The value of Minigames

 

Making games is hard and taxing work. Coming up with interesting systems, seamlessly implementing them into the core product and then polishing them up to retail standard- it's a trip. So much work goes into getting that central product working, balanced, shining to a brilliant standard, that very rarely is there time then to think about 'minigames' that go attached with the project. Who has the time? The Capacity? And even then, what exactly is a minigame within the context of the development process? What makes it mini, but the containment program macro? And why bother with the development and implementation of a product that does not directly reinforce the central ethos of the delivered product? Isn't that, by and large, a betrayal of the tenants of design and storytelling? Clutter is the death of poignancy, afterall. And if not, why not? Questions and queries that could sink and drown for all most care, but I am the kind who ponders the pointless.

First off, we should acknowledge the truth that game design, or rather interactive design as a whole, has fundamentally different aims than most other forms of media, in general. Books, movies and TV shows- by their very nature, need to rely on the backbone of focus to be effective. Focus on the themes, the message, the environment- there needs to be some element that brings together all the aspects of development coherently otherwise the final product can feel meandering and disorganised, and the message becomes lost and muddy. This expectation of focus does start to drift, however, with the length of the product in question. TV shows are usually permitted more time to faff about with non-essential side narrative than a movie would be. Books can get away with twisted alternative plots that weave around the central plot when they want to. And games, arguably the longest form of media in their most bloated forms, can tug at the very boundaries of cohesion without rubbing up against it's audience's patience.

In this way the precedent for the implementation of minigames seems feasible, but let us further define the topic just to be safe. Minigames are self contained units of a game separate to but contained within the core game. A world within a world, so to speak. A minigame is perhaps best defined by it's complete distinction from the core game in that the effect that the player has in manipulating it's world bears no significant effect on the wider world. For example, winning a game of Virtu-Fighter in a Yakuza game might help you succeed at a side quest, but the fight within the minigame of Virtu-Fighter does not resolve any narrative situations within the game, it was merely a vehicle through which the side-game was played. Whereas the 'side game' of micro-managing purchasing various businesses around town in order to save the locals from greedy venture capitalists, would be considered a 'meta game'- because it takes a consequential world event and gamifies it. There's your distinction, Meta versus Minigames.

So Minigames are by design side content. Which makes them inconsequential then, right? Perhaps, but I'd argue it really comes down to the scope of what you are trying to make. Solidly narrative experiences that prioritise the delivery and presentation of every single square second of their game can probably safely steer clear of the very idea of Minigames- but those titles that want to instead simulate the feeling of being in another world, like many games do, would be better served by paying attention to exactly how minigames might aid that pursuit. A well designed and well placed minigame can, in the best scenario, better flesh out the fiction of the world you are trying to build. How better can you create the feeling of a world that people live in than by letting players engage with unwinding within the context of that world? A metatext under the core text.

Perhaps the biggest poster child for the supremacy of Minigames would be the Yakuza franchise, a series of games built around the premise of capturing the spirit of various Japanese districts in order to tell a dramatic gangster story around them. Yakuza prides itself on dozens of minigames all framed around the sorts of pastimes one would find in these sorts of areas. Hostess clubs, Pool bars, street Shogi players, Sauna's with Table Tennis attached, Batting parks, Karaoke, Bikini Wrestling betting circuits, gaming halls, bowling lanes, arcade stores that feature actual complete Sega games in them- You can essentially get lost playing a dozen other styles of game whilst playing your Yakuza game on top. And the effect builds a unbreakable image of Japanese culture so robust it makes these the ultimate tourist games, and that's not even the genre this franchise was built to cater to. All of that without sacrificing the quality of the main narrative- truly magical what they built.

Final Fantasy 7's Remake is also doing a solid job leaning into the world of Minigames in order to buff out it's gameplay loop, but here they serve a slightly different purpose. Building up the world of Midgar is important, but in the structure of an adventure game portraying a vast journey of character and distance, brief little Hub areas packed with different styles of minigames serve as opportunities for the gameplay to sprinkle a little variety for the player's benefit before things get too stale. Final Fantasy VII Remake's gameplay is solid, cinematic and punchy supplemented by a fantastic soundtrack to boot- but that doesn't mean the player won't start to find cracks if you leave them with it for too long. Maybe character switching feels a bit redundant when Cloud is the best damage dealer, maybe there's not quite as much responsiveness as one would like from the 'hold down to combo' gameplay style- but now I'm doing a pull-up competition as Tifa, or playing a quick mini-tactics game of Fort Condor as Yuffie- and now I can't remember what it was I had complaints about. 

Not every game marries itself to the idea of Minigames quite so staunchly, but you'll find their like popping up here and there. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was well know for it's own unique minigame in the form of the competitive card-game Gwent- which proved to be such a worthwhile distraction to the whole 'world wide Witchering' scene that it eventually evolved into it's own game. Fallout New Vegas featured a whole bunch of minigames featured around the gambling life-style that Vegas Champions including the infamous Caravan which is so ludicrously simple it's almost a joke that most people write it off as painfully complicated and beyond possible comprehension. And even the most recent iteration of Mount and Blade featured it's own set of boardgames, one for each culture, each based off of medieval boardgames of the era. 

Minigames are often discarded as extra fluff atop the core package of a smoothed and finished game, but in my mind the level of understanding and forethought it takes to intelligently conceive of, and then implement, a worthwhile gameplay ecosystem within the grand structure of the full product demonstrates a degree of design synthesis worth building a soul around. I'm not saying that any game with a minigame automatically has a soul that makes it worth playing, but any game that does have a soul, probably could sustain a minigame or two. Very few games are made worse by a little deviation off the beaten path- and beyond that who doesn't love the twisting implications of choosing to unwind within an unwinding activity? You'll start feeling like Ryker in that mind prison if you think about it too long. Dreams in dreams.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has the best DLC

 I'm killing monsters.

Are you ready for one of the most unapologetically redundant hot takes on the internet to be espoused right through your window? You ready? Good, cause 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' has really good DLC! I know right, lock me up I'm clearly insane... No, obviously everyone and their elderly grand-aunt who's been banished to the ice sheets of Siberia for the past thirty years knows well the merits of The Witcher games and their respective DLC's which are so good they feel like thievery even at full price. From back in the age when CD Projekt Red evolved from the little studio who could into a powerhouse indie masterpiece maker, capable of no wrong and beloved by the masses. A reign cut brutally short, even when compared to other industry weekend heroes, by their own hubris in their very next release. (What a tragedy; I should write a play.) But I want to throw you in the blue Police Box for a second so we can rewind to those first few days during the release of The Witcher 3's first DLC; 'Hearts of Stone'.

You see, everyone always goes on about ''Blood and Wine'. "Oh, it's like a whole new game tacked onto my game" and "Oh, isn't it's breadth of freedom just so refreshing against the deluge of typically over-priced overhyped repackaged content stolen out of the original build garbage?" And yes, obviously it is all that and more, but 'Hearts of Stone' is not without its merits. In fact, it was exactly for the incredible time I had playing 'Hearts of Stone' that I was so hyped for their next DLC expecting it to be just a little bit more of the same calibre only to be totally blown away- but I'm getting ahead of myself as everyone always does when they bring up this topic. We'll get there, we will; but first I need to remind everyone that every bit of The Witcher's DLC was great!

Even the content which released before the expansions. Remember that? They were little free pieces of micro-DLC that could be picked up totally without strings attached and they each gave tiny little boons, such as alternate outfits for Yennefer, Ciri and Triss. (I'd complain that my main man Dandelion didn't get any new threads but that default outfit is pretty impeccable as it is) A couple of short missions, a new face for some of the Gwent cards, a bunch of new facial hair options, a Nilfgaard armour set, some new more powerful crossbows (Still not powerful enough to be remotely useful in any context, though.) New finisher moves, a Temerian armour set, a scavenger hunt for Wolf School Witcher gear and a new game plus mode. That's all the free stuff, remember. Just CD Projekt Red saying "Thanks for paying for the game and not pirating it or something." The stuff you get for actually giving them extra money puts that lot to shame.

'Hearts of Stone' is an entirely standalone story which takes place in some of places on the existing map that were underexplored with in the vanilla mission spread, namely the to-the-side region of Oxenfurt. The place has it's own little town and everything; but the makeup of content means that in the usual state of play you'll blow right past the place and right onto Skellige, and by the time you've shown back up at Oxenfurt you've overpowered to godhood against the embarrassing wretches that waste your time in this meagre plane. Which makes it an ideal space to stick an entire dedicated expansion that presents a small self-contained adventure with a simply fantastic narrative arc to it all. 'Hearts of Stone' depicts a man cursed with the inability to die and seeking a Witcher to unfurl his bad fortunes. It sweeps the player into an intimate narrative with a small cast of superbly written and acted characters, squeezes in new monsters, locations, abilities and gearsto play around with and presents a finale bout totally unique from anything the game had done before. It was a triumph on it's own.

And then there was Blood and Wine. An expansion that was said to be a little more ambitious, was going to take a little more time to work on, got some people excited and then launched and shocked even the most excitable out there. Much as I claimed earlier, Blood and Wine contains enough content to be a small scale sequel; providing a hefty and epic main questline with a couple of fully branching quest choices, a huge gorgeous new world space that some even prefer over the main game's map, dozens upon dozens of sidequest hewn to the same high quality that every Witcher 3 Side quest is, countless great characters, a brand new home management system, more new monsters and armour sets than the first expansion had and, of course, a deeply personal finale scene for fans who had followed Geralt's story all this way.

But the ultimate triumph here I think steps beyond the undeniable quality of the DLC itself, and it's unassailable successes; the context paints a broad brush too. Note that CDPR were already riding high from the sudden fame of the being the big developers on the block after the whirlwind success of Wild Hunt. They were getting all humble, sending out thanks and receiving congratulations for all their hard work, kissing babies, the whole nine yards. Then they turn around and surpass even themselves by showing up the industry which had exploited and abused DLC practices for so very long. We always like to talk about Oblivion's Horse Armour, but slightly more relevant to the moment of The Witcher 3's heyday; people were still seething over the way that the 'From Ashes' DLC for Bioware's Mass Effect 3, contained a plot important companion and was exorcized from the main game to be sold as DLC on day 1 of release! I think that they even tried to lie about having made the entire companion, from scratch, in the space between the game going gold and launch. And that was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to DLC practises.

It seems almost quaint to imagine a time when the biggest gripes about gaming microtransactions were tied around this DLC feeling rushed, that DLC having it's content split into several chapters, this other DLC literally containing the game's ending (Asura's Wrath and Prince of Persia Remake) and the classic: every Fallout 4 DLC being $10 too expensive. (Including the 5$ ones. They should have paid me to play that godawful non-functional 'Wasteland Workshop' trash.) Yet here was a game which already overdelivered in it's base product, offering a steal of a price for a whole other's games worth of content. It was unreal. And the adulation that fell upon that meagre studio might very well be what inflated their egos enough to think they could brag their way into Cyberpunk 2077 being the game they sold it as, rather than the one it ultimately is. (Ah it always comes back around to Cyberpunk, doesn't it? What a world.)

Most have settled on the reality that just as the Wild Hunt raised the bar of expectation when it came to RPG games, 'Blood and Wine' raised the bar when it came to expansions; but I think that something of the opposite is true. I think that the example set by 'Blood and Wine' has proven to be so galling it might have sunk the DLC sub-industry altogether. I mean think about titles since then that have dropped big DLCs and then consider how many have even attempted to come close to what 'Blood and Wine' did. Outside of MMO content expansions or Live Service overhauls; there really hasn't been a successor. The only one who is trying to match that hill of excellence, who almost seemed doomed to crash into it at this point, is CDPR themselves. So celebrate the success of 'Blood and Wine' by drinking its bounties deeply- it might just be the greatest and last of it's kind.

Voice Acting and AI

 It's the future, but not as you know it

Voice acting is one of the most integral aspects of Modern Game design that contributes towards elevating a gaming experience to truly immersive precipices. At it's basic most principle, Voice Acting allows the voice of the fictional world to be made real and breathes that touch of humanity into the game, in a manner that is tangible and to which people can form an emotional connection. That isn't to say this is the only manner in which emotion can be established, but it's one of the most accessible ways, thus the steady improvement of video game voice acting standards has coincided with an increase to more emotionally charged narratives everywhich way on the gaming spectrum. Voice acting is so important to modern video games that even Bethesda lost their minds one year and decided that the protagonist of Fallout 4 should have a voice actor, (Hopefully they're never going to make that mistake again.) purely because most other modern games capitulated to that industry standard and it felt like the thing to do. Thus when the voice acting community feels like it's future is being threatened by the march of game industry technology, it inspires a serious degree of introspection in deciding where exactly the issue is and if accords can be reached.

Recently some controversy sprang up around the completion and release of a much anticipated mod for the 'Witcher 3: Wild Hunt' called 'A Night to Remember'. (Inspired by the teaser trailer for the Witcher 3 of the same name) The Mod in question acted as an expansion upon the events of the Blood and Wine expansion and would follow the protagonist Geralt on a whole new adventure for wrapping up a hanging quest line. There was just one nagging problem; The Witcher 3 was a highly cinematic RPG where every single character was voiced with memorable gusto, so how could the team emulate that base game content without a voice? This has been an issue in modding stemming all the way back to the days of Oblivion, when voice acting first became a standard in The Elder Scrolls. Suddenly most modded content, usually developed by a single person in their spare time who doesn't have access to multiple voice actors, really stood out from the vanilla game through merit of it being voiceless.

Some modders have found ways around this, most amusingly through the recycling of other in-game audio to form new sentences, which is a practise that has become frighteningly effective over the years. Others just resort to seeking out amateur voice actors or even hiring professional ones, whatever it takes to make that project which took years to drum up stick the landing. But usually, when it comes to recycling lines or hiring an imitator voice actor to take over from some character who's already voiced, like the protagonist Geralt from The Witcher, results are either restrictive or unspectacular. Especially when we're talking about a performance as iconic as Doug Cockle's, how do you live up to a voice like that? Which is where a whole new controversy-raising solution came into the mix when this mod's creator managed to make use of some AI tech.

Essentially, with my limited understanding of technology, it would appear that some sort of software has allowed previous voice lines of Mr Cockle's to be fed into an algorithm that then takes the sounds, memorises them, and reshapes them into entirely new lines. The effect is... really good. As in, if I wasn't already told that this was the case I'd have just assumed that the developer reused some voice lines and maybe dug into some cut content for the rest. Now bear in mind two facts as I say that, that I've only seen a little bit of it in action and there's bound to be some seriously notable slip-up in the full performance, and that this is Geralt's voice we're talking about here, which is rather characteristically monotone. I'd imagine that with other characters that tend to shift their tones and be just a tad more emotive we might have a few hiccups in the system. Still though, at face value this is some incredible technology.

Which is where the concern comes into it, because when it comes to mimicking the voices of voice actors one has to wonder about the potential impact this could have on the industry if it were to become a widespread practise. I mean, take a look at what decent CG has done to the acting world, wherein famous deceased actors can now have themselves digitally imposed into movies to reprise their roles and take on new ones, irregardless of what the actor themselves might have thought. There's a question to be raised there of morality and ethical treatment, which doesn't quite touch this voice acting issue just yet, but there are other parallels that do. Take, for instance, the fact that there's an upcoming movie with James Dean in it. Yes, the dead one. Now I'm sure an actor will be under the CG, acting as James and maybe even providing his voice, but that actor won't be getting the exposure and recognition that he would were he starring in that movie himself. With Voice acting you don't even need the body underneath, developers could cut out the need for voice acting entirely. At least in theory.

In practise there's a lot more nuance to this issue that makes it not the 'looming death knell to voice acting as we know it' that it might seem. Not least of all potential legal ramifications of copying someone's voice, as highlighted by voice actor Jay Britton over Twitter. Obsidian recently revealed how their use of such technology, in it's rudimentary state, is simply to give voice to lines that they write so that they can hear how it sounds and decide what works and what doesn't. As an amateur writer myself I can tell you that is a huge part of deciding the soul of your dialogue, so I can absolutely understand how this technology can be useful, without it also being harmful to the acting industry. And that's not to touch on all the imperfections that, no matter how good this tech gets, it will theoretically never master. (Or, at least, not until that AI Event Horizon I'm talked about before)

As this issue jumped about on the Internet, several voice actors came out to explain the many ways in which their job cannot be taken by a computer due to the many talents that only a human mind can intentionally work with. Some talked about 'breathing' in-between and during lines, which is said to be a big part of affecting the heart and intention of dialogue. Others mentioned the experience that an actor brings to a role, citing the famous story of Christopher Lee informing Peter Jackson how one would sound after being stabbed in the back, drawing from his own history in World War 2. One took a more antagonist approach toward technology in general, painting a dystopian hypothetical wherein an actor's voice and their character becomes iconic through no work of the actor in question, concluding how it's devoid of 'life' and 'art'. Most valid points, however I will push back a little as this is very much Art, just art of a different kind. Software art. And if you consider that invalid through sheer merit of it being from a computer then you might just find yourself fighting against windmills someday.

But as for today the argument is moot, because there truly is a lot more value a human being can bring to a role than an AI possibly could. One company behind a branch of this AI software has cited that this sort of tech would be ideal for a game NPC who needs to take in new information and respond to it, but given the inherently limited nature of a constructed game, as well as the fact that lines still need to be written by an actual person for the moment, I'd say there's little no real world example for that right now. Still, it opens an interesting, and frightening, proposition to what the future might hold for voice acting across the world, because you can bet your bottom dollar that the second this sort of tech becomes good enough to replace real people EA and friends will drop on it like Flies to excrements. I only wonder if there's anything between now and then we can do to protect those who's jobs might be threatened.

Safe Houses in Games

Little pigs, little pigs; let me come in...

With the recent announcement of the 'Saints Row 3 Remastered' I was reminded of a few things; firstly of how hilarious the concept of the first level is: with the Saints robbing a bank whilst dressed as themselves; and Secondly how I always had trouble replaying that game due to one thing: the amount of time it would take to unlock the main safe house. (Seriously, in Saints Row 3 it takes the entire first act. No, that crappy apartment from the beginning doesn't count.) And that got me thinking about what exactly it is about video games Safe Houses that we gel with so much. (Or should I say "that I gel with"? Does anyone else feel this way? Am I a freak?) Why is it that open world games feel like they're missing something essential when you lack a home HUB to return to, even in situations when that HUB is a space wherein literally nothing of consequence ever happens. (As is the case almost all of the time.)

I do find it exceptionally odd as when you come down to it shouldn't the allure of a video game be derived primarily from the gameplay? And yet we enjoy times when our game has great story to it and world building, throw in a strong character arc and things are perfect. Is this just the leftover pretentious pandering that arises from creative critique in general or is there something primitively satisfying about a rounded experience that is common across all forms of creative expression. (Am I getting too general? I'm gonna focus into "Why are there still safe houses in games") Before I explore this subject I should preface this with the same warning that I do with all blogs like this, I am not an expert and this will come down to personal preference so feel free to vehemently disagree with literally everything that I say.

Firstly, let's define what exactly we mean by 'Safe house'. This is a term borrowed from police terminology and popularised in games by titles like GTA to infer a 'base' who's location is largely secure and/or unknown to the public, thus designating it 'Safe'. Although to be even more literal to gaming, a 'safehouse' is merely a type of HUB for players to return to between missions in order to perform some necessary actions like saving the game. As the art of game development evolved and things started to become more intuitive and user friendly, even die-hard Open world titles like GTA started to leanoff on having to return to your 'safe house' and those locations started becoming less and less essential in video games, although you'll still find them in the majority of open world games.

So perhaps the obvious question to ask in regard to 'safe houses' is whether or not they still have a relevant place in modern game design or if they are a redundant hold over. Should there be some sort of movement to move past such a concept and leave it in the past alongside 'limited lives', 'points' and 'time dependant levels'. In order to figure this out I decided to look over the way that safe houses exist (or don't) in a few fairly recent open world titles in order to come to a conclusion in this matter. (Obviously, I can only look at games which are released for this so 'Cyberpunk 2077' cannot be counted even thought that game does tease a safe house that I think looks really cool.)

As I started with it for some reason, the first game I will look at in this regard is Saints Row. Or rather the first series, as Saints Row has based itself staunchly on the Grand Theft Auto formula since it's inception and that means each and every game has boasted some form of Safe house. In the first game all this space really served for was a save point and wardrobe service, although in the second game they really bought out player's safehouse as an in-game menu. Player's could use their TV to watch cutscenes, like one would expect from a bonus menu, and even customise the style of their gang. Although the players had no explicit need to go to this place due to rather regular autosaves, apart from the occasional need to pick up a new car or take some revenue from the safe present in each house. So from that angle, Saints Row is actually very minimalist with how they treat safe houses, allowing players to buy more extravagant ones but lacking any real purpose to doing so.

If there could be one point said towards why this system might still be relevant to it's game, it's because Saint's Row is a very fast paced humour dependant title. At the heart of everything the game offers there should be someway to make the player feel powerful in a humorous way, and I guess the team couldn't see many opportunities in that through simulating house life. That being said, the act of buying and acquiring more lavish and opulent houses is in line with the 'gang boss' context that the franchise is built upon, therefore it makes thematic sense to include that dynamic even if you don't really do anything with it in terms of gameplay.

Speaking of Grand Theft Auto, why not take a look at how Safe houses work in their games? For the first 3 2D titles (1,2 and London) these locations didn't really have any presence in the game, even at the start of the 3D era these locations were still just 'save here' zones. San Andreas remains the only game in the entire series that allowed players to actually buy and go inside of bought houses at their own whim, bringing that sense of actually having a home to come back to. There still wasn't a great deal to do at these homes besides save, change clothes and eventually collect upon unlocked items, but it did serve as an interesting measure of your progression of means throughout the narrative of the game. Only once GTA 5 came along did Rockstar finally kill the need to save anywhere (although you'll still always load up in your safe house.)

As I mentioned, the logic of having a safe home to come back to fits neatly into Grand Theft Auto even if such locations lack in actual functionality. GTA prides itself in being a sardonic mirror upon our reality that mimics a day-to-day lifestyle only in a violent world with fewer consequences. It makes sense, then, for the player to have a home and one that matches the condition of the character along their typical arc. (Which in GTA games usually follows the tried and true 'rags to riches' model) Although in Grand Theft Auto V these places also served a great tool for characterising each of the three protagonist by the world which they willingly choose to reside in. Trevor lives in a trailer far away from the big city, Micheal lives in the affluent upper LS neighbourhood and Franklin starts off in the ghetto before moving into a luxury pad in the hills. It's a great way of telling the audience at a glance who everyone is and what their most base, materialistic goals are.

Now here's a wildcard to consider, ladies and gentlemen, as the Far Cry franchise has been a open world game for as long as 2004 and yet only one of the games has featured a safe house system. Now that isn't to discount how throughout the Far Cry games there have been homely locations in the map, but these only served limited narrative points rather than locations with actual gameplay benefits. Only in Far Cry 2 could you explore about Africa and open up safe houses in which you could save, (an incredibly precious action within the surprisingly hardcore action of FC2) store a weapon (equally as important) and change the time of day. (Which supposedly helps for being sneakier in the later hours, but I suspect that's more of a 'placebo' situation.) But for the rest of the games there are no safehouses at all, and in fact all of the gameplay revolves around the moment-to-moment outpost conquering action rather than the moments inbetween which can  make downtime rather boring as a result.

Now as Far Cry is a first person franchise, one could be forgiven for assuming that the added one-to-one connection between the player and the character would make it more likely for the developers to include creature comforts like a home to retreat to, but quite often with FPS games the opposite seems true. I think that is because there is a part of the 'safe house mechanic' that is more psychological in the way that it gives the character a place in their world that makes them feel part of, hence making that world seem a little more real. In a third person game, all of the little things that make the character feel more real to the player are invaluable to ensure the player cares about the protagonist, whilst in first person games that connection is innate, thus character building and sometimes character narrative take a backseat. Plus, in Far Cry's case it makes absolute sense for there to be no place for the protagonist to call their own, as the entire franchise is built around the concept of people being put in situations that are a far cry from their day-to-day. (It all makes sense.)

But if we're going to sit here and talk about first person shooter action it only makes sense that I talk about a game I've played religiously over the past 2 weeks, even if it may not technically be open world, and that's 2016's DOOM. This is a level based story driven game, therefore it should make sense for their to be no home hub for the Doom Slayer, however in this year's DOOM Eternal, the slayer actually does have a base in 'The Fortress of Doom'. So why is there none in the 2016 game? Well, for one there is the narrative explanation which I'll extrapolate upon; 2016's DOOM follows a series of logical narrative events as the Doom Slayer attempts to seal up a portal to hell after stupid humans open it for what must be the freakin' 5th time. Though simple, this chain of events has a certain pace to it wherein Hell threatens to escape the boundaries of Mars and threaten the Earth unless the Doom Guy can wrap things up quickly, which makes it incompatible for that pacing if he had a home base to lounge around in inbetween missions. (Whereas in Eternal the world has already fallen so there's fewer timed stakes at hand.) But there is also another dynamic to consider.

You see, 2016's DOOM served as a revival of the long dormant DOOM franchise which hadn't be touched for 12 years prior and as such it was meant to be a celebration of all things great about the DOOM licence. That meant fast paced bloody action and a blatant intentional disregard for evolved storytelling. This amounts to the point where the team even dehumanise Doom Guy by canonically renaming him as 'the Doom Slayer' to highlight the fact that he exists as an extension of the player through which to channel their demon killing talents, rather than as a character entity of his own. Therefore there is little reason to give him his own space in the world as he doesn't need to appear real, he is the player and they are him. (And the player is real. Right?)

Looking back at another third person open world game we have one title that breaks the rules I just laid out; 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'. This is a game that paints an involved RPG world brimming with storytelling potential and opportunities and yet there is no home base for Geralt of Rivia to set himself down in. (That is, until the post game DLC 'Blood and Wine') Functionally, this makes sense as there is quite literally no need for there to be any home base. Players can save anywhere they want and thanks to Witcher Meditation they can augment the time of day whenever they want to, so there's no gameplay mechanic that requires a safe house. Although that hasn't stopped quite a few other modern open world games so I expect there's a more thematic reason for the lack of a home. (No, I don't include Kaer Morhen. Sue me.)

In the lore, Geralt of Rivia is very much a wanderer who is obliged to help the less fortunate (provided that they can pay) but not to stick around and help people get back on their feet. Couple that with the heavily 'adventure-focused' narrative of Wild Hunt, revolving around chasing down Ciri, and it makes sense for Geralt to always be in motion, even if technically a Witcher cannot survive off mediation alone. (At least I think not, I don't know for sure.) In 'Blood and Wine', however, a big part of that narrative is around Geralt taking a step back to settle down, so it makes sense for him to have a house in which to rest his head, and to live in for the foreseeable future.

Another non-typical Safe House system in a modern third person open world game exists in Rockstar's 'Red Dead Redemption 2'. In that game, the player doesn't really have a home to go back to as much as they have a camp wherein all the members of the Van der Linde gang set themselves up. This is the place where the player goes to between missions and is actually at lost more essential then other homes as it's somewhere for the player to eat, sleep and take missions. These actions can feasibly be taken anywhere thanks to a camping mechanic (aside from the taking of missions, obviously) but the game encourages players to return to the camp as often as possible and become familiar with the place. This base is unique in that it moves across the map alongside the narrative, changing the activities available there as you go.

Again, I think this iteration of 'Safe House' comes down to thematic reasons in that all of Red Dead Redemption 2 exists to create the life of an outlaw. That means living in the woods away from prying eyes, staying close to those you trust and running from the law when necessary. This also serves a functional narrative purpose as you get chased around the country to more secluded places after which you go from 'living free' to 'living like rats' as the gang dream begins to wilt around you. Rockstar achieved something very special with Red Dead Redemption 2 and I think a lot of it comes from the emotional attachment that they establish between the player and the camp. (alongside its inhabitants) Showcasing how the 'safe house' mechanic doesn't always need to be necessary to the gameplay to be valid and justified, they might even get creative with it.

Ultimately, I think that predominate purpose for 'safe houses' are less for the tangible reasons and more for the benefit of world building. Most games that have 'safe houses' and so implement them in that pursuit and those that do not usually do so because they don't have to worry so much about world building. So whilst the functionality of 'safe houses' are mostly redundant and/or forced (I.e. locking manual saves to returning to the safe house) they do pose a viable thematic purpose. For my part, however, I think there's another piece to this puzzle. Just as I pointed out that games with a pace to keep avoid unnecessary down times, those that don't need to keep up such (like RPGs) can utilise downtimes and peaceful moments to amplify the action packed moments down the line. Therefore if the player gets used to hanging around at home and being relaxed it can make those flashes of action just that more impacting and special. So for that reason I do not think that game design has outgrown the concept of safe houses, and in fact they are just as useful/relevant now as they've always been. (Just maybe in ways that aren't exactly obvious.)

The illusion of video games cities

Trapped in a concrete jungle

We talk about about 'environments' here in this blog, and it is for good reason. The world that the player inhabits is one of the most important aspects of creating an immersive and believable gameplay experience and a well realized world can be absolutely unforgettable. Great gameplay and storytelling are only two thirds of the equation, afterall; without a world to care about it can be hard to dedicate yourself to the narrative, requiring your gameplay to be undeniably top notch to ultimately save your product. (Darn it, 'Destiny', you've got me there!) However, there is one particular aspect of world-building (That would be the physical act of world-building rather than the story telling aspect) that proves difficult even for the most skilled developers, and that is the creation of cities.

It's no wonder why, either. The commonly recognized hierarchy of settlements labels the requirements of a large city as; housing between '300,000 and 1,000,000 citizens', and there isn't a game engine on earth that can render that many NPC's complete with AI packages. (Although that same hierarchy technically means that NYC is a 'Metropolis', so don't take it as gospel.) Even using the common tricks of game development it can be incredibly difficult to create a world space that appropriately simulates the magnitude of a city in a believable way. That being said, urban settings are just too tempting for storytellers to completely write them off, so these teams find clever ways to bring their worlds to life. Consequently, I look upon the act of digital city building as an artform worthy a quick look through in this collation list.

One of, if not the, best example of video game cities in the modern age is 'Los Santos' from 'Grand Theft Auto V' and 'San Andreas'. Based on the instantly recognizable LA skyline, 'Los Santos' is a loving recreation of 'The City of Angels' complete from 'Venice beach' all the way up 'Hollywood Boulevard'. Due to the sheer level of skill and love that Rockstar put into erecting this digital masterpiece, Someone could familiarize themselves with these streets enough to give a rough tour of the actual city. Emphasis on 'rough' however, as even in 'GTA V' the city of Los Santos is only about 1/3 of the size of the actual city. (They got all the landmarks in, but cut down on the number of postcodes.) Either way, this is still an incredibly impressive achievement from Rockstar and one can only imagine how they managed to pull off such a colossal city all the way back in 2011. In fact, the only place that seems set to beat it in terms of scale is Cyberpunk 2077's own version of LA, Night City. (More on that later.) On seventh generation consoles, GTA V features a 'cone of vision' based rendering system that generates cars and pedestrians in whatever way you're focused in order to create the illusion of there being more NPCs than there actually are. Of course, there is a safety buffer to this feature to ensure that you don't accidentally ram into a freshly spawned truck, but this was a clever way of fleshing out the far away world objects without slowing down the frame rate. On Eighth Generation consoles, however, Rockstar manage to coax out enough power to stick with a standard rendering distance set-up; assembling that mammoth-of-a-city one neighbourhood at a time.

In Bethesda's RPGs there are quite a few large settlements for player's to explore, however it's only in 'The Elder Scrolls' where we see them attempt to create a fully functional and manned city. Therefore, by putting 'Skyrim' in our sights, we can get a look at the unique way that they handle 'cities'. Using this criteria, I settled on Whiterun as my ideal case-study for Skyrim cities due to it's central location and familiarity with practically every player. (Even though it is actually the third largest city in the game.) Looking at Whiterun, we see something quite peculiar, namely how the 'city' itself only consists of about 30 residents despite being the 'travelling hub' of Skyrim. This comes from the way that Bethesda's game engine renders each and every NPC with such complex stats and AI packages that it simply isn't feasible to create a city consisting of thousands. (Giving the medieval setting, a settlement of thousands would constitute a 'city'.) Despite this glaring misstep, however, we still consider Whiterun a prosperous settlement due to the way that Bethesda bought that place to life. Firstly, the city itself is scaled so that the small number of residents is enough to make the place feel crowded (something that Bethesda dropped the ball with when they made Oblivion); Secondly, their daily routines often have the people meeting up in the same spot, (The central market, the Bannered Mare. etc.) creating more illusionary crowding; and Thirdly, every citizen is realized with their own personality and story. This goes a step beyond the lifeless 'NPC's of other games because it offers so much more narrative value out of every individual. In this way, a city of 30 can balloon in your mind into a functioning city because you believe in every single inhabitant there.

Looking back towards the late 90's, we have another incredibly iconic metropolitan locale in Final Fantasy 7's Midgar. At the time of release, January 1997, this was an incredible vision for everyone to behold especially given that it was the first time that Square had used the processing power of a disk-based system on their much-beloved RPG franchise. As such, we saw 3D models on a 3D world bought to life in the image of an industrial cyberpunk revolution of blinking lights and heavy, chocking exhaust fumes. Midgar was the dystopian, mechanical monolith slapped right in the centre of a narrative which I have described as: the best possible video game adaptation of 'Fern Gully'. With this one location proving to be so important to the overall themes (or rather, the themes of the first third of the game) it was imperative that the team nailed their attempts at realizing it. However, 3D polygonal tech was still new to the Square team (Final Fantasy 6 was still entirely 'sprite-based') and so they had to figure out a way of creating a city despite lacking the technical power to do so. This they pulled off with a collection of clever techniques that would make any aspiring film maker proud. The backgrounds, for one, would be largely rendered stills that were mostly either top-down shots to establish the packed-in nature of the city streets, or brief sweeping vista shots over the majesty of it all, nailing the presentation of the big and the small. The story, too, directed players through a variety of new locations that differed enough visually to establish a sense of different districts and having travelled a great distance between them. And finally that iconic retro-mechanical music that flowed out of every district did wonders to subconsciously bring players to the right mindspace to believe in a city called Midgar.

Seeing as how we've already mentioned CDPR, we should take a look at their first attempt at bringing a huge city to life in 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's: Novigrad. This was a city that was built to be the centrepiece of the second act of this game as it would be the ideal strategic point between the two warring factions and thus a veritable hotbed of interesting activities. The player would find themselves mostly visiting tiny villages in their time throughout the game, and so Novigrad is designed to be quite the system shock once you finally get there and find that the city absolutely spans the eastern waterfront as far as the eye can see. With all the power that CDPR managed to drum up to bring this particular city to life, it's no wonder that it should prove to be one of the biggest spectacles of the age. Unfortunately, Novigrad seemed to work better from afar than it did from the inside. For some reason, Novigrad never did feel particularly 'alive' in the same sense that GTA cities do, possible because of CDPR's over-reliance on uninteractible NPC's to feel up the empty space between objectives. Sure that works well enough in Los Santos, but that is because players are forever constantly aware that they can just knock out anyone on the street that they don't like and interact with the in-built crime system. In The Witcher, should you go nuts and start offing civilians, not only are you acting in a non lore-friendly way, but the game doesn't quite know how to handle it and just sends endless guards after you until you die or get bored. Novigrad serves as an example of how video game cities can be visually impressive whilst feeling ultimately empty, teaching an important lesson on balance between content and spectacle.

Heading back to Bethesda and their other popular RPG franchise, Fallout, we have a modest selection of post-apocalyptic home steads to choose from. Unfortunately, most of Bethesda's Fallout games seem to focus on 'settlements' rather than post-apocalyptic 'societies', but there are a couple of exceptions I picked out. Fallout 4's Fenway Park (or 'Diamond City') is one such locale, but I dislike Fallout 4 so I instead want to look at 3's Rivet City. This is a settlement fashioned out of a pre-war washed up air carrier that has been irradiated to hell and cut in half, so the perfect place to call home, right? Spend any amount of time in the Capital Wasteland and you'll hear about 'Rivet City' as this well defended city of traders, which is likely enough to grab any explorer's interest. Of course, this being a Bethesda game built on a much earlier framework than Skyrim, the reality isn't quite as grand as the story, but that Bethesda formula goes into making it all work. Once again, Rivet City is a 'city' of about 30-40 residents with the majority of that number going towards the security staff, but Bethesda manage to brag that off with style. This time, the centerpiece of the town is a busy market, selling the illusion of this being a major drop-off point for travellers on the road and giving you a chance to believe in the fact that most people don't stick around. Rivet City really shines with it's layout, however, which is intentionally winding and confusing to create the atmosphere of a large living space with countless decks, rooms and shops. Once again, Bethesda have a habit of making a mountain out of a molehill. (In a good way.)

Lionhead's Fable is a series that long sought to bring a distinctive English flair to the fantasy RPG genre, to arguable success. Hence the name of the region, Albion, which is an old poetic name for the British isles that is not so commonly used today. Inevitably, this meant that the team would try their hand at parodying the industrial revolution at some point, and they did exactly that in Fable 3, as the small town of Bowerstone blew up into a light steam-punky cityscape kingdom. This is the player's home for the majority of the game and the location to which they will return repeatedly throughout the course of events surrounding the campaign, so it was in best interest of the Dev team to have the Bowerstone region feel large and real for players play around in. Once again, the key to bringing Bowerstone to life was interaction. As the game engine wasn't powerful enough to render an entire city, (instead they allowed players to visit specific chunks of the city through separate play areas) Lionhead ensured that the player could mess around with ever individual citizen using the franchises patented 'touch system'. (It's not as creepy as that sounds, but is sure is as awkward) Unfortunately, the citizens themselves as mostly just wooden cutout stereotypes, but every little bit helps when it comes to believing in a world. As another added touch, the performance of the player in the main narrative has a knock-on effect to how many folk survive the final conflict, meaning that the world actually reflects upon your consequences, which always helps the immersive-ness a bit.

Let's go back to the 90's for this next entry, as Capcom decided to up the stakes from their last Resident Evil game and elevate their zombie outbreak from a sprawling mansion to the entirety of Raccoon City. This is one of those locations that is practically video game royalty, and for very good reason as it housed one of the greatest horror/action games of all time and managed to make people feel like they were living through a city-wide zombie outbreak despite the game only having the power to render 7 zombies on screen at once. (You need those precious 450 polygons for Leon and Claire, afterall.) This time Capcom made great use of perspective in order to highlight the claustrophobia of a city that they lacked the processing power to render. That meant a lot of high angled shots of alleyways and separated screens. (allowing one area to be loaded at a time.) Of course, once the 2019 remake came along there was no need for any of that subterfuge and we finally got a chance to see Raccoon City rendered in all of it's glory.

Okay, I already did a Bethesda Fallout game, but what about an Obsidian one? Objectively the best Fallout game to date, 'Fallout: New Vegas' featured a memorable post-apocalyptic society in their depiction of the titular 'New Vegas'. This was a city that stood as the crown jewel across the wasteland as it was one of the only major cities to be mostly unharmed by the missiles that ravaged the surrounding landscape. (Or at least, The Strip survived intact. Everything else was still a little banged up.) What resulted was a revival of the hedonistic materialism that everyone loved about the old Las Vegas, only ramped up to eleven with armed robot guards patrolling the whole place. Obsidian managed to make this city feel large through a mixture of Bethesda's techniques and Rockstar's. They stuck a bevy of named NPC's around the area but spruced up the space inbetween with filler folk; helping to make 'the Strip' feel like a heavily frequented location. They also made sure to take advantage of that Vegas glitz and glamour to plaster gaudy lights and advertisements all over the city, imbuing that overwhelming sense of metropolitan capitalism. All this makes New Vegas easily my favourite place in a Fallout game to visit and one of the best examples of creating a believable town.

Finally, as I promised, we come to CDPR's second attempt to create a huge cityscape, Cyberpunk 2077's Nightcity. This is a Cyber-futuristic-dystopian recreation of Los Angeles from the aftermath of just about every terrible event that a single society can undergo. We're talking wars, recessions and at least one nuclear detonation, but through it all the City survived and thrived. (depending on your definition of 'thriving'.) Of course, Cyberpunk 2077 isn't technically out yet so it's impossible for me to determine what specific techniques the team have used to realize this city, but judging from the demo alone we've seen a vast array of thematic distinctions, impressive graphical flairs and independent variety in civilian walk cycles. It seems that the name-of-the-game for CD Projekt word is diversity and, if the demo footage is any indication, they've pulled that particular task off with flying colours.

City building is one of most complex, and rewarding, task that one could ask of developers, and it is one that is particularly revealing as to the specific talents of your team. I love analyzing all the little tips and tricks that developers utilize, seeing what works and what doesn't, just as much as I enjoy believing in these digital spaces. As we steadily trudge into the next generation I can hardly imagine what sort of ingenuity this new breed of hardware will inspire out of developers and how well it'll all translate.

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.