The Game Critique

Indie Game Spotlight is a weekly feature where I highlight an independent game that deserves attention. Given the difficulty these developers have in being heard, every little bit helps. Some will be free, some will cost money, but all are deserving of some attention.

P0nd is a one-button, flash game by PeanutGallery that came out I want to say over a year and half ago. It is a strange game and before I go any further I want you to go try it. It won’t take more than a few minutes of your time, definitely not more than 5.

Played it? Okay, good.

P0nd is a strange game as it is one built upon contradictions for a numerous point that don’t make any sense until the end, by which point most will have been left confused, disappointed and/or angry. All of those emotions are part of the point. I know it’s a less than five minute long flash game, but spoilers from here on out.

You start off at the beginning of the day as your avatar goes out for a walk with the opening lines appearing on the screen once you hit start:

I delight in the smalle things,
the shape of a leafe,
the curl of sunlight on the grasses.
I set out before dawne, one foot afore the other,
To see what wonders the world may holde.

Those spelling mistakes are not mine; it is word for word what the opening says. (It uses old English spelling for four of the words, but it isn’t consistent and done for no reason.)  The atmosphere is very relaxing until you get to the titular pond. You do the inhale, exhale, feel relaxed, enjoy the scenery thing until it all goes to hell. A giant cell-shaded squid emerges from the pond and the soundtrack turns from light piano to hard rock and the sky turns blood red. Two health bars appear at the top in traditional fighting game style with instructions of what to do flash on screen. It ends with a cutscene of a meteor coming down and laying waste to both the squid and the pond and a scene of your character standing there, with what I can only imagine as the biggest WTF expression on his face.

It ends in the evening with the avatar returning to his cabin and turning the TV on as represented by the noise and the windows flashing white, green, blue and red. We then get a parting quote, “I may be wrong…” – Roger Ebert. This is a clear reference to Ebert’s now famous claim that games can never be art that after much argument and much digital ink refuting him, he recanted saying he doesn’t know enough and that, who knows, he may be wrong. There was more to that hence the ellipses.

From this we have a new lens to examine the game through. The game is a commentary on the nature of the game industry at this point. It all comes from a place of synthesis. No single part of the game has any part of that commentary built in. It is in the compare, contrast and finally the end where it becomes apparent, or rather, the thesis, the antithesis and finally the synthesis.

We don’t know at the time, but afterwards we can look at the beginning segments of the relaxing indie game with an innovative or at least different looking enough to subscribe to the stereotypical indie game label. The opening poem is pretentious, the pixilated look, the light piano music, the game could probably win at indie game bingo. Then we arrive at the pond and everything becomes EXTREME. The graphics, the music, the animations are all EXTREME and meant to pump you up. It’s all about the hyper action of the AAA game industry looking to have you participate in awesome looking things, even though you have no agency. Now we have an avatar after the fact just looking confused.

He went out promised something Zen or sublime and his experience ended with this. Better to go off home and watch TV instead. In this environment, where even something new and possibly enlightening done through mechanics is saddled with tropes and conventions that make a game a game so that people wont be confused or something. In the end everyone leaves unhappy. This moment punctuated by the Ebert quote now reading almost mockingly. Yes, he may be wrong, but we certainly aren’t helping.

The meaning is hidden in the synthesis of the game. Here it uses it by having the thesis and antithesis as contradictory elements. I can see in another game using discordant, but not contrary elements to create meaning. The purpose is that the game recognizes the differing elements and presents a conclusion immediately after they have been recognized and internalized. It’s not something I see in game much like I see in other mediums. Not all games with discordant elements though are doing this or are capable of it. It requires recognition on the part of the creator and a conscious effort in the game to pull it off.

This isn’t a deep game by any means, but it’s a perfect example in a seemingly ongoing argument I’ve been having about authorship. There is a contingent in all art forms that claim the author has no say in the meaning of their own work, that only what is in the text matters and everything else is unnecessary. Now despite the logical fallacy that without the author the work couldn’t be created, here we have a work that with the text alone is not great. Then the author reaches out at the audience and smacks them across the head. The author’s voice is loud and clear in what they are trying to convey. With that, I cannot see, at least in this case how the specific author’s voice does not matter to a work in which it is embedded, regardless of what you think of it.

Indie Game Spotlight is a weekly feature where I highlight an independent game that deserves attention. Given the difficulty these developers have in being heard, every little bit helps. Some will be free, some will cost money, but all are deserving of some attention.

The Stanley Parable is a Source Code mod made by Davey Wreden. It took two years of work to make and is a superb think piece. That’s what it is, a think piece in interactive form. It’s not a game in the traditional sense. There are no points. There are no enemies. It’s a first person game with no shooting or jumping. It is a game about choice. That’s all you do during the course of the game make choices.

They are binary choices, each one of them, but they all lead to a very different conclusion. Why? It’s unusual in that it’s not just a work that may need to be experienced again in order to fully appreciate it; it demands that you play it again. In fact there are 6 endings. I’m not sure if I should tell you that before telling you to play it before reading on, but I feel that you need to know that to appreciate everything. It is easy to miss one of the choices. This way there is no confusion.

But seriously, I highly recommend you go play it now. It will require Source SDK Base 2007 installed on your computer to run and Steam since that’s how you get it. You can download the mod here with instructions.

This is a game about the relationship between player and designer. That is what it is at its core. It is called a parable in the title, but that is a cover. The parable is the story you get should you follow everything as instructed, as the narrator wants you to. By itself, that ending is a parable, a short tale about freedom and control. It’s light and doesn’t offend or really make you think. It’s fluff. Alone it is a parable, but with the rest of the game it becomes part of something greater. The game as a whole, with all the endings is allegorical.

There are six endings with six very different stories tied to them. They all start the same way. You are Stanley, office drone number 427 who spends his day pushing buttons as commands pop up on the screen. You know this because you hear a narrator telling you all this and then you are told no one else is here. So you go looking for someone following the instruction the narrator give you until you come to your first choice.

I thought hard how to explore this game and while just relating my own experiences from the order I played it, I noticed the whole. While playing towards each individual ending it is difficult to see the whole, you can only see what the specific story you are playing out is telling you, but this is a game that demands reflection. It is a game that only works in that context.

The designer has said you can play the choices in any order you want and there is no prescribed way to do it. And there isn’t. It’s an interesting work of post-modernism that eschews reading order and drive to the end for the meaning under the whole as the desired goal. A game with six endings where getting to the end is not the point. Though the order does not matter in playing, the human brain is a funny thing and demands order from chaos, structure from the random. To see the allegory the mind needs to see the story, the flow of events with a beginning, middle and end. The order I think is in the degree of defiance from the narrator.

The first part is to follow the narrator’s instructions all the way to the end. To get the “proper ending.” One follows the designer’s prescribed path to an ending where Stanley is free, but is he really. Once it is over, control is taken away from you and with the narrator speaking you have what essentially is a cutscene. So all the game has done is free Stanley from your control and place it in the hands of the computer. You are not Stanley and all this time you were following the instructions of a computer and when you turned off that computer in game we are presented with an exit where our computer now takes over. This is an irony not recognized by the game. We followed the designer’s story and it was boring. There is nothing there;` it’s dull and safe. It was a parable that taught us nothing.

The second time, one does everything as instructed until the very last part. You turned the computer back on, which, paradoxically, is supposed to put me back under its control, while at the same time defying the narrator. Here we see the designer as tormentor. Things don’t go his way so he punishes the player. We’ve all seen this person. The DM who sends hoards of monsters or instakill random accidents when the players go too far a field and destroyed everything he made. The spoilsport who doesn’t get his way so he takes his ball and goes home. Here we understand there are three people here and not two like we always think in video games at the very moment the narrator/designer explicitly states this is a video game, but there is no escape from the impending doom. The three people are the narrator, Stanley and the player. Because now the narrator is no longer addressing Stanley or even veiling talking about him in order to get the player to act. He’s angry Now he’s outright about communicating with you and not your avatar.

The third part is playing to see where the other stairwell goes. And here is where things get trippy. Not just because of the meta commentary about what we as a player are experiencing, but by keeping it within the fiction we get a whole new type of story, only to realize, sorry it isn’t your story after all. It is there for the narrator to again abuse the player in another way for going off track. He uses the fiction itself to go against you. It’s not passive aggressive like other parts, that we’ll get to, are. It’s creative and within the fiction making it that much more of a kick the shins. Players are the driving force behind their games. They are used to being the main characters, for everything revolving around them. And things have so far, but now the ending is ripped away from you. The narrator tells you, sorry, it wasn’t your story Stanley it was this woman’s and you were just an odd event on the way to work for her. Here the designer goes out of his way to create the strange mindscape and way out both for you and for himself for not following the story.

The fourth play through is the original choice with the two doors. We defy it at the very beginning and again by not getting back on track. Only at the elevator do we acquiesce to the narrator and push up on the elevator. There is no trick; there is no sadistic streak in the narrator this time, he’s not being passive aggressive anymore in fiction or out. He outright tells us that by going up in the elevator we are headed for punishment. (Though he does say Stanley does it to punish himself.) The trap is obvious, but there is no escape, we are told so. Until the person writing the story breaks the 4th wall’s 4th wall and tells Stanley to escape from the narrator whom she is writing. Because her entrance is in narrating what the narrator has done to Stanley. No we understand there are four people here, not three. She is the designer and the narrator is her avatar in this digital world, yet she acts as if Stanley is real by telling him to escape and quit out, for it is the only way. And she is right, but she is still talking to the player. The narrator has no power and neither does Stanley, they are pawns of the designer and player both. And when Stanley is dead and the narrator gone because he has no story to tell, you will stare at a black screen, until you press “ESC” and quit out. It is the only way out of the program.

The next playthrough is where you go down the elevator and then acquiesce by going through the red door instead of further defiance. The game takes us back to the office we originally left. Here I was subjected the mind numbing work of pushing button prompted on the screen for the rest of my life. Except it wasn’t on the blue screen in the game, it was on my screen. It was the white, semi translucent writing of game instructions that pop up when you are learning the controls in the beginning or maybe a quick time event. We are the monkey at the computer pushing buttons when prompted to. We are playing a video game and the narrator finally expresses it as the final cruel truth. You are not free, not while you are in the game. You can’t be, because everything created is only a prompt to push a button and in the end it is utterly meaningless. In this case it is meaningless. There is nothing else beyond this room and pushing the button that is prompted (which doesn’t do anything anyway.)

The final playthrough is to disobey till the very end. Here is where the narrator who by this time we should all understand to be the allegorical stand-in for the designer. You go against everything he has made, tried to break everything he has spent so long in working towards all for your enjoyment and eventually you reach the end, you have achieve freedom by stepping beyond the conventions in the nadir of the digital existential existence only to find nothing. There is nothing to be had, nothing to the meaning for you end up in an empty sky-box. The narrator boots up the opening to Half-Life 2 only to put on display how artificial it all is. We are put in the mindset of breaking the world and how we don’t belong here and it doesn’t fit us. Here we see the designer finally admitting his frustration and “hopes we are happy with what we find.” The scary part is once we as Stanley think we have gotten away, somehow broken beyond even the existential nightmare of nothingness, the narrator/designer pops back in and says, ‘no I’m still here, you are still in my world even though you tried to break it.’ But he is conciliatory, because though he made the game, it is your story. The best he can do is make sense at the end of whatever journey you chose to make.

Here is the only ending that actually gets a “The End.” The first playthrough got the credit roll and the ironic use of Frank Sinatra’s My Way, which normally signifies an ending, but here it is outright told to us. This is the end of the allegory for this is where we are as players and designers. The designers have poured all this time to craft experiences for us, to tell us narrative tales as if they are books or movies, but now they have to admit we as players are part of the equation too. This is the full conclusion of the game.

The writing of the narrator is so sharp and full of detail and subtext that I’d love to get a transcript and do a close examination someday and pick out all the details. But I have to end it here. Why? Because I’ve gone on long enough and besid…

Note: WordPress controls your writing. Hope you backed it up.

*Spoilers for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Heavenly Sword, Bioshock and Braid*

Ninja Theory is a studio I really want to like. I really do. They hold a philosophy towards creating games, AAA games at that, I would love to see more of. They create a work and let it stand for itself. There is no extra tie in, no comic book spin offs, and more notably, no sequels. Before modern Hollywood took over (thanks in part to Star Wars and Jaws) nothing needed a sequel. A work stood or failed on its own merits and not as a part of a whole. Because of this a movie was sold more on the talent associated with it or an interesting premise rather than a title that ultimately doesn’t mean anything by itself.

Ninja Theory has taken great risks in creating original IPs and then moving on once they were done with the work. Heavenly Sword didn’t receive a sequel and really there was no opening for one. Nariko dies at the end and forever is to relive the few days where she commanded the titular weapon. The same goes for Enslaved. The journey is over and while the world may still exist, it might as well be a new IP because with what was set up there is nothing you can really do with it.

Ninja Theory is a studio takes one step forward and two steps back with regards to their games. Heavenly Sword was a game that faltered on hit detection and reasonable fodder enemies, but was otherwise filled with interesting ideas, good boss battles and an interesting story that managed to connect different elements into a compelling and more important, a reasonable narrative. Enslaved fixed the hit detection, but simplified the combat and removed the varied, interesting set pieces with tired ones that don’t seem necessary. Heavenly Sword used a second player character to introduce variety into the game. Enslaved has you stick with one character and tried to introduce variety by arbitrarily allowing a new style of play in certain sections. Heavenly Sword was trying to let the player be the main character in a wushu movie. In the game, all the over the top action, colorful boss battles and deified final battle contributed to this goal. Enslaved, however, is an adaptation of a philosophical text on not the nature of subjugation, though it would appear to be that on the surface to a western audience, but is a story about learning self-control and personal responsibility. Tripitaka, the monk in the original story, isn’t the one who places Monkey in bondage and removes that can of worms from the equation right from the start. The gods did that to teach Monkey a lesson, quite literally. The lesson would come organically from the journey. This isn’t so much an adaptation as it is taking the character names and the first half of the inside flap summery and working from there.

[Edit- Upon editing and double checking the post I found Xuanzang was the name of the monk, Tripitaka is translated word for the cannon of Buddhist scriptures. Later the Chinese form of the word came to be used as an honorary title given to monks who had mastered these scriptures. It has since been erroneously translated as the monk's name, perpetuated by the 1979 TV series that aired in the UK that the developers were more than aware of.]

I liked Heavenly Sword. I did not like Enslaved. I really wanted to, if nothing more than see the potential Heavenly Sword showed Ninja Theory capable of fulfilled and wanting them to reach those creative heights. Most of my dislike for the new game comes from how utterly stupid it becomes. The story’s arc has no real connection to the character arcs. The characters and characterization were the best things about the game. The combat was lazy, the platforming could have not been there and I doubt anyone would have noticed, etc. etc.

The biggest misstep, however, was the ending. Sparky Clarkson, in his post about it, noted the problems that I couldn’t point to at the time, I knew there were  problems, but I couldn’t voice the nature of it. He articulates it perfectly so I won’t dwell on his points, but I want to tie them in to the structural problems they are stemmed from.

The title is “Enslaved” and the game in no way deal with the theme of enslavement. This is a white, middle class person’s, who has never had to deal with the reality of servitude as something as other than working in an office, vision of slavery. Monkey acts like a wage slave rather than the canary in the coal mine he actual is. This is barely servitude, forget enslavement. The demo, which was the first chapter, presented an interesting introduction into the post apocalyptic world of barbarism and slavers. It forged interesting possibilities in my mind of where it could go and what it could say about the subject. It doesn’t run away from the themes it promised, instead it hurls them towards the window in an attempt to make them a nice set of curtains and end up tossing them through it. The whole enslavement thing is nothing more than clever window dressing to give a narrative explanation for the usual escort mission trope of mission failure should your ward die. Why? Because it doesn’t build to anything or use it in any other way.

The world is devoid of anyone other than Trip and Monkey so the entire game has to rest on their shoulders. Even when Pigsy shows up the spotlight is still firmly centered our two “heroes.” The thing is, the direction the developers chose to take them in is not what their premise, nor their title promised. Every work has at the beginning what is called the “implicit promise.” This is where the work sets itself up, introduces the reader to the work’s elements and creates the foundation to which it will build on, specifically referring to the themes and tone of the work. You don’t set up a dark gritty noir drama in the first few pages and then halfway through turn it into a song and dance musical. I can almost hear someone saying, but what about story twists? Something that changes your entire understanding of the work? This is actually where most twists fall into trouble. (I’m really starting to hate that most of these essays are turning into lectures of basic story, plot and narrative structure and terminology.) When a twist betrays everything you knew about a work, then it is a bad twist and shouldn’t have been in there in the first place. It’s when a creator wants the surprise and shock value that they try to do this, thinking it will be cool. It isn’t cool; it’s just stupid. You want to know a good twist that doesn’t betray a work’s implicit promise. Look no further than Bioshock and Braid. Bioshock has one of the biggest twists in gaming where you find out you were being controlled all along, but the very beginning of the game gives you a lecture about self-autonomy. A lecture given by the very man you are forced to kill. Not only does that not betray the implicit promise, it enhances it. Braid has a major twist where you are not the hero, but the villain. You are not the savior, but a stalker. This is the biggest type of twist you can have in a work, but all the writing is centered on setting up a relationship that on reflection looks unhealthy and rather disturbing. The game mechanics are far more analytical and intellectual than they are emotional, which contrasts nicely with emotional nature of the relationship described, so it is shocking, but not a betrayal that the relationship is fake, broken or unhealthy. It makes perfect sense.

Now we come to Enslaved’s twist. The more I think about it the more I think the title refers to those in the VR suits and not the servitude Monkey is forced under. Once again this is a more technical way of arguing what Sparky Clarkson argued in his own post. The end result of the analysis is the same however: it’s plain stupid. The game isn’t stupid in its logical progression of events (i.e. plot); instead it’s stupid because that’s not what we were promised.

I finished the game about a month ago and the more I think on it the more I realized there was more to it than story problems. The bigger thing that irked me was how utterly bad the mechanics were in relation to the whole. They were light and weak in their own right, but entered a whole other dimension of bad when regarded in relation to the whole. The combat, for the most part, was very one note and rather repetitive. That itself is not an issue, but then the game became more focused on the combat that it had any right to. The combat had next to nothing to do with the themes other than basic survival. As something among many different things to do it was fine and it supported the barbaric and uncivilized nature of Monkey, but in focusing on it he becomes less slave than a warrior. It also highlights Trip’s weakness even further. She doesn’t take charge in the fight by ordering him around. It is the other way around. In the combat he is far more deterministic of his destiny than the title ‘slave’ should ever grant him.

What the game is saying is ‘a powerful, forward thinking, crafty individual is best enslaved, because such an individual would never think of escaping slavery.’ Read that sentence again, this time out loud. How does it sound? It sounds stupid, right? And it isn’t because of my poor writing skills. That is what Ninja Theory is saying with their game. The thematic message they are conveying for about two thirds of the game is that convoluted mess. Even Call of Duty, as stupid as the story of those games are, at least are consistent. We’re the good guys, they’re the evil dudes, shoot the evil dudes. The details don’t matter at this level, because the core at least is consistent. It’s hard not to be with such a simple sentiment. Then you have the overly convoluted stories that are bad, see Bayonetta. While that game fall apart in all the minute details of its overly complicated plot (forget story or narrative, the plot alone trips me up), the game can be respected at least in its adherence to its themes despite the convoluted details, because while as a whole they make little sense each individual detail supports the satire in its over the top insanity of action and sexual politics. Enslaved is neither simple nor consistent.

On the matter of Ninja Theory’s other game, Heavenly Sword, a game had a lot of combat where the only real gripe I had was poor hit detection in range stance. Here we have a game almost entirely based around these mechanics supporting the themes of revenge, war and genocide. You can see the easy connection between the game mechanics and the play style promoted by them and implicit promise in the game’s set up. The beginning drops you in the middle of a charging army before setting up a frame narrative to explain how we got to that point. It is perfect set up for a story about violence and revenge. The heavy emphasis on combat mechanics makes sense. In Enslaved they make sense less so, especially because the concept is about survival and they introduce the stealth elements. But even those are poorly handled. You can only sneak past at certain points; it’s not easy to do and often not worth the effort to even try. Especially when you get experience orbs for fighting and you need them for the upgrades in the later mandatory fights.

Plus as much as I like him, Pigsy’s presence in the story makes less and less sense the more I think about him, as he is the only other living human to show up in the story. There are robot antagonists, but they play more like marionettes or security bots. They are a threat, but there is nothing threatening about them. Even the Dog seems more like it’s playing with a new toy that doesn’t know its limits than a truly malevolent creature. Either there is a lack of personalities to fill in the void that the game’s conflict needs or just one too many people that it shifts the focus away from the conflict between the two protagonists. Either would have made a more compelling story than what we got. The fact I was most entertained when Pigsy was on the scene to act as comedic relief and felt the game lacking everywhere else shows that the middle road they chose only worked at the expense of every other character and narrative element.

Another theme that the game abandons is the dichotomy and conflict between barbarism and civilization that is standard in frontier literature. What is the apocalypse but another frontier? With Monkey as the obvious allegory to the untamed wild of man’s nature and an expression of pure freedom, if his name, physic or attitude weren’t enough, a third of the way through we get an Easy Rider homage. Trip is the intelligent one, the civilized one and the enlightened one of the two. We know this because she lives in a village and knows how computers work. (That was sarcasm. Slavery is neither civilized nor enlightened.) It all disappears as soon as you are introduced to the ‘order Trip about’ mechanic, because there is no conflict left between the two.

A related side note on the apparent uncouth versus civilized nature of the two is their accents. Both are native to New York with Monkey’s originating from the Brooklyn and Trip sounding more like the Upper West Side. It helps the player subconsciously feel this dichotomy because of the accents’ tonalities, but if you live in the area it seems like rather potent jab at the two boroughs.

I’m rather disappointed in Enslaved for all of this. They had a perfect opportunity to explore well-worn themes we’ve seen in a post apocalyptic setting (and westerns for that matter) in a new, vibrant setting in contrast to the usual brown, gray wasteland. Instead of the gritty by the skin of your teeth survival of the Fallout mythos, there is a genuine opportunity to rebuild a civilization in the same manner the original ones came about. It transplants the type of conflict that existed, at least in fiction, from the mythical prehistoric era to a new setting, at least in terms of the existence of modern/slightly futuristic technology and our monuments of a bygone civilization that will have a greater effect on the audience. Again another missed opportunity.

A quick note on the platforming, my biggest gripe with it was not with the inability to fail at it, but far more with it being rather sticky. There was no flow to the movement, even where it seemed like there should have been and/or there was a particular urgency to it.

I feel like I have to bring up Christopher G. Williams piece over at PopMatters having just read it. He brings up a valid and much more positive interpretation of Enslaved than I have. He compares its acquiescence to authority in terms of how other games have commented on it and sees it as a commentary on co-operation, the end result of what control really means and if “enslaved” is really as negative as the term made us think it is. He points out that both characters submit to one another in a shared goal of survival. He does a pretty good reading off many of the textual elements to come up with an interesting theory of mutual submission as a reflection of the gamer/game relationship.

I don’t wish to hate on Mr. Williams, but I cannot abide by this reading. Yes all the supporting evidence is there for his arguments, but much of what I have described above inhibits such themes from coming across. The supporting evidence is there, but such evidence ignores the stumbling of the game along those same lines. Much of which is detailed, again, in Sparky Clarkson’s piece.

In writing this I feel that I have less unique things to say in regards to the game other than to textualize two differing arguments with regards to the structural failings of the game’s story with itself and in relation to the game’s mechanics. I’d call it ludonarrative dissonance, but really it isn’t. There isn’t any dissonance. That would mean that there was some sort of connection between the two elements in game at all, when really it seems the story they wished to tell is at odds with every element of the game and the mechanics act more as a way to move things forward. They are practically independent to anything else in the game. I think single player games can tell a story best through a synthesis of all the elements at their disposal, but Enslaved doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do with each individual element. Its cutscenes are a human drama with a dash of romance thrown in, the mechanics are a survivalist drama, the themes are a master and slave and the setting is a frontier mythos. Pigsy’s presence and home add a completely different and unrelated comedy dimension to the game.

In conclusion, Enslaved is the game that finally made me think about abandoning single player games and their strictly authored narratives. I saw the light of Simon Ferrari, Richard Terrell and other ludologists. Enslaved you are a thorn in the side of what I’ve been advocating for two plus years now. Congratulations Ninja Theory for forcing me to the other side.

Probably the most talked about part of inFamous is the moral choice mechanic. The idea is to split the choice between good and evil options, which can be interesting, but the criticism has been leveled at how it is handled. Reasoning in later choices makes less and less sense as you continue on. The options in the early choices are both justified, while later ones seem to prove that you have a problem with rational thought (if you choose the evil route that is). None of the choices are ambiguous (my notes say otherwise, but I cannot think of any examples and after checking the wiki my memory seems better than my notes), both options inevitably lead to the same missions and story with nary a meaningful change between them. The major options are also as smooth as a large clunk in the middle of a symphony. Using Corvus Elrod’s terminology they are closer to developer moments than player moments even if they are billed as the latter. I’d also hate to meet the person who genuinely choose to go the evil route who wasn’t trophy whoring.

This gets the major criticisms of the system (and really all major morality systems in games these days) so now we can move on to what this particular system represents. Joe Tortuga has said that inFamous equates good with altruism and evil selfishness. This is a great starting point, but I think there is a little more to it than that. Cole has the same material motivation regardless of what he does: to get him and his friends out of the city. The moral choice system is all about how you go about it and why you do it. It’s a game looking to the morality of methods rather than what you are doing. Or it is during the story moments at least. The ludic system outside of mission rewards conflicts with this assessment, because once you’ve chosen a path you have to stick with it if you are going to get all the upgrades and you’re going to need them for the later enemies.

If I can be so bold as to asses the philosophical implications of what you are doing in this super powered conflict, the choices and role you set for yourself is one between Heinleinian co-operation and protection versus Randian domination and selfishness. The good morality is where Cole seeks a path of noble co-existence and in the face of a threat protection of the weaker race. The evil spectrum, however, seeks a path of conflict and eventual subjugation by purporting your genetic superiority over the heads of the masses. Does Cole choose to follow an ideal of co-operation to foster better results through more difficult and trying means or follow the greater good through methods of conflict believing he knows best because he is superior? Or to put it in terms more of my intended audience can understand; it is the Professor Xavier school of thought verses the Magneto one.

Or at least that is the conflict as the designers try to portray. Like I said in my previous posts, the earlier sections of the game are clearer and follow a vision while the later ones tend to get muddled and lose sight of the implied objective to the mechanic. The first two choices are prime examples of this. Do you choose share the food equally to those that need it or do you keep it for yourself because you can? Do you fight the riot cops mano-a-mano because you have the strength to do so or do you sick them on the crowd and make the fight much easier and bloodier? There is no one to force you one-way or the other. To quote Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me” seems very apt to the evil half of this dichotomy. Had they stuck to Heinlein/Rand conflict the morality meter might have made sense; it would have given us concrete attributes that we can map the morality meter to. This is a well-worn conflict, (X-Men, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel’s Civil War, He-man and the Masters of the Universe) though this is the first time I’ve seen it represented within an individual instead of two opposing individuals/groups.

As it stands in the later sections of the game a host of issues come up where the morality meter loses focus of what it was representing. Why would the police help you in terms of the prison riot, after you’ve taken missions to fight and kill them? Why would people call to you for help with their surveillance problem if you’ve been indiscriminately murdering people left and right? Why would a photography student want to take pictures of you doing stunts knowing you could electrocute him just as easily? Why would you capture Alden and not kill him and remove the threat period? Why would you blow up a gas tank to weaken an enemy and harm civilians when you have already fought and beaten several of this type already? And why in the hell would people attack you, ineffectively I might add, when you could zap them into nothing?

These problems can be solved had Sucker Punch really worked out what they wanted from the morality system. At times it’s about a conflict of how you do things and at others a straight up good/evil morality play, ignoring the relativism of such a comparison. Such a good and evil dichotomy has to recognize they are two sides of the same coin differing only by margins. The margin they chose in this case is method. But they ignore that and in same cases offer two completely unrelated options. The only way for the story to reach its conclusion as scripted would be to focus on method, which is a far more interesting concept than what we ended up with. In that case when people talk to you while you are choosing the infamous path, they would focus on ends, knowing appealing to your means would be pointless. It would also bring the title into alignment with the meaning. Famous vs. infamous isn’t a question of what you do, but how people perceive you. It’s one of the reasons I find the choice about the poster to be actually meaningful rather than extraneous. Either way you are technically famous in that a lot of people know who you are. For example you can be famous for your card playing, meaning you’re really skilled, or you could be infamous for your card playing, meaning you are a known or suspected cheater. The end result is the same; it is the method and meaning of what you do that matter.

This conflict is especially interesting in light of the game’s ultimate mission. It was to make Cole capable of making the difficult choices; able to do what is needed to be done. Exploring the morality of how he does it is made even more important, because Kessler doesn’t care how you do it, just that you do. This is fine and makes him a better than average villain (for a video game). While the game’s entire premise is worked up on how you do it rather than what you end up doing. It gives you no options in that regard and recognizes the limitations of the medium, but instead of embracing that and working with it to proved an interesting how assessment, it uses it as a crutch for some subpar morality meandering.

(*minor spoilers*)

While the story of inFamous is told through the standard methods of cutscenes, found messages and calls from allies and mission handlers, it adds aftermath commentary. In the form of propaganda the game provides story related and world building feedback on your actions. The messages only relate to the main story missions so the words don’t change, but the effect they have on you as the player as you relate to your in game character is different.

The first of the two main propaganda machines are the USTV acting as the government mouthpiece with its all too peppy and creepy anchorwoman assuring the public that everything is all right. It’s an obvious fact that we as a city are not the intended audience for these news reports, because anyone with working eyes can see they are lies. They display everything as sunny and keep to the script. All the credit of any good Cole has managed to accomplish is given to military efforts. The picture of the city is painted rosy, saying that things have almost returned to normal within the quarantine. It subtly leads the player to realize that no one will ever leave Empire City to make sure no one can contradict the government. It is truth control.

The other voice is the Voice of Survival, who starts as a teacher and motivator on how the people can survive their new circumstances and in some cases acting as a public service announcement as in the case of the children needing coats and blankets. He later turns into a propaganda machine himself, creating panic and subverting any good being done in the city by deliberately misappropriating credit and painting Cole out as the enemy regardless of Karma level. The turning point begins when Cole gets out of bed and steps into the public, right after the food drop. Through most of the game we think of him as popularity hog, noting that fear and panic causes more people to listen to him. But he is not a propaganda machine for himself, but was working for the First Sons the whole time. Here good intentions gone awry.

The dichotomy between them is not really right wing vs. left wing that so much of our modern news networks have become about. Truth control and keeping to the message is not unique to the right as American political news channels would have you believe; it has been used extensively by the left in communist dictatorships. Nor is the anti-government, rabble rousing anarchy movement so entrenched in the left as European history would have you believe; if Texan governor calling for secession and the many militia cells around the country are any indication. Instead the dichotomy on display is one of power. USTV instills power into the hands of the establishment as a faceless entity (again not a construct of communism and the left). The Voice of Survival instills the power into total opposition of the others’ messages regardless of idealistic consistency. (I know I’m going to get flack for this) Think of it is as Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Evil. The dichotomy is not in purpose or method, but in who benefits.

USTV is far more obvious in both its purpose and backer (I wonder if it is because of their more structured nature and obvious lies to anyone in the quarantine). The Voice of Survival not so much. Only at the end when we see him as a pawn in the hands of Kessler and the First Sons does his motives make any sense. He isn’t anything, but anti-Cole and anti-government. Grievances and ideals do not matter so much as personal motives for the propaganda. His lies are not as obvious, because anything happening on one island has no way of informing others on the other island or even other parts of the same island. The Voice of Survival props himself up as the news hound of Empire City against the obvious lies of USTV. He becomes more credible regardless of his lawlessness.

Of course that is not to say Cole does not participate in his own version of propaganda. He has no TV stations or broadcast equipment (although I don’t know why not with what else his electricity powers can do). He has the advantage of being on the ground. His actions speak far louder than either of the propaganda machines. If you stop out of your way to save a fallen person by electro-shocking them back to life, you have changed that person’s mind about you. If you suck out their life force, then those around you will see you for what you are. The selfish and violent verses the altruistic and precise and which one you let the citizens of the city see. Additionally, one of the side missions is for you to choose which poster a design student will plaster all over the city. Neither has a message in anything but what the art conveys. ‘Do you want to be seen as a savior or as a dominator?’ the game asks? These posters will be with you until the end of the game and will subtly alter the perception of you. They are your propaganda as you try and disprove the TV talking heads or confirming what they’re saying.

Like the milieu of inFamous, propaganda is something else that gets shuffled to the sidelines. In the opening chapters it is a constant thorn in your side and a major plot point. It is what starts the riots. Later It becomes nothing but an in game commentary of how different parts of the world take the unfolding events, omitting your actions in them, so Sucker Punch didn’t have to record two different videos, but it has none of the impact or worthiness it did in the beginning. Once my posters were plastered on every wall of the warrens I never felt threatened or othered by the city regardless of what these two sides said about me. Again a great chance for commentary or uniqueness lost on the developers.

Also one last note to developers: If you have audio tracks that are unrepeatable and interesting, DON’T PLAY TWO OF THEM AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME.

I would place the introduction of inFamous as one of the better opening levels in open world gaming. I say this because it sets the stage to not just for the game, but also more importantly for the milieu. Milieu is the French word for environment or setting, but it means more in literary theory and in stories where it is about creating an evocative setting as much or more so than characters, it is treated as a major character. It becomes as important if not more important than those whom the story follows. We see the explosion and then experience ground zero. It is a tutorial of the platforming, but at the same time it creates a sense of place. We are in a parking garage, now destroyed and crumbling. A metaphor for what will befall the city, both physically and societal.

Then the next cinematic paints a picture of a pure Thomas Hobbes style society arising from the isolation and the destructive factions making a grab for power. Life becomes nasty, brutish and short. The first two missions further emphasize this by placing you in a context where you are fighting for survival. Both the mad dash to the food drop and then the desperate attempt to escape the island show the effects the breakdown of society have had. These two missions give the impression of desperation and need. It was these moments that sucked me into the world of inFamous. I could put aside the floaty controls and the imprecise fighting mechanics. Despite what happens after those two missions in regards to milieu I still felt a connection to whatever dim representation of the setting remained. The game from the end of the second mission onward does all it can to undermine its own setting.

There are too many structural inconsistencies that I constantly see. Only when enemies show up and start shooting does panic break out. There isn’t even a subdued panic from people of having their world turned upside down. The citizens are not used to this world, why would they act calm and collected in the face of starvation, plague and death. They wander about blissfully down the sidewalk as if nothing is wrong and their tax returns are already in the mail. Even when enemies do show up the citizens don’t always behave accordingly. They will run in a panic to get away, towards the firing gangs. They will antagonize them by throwing rocks at the machine gun and shotgun toting bad guys. I was promised a closed off, fish out of water refugee like city and I get a New York surrogate with a convenient reason I can’t take the Holland Tunnel out of there.

The impression I was given was that we were in a metropolis turned third world outpost due to the tragedy and blockade. Apart from citizen stupidity let me list a few things that do not ring true with the milieu established. Off the top of my head:

-cars are still running with plenty of gas and people with a desire or apparent need to use them
-generators can restart themselves and are out in the open instead of heavily defended and concealed
-police being any force of law and order rather than another faction vying for control or else not having broken down completely without any governmental support
-the trains being of any use or people having anywhere to go using them (the mission where they are used as a prison for hostages actually makes sense)
-being able to restart an entire city’s power regardless of what Cole is capable of, because there is no such thing as a self-sustaining generator
-not speaking about AI specifically, but why are people out on the streets at all if there are roving gangs of death squads about

Given the intro, none of these make any sense. Cole outright told us all law and order was shot, gangs had risen up and installed anarchy. People were being killed and raped left and right. No one was allowed in or out of the city, enforced by a military blockade. Why aren’t the police effectively another gang, but instead going about business as usual? Where is all the gasoline coming from, because it doesn’t seem to have run out after two weeks? This is for both the cars and portable generators. Plus who would waste it on a car in the first place? Speaking of which, where was the city’s power grid getting its fuel? If there is so much crime, killings, rapes and perpetual darkness, then why are people out and about? Shouldn’t they be holed up in their houses most of the time? Why are people excited about the trains running when they can’t go anywhere?

I can excuse the generators since their ludic and narrative purposes are too intrinsic, but at least give us perpetual rolling blackouts. I felt unease and minor terror when I wandered into areas where they didn’t have electricity yet, because it was dangerous for Cole. Once the power was up and running there was no threat anymore to the avatar or to any of the story elements. You can only feel society’s fear and unease if at points you feel it yourself because of how it affects your avatar in the game world. As long as there was a light switch around, I never felt threatened. The few moments where the game seems to know what it should be doing with its milieu are undoubtedly the best of the game. As I said before the opening is pitch perfect, additionally the introduction of each new island presents a sense of terror of the unknown and of unrelenting chaos. When you stepped out of the tunnel or made it over the bridge you get that sense of dread. The lights you worked so hard to restore are gone; you are at ground level and are being shot at before you can even get your bearings. For a fleeting instant you ask yourself, what have these people been going through while I was fixing the other island? A third point was a mission where you protect the engineers who are fixing the bridge between the first and second island. You actually feel like you are making a difference and getting things back to normal. Everything else seems superficial compared to this mission because squads of the Reapers and Dustmen trying to stop you for it would affect their territorial control. Finally the side mission called Gang War simply for unleashing a level of chaos on the screen that you don’t see anywhere else in the game. It was so volatile I could not see what I was shooting and may have only done half the work as the two gangs proceeded to kill each other. These instances reinforced the degradation of society promised by the game.

Empire city is presented as such an important place and in the need of a superhero. The city was hurting and it was up to us to try and put it right. That was the most interesting part of the game: the restoration of society from chaos. The story, villains, and conspiracy were passable, being primed from a comic book aesthetic. I have no problem with the comic book aesthetic, but the intrinsic promise- the set of rules the beginning of a creative work puts down that are the core of the experience that creative work intends to deliver- is betrayed and not lived up to by taking it’s cue from the wrong comic book. It tries to copy the structure of Spiderman when it should have looked to the world building of Brain Wood’s DMZ.

At the time I was playing infamous I was coincidentally reading Brain Wood’s DMZ, the comic series where new American civil war has turned Manhattan into a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). No one is allowed out and only specific people let in, like the main character Matty Roth as an embedded journalist. Gangs have carved out territory for themselves, these new nations measured in blocks. Electricity is only accessible for an hour a day and only from certain buildings. The island is stratified with no one daring to go past   st street. The two setups are too similar for no one to have not noticed. It wouldn’t have been hard to slightly adjust certain things for the presence of super humans. In fact doing so merely exacerbates the conflict already there. It becomes a test of wills only with the strength to back it up contained not within numbers, but individuals.

The similarities continue into the details. The two news organizations in DMZ and inFamous are practically identical, both have become docile mouthpieces of the government and not based off of stupidity and laziness like in real life, but stooges that understand where the power is. Then there is the opposing mouthpiece that pretty much exists to counter the “legitimate” news program. Both Matty’s girlfriend from DMZ and Cole’s from inFamous are medical professionals in training. In DMZ this is used to give Matty and the reader a glimpse into the unsanitary conditions and hardships of the people. InFamous uses it to suggest and imply what DMZ shows and represents. Power struggles are a common theme of the two works, both on the inside and influences from the outside. Rooftop living arrangements become necessary, because street level is no longer safe. Though the rooftops aren’t used as much by inFamous’ citizens. But then I’ve already told you they have as much survival instinct as a suicidal tightrope walker.

I am not saying inFamous should have been DMZ. That is stepping beyond my realm as a critic, but I am going to point out the faults of one work, especially in light of someone else doing it better in another. It’s even more a missed opportunity since inFamous apes the comic book aesthetic and DMZ is, wow, a comic book. InFamous takes too many of its conventions from the wrong sources. It sets up the bad guys and the controllers of chaos and anything bad can be traced to them. Everyone else is a non-entity with no sense of survival instinct or power. Somehow there are no “little” bad guys trying to scrape their tiny slice of the pie when the main psychic villains fall.

InFamous sees itself as a superhero story in a metropolis turned Wild West town, sort of. When really it’s a story of a DMZ (both comic and real world) setting where super powered humans have arisen. They looked to Spiderman, X-Men and the rest of Marvel’s cannon when they should have looked to Brain Wood’s work, Escape from New York and hell the real-life New York blackout of ’77.

The game was a missed opportunity and given the game’s ending I get the feeling the sequel will have a different milieu, even if it takes place in Empire City. It seems like the designers didn’t quite get what made me want to keep playing the game. It wasn’t the side missions, or the characters, good lord no. It was the city itself and the what-if the game presented about society, which doesn’t seem too much like a what-if anymore.

(*Spoilers Ahead*)

Roger Travis, I welcome you to and kind of expect you to point out everything wrong in the following post.

Brutal Legend’s story is an epic, not just epic. An epic represented by the hero’s journey. We progress through the game following this well-worn path in a new and creative environment based on the culture of heavy metal. So why does the game end 2/3 of the way through?

The hero’s journey is divided into three steps. First is the Departure, where the hero breaks away from the mundane world of his previous existence and begins his journey. Then comes the Initiation, where the hero faces trials and contends with obstacles until he succeeds in his quest. Finally there is the Return, where the hero must come back to the mundane world he left, sometimes a struggle unto itself.

Step one is the Departure, the section of the hero’s story where he must break away from his normal and often humble life the thrust forward into the events of greater things. In Brutal Legend we have Eddie Riggs taken from the modern world and thrust into the age of metal. Unlike the average epic hero he does not shy away from journey initially. In fact he embraces it. He agrees to help Lars and become the rebellion’s roadie. Supernatural Aid comes in the form of Ozzy Osborne as the Guardian of Metal, providing upgrades and collectibles. Eddie’s initiation as the monomyth comes with his first mission. You could argue that it is his escape from the Temple of Ormagoden, but there is no agency on the part of the character. That is a struggle of survival not an answering of the call. That portion of the game is still part of the actual call. The Crossing of the First Threshold is the freeing of the Headbangers. Here Eddie has made the choice to fight and in so doing has begun upon the path. Brutal Legend makes an interesting choice by challenging the structure slightly, but keeping within general story telling conventions by having the Crossing the Threshold part mirror the Trials. The First Threshold is the saving of three groups so that they can begin the rebellion. Eddie not only frees the Headbangers, but also arms the Razor Girls by capturing the wild boars and enlists the assistance of the Kill Master by heading into the heart of the spider’s lair.

Once these beginner trials have been completed we stand at the first test of our worth. Eddie takes command for the first battle on the field of Bladehenge. They continue forward and take the battle to the front door of Lionwhyte’s pleasure palace. But it is not until Lionwhyte’s defeat that we enter the Belly of the Whale: the final piece of the Departure of the hero’s journey where the hero undergoes a metamorphosis of the self and world. Eddie is a roadie, always working from the shadows in an effort to make someone else look good. Now he has to step up to the plate. Lionwhyte is dead, but now so is Lars at Doviculus’ hand, the true villain of the story. The first act has come to an end.

The second step is Initiation. Now that Eddie is apart of this new world or has become a new person he must prove his worth of being the hero by tackling the obstacles thrown in his way. The Road of Trials has already been replicated at an earlier point as a means of departing the world of old. Now there is a new set of three challenges. The previous troops were in service of another, but now Eddie must gather the final troops in his own name. The Fire Barons as reward for the ambush at Death’s Clutch, the taming of the Metal Beasts rewards with the Zaulia and the battle at the mines provides the inspiration for the Rock Crusher. In this section of the story we see Eddie and his road crew begin to mirror Odysseus and his. They are now nomads without a home, continuing on their journey to one-day return victorious. Both monomyth figures face trials that test their metal (excuse the pun) in search of their love so far away. This is Eddie’s Goddess, Ophelia, the representation of his unconditional love. The battle in the Death’s Clutch is the beginning of the second act of the story and the revelation of Ophelia as the next villain: the Temptress, the very thing threatening to pull him from the righteous path of his journey. Atonement of the Father does not have to be about the figure’s father, but whatever holds the sway in the hero’s life and defeat it. In Brutal Legend there are two. Ophelia in her Drowned Doom form is the first, as the corrupted creature now uses his love against him. Eddie must overcome his feelings to transcend the divided purpose Ophelia has instilled in him. The other is the shadow of his father, Riggnarok, whom he learns has a connection to this age and a terrible secret to go with it. He is an obstacle deeply connected with the conflict, further cementing Eddie’s place as the hero, but also possibly as its destroyer. Eddie’s father and the secret is something he must defeat but he can do so not by physical confrontation. Only by coming to terms with it can he surpass the father, a recurring theme in epic tradition as Achilles in the Iliad comes to terms with his father, Zeus and Pursues coming to terms with what his father cannot, the Minotaur.

Apotheosis is the act of defying. Here Eddie must contend with his love for Ophelia and what she has become. Apotheosis is the contention of this contradiction within himself and he must defy one or the other to continue on. He chooses the rebellion continuing on the myth of his father Riggnarok and the hope that he can bring Ophelia back to the light. He kills his notion of love for her and defeats her in the mines and then follows her to the Sea of Black Tears. This is the final part of Initiation: The Ultimate Boon. It is the achievement of the ultimate goal of the journey. What the hero has been working towards the whole time. It is what the struggle has been all about and he must achieve it. In many other myths the boon is a transcendental object that grants the hero powers needed to complete his quest at home: the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, etc. Here Eddie’s boon is not an object, but people: the soldiers of his rebellion. The entire journey has been about gathering an army to fight off the Tainted Coil and set the world of men free. With the completion of this battle Eddie has done just that, he gets the final unit, the Rock Crusher. It is not a single unit that has been the goal, but all of them. However to achieve the Ultimate Boon the hero must face the ultimate danger, his own mortality. The journey takes the hero to hell and thus can he achieve the transition from being a divided person into a single spirit. Odysseus’ trip to the River Styx in The Odyssey is replicated in Brutal Legend’s version of hell, the Sea of Black Tears, the most dangerous place for men in the age of metal. For it tempts the race of man with power at the cost of their souls. Ophelia’s defeat at the Sea of Black Tears is emblematic of Odysseus’ journey to Hades. Eddie transcends himself and has centered his spirit and purpose on the final challenge, the right to return and ousts the usurpers as Odysseus’ did to the suitors back in Ithaca.

Now here’s my problem with Brutal Legend: Where the hell is the third and final step? We have Departure and Initiation, but where is Return? The hero must return from his trails and tribulations a proven man and come home. Odysseus must return to Ithaca and be reunited with his wife. Jason must return with the Golden Fleece to Iolcus and be placed upon the throne. Luke Skywalker must face Darth Vader one final time and become a Jedi. So where the hell is Eddie Riggs returning after the tour to defeat the being he has unwittingly betrayed his cause to. This is more than just the physical travel or distance. The hero’s journey is about the emotional and spiritual journey of the man mirrored in his actions. Eddie has completed all the tests, but the game rushes the end and we do not get to see the fruits of his labor. Generally there may be a Refusal of Return, but that is not necessary for Eddie, there was no refusal to begin the journey there is likewise no need to refuse returning. The journey was not about going home to the modern era, but from the shadows to the spotlight to become a hero and then a return to the shadows away from the spotlight. The Magic Flight where the hero escapes with the boon is the major letdown when it comes to the gameplay. This is the step rushed through with the final battle occurring in the same location as the previous one. The confrontation is so quick, boiled into one fight sequence that you fight by yourself that it feels cheep. This is the step where you should have taken the boon, the army that you had been gathering, home. The final struggle against the Tainted Coil would have been the fight to return, not just home to Bladehenge, but to the previous state of existence, to return as the man behind the scenes. Rescue from Without would have used all the units gathered to fight back the hoard on the battlefield. We do get The Crossing of the Return Threshold in a cutscene. The game does, however, allow the final two parts of the third step to be integrated. Master of Two World and Freedom to Live where Eddie lives without fear of death and it instead becomes the freedom to live. The story is over, but the open world is now at your command to finish both in terms of the myth and sandbox.

Brutal Legend sets up the hero’s journey superbly and then quits before we can get going in the final act. There is no final act. We have a two-act structure on our hands. The defeat of Lionwhyte and escape to the mountaintop is the end of the first act, the defeat of the Drowning Doom and Ophelia is the end of the second act, and the return to Bladehenge and defeat of Doviculus should have been the third act. Not only in story terms, but also in the terms of the hero’s journey. Tim Schafer for whatever reason just gave up on the story too soon. It would have been the return of Eddie Riggs spiritually as well as physically, his place in the world restored as the final soliloquy states, he works behind the scenes to make someone else look good.

The Killer 7 Argument -noun- the reason and reasoning that despite a video game’s flaws, inconsistencies or other failings the overall package is so utterly unique that it simply must be played for the sheer experience. First coined by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw.

It took a while, but I’ve played another game worthy of the Killer 7 Argument. I just finished playing through Braid for the second time after my first complete save was lost to a corrupt hard drive. The second playthrough was a huge help in getting my head around what to make of the game and figure out what I specifically thought of it.

Braid is the indie puzzle platformer by one Auteur Jonathan Blow. Regardless of what some other critics may say, he is the author of the piece and that is not a bad thing. He is not only the game designer, but did everything else save the beautiful art which was passed into the very capable hands of David Hellman.

(If you want to get nitpicky about the term Auteur, yes it is technically wrong to label him that given he’s only made one game.)

I bring up the Auteur factor, not just because of the intense control that some feel from the game designer’s hand in the text and puzzles, but also because of the intrinsic way that the game is woven and layered.

While thinking upon the game I could not help, but call it literary. It is game that works on any level you wish to examine it. On the surface it is a bunch of mind-bending puzzles that sometimes have deceptively simple solutions in a colorfully cartoon world. And if that is as far as you want to look, the game will not penalize you for it. The game works on that level. If you delve deeper into the different facets of the game you have a picture of a man trying to figure out what happened to the princess and how to rescue her in true Mario fashion. Again if you delve deeper you come into the problem of Tim being an unreliable narrator and that the puzzle worlds are not real at all. And you can continue delving deeper and deeper into the symbolism and intricate interconnectedness of the different elements to the themes and message of the game.

At no point does the game punish you for stopping your analysis. It is a work that is meaningful and can be recognized as such even without a degree in literature, philosophy or game design. Braid also doesn’t rely on a single or few elements to convey all it’s meaning, but rather uses all of them. I hesitate to bring up the comparison and please call me out on it if you feel the comparison or connotation of it goes too far, I wont fight you on it, but in this fashion Braid reminds me of Citizen Kane. Like Citizen Kane all the elements of the work come together to present a singular vision: the art, the music, the mechanics, the story, the text, the symbols, the level design and the puzzles. I cannot say I have seen this unified nature so tightly packed together in any other game.

Braid does have marks against it. The puzzles as mentioned before are mind-bending and you can spend forever trying to get your head around what you were suppose to do before you give up and check gamefaqs. The text is baffling at first when put in conjunction to the rest of the game and the epilogue throws everything through a loop. Braid invites inspection and analysis and it almost seems part of the game to do so. It is complex and can seem incomprehensible at first; hell most of us critics are still trying to figure it out.

While all of those can be counted as flaws, they can also be counted as assets to the game. They are intricate parts to the braid of meaning, twisting and wrapping each element around each other. It’s one of the few games that tie its mechanics directly to the themes of its story and vice versa.

Is Braid going to tick you off? Will it make you throw your hands up in frustration? Is the designer Jonathan Blow a big enough prick to warrant not playing the game? I honestly have no idea. But if you have the money and the time give the game a shot, it’s on Xbox Live, Steam for PC and now the PSN. I say give it at least a try and if all else fails, try a walkthrough.

Heroes of Might and Magic II is an old game when they were still getting a handle on new design. As great as it is, it isn’t a game that grew up within a critical atmosphere where such things are considered, even if only tangentially nowadays. Which is a long way of saying there is not a whole lot the game has to say. Still I do have one last thing thought the game brought to mind. One that I think is extra important given the upcoming Black Friday. (Though I may be too late to get anyone to read this.)

It is a strategy game, which means you are buying things. Buildings to make monsters to bring into battle, recruiting the monsters, building other miscellaneous structures, or heroes to lead your army. In other words, you will be spending a lot of gold (and crystal, mercury, sulfur, gems, ore, wood). You do earn resources, 1000 gold a day from each castle, and there are mines and other resources gathering facilities. If you need more of a specific resource, you can build a market in your castle or find one in the over world. If you have multiple markets and visit one in the over world you can drop trade prices with each market. It is a basic economic model without complexity. Unlike some strategy games now, there is no credit system in the economy.

I know a lot of strategy games of old and now still employ this, but HOMM2 was the game I was playing when these thoughts came to me. In these games you cannot spend more than you have. If you do not have the resources then the purchase is simply unavailable. It sounds so basic why would I have to say it? Well its because apparently no one knows this nugget of common sense if the credit crisis and banking failures are any indication. When said out loud this piece of advice makes perfect sense, but we never put into practice. We are never taught to do so.

Kids nowadays whenever they get money, spend it. (Don’t hound me if you are the exception, I’m one too.) They don’t save for a rainy day or in this case, a nation credit failure. So when they grow up they do not have the tendencies to do so as adults. The United States government is not saving either. Any surplus, of which we haven’t had for 9 years, went straight out of any account it’s in into paying off the debt, as it should. I’m not going to get into specifics, but sufficed to say this economic model is not sustainable. This is a problem, especially when not having money is no longer a barrier to buying things.

In Heroes of Might and Magic II there is, it’s a red circle with a line through it over a symbol of gold. If you can’t afford it, you can’t buy it. Even beyond that is the concept, if you want to win, sometimes you go turns without buying anything, saving up for a bigger, more expensive and more strategically relevant structure that you can afford next turn, or two turns from now or hell a whole week.

If you spend all the money you have whenever you want you will find yourself at a great disadvantage. After a while you will find yourself incapable of doing anything at all and lagging behind your opponents.

My point from all this, is why can’t games teach us this. Yes there are learning simulation games that are boring where that is their entire purpose. But even with games like HOMM2, it can teach, by application. Not everyone will learn, but a system like that can teach a person the idea that if they don’t have money than they should spend it. Or even better, given the advent of easy credit, that if they keep spending they will be in dire straights without any savings or resources.

The connection of such simple ideas, that have no pretension about them, and real life is not new. It is the purpose of art (lower case a) to mirror or reveal the real world in some way. Despite Heroes of Might and Magic II, being on another world with fantasy monsters and magic, it still can connect to our everyday lives in a meaningful way. The way we spend our money. I know it would never come about, but if everyone or even just most of us followed the two simple economic ideas in HOMM2, then we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Video games can teach us something by the act of participation. They don’t teach us how to aim and fire guns, how to launch a guerrilla campaign, or how set up a drug dealing syndicate. What they teach us are ideas, concepts, like any other medium.

What did Heroes of Might and Magic II teach me? The basis of smart money management.

Heroes of Might and Magic II, for those of you not in the know, it a turn based fantasy strategy game built around resource gathering and army on army combat. For a more detailed explanation, check here.

The campaign starts off with a cutscene explaining the premise of The Succession War the game is subtitled for. The old king that had united the continent under his rule has died and left two heirs: Roland the good guy and Archibald the not so good guy. Normally the royal seer would choose, but several ‘accidents’ happened and Archibald accuses Roland of killing and conspiring to take the crown. Roland runs off, fearing for his life and Archibald ‘influences’ the new seer and gets crowned king. Roland doesn’t like that and the two end up going to war. You are then given the choice of which lord to serve, nothing too complicated. The rest of the campaign is a series of missions set up by intermediate cutscenes that give an over arching flow to the campaign.

The game came out back in 1996, long before the industries present fixation on moral choice. Heroes of Might and Magic II starts off with a choice. The implications between the two men are rather clear in deed and imagery. One man offers a clean conscience and a place in the kingdom and the other monetary reward and a place in the kingdom. This is the truest sense of a moral choice, because yes there is an offer of reward, but it doesn’t happen within the mechanics of the game. The choice has no connection to ludic elements whatsoever. The only real difference between the two campaigns is which of the six castle types and therefore which troops you have access to. Each side gets three, an early martial based castle, a midlevel castle and hard hitting late game castle. The choice is between which man you are going to work for and given they offer the same thing it really is about which man are you going to help rule the kingdom.

Roland’s campaign has you starting out in the far corner of the continent with limited money to fight with so you have to gather allies by subduing the local lords, saving the Dwarven kingdom, and gathering resource rich areas before moving on to engage Archibald’s forces. A few extra missions to gather the additional forces and magic for the final assault against the capital where you’ve forced Archibald to hole up in.

Archibald’s campaign is directly opposite in tone, but mirrors the strategy. He forces any reluctant lords to accept his rule and crushes those that will not submit like the Dwarven kingdom. He then engages Roland’s forces and puts down any opposition he faces. A few extra mission as he gathers up additional forces and items before the final assault on Roland’s forces at his summer palace in the remote regions of the continent.

The campaigns mirror each other. The gameplay within the missions of gather gold and resources, build and recruit monsters is the same in both campaigns, so where is the moral choice? What exactly makes working for Roland different from working for Archibald once you’ve started? In this I think Heroes of Might and Magic does it better than Bioshock, inFamous, or KotOR.

The moral choice is in the context. For those who bother to pay attention and see the context the campaigns have set up you will see what your use of the game’s mechanics actually mean within the game world. Nothing is different mechanically, but the means is very different between the two campaigns. In fact, some of the missions themselves mirror each other. In Roland’s campaign you are give some forces to protect a number of Dwarven villages under siege that cannot be upgraded scattered across the map, while in Archibald’s campaign you are given a castle and more resources to go and conquer the Dwarven kingdom.

In Roland’s missions you never feel uneasy about the goal you are given, because the context never make you question what you are doing. You are courting allies, not subduing them. You are gathering resources, not taking them. And most importantly, you are defeating enemies, not destroying them.

In Archibald’s campaign you are working for the bad guy. Sometimes it’s cheesy, but it is never hidden right down to the maniacal laughing and the chained up Dragon king next to his throne. The mission that stands out most to me is the one where you have to put down a peasant revolt and are told to make an example of them. There are groups of peasant of wandering monsters armies that number in the thousands. They are the weakest creature in the game, but are powerful in such numbers. The only real strategy to defeating them is to build up some archers and keep your distance as they try to cross the field and cut them down. Then your hero’s necromancy ability comes into play after the battle by turning a third of those you killed into skeleton soldiers. Halfway through the mission I felt sick, realizing what I was doing in the context of the world. I was slaughtering thousands and then desecrating their corpses by having them fight their comrades who were fighting a totalitarian king. Yet there was nothing really different in my actions from when I played Roland’s campaign.

The title to the post refers to the Aesop fable “The Farmer and the Stork.” In it a farmer want to stop the cranes from destroying his crops and so sets up a number of nets to catch them. When he goes to check the traps he find along with the cranes, a noble stork. The stork asks to be released for he is not a crane, nor there to harm his crops. The farmer responds that the stork is as bad as the crane for being with them. The moral of the story is “choose your friends wisely.”

The story highlights another interesting point in that you are not playing as either Roland or Archibald, but a general who chooses to follow either one or the other. In this manner you are not good or evil, but are only a tactician ordering troops and working on strategy. There are only two moral choices in the whole game. The one at the beginning and one about halfway through before the fifth mission, aptly named ‘Turning Point’ for both the point in the war and your own choice. In both campaigns after you are given your orders from the lord you are following you are given the opportunity to change sides. Roland will appeal to your sense of decency and Archibald will appeal to your greed and sense of self-preservation. Should you change sides you are sent a message from your former commander, one of rage and threats by Archibald or one of profound disappointment from Roland.

Beyond those two decisions the only other choices you make are tactical. You are just doing your job. Like the stork caught by the farmer with the cranes you are judged by the company you keep. You are good or evil not by what you do, but by your association with Roland or Archibald.

There may not be more of a message about morality in Heroes II, but the game sets up a structure for examining ones own actions. Looking at your actions in the context given is what morality is about and trying to emphasize that in game is a better way to seek a message about morality than an arbitrary dichotomy within the game.