It's actually Kerr Éire

My mental healthy broke and I stopped posting. Now I basically use tumblr to look at fan art. But hey, you can still read my old stuff. (They/She)

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Comics Code Authority and Precedent

Why are most comic books about superheros? Why are most comic books about superheros about people who support the actions of the state and police? Why are these institutions generally portrayed in a positive light? Why are there so few queer superheros? The answer to all these questions is the comics code authority, not just during the existence of the code but how it’s establishment led to a precedent that continues to this day.

The comics code authority was established in 1954, as the industry was facing calls for regulation companies within the industry decided to regulate themselves to avoid this legal intervention. The code acted as a defacto censor on the medium, limiting the stories that could be told as most publishers would demand creators stick to it lest they face backlash. Those who didn’t would usually be publishing straight up erotica again, again changing what would be expected.

The Code itself had the following guidelines:

Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.

If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.

Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.

Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.

In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gunplay, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.

No comic magazine shall use the words "horror" or "terror" in its title.

All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.

Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.

Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.

Suggestive and salacious illustration or suggestive posture is unacceptable.

Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Rape scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.

Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.

Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.

Nudity with meretricious purpose and salacious postures shall not be permitted in the advertising of any product; clothed figures shall never be presented in such a way as to be offensive or contrary to good taste or morals.

What I wanted to talk about here is that while the code did change over the years and was ultimately abandoned altogether by Marvel and DC in 2001 and 2011 respectively, and other companies at various points, the legacy it left on the medium still remains. The new Spiderman game on PS4 has restarted discourse about how comic books portray the police in a positive light. And the reason for this is honestly, for years they literally had to. If they didn’t follow the code their stories wouldn’t be published or wouldn’t be sold in most stories. By going in with the assumption that police are just, comics have created a world where heroes are fundamentally a reactionary force, fighting to uphold the status quo, whereas villains are usually the ones seeking to change it.

Society is unjust and we should seek to change that. The police aren’t good. And maybe the reason people latch on to villains a lot in comic books, such as say, The Brotherhood of Mutants, is because they’re the ones who recognize that and are actively trying to change the world. Of course, this also has legacy in decades of establishing all your major characters, none of them could be queer, now that they can be queer, still none of your major ones are because they weren’t for decades. And even why Superhero comics are the dominant story in the medium, because for decades you couldn’t really make popular horror like they did in the past.

The point I wanted to make with all this text is pretty simple. When writing and discussing the superhero genre we need to challenge a lot of our assumptions about what the genre is. Cause those assumptions aren’t politically neutral. And we should actively challenge the precedent left by decades of conservative censorship. It’s not enough to assume the genre will naturally change itself free of an official censor.

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DOOM (2016) and Counter-Productive Upgrade Systems.

Doom 2016 is a really good game but it suffers from having a very counter-productive upgrade system. Now before I move on I should say I don’t really have a problem with the random lore notes, audio logs and collectible bobbleheads. It’s all “Argent energy this, argent energy that,” I often like these kind of lore notes but in Doom’s case it never really drew me in. But I didn’t lose anything by not tracking all that down. The same isn’t true of the upgrade items you find hidden in the world and the challenges you do to unlock upgrades. Both of which directly took away from my enjoyment of the game, both in trying to get them and what you’d lose if you didn’t do them.

See, people could defend these by saying I could just ignore them like the lore notes and not pick them up. It’s what I hear when I talk about how I don’t like tracking down the bone charms or runes in Dishonored (which I think has the same problem as Doom, although to a lesser degree.) But the problem is you’re going to be at massive disadvantage if you don’t do this, challenge rooms give you new abilities, drones give you new weapon upgrades, argent energy shards upgrade your ammo, health and armor. These new abilities are enjoyable and you’re going to need them or you’re going to be in for a hard time later in the game. I don’t think I would have been able to do to those final levels with the default health and ammo caps. I also don’t have a problem with challenge rooms in theory or the in game challenges, they can be fun little optional things, the sort of thing you’d do for trophies/achievements. Superhot has tonnes of challenge modes and I love that game. But again in Doom they give you a mechanical reward so ignoring them is discouraged. What all this meant is when I finished a level in Doom or even halfway through the pacing would stop dead in its tracks as I scoured the level spending 15 minutes looking for all the upgrades I missed. It was completely counter to everything else about the design of the game. And I have to ask, what did this add to it? 

How is this better than a linear upgrade path of just being given new abilities and upgrading your stats as the game goes on? This already happens with weapons, why not extend it to everything else? Another advantage to that is the designer would know how powerful players and going to be and plan things accordingly. The conclusion to all this and the point I’m trying to make through all my rambling is this; rewards and punishments incentivize play and designers need to think through the implications of their rewards before implementing them. So yes, finding upgrades and becoming more powerful might feel good and rewarding. But it’s going to influence how a player interacts with the entire game. It’s what turns shooting your gun while sliding from just one of a variety of ways to play the game to becoming to only way a player plays a certain level because it gives you the upgrade. It’s what makes people kill everyone instead of sneaking past because combat gives you more experience. When designers implement incentives poorly it can drag down the whole game.

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I watched Death Note 2017 and thought it was... alright? (Spoilers)

So I watched the Death Note 2017 film expecting it to be as terrible as everyone said and it wasn’t, not really. I don’t think the film is secret gem or anything, it’s still not very good and to be honest I mostly watched it because of the director. Anyway, I have spoiler filled thoughts about the film and I wanna talk about it.

-Race. I should be upfront and say I’m a white Irish person living in Ireland, that’s inherently going to impact how I see things. But yeah, Light is white, the explanations they come up with for certain stuff *cough* Kira *cough* are pretty silly. They easily could have gone with a Japanese-American actor and I’d rather they did, for all the reasons people generally bring up in relation to this topic. I wish it weren’t the case, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. I recognize other people are going to feel more strongly about it. Also with Nat Wolff you never stop thinking of Peter Parker in Spider Man 3 watching the film, ever. And his reaction to meeting Ryuk is hilarious.

-I don’t actually have that much affection for the source material so the fact that it really isn’t a faithful adaptation didn’t bother me as much as it would fans. I watched the Anime when I was 16 and liked it, but I’m not really a big fan or anything. And yeah, it’s not faithful, nor is it trying to be. To the point where it’s entirely accurate to describe Mia as “a character with a name that sounds sort of like a character from the original.” It’s worse than the original but it didn’t ruin things for me, at least it isn’t just a worse version of the exact same events

-In the original Light is a villainous monster with a god complex from day one. Here he’s not, he comes loaded with feelings that the justice system has failed him in regards to his mother’s death and Mia and Ryuk act as far more corrupting influences. Mia herself doesn’t have much reason for her actions outside of I guess liking the power, without Rem and the second Death Note the story here has Light and Mia’s relationship with both being Kira and the conflict between them comes to a head when Mia kills FBI agents investigating them, Light refuses to kill his father causing L to suspect him and Mia plotting to take the Death Note for herself. Also, Willem Dafoe is great.

-I’m a sucker for mundane investigation into the supernatural, it’s why I love The X-Files and I thought the stuff with L was still pretty good. The methods L used seemed to make sense, they changed him a lot as a character but I did like him becoming far more emotionally involved when Light starts messing with Watari, although how he does that without knowing Watari’s full name is anyone’s guess. Lakeith Stanfield did a fine job in the role and I’m fine with it being less goofy than the original, no Light and L being handcuffed together here. Also, they don’t kill him half way through the film and replace him with a kid version of himself nobody likes, so that’s a plus.

-If you’re looking for interesting themes about the nature of justice there aren’t any. If you thought maybe given the American setting and that Light is white and L is black they might play into how people of color disproportionately face incarceration and police violence, they don’t, ever. They don’t even mention it.

-The ending is really good. Light throughout the whole film is missing all the masterful planning that his character had in the original but I loved the scheme he eventually sets up. The climax occurred as it did entirely as a result of Light setting it up like that and fate altering things so it would play out like in the Death Note. The scheme was 1) clever planning on his part and 2) shows that he actually is a bastard and a much darker person than Mia thought. Also I do like it being left ambiguous as to what L decides to do in the end, although it’s probably kill Light.

-I expect better from Adam Wingard as a director. I recognize he didn’t write the screenplay so I won’t pin that on him, this is the first film of his I’ve seen where he wasn’t collaborating with Simon Barrett as the writer. But camera work, transitions and soundtrack all felt subpar compared to his earlier work. There are elements that worked well in his earlier work (the amount of synth for example) which just feels out of place here. It never crosses over into terrible but it’s just okay.

So in conclusion, Death Note 2017 is exactly as good as Final Destination 5. Because that’s how I enjoyed the movie and in general it’s far more in line with it than the source material. It’s like a horror film that’s not particularly strong but is serviceable and does some interesting things storywise, the kind of film I have a weird affection for. If it weren’t for the fact that it’s an adaptation of a popular Manga/Anime series, that’s probably how it would have been received, almost instantly forgotten and somebody like me would watch it a few years later and be surprised to find that it’s alright. I know they had considered a sequel but given the reception, that’s not happening. Which is for the best really, the people involved can move on to hopefully better things.

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Video Games and Accessibility

I’m never going to finish Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Not because I hate the game but because I’ve just accepted that I’m incapable of doing so. See Peace Walker has a section where the main character, Big Boss, is being tortured and you need to tap the triangle button repeatedly in order to survive and I can’t do it. Now this isn’t the first time the series did this, a similar section in MGS 1 meant I’ve never got the 'Save Meryl’ ending, but here there’s no way past it. A lot of people have difficulty with these sections in Metal Gear but for me personally the reason is almost certainly because I’m dyspraxic. A condition which among other things, means my hand muscles can tire easily (typically a problem with handwriting for me) and I find that this particular button mashing test of endurance is to much for me. Personally this is the only game where I felt disability has made me unable to finish it, but for other people this happens far more often. So what I want to outline here is some ways designers can make their games more accessible.

-Easier difficulty settings. I know it’s a simple one, but a lot of difficulties people might have with games can be overcome with different difficulty settings which are less demanding. Even better when you can alternate between them, allowing someone to drop down for a section they can’t get past only to put the difficulty back up afterwards.

-Assist Mode for certain mechanics. Platinum Games has been good in this regard, on easy mode in Nier: Automata for example the player can equip ‘auto chips’ which simplify a lot of the combat mechanics such as dodging.  And they’re all optional meaning the player can choose which they do and don’t want. Other examples would be aim assist in shooters like Uncharted or the ability to hold down a button in lieu of tapping it for things like quick time events.

-Ability to just skip past certain sections you know will cause difficulty. I wish I could just skip the torture section of Peace Walker and get on with the rest of the game but well, I couldn’t.

-Colorblindness mode should always be an option, a lot of games differentiate important things based on colour, things certain people just won’t be able to tell apart. Undertale is a fantastic game which lacked colorblindness options when it was first released and given how heavily colour plays into the combat, I can only imagine it was incredibly frustrating for colorblind people to play pre-patch. Likewise if it might be an issue, you should have options which make the fonts used in UI and menus easier to read.

-Captioned audio and subtitles. The captioned audio part is important as there are a lot of details you might miss out on if you relied on dialogue alone. Things like [child coughs] or [loud explosion in the distance.] Likewise you should cover the ambient dialogue, not just direct conversations with your character. While not quite the same thing, a friend of mine played Metro in Russian with English subtitles and missed out on a lot of background conversations NPCs have which create the texture of the world because they weren’t covered in the subtitles.

-Avoid making things solely reliant on audio cues or have an option which allows the hearing impaired to get around it. For example you might have a boss fight with a giant robot who makes a loud metallic screech before doing a heavy attack. But if you have a hearing impairment you’ll be at a huge disadvantage as without a visual cue, there may be no way to tell such an attack is coming. Another example would be puzzles in games which are based around sound.

Now this wasn’t a massively in depth list and there’s tonnes of people who are far more qualified to talk about the subject of accessibility in video games than I am. But the point I was trying to make here is that there are a lot of relatively simple changes or inclusions that developers can do to make their games more accessible. And I think that greater accessibility is a worthwhile goal.

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Gender Equality in Fantasy

Above is a screenshot from Dragon Age: Origins saying that men and women are generally regarded as equals in Ferelden. RPGs are thankfully past the days of minuses to Strength for female characters and often present worlds in which things like sexism and homophobia are said to not exist. I rather like attempts to make RPGs, Pen & Paper and Video Game alike, more inclusive. However patriarchy and heteronormativity aren’t superficial forces and you can’t just say they don’t exist while not changing key aspects of society. Despite claims of equality a lot of forces within society and underlying assumptions about gender that people have remain unchanged. Worlds which are said to lack patriarchy are still seeped in patriarchal values.

I’m going to use Skyrim as my example here, not because it’s particularly bad or anything, just because it’s a good example of “traditional” fantasy. In Skyrim women hold a wide variety of positions in society, you have women who are jarls, adventurers, generals, storekeepers, blacksmiths, bards, warriors, bandits, priests, guildmasters and wizards. Same-sex marriage also exists with such relationships being considered normal. But unless you get married you’ll never see a single same-sex couple in Skyrim and there’s still inheritance of titles based largely around having children, despite claims of equality the world itself remains heteronormative. And women still perform the majority of unpaid domestic labor, they’ll talk about how "there's nothing a man can do that I can't do better," there’ll be a quest devoted to slut-shaming and being physically weaker or less aggressive than others is worthy of contempt, things you wouldn’t expect in a society free of sexism. It’s probably also worth noting there’s no trans people or people who present in ways that could be considered nonconforming for their gender in general, this is despite the existence of gods like Boethiah who is explicitly both a man and a woman.

You might say this is all proof that Bethesda weren’t trying to make a world free of sexism. But again, I’m not so much talking about Skyrim here as I am tropes common to worldbuilding in general. It’s far easier to imagine a world filled with dragons, elves and spell slinging sorcerers than it is one in which our societal understanding of and relationship to gender is fundamentally different than our own. Because if you’re trying to portray a world which isn’t sexist, those kind of standards would have to change. The Witcher 3 portrays a society which is patriarchal and characters who are sexist, but the narrative and protagonist view this as a bad thing. Geralt is good in regards to how he relates to the women in his life (if you told me when I started playing The Witcher 1 that Geralt will say “No means no - I get it” when turned down by a succubus I may not have believed it,) he’s a positive father figure and we see women like Cerys an Craite and Ciri struggling against such societal standards and other great characters like Triss, Shani and Yennefer. The Witcher 3 isn’t perfect when it comes to portrayals of gender, the game certainly has missteps, but it does show you can have a sexist world with a narrative and heroes that don’t reinforce those ideas. And in some ways it’s better and more honest than pretending that sexism doesn’t exist.

As I said earlier this is an issue that’s really widespread in worldbuilding. I don’t hate works that fail to do it and conceiving of a world which is that different from our own can be hard. But I think if you want to make a world that’s truly free of certain types of oppression, that should mean more than just saying that oppression doesn’t exist and not thinking of what the broader implications would be on a societal and individual level. Equality isn’t like a paintjob you can put on the car which is the society/world you’ve created, true equality is going to change what that world looks like and how people behave on some fundamental levels. It can be hard to envision a society which is so different from the one we live in, but I think that kind of creativity and imagination is worthwhile. 

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Backtracking Done Right

Resident Evil Remake, Metal Gear Solid and Dark Souls are three of the most memorable games I’ve ever played. And I feel a large part of why these games are so strong and memorable has to do with the design of their worlds and how their interconnectedness creates an extremely strong sense of place. “Backtracking” is a term which is often met with derision, it’s seen a cheap way to reuse environments and pad out the game. But I’d argue backtracking is a tool and one which for the most part these games use incredibly well.

I say “for the most part” because Metal Gear Solid contains a prime example of backtracking done poorly. Late in the game you need to use a keycard three times, once at room temperature, once while hot and once while cold and changing the temperature of the keycard requires you to run up and down the same linear corridors several times and only really exists so Kojima can shove in more Codec conversations about late game twists. It’s the perfect example of bad backtracking, it’s late in the game just as things are wrapping up, you have to do it several times, it happens shortly after you first encounter the area, the rooms have barely changed since you last visited, the enemies are the same ones you’ve encounter all game, etc.

But how do you do it right? Firstly I think it’s important to have the world interconnect in sensible although possibly unusual ways. The Spencer Mansion is constructed like a weird puzzle box but it’s built in such a way that you can keep track of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Also you unlock new places and shortcuts which change how you navigate over time. Secondly the levels themselves need to be well designed and feel distinct, from room to room but also area to area. The Tank Hanger isn’t like the Nuclear Warhead Storage Facility and Undead Burg isn’t like Darkroot Basin. If a level is already poorly designed or several places all feel the same then well, having to go back through a poor level is going to feel pretty bad. And I think you can consider changing up environments players are revisiting over time, maybe show a sense of how this place or you yourself have changed, Hunters being added to the mansion in Resident Evil makes the whole place feel more dangerous but by contrast the more static nature of enemy layout in Dark Souls allows you to appreciate the skill and power you’ve gained. Finally I think you need to show some level of restraint in how much backtracking occurs and allow players to “clear” areas. There’s a real sense of relief and accomplishment, especially in survival horror games knowing you won’t have to return to a particularly dangerous place.

So what does good backtracking add to a game? Verisimilitude for one, the world isn’t made up of nothing but corridors of varying sizes which you go through in one direction and games would probably be boring if they were. I loved how much Lordran felt like an actual place because of how everything connected and made sense, from the ladder under the Hellkite Dragon bridge connecting back to the bonfire in Undead Burg to being able to see the Demon Ruins and Ash Lake from Tomb of the Giants because that’s where they’d be, of course you can see them. Still it wasn’t something I was expecting because I was so used to games not being like that. Environmental mastery as a skill is another thing added to the game, especially as you unlock new locations and shortcuts overtime. I’d argue being able to navigate safer and more efficient routes through the world is the key skill the player needs in Resident Evil and many other survival horror games, the best way to deal with danger is avoiding it. Finally there’s the thematic advantage, you can become familiar with an environment like you do places in the real world. You can show off real beauty and put that much more care into environments players are going to revisit several times. I think of Metal Gear Solid 4, returning to Shadow Moses and seeing how it’s been reclaimed by the elements, that sense of nostalgia and how just like Snake, time has had its tole on this place. And I think of Dark Souls (Minor Spoilers) of when the Firelink Shrine bonfire is extinguished, that area serves as hub for the first half of the game and is one of the few places that feels safe. It going out really hit me, the world isn’t safe, things are falling to entropy, soon the flames will fade and only dark will remain. And it hit that thematic point in a way that was more effective than almost anything else in the game because of how important Firelink was to me.

I’m sure if I’d ever played a Metroidvania I’d have written a very different post. I don’t deny backtracking can be implemented poorly, it has frustrated me in the past and will again in the future. But I think backtracking can and often does add a lot to games. It’s a design sensibility that will never appeal to everyone, but no game does or should.

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Drive - The Scorpion and the Frog (Spoilers)

"You know the story about the scorpion and the frog? Your friend Nino didn't make it across the river."

I recently rewatched Drive, a 2011 Neo-Noir crime thriller and one of my favorite films. I wanted to write this post to argue against an interpretation of the film I often see online, namely the idea that The Driver (Ryan Gosling) is the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog. Because I don’t think The Driver is the scorpion, I think he’s the frog. 

Some context, the scorpion and the frog is a fable about a scorpion who asks a frog to carry him across a river away from danger. The frog is hesitant, worried that the scorpion will sting him but the scorpion points out that if he were to sting the frog, he’d die too. The frog agrees to help but when they’re halfway across the river the scorpion stings him. As they’re dying the frog asks the scorpion why he did it and the scorpion responds by saying it was in his nature. They both die, the moral being that showing kindness towards and associating with evil isn’t necessarily going to have positive results. The Driver actually mentions this story late in the film when talking to Bernie Rose, a crime boss, telling him that Bernie’s partner Nino didn’t make it across the river.

Now I understand why people might think The Driver is the scorpion of this story, he wears a jacket with a scorpion on it and his violent life of crime does destroy what hopes he has of a future with Irene. But The Driver isn’t that scorpion, rather he’s literally carrying the scorpion on his back. His job as a getaway driver entails him figuratively carrying people across the river away from danger. This is further evidenced by him typically only wearing the jacket when he’s doing crime, often in his civilian life such as when he’s spending time with Irene and Benicio he just wears his lighter blue denim shirt or white t-shirt.

The Driver helps Irene and her family at several points throughout the film, from coming to their aid when their car has broken down to helping Standard rob a pawn shop to pay off his debt to the gangsters who assaulted him and are threatening his family. He offers to give Nino the million dollars he stole and when asked what he’ll get out of it The Driver responds “Just that, out of it.” A very positive outcome for Nino yet he still sends someone to kill The Driver. After brutally killing a man to protect Irene, you see that the two of them are now a world apart and everything about how the scene is shot shows the distance which now exists between them. The scene ends with a close up of the scorpion on The Driver’s jacket, moving as he breathes. Which I’d argue isn’t indicating that The Driver is the scorpion but that the scorpion, the life he leads has finally caught up with him and stung him, destroying what hopes he had of a future with Irene.

This event, sending someone to kill him and potentially Irene and Benicio is what The Driver is referring to when he brings up the story of the scorpion and the frog. Nino certainly isn’t the frog in the story. He tries to make a similar deal with Bernie even after Bernie murdered his friend Shannon, give Bernie the money and walk away. But The Driver is stung again, stabbed by Bernie after handing him the money. Bernie is the scorpion in this scenario and like the scorpion, betraying The Driver when they could have both happily walked away is what ends up getting Bernie killed.

What’s important to keep in mind about the fable is that it isn’t just the scorpion who dies, the frog dies too for associating with him. The Driver may not be a bad person but because of the people he’s associated with his hopes at a better life are destroyed none the less. "A Real Hero” by College is the song most associated with The Driver, it plays when he goes on his first “date” with Irene and at the end of the film, it encapsulates his desire to be a better person and live a more fulfilling life. And while the film ends with him knowing he doesn’t have that and driving away from L.A never to return; Irene is safe, Benicio is safe and even if he’ll never be with them, that’s enough and the time they had together was worth it.

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Urgency in Video Games - Dead Rising & Papers Please

Video games have a strange relationship with urgency. In Oblivion portals to hell are opening all over the world but the player can spend as much time as they want screwing around and doing side quests and the world will be just fine. From a gameplay perspective the world isn’t in any danger and there’s no need to rush. Now I don’t actually think this is that huge of a problem. It’s strange for sure, it does make the story somewhat lesser and I much prefer when games present stories that incorporate how players are actually going to be playing the game. In Morrowind for example a character tells you to do side quests and join guilds as part of your cover to hide your membership of a secret organisation.

But I do think urgency has a place in video games. And I think one of the best examples of a game using urgency is Dead Rising. Dead Rising’s timer mechanic along with its manual saving is controversial but I think it adds a lot to the game. In Dead Rising you play as a journalist who arrives at a shopping mall full of zombies and tells the helicopter pilot to return for him in 72 hours. So over the 72 in-game hours (significantly less in real life) you can do various cases (main quests,) scoops (side quests,) rescue survivors and explore the mall. But all these things happen against the clock, cases and scoops can fail if you don’t complete them within a certain time frame. While a lot of problems definitely relate to Dead Rising’s poor leveling system and companion AI, the timer and only being able to save in certain locations leads to a lot of interesting scenarios. I remember facing the dilemma of if I should run off to save a survivor in danger or stick with the ones I have, all the while knowing I had less than an hour to get back and start the next case. If Dead Rising didn’t have a timer you’d never face those kind of decisions, you wouldn’t feel like you’re constantly under pressure, feel cautious towards danger, be unsure if you want to take certain risks or carefully plan out the routes you’re going to take to do quests and gather weapons and healing items.

Dead Rising isn’t the only game to make players deal with urgency, a game I think does an even better job is Papers, Please. In Papers, Please you play as an immigration officer at a border crossing in the fictional country of Arstotzka. As part of your job you have to check various documents for discrepancies, you are paid per person you process and get citations and possibly lose money if you let somebody with incorrect or missing paperwork through. If you had unlimited time to check everyone’s paperwork this wouldn’t be a problem and the game would be far less interesting. But you don’t, you are constantly working under pressure trying to process enough people so your family can eat that night. The pressure you are under is a key part of what makes Papers, Please such a great game and it’s what led to me detaining people for a bonus, accepting bribes, denying people without giving them a chance to explain themselves and feeling stressed.

None of this is to say games require urgency and time pressure, as I said at the start I don’t think the lack of it is a bad thing. Even when the game says there is pressure, not having any isn’t a massive problem. And like anything, it can be implemented poorly. But pressure can add a lot to games and if games only ever give a false sense of urgency, it undermines whenever you’re actually under some sort of time pressure and can screw with the story you’re trying to tell. I like the part in Mass Effect 2 where you have to rush to save your crew but I imagine a lot of people lost crew members because they didn’t believe the game was being serious about the time pressure given that it never was before. And more than anything I think that is the biggest problem with lying about urgency, a boy who cried wolf effect. If you keep telling players to hurry when they don’t have to, they may not believe you when you’re telling the truth. And that’s bad for everyone.

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Adventure Game Anthology

This decade has seen a lot of adventure games like Heavy Rain, Life is Strange, Until Dawn and a bunch of releases from Telltale games made in a modern style. While quality varies with Life is Strange at the top and Beyond: Two Souls way down at the bottom, a common criticism of these games, especially those released episodically, is that in the long run your choices don’t matter and paths don’t diverge that much. So a character can either die at the end of an episode or the start of the very next one. And it’s generally understood this is done for practical reasons, making multiple highly divergent paths greatly increases workload. And while there are multiple ways to try and solve this problem one I haven’t seen in practice which I think would be a good idea is not trying to have continuity between each episode at all. Instead of making a serialized story, create an anthology.

Now I like anthologies, collections of stories often from multiple creators, gathered and released together. Stories in an anthology may all be connected thematically or even take place in the same universe. There are various example of anthologies from television shows like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone to the various pulp magazines of the 20th century like Weird Tales. It’s a long running tradition that carries well on into today. But I can’t think of any example, at least none that I’ve played, of a video game anthology. And while it would certainly be interesting for a collection of games each with very different mechanics, I think this style of storytelling would be a good fit for modern episodic adventure games. With episodes typically being between around 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours in length you could tell any number of short, highly reactive and divergent stories.

This was something I feel was toyed with to an extent in The Walking Dead: 400 Days where you play small sections as 5 different characters all coming together at the end. But it’s not quite the same thing. And this is something where the creators could make their own new anthology series, possibly built around a theme like horror or adapt the title of an existing one. “Telltale’s The Twilight Zone” is something I imagine would get a lot of interest. But regardless it’s a format I feel has a lot of merit and does away with some of the restrictions episodic games can bring. You can tell shorter stories that wouldn’t work if they were 15 hours long, you can have choices be really reactive and have significantly divergent paths, include serious consequences for failure, you can bring various writers on board, tell very different stories and take risks you just couldn’t in a full length game. And from a sheer consumer’s perspective it can be a good thing too, you can just buy the episodes you’re interested and still get a complete experience and feel fine getting them as they come out instead of being like me, waiting until it’s all out and missing out on a lot of the discussion about it. So while I certainly wouldn’t want every episodic adventure game to be an anthology, I think it’s a storytelling format the genre could benefit from.

[kerreire]

@ravel-puzzlewell This is what I cooked up in about ten minutes. It’s terrible but you did ask for it.

[kerreire]

Dishonored 2′s Shortcomings

Note: This post contains major spoilers for Dishonored 1, all the Dishonored 1 DLC & Dishonored 2.

So I’ve played through Dishonored 2 as Low Chaos Emily and High Chaos Corvo and I have some issues with the game. But despite how negative this post might come across, as it will be mostly critical of shortcomings, know that I do like the game. In Dishonored 1 a lot of the story is told implicitly which is a method I think worked really well. Come Dishonored 2 a lot of previously implicit detail has become explicit, so Corvo being Emily’s father or the heart containing Jessamine’s essence. Which is fine, it’s important information and it makes more sense for it to come to the forefront. But what I don’t like is how it feels the sequel in general to its detriment drops a lot of that secrecy and implicit storytelling, especially in relation to The Outsider.

The Outsider in Dishonored 2 was a disappointment to me for a couple of reasons but my key problem is how much I hate the backstory he’s given and how you learn it. The Outsider literally drags you into the void at the end of a mission to tell you his backstory, how Delilah got her powers and what her master plan is. For a series which is usually more subtle it’s a really hamfisted way to go about it. But more than anything it destroys the air of mystery which existed around The Outsider. In the first game he was a mysterious, Nyarlathotep like figure who’s abilities, origins and motivations we don’t fully understand. And in the second game you’ll find various books about the mysterious nature of the void and The Outsider. But then all that enjoyable mystery is washed away in a single conversation where he tells you he was a human who was stabbed during ritual inside the void and it turned him into a god, now Delilah is leeching off his divinity, somehow, and he wants your help to stop her. And knowing this could be fine but I feel it detracts far more than it adds.

Until that conversation I had no idea what Delilah was planning, The Outsider tells you from the start it’s more than just the throne but you don’t know what. And unlike the Daud DLC it wasn’t an interesting mystery spurning me onward, I was just unclear on what Delilah could already do, what she’s planning to do, what she hopes to do in the future and how urgent we need to be in stopping her. She steals Corvo’s powers at the start of the game and petrifies him or Emily but it never seems like she wants either of them alive, so despite not killing you right away her various minions will still try to do so. Magic can be a tricky thing in a story both when it’s vague and given harder rules but here, as opposed to the Daud DLC where she was trying to steal Emily’s body, it was just less focused on what Delilah was trying to do. And I feel it was a missed opportunity to have the High Chaos endings not be save your family member or just don’t for some reason and instead have it be save your family member or go through with Delilah’s plan and steal the Outsider’s power for yourself, the ultimate and alluring selfish indulgence. 

Finally I found the game lacking thematically. Revenge as a theme didn’t really work for me, with Emily or Corvo. She didn’t kill your family, so I’m not trying to avenge that and Emily never came across as being particularly fond of being Empress so while I certainly want to stop Delilah it didn’t quite have the same weight as the first game. What I feel would have been a stronger theme and one I wished they explored more is responsibility. Emily is a young adult and learning to come to terms with and balance responsibility is a big part of transitioning into adulthood, especially for someone with as many responsibilities as Emily. It’s also a huge deal for parents. It’s brought up several times that while what the Duke does is horrible, he was ultimately subservient to Emily and their coup was planned for years. And as long as the silver flowed they didn’t look into what the Duke was doing. Both she and Corvo comment on how their experiences have changed them and they now have more of an insight as to how common citizens live. You could follow up on this in character, taking a more direct caring role toward the Empire’s citizens and showing compassion could be a sign of a Low Chaos Emily who cares for others while just living the high life without a care for their struggles, letting other people deal with everything or sailing away from Dunwall altogether a sign of High Chaos and a more self interested Empress. But as is I didn’t feel the game carried its themes very strongly.

[kerreire]

Earning The Happy Ending

Contains spoilers for The Witcher 3 and Dishonored 1. I mention a little about possible endings and how you get them but don’t go into to many specifics. Still if you want to avoid all spoilers, best you don’t read this.

I recently finished the main questline of The Witcher 3 which has made me think about games with multiple endings. Namely how in the eyes of players ‘good’ endings are usually understood to be the ones which are happy and good things happen to the characters. These are also the ones which typically require more effort on the part of the player to achieve. Bad endings by contrast are endings which are sad and bad things happen to the characters and typically require less effort or outright failure on the player’s part.

The Witcher 3 and Dishonored are similar in this regard. Both are games in which a father searches for his daughter and your actions determine what her ultimate faith will be come the ending. In order to have a positive ending in The Witcher 3 you need to be a good father who’s caring but also supportive and encouraging of Ciri’s independence. In Dishonored the most positive ending happens when you kill very few people and rescue Emily while the more negative endings involve you either failing to save Emily or where you kill quite a few people and Emily who’s influenced by you becomes a somewhat darker person as a result. In terms of quality all of the endings for both The Witcher 3 and Dishonored are ‘good’, they’re very fulfilling and satisfying conclusions narratively, character wise and thematically. But they aren’t all happy endings, in some cases they’re crushing downers.

I think a lot of this has to do with games being considered things where you win or lose, so if you do well you ‘win’ and get a ‘good’ ending where good things happen while if you do poorly you ‘lose’ you get a ‘bad’ ending where bad things happen. In that way it’s almost a sort of wish fulfillment, video games present a world where things make sense and if you try hard and care about others everything will work out in end whereas in real life that often times isn’t true. And I’m as guilty of this as anyone, I usually want to get the good endings where good things happen to characters I like and the world is a better place. But just because you don’t want bad things to happen doesn’t mean they shouldn’t, ultimately I feel what’s important is a story makes me feel something, be that joy or sorrow. I loved the ending I got for The Witcher 3 which had a happy albeit somewhat bittersweet tone. Once the credits had finished I looked up the other two endings which were also great and I want to believe even if I had gotten another ending which I might have been upset at because it was sad, the sheer quality would more than overcome that. And that’s what I want, quality endings regardless of their emotional tone.

However I do feel there is something developers can do as well and that’s not just have endings which are reflections of how competent we were at the game. Where happy endings happen to people who preform well and sad endings to those who preform poorly. One of my favorite examples of nuance in endings is Fallout 2 where fixing a community’s nuclear reactor allows them to survive and get by but optimizing it results in them being attacked by a neighboring community who are having power difficulties of their own and see the optimized plant as a resource to exploit. I’m not saying that good actions should always have unforeseen negative consequences or every decision needs to be a Sophie’s choice. But it’s something which shouldn’t be a given and as a medium at times it feels we fall into that. Sad isn’t the same as bad. Ultimately I don’t think we should treat sad endings as something you just get for failure and happy endings for performing well, the real world’s more complicated than that and our games should be too.

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Dishonored 2 PC Question

Hey folks, I have question. I haven’t gotten Dishonored 2 yet and I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers for it, so I don’t want to dig too deep myself, but I’ve heard Dishonored 2 on PC at the moment is really unstable and kind of a bad port. How true is that? Because I could get it for PC or PS4 and I’m not sure which I want to get it on yet.

So what I’m trying to ask is, would I be better off getting the game on PS4?

[kerreire]

Hannibal, Dramatic Irony and Adaptation

Hannibal’s a cannibal. If you’ve ever heard of Hannibal Lecter you already know this. I finally got round to watching Hannibal recently, I liked it a lot and something which really stood out to me during the show was the excellent use of dramatic irony. And it’s a style of dramatic irony I’d like to see more of in remakes and adaptations. Dramatic irony is when the audience knows information that the characters in the story don’t know. Which is something Hannibal plays with a lot. From the first episode we’re show that Hannibal is a serial killer who kills people, eats them and serves them to others. Instead of us not knowing who the Chesapeake Ripper is and being surprised when we find out, we know it’s Hannibal and tension, drama and sometimes comedy is created as a result of that dramatic irony. Instead of wondering who the killer is we’re wondering when and how the rest of the characters will find out. 

So what I wanted to do was expand this into a larger point about adaptations and remakes. You don’t need to ignore the existence of the original material, doing so might make you work worse. Instead I think when making something like this creators should consider playing with the knowledge an audience may already have. This knowledge can fall into two broad categories, stuff only people familiar with the original work would know and stuff anyone can be assumed to know given the how well known the work is. A well executed example of the former is the Resident Evil remake where a well known scare from the original, a hallway where zombie dogs breakthrough a window, is played with so when walking through the hallway for the first time the window only cracks. But then they do breakthrough if you pass through the hallway from the other direction. It’s a scare that plays with the expectations of returning fans but not in a way which detracts from the experience for newcomers. An example of the later is, well, Hannibal. Even if you’ve never read/seen anything with him in it before, most people already know Hannibal’s a cannibal given how well known The Silence of the Lambs is.

Remakes and adaptions are fine, I don’t think they ruin creativity or anything. But I do think acknowledging the existence of other versions of the story while making it allows for more creativity to take place. Not every adaptation needs to do this and it shouldn’t be done in a way that hampers the experience for newcomers, the work should be able to stand on it’s own. But you can allow for more creativity and let creators do interesting things. Be that through the use of dramatic irony, outright changing minor or major details from the original or by just playing with our expectations. Remakes and adaptions don’t exist in a vacuum and don’t need to be treated as though they do. And seriously, do any of us need to see Uncle Ben die again?

[kerreire]

Vote Loki is a comic that raises a lot of questions about the Marvel universe. Questions like, where’s Verity Willis? And no seriously, where is she?