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.

The Portal script is one of the more challenging ones I’ve had to write, because it’s very difficult to pick apart a game that manages to excel on all fronts. And now Portal 2 is on the horizon, and it’s being hailed by its writers as “one of the finest single-player games [Valve] has ever created”. No pressure.

Portal is one of the clearest example of the “gameplay before story” adage. It started out as a student project that saw its core mechanic (navigating obstacles and puzzles through the use of two dynamic portals) spun out into an entirely new game. The relatively small development team then had to come up with a fresh story to contextualise that mechanic, and design constraints compelled them to use existing assets from the Source engine. This led to the decision to consolidate Portal into the Half-Life universe, but besides a few vague allusions to Black Mesa and the Combine, the game exists on its own merits. Ironically, Half-Life 2: Episode 2 incorporates more outright references to Portal (and especially Aperture Science) than the other way around.

As such, Portal is a game with a story that was written entirely in function of its central gameplay conceit, and that story has been rightfully praised far and wide. Judging by the amount of marketing that surrounds its sequel (not to mention the ongoing ARG that has the fanbase jockeying for position), it seems that it’s become one of Valve Software’s most prized products. But to be fair, it has ruined cake forever as being just cake.

Note: as before, this post was featured on GamaSutra. Also, my tendency to let incidental thoughts between parentheses meander into entire paragraphs has now been remedied through the use of footnotes.

Throughout Deus Ex: Human Revolution’s development, Eidos Montréal has joked that “we all played Deus Ex, and some of us were even forced to play Deus Ex: Invisible War”. It is a fairly flawed game, even when considering its near-impossible task of following and rivaling an iconic predecessor. My thoughts have already been mentioned in this post, and they were only affirmed by a recent playthrough. It occurred to me that there is a very specific way in which Deus Ex: IW fails to engage the player, beyond some of the more obvious shortcomings that the Short Script picks up on ^[1].

It first struck me when watching this post-mortem on Deus Ex: IW by its creative director, Harvey Smith. He specifically mentions the consolidation (console-idation? I kill me!) of the swimming skill and aqualung augmention in the first game into a single biomod in the second. While his example is technically a theoretical exercise (there is no swimming in Deus Ex: IW), it applies to many of the design decisions made for Deus Ex: IW and provides an interesting vantage point on what I believe to be one of its largest flaws. As Smith puts it, even though this consolidation process makes no difference on a mechanical level, it does curb a player’s fantasy that he is exercising his own authority in choosing how to develop his character and how those choices are reflected in the game world. In my opinion, Deus Ex: IW breaks this fantasy in a myriad of seemingly innocent ways.

The key is Smith’s use of the word “fantasy” and how it relates to player agency, a concept I previously broached in this post (which ironically includes a link to Smith discussing player freedom in Deus Ex). The relation can in fact be as simple as calling player agency a fantasy ^[2]. Without knowledge of multiple avenues inside a game, agency only becomes an impediment once that fantasy is broken. As long as the player has the impression that his actions and choices matter, he will lend them credence and meaning (regardless of how many avenues there actually are). The same principle applies to level design, which can make a world seem more alive and expansive than it really is. Crafting agency then goes beyond offering visible dialogue choices or gameplay approaches. The former influences the story while the latter influences gameplay (any crossovers notwithstanding), and Deus Ex: IW focuses on the wrong end of the equation.

The game attempts to offer the player full agency in its storyline by allowing him to align himself with every faction in the game. This is most significant when considering the Knights Templar, who are consistently portrayed as irredeemably evil and easy to hate. They are the only faction which the player has to fight until its leader, Saman, attempts to sway him to his cause close to the end of the game. This is sorely inconsistent with everything that preceded, even (and especially) if the player actually decides to join them. Contrarywise, Deus Ex offered no option to stay with UNATCO, but in light of its overarching narrative, it couldn’t, nor did it have to ^[3]. Of the “flaws” that Deus Ex had, this was one its sequel did not need to fix.

Gameplay-wise, Deus Ex and Deus Ex: IW are by and large similar beasts in their approach. Whenever the player meets an obstacle, he consumes a certain number of his resources to get past it, be they lockpicks or explosives for doors, multitools or nearby computer terminals for cameras, and lethal or non-lethal weapons for guards. Deus Ex: IW drastically reduces the number of available resources to streamline the interface and ease up the learning curve (for instance, doors are now indestructable and multitools also function as lockpicks), but it’s less about this reduction and more about how all the different approaches are implemented in gameplay so as to maintain (the illusion of) agency. The best illustration is how Deus Ex: IW handles keycodes.

The keycode is 2, okay? Think you can remember that?

In both games, keycodes are numerical and either handed out by characters or gleaned from datacubes. The difference is that Deus Ex makes the player physically type the code into a keypad, while Deus Ex: IW automates this process (using a keypad opens the corresponding door as if it were a simple toggle). The outcome is the same from a mechanical standpoint, because only one keycode is correct. But the agency effected by the player is diminished because he wasn’t allowed to enter that keycode himself. This also eliminates all possiblity of guesswork from Deus Ex: IW, since the successful operation of a keypad depends on having completed the interaction which yields the correct keycode, rather than the keycode itself.

Ostensibly trivial design decisions such as this, when added up, contribute to the player losing his feeling of agency, even if it is just that: a feeling. At the time of writing, player agency’s most devoted advocate Clint Hocking has posted another piece on its (d)evolution, which neatly dovetails with the above assertions.

1. To anyone thinking about (re)playing Deus Ex: IW, I highly recommend downloading John P‘s Unified Texture Pack here. It dramatically enhances and improves the quality and resolution of the game’s textures, and I can’t imagine playing without it.
2. This is not the case when a game is specifically designed around multiple choices that aren’t readily apparent (in story and/or gameplay). An example in Deus Ex is the fate of Paul Denton. JC’s actions decide whether he lives or dies, but this is never made explicit. Many players attested that they didn’t realise they could save Paul until it was pointed out to them. Only playing the game both ways provides the full story. Outright gimmickry in other media (such as Run Lola Run‘s structure) would be needed to compete with the elegant multiple narratives that separate playthroughs in games can provide (a point gleaned verbatim from this article).
3. Ironically, unused audio files suggest it was initially planned by the developers. This conversation has JC disbelieving Paul’s evidence of UNATCO’s corruption, but it’s likely that a subsequent event would have made it untenable for JC to keep refuting Paul (perhaps the raid by UNATCO troopers that follows that scene anyway).

Note: this post was featured on GamaSutra, so I am reproducing it here with a few minor changes to accompany the Short Script of Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, the game that really made me consider stylised visuals and what they are capable of.

I’m not going to lie. If its demo wasn’t enough to discourage me from picking up Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, its critical response was. The game hasn’t fared particularly well, with official reviews citing its short and lacklustre single player campaign as a primary flaw. Despite those misgivings (or perhaps, because of them), I wanted to write a Short Script for it, so I waited for its appearance in the local bargain bin. And even then I felt cheated, because it’s just a really poor game. I mentioned before that I was looking forward to its “YouTube aesthetic”, because it provides a unique and consistent level of stylisation. But that’s unfortunately lost on a fundamentally broken game. In essence, it plays just as bad as it wants to look.

The game’s art direction does convey how its title characters see the world they inhabit. Like literal observers watching a video of the events, both Kane and Lynch are detached from their crimes. They have no real connection to their actions, as if they’re watching themselves from afar and powerless to put a stop to what they’re doing. As such, the visual style communicate both to the player and about the character he plays. And that’s the lead-in for a look at stylised visuals.

First we have to make a detour through the movie industry to ease us into it, and more specifically, the introduction of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Before movies are released, their CGI aspects are often advertised and thus receive very specific attention. This foreknowledge alone can be enough to prevent any disbelief from being suspended. There are movies that are entirely CGI, but this level of attention is more apparent when a movie combines CGI with live-action. A recent example is Jeff Bridges’ dual role in Tron: Legacy. He plays himself as an older Kevin Flynn, and his appearance in the original Tron is digitally recreated as his counterpart CLU 2.0 (who looks like his younger self). Many people were put off by CLU 2.0′s representation, calling it “appalling”, “eerie” and “creepy”. A movie which suffered similar criticism is The Polar Express, which has become the poster movie for misfired results in attempted CGI realism.

I'm a real boy!

Conversely, the amount of people aware of any CGI in The Social Network is far less. The Winklevoss twins were played by a single actor who simultaneously portrayed both brothers, and their presence in a single shot was accomplished through seamless editing and post-production superimposition. While the conditions are different (it’s not an entirely computer-generated character), the context is. Hardly anybody knew that any CGI was involved, so very little attention was paid. CGI is at its best when it augments, not replaces.

If we translate that line of reasoning to videogames, we find that they are, purely by definition and semantics, always CGI (live-action cutscenes notwithstanding). Hence, the visual presentation of a videogame plays a huge role in its development, especially when looking at AAA titles. Development diaries speak of “real-time dynamic deferred global illumination lighting” and “diffuse specular character animation shading cubemaps” which try to create a world and populate it with characters that adhere as closely to reality as possible. In doing so, the visuals expose themselves to a far-reaching level of scrutiny. A very fitting example here is L.A. Noire.

It might be premature to judge L.A. Noire’s visual presentation when the game hasn’t been released yet, but it’s a fitting case study by virtue of the excess of information on and considerable response to the MotionScan technology that renders its characters. In a nutshell, MotionScan uses an array of cameras to capture every aspect and angle of an actor speaking his lines and then compiles this data into a 3D facial expression system (an early version of this technology has been applied to me). This is currently the closest we are to translating the entire gamut of acting into a game within a single process (only the motion capture is still handled separately).

The characters in L.A. Noire look very lifelike as a result, but something about them seems off in much the same way as CLU 2.0′s appearance raises eyebrows. To me, they look like what they amount to on a technical level: shop window dummies with .gif files taped to their heads. Their eyes appear dead and their mouths move like they’re chewing honey. L.A. Noire’s saving grace is that this is not reality purely for reality’s sake. Being able to sniff out liars based on subtle expressions and gestures is a gameplay mechanic, which is why the characters require detailed facial expressions to make every nuance readily visible. But therein lies another problem.

Derp.

To make sure that as many players as possible will be able to catch the hints and clues that are betrayed by suspects during interrogation scenes, they are made explicit by the actors. It’s like they’re following the handbook on how to detect lies by making every tell obvious (like shifty eyes or a tightening mouth). This isn’t just the case for L.A. Noire. This article on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game praised for its production values in creating believable character visuals, concludes that those characters are “all animated, excitable, overworking their eyebrows and emoting all over the place”. In essence, the digital actors overstate themselves to make even the tiniest conveyance of emotion stand out.

Ironically, the flipside is that lip synchronisation seems to go completely the other way. It’s often understated and barely visible. This scene from Splinter Cell: Conviction is a good example. Sam Fisher puts emphasis on each word when he threatens Anna, yet his mouth simply opens and closes like a fish bobbing for food. Shout “I! WILL! KILL! YOU!” in front of a mirror and see how your mouth really moves along. Lip synchronisation is still very much hit-or-miss in games, in part because it’s something we tend to pay close attention to.

I have no doubt that games will one day acquire the visual acuity to render a fully believable human being without so much as dipping a toe in the uncanny valley. The evolution that graphics have undergone in the last ten years alone is enough of an indication. But this lofty goal might sway developers from a different approach that provides more unique modes of expression, and that approach is distinctly stylised characters and visuals. It’s not simply a way of avoiding the uncanny valley altogether by telling the player that realistic visuals is not what the developers are trying to achieve. Usually the extent to which characters are stylised is just the extent to which the art team weren’t able to make them realistic.

Many articles on games try to pinpoint the specific aspects that separate them from and elevate them above other media. Games indeed possess unique capabilities to express themselves, and one of those is the way in which the world can be represented as it is seen through the eyes of the character that you play (through intentionally stylised visuals). This point is communicated brilliantly in this analysis of Hitman: Blood Money (from which the phrase that ended the previous paragraph was gleaned).

A good example is the change in appearance of the Little Sisters between the two BioShock games. In BioShock, they purposefully look creepy, wrong, and almost alien with their oversized eyes and drooping faces. This is because the protagonist, Jack, is uncomfortable around them (who wouldn’t be around a girl who’s got glowing eyes and stabs corpses). But BioShock 2 makes them seem more endearing and human, because the protagonist is now a Big Daddy, who is meant to feel paternal and care for them.

Extreme Makeover: Rapture Edition

On their own, intensely realistic visuals are not enough to load characters with empathy. For instance, many gamers have attested that Limbo affected them on many levels, despite (or because of) its minimalistic graphics and vague context. The subject matter of a game naturally plays a role in the decision to stylise visuals. Heavy Rain wouldn’t work as a cartoon, but Team Fortress 2 wouldn’t work as a gritty war simulation (incidentally, it was initially planned as such). Stylised visuals also work in movies (see any Pixar movie), but in games, they have the capability to do so much more.