Remember Me?

I’m no authority on gaming culture, but I know enough to know that to write on the history of video games without mentioning Myst (Miller 1993) is to write on the history of cinema without mentioning The Maltese Falcon (Huston 1941). It’s not a question of taste, although I love them both – it’s that both of them fundamentally changed the mentality behind both production and consumption of their respective media. And I’m no essentialist either: The Maltese Falcon was not strictly the first film noir, nor was Myst the first ‘thinking man’s game’. But they were the first to take the distinct elements of the genres they came to embody, and base themselves around those elements with ferocious conviction.

In the most direct way possible, Myst is a plot with a game almost incidentally hanging off of it. What occurs because of this could well be a crowning argument for the “game-as-art” party: the game spawned from this plot adds a dimension to the text that would otherwise not be there. Myst is, story-wise, about some very specific and decidedly literary things, and were its facts, story, setting and characters given to us in a vacuum there would be nothing more to it. It’s the existential game-play that contextualizes everything and makes the text itself about something else entirely.

Myst begins itself with a visual image of metaphorical blankness – a grey misty sky over almost indistinguishable grey water. A three-parts sad, one-part sinister music cue establishes well what the game will, in almost direct opposition to its central plot, be about: solitude. Without rhyme, reason or back story, The Stranger (as we are forever to be known) arrives in this desolate sea of stillness on an eerily silent island of mystery. We are, needless to say, alone. Exploration is the only option, and is achieved through point-and-click interface and starkly beautiful imagery. Critics have a called it glorified slide show. That’s hard to defend.

What can be defended is the focus Rand and Robyn Miller, brothers and Myst-creators, have put on the then long-neglected intellectual hunger of their audience. Myst may not have been the first game to entail a rich and engrossing mythology from which novels have been written, but it was certainly one of, if not the first, to jump to the literary before even finishing with the game play. A lot of this piece will be spent reading in-game books, found in the abandoned library on Myst island. You will learn what you need to know to solve the physical puzzles blocking your journey, but you’ll also learn a whole lot more. Why this island is here, why you’re here, who’s responsible, where they are, what they need from you, what their lives were like, what kind of people they were. Myst’s bigger and better sequel, Riven (Miller 1997), takes this even further. There is a physical anomaly in the world of that game, whereby a tunnel is burrowed through the ocean and kept open as if by magic. If you read enough of the discarded journals that are lying around, you’ll find a science-fictive explanation for this. If you don’t, then you don’t. Your loss.

What I’ve been trying to say, but should perhaps reiterate once more for effect, is that the Miller brothers weren’t out to make a video game: they were out to tell a story that needed the kind of immersive interaction only video games can provide. Myst is a lonely and eerie experience, and that taints the story it tells with melancholy in a way that nothing else could. You can’t ask your readers to kindly feel sad, uncomfortable and intrigued, if they wouldn’t mind, before they settle down to your tale, as that really is the best way to receive this sort of thing. You have to put them there yourself– Rand and Ryan Miller saw a way to make that happen, they took it, and video games as an artistic entity still reverberates with their vision.

Now why can’t we have all this in video games?

You may have gathered from my review of Mass Effect that I’m one of those irritating people who thinks that there may be more to Video Games than just mindless entertainment. You may also remember that I mentioned in that review that one of my favorite games was Fallout. Set for release later this year is the much anticipated Fallout 3. It has just been revealed that in Fallout 3 there will be consequences for using drugs, not all of which would be negative, and the Australian censorship board promptly banned it.

This is not the first time that this has happened and the end result is that the game was censored so that it could receive an MA15+ rating in Australia. Now, I don’t know what’s worse, a game being banned or a bastardised version being handed to me instead of the genuine product. Would you prefer them to ban Apocalypse Now or just cut out all the parts with war in them? You know, the ones that could potentially offend someone?

There are two main reasons why I think should be an an R18+ rating for computer games in Australia.

Number one. Games can attain the same levels of expression and sophistication as any of the classical art forms. Don’t be confused, I’m not saying all games are the pinnacles of creative expression, worthy of enshrinement in the annals of human culture, but neither are all films, books or paintings. Some are amazing experiences which move us and expand our understanding of existence and some are gratuitous and attention seeking. Most people wouldn’t place the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the same pedestal as Citizen Kane. In the same way that most people wouldn’t rate Bad Day L.A (described by 1UP.com as “the worst PC game to stumble drunkenly onto the scene in years.”) in the same legue as Beyond Good and Evil or Bioshock.

Let us take Bioshock as a recent example (being that I’ve already harped on about Mass Effect):

It is with no lack of irony that I chose a game which obstinately deals with censorship by setting itself in a 1950’s, underwater city, created as a haven for artists, scientists and philosophers who wanted to work unfettered by all those pesky ethics and morals. In the game you play Jack, a man whose plane crashes in the middle of the ocean and finds himself trapped in the city of Rapture. It is apparant that, while Rapture was no doubt an amazing cultural, technological and engineering wonder, something has gone horribly wrong. The city has sustained huge structural damage, the streets are littered with corpses and a terrifying menagerie of creatures are wandering about.

It would have been very easy for Bioshock to be play like just another first-person shooter. They could have designed it in such a way that you walked through endless corridors, leaving a bloody swath behind you. It would have sold pretty well and gained a loyal following among first-person shooter fans. But they didn’t settle for that. The graphics are wonderful, yes, the combat is visceral and the pacing is spectacular but, ultimately, it is the setting and narrative of Bioshock that makes it truly special. As the player moves through the game and explores the setting the story of what happened to Rapture unfolds via audio logs, left behind by its residents. This story is fascinating, exhilerating and terrifying all at once and, most importantly, it plunges you headlong into a world and an experience that you would never have outside of the game. This is the key to Game’s potential as art.

Immersion.

A great work of literature will transplant you into another world and make you feel things at a base, visceral level. A great painting will worm its way into your consciousness and hypnotise you with its beauty, ferocity or horror. A great film will pluck you out of your seat and inject you into its protagonist and a great game will do exactly the same thing. Bioshock can be considered a work of art, not because of its pretty graphics or nice design, but becuase of its level of immersion and the loving care with which its designed to illicit emotion. Like all great art, it allows you to vichariously project yourself outside of your everday realm of experience. With that, i’m going to close my case for game’s potential as art (I could go on, but I want to wrap this up).

The second reason (remember, there were two reasons) that I think Australia should have an R18+ rating for video games is that the average age of the Australian game consumer is 28. The people playing and, more importantly (for the purposes of this article), buying these games are adults. To say that we can’t have them around becuase they’ll corrupt children is redundant. This battle has already been fought on the fields of film and television. It is the entire reason why we have a ratings system; consumer choice. Are we to believe that, as far as the government is concerned, we can buy pornography but not an unmolested version of Fallout 3?

The adults of Australia deserve to be treated as such. If you care about this issue even 1/100 as much as I do, please, for the love of god, sign this:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/game-ratings-aus/index.html

If you’d like to learn more about australia’s horribly outdated classification system for games the IEAA has produced this extensive article.

I’ve been a long time fan of Computer RPGs. I’ve played many an epic pixel-fest in my time. Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic and the Elder Scrolls series have all graced my various computer screens over the years. I am, in particular a fan of the old-school, isometric computer rpgs. There was a generation of computer rpgs that embraced plot and character above all else. This was their main source of praise and damnation, depending on who you were talking to. Fans loved the depth of story and detractors complained that they were ugly and boring. I fell into the fan camp. Fallout and Planescape Torment are two excellent examples of this era of gaming. You had the opportunity to create a unique character, with a realistic personality and an expansive, open-ended world in which your actions had serious consequences (and occasionally rewards). This is not to say that every game of this ilk was any good (Icewind Dale was a dull slog of combat and snow) but, for a while there, we had a run of computer roleplaying games that actually allowed you to roleplay.

The perceptive among you will note that two of the games listed above, Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic, were created by the good folks at Bioware and another, Planescape Torment, was created using Bioware’s Infinity Engine. “What the hell does that have to do with anything”, I hear you bray? Wel, our old friends at Bioware are back and they are back with a vengeance. The latest offering from Bioware is the epic, science fiction saga Mass Effect.

I have had some trouble with videos playing, so you can also veiw it here.

Ok, so the voice-over is a bit hammy but it’s a launch trailer and they’re trying to sell something but there are a few things about this clip you should know. The first thing you should know is that all of the visuals are in-game graphics. The second thing you should know is that a puny little youtube clip doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of illustrating how amazing this game looks in full HD on a nice big LCD screen at 1400×1050 resolution. The level of detail and 3D rendering is astounding. This incredible graphic detail and loving animation is crucial to Mass Effect’s success and level of immersion. But I’m getting ahead of myself, before you can appreciate quite what this game does to me we need to talk a little about its character creation process.

If a roleplaying game is one in which you take the role of a character then surely one of the fundamental components of any roleplaying is the process in which you create your character. Now, this might seem elementary, but you’d be amazed how many games seem to miss this. A prime example is The Witcher in which you’re simply ‘the witcher’ and, from the get-go, you have no say in your character’s abilities or (perhaps more importantly) personality. Now that’s all well and good if I’m interested in playing a misogynist, mutant, monster-slayer who talks with his sword, but what if I want to play a compassionate, pure-bred, sissy who talks with his vocal chords? The answer is, in the case of games like The Witcher, I’m screwed.

Straight off the bat, Mass Effect scores big points for its character creation process. First of all there are 6 basic kinds of character you can play: Soldier, Engineer, Adept, Infiltrator, Sentinel, and Vanguard. Basically you can be really good at fighting, manipulating technology or biotics (or as it should be called, but isn’t for copyright reasons, ‘the force’). Alternatively you can be mediocre at two things. This business of being able to select your character’s specialty is nothing special in computer rpgs and any of them worth their salt will have it, so I won’t dwell on it. Next the game asks you three questions about you character’s background. This is a really nice feature because not only do you have a say on your character’s past and psychological makeup, your answers to these questions affect the way other characters in the game react to you and opens up some quests specific to your background. This is another element that greatly adds to the ease of immersion within the game world. People and events around you refer to your character based on your preferences for the kind of guy (or gal) you want to portray.

The really impressive thing about character creation in this game, however, is the degree to which you can sculpt your character’s appearance. You can completely change your facial structure, skin colour, facial hair etc. Now, I know what you’re going to say, “That’s nothing new, why, Oblivion did that just last year!”. To put it bluntly, you’re wrong. What you mean to say is “Oblivion tried to do that and failed so miserably I wanted to cry because the character I ended up with was a horrible monster whose mother would sooner club it to death with a red-hot poker than love it.” While Oblivion allowed you to morph the features of your character the facial structures didn’t conform to any kind of real human parameters and it was very hard to create a character that looked like a human being. Mass Effect succeeds because every character I’ve made has looked like a completely believable, convincing human being. The textures, lighting and bone structure are so amazing that you can create a face which looks equally realistic in any skin tone. At one end of the spectrum I was being stared down by a cold, hard, space brother and at the other I was faced by a mean, stubbled, space-whitey.

So, bearing all this in mind, by the time we reach the game we are presented with a beautiful in-game cinematic sequence starring the charcter we just made, down to the finest detail. Elements of the history we created are woven into the plot and we are introduced to our character’s place in the setting. By the end of this sequence we’re completely immersed in the game and ready to kick some galactic-arse as we explore the universe. This is what roleplaying games are about. Playing a character you’re excited about in an amazing setting.

To further enhance this all of the dialogue and cinematics are lovingly rendered with the in-game engine and presented in wide-screen, starring the character that you created and not some pregenerated jerk. Dialogue plays a huge role in this game. You’re choices in what you say have an impact on what happens in the game, the way other characters relate to you and even allows you to apply skills you gain over the corse of the game (such as charm, intimidate and diplomacy). The interactions between all of the characters in the game (including yours) is a delight. The voice acting and character animation convey real emotion and result in an incredibly cinematic gameplay experience. Unlike nearly every computer roleplaying game I’ve played, in Mass Effect you feel like the star of a classic feature film. It plays like a golden era Science Fiction novel with you at the centre of the action. The characters, setting and dialogue are all incredibly convincing (especially the aliens which look real).

People have complained that there is too much dialogue in the game but, frankly, they’re missing the point. If you want a quality shooter you’re playing the wrong game. This isn’t to say that the combat in Mass Effect isn’t fun, it’s a hell of alot of fun, but if you want non-stop action unfettered by all that pesky talking then get Gears of War or Crisis or any of the miriad of First Person Shooters out there. Don’t assume that the only application for quality 3D graphics is the wholesale destruction of countless foes and interactive environments. Mass Effect proves that games have the the potential to be powerful, story driven and visually stunning all at once and is serious ammunition for the “games as art” argument. If you enjoy computer roleplaying games (or for that matter, pen and paper roleplaying games) then I strongly recommend you purchase Mass Effect.

Those interested can compare Mass Effect prices here.

(This is not a paid advertisement, I just really want people to purchase this game to encourage Bioware to make more)