aaronverber's forum posts
Imagine an empty cup. The cup represents my ability to express an idea. I'm not going to lie: my cup is pretty fancy--none of that plastic crap. We're talking glassware from Target, at least. But the cup is still only so big. In fact, it's pretty small. I can, of course, only pour one glass of water in at a time. The water is what I want say about anything in particular. I want to say a lot--I want to pour the water in all at once, but I can't. I have to take my time and drink the water as I go. This is frustrating, to say the least.
I feel like I have a lot to say about player agency versus player power, scale, story, storytelling, progression, art, originality, allusions, challenge--and I will, eventually. But I guess the overriding thought behind all of it is a hope for something new, something different. As much as I've loved following along with all the E3 shenanigans, the Big Picture, step-away-from-the-dots-and-see-what's-really-going-on sort of idea I got from this week was, "Well, it worked last time, didn't it?" (Again, this is a loaded statement, with several obvious exceptions, but I'm going for brevity.) By that, I don't mean a lack of originality. That's not my complaint. I've come to accept that there is no such thing--it's a myth, ironically enough. Because that's where most everything comes from, eventually, if you tear away all the embellishment and pomp: those pesky Greeks.
I'm looking for something with a spark. A glow. A love you don't find every day. I mean Journey. I mean Portal 2 (the first was original enough for both of them, if you ask me). Of course they exist within the trappings of what has come before. So does everything else. But it feels fresh. And I wish I could do a better job expressing what that feeling is, but I feel it strongly enough to trust it.
Don't get me wrong. In my first two blog posts, I praised Doom (which created one genre) and Dragon Age: Origins (which in some way stands as the current culmination of another). The first was game-changing (get it?). The second was a love-letter to RPG fans. But there is some sum experience that is gained from the good games that cannot be faked by the bad. I just wish I knew what that was. I mean, who wouldn't? But I feel like I have a lot of water in my brain, waiting to get out. I want the answers to be in there so badly. I just have to wait it out, I guess, and drink a lot of water along the way.
Uttering the phrase "Knee Deep in the Dead" brings on some of the strongest nostalgia I can muster. I've been thinking a lot about Doom (that's Doom circa 1993) lately. Now, let it be known that I have nothing at all against violence in video games. Have you seen the trailer for Metal Gear Solid: Rising? I'm all for that shit. But Doom is probably the pinnacle of the "Shoot First, Don't Ask Questions About Why You're Shooting First Ever, At All; Just Shoot and then Shoot Some More; and For the Sake of King and Country, Don't Look Up" genre.
Of course, there was a story. Sort of. And as a child, because I was about nine when I first played Doom (and I'm still perfectly normal, Mom), I tried to fill in the gaps of the story with my imagination. (That's the thing in your head that's kind of like a video game, but has no controller. Well, it does, but... Uh, never mind.) The time I spent trying to understand, with limited mental capacity, the hierarchical relationships between the Barons of Hell, the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind (which is, by the way, one of the sweetest titles for an enemy ever) is staggering. Do you think the Barons of Hell were related to each other? Do you think they were nice to each other? Is the Cyberdemon their father? They look awfully similar. Has the Spider Mastermind ever played the boardgame Mastermind?
A good chunk of my obviously thrilling youth was spent expanding upon the whole outer space/Hell mythos thing. This came (wait for it) in the form of (the delectably named) WADs. Most of the levels I built had a kind of a science fiction motif going on. I liked those textures because they looked cooler. And because, as a nine-year-old, I didn't have a strong enough concept of Hell to really enjoy making my levels hellish. But I knew what space was. Oh yes. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation. Space was sweet, with glowing blue lights and metal walls everywhere. Oh, the future! So while my brain was busy trying to piece together the more occult aspects of Doom, my need to create resorted to making everything look like the Enterprise, or my house.
These days, however, I pretty much steer clear of shooters. I need a good story, and the majority of shooters over the past ten years have been pretty weak in that department. So have a lot of other genres, but let's focus on one thing at a time. There are exceptions of course (I'll just say it first: Bioshock), but that's not my point. My point is that I liked, no, loved Doom, and it had almost no story whatsoever. And I knew exactly what to do. It's not like I needed to know about the UAC and the moons of Mars and the gateway to Hell to know that everything needed to die. Portal is a good example of a modern game that does this kind of minimalism well. I think many of today's shooters suffer because a story is crammed in where it doesn't really need to be. Do I need a bunch of witty sidekick soldiers? Does it matter if I'm humanity's only hope? Does it really make a difference? I'll shoot everything either way. Half the time, no one in the game even seems to notice what a murderous jackass I am.
I mean, what is more intriguing? Being led through an "epic" story of "love and loss" with "great" dialogue and "strong" characters?
Or arriving in a not-so-empty building, knee deep in the dead?
Spoilers ahead! Not that you couldn't see it coming. I mean, it's called Dragon Age: Origins, right? I'm going to assume you know about the origins, so it stands to reason that...yeah. Anyway. This is your final warning. Also, know that this is just one short thought of about a million I could have about Dragon Age. This one just seemed most worthy of being shared.
I didn't start Dragon Age: Origins intending to play like a bro. In fact, I had decided to start my character with as few prejudices as possible. I just hoped that he would find his own way in the world, and that I would find something at all. This had the humorous side effect of making my character sound like a complete idiot at the beginning of the game. Not only did poor, confused Eckard ask a lot of awkward and abrupt questions, but he also didn't really care what happened during his origin story. As a city elf, he was supposed to hate the humans who teased and tormented his people. Eckard, however, was a bit spineless in the beginning. He never backed down from a fight, but he didn't have much passion. He was quiet and lost. He had nothing to believe in.
I don't (or didn't) feel the same way as my character, at least not consciously. But a part of me, a big part of me, must have identified with that. My character and I were, to some extent, searching for something. By the time the Grey Wardens had been betrayed at Ostagar, though, we had found it. Eckard and I shared a loathing for treacherous Loghain. What a prick.
But it wasn't Loghain's treachery against Eckard that had me so upset. When I discovered that Alistair had also survived, I was a little worried: he can, at times, be a bit of a whiny tool. And then he told me how he wanted to hold a proper funeral for Duncan and travel to Orlais and that he and Eckard were in it together. I was touched. Eckard, doubly so. It was at that point that I decided Eckard and Alistair would be good buddies. There would be no romance--that's not what we needed. We were, as it turned out, looking for a friend. Besides, Alistair seemed more like a ladies man, hangs-out-at-that-bar-you-hate-but-go-to-all-the-time-anyway sort of dude. It was quite the bromance.
I rolled around town with three warriors and a mage for most of the game, feeling like a tool most of the time, but a polite tool nonetheless. Alistair was always in the party. Eckard always had his back. At every twist and turn in the plot, he sided with Alistair. They liked the same things, hated the same bloodmages. But there was one thing I had to disagree with him on: he had to become king. And I always felt a little bad about that. I could tell he didn't want it, but hoped it would be a sort of character building exercise. Boy was he pissed when I chose him over that other bitch. I then felt even worse about using my maxed-out persuasion to talk him down. And when it came time to kill the Archdemon, which I hardly cared about after being so satisfied by Eckard's disemboweling of Loghain, I took one for the team, for Alistair, and sacrificed my character (without even realizing this would be completely retconned later, I might add).
Few video game characters stay with me after I've finished a game: Manny Calavera, Urdnot Wrex, and Joker (though only in Mass Effect 2, really) are a few of the standouts. To that, I add Alistair. As I get older and busier, I realize that video games might one day take a back seat in my life. But if there is one thing that can keep me coming back, it's characters like Alistair. He made me laugh. He made me care. He made me play. And yes, he made me cry.
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