Review: Silent Hill 2

This is a horror classic that I only recently got the chance to play.  I went into it with high expectations; the only other horror game I've seen consistently put on the same level as Silent Hill 2 is Fatal Frame, which to this day is the most terrifying experience of my life.  Seriously, the night my cousin and I played it through, we drank tons of Mountain Dew Game Fuel, and now whenever I so much as smell the stuff I have flashbacks.  *shiver*

But anyway, you can see how that would set up some powerful expectations.  The result? Mixed, but overall highly positive.

Don't get me wrong; I loved Silent Hill 2.  It's one of the more psychologically interesting interactive narratives I've seen in a long while, the type of experience you could discuss with a friend for hours just about different interpretations (I certainly did).  I am in no way saying it was disappointing, it simply delivered an incredible experience in a way I wasn't quite anticipating.

The Silent Hill series in general is more about a general concept than a cohesive narrative; a person with some intense inner demons is drawn to this town, where they are attacked by monsters and put through trials that will either break them or, if they get through it, get them past their problems.  So in this one, James Sunderland goes to Silent Hill after getting a letter from his wife, Mary, telling him to meet her there. Considering his wife has been dead for three years, he goes to see what is going on.  Upon getting there, he gets attacked by a strange, bloody monster, meets a few other people who seem just as confused as he is, and finds a woman named Maria who looks exactly like his wife.  And that's all before encountering the strange, pyramid-headed being who just doesn't seem to die.

The gameplay and general design is certainly dated in some ways; this was early in the days of the Playstation 2, after all.  The camera can be a pain, but that's somewhat to be expected of games from this era.  The combat is woefully simple and slow, and while that's partially intentional (to instill a sense of powerlessness and fear), even just mapping the downward strike to another button would have done a world of good toward less frustration with the controls.  The fearful effect of the sluggish combat is achieved, but it definitely could have been done with better design so it feels more powerless than frustrating.

Get used to this; these hallways make up most of the game.

The level design also didn't evolve much from the first one.  The most open you'll almost ever get in this game is running through the streets between buildings; most of the game takes place in narrow hallways and small rooms, and while such claustrophobic spaces can be nerve-wracking, it gets a bit old after a while. There is still dense fog as well, but as has been noted by many critics, this is both to make up for hardware limitations and to obscure vision for the sake of a more effectively fearful atmosphere, and it certainly doesn't hurt.  All in all, the basic gameplay is functional if very much imperfect, and many of its weaknesses can be shrugged off under the excuse that the PS2's hardware was still relatively new at the time.

There are also many puzzles, which can tend to be a bit unintuitive.  At first it was difficult because the game expects you to search everywhere before finding a solution, scattering clues and necessary items all over a given area for you to find.  This can be kind of annoying, especially given the difficulty one may have in spotting these items amongst the largely samey environments (I even managed to miss an important, though thankfully not vital, weapon along the way), but once you get used to searching everywhere, it's not much of an issue.  What remains a source of irritation are the often downright strange puzzle solutions.

For instance, in an early building there is a bundle of trash stuck in a garbage chute.  You know it's important because the game pointed it out (I have no idea why James would take notice of this), but you need to get it out somehow.  Among other things in this building, you find a pack of canned fruit.  It seems useless, but the game expects you to logically deduce that you can drop this heavy item down the chute, therefore pushing the stuck garbage bag down as well.  It does make logical sense, and perhaps that reasoning would work in a game that gives you many different ways to go about things, but in a game that only ever gives you items if there's a practical use for them, this kind of puzzle can be rather frustrating.

In this one, the player must combine a random string of
hair and a bent needle to pull the object out.  

That said, all of these elements are perfectly functional, just highly imperfect.  They will get annoying at times, but rarely infuriating, and they always work well enough to carry the game forward.  But really, none of these things are the draw for Silent Hill 2.  There are two things that make this a worthwhile experience: atmosphere and story.

In regards to atmosphere, the game simply does a good job of setting up a general aura of dread and fear.  The fog outside keeps you constantly guessing as to what's ahead of you.  The cramped spaces promise little ability to maneuver or escape.  You have a radio that emits static when an enemy is nearby (but not necessarily visible), and this never fails to make a stressful situation far more tense.  And each appearance of Pyramid Head reminds you that you're not on the offensive in the slightest; you're being hunted, and surviving is all you can really hope to do.

Ultimately, the game fails to scare on the same level as some other horror games due to its relative lack of singular events and terrifying set pieces. One of the most unsettling moments in the first Silent Hill for me was when a room had an empty bird cage, and yet one could hear frantic fluttering, as though a bird were trapped inside and desperately trying to escape.  Most great horror games have things like this; not necessarily jump scares, but singular events or set pieces that increase the tension within a particular location or situation.  However, this is far from a condemnation for the game's value as a horror piece, it's just that most of it is more psychologically disturbing than outwardly scary.

The story is the main aspect of Silent Hill 2 that makes the whole experience worthwhile.  The summary given at the beginning of this review is certainly not a full representation of what this story has to offer (as is common for video games with good stories), but I will try to say what is so special about it without giving any real spoilers away.

It's no secret that Silent Hill 2 has multiple endings.  What's a slightly lesser-known fact (though still hardly a secret) is that these endings are not based on specific, blatant actions or choices as they are in most games. Rather, this game has a way of judging you on a deeper level based on actions you may not even realize you're making.  For instance, the bad ending bases itself partially on whether you run around at low health instead of healing immediately; caring so little for your survival can lead to a bad ending. Similarly, the role Maria plays in the story will depend on how well you protect her in gameplay, whether you accidentally hit her, and whether you regularly visit her while she's resting in a particular room.  There are no gameplay prompts, no indication that any of these things matter or can even be done; how the story turns out is entirely up to your play style and the nature of your connection to the characters and events.

This gets far more interesting when you begin to fully understand the nature of James' interaction with the other characters in the story.  Though an "all in his head" theory for the story is very debatable, it is very clear that the other people in the town of Silent Hill represent a specific part of James' psychology in light of the backstory revealed near the end of the game. Things such as self-hatred, the ability to love, violence toward others, and denial are all represented in the story, and the way James interacts with these characters is part of what determines the ending.

The cool thing about this is that Silent Hill 2 has no canonical ending.  Even in future entries in the series, which attempt to bind the series together into a more cohesive story, James' fate is left ambiguous.  In a way, Silent Hill 2 is less of a narrative and more of a story-driven psychological exploration; a parable with a moral that changes depending on how you play the game.  Your experience with Silent Hill 2 could make it a cautionary tale for a number of reasons or a story of triumph over inner demons, all depending not on forced moral choices or a blatant good/evil paradigm, but on many different little details about how you played and what you valued in-game.

This is why Silent Hill 2 is such a great experience.  The game is functional on all basic levels, far from perfect on most of them, but so enthralling from a narrative perspective that it absolutely deserves to be played.

"Growing Out" of Video Games

This topic isn't specifically about video games as a narrative art form, but it is certainly related to it.  This is a topic that has come up rather often, both in my life and in the lives of many other gamers I know, and it's one that really has to be dealt with as a cultural misconception.

We live in a culture that regards video games as toys.  In a way, this is actually correct; it would be difficult to refute that the nature of a video game falls, to a large degree, under the definition of a toy.

Source: www.usaopoly.com

Breaking away from the specific consideration of video games for a moment, if one goes to a toy store, there will be a whole section devoted to board games, card games, and other tabletop games of similar nature.  There will probably be another area that, while not as comprehensive as an actual sporting goods store, will have basic supplies for sports, such as balls, bats, racquets, and the like. While some games are certainly valued as more than that (no sports fan, for instance, would regard the Superbowl or the World Cup as a bunch of guys playing with a toy ball), games, as a general principle, are regarded in our culture as toys.  In any case, the two are hardly mutually exclusive.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course.  Play is a very important aspect of the human experience, for personal and psychological reasons as well as social ones, and that is generally reflected in our culture.  But the personal value of toys is generally considered important only in that it provides a break from the stresses of life, something that, while important, has little or no value outside of that function.  Even despite the supposed value of hobbies, if an adult's hobby is playing with or collecting some kind of toy, this is often something of a social mark of shame.  In short, our culture sees little or no value in toys outside of social value and occasional (but certainly not regular) escapism.  Because of this, it is expected that one is to gradually cease playing with toys as they grow older, replacing their former liesure with work and other productive activities.

This is not so with art.  Even when a given medium is viewed solely as entertainment, there is usually more value ascribed to them.  Reading is encouraged from childhood, and no one scoffs at an adult cracking open a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.  The same can be said of movies, though in a bit of a different way; people rarely recognize the same level of artistic value in film as in literature, but it is certainly understood, and watching movies is still a socially acceptable pastime for an adult.  And music, of course, is acceptable for any age to enjoy without accusations of immaturity or irresponsibility.

Source: Wikipedia

Well, depending on the music.

Obviously, this site is dedicated to the idea that video games are an incredible artistic medium, so I'm not going to use this space to make the argument that video games' toy-like nature is irrelevant to their artistic status; that fact is assumed.  I'll save it for a later Counterpoint article, but for now we're simply operating under the assumption that this combination of a toy and an artwork does have value as an artwork.

The question then arises, is it possible for one to "grow out" of video games?  Is the entire medium something that one should lose interest in as they grow up and the responsibilities of adulthood force out such frivolous activities?

There is an extent to which I can see this happening, in certain situations at least.  The fact is that video games are more time-consuming than most other narrative media, and since the medium is hardly renown for its artistic value (however unfortunate that may be), a lot of the game-playing that goes on is strictly recreational.  So it's understandable that someone who is only playing for fun would slowly have video games fade from their life as they choose to focus on different things with both their careers and free time, until the only time they really have to play games is with friends or family.

However, this does not amount to video games being something that an adult must cast off in favor of more meaningful activities, because video games, like every other artistic medium, are not without meaning. Not by a long shot.

Essentially what we have is a cultural double standard based on misinformation as to the nature of video games as a medium; society at large still views video games as toys, and does not acknowledge the artistic value inherent in the medium and strongly present in many of its artworks.  As a result, it's expected that, like other toys, they should simply stop getting so much attention as people grow older.  But this is not how it works, nor how it should work, because that is not what video games are.

In the end, we are talking about an artistic medium here.  Excessive playing should, of course, be looked down upon.  That's just common sense, as it is with any other object, medium, or pastime.  But the very playing of video games, or even a focus on them, is something that should be perfectly acceptable in an adult, because these are not simply toys, but artworks, with the same value, potential, and beauty that term implies.

Just something to keep in mind, and perhaps to encourage fellow gamers; I doubt I'm the only one who's gotten this line before.  Valuing video games does not make us immature children, it simply makes us members of society who enjoy a particular form of artistic media.  And in a few decades, young children will gawk at the fact that we were alive for its inception, and the classic works of the medium will be studied in college courses.

Well, a gamer can dream; but it's far from impossible.

Absence

I apologize to anyone who may be reading for the long period of time in which I have not published an article.  I've had a lot of ideas swimming around in my head, but not the time to really incarnate them into full articles.  I've gotten a few going, though, so this Saturday will mark a new wave that can manage a weekly schedule for at least a while.

The upcoming article is about the expectation to grow out of video games as we grow older.  As you might expect, I don't take too kindly to that notion; come back on Saturday to see why.

Counterpoint: Arguments that Just Need to Stop

Welcome back to Counterpoint, where I deconstruct and analyze an argument against video games as an art form in order to better understand both the argument and why we stand so firmly on the artistic side of this debate.

In past Counterpoint articles, I've focused on one argument that has some good discussion value behind it.  However, I've also seen a lot of reasons that really don't require an entire article's discussion, because it simply takes a moment's thought to refute it entirely.  So let's take a look at some of these, shall we?

1. Video Games are Entertainment
This is a very true statement.  But what does it have to do with whether or not video games are art?  I've explored the interaction between art and entertainment before, and it was really just a long-winded thought process to get to the inevitable conclusion; art is used as entertainment.  This is true of all art forms throughout the history of humankind; art - be it literature, painting, film, photography, dance, whatever - is used to entertain, and through entertainment, to inspire thought and reflection.  We could argue semantics by saying art is "compelling," not necessarily entertaining, and that is certainly true.  But acknowledgement of this fact is assumed, considering this is as true of video games as it is of any other artistic medium.  The fact that video games are used to entertain simply has no bearing on their status as an art form.

2. They're Fun, So Why Care?

I talked a bit about this in my first full article on this blog.  Since then, however, a very intense, nearly-catastrophic example has surfaced; the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States almost put the entire medium under government control, and the only reason they didn't is because they ruled video games as a legitimate form of artistic expression, to be protected under the first amendment (for those outside of the US, that's the part of our constitution that guarantees freedom of speech).  This proved what some of us already knew; the acceptance of video games as an art form in our culture and society is in fact vital to the medium thriving in them.  You don't need to study video games as art; it's perfectly fine if you just play them for fun, or you simply enjoy e-sports.  After all, most moviegoers certainly don't follow up each trip to the theater with a discussion about the film's artistic representation of its themes, but they still recognize film as an artistic medium, and that recognition by the general population and societal authorities is a large part of what allows the medium to be studied and valued as it is.

3. They're Games, Not Art
This is arguing semantics in the worst way imaginable.  Yes, they're called "video games."  Film was, and sometimes still is, referred to as "motion picture," and even the modern term "movie" is simply a rather cutesy derivative of that term.  The word "literature" is often defined as simply meaning "the written word."  And a "painting" is... well, just that.  It has paint.  But in none of these cases do we consider these terms to be the sole descriptor of the medium they represent.  Yes, films have moving pictures, but they also have stories, music, dialogue, and other elements blended together to make a complex artistic medium.  Literature is far more than the simple existence of words written on paper, as those words form beautiful poetry and thought-provoking stories.  And painting, of course, is not about the simple presence of paint, but about the pictures it forms and the emotions and thoughts said pictures inspire.  In the same way, just because this medium is referred to as "games" does not mean it is and can only involve the playing of a game; those game systems are combined with countless other artistic elements to create something that is far more than just a game.  There are arguments that the game-like nature of the medium excludes it from being art (one of which I covered in a past Counterpoint), but those are far more complex than this, as they must be; the simple fact that "game" is in the medium's title means absolutely nothing regarding whether or not it is art.

4. Playing Games is Not Art

Though many have argued for skillful play as an art form (especially in sports), that's an entirely separate debate that we won't go into here.  Rather, let's address the fact that the player is not the artist in this discussion of video games as art.  The involvement of the player is a big aspect of interactive art theory, for sure, but when someone says video games are an art form, he/she is not claiming to be an artist by shooting dudes in Gears of War or puling off that daring play in Madden, they are claiming that video games are made by way of a creative process, the final product of which is a work of art to be experienced through play.  Video games are not art because they are played, any more than film is art because movies are watched, or books because they are read.  The design, the creativity and skill behind the process is generally the main consideration when discussing artistic status, not the method by which people experience the completed artwork.  Besides, if we're saying video games aren't art because playing them isn't art, we would also need to say painting isn't art because looking at a canvas isn't art, or Shakespeare isn't art because watching a play isn't art.  And I think we can all agree that's just not how things work.

So there are a few smaller commentaries on some annoying little issues that pop up here and there.  Hopefully they can help you further understand the relationship between video games and traditional artistic sensibilities, or perhaps give you something to say to someone next time you talk about this with someone.  See you next week!

Adaptation Study: Henry V

Last week, I promised to return to the topic of adapting linear works to interactive media by discussing the possibilities regarding Shakespeare's play, Henry V.  That's a bit of a daunting task, but we'll see how it turns out.

Warning: there will be spoilers.  Though I do assume some familiarity with the play (so the context of some scenes will be missing), this discussion requires talking about specific elements of the story and how they could translate into gameplay, so naturally, if you've somehow managed to miss this story and you don't want it ruined, I recommend you watch one of the many film adaptations (Kenneth Branagh's is quite good) or simply read the text online before reading any further.  Otherwise, let's do this.

This particular play would work in many gameplay genres due to its nature as a war story, since combat is basically gaming's default setting.  It would likely take some interpolation, specifically the addition of various historic battles (since this play is based on actual historical events) besides those portrayed in the text, in order to elongate the game.  This would especially be necessary if this were an action game, since the action genre has little more than simple combat in the way of gameplay; an interesting way to present it in this case might be to present the story from the viewpoint of one of the soldiers, witnessing the events of the play from an outside but involved perspective.  In order to avoid such intense and widespread interpolation just to make the minimally accepted playtime, however, Henry V would more effectively be adapted as an RPG.  While it would be interesting to talk about gameplay and combat mechanics, this site is about storytelling, so let's talk about the story and the mechanics behind it.

Much of the personal conflict in Henry V comes from Henry’s struggle between his responsibilities as an authoritative king and his moral standards, especially those regarding his old friends.  In the story, he makes many difficult decisions along these lines, such as when he hangs his old friend Bardolph for insubordination.  These kinds of choices are exactly the kinds that RPGs thrive on; they will not affect the overall outcome of the story (it is perfectly reasonable to assume that, for instance, had Bardolph not been hanged, the overall story would be largely unaffected), but could have an affect on some of the details and allow the player to shape Henry into the kind of king they want to be.  These types of choices are ideal for a RPG.

In fact, this story lends itself quite easily to a traditional Western RPG model.  For one, RPGs in general are not completely centered on combat; they also include some degree of dialogue (often allowing the player to choose how the player character responds in various conversation events) and miscellaneous sidequesting.  This means that even the non-combat scenes of the text could be interactive to an extent.  For instance, the player could choose how strongly to react to the Dauphin’s insulting message; perhaps Henry could lose his temper and respond violently, reply in a composed but resolute manner, or he could shrink at the idea of war (though of course, for the sake of the story, his reaction would dictate his character more than the story's events, since the war kind of needs to happen).

That's assuming a model similar to Mass Effect's dialogue
wheel; there could very well be more options as well.

These scenarios can provide examples of another Western RPG standard: the morality bar.  However, in this particular case, the spectrum of good to evil may be better represented by a spectrum of friendship to kingship, or maturity to immaturity (which, conveniently, is a bit more clear-cut than morality and thus will lend itself better to this spectrum).  Since Henry’s main conflict in the story seems to be the struggle between his kingly duties and his responsibility to his friends and his personal morality, these themes would be very effective to explore in the context of the story.  This would mean that most of the game’s morally grey decisions would make him either choose his friends and personal comforts at the risk of compromising his leadership and respect, or defy his own needs, loyalties, and indeed his own personal morality in order to be a more effective leader.

However, all these choices fall flat if there is not some sort of impact on the story.  The player must feel like they are shaping things, which will not be accomplished if the story remains unchanged despite their actions.  Again, the nature of this particular story makes this relatively easy to implement.

But we will most certainly not be considering Roger Ebert's
"naked and standing on their hands" comment.

Henry’s placement on the spectrum (be it morality, maturity, leadership, etc.) can affect his standing among his soldiers.  This could be reflected in the types of quests he gets from them, the things they say around him, and could possibly affect the outcome of some minor battles and quests along the way.  The larger outcome of his standing among his troops would be the casualty report after the climactic battle of Agincourt.  If his men grudgingly follow him due to his standing, they may not be so motivated to fight well, and more may die.  If Henry’s standing with his soldiers is abysmal, perhaps the battle could be lost altogether.  Only the highest standing with his men as a leader would produce the extremely low body count presented in the original play text.  The player will have to decide whether it is worth the lives of Henry’s soldiers to retain the friendships and loyalties of his youth.  With very little interpolation, this could even be stretched to represent a choice between Henry’s maturation and his preservation of innocence.

Here, an interesting issue arises.  The insertion of player choice is allowing the story to be changed as the player sees fit, along the lines the developers draw, at least.  Fidelity is being compromised to a large extent, though there would definitely be a story path that could be followed to directly correlate to the story presented in the play text.  Allowing the player to alter the story progression would undoubtedly be a controversial move among Shakespeare scholars.  For that matter, it would require additional dialogue to cover for each option, meaning either some bold writer would need to try and mimic Shakespeare's style or the language would have to be jettisoned entirely.  Indeed, a simpler gameplay genre would make it easier to prioritize fidelity.  An action game, for instance, would allow the story to progress as intended through cutscenes, allowing the player to participate only in the battles, the outcome of which would be fixed.  The only way the player could alter the story would be if Henry died, in which case the game would simply deliver a “game over” screen and start the player back at the most recent checkpoint to give them a chance to do it right this time.

However, that would be overlooking the greatest potential of video games as a medium.  While Henry’s personal struggle can be observed while reading the text, attending a performance, or watching a film adaptation of Henry V, the player of a video game can actually experience this struggle.  Rather than learning from the way in which Henry responds to these pressures, players can learn more about themselves based on the decisions they would personally make in the situations the game puts forth.  As Daniel Floyd said in the Extra Credits episode Enriching Lives, “This is the unique power of games as a medium.  They ask us to live our decisions.  In this medium, we cannot be spectators.  We are forced to confront our own actions, and that forces upon us a level of introspection."

So in the end, it's actually quite possible to make this conversion.  It does take some flexibility; absolute, unshaken fidelity to the source material cannot be the driving force when adapting a linear story to an interactive form, though I'm sure some Shakespeare purists will not be happy about that.  More important than complete fidelity, however, is to take advantage of the storytelling elements and techniques that can only be accomplished through this medium, and in doing so, hopefully offer something to the story and the player that they could not have from non-interactive media.

Hopefully this little brainstorming session has been an interesting read, and perhaps has inspired some further thought into the idea of adaptation into video games.  See you next week!

Random Note on Adaptation

There was one example I didn't note in my previous article that really does deserve note.  Not because it's an exceptional example of one of the difficulties I noted in the article, but because it's actually the perfect example of the principle I stated in the first adaptation article.

For those too lazy to click on the link (not judging; I don't blame you), I said that the main reason films based on video games tend to be so awful is the lack of artistic respect for the source material on the part of the film's makers.  This is not very common, however, in adaptation the other way around; a video game based on a story from another medium is usually made to adhere closely to the source or, in the case of some, made because the creator saw potential in a great story.  But this is not always true.

Dante's Inferno is possibly the best (or should I say worst?) example of this in the medium thus far.  I'm not sure what inspired the developers behind this game to make it, but there is very little connection between the game and the classic book from The Divine Comedy (basically, the idea of circles of Hell).  Essentially, the book's concept of Hell is the only thing the game gained from the book outside of, perhaps, a few sales to poor, unwitting literature buffs.

Literature buffs that likely burned the game rather than
unleashing it upon an unsuspecting Gamestop customer.

Not that I would expect anything better from EA, but you know what, Dante's Inferno could possibly make for a very interesting video game.  But the developers simply took the basic, basic concept of the story and made their own, entirely different action game out of it.  This is not respect for the original work; it's not even a legitimate attempt to adapt it.  And that's not okay.

Hopefully we will see more real, legitimate attempts to bring classic stories to interactive media as video games are more widely understood as an artistic medium, but for now, let's do what we can do by supporting the ones that deserve it.  Metro 2033, for instance, is a little-known first-person action/survival horror game based on a Russian novel, and though I have yet to read the novel, I have heard highly positive comments regarding its adaptation.  Plus it's just a really good game.

Adaptation: From Non-Interactive to Interactive Part 1

Adaptation to video games from other mediums has always been an... interesting venture.  I really do think, as I said in a previous article, that a lot of the failure of game-to-film adaptations comes from a lack of artistic respect for the source material, but I'm not sure the same can be said of the adaptation from a non-interactive medium to video games.  Let's see if we can figure out what makes this so difficult.

Firstly, let's get this out of the way; yes, most games based on movies are shameless cash grabs.  I'm not sure the same can be said of other source mediums (mainly because video games based on books or stageplays are rare, to say the least), but film certainly tends to get the most adaptations and the vast majority of these are simply a hope to cash in more on the film's license.  A rare few of these have been lucky enough to be handed to good directors (such as Michel Ancel's King Kong), or sometimes simply succeeding based on unoriginal but solid construction (such as the Lord of the Rings movie tie-in games), but usually they are uninspired and poorly-made simply because the developer is not trying to adapt, but simply to cash in.

However, that's not something to get caught up on.  There are genuine difficulties and problems when it comes to adapting a work into interactive media, and they are important to understand and solve.

Really, this mostly comes down to a single, large issue that envelops almost all the problems with interactive adaptation; developers, if you're making a game based on another story, tell the freaking story.  Far too many game adaptations take the easy road by bridging awkwardly-shoehorned-in action sequences with a couple lines of dialogue, then moving to the next, and that simply doesn't cut it.

Pictured: the worst offender I've ever seen.  Even more annoying
considering the source material is famous for its long monologues.

Developers, it's obvious from the fact that you had to add action scenes that you're familiar with games' more constant need for interactivity.  Which means you should also be familiar with the fact that not every scene in a movie is an action scene.  Which also means you should be able to figure out that those scenes with all the talking in the movies are kind of important to the story.  Cut them out, and you have nothing more than a string of loosely-connected action scenes.

Otherwise known as a Michael Bay film.

As I noted from my experience with inFamous, it is a lot more difficult to do character development in a video game than it is to do plot development.  Especially over this last generation of games, we've had Cortana explaining the plot to us as we play, audio diaries describing the ruin of Rapture, and Captain Price yelling at us on the radio about where to go next.  And though some of a character's personality can be communicated through this method, a story suffers from having no time fully dedicated to character development.  But in an action-oriented video game, that's not very easy.

The most obvious solution is to just make cutscenes.  And that's fine; not exactly progressive, but I think I've made it clear that there's nothing wrong with telling your story through cutscenes, especially since that would really be the easiest way to tell a story that wasn't interactive in the first place.

Besides, Hideo Kojima does that more than you ever could,
and his games are revered.

Outside of that though, there really is room for creativity.  Remember when I talked about major and minor narrative interaction?  Minor interaction is effective and relatively easy to insert in a linear story since emotional impact is heightened without changing the events of the source material.  For instance, simply taking that supporting character's death in the third act and making it happen while the player was under a time limit to reach him/her would intensely magnify the sense of responsibility, guilt, and sadness an invested player feels.

Specifically back to the question of character development and non-action scenes, however, we run into the most difficult problem to overcome; player choice.  Perhaps, one might think, dialogue systems like that of Mass Effect could give the player a way to interact with dialogue-heavy scenes and even help give the player a say in the story's events, but dialogue systems like that are boring and pointless if the player doesn't have some amount of control over the events of the story.

Minor changes are no big deal, but the ability to decide the character's morality, or the ability to make story-changing decisions like in Mass Effect, simply could not coexist with a story that is preset on a certain path.

But this does not mean all player interaction with the events of the story is impossible.  However, the best way to learn is through example, and this article is already pretty long, so next week there will be a discussion about working around this issue using the example of Shakespeare's Henry V.  Yeah, I'm going there.  Come back next week to see how it turns out, and in the meantime make sure to like Binary Narrative on Facebook!

Format Change

Okay, here's what this is coming down to.  I set up a weekly publishing schedule in hopes that I could keep a steady stream of articles coming for people to consider and discuss.  As it turns out, however, the amount of people actually seeing said articles is disappointingly low, and I can't keep up the weekly workload for the few people that may be reading this blog regularly.  As a result, I am going to need to move to a more lax schedule.  This disappoints me, as one of my annoyances with many internet personalities and such is the tendency to often be late or even wait weeks or months between entries.  I hopefully won't get quite that bad, but I simply don't have time to write weekly articles if they will not actually be read.

I apologize to any regular readers I may have, if in fact you do exist.  If you disagree with this decision, feel free to let me know in the comments or by way of the email at the bottom of the page, but as of now this blog simply is not achieving the goal I had envisioned, and I can't afford to put that much time and work into something no one is reading.  I will hopefully have something for you soon.

inFamous

Sorry for the lack of article on Saturday; my last semester of college just started, and things have been a bit crazy.

Finally got around to playing inFamous.  I got it during the Welcome Back program and I've been playing other games since then, so I'm just now playing it.  And I am enjoying it quite a bit.

It's unpolished in a way one would expect of a game so ambitious and relatively old in the context of the PS3's life cycle.  My favorite glitch thus far was in the first sewer area when you heal a man, a woman opens the gate and comes through, then the man drops to his knees and yells about how awful life is while the woman looks like she's running, but she's just moving slightly next to the suffering man.  It looked like she was doing some sort of happy dance while this guy screamed in anguish.  I laughed.

From a storytelling perspective, it's an interesting experience in that it seems to put no real effort into character development, but sometimes it seems like it really wants to.  We see some development in Zeke, but only in a few specific little areas.  Cole's girlfriend seems to basically be a non-character, more of a plot device to motivate Cole and offer some quests than an actual character, and yet I think it was supposed to be a really happy moment when she forgives Cole for what happened (it happened like halfway through the game and was more than a little obvious, or I would have warned for spoilers).

This is the most common problem to plague gaming as a narrative medium; it doesn't want to take any more time than necessary to develop the narrative elements.  It'll try to do a good job communicating the plot, but characters take a long time to develop, and that can't be done in gameplay to the same extent that plot can, so in order to preserve the all-too-common "all action and gameplay, all the time" mindset, they develop the plot but don't give the characters their due attention.  Perhaps I'll write a full article on that at some point, but for now it's just an interesting thing I noticed in inFamous.

Demon's Souls

After hearing a lot about it since it released, I’m finally getting to play Demon’s Souls, and it’s quite an experience. There’s certainly something to be said for what difficultly brings to a game's atmosphere, which I admit I hadn’t really considered. Most of my past experience when it comes to difficulty interacting with narrative and aesthetics has been in games where the emotion and excitement has built up for the epic battle, and you can't wait to go in and finish this once and for all... then you end up losing all that excitement and emotion over the course of many retries. It’s always been more annoying than anything else, from a storytelling perspective at least, for a game to be punishingly difficult.

However, this is different. Demon’s Souls fills every encounter with such pervasive dread you often feel terrified despite your enemies being, for the most part, not terrifying in the slightest. Demon’s Souls is by no means a horror game, and yet it manages to scare me more than most horror games ever have. I say most to account for the existence of Fatal Frame, which is probably one of the most piss-your-pants terrifying experiences any demented human mind has ever conceived.

But Demon’s Souls rarely dips into horror, and even when it does, it’s directly tied to the one thing that truly makes this game scary; the fact that every encounter, every battle, every enemy might give you the last fight of your life, and a harsh punishment awaits you should you fall to their sword. The atmosphere is intense, and often quite unsettling; I think the highlight was when, in one of the level, you enter a hanging cage and are lowered further down than you could even see from where you were… into a blood-red marsh. But even then, it wasn’t just, “Blood, that’s scary!” The fear that struck my heart and stopped my breath in that moment came from the knowledge that if something down there created that marsh, it could very easily add me to it. And of course, if it did, all my souls (which are used both as currency and experience points to level up) would be lost.

I had never seen this kind of difficulty before. The kind that actually increased the artistic legitimacy of the game in question by filling the atmosphere with a constant awareness that one mistake could mean your death. It’s a very well-designed game, to the point where you rarely ever feel cheated when you die, which helps you fear death rather than get frustrated at it, increasing the tension without making the game unbearable to play.

Just my random thoughts on a very interesting game.  I also just realized its sequel/spiritual successor, Dark Souls, releases in October.  As if I didn't already want more games than I can afford in the coming months...

DLC and Storytelling

There's been a lot of outrage recently about downloadable content.  People are saying it (or at least certain uses of it) cheats players by charging money for content that should have been available as part of the original game they paid for.  Outside of ridiculous examples such as day 1 DLC, I don't agree with that; I think if the developers want to expand their vision for the game and add more content, players should have no problem dropping ten or fifteen dollars for some extra content in a game they love.  But when it comes to storytelling, there is a troubling trend I have seen as of late: leaving unanswered questions or a vague ending so the DLC can finish it or fill in the blanks.

I just finished Alan Wake, which is an absolutely fantastic game with a compelling narrative and tense atmosphere.  A week or so before I started playing that, I finished Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which isn't quite as good and really failed as a Castlevania game, but is still a very strong title overall.  The former seems to revel in the loose ends at its conclusion.  The latter resolves everything, then has an epilogue that seems to completely ignore the ending of the story and does not explain what happened to so drastically change the outcome of the story.  In both cases, the answers were in two episodes of downloadable content.

Now when it comes to gameplay, a game is expected to deliver a certain amount of gameplay depending on its genre.  For mainstream action games, it's at least 8-10 hours.  For older JRPGs it's at least 20, and for newer ones it's more like 40+.  Open-ended western RPGs are expected to require at least 40 hours and offer 100+.  The idea that these minimum times dictate how much money the game is worth is severely misguided, as shorter games like Portal display, but the point is that a given game usually offers the expected amount of gameplay and a good progression of power and challenge, assuming it's not just a terrible game; the game itself is complete.  So when it comes to gameplay, DLC is essentially a way to add a few hours to the game and hopefully provide some thrilling new situations.  It's not all that it is really capable of, but outside of simple in-game items or weapons, it's pretty much all it's been used for.

The story works in a very similar way.  It's fine for DLC to expand on the story; provide a side mission with an interesting story like the Assassin's Creed games, add an optional character like in Mass Effect 2, or simply provide a bit more insight into the story's events.  But regardless of what DLC adds to a story, it should always do just that: add.  Never should DLC complete a story, because the story should already be complete within the game itself.  Sure, maybe some details can be added or expanded in DLC, but the story should be perfectly understandable and complete just as the game ships.

Imagine if this was done in any other medium.  Imagine if The Dark Knight Rises told its story over two and a half hours, but ended on a cliffhanger and declared that there were two half-hour DVDs for sale for $5, and buying them would reveal how the story ends.  What would happen then?

This.

It would not be okay.  No one would let that fly.  People would buy it, sure, because it's freaking Batman and they need to know how it ends, but the amount of absolute, seething hatred that would be directed toward everyone involved in the film simply would not be worth it.  People would boycott future projects and, in the long run, revenue would go down exponentially.  So why is this somehow acceptable in the world of video games and online content?

I think the only real reason is that we are dealing with a new medium, both with video games themselves and with the ability to offer content easily over the internet.  We are still learning how to use this new technology within a medium that itself is still relatively new.  It only makes sense that things like release patterns and marketing would undergo a growth period before they can truly be used effectively.  But while this lack of full comprehension of the medium and distributing technology makes it more understandable, it is no excuse.

We're smarter than that.  

Downloadable content has a great purpose; the ability to add content to a game without releasing another full-fledged game is great.  It is capable of releasing small, inexpensive extensions to games that we love, or even release games in short episodes (actual episodic release, not Valve episodic release).  The possibilities are awesome.  But we, as gamers, are used to situations where people try new things, even when they just piss us off.  As games gain more cultural respect and mainstream attention, hopefully the same group that would hate this situation in film will also hate it in video games, and publishers will be required to shape up and respect their customers.

I know I've said little here that hasn't been said before, but while this trend has existed in gameplay, it's unsettling to me to see it begin in the area of storytelling.  Let's hope this doesn't become a common occurrence.

If you agree, like Binary Narrative on Facebook, and I'll see you next week.

Minor Narrative Interaction

As promised in my last post, here are a few games I recommend to see good use of Minor Narrative Interaction.  Some are obvious, and some less so.  These games make good use of interactivity without making the entire story hinge on the interactive elements and the player's input, and they do a very good job of increasing emotional impact and character empathy through these techniques (though for the sake of spoilers, I won't describe exactly how).  There are more that belong on this list, of course, but these are some particularly good examples.  If you feel there is another game that should have been included, feel free to say why in the comments!

Bioshock
If you're interested in games as a narrative art enough to be reading this blog in the first place, you probably know what I'm talking about.  Bioshock has not only a fantastic twist in the story, but it presents said twist in a unique way that not only emotionally involves the player through excellent use of minor narrative interaction, but hammers the point home like a railway spike straight to your intellect.  A truly brilliant moment in a truly brilliant game that must be experienced.

Beyond Good and Evil
The final boss fight of this game is one of the best examples I've seen of symbolism in actual gameplay.  The controls during the final battle very accurately reflect the struggles of the protagonist and her state of mind at the time in a rather brilliant way.  It's rare to see a game play with the controls to give meaning to even the game's basic control scheme.

Final Fantasy X
I mentioned this in the actual article.  Final Fantasy has a bit of a reputation among some for not involving interactivity at all, for just being long stretches of gameplay punctuated by cutscenes.  For one, that's not true.  Secondly, there's no reason those stretches of gameplay can't be great examples of minor narrative interaction.  This game takes a normal gameplay sequence and, through emotional music and the weight of responsibility on the player, makes the entire process a battle within you between the desire to leave and the need, from both the game and the story, to continue on.

Shadow of the Colossus
The death of a colossus in this game is not a triumphant or exciting experience.  The battle is epic and exhilarating  but once you have killed them, the magnificent beast falls to the ground, life pouring from it, as tragically beautiful music plays.  It's a beautiful moment that evokes more sorrow than triumph.  Seems kind of weird, seeing as killing these colossi are the key to reviving your dead loved one.  But it will all make sense in the emotional ending, in which your efforts certainly make the scene more impacting than yelling at an onscreen character ever could.

Major and Minor Narrative Interaction

These concepts are hardly new, but much like the Narrative/Gameplay Paradigm, this article is my attempt to label and define these two concepts and explore how they work.

It's important to keep in mind that the dramatic story-altering forms of interactivity employed by developers such as Bethesda and Bioware are not the only way to use interactivity in meaningful ways.  It's great to be able to shape the entirety of the story's protagonist, or determine the course of events as the story progresses, but it would be a mistake to think that is the only way for video games to convey their narrative through the unique lens of interactivity.

I'm going to separate interactive storytelling techniques into two categories; there could be many more, obviously, but as a first step let's keep it simple.

The first is major narrative interaction.  This is interactivity on a major scale, the kind of interactivity that allows the player to have a large impact on the game's characters, story, and world.  When you make a decision in Mass Effect that carries over to its sequel and affects its events, that is an instance of major narrative interaction.  This kind of interactivity focuses on letting the player have control and putting the story and characters in their hands.  The player is allowed to choose the type of experience they want based on the options given them by the developer.

The second category is minor narrative interaction.  This is the more subtle use of interactivity, the one that doesn't have any real effect on the story or characters of a given game.  This is what's used at the end of Shadow of the Colossus, the end of Halo: Reach, the plot twist in Bioshock, the final walk to Zanarkand in Final Fantasy X, and the nuclear bomb in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.  Most examples are rather spoileriffic, so I can't describe specific examples without ruining some truly amazing moments, but hopefully you be familiar with at least one of the moments I named.  The basic idea of these is that they put the player in control for an important story point that will not change based on the player's interaction, but the emotional impact and even the story's main points are hammered home in a way that cannot be accomplished without that interactive element.

Major narrative interaction is often the only recognized form of interactive storytelling.  Understandably, the most thrilling potential for interactive narrative is the ability for the player to actively help shape the story and characters, to make important decisions that could take the story in different directions.  The involvement of the player in the artistic experience is an important and exciting development in the arts, and we rightfully have a desire to explore it to its furthest potential.

However, it is important that we not overlook the importance of minor narrative interaction.  This type of interaction does not allow the player to shape the story, at least not in any huge way, but rather endeavors to quite literally put the player in the place of the protagonist, to walk a mile in their shoes so to speak.  In well-crafted uses of minor narrative interaction, the player's actions (or lack of ability to interact in a certain way) reflect the struggle of the protagonist in a way that increases the player's sympathy and emotional connection to the character and events.

It sure added a lot to Crisis Core.  No Final Fantasy VII
fan kept dry eyes at the end of this game.  

A classic example of minor character interaction is at the end of a story, often a prequel starring a different character, when they have their last stand.  Enemies pour in from all sides, and more come no matter how many you kill, until eventually your character is overpowered and falls in battle.  This concept is far from new; it has happened in all sorts of stories.  But there's something different about playing it and actually experiencing that lack of control.  You can fight all you like, kill as many enemies as you want.  You could be the best player in the known world, and you will eventually lose.  Despite all you've been through, all the good your character has done in the game's world and story, it comes to an end here, and you can't do anything about it despite your best efforts.

Some games have also made your character, under the control of some unknown force, do something neither they nor you want them to do, and whatever buttons you press, they only bring the character closer to this action, never stopping them.  Or perhaps rather than putting the death of the final boss after your epic boss fight in a cutscene, the game allows you to deliver the final blow yourself.  Some games have even forced the player to do or watch terrible things, such as the controversial No Russian level in Modern Warfare 2.  These are seemingly small touches, but they really add a lot to the emotional impact; the player feels a sense of responsibility when this interaction is present, and for them to fail when in control, even if the game allows no other course of action, is a far more emotional experience than seeing a character fail in a story.

I've often seen people consider major narrative interaction to be the only type of interaction that truly separates video games from other media.  But as important as major narrative interaction is, it is not the only important or even the most important type of interaction when it comes to interactive storytelling.  Major narrative interaction is great, and very important, but it requires a large financial commitment, a lot of manpower, and the type of story that lends itself to multiple branching paths.  Minor narrative interaction, on the other hand, is not only easier on the workers and the money, but can also apply to every type of narrative imaginable.  This is because it does not demand non-linearity, but instead works to achieve heightened emotional impact regardless of whether the narrative branches.

In short, it's important to consider both major and minor narrative interaction when studying a given work of interactive art.  Too often a game is condemned for having no real interactive value simply because of its lack of major narrative interaction, despite having a strong presence of minor narrative interaction, and recognition of both types is vital to truly understanding how interactivity and story work together in this medium.

On Wednesday I'll post a list of games I recommend checking out to see good examples of minor narrative interaction.  I imagine some people will agree and some will disagree with what I'm saying here, so feel free to comment and let me know!  Until then, remember to like Binary Narrative on Facebook if you like what I have to say!

Adaptation: From Interactive to Non-Interactive

Apologies for the late posting time; had a bit of a pet-related emergency that took a lot of time and induced a lot of stress.  But now it's up, and I hope you enjoy it.

Many gamers have given up on movies based on video games.  All we've gotten from the practice are a ton of horrible movies and one absolutely awful director, and the few decent films we have gotten weren't terrible, but also weren't actually adaptations of the game, just similar stories with the same name.  

Unfortunately, a common reaction to this fact (and every time a film adaptation of a game is announced) is to exclaim that there will never be a good video game movie because, based on past failures, it's impossible to make one.  However, if you'll allow me to be quite frank, that's stupid.  This is art, dependent on nothing more than a skillful depiction of our own creativity; some things may be difficult, but nothing is impossible.

Artistic sensibilities aside, there are identifiable reasons why these films have not worked, which always means it is possible to improve.  If you can identify the problems, you can work on solutions.  So let's see about identifying some of them.  

If you've played Diablo,
you'll get this picture.

First of all, the interesting thing about adaptation when it comes to video games is that there is an interactive component that must be dealt with.  In the past, all a film adaptation had to deal with was the translation of words into images, or from the single-perspective staging of theater into the multi-angle setup the medium allows.  Granted, these were not easy; each medium has unique properties that others are hard-pressed to incorporate, or sometimes downright impossible.  But none of these elements have ever been so vital to the work as interactivity can be.  It is difficult to portray the words of a book with moving pictures, and it is hard work to accurately adapt the works of Shakespeare to a filmic medium, but at least it can be done.  Interactivity, on the other hand, simply does not exist (at least in any meaningful way) outside of video games.  

This was a compelling choice, but much more so when you
had to make it than it would be if Ethan did it himself.

Now of course for most games, the only effect this has is that which I discussed last week, which really isn't a huge hurdle to overcome.  Interactivity inherently connects the player with their characters in a way passive media does not, but we all know that connection is not required to create a compelling, personally identifiable character; we can all name many characters from film, literature, or theater we are far more connected to than many characters I could also name from video games.  And the fact is, none of the game-based films have had to contend with this much; very few, if any, of the games that have been adapted even had multiple endings, let alone the complex and multifaceted choices found in games like Mass Effect or Heavy Rain.  So really, though this is a problem, it has rarely been confronted, so there is not much to talk about.  

My one recommendation with this is to be creative.  Look at Clannad: the game's main romance has two endings, and the good one is unlocked when you play through all the game's different romance arcs.  The anime based on it (which I highly recommend as long as you don't mind crying like a baby), rather than choosing the good one as canonical, manages to fit both in.  The result is, unfortunately, less than perfect; I had to look up the ending online after watching it to fully understand it.  But it was a valiant effort.  The point is simply that, while interactivity cannot really be a part of film, that does not mean complete linearity is the only option.  Be creative.

However, on to the problems that have been more relevant to video game movies thus far.  The most obvious is that there is yet to be any real talent put into them.  Sure, there will be some noteworthy actors here and there, and it's true that not every director is as bad as Uwe Boll, but in general video games just haven't gotten the same talent behind their movies that literature and theater have.  Thankfully, this one will likely change over time; we live in a world where Kenneth Branagh, famous for directing and acting in Shakespearian film adaptations, directed Thor, a movie based on a Marvel comic.  Considering the parallels between comics and video games in their fight to earn artistic recognition, I think it's safe to say video game films will eventually get their due talent.  

Another big one is that, for some reason, very few of the games that have the narrative strength to do well in a filmic context have actually been adapted.  Why did we get a Bloodrayne movie?  Why is there a movie based on Dungeon Siege?  Where is our Beyond Good and Evil film, our epic Ocarina of Time movie, or that Halo adaptation that was supposed to be made way back when?  These games have good stories and would be pretty naturally adapted to the big screen; so why do we keep getting the non-story-centric games adapted?  

Well, the answer to that one is actually another reason in and of itself; budget.  Studio execs don't seem to see enough money in video game movies to pay the fees necessary to adapt a worthwhile game.  Fox and Universal even turned down the Halo movie based on budget reasons, which I think we can all agree was a very stupid move; of all games to turn down for budget reasons, they really thought a Halo film wouldn't make enough money back?

Though would-be Halo director Neill Blomkamp went on to
make District 9, so I think I can forgive that in the end.  

The unfortunate truth is that films take money to make, especially action-oriented films with heavy requirements for special effects.  Video games exist almost solely in the genre that would require such effects in a film adaptation, so this especially true of them.  However, they are also not particularly respected as art yet, meaning that to most studios, what matters is not so much whether a game makes good artistic sense to adapt to film, but whether they can cheaply acquire the rights and make a profit.  Unfortunately, under these criteria the best candidates for film adaptation are more along the lines of gaming's blockbusters than its artistic triumphs.  

In these ways, many projects have been doomed from the start, but what goes wrong with projects that have real potential?  This is the most important thing about it.  

Anyone adapting a work must have respect for the source material.  Not necessarily a driven desire to be completely faithful to it (prioritizing complete fidelity to the source material above all else is a grave mistake in adaptation), but a genuine desire to see the work done justice within another medium.  Game adaptations have, thus far, lacked this almost entirely.  

A good example was almost the Uncharted movie, which I talked about a bit in one of my smaller Wednesday posts.  In short, director-at-the-time David Russel had planned on making the film about a family that protects important artifacts from those who would steal and abuse them, which any fan of the games can tell you has absolutely nothing to do with Uncharted outside of the involvement of important historical artifacts.  

Thankfully, he was taken off the project due to "creative differences."  Issue being, David Russel wasn't planning on making an Uncharted movie.  He was planning on using the lucrative name of Uncharted to make his own movie with similar themes.  In an interview, he said he respected the source material, but did so noting only the gameplay and cinematic style of the game without a word to the story or characters.    

And therein lies the problem; directors don't see their video game-based projects as adaptation of a story so much as adaptation of a toy.  They see a game with a setting and gameplay style they like and decide to use those things to make a movie, without consideration of the fact that they are adapting a work of art that already has a story and characters.  It's like if someone saw a Batman action figure and decided to make a movie about a boy raised by bats in the jungle who grows up to become the villain of a horror flick; you could get it from the basic concept of what Batman is, sure, but you would have to completely disregard the story and character themselves in order to get it, to view Batman as a toy and concept instead of a story and a fully realized work of narrative art.

Come on, with no knowledge of the actual Batman, you know
that mistake could easily be made.  

Until the adapter in question treats video games as a narrative art that is to be legitimately adapted, we will continue to get movies with vague similarities to the games on which they are based instead of actual adaptations of the interactive stories we love.  So it may just largely come down to the eventual cultural acceptance of video games as an art form, combined with their mainstream incorporation to make studios more willing to greenlight films based on more deserving games.  

All this is just analysis and theoretical work, but the main thing to take from it is that there is still hope.  There is nothing that inherently makes game-to-film adaptation impossible, but the cultural relevance and opinion of video games is perhaps not yet to the point where they are particularly likely to succeed.  This is unfortunate, but it is by no means permanent.  When a studio takes a risk and a writer and director respect the game's artistic merits, we will get a good adaptation.  And there will be much rejoicing.  

Remember to "Like" Binary Narrative on Facebook, and I'll see you next week!