Metaphorical adventure vs. Litteral adventure

I’ve recently come across a discussion thread about whether or not Red Dead Redemption was deserving of Game of the year title. The detractors ranted about a sensible fact found within the bulk of the game : if James Marston, our cowboy protagonist, was indeed on a quest for redemption, then why was he killing so many people? If he really was worried about his children and wife, then why was he losing so much time doing pointless side-quests, hunting, gambling and so forth? If he really was the good guy the cut-scenes depicted him being, then why would he tie up a damsel and bring her up to a railroad (and in my case, he kinda did it a few times)?

A FEW THINGS THAT METROID : OTHER M GOT RIGHT

Nintendo and Team Ninja’s recent effort with the Metroid series, Metroid : Other M (Nintendo, 2010), gave gamers, it would seem, a lot to complain about. The silent and hard-as-nails bounty hunter Samus Aran was given a little more backstory than usual (which was already strongly hinted at in Metroid Fusion (Nintendo, 2002), for all you nit-pickers) , and that was enough to put the whole gaming community ablaze. The game did, in my opinion, include its story tastefully, in concentrated bursts so as not to distract from the gameplay and general solitary ambience, trademark of the series. What would be good cannon fodder for all haters is the whole mother-and-maternity related symbolism, grossly tacked on the game, that would have benefited of a more subtle integration than a litteral ‘mother-daughter relationship gone awry in a baby-bottle-shaped spaceship’ thing actually going on. Or how Samus comes in fully-equipped but is waiting for orders given by her father figure, another prism to the redundant theme, to use all of her firepower (a far better excuse would have been that since the Space Federation tinkered with her suit to get samples of the baby Metroid, they could have as well cloned the Chozian technology of her suit aboard the Bottle Ship, but then again, that’s just me).

Let us focus on the positive aspects of the game, now. There’s a lot it did right.

Alan Wake: la puissance du mot

L'acte de création, comme quiconque s'est prêté au jeu le sait, vient avec son lot d'angoisses, de doutes et de craintes. Plusieurs questions assaillent le créateur; mon œuvre réussira-t-elle à témoigner de ma vision, de mon intention? Serai-je à la hauteur de cette vision? Et les mots, ces petites choses couchées sur le papier, peuvent se révéler de puissantes armes, certaines à double tranchant. Il y a le rythme, la sonorité, le sens parfois kaléidoscopique de certains mots. Tout ceci dessine un terrain drôlement fertile pour le créateur de jeu vidéo, et Alan Wake (Xbox 360, Remedy, 2010) apparaît alors comme une opportunité exceptionnelle d’aborder ces peurs.

SILENT HILL : THE ROOM : LA FAMILIARITÉ COMME SOURCE DE L’HORREUR

Je viens de terminer ma première traversée du jeu Silent Hill : The Room (Xbox, 2004) et je suis frustré. Oui, frustré puisque depuis quelques temps déjà j’accumulais dans un recoin de ma pensée des notes concernant mon jeu vidéo d’horreur idéal, et The Room me vole plusieurs de ces idées (peut-on vraiment prétendre qu’il me les vole? J’ai simplement ignoré ce jeu pendant un trop grand nombre d’années avant d’y jouer!). Hors, ce fut un grand plaisir de voir ces idées réalisées, quelques-unes même poussées plus loin que je ne les avais déjà formulé dans mon esprit.

The 1.5 sequel

Economics regulate many aspects of our lives, and videogames are no exception. The more our consoles are getting closer to picture-perfect photo-realism, the higher the cost of producing a videogame. This is especially true when it comes to AAA titles, and although indie games can get away with simpler or more ‘artistic’ or abstract graphics, everyone has to at least meet the HD standards expected of today’s games.

But I do not want to rant about graphics today, that’ll have to wait for another time. In fact, my point is simply to underline a sad new reality in the videogame business: making a game is costly, very much so that games now come out unfinished, so they can turn in some profit. Any new game is kind of offered at first in a 0.9 version, left opened, with a lot of loose ends. That makes their inevitable sequels the real, full games. Instead of being a ‘2’ at the end of the title to signify the sequel, such games should have a ‘1.5’.

Immersion through characterization, characterization through the mundane

There is a trend that’s been going on for years in modern videogaming, and it’s the whole moral choices structure of games. Seems like every game now has to have a duality system integrated where you can act either like a saint or a total douche. It’s all part of an effort to customize, individualize the gaming experience to every player. We live in a society where nowadays every little thing tries to convince you they’ve been made for you; through its name, YouTube wishes to remind you that its yours, and Apple, with its iPad and iPod and iEverything, even by-passes the need to tell you by simply implying through their names the devices are already yours. But let me plead for the contrary.

Incorporating a theme into a game

Since videogame narrative is still (mainly) taking its cues from its bigger brother, cinema, a lot of stories are built around the same techniques as a movie scenario. Thus, it is common to hear game directors or creators using the lexicon of the seventh art. I observed a trend over the last few months of game directors discussing the elements of their works and justifying them through the concept of theme.

A theme, much like in cinema, is the idea, or message, underlying the work, presented through motifs such as characters and their actions, sets, color schemes, dialogues, etc. Even the smallest detail can draw from (and to) the theme. Some of the grandest works of art had a theme and incorporated it cleverly, creating some sort of interaction, whereas symbols and references create a network of signification that adds to the effect the work has on the viewing public.
Now, games can, and do, have themes. For example, Bioshock is a game about power and manipulation, and the many enemies citing the Bible seconds before attacking the player is a reference to religion, one of many references to a form of power and manipulation the game contains. Games being an interactive medium, they can incorporate themes in their mechanics in ways cinema cannot. A game mechanic can be modified to add an echo to what the game is about, and this can be done seamlessly, or it can be forced upon the player.