The Game Critique

(Forget it, this is going up as is. – Eric Swain)

My last post was really only the first half of a longer first draft I wrote on paper. When transcribing it I realized it started to meander and connect too many points, so I cut it down and resettled everything else into another post where it would hopefully make more sense.

I wrote about how my exposure to Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition at PAX East sparked that tabletop creative part of me and I started a new campaign. Well here is where I bring that journey full circle back to PAX. While there I got into a discussion with Matthew Gallant and Alex Horn where we got to talking about structure in video games, namely Far Cry 2.

I was told the story of how, apparently, the other writers of the game wanted to give the player the option at the very beginning of the game to shoot the Jackal while lying in bed in a malaria stupor. CLINT HOCKING shot this idea down, though he had to fight to get rid of it. It may make a nice bullet point on the back of the box, but if the Jackal is dead, why would you play the rest of the game. Your ultimate overarching objective had been removed. Even as the game is, some people feel that the final objective’s presences isn’t felt enough to make it noticeable and via consequence the game is missing direction. It’s one reason I respect CLINT HOCKING, despite hating the first title he worked on, he understands structure. When I heard the story it took me less than a second to realize there was a problem and identify it.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about the story, but from the sounds of it, the other writers didn’t see a sliver of a problem and thought it was a good idea. So many others, like them don’t get it and throw a lot of cool things into a pile in an attempt to racket up the tension higher and higher.

I can’t just be imagining it. It’s lack of structure that had most of us scratching our heads about No Russian’s point in Modern Warfare 2 or the numerous plot holes riddled throughout Heavy Rain. It’s lack of structure that has me rolling my eyes every time someone brings up Prince of Persia (2008)or force catatonic boredom during grind sessions in JRPGs. It’s why Brutal Legend stops so short it gave me whiplash. It’s where the cries of outrage came from the retconning of Fallout 3′s ending. It’s why people call Bioshock’s last third a padding waste of time. And it’s because of structure that Portal is hailed as one of the greatest video games ever made.

It is a complaint that comes up again and again even if it’s not expressly what people are saying. Sometimes they don’t understand why something is bad and they latch on to the most obvious, a shoddy sequence that tries to make plywood take the place of hardwood dining room floors, when really it could be that the termite riddled supports can’t sustain the oak.

Since designers are incorporating story more and more into games, then they have to follow a basic structure. It wouldn’t interfere with gameplay or difficulty. Instead a grasp and implementation of structure would compliment and better the product overall. It would allow for clear and reasoned direction so we wont end up with dead points, ludic gates, anti-pacing amping up of action or failure to end a game properly. (Or begin one for that matter.)

I think some of it comes from most of us having grown up in the 8-bit and 16-bit gaming era where the whole game was set as an extended third act and the backstory relegated to optional material. Now we are setting ourselves up to experience the whole story, with developer only having the skills from an earlier age.

Now this isn’t true for everyone. Bioware knows structure, almost fanatically so. Valve understands pacing like its nobodies business. Bungie doesn’t care for an overall product so much as the next 5 minutes flow and it works. But structure doesn’t just mean pacing it also means setting.

We already know what video games are better at than any other medium. Games are better at setting a world up for players to experience. Fallout 3 put you in the wasteland. The Silent Hill games are terrifying, because the town in a place that becomes real. Rapture was as much a character in Bioshock as Andrew Ryan was. Even Left4Dead story works in its minimalism. The best stories from these worlds were the found stories. Clues and hints in a world that suggested a story outside itself.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor has a story so divorced from its gameplay, I marvel at who thought to put them together. The game is all about feeding your spider and making his way through the mansion. The story is about a love triangle and family betrayal all told through found objects that make up the world. It’s a perfect case study of what games do best.

Uncharted 2, by contrast, gave us such an authored narrative, with linear active story engagement up the ass, but what it had better than every other game was a detailed understanding of plot pacing. Amy Hennig knew that a story arc doesn’t go up and up until the climax; it sweeps up generally with pits and lulls all along the way. Uncharted 2 does this artful precision, even if the story itself is a bit trite.

The Metal Gear Solid series, for all their over verboseness, have marvelous structure when it comes to pacing out the action. (Maybe not so much MGS4.) There aren’t really lulls, but a constant state of tension thrown into sharp relief by the high action sequences. When you are not in alert phase the game is very quiet and toned down, with the ever-present threat of being caught around every corner. It allows the world to keep tension there, but it is such a gradual climb, that it could be said that it was level, until you are spotted and have to run for it.

Tension, action and compelling are not synonyms. I have yawned at over extended action sequences, because I frankly didn’t care. When a system built to pull you into a world is only interesting because the player is metagaming it, you have a problem. When external incentives like achievements and trophies are why you keep playing or why you are expected to keep playing, it’s a problem. If your game is designed to draw the players in on merits of ouroboros like activity, see Farmville, it’s a problem. A game that cannot stand on it’s own merits has a problem. (Another rant for another time.)

Structure, however a designer employs it are the bread and butter of the medium. At its most basic, structure is the rule set that governs its magic circle. At its most expansive it is how all information is delineated from the system to the player and back again.

To paraphrase last weeks post, cause it is such a good line: the designer creates the story, but the player creates the plot. Just make sure you know which part you’re dabbling in. CLINT HOCKING did.

After PAX East sparked my interest in DnD and my players wanted to get back to it, I decided to give it a try. I liked the 4th edition simplification and streamlining of the rules. So I got the core books and read through them in anticipation of trying a new campaign. What I want to talk about came about at the end of our character creation session.  Using the suggestions in the Player’s Handbook #2 the players use the possible background bullet points to create their character’s pasts. With very limited input from me, my players came up with the following.

Krieg Fargrim, a Dragonborn Warlord, was a farmer on the edge of a desert before entering the military. His company was sent on a campaign into the bordering desert to fight a war and then they got a certain mission. They found an underground complex that had connection with long fallen Dragonborn civilization. His unit was wiped out during this mission. When he was rescued and brought back, he quit and made his way to the city. The player got this from the background elements geography-desert, status-poor, occupation-farmer, occupation-military, and racial Dragonborn-Brush with past.

Ashley Pliskin, a Half-Elf Rogue, was born to a human mother in the mountains to the north to a community of bigoted humans that ostracized him and his mother for their connection with an Elf and was cursed by his grandmother at birth. Later he escaped the mob, becoming distrustful of others and made his way to the city where he ended up joining a gang for a short time. They weren’t happy when he left. This player worked off the tags geography-mountains, status-poor, occupation-criminal, birth-cursed and racial Half-Elf-outcast.

Midnight, an Elf Barbarian (and the only female of the group), came from a noble elven family. At her birth a prophecy dictated that she would be forced to suffer humiliation and degradation before eventually achieving greatness. Her parents sent her to the city, thinking it the best place to impose suffering on their daughter. The only work she could find there was as a stripper (I am not making this up.) working in a shady section of town. She randomly chose geography-forest, status-noble, birth-prophecy, occupation-entertainer and racial Elf-urban Elf.

Finally, Rain Vavack, a Human Shaman, (for this background I kept a running list of sources as he was telling us his background, see footnote) was a farm boy in the desert before sand pirates attacked it. He didn’t beg for his life and instead of killing him put him to work turning a large wheel. While on the sand ship he learned how to fight. Eventually he escaped slavery and found an old man in the middle of nowhere. The old man explained the mark on Rain’s forehead and the old man revealed his own mark telling him all with the mark where chosen to do battle and suck the power out of the mark until there was only one. (Our group then dubbed him the “main character”) He then made his way to the city being chased by his former owners. He was inspired by geography-desert, occupation-mariner, status-noble, birth-blessed and racial Human-Heir to forgotten god.

Now here is where co-operative storytelling got interesting. Rain showed up late, so the others had crafted how they met so he had to fit himself into the situation. This, with little help from, the DM, was the final product; Ashley was caught by Midnight attempting to rob the strip joint and in return for not turning him in, he would get her out of there. She had had enough. They managed to get outside, but were seen and are forced to run with the bouncers giving chase through the twisted streets before running into an alley bar and ducked behind the imposing figure of Krieg, making him spill the rum down his front just as their pursuers charged in. Krieg demanded to know who spilt his rum and is pointed to the pursuers by Ashley. Meanwhile, Rain sees the men charge in, think they are slavers there for him, tried to slip past. Krieg whirls around and clocks Rain in the head knocking him prone…TBC…

At the point I threw out all my plans. This was such a good setup there was no way I could not run with it. It even comes with it’s own built in cliffhanger. My input to all this was giving bonuses to skills and the act of Ashley and Midnight ducking behind Kreig. The rest was all them. We had to leave it there, but the next session saw them defeating the pursuers, Rain running away like a coward and later meeting at a city square. Here is where a problem arose. The girl who made Midnight didn’t want to play so I took the character over. I interjected her into a conversation the other two were having at an inopportune moment that spoiled the role-play, while I was dealing with Rain taking a bath in the central fountain.

I am not a real experienced DM and because of the lack of players I always did the job and ended up having to run additional characters to pick up the slack. It was even more unfortunate, because this was the first time in a campaign that my players have actually tried to role-play. Through all this and reading the opening chapters of the Dungeon Master Guide #2 I see more clearly what the job of a DM is, to provide structure. It then becomes a question of how much structure to provide.

The DM in this case is the game designer. He doesn’t create the rule system, or at least not most of them, but he does choose which ones to implement. He creates the setting and imparts it to the players. He takes control of all the other characters. He is friend, enemy, designer, and referee all rolled into one. In this case I have become the real world equivalent to the hidden calculators and systems invisible to players in video games.

When I worked on previous campaigns I was always working on the mechanical nature of the world. Dungeon maps and basic interactions, while failing to either utilize or live up to the implications and purpose of a role playing game. Too often I worked from the top down, building a combat encounter around monsters that would attack, instead of the bottom up where I figure out why they are there and learn how they would attack. The latter is much more satisfying. I would stumble across a few of these moments and it would be obvious that they were superior to the other encounters of the game. The more I’m reading and thinking about it from the design aspect the more I think of what I actually have to do to create a fun and compelling game.

Game//Cooperative storytelling designers do their best work when they set the stage and let the players do the action. Or to put it another way, DMs create the story and the players create the plot.

I don’t have any definitive answers, but I feel like I’ve taken another step to understanding what the hell everyone else seems to already know. I’ve stopped looking at the surface and am now looking at the structure. I just have brush up my skills towards this craft.

[Addendum] I had written this, but then Jason Rohrer released Sleep is Death. This is probably the quintessential cooperative storytelling program. I have not yet have had the chance to try it out. I can’t afford it at the moment and when I can I hope it wont be a fad that has flown by. I put this aside for a bit so I could come back to it and edit all the details and clean up the writing, as any decent writer should. In the mean time I read on Sleep is Death and how to be a better player within this particular experience. I couldn’t help but notice that much of the advice is similar to the Dungeon Master Guide. One of them was almost word for word.

If you have a game that’s purpose is to create a story, whether fully or just the details, then putting a person in a sandbox is a bad idea. Putting a person in a sandbox with a shovel in their hand is a better idea. Putting a person in a sandbox and then offering them the choice of different types of shovels seems to be where we are at the moment. The best idea of all, put the player in the sandbox offer them a shovel and have a swing set sitting the background.

* Star Wars, Gladiator, Dune, Conan the Barbarian, Princess Bride, Harry Potter, DBZ, Highlander, Lord of the Rings

I feel like all I’m about to do is state the obvious.

A thought came to me as I finished up Heavenly Sword as my mind turned to stories in video games. Video games need stories crafted specifically for the medium. Every medium that tells stories has their own way of crafting a story. Length is one way to look at it, but detail, pacing, depth all contribute for a successful story in any medium. The measures of each is very different for each medium and transitions of a work from one medium to another takes effort in learning what to cut, shift or otherwise edit. Video games are different, as they usually require additions instead.

We have always known this; the difference for video games is that there is a need for the interactive elements, the gameplay elements, which changes the nature of how the story flows. The technical requirements of a game require a different type of story. Many of which grind to a halt when the interactive elements of the game show up and when transitioning between the two it’s like you can hear an audible clunk. The game portions are either wedged in or the game goes so outlandishly out of its way to force extra gameplay sections to make sense.

Heavenly Sword didn’t seem to have either of these problems, or at least not for the reasons I mentioned. I wish the game had smoother transitions between the varying sections and less load times, but back to the point at hand. The story was well crafted and the underlying structure was solid. With some edits it probably could be made into a movie, but most of it was specifically made for the video game medium. Not only did the story allow for the combat, it required it. The writer left spots open or crafted sections specifically so player interaction could happen. The gameplay sections are melded into the overall story because the story allows for their existence. The story in Heavenly Sword is simple enough that it’s easier to see the working parts from a conceptual standpoint, but once the process is understood it can be applied to more complex story ideas.

I wrote a three part series on CreativeFluff.com about the division of story and gameplay and what was being done to try and merge the two part together. I did not, however, consider the following. The first step to the process is to get a writer who understands what video games are and understands the medium’s specific needs when it comes to interactivity. It isn’t about cut scenes or in game dialogue or audio journals or visual clues for the story to be conveyed better in a video game. What is needed is a story specifically suited to the video game medium. Video games require a different set of rules when it comes to pacing, tension, information, etc etc. Those terms don’t mean the same thing in video games than they mean for movies or TV, the two most often imitated formats.

I don’t know the specifics of how to create working stories for the medium. That will take further thought.

I talked about how the story structure in Prince of Persia didn’t work for me and how the various villains fit in the game’s thematic consistency. Now I’m going to combine the two ideas. This may come off as a little dictating from on high, but oh well.

Spoiler Warning

2nd Warning: This is an experiment.

To understand any story is to understand the arc that the plot and characters take. I know that is a gross overgeneralization, but work with me here. Prince of Persia had three acts. The first act concerns itself with introducing the characters, the situation and the mechanics of the game. By the time you leave the canyon you pretty much have the idea for what is going on for the rest of the game. The third act contains the climatic battle with Ahriman, the denouement and the cliffhanger ending. The second act is where a majority of the action takes place. Here we have the four vignettes I detailed earlier and the ‘you can choose the order of the story’ gameplay. It is in this second act I’m going to focus my attention.

First a little overview of the four vignettes and the four enemies they are focused upon. Just a little boiling down of where they stand in their thematic relevance.

The Hunter – an embodiment of selfish desire and hubris and little else

The Alchemist – a traitorous enactor of crimes against humanity

The Concubine – a small amoral woman that is turned into a larger corruption

The Warrior – a tragic figure whose desire to save causes destruction

Now assuming each vignette is played to completion before moving on to the next we have 24 different possible combinations that could make up the second act. I bring this up to attempt something. I have contended twice already that Prince of Persia would have the story told much better as a linear narrative. I also have stated that all of this could have been accomplished without changing any of the middle action, merely structuring it. Well, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.

The story arc of the game is simple. The Prince comes in as a solo artist on life, meets Eleka, gets dragged (willfully goes) into trouble, contends with enemies, seals evil god, breaks free evil god to save Eleka, to be continued. The ‘contends with enemies’ part is where the arc happens. The Prince has to undergo a change. Not just an attachment, but also a philosophical change of character to be capable of setting Ahriman free. That gives us two arcs to contend with, the thematic arc or Prince’s story, and the relationship arc or Eleka’s story. This would be if it were a long movie. However, due to the interactive nature of video games we also have a third arc to contend with, the gameplay arc or player’s story.

I’ll do my best to explain myself.

Each arc focuses on a different part of the information delivered to the player. The relationship comes from the interaction between the Prince and Eleka, not just in conversation, but also within the scripted actions during their ordeal against the corrupted. The thematic arc would focus on the representations the corrupted have with the Prince’s state between his beginning the adventure and concluding it. Here the final vignette will color the Prince’s motive the most. Finally we have the gameplay arc in which we have the play incrementally more challenges from the enemies.

In looking directly at the four corrupted there are certain similarities you can see between them. Both the Alchemist and Hunter are based in rationality, while the Concubine and Warrior have their character based in emotion. Additionally, one could describe the Alchemist and Concubine as soft characters, since they are not really combat based as their counterparts the Hunter and the Warrior whom I would attach the descriptor of brute. Given this and their abilities I would tentatively give the order for the gameplay arc: Alchemist, Concubine, Hunter, Warrior.

Turning to the thematic arc of the story I look to the Prince at the beginning. His best line up is with the Hunter. Both are out for themselves and give little regard for others. The difference between them being the ‘put their heads on the spike’ part. Following the Prince’s attitude towards the other corrupted we find him thinking, but unconvinced by the Warrior’s actions of self-sacrifice. Moving onwards we see his almost confusion and later outrage towards the traitor and finally we see what makes the Prince the Prince. The Concubine reveals information about him that he won’t elaborate on, but the conflict there ends up being more of who he is than what he can do. My tentative thematic arc listing is: Hunter, Warrior, Alchemist, Concubine.

Then we have the relationship between the Prince and Eleka. To me the most touching moment between the two, in fact one of the few moments where I could believe that they could love each other, was the Prince’s trust in her when he jumped off the top of the tower. That type of trust has to develop and be nurtured through the rest of the game. In the city, the dialogue between Eleka and the Prince is very utilitarian and a sort of detachment between the characters as there was in the citadel. It could be that it was merely the locations, where Eleka had little to say, where as she had a few stories of her time in the palace she was willing to talk about. However, I would also contend that the end locations against the Hunter and Warrior were not as moving towards their characters solidifying a relationship, but laying groundwork. The Warrior vignette especially offered the Prince a conflict of opinion in Eleka’s interpretation of the Warrior’s actions to pull his interest further along. As for the Alchemist, I keep coming back to the image of the two of them relaxing on the platform after having defeated him and just laugh while looking up at the sky. I get a real sense of companionship out of that image, both of them relaxing in a quiet moment together. Tentative listing for the relationship arc: Warrior, Hunter, Alchemist, Concubine.

The three arcs of the story give us three vastly different preliminary orders. Working from this and to further examine other order possibilities I am going to see how we can make the different arcs work together in pairs of two.

The thematic arc and the gameplay arc are about building towards something. The thematic arc is there to set up a rational behind the Prince’s final choice and the gameplay arc is about upping dramatic tension in the interactive moments of the game until the climax against Ahriman. From this perspective we can see that there has to be a change within the Prince for him to make this choice, so you have to start him with an opponent that can mirror this, while offering an opponent who is not a powerful combatant. Following that you follow the vignettes of increasing the prowess of the combat, while keeping in mind what each corrupted represents. The toughest opponent who ratchets up the tension in combat is the Warrior, who also offers a meaningful mirror to the future decision of the Prince. My suggested order here would be: Alchemist, Hunter, Concubine, Warrior.

The relationship arc and the gameplay arc also see a rising action focused on increasing the tension in the story. While I wouldn’t suggest it as the best way to grow the relationship between Eleka and the Prince, Ubisoft went the sexual tension route, among moments of serious caring in regards to getting the characters together. While what I said above about the opponents needing start off easier or at least more straight forward still apply a need to modify it in regard to how each vignette deal with the relationship, especially in regard to Eleka’s desires and reactions. A more straightforward vignette at the beginning would facilitate their relationship’s arc of from rocky ground to deep trust. The Concubine could be argued as a better final encounter as it takes place in a section very close to her heart and is more telling of her history than anything else. But also it offers a hint of the Prince’s past in the final confrontation. It presents a kind of what might have been between the characters, the palace that they can never share. Here I suggest: Hunter, Alchemist, Warrior, Concubine.

Finally we have the close-knit combination of the Prince’s thematic arc and the characters’ relationship arc.  The Prince’s own arc is a reflection off of the decision that ultimately is tied to the relationship he has with Eleka and his desire to continue it in the face of death and destruction. In just looking at these two arcs the focus would be on them rather than the player. In both arc you have to start them out as strangers, something that would keep the characters at a distance, but bring them in towards a common goal. Then you would have to further break the ice between them, while having the Prince being offer contrary evidence to what he believed in. Then you’d have to both cement their feelings towards one another and present corrupted that could act as a mirror to his choice and desire. My suggestion here would be: Hunter, Warrior, Alchemist, Concubine.

So after all that theorizing I come down to combing the essence of what the three story arcs are trying to accomplish in a single linear choice. I looked it over and tried to find an order that would satisfy the relationship in growth and meaning, satisfy the thematic requirements of the Prince’s change and mental state, and satisfy the need to have an increasing opposition structure to the player. There isn’t one.

That is until I remembered a mantra of design. That you can only notch up the threat and power so high in a linear fashion before it looses the feeling of danger. It’s called power creep where things get too powerful that it breaks the game, or in this case the player loses interest. It is not fun to keep fighting a slightly stronger brute each time. You have to mix it up a little. A closer look at the different attack styles led me to the following order: Hunter, Alchemist, Concubine, Warrior.

As I have expressed before it is the perfect stating point for their relationship as it they keep their distance from each other through this vignette in comparison to the others and it mirrors the Prince in his beginning mental state. His is selfish and out for his own desires. It is in the conflict between the two that the Prince begins to differentiate himself from the other corrupted in that he can place the fate of the world above his desires. The gameplay offers a basic combatant whose tricks are more about getting to the Hunter rather than the actual battle with him.

Second is Alchemist, because it has Eleka open up a little to the Prince as she expresses her disgust with the machinery of the Alchemist and her loathing of the traitor himself. At the end of the battle on the highest platform they find themselves laughing about it and relaxing, as they get more comfortable with the other’s presence. Theme wise we later learn that the Prince himself could also been seen as a traitor as he turned his back on his royal heritage and abdicated all responsibility for his actions. We see the Prince moving further away from that identity. Gameplay wise it changes things up a little, with a more cautious combatant, who is more likely to use long-range attacks and is better at dodging the Prince’s own attacks. The Alchemist also displays a little of his power by infecting the Prince in one area, which adds a nice sense of variety giving the player a countdown clock to heal the fertile ground.

Thirdly is the Concubine. This is where the relationship bonds really begin to form. We have Eleka revealing more about her past to the Prince. In the opener to that section she is telling stories of her time there, watching performances and dreaming of far off lands, almost wistfully. She talks of her mother and the wounds that it left in her family. The Prince becomes more than a random savior, he becomes her confidant. The Prince reciprocates the trust when he leaps to his death expecting Eleka to be there and catch him. The Concubine represents the wish for power, but also is an agent of lust versus love. She uses men to further her own ends using her feminine wiles. She tempts the Prince as such, but he rejects her advances and turns to Eleka as his grounding agent. Selfish desires are becoming less and less a driving factor in his character. This vignette more than any other is the turning point of his character. The player gets a slightly different challenge as well. The Concubine is an illusionist and will put multiple copies of herself on the battlefield to distract and disorient. She is far more agile than the other corrupted and faster too. But the most defining characteristic is the fact that for a time she removes Eleka from the battle by entangling her in corrupted. The Player has lost a button. Also she casts a spell on the Prince at times to reverse his movements of what the player input is. It switches up an otherwise beefing up of the boss.

Finally we come to the Warrior. I’ve explained before why he makes a good endgame thematically. The Warrior more than any other is the mirror of the Prince at the end of the game. The Prince becomes the fallen hero, a hero pulled down by his own good intention. Eleka here really tries to focus on that fact here. The further you progress in the Warrior’s territory the more her dialogue focuses on factual things, like how to proceed. The Prince asks her jokingly if he could have the city and she agrees. In part it is foreshadowing to the task she knows she must do, but also it is an effort to distract the Prince and distance herself. It is to no avail, as the Prince seems to be closer to her than ever as he carries her out of the Warrior’s fortress bridal style. She talks about his noble sacrifice, the kind that she will soon have to make, but the Prince rejects that concept, a possible indication of what he himself will do. As a combatant, none is stronger or more powerful than the Warrior. You can’t hurt him with any attack and you can’t even use the gauntlet attack on him. Blocking is almost a futile effort. Your only option is push him off the ledge, tower, or lock him in a cage. In the final battle after you drop him into a pit of lava he comes back and only then does he begin to lose health, but all you can do is run and dodge. This is not a battle of skill, but one of attrition. Beyond the final battle with Ahriman there is no more climatic battle in the game. It is a perfect ending to the 2nd act. At the end of the Warrior’s vignette the mood is somber as it should be. A good man gave his life and soul so that they may continue and now they must do just that.

I examined the different vignettes and looked at 7 different vignette orders. During the examination of each order I revised my opinion of certain details. In my final assessment, for example, I see a different meaning behind Eleka’s utilitarian dialogue than I did at first. I only changed my mind about certain details of the story; overall the game still disappoints me.

Were Prince of Persia made into a linear game this is how I would have constructed the vignettes with the given material. As it is this is my opinion on the order you should play the areas in to receive the most out of the story arcs.

*Spoiler Warning*

The servants of Ahriman are the thematic representation of their fall from grace and at the end of the game, a representation of the Prince. Each had a desire that could only be fulfilled giving something to Ahriman, in their case, their souls. However, like Faust, they find their wishes fulfilled, but empty. The Hunter wished for more dangerous prey, a more cunning prey, but once he hunted humans he found there was no greater prey and was soon stalking a desolate citadel. The Alchemist gave his soul to attain knowledge and the ability to push the boundaries of his experiment, but soon found they were for naught in that they benefited no one. The Concubine wish to once again hold great power through influence of powerful people despite her disfiguration, but now holds court in an empty palace. The Warrior wished for the power to save his people, but now haunts a crumbling city, much like the one his people once lived in.

Each servant, the Hunter, the Alchemist, the Concubine, and the Warrior, is a small thematic vignette within the greater story arc of the game. The player has to complete four areas under the particular servant’s control before they are able to pursue and finish them off in the final location that the servant retreats to. Each one is thematically relevant to the servants’ purpose and state. Once done with each vignette the player moves on to the next one. Of course each self-contained story does not have to be done to completion before tracking a different enemy, but for the sake of thematic unity, we’ll assume for the play through that the player finished one enemy off before moving on to the next.

Examining each servant we find a different type of antagonist, with a different motivation and the supposedly a different lesson that the characters and player is supposed to come away with. I’ll examine each servant one at a time.

First is the Hunter. Here we have fallen prince who loved to hunt, but became bored with the pastime because he got too good at it. He wanted to move on to more dangerous and cunning prey, doing so led him to Ahriman. He is by far the most aggressive of the four, but also the most-straight forward. He does not speak; his intentions are more than understood. He sees the Prince and Eleka as trophies and nothing more. You do not speak to your prey, nor reason with them; you simply hunt them. The areas in which he chooses to fight are closed off, difficult to get to and more often than not allow him to blind side the player. In one area, during a magic flying sequence he knocks them out of the air and begins a battle. It is the only time in the game this happens and is surprising when it does. In another he stands waiting like the enemies do in the other areas only to have the ground fall away under your feet as you charge up to him. But in the end ultimately fails and dies because of it. There is no repentance in his character, he recognizes it as law of the jungle, be or be killed. He was a hunter whose prey got the better of him.

Next is the Alchemist. Here was a former member of the Ahura that betrayed his own people to Ahriman for the gift of being able to control the corruption. He used his new found power to continue his never-ending quest for knowledge. He displays an angle of insatiable greed, not for gold, but for knowledge, for his experiments. He sees no use for the world around him or its petty and temporary problem and seeks eternal knowledge that can serve no one, but only acts as simultaneously balm and fuel for his burning desire. The Alchemist literally locks himself away in his observatory, his ivory tower and it crumbles when he is no longer there and it is not missed. A testament to the uselessness of his endeavors compared to the crimes he committed to continue them. With his death, he cries out ego-maniacally that he can’t die, that he isn’t supposed to die. As corny as Eleka’s response is its true. Regardless the Alchemist is shocked not repentant.

Moving on the Concubine. Here is a woman who lust for power was her driving force. She was manipulative, crafty and always got what she wanted. Her downfall came from the loss of her beauty, the illusion that gave her influence. Ahriman returned her the power to do just that. In a world of politics and intrigue her powers are most effective. Her illusionary powers soon become tools for her own delusions rather than to delude others. She creates a different world for herself, which the different areas of the palace highlight, as this as the once majestical building is crumbling and the only power or authority that still remains is illusionary. Her prowess is not in combat, but the only way to stop her is to break her spell and like before she met Ahriman revealing her true ugly self beneath the facade.

Finally we come to the Warrior. He is a tragic figure. Unlike the other servants, he did not give himself to Ahriman out of his own selfish desires, but for the sake of his people. Ironically in asking for the power to save his people he had been granted a power of unequaled destruction. He had become a juggernaut and found himself an exile of the peaceful people he once saved. Now they are long gone despite the Warrior’s efforts. Upon Ahriman’s release he marks his territory in the city, where people like the ones he once protected once lived. His very presence is causing the city to crumble and breakdown around him. It is impossible to defeat him in a fight and must resort to pushing him off ledges or trapping him in cages, due to his immense powers. One can only imagine how the once peaceful king defeated an army. After a fight in one of the towers, the Warrior’s power leads to the Prince and Eleka forced to flee a collapsing building. The whole time Eleka tries to reason and appeal to who the Warrior once was. In the end it is unclear if she succeeded or if they were as the Prince claims, “lucky.” Either way the player can see the conflicted persona beneath the armor.

Each of these antagonists marks a thematic relevance to the Prince’s fate. Each of them made the choice to make a deal with Ahriman for their desires. If fact you can see a bit each of them in the Prince. The Prince is a traitor, a seeker of a prize, a lustful individual, and sacrificing himself for those he loves. As much as the relevance is appreciated it is dissonant that the Prince doesn’t take heed from other who have made this mistake in this choice.

Overall I stick to my belief that Prince of Persia would have played better as a linear narrative. Nothing seems to back this up better than the vignettes. In each one it would have built more tension and more antagonism between the Prince and Eleka and the servants of Ahriman.

The Hunter could have had a prolonged hunt across the four areas before leading his victims into his lair. He could have had a long-term strategy that would have been more in line with his greatest hunter motif. His trap diverts them into a different section that would lead them where he wanted them to go. The designers have a reason the hunter keeps running away: to draw the two them deeper and closer to being his newest trophies. The end result of beating him would have provided greater satisfaction for having survived such a cunning foe.

For the Alchemist we are sort of only told of his atrocities and only see the results of his research. The broken down machinery, the reservoir and the tower. None of which seems very menacing or having only illicit purposes. In fact Eleka seems to take a staunch faith over technology stance of many fundamentalist religions. We could have worked our way up the large machinery to the tower where the experiments were conducted. We see the end result that could have their uses and the Prince may think them cool, until he witnesses the price and understands Eleka’s logic.

The Concubine could have started with her simple illusions, before building one upon the other creating a different feel of the gameplay mechanics and really messed with the player’s mind. Near the end the game started to do this, but I feel after the Prince and Eleka started breaking her illusions she creates more intricate and complex ones and not rely on tying Eleka down at the start of every single fight. The final illusion of the infinite Elekas is the type of screwing with the player I would have liked to see more of.

And the Warrior, as interesting as Ubisoft tried to make it, his destructive presence did not come across well, because the city was as destroyed as it was ever going to be. There were rumblings and the sounds of the Warrior raging, but never a visible sign of the destruction, except for one of the towers. It would have been nice to see the city become more and more dilapidated as the heroes continued on. Make the scenes of travel through the city more intense by having everything falling apart around you or if you weren’t fast enough on top of you. The idea that this being is so powerful could be represented through more than his health bar never being effected, you could have had his destructive power hinder and hurt even when he wasn’t in sight or near them.

None of the overall story ideas or thematic elements would have changed and probably would have been enhanced by a linear treatment. But there is more it would have added to the story structure than just details and tension. It would have created an overall thematic arc for the Prince. Many have called this game Eleka’s story despite the Prince being the title. I think it is both of their stories if the beginning and end are any indication. It’s just the physical trials are Eleka’s story, while the thematic trials are the Prince’s. Unfortunately they are lost in the ‘do it in your own order’ gameplay. What I mean is have there be a progression from one servant to the next as they heal the fertile ground so we can really see what it means to give in to Ahriman and better understand the choice that the Prince ultimately made.

I have more on Prince of Persia, but since this essay has grown to long, I’ll finish up my thoughts in the next post.

The title pretty much sums up thesis for this essay. Prince of Persia has fallen to the trend of non-linear gameplay. It’s the new buzzword in the market. That’s all fine and dandy, and in the weeks up to its release even I praised the design as a merging of story and gameplay. However, now having played the game Prince of Persia has replaced Mirror’s Edge as my most disappointing game of 2008. It has nothing to do with the gameplay. It has to do with the story and more specifically with the story’s structure.

SPOILERS AHEAD

My general issue with the story structure is that there really isn’t one. The designers constructed the beginning and the end and left the rest to the player. When it comes to telling an overall arc of a developing relationship, such a method is counterproductive to the story. The designer doesn’t know what order the evens are going to happen in the story. This means that the characters have to have a similar level of familiarly with each other throughout the game. The Prince and Eleka’s relationship doesn’t grow to the level that would make the ending functional or believable. Let me reiterate that, they do form a bond with each other, but they do not come to love each other. The game does not convince me of this. Actually their relationship with each other seems a little schizophrenic. After each boss fight in the lairs there seemed to be a moment or two of them growing closer, each highlighting some slightly different aspect of growth, but once you were back to the main areas, it was back to the old interactions. It was like they had actually reversed their character development.

There also seem to be some questions about the relationship between the Prince and Eleka in general. The Prince follows the archetypical story of a rogue turned hero, through a period of reluctance before finally giving way to altruism. The thing about these changes in the Prince is that the alteration happens very early on. At first he follows her out of curiosity and self-preservation and then changes to wanting to save the world from the corrupting forces of Ahriman. This change happens right after the tree of life is destroyed and the entire world turns to darkness. The game has to, because if it didn’t and you gave the players free reign, then you have offered the choice of not saving the world. In a linear storytelling you could show forces beyond his control driving him forward, until he does so of his own free will. It offers a more dynamic characterization as well as an opportunity for his character to get closer to Eleka. Eleka seems perfectly in tap with this version of events as I got a distinct impression that she was spending her time trying to convince the Prince to help with lines like “Please, we must get moving” or “It used to be, before the corrupting influence of Ahriman.” But she is preaching to the choir. He is already committed to the task, so I’m a little confused with what she is trying to convince him of.

The Prince and Eleka’s story is really that of Han Solo and Princess Leia of Star Wars fame. The Prince is not of nobility and is rogue looking for his big payout. Hans Solo looking for the money to pay of Jaba and the Princess his donkey packed with gold. Meanwhile, Eleka and Leia are both Princesses that are in danger, ironically by their father under the command of a greater malevolent evil, that are rescued by the rouge at first through self interest and then because he fell for her. This is basic story arc, but Prince of Persia fails to deliver the arc part. It offers a beginning and an end and leaves much of the middle to meander about. The meandering vignettes of each soul seller that has to be defeated offer a few highpoints to the storytelling. I find the antagonistic relationship between the Prince and the enemies far more interesting that I find the overall arc of the Prince and Eleka’s relationship. Each one is different and offers a different perspective of succumbing to Ahriman’s clutches. However among the few brilliant moments there is a lot of dross and repetition. Because you can do the areas in any order there can be no increase in antagonism or reference earlier incidents.

In effect there is no rising action, which is really a point for the whole game. And without rising action there can be no effective climax. And now we come to the crux of the debate, the game’s ending. Mainly because the ending of the game invalidates what it has set up. An ending of a story must be the product of what the story has set up. Prince of Persia is a victim of hollywoodism relationships. Where the movies basically say ‘look a man and a woman as main characters they are together obviously’ and then in most cases does absolutely nothing to back this up. They are also working under the falsism of opposites attract. They do if there is some underlying similarity or jointly held interest. Saving the world from this one disaster is not a joint interest. The Prince would have pawned the task off on someone else if he could. It just so happens that there was no one else. Even so there wasn’t enough time to build up a meaningful relationship between the two characters. The ending wasn’t bad it just wasn’t justified.

I had a few questions about certain details of the story. The first of which was, how much time do the Prince and Eleka spend together? It may seem unimportant, but a relationship takes time to build, especially one where the other is willing to sacrifice the world to bring back his love. There are no breaks in gameplay, Ubisoft makes sure we know this, the time you spend playing is in real time. There is no 1-day = 2 hours of Baldur’s Gate, no time spent unconscious a la Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, and no “one week later” title card of any random TV show. (Give me a break I can’t think of one.) Like in Aristotle’s ideal of storytelling, there is a unity of time. Of course everyone’s playtime will be different so for reference I looked for Ubisoft’s ideal time for completion. There is a trophy/achievement for completing the game in less than twelve hours. Twelve hours! Using this we learn that they spend less than half a day together and I’m expected to believe that they have fallen in love. It is enough time for me to believe that the Prince has grown friendly or attached to Eleka. Their banter makes me think that they’ve grown from general dismissal to mutual understanding and friendship. That’s all they’ve really had the time for. I may be reading too much into this, but then again even if you hammed the controls a few times and spent more time than twelve hours, the story couldn’t take place in much more time than that.

On that note another trophy, entitled Precious Time, is received if you stand still for a minute after Eleka has died and is in your arms. This suggests that the Prince didn’t undo all of their efforts to re-imprison Ahriman in the heat of the moment or because of Ahriman whispering in his ear. He did it with deliberate forethought, weighed everything and made his choice. This is unreasonable for the way the character that was set up. There was no change in him that would make this believable. Finally, unlike what Michael Abbot has suggestion as another possible conclusion, there is an end, one that not only suggests a sequel, but blatantly tells you that it’s Too Be Continued.

All of these problems and conflicting directions of the story come from its attempt to change the gameplay structure to that of a non-linear affair, but the story suffers for it. Because the player can go anywhere at any point the developers have to make the character interaction believable at every single point. There are two ways to do this, one is to have the story be dynamic and have their interaction change based upon what they’ve done and develop their relationship that way, or to have them say the same things in new pithy ways throughout the game and keep their relationship at a consistent level so it doesn’t matter what order they do the areas in. Ubisoft went for the latter. Then they pull out this ending where the Prince sacrifices the world for Eleka, which would have been fine had any sort of deep felt relationship been developed. Ubisoft tried to shoehorn a linear narrative into a non-linear game and paid the price for it. Honestly I didn’t really care about the ending, because I didn’t care for either of the characters or the threat they faced. I couldn’t bring myself to immerse myself in the experience and it was the first time in a Prince of Persia game that I found myself on the outside as I was playing. I fully recognized that I was controlling the Prince by remote control and it had nothing to do with the mechanics, but with the story. Some stories you place yourself and sympathies with the character, some you view at a distance, but within the world and others just make you realize that you are sitting in front of a screen holding a piece of circuited plastic. I didn’t hate these characters, worse I was ambivalent about them. The worst thing a creator can do is make their audience ambivalent about the work. At least if I hate them it means I find their own activities abhorrent to my own belief and I attach to them out of a sense of disgust in what they represent. Goodfellas would be an example of this.

In conclusion, it is my firm belief that Prince of Persia would have played much better as a linear story with a linear progression and nothing at all would have been lost in the gameplay department. Not even going into that, the gameplay could have been improved and the game would have still retained the qualities aimed towards the less experience players that Ubisoft was going for. It is a real pity that the designers decided to succumb to trends without thinking about the consequences made their game “open world.” Were it linear they could have developed the relationship and increased the sense of closeness between the characters, despite time constrictions and then I along with others would have accepted the ending. It also would have fixed many other issues I had with the story that I did not get into here, but I think this is a major one that alone would have warranted the change.