Also, I'd like to briefly note an article that a kind poster, David, pointed out in my last post, which explores the eloquence (or relative lack thereof) of story and storytelling in video games, written by Junot Diaz! Junot brings up some excellent points in his article, in my opinion, very much in line with one of the persisting fundamental problems with the video game business today; it's still such an immature industry, a medium where the voices and talent have had only thirty years to develop. Imagine how sophisticated the written word or the movie industry was thirty years after its inception. Find it on the Wall Street Journal website here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html
5. Half-Life (PC, 1998)
The premise of this game (as is the case for most First Person Shooters, FPSs) is hideously simple. You play in first person perspective with nothing but a gun and a cross hair, and are charged with shooting anything that moves. In reality, Half-Life is no different from the hundreds of other FPS that have come before or after it. You shoot things. You shoot a lot of things.
Half-Life makes its money in its departure from the video game standard of storytelling, rather than a reinvention of the FPS genre. One of the time-honored traditions of video games is the implementation of "levels" as an indicator of progress. This can be anything from the level your character attains when he/she gains enough experience points to the levels you complete with a tiny red, jumping Mario. Levels are great for video game designers because they make creating games easy (easier). Want to make a snow-based level with lots of monsters? Great. Done. What about a lava world with lots of jumping and dexterity-based puzzles? Easy. The discrete nature of leveling and level creation makes a game more diverse and interesting for the player. Where level design fails, in my opinion, is in the immersion of the player to the game. Simply, it's incredibly jarring to suddenly and arbitrarily end a scene, a situation, or a level just so you can move on to a different environment. It takes the player out of the game, and has a curious effect of "tearing down the fourth wall," to borrow a term from theater, which is something that would rarely be done (or done only with great intent) in other mediums, yet is done all the time in video games. And why would any self respecting story do that? Imagine getting to the castle where you're about to face the big bad boss to save the princess when the game suddenly pauses to essentially tell you: save here, perhaps. Drink a couple of strength potions. Enjoy this little movie cut-scene about how bad the big bad boss is. It doesn't make sense, and it removes one of the strongest qualities a video game has to offer -- interactivity.
So where does this leave Half-Life? Half-Life throws all old video game convention out the window, by giving you nothing to begin the game with except a character to control in first person perspective, and later, a gun and cross hairs. And that's it. There are no "levels" to speak of, no interruptions in the game where control of the game is taken from the player, and from the beginning credits until the the end, there is nothing except the survival of your character. You could conceivably play the game from beginning to end (all 20-30 hours) without stopping; every significant event is experienced real time, whether it is being attacked by an Apache helicopter to destroying a gigantic tentacled alien inside a nuclear reactor to eavesdropping on marines who are hunting you. The scenes of action are extremely exciting, and even better, they are defined by the player's reaction to what happens -- do I throw a grenade at the group of marines and then run in with guns a' blazing or do I snipe them from afar? -- which makes for great gameplay and even better stories.
4. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation 2, 2001)
On the other end of the spectrum, we have one of the preeminent examples of video game interruption during gameplay -- Metal Gear Solid 2. Where you could call Half Life a minimalist exercise in storytelling, letting the player experience everything themselves, the Metal Gear franchise is perhaps most famously known for beating their players over the head with ridiculously long movie sequences, scenes of dialogue, and overt, heavy handed political commentary. To say that the last four or so Metal Gear games is almost akin to playing an interactive movie would not be so far from the truth. So why, especially after spending several paragraphs above deriding the problems with taking player control out of the hands of the player, would I nominate Metal Gear Solid 2? Because I love a good story, especially a story that can deliver with near Hollywood-like production values and effects. Check out the following intro movie to Metal Gear Solid 2:
So what's so important about Metal Gear Solid 2? For starters, it was one of the first games that truly attempted to bring a movie-like quality to the story it was telling. Metal Gear Solid (One) attempted to do this on the Playstation with its transition to 3D graphics, but at the time, the technology was limited and constrained in many ways. It wasn't until the sequel with MGS 2 debuting on the Playstation 2 do we get a game that fully exploits the technology of its day. To me, the above intro movie is something straight out of a Bond film or some spy thriller, complete with dramatic music and high-flying digital stunts. Even more tellingly, you can see how the series has evolved in terms of how the medium of video games (at least for this game) views itself in the intro of its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 3:
Credits? Theme music? If you were watching the above on the big screen, I bet you'd guess it was another Bond movie, for at least the first few minutes. While the gameplay was in general excellent and interesting, what most fascinated me about Metal Gear Solid 2 was its almost rigid adherence to making it seem like you were playing a movie, an extremely well made, well shot, and well financed movie.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment