We All Fall Down

On the role of role

  • Reading time:5 mins read

See. The big advance in FFX, as far as the series goes, is in narrative and all that it relates to. The game system underneath is just the same as always — one that leads you to dissect it in such a way as you do; to think about its characters and overall world in Pokemon terms. Some of the relative sophistication is dulled by holding back and masking the player’s involvement with Game, lowering the relationship between player and character to trainer and racing pony.

That ain’t a healthy relationship. It’s akin to the horce-race coverage of local elections that you will see on the news. The point isn’t who’s ahead, and what numbers they can come up with; the point is the issues at stake, that have a broad or specific effect upon us, upon our world.

What is required here is a whole shift of our frame of reference, of our expectations.

The question is, what specifically or generally might illustrate a place to shift it.

As far as the relationship of a character and his world, I like the image of Shenmue, crossed with the likes of Elder Scrolls or Fable. On a level.

How, then — to take that as-is, for the moment — to integrate this with a game system, game world like those in FFXII? What else would be required? To strip away the mask that numbers and statistics and superimposed gimmicks present, and to put yourself in the position of the characters you control and face, what is missing? This is a subtle question; it deals with psychology more than anything. What do we need, to make our lives meaningful, comfortable, believable? What is real, what is false, on an internal level, and why?

The challenge is to come up with some framework which will allow the player to directly channel whatever the answers might be, without the architecture getting in the way, emotionally. This is not a matter of simply taking away the superficial elements that you happen to enjoy, but to be rid of the very reasons why you would want to prop yourself up with them. I’m pretty sure, were such a thing to exist, you would have no reason to lament the loss of the system; rather, when presented with the alternative, you would be wondering why you had been leaning on it for so long.

Me, I don’t have the answers. I’m just watching.

Thing is: if you go back to the origin of these systems, the pen-and-paper RPG, and you play the game correctly, the stats stand in for abstract or complex ideas: how much damage a person can take before dying, and how likely he is to hit a monster; values and properties that would otherwise be difficult to keep track of. The purpose of these statistics is to enable everyone concerned to deal with complex situations and conflicts, which might arise during play. The intended focus is upon the interaction amongst the players: upon picking a role, and thinking within it and within the world presented to you by the narrator — the DM. An RPG is about exploring an alternate life. The rules do not dictate; they empower.

This is, of course, not how people always play it; for many people, the organizational system — a tool which exists to make the experience easier to manage — has become confused with the game itelf, transforming the system into a bureaucratic trap, and the process of playing an unhealthy exercise in tunnel-vision. And that’s the whole problem we’re discussing.

These systems are a convenience; they only exist, in principle, to enhance the core ideals at stake in the experience. If the systems are no longer doing their job correctly, then let’s find a new structure that will work with contemporary technology to address those ideals; that will be a tool instead of a distraction, once more.

The question is raised: “If, however, you remove all of the systems that people have come to associate with the RPG, will a game still be recognizable as such?”

I think so. Again, it all depends on burrowing back down to the essence of what an RPG is trying to illustrate. If it’s there, people will feel it.

A decent comparative model might be our definitions for different genres of fiction: tragedy, comedy, farce. Each of these has a specific definition, which tends to be tied to a certain combination of defined human emotions and certain models of human behavior, desire, and ambition. The colors can be combined in any way you desire, clearly; such is the manner of life.

Nevertheless, there are certain keys to the RPG which are not present in the shooter, in the (closely-related) adventure game, in the platformer. There are certain real human traits that these genres exist to placate, stir, or simply acknowledge. It might be helpful to dig up what these are, if we are to do much of human meaning with this medium. Then we can build with them.

Actually.

I think I have hit upon why videogames remain an immature form of expression: the focus remains generally upon the method of execution rather than the underlying themes.

In other media, genres are generally classified in terms of what they have to say about life. In videogames, genres tend to be broken down by the actual game mechanics — by the process, rather than the goal. This is rather a shortsighted approach, akin to the way one sees life as a child.

I think this is something to revise, someday.

[For more discussion, see this thread.]

Missing Pieces

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The message I get from Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is: “Hey, we’re making a movie and we’re totally basing it on a Charlie Kaufman script. Isn’t that trippy? Isn’t that cool?”

The message I get from the supplementary material is “Oh my god, George Clooney is such a great director! He has, like, ideas and stuff! He doesn’t even give himself more takes than the other actors!”

I am sure this is all true.

First-Place Pathos

  • Reading time:1 mins read

The success music in Excitebike is oddly touching.

This seems to come mostly from the interval between notes three and four. Or perhaps it’s just the leap up to the third note, and the need to resolve that somewhere. Yet, what an unusual place to resolve.

To then resolve that measure into the syncopated riff of measure two — well. There’s something going on here.

After that point, Hip Tanaka just winds the piece up into a crisp, early-NES victory burble. That part is disposable.

The first part, though:

There is some sense of victory, or weak recognition of joy — yet it comes through a conflicted filter. Even winning is not enough to heal the deep emotional wounds our heroic racer has faced. Now it is time for him to walk off into fate and the sunset, his mission complete. We will never see him again — though sometimes, when the smell of nitro arrives on a summer breeze, we shall remember.

Someone remix it for me, please, and bring this quality out.

Mega hurt

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Jesus, Megaman 3 is hard.

…

Despite the uninspiring music and level design, and second-class boss design, I might have a higher estimation of the game were I able to beat a level or two. Maybe once, in fourteen years.

A criticism often levied against the second game — indeed the only frequent one I hear — is that it is too easy. Usually it’s the hardcore assholes who lay the claim, although other, less hardcore, sometimes not-at-all-assholes sometimes agree. I have always found the US version of the game at just the right level: tough enough to hold my attention, while forgiving enough that I can play the damned thing.

As regards the follow-up, I just don’t understand the appeal here. Were the game itself rewarding enough to drive me through the frustration, that would be fine. Megaman III, though, makes me feel even worse than when I play Ninja Gaiden III. At least the latter game is such a bizarre failure that I am compelled by a dark curiosity. Megaman III isn’t so charming as to be poor. It’s just dull. Way too dull to be way too hard. It seems to expect me to bring my own baggage: to play it, and like it, just because I played and liked its predecessor.

Then, I have never enjoyed Streets of Rage II as much as the first game. I feel Sonic 2 loses a lot of the appeal of the original. I don’t enjoy King of Fighters 2000 or ’97 nearly as much as the chapters to which they are mere upgrades. Perhaps the game is just too polished for my tastes. Perhaps the implicit inertia in its design and execution offends me on some level that I cannot justify in rational terms.

Or perhaps I’m just not hardcore enough.

I guess I can live with that.

The Shooting

  • Reading time:4 mins read

In a sense, the interaction in a shooter is about the most basic interaction available in the medium. You reach out and touch your environment by sending out a “ping”; a probe. As you mention, the shooter is the original videogame — starting with SpaceWar. Even Pong operates on a similar principle, really. It’s just… backwards, kind of, in that the “bullet” is coming toward you, and you’re trying to catch it. (I don’t quite like this model as much.)

All through the medium, shooting more or less equates to exploration. In Metroid, you test the walls, and get a feeling for your environment, by shooting at them and it. In Asteroids and Centipede, your shooting shapes the very gameworld.

It was something of a revolutionary leap to switch away from this mechanic in Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. — that whole thread that I was mumbling about before. In that model, you’re no longer pecking at the environment from afar but personally running around and punching and gobbling and jumping through it. Sort of interesting to tie this into what I was saying earlier. Not sure how it all goes together.

…

Mizuguchi went back to a rail shooter for Rez for a reason: he wanted a clean slate; to strip away all of the junk we have piled on top of the medium for the last few decades, and make the most basic videogame he could, that would still be palatable to a contemporary audience. There’s nothing more basic than a shooter. This is ground one, for videogames. Everything else is built on, or exists in rebellion against, this mechanic. Mizuguchi then tried to find just how much he could express with this mechanism — to show, in part, that it’s not the game system which necessarily drives a game, on an artisic, on an emotional level. Also, just to show how much can be said with how little — and thereby to ask why we have come to tend to express so little with so much.

This is why I like Rez — just the whole way it disassembles our whole notion of the videogame, and shows how it might be used more well than it has been.

I’m really curious what his next step might be.

Parts of the above, combined with parts of what I said about Gradius V

POWER IS… LOSING CONTROL… UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I would still like to be able to duck, in Morrowind.

I mean. There are two buttons mapped to the menu. There is both an action button and an action-after-you-have-drawn-a-weapon-or-readied-a-spell button. That’s kind of a waste. You can save two buttons there. Put attack on the face action button, and put, say, duck on the trigger. Then allow me to put run on the other face button, so I am not forced to use analog, if I do not wish. As it is, I keep finding myself running when I do not mean to. It will feel better, to my sensibilities, if running is turned into a conscious decision, rather than just a side effect of trying to get somewhere. Or if I have that option, anyway.

I further wonder why both the left stick and the D-pad move the character. Yet more repetition! Yet more waste! Why not allow the player to map four different functions to the pad!

So. Here is my idea of a (fully remappable) control scheme — some of which would entail altering the game mechanics somewhat:

Left stick: character movement (with an analog on/off function)
Right stick: camera movement
Left trigger: jump
Right trigger: ready shield
A: action
B: run
X: sneak
Y: menu (notebook would be included here)
White: use item 1 (equipped on belt, say)
Black: use item 2
D-pad left/down: ready spell
D-pad right/up: ready weapon
Start: pause/save/load
Back: rest
L-stick click: duck
R-stick click: camera change

Yes. This would be nice.

The cat, at some point since last I was in the living room, turned on the PS2 by itself. Somehow.

Again with the objectivity

  • Reading time:2 mins read

On a certain level, you could argue that Super Mario Bros. signalled one of the most drastic changes to the superficial in the history of videogames.

>That’s only true if you fully accept the maxim that All That Is Important Is Gameplay, defining all other aspects of presentation and style as “superficial”.

No, it isn’t.

Super Mario Bros. introduced a bevy of new(-ish), and useful, gameplay concepts. It introduced little new in terms of character or story, over games that had existed long before.

The most significant problem that the game fleshed-out into the form we see it now, is the one first popularized in Pac-Man: preference for a rigid pre-established world template, to explore and master, over a more complex series of dynamics, as in, say, many of the earlier works of Ed Logg, where the player’s actions determine the nature of the gameworld, and thereby the future of the game.

I’m being simplistic, sure. There are plenty of counter-examples you could find, were you so inclined, of previous games with this structure. There is plenty you could provide to argue that this concrete storybook objectivenesss was the direction that games were moving in anyway, or that this is where they always sat. And for that matter, Super Mario Bros. is not so much a culprit here as is the whole design culture that it insipired. But there you go. Super Mario Bros. more or less shaped the modern videogame. Most of what exists now does because of the concepts in that game.

Of course, this is how games became popular. First Pac-Man, then Super Mario Bros. You give something obvious to latch onto, emotionally. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. It’s a natural creative impulse. I just kind of wish that games had gotten a little further before this objective quality took over, overriding so much potential for abstract potentiality.

…

This is also, to a certain extent, why I so dislike the Super NES, and why the Zelda series has been a bore to me after the second game. I just wish developers would quit giving me overt toys to play with, within a specific framework — action figures and playsets — rather than a framework where my presence actually makes a difference.

I would like to matter.

Don’t Fear the Leaches

  • Reading time:5 mins read

Gemstone indeed seems to be rather smarter than Gladstone was — at least, toward the end of its second run.

Beyond the format and title reorganization (with the two premiere comics — $crooge and WDC&S — for the fans, the two standard titles — Mouse and Duck — for the casual newsstand audience, and the digest — DDA — for the impulse, give-to-the-kid-to-shut-him-up-for-a-few-hours market), they seem to acknowledge how to organize the material itself.

I tried to find a few Gemstone books for Free Comic Book Day. Hard task. They don’t seem to have all that great a distribution, as yet. Although, oddly, I kept finding posters with the classic cover to Barks’s one Mouse title, “The Riddle of the Red Hat”. Offhand, that seemed a strange choice. Even stranger if Gemstone’s comics aren’t actually available. The best I could find was the DDA digest — which, when surreptitiously removed from its folded-over comic bag, revealed itself to contain nothing but throwaway Italian Duck fare. I think the highest-grade was the likes of Scarpa. Basically filler. Kind of disappointing, as I was expecting some really long adventure tales (as the title, and the history of its use, would tend to suggest).

The Virgin Megastore, however, yielded a special Gemstone promotional issue, designed specifically for Free Comic Book Day. On the one side, Mouse. On the other, $crooge. Inside, a subscription card. Curious.

Further research reveals that the contents include the first (of only three) Barks encounters between $crooge and Glomgold and, indeed, “The Riddle of the Red Hat”. Although initially disappointing, as I was on a hunt for Rosa — or at least Van Horn — and I already have the entire Carl Barks Library in both hardbound and album form (trading cards included) — I began to realize that this was probably intentional.

In the Gemstone books I have read thus far, I have seen not a single Barks story — strange, in a sense, as even with the multiple full printings of his run, Gladstone had a tendency to reprint his work at every opportunity (to the point that it began to drive me nuts). Then again, Gemstone has a lot of Rosa and Van Horn to catch up on — as well as Jippes and some other B-plus-level writers and artists.

It’s more than that, though. As I prove on my hunt, new Rosa and Van Horn work is book-pushing material. This is the headliner stuff. On one level, Gemstone isn’t going to blow it on a promo issue, when they can use it to sell some of their major titles. On the other hand, Barks has been done to death. There is no need for him in the major titles except in a severe content draught. For a promo, though? Well. The rules are different.

I get the impression that this issue has a much wider distribution than the normal comics. Gemstone wants to pull in readers; to get out the message that they are around, and that Disney comics are being published. What better way to do this than with a two-way issue, including both the Mouse — which people associate with Disney, even if his comic life has been mostly uneventful save some refitted Godfredson serials — and $crooge, who is really the star of Disney comics, to anyone who knows a thing about them. Draw them in with the icon, and get them reading the real material.

Further, what better introduction to $crooge than Barks? And what better Barks story than an eventful one, such as his first meeting with his arch-nemesis, Glomgold? It’s also a rather poignant story. There is also the possible nostalgia factor, where old readers might be attracted by a new glimpse of “The Good Duck Artist”, from years ago. The only question now is what halfway-interesting Mouse material is available? There really isn’t much, again, unless you care to reprint a Phantom Blot serial — which would both look sloppy and be way too long. Unless, perhaps, you remember that one short Mouse tale that Barks did. It’s something of a rarity. You really only see it turn up once every decade, if that. Not a bad opportunity, this, to drag it out again.

So if Barks is promotional material, and Rosa and Van Horn are headline material, then what’s with all of the mediocre material in the DDA books? Simple: It’s a place to put it. No real use putting high-interest content in a digest, which you generally put by the toilet or throw in the back of a car. This is not high-concentration material. These books exist to fill time. So, in a sense, they are just asking for filler. The comparative junk that, in previous eras, would have cluttered the main books and caused nasty letters, is perfect fare here.

Gemstone is starting to remind me of Playmore.

I see this as a good thing.

Frickin’ Fantasy XII

  • Reading time:7 mins read

It’s one of those laws. If you say anything negative about Final Fantasy, you’re just asking for trouble. To be fair, the complaints I have gotten have generally been civil. I just haven’t had much patience to reply in any helpful manner.

>I see gameplay in an RPG to be a bonus if it is really great gameplay.

If a game is designed well, it is designed well. This genre is developmentally stunted, as a whole. The reason you say this is that you have not seen what greater expressive potential would be possible, were the design philosophy intrinsic to this genre as mature in its development as it could be, at this point in the overall history of game design and in the evolution of game hardware. Pretty much anything is possible now — yet developers have not yet caught up with this potential; increased their ambitions to fit it, and find a new set of limits of expression within the medium; preferring to stay with the same limited design decisions that they have, more or less, been using since the 1980s — decisions which were instituted at the time merely because of the inherent limitations in technology and in design theory at the time.

This is a problem in all genres. It’s just that RPGs are the most prominent example. In a broad sense, they have not grown to fit their bigger shoes. Developers are more or less doing the same dumb things they always have, out of habit — or out of a lack of understanding for what these design concepts originally stood for, or why they were instituted. Or because the audience itself has not matured enough to ask for something more substantial.

You must understand that videogames are not what they could be, artistically. There are few developers at present who are actively trying to explore the expressive power of the medium; the rest are content with absentmindedly churning out reiterations of games which have already been made dozens of times in the past — games which worked, once, in a specific context. They might have even been clever for their time, for the solutions to contemporary hardware and design problems that they happened to find. What so many people fail to understand, however, is that those solutions are relevant within a specific context — timeframe, developer, hardware — alone.  The solutions that Shigeru Miyamoto found and applied within Super Mario Bros. were ingenious for that moment, for that game, for that history. They were an evolution of ideas that Miyamoto nurtured through several previous games: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Mario Bros. Although some of the principles that he developed in that game — such as his general concept of level design, whereby the game implicitly teaches you how to play it without ever telling you what to do, as such — will probably always be applicable in one sense or another. Others are inherent to that game, to that one man. They are his ideas. Anyone else who uses them as-such — who just takes them and sticks them into his own project, without understanding why the ideas existed to begin with — is making a big mistake. Those parts of that project will be false, because they do not come from the subject at hand. They do not grow out of what this second person is attempting to accomplish. They are an easy and proven solution, yes — yet within their context. This new person, with this new project, has created a new context. And that new context, especially with knowledge of what has come before, demands a new series of questions and demands a new series of solutions which evolve from the demands at hand.

Here. Take a look at what Toru Iwatani has to say. It’s interesting.

http://www.insertcredit.com/features/gdc2004/iwatani.html

The techniques that Yuji Horii created for Dragon Quest are great for Horii and for Dragon Quest. They are his own ideas, which suit what he is personally trying to accomplish. The gameplay choices he makes are perfect for his games. Outside Horii, the situation is different. The question has to rise: what are we trying to accomplish here, and what is the best way to realize that, given current technology and what we understand so far about the potential of game design? If, in the case of, say, a Final Fantasy game, our goal is to tell a story, then how rich a story can we tell? What kind of a story? What manner of game design would lend itself most well to what we wish to accomplish within that story? Ideally, the game design would be invisible. You would not distinguish between it and the ultimate goal of the project — because the design itself would come from that goal. It would be designed in order to facilitate that goal. The game design itself, the game play itself, would be part of that story, and the story would come from the gameplay.

It’s not like this is hard, today. Take a game like, oh, Metroid Prime. The goal in that game, really, is exploration: communication with the environment. To facilitate this, the game is set in a first-person perspective. That way, you’re left looking at the game world rather than Samus’s ass. The game has a rather profound story to tell, yet to do this it draws from the main goal of the game, and from the established gameplay decisions. It is in the process of playing the game, and of inspecting the environment, learning about the game world, that the story unfolds.

Although story is secondary or tertiary in this particular framework, and it evolves organically out of the more primary elements of design, without interfering with them, you see the structure. There is no reason why it cannot be turned on its head, such that the gameplay, the overall design, evolves from the story. If that is the primary goal. Of course, that means that the game design would depend on just what the story is; what its own focus is; what the writers hope to get across.

If a gameplay decision does not lend itself to the ultimate goal of the project, directly or indirectly, then it probably doesn’t belong there. It’s the whole deal about too many strokes spoiling the painting. Even more so when the strokes are misjudged to begin with. Or when they are put in place just because that’s the way it’s always been done, or that’s what people expect, rather than because that’s what the painting calls for.

As long as developers continue to cram their ideas into existing, prefabricated molds — which describes most of the persistent mechanical facets that people have a tendency to associate with the RPG genre, in favor of the more integral goal of the genre (mainly, showing the personal growth of one or more people through a set of difficult trials, and what effect their actions along the way might or might not have on the world around them — thereby, with luck, expressing something meaningful about the nature of life) — they will be stuck in a creative rut. They will not grow as artists. The genre will not grow. The medium as a whole will fail to mature.

What I was trying to say, in that preview, is that Final Fantasy XII seems like it might be one big step toward pulling the genre as a whole out of its current rut. Toward making people /think/ about what constitutes an RPG — or just a videogame, in general — and what what they’re really trying to accomplish.

The rest was just a bit of passing commentary, to help explain why I said that.

Vocal Hill

  • Reading time:3 mins read

This is all interesting, particular in the breakdowns of the plot and the character and monster origins for the first two games. Something that strikes me, however, is the marked difference in approach to the third game. Whereas in Silent Hill 1 and 2, the monsters were all consciously designed as manifestations of this or that, and the names for all of the characters and places were carefully (if perhaps overly-so) selected based upon relevent literary references and themes — like Harry and Cheryl’s names originally coming from Kubrick/Nabokov’s Lolita (before some alteration), and James and his wife’s names coming from elements of the Jack the Ripper case — very little of this consideration seems to have gone into Silent Hill 3. Monsters don’t seem to be particularly explained, either in their presence or in their design. They are there because the game needs creepy monsters. Names are increasingly arbitrary. Heather was named after her voice actress. Douglas was named after Douglas Fairbanks, for no particular reason. All of the attention in the creation of the third game seems to have gone into dissection of the plot to the first game, and into attempts to tie up everything prior to some comprehensible framework.

Although impressive in a certain right, I am unsure how truly constructive this approach is — as it kind of overlooks exactly the strengths of the first two games: namely, their ambiguity, and their strong inner motivation to illustrate one or another principle, or theme. Their subjectivity, really. In Silent Hill 3, the role taken by strong central themes in the first two games is usurped, in a manner, by convoluted and overt plotting as a new motivation. An attempt at aimless reason where highly-focued irrationality had previously been the whole reason for being.

This method just strikes me as rather clumsy, in comparison.

I guess that might be part of why Silent Hill 3 reminds me so much more of Biohazard than do the previous games.

EDIT: Notice also how many locations in Silent Hill 3 (once the player actually reaches Silent Hill) are lifted straight from the second game. Same geometry. Same fences still crumpled in the exact same way. Didn’t bother to change a thing, for the purposes of the game at hand. This seems to work into the above, somehow. One monster model is even taken straight from Silent Hill 2, although that should not be, given the explanation for the monsters in the first two games. The director of the third game didn’t seem to much care for these subtleties, though.

E3 Errata

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I really wanted Nanobreaker to be a step toward something excellent — or at least something compelling and odd. Or for it to show that Igarashi knows what he’s doing with 3D games. I don’t think it accomplishes any of this, in the state in which I saw it. I mean. It’s… sort of interesting in the sense that it’s just so damned bloody. Or. I guess Igarashi insists that this isn’t really blood, but oil or something. Whatever it is, it’s red and it’s goopy and it’s everywhere.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Final Fantasy XII

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

I have never been all that hot on Final Fantasy. A few games in the series have managed to amuse me, on one level or another. In general, I am bored by what Square has continually tried to accomplish with this series. I feel often that they have gone in the wrong directions, for the wrong reasons, and have as a result — given how much political influence they have within the design community, and how misdirected and conservative their design philosophy has been — been largely responsible for the lack of substantial evolution in the Japanese console RPG genre which they helped to popularize. They just set a bad popular precedent, for the rest of the industry to follow. And follow, you know the industry will. Biohazard was another problem; Mikami is now on his way toward fixing it. Now, though, I think Square might be on its way to joining Capcom in this trend toward repairing a whole genre.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Myst IV: Revelation

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

This was a surprise; I had heard nothing of a new Myst. I knew about Uru, and I knew of its troubles. It has been a long time since I have bought a PC game, however; I just haven’t had the computer to run anything made after 1997. Then, since there hasn’t been a lot interesting going on with the PC scene since the mid-’90s (unless you’re into whack-a-rat or first-person shooters, or you absolutely must have the fastest graphics card and processor, to show off the newest tech demo), I have for some time felt safe to ignore that whole segment of the industry. Yet, it seems like there is still some activity worth tracking. I think.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Altered Sega

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

There was nothing going on at Sega. Perhaps that’s why they decided to hide the booth in a small room off a little-used hallway, apart from the show floor, where no one who found it did so by accident and few who did intend to take a look remembered to do so. Out of sight, out of mind. Yu Suzuki strolled around, gently sipping his bottomless Coca-Cola. Some other high-level Sega staff sat crosslegged on the carpet in the hall outside, chatting. No one paid attention.

( Continue reading at Insert Credit )

Sunder Land, where all is asunder

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I just beat both scenarios of Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams in one day. In one sitting, really. I first had to play to where I left off in the PS2 version, although that took an atom of the time it did the first time. (I notice that James no longer comments, of a map of the United States, “It’s a picture of something. I’m not sure what.”) Perhaps I was in a better mood or perhaps I was just prepared; the goofy world-logic did not distract me as much, today. Instead, I was distracted by the atmosphere and narrative. This really is a sophisticated game, artistically; one of the most-so I have encountered. Although it falls short on the actual game mechanics, that’s okay. Its mind is elsewhere.

I think I actually respect this even more than the first game, although they are rather different in their approaches and intentions. Where Silent Hill 1has its crushing sense of fear, that makes a person think twice to play it in the dark — or even to play it at all, at times — this does something more subtle. It is about all-encompassing, numbing sorrow and guilt — with all of the haziness and tempermental bursts and aimlessness and self-effacement and strange obsession that come with it. It is a portrait of a man willfully falling apart. A trip through his head, as he fights to either self-destruct entirely or to confront his demons and accept what he has been unwilling to accept. Whatever brings an end to the murmur. The entire game is focused around illustrating that picture.

A common enough theme in literature. In videogames, not so much. It’s too adult a depiction of pain. The scope of the game, by which it does illustrate this theme, is far more ambitious than I am used to. The original Silent Hill deserved enough praise just for being bright enough to understand how fear works better than any of its contemporaries. That seemed like a stroke of genius. This… is something else entirely.

Then Silent Hill 3 seems like an attempt to go mainstream with the series. It plays (and, in general, feels) much more like Biohazard than either of the first two games do. It tries to directly follow the plot of the first game, and to provide some more stable answers about just what this “Silent Hill” place is — something that really did not need to be done. It has a sassy, sarcastic lead. The music is more oriented toward pop, over the metal machine of the first game and the drones of the second. It’s just so… polished, and pretty, and palatable. Then The Room is supposed to follow after the second game, in some respects. I… well.

I guess I should reserve comment until I have seen them through. Something just feels a little unnecessary here.

Anyway. I am making progress.

A while ago, Justin Freeman made reference to a list of the top five (or was it “only five”?) significant games in this hardware generation: Metroid Prime, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, ICO, Rez, and Grand Theft Auto III. He said “Maybe Silent Hill 2” — although that would make an unusual five. I’ll throw it in. I will also throw in Ikaruga, Wind Waker, and Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution. These nine games seem, to me, to be the sum of all of note that we have learned this generation. I have yet to find a tenth candidate.

Some will be surprised that I include Wind Waker, given my attitude toward the game. Some who know me better will know that it is precisely that attitude which puts the game on the list. Evolution finally comes through and admits what a meta-fighter Virtua Fighter has always been, as a series. It says some things about fighters, and about videogames, and the way we interact with them in a broader sense, that should do some permanent damage if you think about it too hard. And Ikaruga is, frankly, one of the most perfect and elegant game designs around — one which helps to illustrate on a base level, along with Rez, what videogames are, at their spine — and one which demonstrates the “pure” videogame (that is, videogame-as-design) at its most ideal. There is a level of truth here that, although related to the games of the early ’80s, could not exist in any previous hardware generation.

I might talk about this all in more detail, later.

Or. Maybe not.