' meteor and vanished. But alas I was foolish.

Murmurs and whispers had slithered by for years that cogs were turning in the background to revive this seemingly dead brand but... I mean we've had years of GTA V single player DLC rumours for even longer and nothing ever came of that. (The upcoming Franklin update for Online has sent those rumours into the stratosphere) Honestly, even when I saw that slam dunk reveal of Bigby Wolf for another series of The Wolf Among Us (Which is my favourite Telltale game, FYI) I just assumed this was a Microsoft team that were taking over from Telltale's work. But nope, this Game Awards proved that the name has indeed been reinstated, and they've even gone to try and emulate the same visual style that made them bucks all those years ago. As for how many of the original staff are even back in the office, well I can't say that much. (I know that if I were unceremoniously let go with one day's notice, I'd have a lot of reservations about so much as looking at anyone I once worked with in the eye again. Actually, come to think of it I have been in that situation before, so I attest with experience.)

This time around they seem to be back to their old tricks of securing big brand deals with properties and 'adapting' their work into the Telltale formula. I don't think they've ever been given the trust and respect to make a canonical addendum to anything they've worked on, (I'm not sure how Fables feels about The Wolf Among Us being a prequel. Maybe they accept that, at least.) but they've had the chance to work with Marvel, HBO and The Walking Dead in their prime, so this song-and-dance is practically old-hat to the team by now. This time around the lucky series is The Expanse, and good luck on figuring out whether that's based on the popular and lauded TV show or the ongoing novel series. (Actually, we don't need to play that game this time like we did with The Walking Dead game. It's the TV show, they even recycled one of the actresses to play the lead.)

Now I unfortunately have never watched The Expanse, but hold off before you execute me so that I can provide my pitiful excuse! Okay? So, I don't watch much TV that isn't either gaming related, Anime or just straight trash that I can make fun of. (Why do you think I've watched almost every episode of Supergirl?) So I'm no expert on what this show is, although I've heard it described as Mass Effect set before the First Contact War (The event which marked humanity's first contact) and so if that sounds as interesting to you as it does to me than you'd probably think this show sounds pretty dope too! And that description was offered by Pucci himself, and who is rightly more trustful and has better taste than a Floridian Preacher with a 100-year old, bisexual, cult-leader, vampire fetish?

What I do have a lot of familiarity with, conversely, is the tried and tested Telltale formula, which is the thing that some believe led to their downfall all their years ago. You see, Telltale make choice based storygames where the bulk of the gameplay is making decisions or OTE sections. Not exactly the most riveting stuff on it's own. What's more, the obsession with their moving-comic-book aesthetic that management swore by, as well as the heavy pressure to put out new games at an excessive rate, meant they were forced to use a game engine with a lot of development drawbacks, such as absolutely no physics in it whatsoever, making every scene a painstaking animation process. I don't know if any of that has changed in this Phoenix Downed reiteration of the name, but I can already see they're at least mimicking the old visual style, albeit decently updated, which makes me a little uncomfortable just for knowing all the headaches that the original was tied to.

I'm not one to wag fingers without evidence (What a total lie) but I wonder where exactly this new Telltale is placing itself in order to, you know, not go the way of the old Telltale. I remember hearing about a lot of ideas floating about to change up the formula so that the games would retain their narrative heart but actually embrace different types of gameplay, and that sounds great! Only somehow I don't think they've taken any of that to heart. (Call it a hunch, but I feel like that would be the very first thing that Telltale would be announcing about their big return if that were the case.) That being said, I am insanely happy to see this style of game resurrected, because in their absence the only real alternative company we've had to fill the void has been DONTNOD, and... yeah... those games are great and all... but I want something more fun.

Still, at the end of the day the reason I'm here is for the Bigsby Wolf return. Anything to do with The Expanse is cool and all, maybe I'll try to catch up with the series before this game comes out so I can enjoy it, (five season? Whew, I've got some binging ahead of me!) but I need me some Wolf Among us and this isn't going to cut it. This I say even when I know in my heart of hearts that they won't honour that niggling cliffhanger at the end of the first season. I just know that they won't. But having played it again just recently I can't shake the tantalising mystery just delicate enough in inflame anyone's curiosity; who exactly is it telling everyone that Bigsby is bad? Seriously, it ain't cool to talk about the man behind his back like that.

When Choices don't actually matter

 Your actions have consequences

I actually remember my first time booting up Telltale's The Walking Dead and seeing that ominous message fade onto the screen amid a wall of black. 'Your actions will have consequences' blinked into life and hung for a time, ensuring the message really squirmed into your gut and nestled in your psyche. I'll be honest, it unnerved me. I wasn't throwing my head up and shouting "Finally, a game where things matter!", instead I was glancing to-and-fro, trying to exactly pinpoint how I typically like to play games and what sort of mess that might land me in. Could I accidentally screw up the entire story by not taking it utterly serious from day one? Would the main character instantly explode if I failed to select the perfect rhythm of choices? How serious are the 'consequences' we're talking about? I saw it as a threat directly against the laid back, see how things go, way I used to play narrative based video games, and maybe that was a jolt I needed in order to pay more attention and care about these games.

Obviously it didn't take long for a bit of experience with these types of games, all of whom started with that exact same plodding flash card, for me to realise that my 'actions' would only actually have a very limited set of 'consequences' and usually at highly specific moments where the actions are blindingly obvious. "Will you help the annoying guy or the useless woman in the middle of the zombie attack? Bare in mind, the other probably ain't gonna make it." Titles like these talk a big game about how branching the plot is, or how every single butterfly trod on will cause a cataclysm one world over, but in truth they're limited by the plot and the writers. You can't make every choice lead to some unforeseen consequence, else people will be too terrified to make any choices for fear that they'll screw everything up! (Not to mention the sheer vast range of options and story twists that would take in order to nail down to the wall perfectly.) But some fans can find this to be a bit of a betrayal in that they very much expected for their every choice to become a new plot point. So I wanted to explore some games who flounder or succeed on that very promise.

Take Cyberpunk for instance, being a game that very much sold itself on being a heavily choice-driven experience, but which famously didn't live up to that nearly as much as fans wanted. One of the most commonly quoted points of contention is the 'origin' system, wherein players would get the chance to choose who their character was before the storyline and that would influence the way they would interact with the story. Similar to how a lot of the more hardcore RPGs function. However, that origin ended up influencing only the very beginning of the story and as the plot went on, people found themselves only really being given an influencing part in the main plot at very sparring moments. Most annoying for some, being the fact that some conversations would give you a chance to offer an alternative option (even requiring a skill check to be passed in order to raise the point to begin with) only for your opinion to be overturned in favour of where the game wants you to go. Presumably the option is just there for characterisation in showing how smart or capable the player is then? It mostly just frustrated instead.

Pillars of Eternity is a game that doesn't suffer nearly the same amount of narrative hatred, even though it does actually handle it's origin choices very similarly. In that when you select where you came from, what your species is, and what you do; oftentimes that comes up very rarely in conversation, and when it does it comes as mere flavour text that is then contributes nothing tangible to the actual scene or interaction. The sequel does a much better job of this, but in the first game the only point I can recall where something tangible can be done depending on what your character is, was in the very beginning of the game where you find some braziers which can only be lit if your character is a fire god-like. But even that doesn't make any sense because you actually find torches littered all over the place, why can't they light the braziers? Of course, the rest of the game has a lot of choices and branching quests independent of your character creation choices, so this is more a 'drop in the bucket' problem for Pillars, but Obsidian did take steps to rectify it for the next game so it was definitely a recognisable problem.

On the other side of the spectrum we have games like Deus Ex, where we are presented with a world where choices do matter. Now by it's very nature, Deus Ex is a series where player choice shapes the experience, as this is a stealth-based immersive sim, and so building your character to be better at hacking defences and turning them against the enemy is going to change how you approach pretty much every area of the game. But choices effect the story too in that you're given chances to effect the progression or ending of practically every single encounter and mission in these games. A lot of these are self contained instances, wherein the matter is opened and closed within this quest alone and the wider narrative carries on unabated, but the effect still rings true in that the player feels like an active architect in their own fate.  On the otherside of the adventure, this means all these games have huge branching finales that can mean drastically different things for the future of the world and the people who live therein, encouraging replayability as these sorts of systems are designed to do.

So we've seen examples of both successes and failures in this field, but what of a successful failure? Mass Effect and Fallout 4 both have shades of everything we've already talked about in them, however when it comes to choices and consequence there is a shared criticism that these games illicit more than any other; the misleading dialogue option. With the very nature of how dialogue is handled in these games, a preview for the player followed by a full response from their avatar, there comes a few situations where the player will pick an option only for the response to veer in tone drastically from what they expected. This isn't necessarily an example of the writing lacking the scope to change the story, but can still feel like choice being invalidated due to the game interpreting your choices in a way that you didn't intend for. My example for this would be during Mass Effect Andromeda, where if you're too friendly with a swashbuckling smuggler side character the game will automatically assume you are pursuing a serious scandalous relationship there, which leads to some very awkward 'surprise intimacy' moments down the line. (I didn't know it was that easy to lead a guy on...)

I've touched upon a bunch of different types of promised consequence met by disappointing payoff, and what I've landed on is that mostly successful payoff (like Deus Ex) relies heavily on choice that has a distinct effect rather than choice that merely adds flavour; but does that automatically mean flavour options are bad? Whenever I was playing the Pillars games and an option would pop up to indicate that the experiences I'd had or the options I'd selected in character creation, would give me a unique option, I'd pick it. Personally, I saw these not as new paths to through the narrative that needed to branch into new questlines, but just an expansion of who I was, providing a unique perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to experience. But I think the key is balance. Don't promise your game will be a choice-important romp if the majority of your choices merely add context that the other person would have shared anyway.

There are a lot more examples of choice versus consequence in the interactive story games out there, but I found a lot of those example to be much more situational and specific than what I was talking about here. Although I bet it would be fun to pick out some of those games and really go to town on the key choices of certain episodes, maybe I'll do that sometime. My view on things is that choices and consequences shouldn't ever really be the key selling point of your game, but merely some spice thrown in there to mix up the pot, provide some replay value. Because when you put the weight of the game on it, then you open yourself up to criticism about "But what about this moment where I couldn't choose?" or "Why didn't this choice mean as much as that one?" At the end of the day the tag is performative more than anything else, no one really wants to make a story where every element of it can be pulled apart my some scrappy player who thinks they know the best solution to every problem. It's the writer's story at the end of the day and is limited by the shades that they want to explore, maybe that's a reality that game's marketers need to be more cognizant to in the future if they want to avoid unnecessary disappointment. 

The Wolf Among Us 2

Who's afraid of Bigsby Wolf?

At long last I have come to the end of my VGA flashbacks (only 2 months after the actual event) and we've landed on the one game that I've been holding off on the most. One title which succeeded at blowing my mind so completely that I needed these past two months just to get all my thoughts together so that I could appropriately discuss it. I am, of course, talking about the grand announcement (or should I say; re-announcement) of 'The Wolf Among Us Season 2.' To be completely frank with everyone right now, I'm still in the throes of giddy shock right now as I feel like one of dearest friends has risen from the grave for one last pub crawl. (Let me explain why I feel so strongly about this.)

Telltale was a studio that had been knocking about for quite a while before it hit it's stride. In their early years they dabbled with various mediums that could facilitate cinematic storytelling until they took the steps to revolutionise that particular sub-category of games with 2012's 'The Walking Dead'. When that game first launched the franchise was at the height of it's popularity, with folk dedicating every fibre of their being to consuming this show, so for a related game to launch in this window heralded both incredible potential and risk to crash and burn. To muddy matters even more, this game wouldn't even be based on the TV show that had taken the horror world by storm, but on Robert Kirkman's comics which was still relatively niche in terms of audience. The title couldn't even rely on it's identity as a game to secure a sure-fire audience, as Telltale's new 'gameplay' style would defy many traditional classifications for a 'video game' and would inevitably be compared to a 'choose-your-own-adventure' DVD game. What I'm trying to say is that this game had everything working against it and very much should have crashed and burned. But it didn't.

Against all the odds, The Walking Dead hit audiences with more than just mild success, the game was heralded as a revolution to video game storytelling. (Personally I wouldn't go that far but the title was a good time.) The characters were endearing, their journey was heart-stopping and the conclusion of the tale was powerful enough to bring some audiences to tears. Telltale had established themselves as a true powerhouse in the gaming landscape and revived the 'point and click adventure' genre. But then the immediate question was raised. Where would the team take their talents next? They couldn't relay on Walking Dead forever, so what brand could they possibly move onto next in order to prove that they weren't just one-trick-ponies? They ended up with the comic book series: Fables.

Fables is a somewhat similar world to American Gods, as in it purposes a world in which the fairy-tale characters from The Brothers Grimm would walk the real world and try to survive. It took classic characters like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and Snow White and threw them into a gritty and dark world of murder, prostitution and drugs. In theory, that concept has the potential to be one of the most eye-rolling 'wannabe edgy' stories of all time, but through a shared quality in writing and a dedication to remaining mature to the subject material, Fables handled it's premise with integrity and easily sold it's world to audiences. This was the world that Telltale wanted to share with video game audiences through their (Prequel?) series; The Wolf Among Us.

A lot of things went right for Telltale to set-up this particular series, and not all of it was intentional. 'The Wolf Among Us' followed the tale of Bigsby Wolf, (The 'big bad wolf' from Little Red Riding Hood) although here he was just a gruff looking plain-clothes detective right out of an noir movie. Bigsby served as the sheriff of the New York population of fable characters and it was his job to keep everyone following some variation of the law considering the fact that real police would have trouble enforcing laws upon citizens who can eat bullets and transform into nightmare monsters. His job is put to the test, however, once bodies start showing up and it's up to Bigsby to figure out who is putting down fables in his city.

So there it is, a fairly bog-standard crime thriller story with a weird supernatural twist. What's the big fuss about? Well, 'The Wolf Among Us' benefited from a great narrative team alongside years worth of source material, as this title managed to make every character in this dime-store novel feel real and interesting. When I came to the first game it was very much just to dip my toes into the waters due to a demo that impressed me, but I left that first episode absolutely hooked to a degree that only the best stories can replicate. But this is where a slip-up for Telltale managed to work out to their favour, as due to an unforeseen complication the second episode of 'The Wolf Among Us' had to be delayed by several weeks. Usually this would result in a huge hit to the audience, but the first episode of this game had landed with such an attention grabbing cliffhanger that everyone was salivating for some resolution. The delay only heightened the fervour for this title and allowed for others to get in on the excitement that was sweeping the gaming world. (As well as allowing for Streamers,YouTubers and their huge audiences to get invested.)

When it was all said and done, 'The Wolf Among Us Season 1' capped off as some of the finest work that Telltale ever pulled off and the team would never get the chance to match that high for the rest of the company's lifespan. Don't get me wrong, I liked 'The Walking Dead series 2' (a lot more than most people, it seems) and 'Tales from the Borderlands' is easily the funniest entry to the Borderlands franchise, but nothing from Telltale had me coming back month after month itching for my fix. Bigsby, Snow and all the fable cast had us enchanted and the subtle tease (which doesn't even really amount to a cliffhanger) at the end of season 1 would rattle around her heads for years to come. Telltale seemed to be very aware of how special this title was as well, as they never rushed to make a sequel and vowed to take their time in order to make it perfect. Unfortunately, that reticence ended up costing us the possibility of a sequel altogether.

In late 2018 it was revealed that Telltale games was shutting down for a variety of reasons that I can't be bothered to shift through in this blog. That was pretty much the end of all hope that we would ever see the promised sequel series as the studio was taking all of their talent and licences to the grave with them. Or at least so it seemed. Through some means, some Telltale staff managed to band together in order to pen the finale of their Walking Dead series, providing closure to the fans of that particular franchise and sparking hope for the company. Nothing more would be said until December last year, when fans were thrown for a loop with the surprise announcement of 'The Wolf Among Us 2'. (I almost fell out of my chair.)

You might have noticed that the majority of this blog didn't even touch on the VGA trailer itself, and that is because that trailer was constructed with the sole purpose of inspiring my brand of nostalgia. We see Snow White asking for Bigsby's help and nothing else, but we didn't need anymore to be flooded with memories of the best of Telltale's best. As of yet were still to get any concrete information on what this means the company (Is Telltale back?) but right now I don't need to know anything other than the fact that the Big Bad Wolf is coming back to my computer screen sometime in the future, and that's enough to set me buzzing.

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.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

This one's for the Audience

In typical viewing media there are three metaphorical walls. The three surrounding the character that exist within their world, and the fourth which exists only for the audience to peek in. A transparent glass wall that separates the world of fiction from our own. This fragile separation keeps our viewing experience rationalized as it means we witness without being noticed, the characters play their parts without ever realizing they are in a play. But what happens when things don't play out like that? What happens when the characters break that cardinal rule of cinema and look directly into the camera? Is it anarchy? Does the fabric of space time collapse around us? Well no... we usually just get an overdone joke.

A significant degree of 'Modern' story telling in film, TV and now games, have followed the trend of traditional art (one century late) and gone 'Meta'. That is to say, they often like breaching the metaphysical barrier between fiction and reality and acknowledge that they are in a performance. At first this was a little bit quaint, a scandalous break from the norm that gave the viewers a forbidden look behind the curtain. That sort of shared secret between the audience and the character could even become engrossing as they wrap you up in their world by acknowledging your own. But over exposure, as always, as sullied this charming gimmick and turned in into a sour and predictable move. Such to the point that only the quirky (lazy comedy movies) and the committed (Deadpool) still stick to the formula. Even games have given up on this cliche for the most part, however there was a time when it was all over the metaphorical shop of gaming, and I want to approach that today.

Seeing as how I already mentioned already, I might as well start with Deadpool. Not the movie version starring Ryan Reynolds, but the Video game starring Nolan North. (Good lord, both their names are alliterative. They belong in comic books!) Deadpool is a character built around one simple premise: he knows that he is in a comic book and he doesn't care. That has carried over to every piece of media to which Wade had emigrated to and it means the game is inter-cut with many instances of Wade breaking the Fourth wall. Heck, the entire story is driven around the premise of Wade struggling to make Deadpool game after getting his propositions cancelled by the studio and firing his prospective voice actor (Nolan North, obviously.) What follows is a wacky affair in which Wade chases down some vague threat whilst, every now and then, making a snide remark to the camera or even shifting his own reality to fit to some joke. He even personally makes the final fight 10 times harder in order to make it more climatic by cloning the boss. (Sounds more like the actions of a really annoying lead designer, honestly.)

Metal Gear Solid, (ding-ding-ding. I've exceeded my Metal Gear quota for the week!) featured one particularly endearing trait wherein the series would occasionally acknowledges it's own existence for little moments of "Wait, did you notice that?" Metal Gear Solid 2 has that moment when Campbell's AI starts going haywire and he directly informs Raiden that he has been playing the game too long and should turn it off immediately. Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes has the level in which you re-enact scenes from the original Metal Gear and get your game infected with the classic 'FOX-die' virus only to have the actual Fox Engine (The proprietary engine made for the game) save you, And then there were those off-the-cuff moments throughout the game wherein characters would teach you how to play the game by actually saying things like "Press the Action button." (That always annoyed me, truth me told.) But the classic Fourth wall break would have to go make to Metal Gear Solid 1 during the fight with the iconic Metal Gear villain; Psycho Mantis. Things start off with Mantis 'reading your mind' (scanning your memory card) and then commenting on games that you like to play. (Spooky!) They come to a head, however, mid-way through the fight once Mantis starts dodging all of your moves instinctively. Calling for back-up reveals that Mantis is once again 'reading you mind' and the only way to shake him off is to replug your controller into the second game port. (You can see why they don't try cool tricks like that nowadays)

Borderlands 2 is primarily a comedic game at heart, so it makes sense that the team would be a little bit flippant when it comes to creating a solid and believable world. That being said, Borderlands has managed to only subtly prod at the fourth Wall throughout all of it games, but never go the whole hog and shatter the thing. One of my favourite moments for this is when Scooter sends the vault hunters off to bring power to a small settlement, which can be achieved through the acting of clearing monster infested pumps. He commends you for fixing the first pump without prompt and then comments about how weird it was that he knew the task was done the second you did it. (A subtle nod to the same logic fallacy that affects all games with silent protagonists.) The best, however, comes from 'Tales from the Borderland' in a scene wherein the protagonist Rhys is shocked by the fact that he has the consciousness of the previous game's antagonist, Handsome Jack, inside of his cranium. (I guess Cyberpunk was taking notes for this scene.) Handsome Jack plays around with Rhys by threatening to overload his neurons before laughing it off by saying he can't do that. He's still tickled by his ability to  terrify Rhys and, in Telltale game's style, a little prompt pops up in the corner stating 'Handsome Jack will remember that.' By chance, Jack finds himself noticing the little prompt and points to it saying "What the hell?" before it disappears and the scene goes on unabashed.

Bioshock isn't the kind of game that one would usually equate with being 'fourth wall breaking', and that's because it isn't... In the traditional sense. Whilst Bioshock is both a sober and satirical look at a twisted society driven by extremest socialist ideals, it doesn't take much to see how the game aims at video game culture as well, especially in it's twist. Now, I know that the game has been out for over a decade now, but seeing as how the twist itself is one of the best in gaming history I will dance around it here. (Look it up if you really want to know. Or better yet, play the game.) But safe to say, 'that twist' is a direct comment on the way that games incentivize the player by forcing them to do tasks for which the player is not in control. Even when presented with a branching RPG narrative, there are still restrictions to your actions at some point, making the art of video game storytelling almost 'enslaving' in it's execution. Perhaps not shattering the fourth wall wholesale, but defiantly noticing it in a smart way.

One 'Fourth wall breaker' that is well on it's way to becoming a classic is Dan Salvato's 'Doki Doki Literature Club'. That is a game in which the player is initially rolled into a traditional anime-schoolboy set-up only to have everything turn on it's head in the weirdest possible fashion. The first hint of anything going off-script is when Natsuke pokes fun at Monika by joking how she should be the person to talk to about matters concerning fish seeing as how it's in her name. After a moment of confusion, the girl spells it out for us; "Mon-Ika". Eventually, Monika has to wave it away be explaining that the joke doesn't work in the English translation of the game, and we get our first glimpse into the way that things aren't sensible in this game world. The game itself goes into fifth gear at times but, once again, I refuse to spoil things so I'll encourage those interested to seek it out yourself, you won't be disappointed.

Lastly, there is a game that one certainly wouldn't assume would be flippant with it's fourth wall, and yet when it was, the moment was undeniably perfect. 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' was  in development for a very long time and when it came out, critics and fans alike attested that it was worth the wait. The game was especially important for the Developers themselves, CD Projekt Red, as it was the conclusion of the franchise that had put their studio on the map. The team threw their hearts and souls into the game and were rewarded with adoration and fandom from practically every corner of the Internet. But things didn't end there, as the team then moved straight on to creating two DLC's for the game; 'Heart of Stone' and the new-land expansion: 'Blood and Wine'. With the latter DLC being the last time that CDPR would work on The Witcher for the forseeable future, the team ensured there would be a moment of closure for themselves and the fans. At the end of everything, once the day is saved, there is a moment wherein Geralt finally makes the choice to end his illustrious career of monster hunting and retire. Regis comments how the both of them deserve rest after their turmoil and strife, to which Geralt merely responds "That we do." Before looking straight at the camera to let the audience know that he's including us in that statement too. It's a touching scene to tell us all that he has earnt a break and is almost looking for our permission to take it, it was a moment that just felt right.

As you can see there are a great many number of ways that one can play around with breaking the Fourth Wall, and not all of them are lazy and awkward. That being said, I'm glad the trend has fallen off of late, before things started getting as dire as the 'modern art' scene and we started getting 'impressionist video games'. Perhaps there is still space for the odd subtle fourth wall wink in the future, in the same vein as The Witcher 3, but I'd still ask for it to be exercised in moderation before another foul trend starts to build.