At long last, the Mass Effect 3 Short Script is here. It also happens to be the 25th script I’ve written, which probably marks some kind of jubilee. You’ll find it on BeefJack once more by clicking the link above. Regarding the game and its controversy, I find myself in agreement with Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, who claims that Mass Effect 3 doesn’t have a shitty ending, it is the ending. The entire Mass Effect series comes to an close with this game, not just in its final minutes. So even if you think the ending sucks noodles, the other 95% of the game is still awesome. I think it’s an amazing game that’s not undone by its conclusion.

My impressions of the game as a whole (beyond what the Short Script lets on) are reflected in this BeefJack feature. It also segues into a rewrite of the ending, sort of like I already did for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 here.

Another Short Script has popped up on BeefJack. This time it’s for Starbreeze’s reboot of the 1993 isometric game Syndicate, which is ludicrously titled exactly the same. It’s a cyberpunk game set in the future where corporations are immensely powerful and openly duke it out with each other by deploying agents with enhanced abilities, all in a bid for control. If that sounds anything like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, it’s because it totally is.

My official BeefJack review bemoans Syndicate’s setting and storyline for being utterly rote and generic. I don’t contrast it with Human Revolution directly (except where both games have equally aggravating boss fights), but Syndicate does offer a striking lack of nuance in both story and gameplay.

Story-wise, the worst offender is the character of Jack Denham, CEO of the syndicate the player is working for. Overlooking the fact that he’s portrayed by go-to bad guy Brian Cox, Denham is so obviously evil, he doesn’t even need to chew on that kitten. That’s alright, because in a sense he is the character you played in the original Syndicate: an irredeemable scumbag who sends out agents to violently cripple rival syndicates. Placing the player in the boots of one such agent who (spoiler alert, but not really) ends up rebelling against him completely defeats the purpose.

Human Revolution’s David Sarif is a much more subtle example of the profit-driven corporate executive. Syndicate’s storyline actually takes the concept of countries waging wars with each other and simply replaces governments with corporations. The same applies to Human Revolution’s jump from the original Deus Ex: Sarif Industries is the equivalent of UNATCO. Sarif sends out Adam Jensen as if he were a government spook, thereby taking on the role of Joseph Manderley (but with a robot arm). This raises some intriguing questions as to how far Sarif thinks he can carry his prerogative, because he is essentially a corporate executive who strays from the boundaries of his job into the realm of illegality.

Please take note of the Eurocorp logo on my jacket before I kill you.

Syndicate’s Jack Denham lives in a world where all that is taken for granted. The agents he sends out carry the Eurocorp logo with pride, as if a giant ‘Fuck you’ to the rival syndicates they attack. While interesting in its own right, it strips Denham’s role of all possible nuance and subtlety and reduces him to the standard moustache-twirling villian. David Sarif is a much more intriguing character, carrying himself like a petulant child whenever he’s caught but always excusing his deeds with reasonable arguments.

As far as gameplay goes, Syndicate boils down to the action pillar from Human Revolution without the grace that the other three pillars (stealth, hacking, and social) offer. Like I say in my review, that’s perfectly fine, since Syndicate is a decent shooter. It’s just that it’s only a decent shooter. The additional breaching abilities don’t add to the gameplay experience and the storyline is too rote and in-your-face to be enough of a reason to keep going. By the end of the game, you’re still doing the same thing you started it with.

Whew, been a while, hasn’t it? The reason for the lack of updates here is my recent work on BeefJack, which has agreed to host my Short Scripts as a regular feature. Battlefield 3 takes the dubious honour of being the first, so if you want to read it, click on the link above. The script will be added to the archive here in due time. But on BeefJack, it has pictures!

So, BeefJack. I provide news posts as well as regular feature content, all of which is neatly catalogued here. So far I’ve written reviews of Jurassic Park: The Game, Afterfall: InSanity and Syndicate (which will soon get a Short Script too), previews of Mass Effect 3 and Prey 2, and opinion pieces on Mass Effect 3, Half-Life and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Oh, and on an unrelated note, I also contributed another script to The Editing Room. This time, it’s for In Time.

I reviewed Battlefield 3 too, but I did so in some strange language on GameQuarter, the Dutch site I wrote for before I moved on to BeefJack. The score appended to that review stems pretty much from the multiplayer experience coupled with the technological marvel that is the game’s graphics engine. As my esteemed brother puts it: “I give it an 8 out of America. Much better than MW3. But that’s my opinion.”

It’s an opinion I share, since Battlefield 3′s singleplayer campaign emulates the Modern Warfare games to such an extent that it’s not even funny. Nukes, Middle Eastern and Russian antagonists that infinitely respawn, quicktime events, scripted stealth, vehicle sections, it’s all there and equally rote. Even the friendly fire message is exactly the same.

That being said, Battlefield 3′s story does attempt a nonlinear  narrative structure that tells the events out of chronological order. It’s done in a fairly clever way and without it, the story would’ve been far more generic. So there’s that.

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 does what it does best: it offers undeniable fun. It is a tightly scripted roller coaster ride that dials the blockbuster spectacle up to eleven and goes out of its way to keep it there. It’s breaking sales records as we speak, it’s engendering controversy with scenes partly designed to do just that, and it’ll be played online long after the single player campaign has been forgotten by all those who didn’t have to review it. It’s 2009 all over again. So what’s left to say?

This!

Fine, you try captioning this one.

On October 26th, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) invited four games writers and narrative designers for a small panel on the theory and practicality of writing for games. Since I was visiting a friend in Wales at the time, I was unable to attend myself. Fortunately, I managed to sneak a recorder on an unwitting attendee, and she captured the entire panel for me. If this unwitting attendee whose name may or may not be Nina is reading this, you have my eternal gratitude. So while this is an indirect account of the panel, I hope to offer a short but thorough recap here. Read on to find out about the improper use of cutscenes, the challenges presented by a silent protagonist, and why a games writer is like a feng shui guy.

The panel consisted of three established game writers: Rhianna Pratchett (Mirror’s Edge, Heavenly Sword), James Swallow (Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Killzone 2), and Ed Stern (Brink, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars). They were being chaired by a fourth: Andrew S. Walsh (Risen, Prince Of Persia). The hour-long panel focused mainly on writing meaningful game characters and their relationship with the player. Since several themes frequently cropped up during the discussion, I’m going to disregard chronology and arrange the major talking points by those themes.

Rhianna Pratchett, James Swallow, and Ed Stern, all noticing something to the left.

What makes a game character tick

Walsh opened the panel with the question of what a character in a game constitutes. Stern took this opportunity to elaborate on the overarching challenge of writing (a character) for a game, which is interactivity. Rather than passively reading a book or watching a movie, an audience actively plays a game and has control over the proceedings. While this element of free will remains an illusion at best, it still forces a reexamination of existing tools and methods of writing characters. Other media may offer convenient shorthands and tropes, but games present a unique challenge of their own. At this point, Stern viewed the crafting of believable characters from a visual standpoint. Explosions and toppling buildings are easy, but two characters having a meaningful conversation is incredibly hard to create. As Tom Jubert once said: “An actor in a film can convey with a single glance what a games writer has to bring across with one or more lines of dialogue.”

Swallow made a distinction between two types of player characters: well-rounded protagonists and empty vessels (or blank slates). Well-rounded protagonists (like Uncharted’s Nathan Drake) have a defined background and personality, whereas empty vessels (like Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman) are usually silent leads without any defining characteristics, allowing the audience to imprint their own. Swallow used Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s Adam Jensen as an example of a middle ground between the two. Jensen’s history is established by the game, but not his conduct. The game defines his past, the audience his present and future.

It is also pointed out that the background (if any) of not just the player character, but also every NPC, is rarely communicated directly to the player. Stern and Swallow called this “invisible writing”. Visible writing is dialogue, e-mails, and even shouts made by the enemy (known as “barks”), but this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Most of the writing is used for internal consistency in design documents and character sheets. Incidentally, this makes Excel to be a games writer’s best friend.

Walsh then went into specifics by asking about the dissonance created when a character’s actions don’t dovetail with his characterisation. An example is Grand Theft Auto IV’s Niko Bellic, who can be steered into massive chaos and destruction by the player, but still comes off as caring and sympathetic in cutscenes (as pointed out in this post). Pratchett picked up on this by talking about immersion and suspension of disbelief. Coinciding the motivations of a character and the player who’s controlling them is a writer’s sweet spot, and if this is not the case, the immersion is easily broken. Niko Bellic may not want to hit that pedestrian, but the player might. The same frustration appears when a player character does something incredibly badass or horribly stupid in a cutscene, which can or would never happen in gameplay.

Pratchett also noted that a game environment can represent a strong character in and of itself. Using BioShock’s Rapture as an example, she explains that the level design of a game can tell a story as well (what I call an “aftermath story”). Stern likens this to setting up a crime scene, and notes that this type of storytelling is never forced on the player. That being said, sometimes it is unconsciously absorbed regardless.

How genre and platform affect and influence writing

A question from the audience prompted a talk about how a specific genre can influence writing for it. Pratchett had some interesting experience here, since she has worked on a franchise that spanned different platforms. In the Overlord series, she had to write a character for a game released on the major consoles, but also introduce that same character in another game on the Nintendo DS. Going from full motion capture to a blurb of text on a screen really forces a writer to know the universe they’ve created and underlines the necessity for the aforementioned invisible writing for internal consistency.

This then spilled over into a discussion of how first-person and third-person perspectives call for different approaches. The player character is entirely visible in third-person games (even if only their backside is visible most of the time), which allows for animations and even camera angles to help with characterisation. First-person games tend to have more silent protagonists whose thought processes are then externalised to other characters in the world. Pratchett mentioned that Mirror’s Edge’s Faith had a lot of comments and reactions during gameplay, but these were cut at the eleventh hour as they tended to confuse playtesters. The mind automatically links a voice to someone speaking it (which is how ventriloquism works), so if there’s no one visible, there’s just a disembodied voice floating around.

Stern added that audiences have very conservative expectations when it comes to genres, and went on to state that games are still trying to find their specific language. He used Marshall McLuhan‘s theory that things are often defined in terms of what they’re replacing (with “horseless carriages” as an example). As such, games are often judged by the standards set by movies, just as those were judged by the standards of theatre plays.

Why cutscenes aren’t always bad

Pratchett stressed that cutscenes are not an indication of lazy storytelling. They are simply a tool, but as Stern stated, when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Sometimes a player doesn’t mind being told a story, as long as it’s a good one. An expertly crafted cutscene can be a reward after a challenging piece of gameplay. The problem is that cutscenes are difficult to produce. They need to be carefully planned ahead and wrapped early on in development, especially when they involve motion capture. Without naming names, Pratchett aluded to her work on Mirror’s Edge, which was hampered by incongruous cutscenes and art styles as a result of time constraints (as pointed out in this post).

She continued that not all story needs to be relegated to cutscenes. It’s often far more effective to layer it into the gameplay experience as well. She uses Half-Life 2: Episode 1 as an example. At one point, Gordon Freeman and Alyx are pushing through a darkened parking garage infested by zombies. When an off-screen groan indicates the presence of another zombie, it turns out to be Alyx playing a little prank. This little unscripted “character nugget” resonated with Pratchett far more than any cutscene would’ve. A narrative that is created around and reacts to the player’s actions is something that requires forethought, which is translated as bringing in a writer as early as possible.

Involving a writer from the word go

This point was raised organically at various points, and ultimately forms the synthesis of this panel. If there’s anything to take away, it’s that there is an inordinate amount of factors that influences the craft of writing games. This plays into the medium’s relative youth. Games are still discovering what makes them unique and how that creates a new language rather than one cobbled together from what came before (i.e. movies). And that is why it is incredibly important to have a writer or narrative designer on board as soon as possible. Layering story into gameplay is but one example of a tactic that can only be put to full effect if there’s a writer who can make it happen early enough. Stern joked that his job is like that of a feng shui guy: no one really knows what it is he does, but it’s lucky to have one around. He moves individual bits of furniture around and everything seems better, though nobody really knows why.

Note: I’ve also made another contribution to The Editing Room. My thoughts on Rise of the Planet of the Apes can be read here. Also, next week the annual Eurogamer Expo will commence, and I’m going to be there in three different capacities: a journalist, a visitor, and a volunteer. These may overlap at times.

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution Short Script (and I have to use the qualifier “short” lightly here) is one of the toughest and most gratifying scripts I’ve written. I consider it to be a wonderful game that comes down to the best kind of fan fiction Deus Ex could ever hope to get. I’m not sure whether it would have fared as well had it been a new IP, as the countless references to its progenitor add a flavour that immensely intensifies the overall experience. As a result, I find it nearly impossible to look at Human Revolution without Deus Ex as a touchstone. This post will therefore make a lot of comparisons between all games in the Deus Ex series. And just like the Short Script, it’s also quite lengthy, which is why I’m going to have to subdivide it.

How Human Revolution improves on Deus Ex

When playing Human Revolution, it quickly becomes clear that Eidos Montréal have a profound love and respect for the original Deus Ex. Luckily, that didn’t make them squeamish about tinkering with the main formula. From both a gameplay and a story perspective, Human Revolution addresses some of Deus Ex’ flaws and makes some improvements of its own. To list but a few from the gameplay side:

• Hacking in Deus Ex amounts to no more than watching a progress bar, and reading all mails on a hacked computer often means repeating this process several times over as it keeps running out. Deus Ex: HR alleviates this tension by front-loading it into a surprisingly enjoyable minigame.
• Stealth in Deus Ex relies heavily on hilariously nearsighted enemies who often can’t see the player standing three feet away. Deus Ex: HR includes a cover mechanic that allows for the same situational awareness without the allowance for exposure (the enemies are still somewhat nearsighted though).
• Moving a body in Deus Ex is impossible when it’s carrying supplies and the player’s inventory is full. Deus Ex: HR offers a handy tap-or-hold key function to choose between looting a body and moving it.

The same corrective approach is maintained from a story perspective. As pointed out in this article, the original Deus Ex “scratches at legitimate and real political concerns about power, media, class, technology, and choice, [but] fails to do what great science fiction does best: address head-on the core problems of contemporary society”. Human Revolution reduces its scope to a singular emphasis on the theme of transhumanism through augmentation technology, and in doing so, burrows to its core rather than merely scratching at it. Transhumanism permeates everything, albeit in a very polarised fashion. For instance, nearly every pedestrian that Jensen addresses responds with their view on augmentation or some issue circling it.

This tightens its focus and allows for a more coherent reflection on contemporary society, even if a few parallels are reasonably ostentatious. While some may argue that this focus isn’t tightened as much as it is narrowed, it does close the gap between story and gameplay. It’s not often that a unified vision carries a game forward, but Eidos Montréal seems to have started from a strong thematic foundation and developed every aspect of the game from there.

How there is still some consolidation

In this post, I analysed how Invisible War falls short of engaging the player. Human Revolution manages to avoid those pitfalls for the most part, but still shows signs of some consolidation. The biggest indicator is Human Revolution’s approach to experience points (XP). Invisible War ditched Deus Ex’ XP system and merged its separate skills and augmentations into a single biomod system. Human Revolution brings XP back, but has the player spend it on augmentations. As such, XP in Human Revolution ultimately serves a similar function as Invisible War’s biomods: the acquisition of character-specific abilities (more so because XP is also available as a collectible in the form of Praxis Kits). But players do have to type in keycodes and passwords themselves, which is more awesome than it should be.

This consolidation also occurs on a narrative level in Human Revolution’s endgame. The different endings available to the player are communicated to him in a single room where a button press will yield the desired ending. Eliza Cassan even pops up to explain in great detail to what exact circumstances each ending will lead. Conversely, the endgame in Deus Ex consists of the entire Area 51 level, and JC Denton is only gradually familiarised with the available endings throughout the flow of that level. This allows for much more elbow room when it comes to giving those endings some narrative gravity. For instance, if the player starts performing actions that lead into one ending, supporters of other endings will attempt to discourage him (listen to the Infolink messages here, here, and here). Human Revolution’s tactic of a final decision room precludes this.

How my storyline predictions measured up

I also anticipated a standard Brylcreem Aug, which implements tiny pomade dispensers at the base of Adam's scalp.

I had my own thoughts about how the storyline of Deus Ex: HR would play out. They didn’t turn out to be very accurate, but I’d still like to list them here. Most of my predictions were gleaned from the Deus Ex Continuity Bible, a document used to maintain consistency in the game world during that game’s development. It details the world of 2052 and the history that led up to it. Eidos Montréal used it as a springboard, as evidenced by this quote from Narrative Designer Mary DeMerle: “Not only have we heard about the Deus Ex bible, it was also required reading before we began work on the story concept for Human Revolution. After reading it, we spent several months filling in some of the blanks in its timeline and history in order to create the characters, companies, cities, and world events that exist in 2027″. As such, my predictions stemmed from combining the timeline in the Continuity Bible with the available information from various previews. I present them here:

Human Revolution’s overarching narrative thread would focus on the very beginning of the schism between the Illuminati and Majestic 12 (the latter ultimately absorbing the former’s power structures sets up the plot of Deus Ex). One passage in the Continuity Bible specifically describes MJ-12 as “the Illuminati’s technology and communications [arm]. It doles out technological advances and stores those the world is not yet ready for (or those too powerful to give to potential enemies)”. Keeping that in mind, I saw David Sarif and his company as being the most significant front for MJ-12 and the site of their most important research. It would also mean that Sarif indirectly answered to Bob Page. Largely through the Illuminati’s stewardship, MJ-12 could exert a considerable level of control over the development of augmentation technology through Neuropozyne. This is actually a similar situation to the one in Deus Ex: just replace augmentations with the Gray Death and Neuropozyne with Ambrosia.

The bible also mentions that MJ-12 was starting work on nanotechnology around the year 2023. They needed a test subject for experimentation and ended up choosing a young Paul Denton because he had “the most suitable physique and genetic makeup for the nano-augmentation project. His immune system was excellent, yet he had no allergic reactions to non-biological foreign materials in his body”. This led me to believe that Paul (who was nine years old in 2027) was in fact the “Patient X” that Megan Reed was working on. Her progress on universal augmentation acceptance would then threaten the Illuminati’s method of control through Neuropozyne, forcing them to put this development on the back burner.

The first sign of MJ-12′s secession would be David Sarif’s unwillingness to comply with the Illuminati’s directives, in part because he wanted Sarif Industries to helm this discovery, but also because he genuinely desired to make augmentations available to everyone. The attack on his company by a group of mercenaries then becomes a warning from the Illuminati. Sarif knew this and backed off, but hatched a plan of his own that centred around Adam Jensen. Severely wounded in the attack, Sarif arranged for Adam to be mechanically augmented (“I never asked for this”). He specifically went through this trouble because he knew Megan was still alive and the history between Adam and Megan; the former would relentlessly pursue the latter (“I’ll never stop looking”). Sarif also uses this opportunity to test out Megan’s research on a human subject, and this is the reason that Adam doesn’t require any Neuropozyne.

This setup then leads into the game proper. Adam follows a couple of leads and eventually uncovers (part of) the truth. When he confronts Sarif with his discoveries, the latter reveals that a contingency was installed during Adam’s augmentation procedures: a killphrase. An example of how that exchange could go:

DAVID SARIF

I knew you’d go after her with everything you have, Adam. But everything you have is everything we gave you.

ADAM JENSEN

Including a killphrase.

Realising that Sarif has leverage over him, Adam is coerced into following his orders and continuing the search for Megan and her team. Now Adam might be more susceptible to other factions who play on the fact that he had two fundamental choices taken away from him. As JC Denton needed Tracer Tong to disable his killswitch, so must Adam seek out help to free him from Sarif’s grasp. Eventually, the ultimate plot twist would be Bob Page’s own agenda. While initially siding with Sarif against the Illuminati, his final goal is the one that Deus Ex plays out: becoming a living god. He is already making preparations for that by co-opting MJ-12′s work, and the research around Paul Denton and nano-augmentation is a first step to what he requires.

As a whole, this speculative storyline is debunked right out of the gate by Human Revolution’s intro sequence. It turns out that Jensen is Patient X, and several sidequests in the game merely allude to the fact that he was one of the genetic experiments in MJ-12′s research. Human Revolution never runs with this, and the questions about Jensen’s past are never cleared up in full. The main storyline is more important because it has potential to stand on its own. Eidos Montréal cleverly keep the more congruous links to the Deus Ex canon in the background. You can remove all traces of the Illuminati and relegate the conflict to corporations, and the story would still gel.

Oh, and the development studio’s love for Deus Ex also seems to include an intense dislike for Invisible War as a corollary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t encounter a single reference to that game in Human Revolution. I even read that purple was specifically kept off the colour palette, because it’s equated too much with Invisible War’s art direction. So yeah.

Note: I’ve been quite busy in the last two months. I nonetheless managed to contribute something to The Editing Room, the site that single-handedly influenced Playthroughline’s style. Read my take on The Adjustment Bureau here. Also, the next Short Script to go up will be that of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I feel as if this entire blog has been leading up to that one.

I share both Tom Francis‘ affinity for and frustration with Mirror’s Edge. It’s a beautiful but flawed game; its potential is marred by what seems like a series of last-minute cop-outs. “Wait, are consumers really going to go for a game where all you do is run and jump around? Better add some weapons to even that out!”. The loose approach to the game’s mechanics can also be seen when looking at its story. Mirror’s Edge is a game where the disconnect between story and gameplay manifests itself visually.

The most striking aspect of Mirror’s Edge is its starkly colourful and unusually bright environment. The unnamed metropolis it’s set in is practically a character in itself. Just take a look at the Mirror’s Edge collection over at Dead End Thrills, and you’re set as far as desktop wallpapers are concerned. Which makes the transition to 2D animated cutscenes all the more jarring. It’s as if there was no longer any time or budget for motion captured cutscenes to complement the (addition of a) story, so the gaps had to be filled out with something that could be slapped together at a moment’s notice. I’ve pointed out this disconnect before (namely here), but if you look at the story as is, regardless of how it’s presented, one element sticks out as being most exemplary of that disconnect. And that’s the character of Lieutenant Miller.

Yes you, you Jim Jarmusch-looking motherfucker.

He’s a police officer and the direct superior to Kate, and alternates between helping and hampering Faith on her mission. Most of the inconsistencies regarding his role are superficially pointed out in the Short Script, and those inconsistencies stem from the fact that Miller appears to be a holdover character. It seems he’s on hand whenever the story trips up to provide whatever function is required at that point. This undermines his character at every turn because he clearly knows about the whole plot to set up Kate (one of the bad guys flat-out told him about it). Then, when Mercury dies and Faith no longer has a guiding voice in her ear, Miller shows up in the last level to fill that role, even though his presence there would be excrutiatingly implausible. He just tries to be too many things at once (which he demonstrates by wearing a turtleneck under his suit).

In my previous post, I mentioned that certain games try to instill fear in the player. This is the cornerstone of Doom 3′s gameplay experience, which pulls out all the stops. By far the most common technique used is that of the monster closet. In fact, Doom 3 has so many of them, you can’t help but wonder about those the player didn’t trigger. Picture a demon, anxiously waiting in a cramped, 5×3 storage space. It knows it’s supposed to jump out at whoever opens the panel that traps it in there. It never happens. “Is that gunfire I hear outside?”, it wonders. But then, silence. “Have they -- forgotten about me?”.

I had a lot of fun with Doom 3 when it was released, and it still holds up today. One aspect that struck me in the face of more modern shooters are the relatively simple controls. There are no separate keys for throwing a grenade or performing melee attacks; these are weapons that need to be equipped. There’s also no cover system or ironsight aiming. Even the ubiquitous Use function is replaced by interactive computer screens that have become a staple of id Tech 4. All this leaves the control set fairly easy to use, and you’ll never throw a grenade at a button you only meant to push.

Doom 3′s storyline is enjoyable, but the whole thing seems a bit overdone. I admit, I ate it up, but I’m the kind of player who listens to every audio log and reads every mail. And the story of a research base overrun by murderous creatures after a failed experiment is quite well-trodden. The problem is similar to the one that Penny Arcade voiced when discussing Unreal Tournament 3. In this post, they assert that the game didn’t really need a single player story because it is a quintessential multiplayer game. Its campaign mode nevertheless attempts to explain away the mechanics of familiar multiplayer game types by giving them a context. So we’re not capturing flags, but FLaGs (which are Field Lattice Generators that power the enemy respawn units, obviously). While not obtrusive, it does seem somewhat impertinent.

The original Doom is a game that revelled in its own ridiculousness. Doom 3 layers a serious context on top of the same ridiculousness, and this juxtaposition feels awkward in some places. But, as was the case with Unreal Tournament 3, it never actually gets in the way. Except when a lengthy audio log only mentions a security code at the very end. Then it forces itself on the player.

In this post, I used Condemned: Criminal Origins as a fitting case study for (the impact of) weapons in games. Condemned features a dedicated melee system and only occasionally offers a firearm to the player, which makes them stand out more. Monolith Productions went completely the other way with F.E.A.R., a shooter that focuses its entire gameplay experience on smooth and stylised combat. With guns. Lots of guns.

In a very unintentional and roundabout way, F.E.A.R. got me thinking about psychological warfare. The game of course uses it to unsettle the player with its horror element, but that’s not what I mean to discuss. It’s actually a certain aspect of the combat system that made me think about it from the other side. One of the melee moves that the player can employ in F.E.A.R. is a crouched slide kick, which affects physics objects. It also works on dead enemies, but a little too well. Slide into a corpse, and the ragdoll physics see it bouncing clear across the room, smashing into walls and leaving blood smears. This is very comical and elicits no reaction from anyone in the game world, friend or foe. But what if it did?

Imagine a group of soldiers holed up in a chokepoint. They know someone’s coming, someone who’s managed to wipe out many other soldiers. And then the lifeless corpse of one of their fallen comrades flies into a hallway in front of them, brutally coming to rest against a nearby wall. Nothing else happens until another corpse joins the first. The soldiers are now terrified. They get the message. “This is what I did to your friends. Think about what I’ll do to you”. As a result, they are demoralised and less effective in combat.

This is what I kept doing in F.E.A.R. because it was fun, a glitch or oversight in the physics engine or another homage to the stylised, over-the-top combat that typifies the F.E.A.R. series. But of course, the soldiers were never terrified because they weren’t designed to be. Enemies actively fearing the player is a tactic used in some games (usually a result of the advantage that the player has, which in F.E.A.R.’s case is slow motion), but this is rarely a direct result of his actions. Far Cry 2 sees the player gaining notoriety, which gradually switches the enemy battle cries from “You’re gonna die, ha ha!” to “We’re gonna die, whimper!”. But this happens during every playthrough and is tied more to what the player is than what he does. In the Aliens Versus Predator games, it’s because you can be fearsome creatures like aliens and predators. In Batman: Arkham Asylum, it’s because you’re the goddamn Batman. Even Sam Fisher manages to instill fear in his enemies, but that’s because he’s established a reputation over the course of four preceding games ^[1].

Many games are focused on scaring the player, but how many focus on the player scaring his enemies? What if a game constructs its gameplay and combat mechanics around causing actual fear to weaken enemies before even firing a shot? This would of course go further than using the dead bodies of enemies to intimidate live ones. Different fear mongering methods could be employed. After all, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and then dangle in front of other ones.

Oh Jesus! He got Mr. Fluffykins!

1. The combat dialogue uttered by enemies in Splinter Cell: Conviction constantly alternates between unwitting boasts and intimidated cries of fear, as illustrated in this hilarious article

Portal 2 isn’t merely a sequel, it’s a viable application of what was essentially a trial run. Valve Software has stated that it never expected Portal to gain the extended following it has, which is why The Orange Box acted as a safety net. A most unnecessary safety net, since Portal managed to eclipse both Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2 in popularity. And now Portal 2 has evolved into a standalone title that does just that: standing alone.

It should come as no surprise that Portal 2 is expertly written. The overall story is an intriguing one, even if it is a series of excuses to keep putting the player through more and more numbered test chambers. And even though the characters often utter lines that are only loosely related to that story, they are so darkly humorous that this doesn’t grate in the least. It’s often worth it not to follow instructions right away, just to see the many follow-up comments that are provided. One of the best lines in the whole game comes from Cave Johnson, whose already hilarious lines are lent even more bite by J.K. Simmons’ wonderfully cantankerous performance.

Gameplay-wise, Portal 2 intelligently keeps the player’s main mode of interaction with the game to its bare essentials: a portal gun that shoots two portals. Every new addition is something that exists in the world. Still, I sometimes found myself oddly focused on such additions. For instance, I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to direct an excursion funnel over a chasm so I could cross it. Then I realised I could simply place regular portals at both sides of the chasm and pass through those. As such, the increase in scale and content that naturally accompanies a sequel does preclude some of the tight-knit and intimate puzzles (and storytelling) that made Portal so appealing.

After finishing the single-player game, I played the co-op campaign with my brother. It’s one of the most entertaining and rewarding multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had. In one of the earlier levels, there’s a maze that needs to be navigated by one player while the other operates buttons to shift its layout. There’s of course the immediate temptation to trap or crush each other. Valve Software knows its audience. GLaDOS’ lines are naturally very funny (especially the enmity she attempts to sow between the robots), but figuring out and solving a puzzle alongside someone else puts just as wide a smile on my face.

Then there’s the music. Whenever a game boasts a “dynamic soundtrack”, it usually means that each level has two distinct musical cues that flow along a single theme tied to that level: one for calm exploration and one for frantic action. Portal 2 features a soundtrack that labels itself as dynamic, but takes it much further than that. Whenever part of a puzzle is solved, the music reacts by adding a layer of riffs, increasing its complexity. The player can also go back by undoing his actions and removing those layers, which allows for a very organic indication of progression. This is most apparent in a test chamber that requires the simultaneous redirection of three lasers -- sorry -- thermal discouragement beams. The gels also have their own musical cues, and I’m curious to see whether players will upload videos of the emergent music they’ve “composed” by shooting across different gels.

Chell does tend to look like a generic Lara Croft.