Metal Gear Solid 4 (Part 1)

As always, spoilers.

I don’t want to address the rhetoric surrounding the game like I did with Grand Theft Auto 4. I don’t think the game “deserves an 11” as IGN puts it and I’ll leave it at that. Personally, I’m more interested in talking about the game itself and some of the issues that it raises.

First of all, I should point out that I am completely un-invested in the series. I had a PS1 and I did play through some of the first game when it first came out. However, because I skipped the last generation of consoles, I never had a chance to play MGS2 or MGS3. I recently picked up the Essentials collection, but of course I got sidetracked by work and other games so I never got the chance to go through the series before I started MGS4. I don’t know if this is good or bad, to be honest. I don’t have the history with the game and I can approach it with a fresh perspective. Yet, I am sure that I am missing some aspects of the game that veterans of the series would find old hat. But, I just wanted to put it out there that I come to the game from the outsider’s perspective.

Of course, I should probably start with the 800 pound gorilla in the room – the number and length of the cutscenes. I have no idea how long the cutscenes are, but the estimates of 6-8 hours probably aren’t far off. I realize that I shouldn’t ignore the cultural context of the game. I don’t claim to be an expert on Japanese games, but many of them rely on cutscenes to introduce plot and for exposition. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey are recent examples of games that use cutscenes to tell their stories, but there are countless other examples. MGS4 isn’t any exception and it probably shouldn’t be. As a man who is a major voice in the Japanese development community and who has been working for over two decades, Kojima has informed Japanese game design as much as he has been influenced by it.

As a “western” gamer however, the length and number of these cutscenes do standout. Again I’ll point to Ken Levine and his insistence on not forcing story on a player but on using the game world to tell a story. The question is whether or not the cutscenes are a crutch that developers use when they cannot figure out a different way to tell a story in a game. I’m not saying that developers should ignore filmic storytelling techniques developed over the last century, but perhaps there should be an attempt to push the game medium forward as well. I don’t want to discount Kojima’s attempts to try something different with some of his cutscenes. The most prominent example is the number of times the psyche meter makes an appearance during the cutscenes. The psyche bar usually depletes by one segment when Snake is told that he can’t smoke or that he is old. In one case, it severely depletes when the he discovers that he only has six months to live (and then again when he discovers that he has to kill himself in three months or the mutated FOXDIE virus that he carries will infect the entire world) and near the end of the game when the nanomachines in his body fail. The integration of the game HUD into the cutscenes is very clever and helps teach the player the game mechanics while also reinforcing the characterization of Snake.

Intriguingly, I found that much more interesting than the other attempt to introduce a game mechanic into the cutscenes – the use of a mechanic similar to QTEs. During a cutscene, either the L1 button or the X button will appear. The L1 button allows the player to watch a scene from Snake’s perspective while the X button will trigger a quick image from the previous games. While the former lets you see a scene from another perspective and the latter lets you contextualize the current dialog with a previous game, their importance isn’t emphasized enough to make them anything more than curiosities (although you get extra Drebin points for viewing the flashbacks, so there is a small gameplay incentive for viewing them). It’s possible that for someone nostalgic for the previous games the flashbacks would have much more meaning... but unfortunately, I’m not that person. But, at the very least, they do break some of the monotony of the cutscenes. Of course, I should mention that during the mission briefings, you are given the chance to control the Mark II and you can watch the scene unfold from any angle you wish and also find some extras strewn about the plane. But still, this doesn’t change the fact that you’re sitting for 20 minutes waiting for plot to be delivered to you.

I should be fair. The cutscenes aren’t all plot exposition... although there is a fair amount of it. I imagine part of it is to make the story accessible for people who may be playing the game for the first time. So, not only do characters repeat information for you, they also do it as slowly as possible. I think I just turned off my brain when the fourth person explained the role of nanomachines/SOP in the game’s soldiers/PMC recruits. It’s the equivalent of Data trying to explain some made up scientific fact in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. You can tell when exposition is about to begin when there is a cut to an animatic of the Patriots or of the PMCs or the AIs or something else. But, there is also a lot of characterization in these cutscenes... indeed, most if not all of the character development is found in the cutscenes – from Snake’s reaction to the fact that he was designed with a degenerative disease, to Naomi’s personal conflict between her wish to live and her desire to stop the Patriots and the various other characters. Meryl, Johnny, Drebin, Otacon, Sunny, Big Mama, Ocelot/Liquid... all of their growth and development comes from how they are depicted in the cutscenes. As with GTA4, this aspect of the cutscenes certainly helps make the characters sympathetic and explain their motivations. My only criticism would be that, unlike the GTA4 cutscenes, the MGS4 cutscenes could use some editing to make them faster paced.

That said, not everything is overly explained in the cutscenes. A moment that pops up for me is during Act 1, when Snake first meets Meryl. He asks her about the Patriots, but she only hears “La li lu le” (or something similar). When she asks him why he’s speaking nonsense, he just drops it and the exposition moves on. Later on, Snake meets up again with Drebin and they begin to talk about the Patriots. Drebin first says “La li lu le”, Snake looks at him suspiciously. Drebin then says the world “Patriots” and reassures Snake that he’s free of the nanomachines that control the typical soldier. It’s a nice little moment where a small plot element is introduced and is explained later on.

Could they have used alternatives to cutscenes to tell their story? Probably. But I think Kojima wanted to tell his story this way and I certainly respect his choice to do so. I just think the more interesting story elements come from the times when he does not rely on cutscenes.

First and foremost is the “dream sequence” that starts Act 4. I must admit I found it hilarious that when Act 4 starts, you are right back in MGS1, PS1 graphics and all. What better way to put the player into Snake’s head than to have him or her go through the second screen at Shadow Moses? The player feels nostalgic for MGS1 since it invokes his or her memory of the past game, just as Snake is dreaming of the first time he was sent to Shadow Moses.

The end of Act 5, from the moment that Snake tries to get to GW to the point when Snake fights Liquid Ocelot, also stands out. Going through the microwave corridor by tapping the triangle button does, as some posters have suggested, put you in the physical state of Snake. The slowly depleting health and psyche bars also reinforce the player/Snake relationship. The fact that the player needs to pound on the triangle button faster as Snake struggles against death to reach the end of the corridor only adds to this relationship. During Snake’s crawl, the top half of the screen shows a montage of the entire cast of characters as they fight their individual battles. Meryl and Johnny fighting the FROGS, Mei Ling tries to maintain her composure as captain of the Missouri and Raiden is trying to survive a fight without any arms. It’s a nice way to bring the entire storyline to a head and connect it with the player’s interactions with Snake.

The fight between Snake and Liquid turns into a fighting game, complete with health bars for both characters. The controls for this section are very simple – there’s only block and attack – but it’s definitely a moment that stands out, reminding the player that this is the climax of the story. Not only that, but during each round of the fight, music from the past games is played in the background (and there is a “music video” style title that tells you the name of the track and the composer, in case you aren’t sure where the music is from), emphasizing that this is the climax of the entire series. Despite being largely contained and a bit shallow, the different experience makes the scene stand out from the rest of the game and gives it the importance that it deserves.

And of course, there are the many times when the game breaks the fourth wall. The ones that come to mind are when Otacon telling you to switch discs during the Shadow Moses mission in Act 4... before remembering that the game is being played on a PS3 so they don’t have to switch discs and the (Psycho) Mantis fight, which harkens back to the original MGS game where Psycho Mantis could do things like “read your mind” by looking at your memory card and reading your control inputs. I’m sure there are several other examples, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

Personally, I just find these moments far more interesting than the fairly non-interactive cutscenes that make up the majority of the story telling in the game. As a game, the player should be involved for the majority of his or her time with it, but when the designer demands that the player sit for 10 to 15 minutes while being fed plot, it takes the player straight out of the game. The lack of a theatre mode or even a way to fast forward through these cutscenes means that you have to sit through them if you want to follow the entire story. For a game that would take 15-20 hours to complete, nearly half that time is spent watching the cutscenes and I’m not sure if that’s a complete game experience or an HBO miniseries with some interactivity thrown in. For me, when I play a game, I want to play a game. That means that I am looking for an interactive experience. Even Mass Effect, which is essentially a 20 hour long cutscene, felt engaging because I was directing Shepard’s actions even when I wasn’t going through a level blasting bad guys. There’s no such interactivity with Snake here... and when the dialog is clunky and awkward, I can only sit in frustration hoping for the next game sequence to start up.

There’s one last thing I wanted to point out which I thought was clever and wish was done more in this game. One of the “secrets” that you can find is a camera that you can use in game to take screenshots with. Now, you can pick up the camera any time using the Mark II during the first four mission briefings. However, if you wait until the last briefing to pick up the camera, you get a “bonus” picture of Sunny and Naomi. This works as a story telling mechanic because Act 3 is when the characters get close to each other (not just to write the virus that takes down JD and the Patriots) and bond, so it’s almost perfectly natural that the characters would take a picture together. Yes, there’s a bit of a meta-game there where you probably have to have outside assistance to know that there’s a special picture only if you wait until Act 4, but it’s a nice moment that combines gameplay and story progression.

I’ve already went way too long here, so I’m going to save the rest of my thoughts for another post. I do have a couple of other points that I really want to write about, so bear with me as I complete my ramblings.

Grand Theft Auto IV

As always, this post will contain spoilers.

I've always had a fairly ambivalent relationship to the Grand Theft Auto series. I played the first two top down GTAs back on my old 486 machine, but I never finished them. I never owned a PS2, so I only played GTA3 and Vice City years later when they arrived on PC... and by that time, they were so dated they really weren't worth playing.

I think GTA: San Andreas changed that for me. It was the first GTA game where your character was more than just a cipher for the player. CJ was his own entity and didn't apologize for it. The fact that many people complained that they were "forced" to play a black character only legitimized the Hausers' decision to appropriate West Coast "urbanity" in their game (although, from various reports within the gaming press, the Hausers are offended by accusations of appropriation). San Andreas went beyond the simple parody and satire of American life - although it still did so amusingly - to address issues of race and masculinity. The fact that a simple Google Scholar search will yield several articles on race and San Andreas indicates that the game certainly touched a nerve.

There are a lot of things that I found interesting with San Andreas that I'm sure other people have written about. My favourite scene has to be when CJ and his friends crash through the "R" of the giant SPRUNK sign overlooking the highway. Yeah, it's crude toilet humour, but it also attacks American commercialism by showing how crass it can be. As a parody of the LA Riots, the ending of San Andreas was both breathtaking in that "Ken Levine inspired let the world tell the story" kind of way (entire city blocks were on fire and the previously mindless pedestrians suddenly became a vicious mob) and also heartbreaking. CJ gets his revenge... but he lost so much in the process. The fact that the riots were caused because an African American police officer was acquitted of his crimes raised issues of race that went beyond the simple black vs white dichotomy - something that would come up in real life when African American NYPD officers were acquitted of shooting an unarmed African American civilian.

But this post is about Grand Theft Auto IV. I honestly don't think I need to talk about the gameplay too much, but I'll go counter to the glowing reviews by suggesting that the shooting controls are average at best and the lack of checkpoints during those long arduous missions are still annoying, even with the quick retry button (mainly because you lose your body armor if you die). My biggest gameplay problem with the game is the fact that many of the missions are heavily scripted. Most of the storyline car chases are just that - chases. You can unload all your ammo into the enemy vehicle, but they won't die. Why? Because the chase is leading you to the next cutscene. One of the possible final missions, Out of Commission, is probably the most guilty of all of these missions. When you first catch up to Pegorino, you can't shoot him - he is invincible. When he's on his speedboat, you can't shoot him. When you are chasing him in an attack helicopter, you can't shoot him. It's only when your chopper is shot down and you land that you are able to chase Pegorino down and kill him. Clearly, this was so the player could experience the drama of the scripted chase - from foot, to bike, to helicopter, but for a game in a genre that is defined by its openness, this level was anything but.

But, let's go to the story. We've all read the rhetoric and in fact, N'Gai Croal justifies the use of such rhetoric by explaining why he needed to compare the game's story to The Sopranos. As engaging as I found some of the story to be, I don't think it comes close to the best of television or film. That mantle still goes to Bioshock. Why? Ultimately, the game's story is told through cutscenes and through conversations - this game's version of the "radio logs" found in Bioshock. Some of the environmental storytelling found in San Andreas - such as the SPRUNK sign and the city wide riots in which the entire city descends into chaos - is nowhere to be found in GTA IV. If anything, this game feels slightly regressive.

What is added however are branching story paths. You'll have a couple of opportunities to kill or release characters and at three points in the game, you'll have to choose to kill one of two people - the last choice deciding which ending you receive. While this is certainly an interesting mechanic, forcing players to make tough choices, it feels very much like a shallow version of the system perfected (perhaps too much) by BioWare. In the last few 1up.com podcasts, Shawn Elliot has expressed my concerns with the choices that the game offers. The problem is that throughout the rest of the game, you can essentially act like a sociopath. You might just shoot random people and police officers while driving around the city... not to mention the fact that you constantly commit the game's eponymous crime in order to get a car in the first place.
So, when you finally track down Darko - the man who betrayed Niko's military unit back in Europe - and you are offered the choice of executing him or letting him go, the consequences are fairly shallow. I chose to let Darko go and when I did and got into a car, Niko begins talking about the various emotions he is feeling at the moment. Anger, sadness, regret. But, the fact that I just stole a car a gun point in order to trigger the conversation makes it almost farcical. Niko believes that he might have changed after letting Darko go, but as a player, I just stole a car and killed countless innocent people before hand... not to mention the people I had to kill in order to progress the story in the first place.

This is a case where the choices you make are not only shallow, but the this is where the gameplay - dare I say the ludic experience - interferes or contradicts the narrative. The two simply do not mesh and the story becomes less than what it should be.

It was pointed out by John Davison on the May 9th episode of 1up Yours that this may be the first multi-million selling game that is a tragedy. Indeed, depending on your choices at the end of the game, either Roman or Kate will be killed. I don't know what happens in the ending where Roman dies - I haven't tried that ending yet, but in the ending where Kate dies and you kill Pegorino in revenge, that victory is hollow. After you shoot Pegorino, Roman enters the scene and tells Niko, "We won man, we won." Niko simply walks away as the camera pans to show the Statue of Happiness in all its satirical - and at this moment ironic - glory. Despite my problems with the narrative, I will readily admit that I was excited by the fact that the game truly is a tragedy in that traditional literary sense. Sure, Niko doesn't die, but at this point he might as well be dead. Of course, the fact that you go back on your merry way after the game ends ruins the weight of that tragic ending... but, I can forgive that since being able to play through the game after the story is over is a trademark of open world sandbox games.

Ultimately, I don't believe that Grand Theft Auto IV is the revolution that everyone in the game enthusiast industry and members of the mainstream press want it to be. Yes, the graphics and the representation of New York are fantastic... and the Euphoria physics engine looks like it will be the new "lens flare" and "bump mapping" of video game technologies. But from a storytelling perspective, it doesn't do anything new. If anything, it regressed and is lesser than San Andreas.

It was recently confirmed that Bioshock will be made into a movie and because of Ken Levine's method of storytelling through video games, I don't believe that there really is any interesting way for the film's producers to reproduce the game's story. At best, they'll have to focus on someone other than the player character. With Grand Theft Auto IV however, I believe that you could probably string all the cutscenes together and release that as a film. There's really nothing in the script or the game that can't just be lifted and made into a screenplay... and that's unfortunate.

I do have other issues with the story, but they are perhaps relatively minor when compared to what I've just discussed. For example, I believe the pacing is way off. This is a case of game designers believing that "longer is better" because the "hardcore" gamer wants 80 hours of gameplay. Unfortunately, the length leads to the gameplay being monotonous (it's a series of chases and shooting sequences) and the introduction of characters that ultimately lead nowhere. As amusing as people find Brucie and Bernie/Florian, they are characters that maybe could have been left out of the main story and made secondary.

The "revolutionary" choice system in this game is fairly shallow as well. What is lauded here is criticized in other games, namely the various Star Wars in which you make a choice the effects the outcome of the game. Most famously, Knights of the Old Republic featured a single choice where you could choose the "light side" or "dark side" ending, regardless of your decisions throughout the entire game. GTA IV does exactly the same thing and saving before you make this choice allows you to effectively watch and play through both endings.

There is also a problem with misogyny and perhaps homophobia. The women in the game are fairly shallow characters that stand only in the periphery. Michelle, Elizabeta and Kate are all ultimately background characters that do not matter. Yes, Michelle's betrayal ultimately leads Niko to find Darko and Kate's death leads Niko to seek revenge and feel the pathos of losing everything he has in America just as he has lost everything back in Europe, but they are mere plot devices and nothing more. The shallow dating game and the reference to "Hot Coffee" only show that they really haven't evolved that much from their previous efforts. The lap dance sequence at the strip club (complete with vibrating controller) only adds to the male-centered focus of the game. At least in this game, prostitution is not encouraged. As a gameplay mechanic, it's faster and cheaper to by food than it is to sleep with a prostitute. My only hope is that the Hausers will finally make a game that features a female lead. That will ultimately solve some of the problems with misogyny in the game. If anything, having a female character cruise around for male prostitutes will at least confound the Jack Thompsons of the world.

As for the homophobia, while Brucie may be an astute observation of closeted homosexuality, Bernie/Florian is essentially an effeminate male stereotype. The fact that he runs using the female running animation only compounds the use of that stereotype. Are there closeted men who need to assert their masculinity constantly? Hell, there are gay men who need to assert their masculinity constantly, so that's not an issue. Similarly, I do not deny that there are effeminate gay men either. But relying on these shallow stereotypes simply detracts from the more nuanced discussions of the immigrant experience and the themes of loyalty and identity. Although, I will admit, the fact that the game makes you execute a gay basher (Bernie/Florian's stalker) is clearly a standout mission. Given the many, many people on Xbox Live who casually toss the word "faggot" and "gay" around, I can only hope that mission made them realize their own homophobia.

I don't want to make it seem that I "hate" the game. At the very least the game forces people to think of these issues simply because of its popularity. Indeed, as shallow as the representation of some of the themes in the new Iron Man movie must be, the fact that it's out there and will be seen by millions of people is only a good thing. While I wish that more people would watch Standard Operating Procedure, I think that's simply a pipe dream. Indeed, a straight up game about the immigrant experience in America probably wouldn't sell well. But within the context of Grand Theft Auto? Suddenly millions of people are playing the immigrant experience for themselves and maybe, just maybe, they'll learn something from it.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (1 and 2)

With the recent release of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, I am reminded of a moment that I consider a highlight of 2006. Yes, a lot of people were busy curb stomping and chainsawing each other in Gears of War, but I believe that Rainbow Six: Vegas featured one of the more visceral moments that year.

On the level “Freemont Street”, you lead your team through a casino and into the eponymous street. When you open the door, the first thing you see is a family taking cover from terrorist fire. You notice that the child is separated from his anguished parents, telling their child to stay where he is as bullets fly past them. If you can clear out the terrorists fast enough, the child runs to his parents and the family is reunited. As you approach the family, the parents thank you for saving their child.

Yes, this is a scripted event. But one thing that people may not have noticed is that you can fail and the child can die. Unlike other sections of the game where a civilian death results in an instant game over screen, the game lets continue on if the child is shot by the terrorists. As you pass by the child’s parents, you see them hold each other in grief as they look at their child’s lifeless body. While you didn’t kill their child, you failed as a member of Rainbow and let the terrorist score a small victory.

In the end, this moment is inconsequential in a rather generic and uneventful story. Yet for me, it stands out as the most memorable moment in the game, if not in recent memory. This is a case where player performance directly affects the outcome of the narrative as opposed to the menu based system seen in many other games (for example, in Bioshock, press one button to harvest a little sister or another to save her) and where failure does not necessarily mean a game over screen. Yes, there have been many other games where mission failure does not necessarily mean game failure (Wing Commander instantly comes to mind), but not on this specific scale. This is yet another case where games, through game play, can provide an experience through interactivity that cannot be provided through the passivity of film or other media.

Unfortunately, this moment is not replicated anywhere else in the game or its sequel. Clearly, the designers were aware of this innovative method of storytelling, so it is disappointing that they did not choose to revisit it. One can only hope that they implement performance based narratives in a future game because it is a device that remains largely untapped.

As for the story itself? Well, there’s really not much to say. Both the game and its sequel are by the book techno-action Tom Clancy-like thrillers, except instead of killing incompetent Chinese people, you are killing incompetent Mexicans and/or Latin Americans. Perhaps the only interesting thing that appears in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 is the fact that you can choose the gender of your character. As a male character, the story turns out to be a fairly standard Oedipal narrative, with the main antagonist feeling resentment towards you because you coddled and protected him from his failure. As a female character, the conflict suddenly becomes creepy as your character is caught in that grey area between mother figure and sexual object. Does Gabe resent “you” because you were too motherly, or because you rejected his sexual advances, or maybe even because he rejected your sexual advances? I have no doubt that this is completely unintentional and perhaps I am bordering on over-analysis... but play through the last chapter again with a female character and listen to that final piece of dialog between you and Gabe again. If you can tell me you don’t see anything weird in that relationship, you are probably less damaged than I am.

Mass Effect

Again, this will be spoilerific... perhaps more so than my Call of Duty 4 post.

So, before I begin, I will gladly admit that I am a BioWare fan... and dare I say it? Yes, I dare. I am a BioWare fanboy. While I'm not hardcore enough to have MDK... I have the two Baldur's Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire and the recently released Mass Effect. In fact, I am probably one of 50 people in the world who would openly admit to being a David Gaider fan and while I hate displays of nationalistic pride when it comes to art or sports (USA! USA!), I am genuinely proud that BioWare is a Canadian company.

With all that preamble out of the way, I'll say that I have forgiven the game for many of its game breaking and technological problems. Some of the classes are just unbalanced for even normal difficulty while some of the classes are essentially invulnerable once you reach level 25. There's the classic loading problems (people ignored Portal's elevators, didn't they?), screen tearing and Unreal Engine 3 related texture pop-up problems. I also think Jennifer Hale is the best voice actress in the industry and I would pay her to read the back of cereal boxes, so having her be the voice of (female) Shepard didn't hurt either.

But, let's ignore all that reviewey stuff. At this point, you've either played the game or you've ignored it to play Halo 3 or Lost Odyssey. Mass Effect is the latest game in BioWare's opus of interactive ethics games. The twist this time is that the binary isn't good vs evil... it's good cop vs bad cop or Paragon vs Renegade. "Jack Bauer in space", as one of the designers put it. In many ways, the system has been greatly simplified from previous BioWare games. Being Paragon unlocks some Charm points and opens up more Charm slots to allocate points to, which in turn unlocks various dialogue options in the game and to make shopping at stores cheaper. But unlike KoTOR or JE, there are no specific gameplay advantages to being a full Paragon. The light side character in KoTOR has a special advantage when using light side powers and is penalized for using dark side powers. In ME, a rifle is a rifle... it doesn't matter if you're good or bad. The end result is that you are maxing out your Paragon slot in order to max out your Charm and to unlock new dialogue options and nothing more.

The huge problem here is that you are forced to choose a path one way or the other. There are no shades of gray here (in KoTOR, there was a specific item that you could only equip as a "gray" Jedi, and Jolee Bindo encouraged you to ride the line and not choose one or the other). If you want to unlock the "Charismatic" achievement where you "Use Charm or Intimidate to resolve an impossible situation", you must have 10-12 points in Charm or Intimidate. (This is when you convince Wrex to stand down on Virmire or convince Saren to commit suicide at the Citadel). The only way to do that in a single playthrough is to stick to a course and rack up as many Paragon or Renegade points as possible. The only advantage to this system is that unlike past BioWare games, there is no one single point where you choose your ending. In both KoTOR and JE, your previous actions had no bearing on the game ending... it came down to one specific choice you made near the end game. Here, your ending is based on your Paragon or Renegade values at the end of the game, even in spite of your decision to save or kill the Council.

Despite the simplified morality system, some of the complex emotions still exist. Just like many other gamers out there, I slowly grew more uncomfortable making Renegade choices. I felt horrible while my Shepard gleefully pushed the button that killed the Rachni queen. And Feros? That planet nearly broke me. Not only did I have to kill every colonist who was being controlled by the Thorian, an event which is horrible enough... but the aftermath of the battle with the Thorian? In case you haven't seen this part, after you kill the Thorian, the Asari is set free. She tells you everything she knows about the Conduit and in the end, you have to decide her fate. The Renegade choice here is to "make her pay for her crimes". But this isn't just a simple case of shooting her. She looks at you, agrees with your choice, turns around and kneels down so that you have a perfect shot at the back of her head. It was perhaps one of the most disturbing moments in the game for me.

The deeper question is why was this disturbing? For me, the answer is player agency. The mere fact that you personally choose to drive your character down this path makes you complicit in a way that you aren't when you read a novel or watch a film. Like the famous ending of Metal Gear Solid 3, you pulled the trigger... not the author of the text. This is something I've wanted to explore for the last three years, but I haven't found the right framework. Psychology? Sociology? Philosophy? Narratology? Or God forbid, Ludology? There are also a lot of questions, of course. Is this system of ethics culturally located? For the few Japanese players who have finished the game, did they have the same experience? Is it "wrong" if you do not feel guilty after making "bad" choices? Many players can, as with novels and film, separate themselves from the text. Even though they are personally making the decisions, to them it's "just a game". While I'm far, far away from contemplating my dissertation, I know that I will be answering these questions and more.

For a game of choices, there is also one moment in the game where player agency is constructed in a, as a Star Trek fan might put it, "Kobyashi Maru" scenario. On Virmire, near the end of the mission your team splits up and at some point, both members of your team are under attack. You have to make a choice to save either Kaidan or Ashley. Now, there is of course the larger meta-game at play here - if you are pursuing a romantic relationship with one of the characters, obviously you would want to save them. Also, if you need a strong Soldier or Sentinel in your party, that might inform your decision as well. But let's ignore that for a moment. Here you are presented with the illusion of choice, since either decision you make you are condemning one of your characters to death by nuclear explosion. This is a scene that replicates the "tough choice" that we see military officers make in various war films, only this time you are the one who is forced to make the choice and deal with the consequences. Indeed, if you choose to save your love interest, the character will wonder if you saved them because of that relationship, questioning your ability to make rational judgements (and perhaps reinforcing the idea that superior officers should not sleep with their subordinates). However you read it, narratologically, it is a moment of player agency that isn't agency at all. You choose who to save, but in an ideal game situation, you would be able to save both characters and still kick Saren's ass.

Peter Molyneux suggested that most game players simply could not accept negative outcomes as a natural property of video games. In Fable 2, when you are knocked out your character is permanently physically scarred. He pointed out that in testing, most players would simply turn of their consoles and restart the game rather than deal with the consequences of their failure. As a result, he was forced to remove that aspect from the game entirely. By building in failure right into the game narrative, Drew Karpyshyn (and his writing team) created a narrative where failure was inescapable and the player was complicit with that failure. While you can react to that failure with compassion or anger after the fact, this is an failure you must face whether you are a Paragon or Renegade player.

In a year where player agency was the new focus of major games - see Bioshock, Portal and The Darkness - this moment was as much a standout as the nuclear weapon going off in Call of Duty 4 and potentially says as much about the text itself and its underlying themes of leadership, command and ethics.

One final point. As someone who saw the anxiety over the series finale of The Sopranos, both in public discourse and within academia, the lack of narrative closure in Mass Effect did bother me. For all their successes, BioWare's writing teams seem to have a problem with denouements. KoTOR just ends, regardless of your choices. JE gives you an ending, but they are a series of text pages that perhaps foreshadow the ungainly reading that Sakaguchi put into Lost Odyssey. Mass Effect is no different. Yes, the game is the first in a trilogy... but does that mean that your characters can't take the time to mourn the death of Kaidan or Ashley? Or that your character can't take the time to help Tali find her way back to her fleet? Or perhaps help Wrex use Saren's research to save his people from extinction? Or have your character simply spend time with your love interest, if you chose one?

Maybe the sequel will address some of these unfinished plot threads... we can only hope.

New Games Journalism

The phrase "New Games Journalism" is almost like a curse in the gaming press. Jeff Gerstmann, formerly of GameSpot and now of Giant Bomb, has totally resisted the phrase, suggesting that the game press shouldn't aim for the example of Edward R. Murrow or Pauline Kael. This is an opinion shared by many writers in the industry, including those at 1up.com, IGN.com and Future US.

While I certainly value Gerstmann's opinion as a long term veteran of the gaming press, I feel that this is extremely shortsighted. He advocates a "consumer reports" type approach to reviews. The facts and just the facts. What's good, what's bad, and why you should or should not buy the game. Unfortunately, I believe that this style of review is essentially impossible - Gerstmann's own Kane and Lynch review and the subsequent controversy would seem to disprove his position on the issue.

Shawn Elliot of the now defunct Games For Windows Magazine once called the press "professional enthusiasts" and recently referred to his occupation as a "game boner stoker", a not so subtle admission that the current state of games journalism is anything but journalism.
Not surprisingly, GFW Magazine and CGW Magazine was one of the few American game enthusiast magazines to print multi-page articles not tied to a new preview of Halo 5 or Final Fantasy 17 EX Crystalis or whatever the hot new game of the moment might be. Yes, they do the previews, but they've also featured articles examining Christian gaming and Islamic gaming, topics that are anathema in the gaming press. Freelancers such Lara Crigger and Evan Shamoon contributed articles to the magazine on peripheral issues related to gaming or on small games that would never make the cover of the magazine. I should stop before this turns into a full blown eulogy.
(I should note that I share the same opinion of Game Informer magazine. While other gaming press outlets were left wondering why Koreans like Starcraft, Game Informer sent someone to Korea to actually try to answer the question. The writer interviewed Koreans, went to PC Bangs, and did what journalists who want to answer a question usually do - investigate. The result was a 10+ page spread in a magazine usually devoted to console games... not on Starcraft 2 itself, but on the role of Starcraft in Korea.)

While the closure of the magazine would seem to indicate that people who play games do not want these types of articles, I believe in the contrary. N'Gai Croal and the MTV Multiplayer Blog prove that you can have more in depth articles that are not game previews or reviews. Indeed, Patrick Klepek's recent investigative article on the 360 remote would indicate that there is space for game journalists to actually be journalists and not be the mouth piece of large game companies.

Should the gaming press aspire to Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert or Edward R. Murrow? It's only games, right? Games aren't as serious as film or the news. But why not try your best? Why not aim to have your name added to that lexicon of journalists? What are games journalists and game players afraid of? It's time to grow up and I, for one, anticipate reading the work of the next Pauline Kael of games journalism.

Reading Call of Duty 4

Getting waylaid once again, this time I'm just going to work on short, brief posts.

There has been some question on whether games can be taken serious or should be taken seriously. The backlash against N'Gai Croal after his comments on the MTV Multiplayer Blog here sparked an outcry across the big gaming forums, claiming that Croal had been taking the Resident Evil 5 trailer too seriously.
That topic has been discussed to death and really, after the GFW Radio podcast from 04/18/2008, the PC editorial staff at 1up.com has covered most of the bases.

What I want to do here is show that games can be "read" in the same way that pretentious, out of touch academics "read" works of literature and film. Disclaimer: I am an PhD student in English Literature, so I'm one of "those" people.

So, why Call of Duty 4? It's one of the biggest games of 2007, tops the NPD monthly sales charts and tops the Xbox Live play charts. Launching the map packs a couple of weeks ago brought Live marketplace to a crawl, crippling it for at least a day. It's one of the few games that nearly everyone knows about and when people think games that can be read, people immediate point to Bioshock, not something mainstream like CoD4.

*spoiler alert*

Let's begin by looking at how the game starts. You take the role of Yasir Al-Fulani, president of an unnamed country that is obviously Saudi Arabia if you know how to use an atlas or Google Earth. You have extremely limited control at this point - in fact, you are basically a moving camera, forced to watch as your capital city is taken over by Khaled Al-Asad. Over the PA system, you are called an American collaborator who has grown wealthy working as an American puppet as the people of the country grow poor. See any parallels to the real world here?
Let's look at the fact that you are quite literally a puppet in this moment, being controlled by the game designers who decided that the game should begin this way. Here, you are complicit with Al-Fulani, a mere puppet for some greater power, forcibly complying with this greater power's wishes in order to get more. In Al-Fulani's case, maybe it was military support or money. In the player's case, it's a desire to progress the plot of the game.

Let's not go overboard here. Someone could keep going with this one scene and I think they should, but in the interest of brevity, let's move on.

Much has been said of the AC-130 gunship scene and I really don't need to cover it again here. If you don't see anything deeper in this scene than just blowing away Russians with a howitzer, maybe you need to watch the news or find some AC-130 footage on YouTube.

No, the big scene I really want to talk about is the end of Act 1. In fact, I would argue that this was the biggest moment in gaming and for gaming in 2007. To set the scene, you are in the capital city of this unnamed Middle Eastern country as part of an American invasion force. Through the course of this mission, a Cobra pilot is taken down by a RPG and your Lieutenant orders you to pull her out and save her life. After you do just that, a nuclear bomb detonates and you are knocked out. When you wake up, you see you are right in the middle of the aftermath of a nuclear attack - the huge mushroom cloud is right there in the distance. You can hear over loudspeakers or your radio that American forces are trying to save survivors... but your controller starts to rumble and you can hear a beating coming from your speakers. Seconds later, the screen turns to white and you are listed as KIA.

That's right. This is the first Call of Duty game, if not one of the first FPSes, where you really die. Maybe you can chalk Al-Fulani up as a throwaway character... but this is a US soldier, your true cipher into the game world. This game changing event even impressed Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, and that's saying something if you're familiar with his reviews.

But what does this mean? It basically renders the entire first Act a "waste". Al-Asad used the coup as a distraction against the true threat in Russia and it worked, since thousands of American soldiers are dead and he's closer to getting to that Russian nuclear facility that appears in Act 2 and 3. Your personal victory of pulling out the injured Cobra pilot and dragging her back to your helicopter is rendered meaningless by her death, the death of your squad, the death of the thousands of other soldiers in the city and your death. It doesn't matter if you're the greatest CoD4 player in the world and you pulled that pilot out on Veteran difficulty while time to spare. That effort was pointless, because in the end, you still died.

If this moment isn't as thoughtful as a similar moment in Platoon or Full Metal Jacket, I don't know what is.

The game ends in the same way, with everyone in your SAS team getting wiped out. It's implied that you don't die, but you can't know that for sure. You save the United States from a nuclear attack, but at the cost of the lives of your friends. The ultimate price for answering the "call of duty".

Is CoD4 a fun game? Yeah, of course it is. Infinity Ward never disappoints... (well, except for spawn closets) But just because it's fun doesn't mean that it can have a deeper message or that it can be "read". I hope I've shown that here today.

Yay for state sanctioned holidays!

This is more a reminder for myself that this place exists. Now that the holidays are here and I don't have to worry about anything for a week or so, I'll have the time to bang out my own review of Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect. My focus will be on how these two games manipulate a player's expectations of player agency.