Saturday, June 26, 2010

Witchering Hours

At the end of my last post, I hinted at my weariness of Bioware's binary approach to narration and character building: Paragon vs. Renegade, Sith vs. Jedi, Light Path vs. Dark Path (am I the only one who remembers Jade Empire?). Dragon Age is a welcome departure from such dichotomies, though your companions' and their approval of you produces a similar sort of judgment system. Don't get me wrong, I love the game (I'll be writing on it soon) and I love Bioware, but I think CDProjekt beat them to the punch where dark, morally ambiguous fantasy is concerned. I am referring of course to their excellent first effort, The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.

I love icons and symbols, and The Witcher's badge is a mean piece of work.

The source material, Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski's series of novels by the same name, is rich and ripe for a videogame adaptation. Both the books and the game are centered around The Witcher Geralt of Rivia. And what is a Witcher you ask? They are mutant white-haired badasses who get high on toxic alchemy and hunt beasts that go bump in the night. Theirs is a grim and grimy world fraught with feudal greed and supernatural peril. The game does a good job of transmuting this ugliness into a refreshing aesthetic; the world is convincingly and authentically dark, as opposed to being bombastically violent and sexualized.


I am only in the beginning of the game's massive 80+ hour quest, but the writing so far has been superb, and the story telling has been intriguingly receptive to interpretation. An example at the cost of a minor spoiler: In the first chapter, you are confronted by a lynch mob that blames a witch for summoning a hellhound that haunts their town. It is up to you to determine whether she is guilty, (and she is a scheming, feisty, seductive thing), or if the townspeople summoned the creature with their own misdeeds. After you make your call, you live with the consequences. There is no definitive truth revealed after the fact, no slider creeping toward saintliness or descending into antipathy, no "Morrigan disapproves." The game is about interpreting situations as opposed to making obvious moral judgment calls.

Now this is what a badass looks like. Haggard, scarred, but graceful as well, and positively lousy with sharp things. I mean, he's got a huge hook just hanging out on his belt!

The gameplay itself is also admirable, if awkwardly situated between third-person action and traditional western role playing tactics. The combat, even in the enhanced edition, seems like it would really glisten if it had just a little bit longer in the kiln, but I still prefer it to the often tedious, micromanaged tactics of Dragon Age and Neverwinter. The progression system is particularly praiseworthy; a blend of Final Fantasy X's sphere grid and Diablo II's skill trees. Each level up is an opportunity for customization and gaining multiple new powers. The game's alchemy system is also a nice addition, as it really reinforces the ritualistic, "Eye of Newt" approach to magic, while applying another layer of strategy and preparation to combat. I even found the game's "trading card" approach to sexual conquest to be an amusing tongue-in-cheek commentary on videogame romances. No, really. It's certainly no more crass than Mass Effect's Paramour achievements.



Speaking of collectibles, the enhanced edition includes a bounty of bonus loot: a music CD, a making-of DVD, and my favorites; a short story and a map of the fantasy world. They don't often make 'em like that anymore kids, I tell you what. My hopes are high for the sequel, though truth be told, I don't think I'll be able to complete the first game's sprawling campaign before it hits. There's no question of whether you'll be getting enough bang for your buck here though. If you want fantasy action that isn't afraid of gray areas, give ol' Geralt a try. You won't be disappointed.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Bioware used Sequel! It's Super (Mass) Effective!

It's been a hell of a long time since I wrote a videogame review. Let's fix that right now! My playing habits for the last academic year have been largely dominated by two little words: Mass Effect.

Note the strong blue hues of this poster, and how they compare to the reds of the sequel. Color coding series might be trite, but it's a trend I approve of.

The first game in the series was a deeply flawed experience. I can't think of a more underwhelming opening to a videogame than puttering around on through The Citadel, gathering evidence of Saren's bad behavior. In addition to the pacing issues, the combat system was ambitious (squad based shooting + RPG action!) but deeply flawed (gunplay was simultaneously silted and detached) and buggy to boot (I got stuck in prone position during the Matriarch Benezia fight: twice). The inventory system was sloppy and required constant attention. Despite these complaints, the game grew on me like mold on a raspberry. I liked the characters and the writing, which while very conventional, was sharp. I also liked how each alien race seemed to personify certain philosophical doctrines.

For example, the Asari, an 'all female' race of blue skinned psychics capable of reproducing with any other race via mental coitus, can be thought of as the ultimate feminists. In contrast, the brutish Krogans who consider headbutts to be a normal part of conversation, are perfect avatars for the adolescent male Id. The migrant Quarians who have been driven from their home world by their own robotic slaves, could be considered Space Jews, for lack of a more politically correct term. Throughout your journey, you amass a staggering body of information on these various races and their cultures in the games codex. Players can safely ignore all these little logistic details, but I was delighted to learn how Element Zero actually works.

All in all Mass Effect ended up being a fun experience overall. But it really doesn't hold a candle to it's sequel. The game literally opens with a bang and while the plot remains faithful to familiar sci-fi conventions, it is far more engaging than it's forerunner because you are repeatedly confronted by the consequences of your decisions. Did you threaten the eternally annoying Conrad Verner with a gun? Nice shootin', Tex. He'll be running around the sequel pretending to be the Goddamn batman. I would have liked to see some of your decisions, like the fate of the council, to have some appreciable influence on the way the plot unfolds, but running into familiar faces (and a few people you will have inevitably forgotten) has a certain charm.



Mass Effect 2 is one of the most successful videogame sequels I have ever played.


More significantly, Bioware made good on the unrealized gameplay promises of their first game. Mass Effect 2 successfully marries squad based third-person shooting to RPG strategy and abilities. While it lacks the verticality of modern 3rd person titles, ME2's gunplay feels tight and satisfying, if a little less visceral than 'dedicated' shooting and action titles. The over-involved inventory system has been replaced with a system centered around buying, 'researching' and upgrading. Gone are the hated mako sections, (though there is DLC available involving a jet Hovercraft that are similar and more fun). The most important upgrade is undoubtedly the addition of quick time events that allow you to act or interfere with cut-scenes in ways that have meaningful effects on the story. Usually, these events boil down to left clicking or right clicking to behave like a Paragon (fluffy diplomat) or a Renegade (borderline psychotic hard-ass). As tired as I am of this binary approach to character growth, this system makes conversations and other non-combative exchanges far more involving than in previous titles.


ME2 is not without it's faults, however. While the sequel never suffers from the monotonous pacing that plagued the first game, it does feel rigidly formulaic at times, particularly during the Loyalty Missions; side-quests that are supposed to deepen and characterize Shepard's supporting crew. Some missions, like Tali's, are quite inventive and they do an admirable job of expanding both the world and its characters. Others, like Jacob's, seem to prove that the writers had no idea what to do with certain characters. The most criminal aspect of the loyalty missions however, is that the third member of your squad turns into a mute, irrelevant mannequin. The game will tease you with potential tension between crew members, but they could do so much more with this in-fighting. It would also be interesting to see romance bud between somebody other than Shepard and his female crew members. Maybe Tali and Garrus could have a thing, only for it to adversely affect their performance during missions? Just a little food for thought.

Given that Mass Effect 2 was received with nearly universal critical acclaim, it will be interesting to see if Bioware plays things safe in act three, or if they continue to push the envelope with innovation. Most videogame companies strongly abide by the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought. I'm still hoping they'll surprise me again.

Friday, June 18, 2010

A Gamer Romance

I first encountered Scott Pilgrim in a freshman seminar on comic books. Somebody brought in volumes 1 & 2 as examples of Indie Comic books, and I remember randomly flipping to a page where a guy died and turned into an item box containing a Mithril Skateboard which tragically goes to waste because the main character didn't pick skateboard proficiency in the fifth grade. Somebody prodded me to pass the book along, but I had seen enough. I was in love. But I was also younger and dumber and more easily distracted, so it took four more years and an awesome movie trailer before I actually remembered to buy the damn books and give them a read.

This is what volume one (of five) looks like. Most major booksellers will be stocking them to cash-in on the movie buzz.

At first, I intended to read the books and write about them after seeing the movie, but after devouring all five volumes in three days, I decided the comic merited a post of its own. The series taps directly into the casually violent, attention-deficient energy of the gamer subculture and blends it with the lyrical awkwardness of the hipsters. The main character is a proud underachiever and the bassist of a humble bedroom band, yet there is also a sort of soft elitism in play thanks to the staggering number of obscure videogame references; I'm not talking about "Big Bang Theory" name-droppings either; most of them are clever gags that you can only appreciate if you've played the titles in question. In addition to all that, the series displays the same sort of brilliant self-awareness and self-deprecation that was evident in Arrested Development. All these elements blend beautifully to make a beverage that does not only feel fresh, but long over-due.

Despite all of its absurd post modernity, the series' premise is remarkably simple and romantic: Scott Pilgrim must defeat Ramona Flower's Seven Evil Exes to pursue a real relationship. She is literally the woman of his dreams, as she uses extra-dimensional shortcuts, or "subspace highways" that pass through Scott's subconscious. This concept of subspace is not only a nice nod at Super Mario Bros. 2, but a fitting metaphor for the internet's role in online dating. Social networking sites map out the geography of social anxiety. When you're crushing on somebody, you Facebook-stalk them and you are stalked in turn by their status updates; haunting pieces of minutiae from a life you're not actually a privy to. I don't think Brian Lee O'Malley ever intended to get all allegorical with Pilgrim; the books seem far too humble for that. But they can work on multiple levels. The concept of fighting the fast to pursue the present is old as dirt, but stylized video-gamic violence puts a unique twist on things.

Word around the interwebs is that the final chapter in Scott's saga will be out on July 20th. It can't come soon enough.

The characters really sell the stories though. Scott is wonderfully flawed but totally endearing. Ramona...well actually, Ramona's character is kind of weak, but Wallace Wells (Scott's gay roomie/guru), Kim Pine (Scott's sardonic Ex-girlfriend/drummer) and the evil exes (psychic vegan douchebags, chubby half-ninja lesbians and surprisingly nice skateboarders turn superstars) are all incredible. They are people you want to spend time with. Honestly, I'm a little bit nervous about the movie's casting. While the visual style looks incredible, Cera seems a bit too wimpy and reserved to play Scott and I was also disappointed at the decision to go with a Caucasian Wallace Wells.  The side scrolling beat'em up based on the books however, looks incredible. It will be interesting to see how things turn out. Look for my review on the movie and game later this summer!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

On Prince of Persia and The Problem with Videogame Movie Adaptations

Videogames and Hollywood share an unfortunate history. The 1993 film adaptation of Super Mario Bros, with it’s uncharacteristically dark interpretation of the game’s whimsical Mushroom Kingdom, set a trend of videogame film failures that continues to this day. Mario’s failure was followed by hasty adaptations of the popular fighting game series, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. The early aught’s adaptations of the popular Tomb Raider and Resident Evil franchises saw bigger budgets and larger returns, but failed to rise above mediocrity. Hopes and expectations were at an all time high for Hollywood’s most recent videogame venture, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. According to movie-rating aggregation site Rottentomatoes.com, Prince constitutes “…A substantial improvement over most video game adaptations,” even though it holds a meager ranking of 39% positive reviews. With a budget of $200 million and experienced talent such as Jerry Bruckheimer, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Sir Ben Kingsley, one cannot help but wonder where things went wrong.



It must be noted that videogame adaptations of movies suffer from a similar lack in quality. For gamers, it is all but a forgone conclusion that titles released alongside summer blockbusters and holiday season epics will be shovelware: under-developed, derivative software that is designed to capitalize on the film’s hype. By and large, gamers ignore these cheap cash-ins. Sometimes a quality release will be overlooked because it is a licensed property, as was the case with the cult classic, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay, the videogame prequel to the 2004 science fiction film The Chronicles of Riddick. Fittingly enough, the new Prince of Persia game released alongside the feature film has met with lukewarm reviews.

Gamers have a much harder time ignoring poor film adaptations of their favorite franchises however. This is partially due to the fact that gamers are, amongst other things, extremely passionate fans. After witnessing an atrocious trilogy of videogame adaptations, videogamers created an online petition to try to convince German filmmaker Uwe Boll to stop making videogame related movies altogether. There is much more than nostalgia at stake when a game is adapted for the silver screen, however. A videogame’s debut on the silver screen is its introduction to the public at large. It opens the experience of that videogame’s fictional universe to people who have never played videogames before. If an adaptation is shallow, bombastic and incoherent, it reflects poorly on that specific title, and the videogame medium as a whole, reinforcing the popular beliefs that games are unsophisticated and juvenile.

But is this portrayal of videogame narratives inaccurate? In her article, “Why You Will Never Be Happy With Video Game Films,” videogaming journalist Leigh Alexander suggests that the primary problem with videogame movies are videogame narratives. Alexander begins by her discussion with an examination of Resident Evil: Degeneration, a computer animated, direct-to-disc short film based on the popular game franchise. Unlike Paul Anderson’s trilogy of live-action movies based on the popular game series, Degeneration was developed by series’ creators Capcom, and set within the same continuity as the videogames. While Paul Anderson attempted to explain and contextualize the zombie virus that wreaks havoc in the videogame in his films, Degeneration does away with exposition altogether in favor of action. Alexander suggests that fans of the videogames will likely be more receptive to Degeneration, despite its narrative incoherence, because it is truer to their experience of the games than Anderson’s live-action films.
Alexander concedes, “Perhaps to an extent; unfamiliar with the language of games, films often mistranslate a title's appeal.”

This does not appear to be what happened with the movie adaptation of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, however. On the contrary, the film’s creators seem well aware of the fact that they are batting against the odds with their adaptation. Jordan Mechner, creator of the 2003 hit video game on which the movie is based, worked closely with executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer to capture the feel of the game. In an interview with the popular videogame news blog Kotaku, screen writer Doug Miro also professed Bruckheimer’s respect for the source material, and stated, “It still hasn't been proven that a game movie can be done. The perception is that it can't." Miro is hopeful that Prince would turn the tide for videogame movies, just as X-men and Spider-man opened the floodgates to comic-book adaptations.

Being somewhat jaded by previous adaptations, I was pleasantly surprised by the film’s familiarity and respect for its source material. Subtle details such as costuming and set design were immaculately reproduced. There was a great deal of skepticism about the decision to cast Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular prince, but his acrobatic heroics and wry wit accurately captured the spirit of the game’s protagonist. The filmmakers clearly interpreted the game’s charm faithfully and accurately. Yet the movie was not nearly as engaging as the game it was based on. What went wrong?

Alexander’s article presents one possible explanation; “The dominant problem [with videogame films], though, is that the narratives of games are unfortunately not nearly as sophisticated, intelligent, affecting or entertaining as we think they are.” There is no denying the simplicity of the average videogame narratives. Their characters tend to be archetypical, and their plots fall into familiar patterns. But Alexander’s phrasing captures an important detail: Gamers genuinely perceive their experiences in games to be complex, rich narratives.

Jesper Juul examines the unique difficulties of translating narratives between different media in his article “Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narrative.” To clarify what is being translated, Juul uses Seymour Chatman’s model to divide narrative into Discourse (the telling of the story) and Story. The latter constituent is further divided into Existents (characters, settings, objects) and Events.


Discourse
Story
Existents
Events
Narrative



Juul uses the example of Atari’s 1983 Star Wars arcade game to demonstrate how these narrative building blocks can be rearranged and garbled in the shift from a non-interactive media to an interactive one. The arcade game is solely based on ‘the death star’ sequence of Star Wars: A New Hope, with the player assuming control of a virtual X-wing fighter. There is no Darth Vader or Han Solo. No Tatooine or Millenium Falcon. Any contextual knowledge of the Galatic Empire and the Rebel Alliance is contingent on the arcade cabinet’s art and the player’s knowledge of the film. In addition to excising these crucial existents from the story, the arcade game offers outcomes that directly betray the events of the movie; the player can fail to blow up the Death Star, loosing the game. If the player succeeds in destroying the Death Star, a second one will appear, also betraying the events of the first movie, (though it is amusing to note that the threat of the death star is revived in Return of the Jedi). Clearly, the components of story are subject to warping and fragmentation in the transition from movie to games.

It must be said that Juul’s example is something of a strawman; videogame technology has come a long way since Atari arcade machines, and modern examples of the form are much more capable of telling complicated narratives. Eidos’ and LucasArt’s Lego Star Wars series follows the events of the films quite faithfully (albeit through the filter of Legos). Juul does acknowledge the emergence of “cut-scenes” in games, non-interactive sequences where the player must watch instead of play, but he over-emphasizes their relationship to Existents and Events. I would argue that this mixed presentation is a discursive decision. Alternating between “non-interactive” narration and the capacity for play creates a very complicated relationship between audience and “text.”

Jull acknowledges that his model fails to account for the avant-garde. Movie-watching can be an interactive, discursive experience. Scenes may be interpreted in a variety ways and craft may be analyzed and appreciated on many levels. I would even argue that choosing to simply “receive” the given visual narrative at face value, constitutes a meaningful interpretative decision. Obviously, in videogames the prevalence of interactivity is much more pronounced. The vast majority of ‘the narrative’ will not progress unless you play, (unlike film) and this strongly influences players’ relationships with the game and its characters. Even though the game’s frame narrative is fictitious, the player’s interactions with the game’s rules; his losses and his victories; are real.

I believe this complicated interaction accounts for player’s deep narrative investment in games. Repeatedly experiencing, and eventually overcoming failure over the course of a narrative makes the quest unpredictable and exciting. It creates a second order narratological system, not unlike the second order semiological system Roland Barthes’ uses to describe the mythological. Each isolated victory and defeat in play, carried out in accordance with the game’s ‘text;’ the language established by it’s rules, graphics, and control interfaces can be likened to a single completed story. The sum total of these stories creates the gamers experience with the game as a whole. As with Barthes’ model, I present the following spacialization is only a metaphor:


Discourse (game text)
Story (game text)
Discourse
(game play)
Story (Game play)
Existents
Events
Existents
Events
(game play) Narrative
Narrative (game text)


When a gametext is transferred to a movie, writers not only need to flesh out the simplistic, conventional characters that currently define the videogame genre; they must also create a more structured, faster paced experience. My greatest complaint concerning the Prince of Persia film is that the fabled Dagger of Time; a weapon with the power to rewind time; sees very little use in the actual movie. In the videogame, players must use the daggers rewinding mechanic frequently to undo botched jumps and fights. It was a revolutionary mechanic for videogames, because it situated a players’ ability to come back from the dead within the narrative context of the game. Contrary to Juul’s assertion that “Game’s are almost always chronological,” I would argue that the stories of videogames are inherently circular. To experience them is to replay them, time and again, exploring their various permutations. Movies are experienced in a single narrative line, regardless of whether the chronology of their plot is shuffled or not.

I suspect that videogame movies will become more successful when their uni-directional narratives start to leverage the circular discourse of gameplay. It is interesting to note that these types of gamic trends are already surfacing in non-videogame movies. Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland features a number of these visual motifs that evoke a videogame feel, including richly stylized violence and a number of “rules” for survival that are represented by colorful icons, reminiscent of “achievement” graphics. One scene even depicts a “zombie killer of the week,” a wink at online scoreboards for multiplayer games. More recently, these trends were evident in Kick-Ass, which featured elaborately choreographed violence, an intense first-person shooting sequence, and a murderous child-hero. The trailer of the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is rife with videogame graphics and sound effects. As a gamer, it is gratifying to see these motifs and patterns migrate to the mainstream, and I look forward to the day that Hollywood does a videogame adaptation justice.