Valkyria Chronicles: I hate Nazis and You do too!

A sequel to Sega’s Viking:  Battle of the Asgaard?  No, not quite.  It just seems that non Judeo-Christian mythology is back in vogue again and I for one am perfectly happy to indulge in this new trend.  No more crosses, please!

Anyway, let’s go through the game in brief.  It’s a half real-time and half turn-based SRPG – which in itself seems like a crazy idea but it injects some life into an old genre.  You control each character in real time from a third person perspective, almost like a TPS.  There are also quite a few nuances with the combat engine, the best example is that if you move into an enemy’s cone of vision you will expose your characters to a free attack, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m also not going to dwell on the eye-catching art style that they chose to use – everything looks like a watercolour painting or a pencil sketch.  I have no idea how the technology works, but it needs to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated.  In a world where every other game has is the plastic look of UE3, anything that takes a different approach should be commended.

What I really want to focus on is the story and the story telling.  So it’s been a while since I’ve watched a full anime or manga series mostly because I don’t have the time or self-dedication to devote myself to watching something that will take months to get through (the heady days of the 90s, with Initial D and Sailor Moon and GTO, are behind me) but Valkyria Chronicles is the most “anime” text that I’ve experienced in a long time.

Everything that confuses and bewilders me about anime is in this game.  For a game set during a brutal war, it feels strange to have 14 year old characters being shot at by soldiers who are essentially SS troopers.  I know that the genre often features characters that are extremely young – but imagine if the cast of Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan were all teenagers.  It’s just an odd convention that takes a bit of getting used to. 

Then there’s the other anime convention that has always confused me – are these characters white or Japanese?  It’s set in a fictional Europe that they’ve so creatively dubbed “Europa”, but the characters are drawn exactly the same way that characters in other anime series are drawn.  What makes it all doubly strange is that there are “black” or at least “dark skinned” characters, so it’s not as if race doesn’t exist in the convention of anime.  I just don’t know enough about Japanese culture or the conventions of manga/anime to know if this is just an art style, some form of deep-seated wish fulfillment or even just the typical privileging of whiteness.

Taking out the mythology of the “Valkyria” and the steam punk nature of the technology, the game is basically a retelling of the Second World War – including the holocaust (the Darcsen being locked up in concentration camps, use as forced labour and then being executed as their overseers abandon their posts?  It's not subtle at all).  Now, I don’t want to attribute the qualities of one game to an entire nation, but given the role that Japan took during WW2, it seems odd that there is a romanticisation of the European front of the Second World War.  Perhaps the only interesting divergence from real world history is that the “Allies” in the game’s fiction are almost as evil as the “Axis” powers in the game’s fiction.  I just wonder what the game would have been like if it was set in a fictional Asia, with the “Korean” country trying to resist a fictional China and Japan.  Again, this is just one of those odd socio-cultural aspects of being Japanese that I'm not sure I'll ever understand.

As for how story is presented in the game itself, it’s typically Japanese – long cutscenes intermixed with bits of gameplay.  I was mostly caught up in the story, as clunky as it could be, so I didn’t mind it so much but I can understand how someone might be totally frustrated with having to sit through hours of videos and text bubbles in order to actually play the game (it's better than Metal Gear Solid 4 thankfully).  That said the way they presented the story is probably one of the cleverest ways I’ve seen someone do a menu screen since Psychonauts. The game is set up so that as you play through the game, you are essentially reading a book about the war aptly titled The Valkyria Chronicles, with each chapter of the book being a mission in the game.  When most games simply use a text menu to select cutscenes and missions, it was just nice to see someone take the time to integrate the menus into the fiction of the game world.

While I wished that they took some of the thought that went into designing the menus into figuring out ways that they could have told the story during gameplay, I definitely appreciate the game for what it is.  Yes, it’s undeniably a Japanese game but it is also innovative enough that it becomes a standout in a genre that is somewhat stuck in old conventions.

(Now if I could only finish Persona 3... or Persona 4!)

Oh, and here's an interesting picture I found on NeoGAF that apparently comes from 4chan that pretty much sums up the weirdness in the game:

Saints Row 2: Even Rower

Okay, so that’s not the subtitle... but it seems in keeping with the spirit of the game.  Yeah, there’s really nothing spectacular about the game’s narrative or story – Volition has gone out of its way to tell you how pretentious and boring Grand Theft Auto 4 was – instead opting to make a game that was simply fun.  Your character isn’t a conflicted ex-soldier trying to find a better life – s/he is just a “gangsta” who wants to own the city through any means necessary.  Sure, there’s satire, but it feels more genuine and less contrived than Rock Star North’s particular brand of extreme Americanism.

And you know what?  In an open world game – that just works for me.  There is no narrative dissonance when I run over people or shoot down a police chopper with a wire guided RPG.  There isn’t an overwrought cutscene trying to convince me that the main character is more than what s/he is – a psychopath who likes to blow things up.  It’s completely unapologetic and it’s much better for it.

With a very thin plot then, what is there to talk about?   I just wanted to point out that if there was ever a game about ergodic/ludic/emergent “game telling” experiences, this is it.  The game is as fun as you want it to be and Volition went out of their way to make it accessible to as many people as possible.  In mission checkpoints, regenerating health, the ability to recruit CPU players to help you on missions and a Gears of War-like revival system in co-op – it’s a game that wants you to finish it.  Even the cars handle much easier, relying on a more arcade-like handling model that lets you do hairpin turns on a dime.

For all my talk about narrative in games, I just needed a reminder that games can just be “fun” and that I shouldn’t feel the need to apologize for the fact that I find it amusing to run around suburbia with a septic truck spraying raw sewage on people in order to lower property values.  As I make my way through GTA4: The Lost and Damned, all I can think is that I hope Volition is working on Saints Row 3.

Flower or How I Became a Flower Child

Like Braid, I’m imagine that Flower has been talked to death by the time this goes up, so there really is nothing I need to say about the game that hasn’t been said – including those who think the game is a pretentious, unplayable mess.  Of course, I’m in love with the game for the same reasons that everyone else loves it.  Following in the footsteps of Rez and Everyday Shooter, Flower is the embodiment of game “synesthesia”, where you add to the music in the game through your own actions.  But what will immediately draw people in is just the amazing art design of the first two levels.

That said, I honestly wasn’t impressed with the first three levels.  It was charming and pretty and I was quite happy to play the game, but it felt like nothing more than an elaborate tech demo.

Then I played the fourth level and the whole experience changed.  It went from just flying around a pretty environment to being a rousing adventure straight out of the typical myth cycle.  While I’m sure people will have their own take on the game and ascribing authorial intent to a game that tries its best not to impose a narrative on the player is somewhat problematic, I believe that it is safe to say that the game is a reaction to urbanization from the perspective of a flower.

The jarring move from the gentle turning of windmills on a grassy plain to the black and harsh reality of a world full of power line towers and steel girders is an extremely emotionally jarring moment.  The game forces you through a dark trench that imposes a feeling of claustrophobia on you – a feeling that is doubly more oppressive because of the freedom that the game offered you in the first three levels.

In the fifth level, the game completely changes.  For the first time the game introduces an element of danger.  If you touch a downed, blacked power line – you take damage and lose visibility.  The first time that happened, it was so unexpected that I almost felt the shock myself.  The payoff for the “boring” unassuming gameplay of the first three levels is that it is able to lull you into a false sense of security.  I haven’t seen a better way to invoke the fear that a flower would feel when faced with the cold and harsh reality of a city.  I’m sure there are poems and paintings that try to do their best to be moving representations of nature, but actually putting the experience into the hands of the player simply makes the experience that much more personal.

Following the myth cycle, the final level is one of redemption.  Having suffered the crushing oppression urbanization, the flower then strikes back.  The game gives you a powerful sense of agency and tells you to go forward and destroy the corrupting elements of humanity.  It doesn’t condemn humanity or city life.  In fact, when you destroy downed power lines and steel girders, new high rises are born out of the ground – just like flowers! – and you see that nature and humanity can coexist.  You enliven a city block by restoring colour to the buildings and bringing back life to a small park.  You even make flowers bloom as you fly down a highway.  This isn’t the hyperbolic YOU’RE KILLING THE EARTH message that you’ll find everywhere else.

And the final moment of the game is the emotional climax that the game builds toward.  You explode past a tower of steel and into a scene that reminds you of the window you see at the beginning of the game and the steel tower suddenly transforms itself into a giant tree.  It was just an extremely satisfying moment that I haven’t felt since I finished the special “star” ending of Braid.

I really don’t want to make any declarative statements.  Games have arrived.  Games have evolved.  Games are more than just a series of violent actions linked together by cutscenes stolen from film.  I’ll let other people try to argue those points about the game, because I'm sure the hyperbole is flowing free without me contributing to it.  I’ll just say that I never thought a human made "text", game or otherwise, could ever properly personify a flower – so much so that I felt, as stupid as this sounds, the anxieties and aspirations of a flower.  Flow left me a little disappointed, but Jenova Chen is now on my radar and I'm definitely looking forward to "Flowerer" or whatever his next game may be.

What better way to end a post than with a sunset?