To a gravelly voiced narrator and strobing electronics, ‘Outrun’s ‘Prelude’ jumpstarts the legend of the Dead Cruiser, the Testarossa-charged phantom trapped in a time of black shades and high tops and then splits the night in the thunderous crack of lightning. It’s the perfect way for Kavisnky’s 80’s-film-inspired synth-rock ballad to put pedal to metal and throw fire from all twelve cylinders.
But it only sets the stage. With its ambient instrumentation and pulsing beats, ‘Blizzard’ is the cry of tortured souls calling you from the ether. If ‘Blizzard’ is seduction, ‘Protovision’ is salvation. A song that starts with the strong rumble of a motor tearing road towards you, it’s chrome etched in lasers shining under the passing city lights. It’s the theme of a pale rider.
It’s evocative. Through its thick and grimy sounds, only half of the fourteen tracks speak a word but all say a thousand. Listen to ‘Testarrossa Autodrive’, a machinegun spitting race that is every bit as awesome as its name confers or to the digitally-off-kilter vocals of ‘Odd Look’ to see a selection that is varied, thematically consistent but compositionally divergent. As a cohesive work, it’s an album whose every song is another scene in a well-paced movie.
Despite tones dripping with atmosphere, some of its standout songs are the ones with the most explicit messages. ‘Suburbia’ is a laid back rap set against the beeps and bloops of future computers that never came to bear, with winking lyrics including the awesome ‘cut these fools like pizza pies with extra cheese’. ‘First Blood’ stands out as well, with its Rockette-on-a-smoky-stage vibe that could be something straight out of glam rock-opera Streets of Fire.
While the majority of the tracks are exclusive to this album, several have been available since 2007 on Kavinsky’s 1986 LP. They’re great songs rich with texture that shows that his Dead Cruiser concept had been prowling the streets for quite some time. Strangely the only place where it hitches is with ‘Nightcall’, an otherwise excellent song made famous for its appearance in the opening credits of Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Drive’ that feels like a congested highway compared to the open-road flow of the rest.
At its most superficial level, Outrun is the soundtrack to a movie that never existed, set in a time that has become more fiction than reality. The truth is really deeper than that. In more ways than one, Outrun- like the red-eyed teen at its center- is a specter from long ago, haunting the asphalt of today.
Fifteen minutes into Resident Evil 4, Shinji Mikami and his design team test your comprehension of the mechanics they’ve been invisibly teaching you since you selected ‘New Game’. Former rookie cop Leon S. Kennedy had just fought his way through the Ganado’s Village and now finds himself catching his breath on an old dingy farm. Stray slightly from the beaten path and you’ll find a radiant pearl necklace enticingly suspended above a barrel of putrid water, patiently waiting for you to find it. Retrieving this necklace is your test. You can’t just reach out and interact with it, so you draw your handgun and shoot it loose- and immediately fail as it falls directly into the barrel of sludge beneath. When you pull it from the filth, your inventory lists the item as ‘Dirty Pearl Pendant’, its picture a grimy mess. Looking back at the barrel, you notice the 2x4 propping up the lid, so you shoot that next and watch it create a cover. Since you didn't learn the lesson before, you do now: Resident Evil 4 rewards tactical gunplay.
Let’s study the notes:
Despite their radical attempts to experiment with new narrative techniques, the first mainline Resident Evil titles are largely remembered for controls and mechanics designed to facilitate a very specific gameplay. While each successive game made iterations to the core mechanics, what is true of Resident Evil’s core is true of Code Veronica’s. That changed with 4.
You can discover the games core design pillar, the one every gameplay mechanic is based on, without having your hand on the controller- the game’s camera is placed just behind and above Leon’s right shoulder. Leon’s figure defines the middle left quarter of the screen from the waist up, his head pointed directly towards a small wooden house fifty feet away and immediately establishes your current objective. Because you recognize you can’t move forward, you turn to the right where the hill tapers into a path. You now know that left and right control Leon’s horizontal orientation and up and down move him forward or back in the direction he’s facing. You test out the other buttons. You can run, pull out a knife and draw your handgun.
Pulling the right trigger, the camera zooms closer in and you see a red laser sight extending from the handguns muzzle. When you move it around and see how it tracks you realize that the sight moves relative to Leon’s perspective rather than your own but the two coalesce with a bounding box: while the camera moves one to one with vertical axis input, horizontal movement has some play and keeps the camera static when pointed in the middle half of the screen. The end result has you controlling Leon as if he was playing a light gun shooter (fine Metroid Prime 3). Then you see the laser sight come to a point on the black shape of a crow sitting on a branch. That means you can shoot it. And you do. There’s two more on the dirt. Three separately placed targets to practice on. You’ve learned to shoot.
When he gets to the small shack, Leon finds a Spanish man stoking the fireplace. When Leon tries talking to him, the man grabs an axe and swings. You regain control as he comes slowly at us, hand raised. You scramble for the trigger draw our gun again, put a round in his chest, in his arm, and see that while he is still coming towards you, the bullets are having different effects based on the location they hit. When a bullet takes out his feet he staggers into you and a ‘Kick’ prompt allows Leon to deliver a strong roundhouse that sends the man flying. With him on the ground, a headshot will end the fight. The man’s behavior is unlike any of the other monsters Leon has fought and we discover why when he investigates the body- ‘He’s not a zombie…’
You turn back to the door and find it barred from the outside. You'll have to find another exit. Since the house is so small, you run up the stairs, past a window and to a small desk with a box of ten handgun bullets. On your way back down, you pass the window again and get a prompt letting you know you can jump out. If you do so, you’ll find yourself exposed to three enemies creeping straight towards you. If you take a moment to look out the window, you’ll see one of those enemies centered perfectly within the windows frame. Breaking the glass with your knife, you can calmly aim at the man’s head. From your perch, you can shoot two of the three guys and then jump out the window and take the last. The lesson becomes more advanced: maps can be designed with verticality and wise placement comes with advantage.
The long path forward consists of a few curves that get you well acclimated to the movement. A hundred feet in you come to a wolf trapped in a bear trap and while you’re given the opportunity to free it, the larger point is to make you aware of environmental hazards. You’ll run through an obstacle course of traps and tripwire. The game wants you to get good at squeezing through tight spots.
The second map is the village, a complex space with cover, alternate paths and verticality. From the path you entered, you could rush straight into the thicket of enemies in guns blazing but by taking the route to left, you bypass them behind the safety of the houses. At the far end, you’ll find the first female villager busy bailing hay. You might drop your guard, thinking her tamer than the others. You’ll only think that until she turns her pitchfork on you. Aside from the gameplay of the geometry, the layout of the village is logical as a living space with houses, stables and a tower. It’s a living place that feels organic to the setting and not built directly for the gameplay.
Fighting the woman off gave the rest time to circle around you. As they close in, you’re forced to apply more advanced combat techniques than you were aware you possessed. It starts defensively as the location based damage system allows you to tactically trip up enemies buying yourself both room and time to reposition. Your understanding of the environment grows as well as you run into a house, barricade the door, knock down a ladder from a second story window and jump off the roof in an attempt to juggle enemies and plan your fight against the mob bearing down on you. So far, analysis has portrayed the gunplay as the sum of two distinct gameplay concepts- crowd control and complex level design both with offensive and defensive options. In this scene we discover a third that informs a fundamental design choice that we had tackled earlier.
When we shoot a flying axe out of the air, we notice that Leon’s gunplay allows trick shooting. Let’s take a second to look back at Leon’s laser sight which is a very specific aiming mechanic for a game to implement on purpose. In his excellent God Hand review, Hamish Todd observes that every enemy in that game exists on a separate plane consisting of it and you. Considering how God Hand’s movement and camera designs were taken from Resident Evil 4, maybe that conclusion applies here as well. Maybe that’s why Leon could shoot that axe out of the air- it exists on a line connected to him and his gun. Compare that to the reticle used in other third person games, where guns fire in relation to the orientation of the controller’s right thumbstick. Not only would trick shots be more difficult (since you’re essentially trying to hit a target perpendicular to its trajectory) but would make enemies less physically threatening because of the nature of three dimensional controls: you could have simply sidestepped the axe. At that point, why even have it?
It’s a waste of time to try to figure out which came first, the bounding box or the trick shot gunplay, because the two are so intrinsically symbiotic that you can’t analyze one divorced from the other. In fact, that’s the beauty of Resident Evil 4’s design- the gameplay succeeds because the gunplay, crowd control and traversal options all fit together into a unified whole, on that would have failed if any part wasn't properly constructed. Regardless of the wisdom of so strictly adhering to the staid movement controls of the franchise, the cohesive combat form as it exists in incredibly tight.
The fight tears through your ammo. As you frantically scour the area for weapons, ammo and health, you find that the series traditional concept of exploration has evolved into something new, something more active, more aggressive. Depending on how well you explored the first map and fought the eight enemies along it, you could be coming into this fight with sixty handgun bullets, two grenades and several herbs. If you rushed through the area needlessly wasting ammunition you’ll likely find yourself in a frenzied scramble for supplies. This desperation transforms the games exploration into a tense struggle to survive.
Tense is a very accurate description. In studying the individual gameplay systems, we’ve also found the games central emotional tone. Where the series had lived in B-movie horror camp, it’s now big budget action horror; the dangers are no longer around the next corner but behind your back and just out of your line of sight, stalking you with their axes raised. The way the camera is placed so closely to Leon’s back creates a palpable claustrophobia that pulls at your hindbrain. No place is safe- enemies climb through windows and destroy barricades and force you to be constantly on the move. You know that part in suspense movies where the hero’s fate depends on their ability to light a match? These fight scenes are the constant ball of tension and ecstasy of relief of those moments as you raid the village of its spoils, constantly hunted. Then you hear a chainsaw fire up, its throttle rattling. It’s a fast and frenetic fight.
Then it ends, your enemies drawn away by the ringing of the chapel’s bell. Leon stands in in the center of the now abandoned village, bewildered by the sudden turn f events. A late title card pops and we learn our final lesson: this is Resident Evil 4. It’s a game built of familiar concepts but applied into a whole that is both an evolution of the one’s that preceded and a bold new direction for its future. Your test awaits.
Double Dragon Neon lands a first-frame hurricane kick to the junk with a virtuoso big-hair anthem that recaptures the lost spirit of the original ‘80’s arcade classic while reveling in the decade’s ridiculous excesses. As if powered by some ancient Chinese magic, Jake Kaufman runs to the right and punches dudes in the face with the confident bravado of an action movie hero.
The album greets us with the speed metal meets chiptune power ballad ‘Title Theme', a song of equal parts ‘80’s arcade game and ‘80’s action flick. It could have been the theme song for Double Dragon or Beverly Hills Cop of Commando. Then we hear ‘City Streets 2 (Mango Tango – Neon Jungle)’ and everything clicks into place.
Every beat ‘em up of the era wanted to be glam rock opera Streets of Fire (Streets of Rage anyone?) and now that the tech has caught up, Double Dragon Neon completes the transformation it began so many years before. There was always the retro sci-fi aesthetic and the kidnapped girlfriend and the biker gang holding the city in the grip of fear, now there’s the screeching wails and makeup. And as Billy and Jimmy step up to fight, the city rallies behind them. Just listen to ‘Level Select’.
It’s music reinforcing story reinforcing gameplay. The music empowers the Lee’s. ‘The Tapesmith’ introduces the grimy fantasy rock and paints a picture of the man it’s named after. Listening to it you see the Tapesmith standing over his forge like it’s an extension of himself. It makes us believe he is striking steel that will be plunged into the heart of some Tolkien-esque dark lord.
In game, his Mixtapes give the Lee’s various bonuses, but they have more significance here: these tiny songs allow Kaufman to go nuts and flex his creative muscle. What he produced were songs no more than 46 seconds long but experiment with the many fabulous miscellaneous genres that would have been inappropriate in the main story. To complete the authentic feel of the album, each of these tracks are introduced by the mechanical click of a Walkman's play button being pushed. In a way, the two styles differences enhances the other- makes the main songs more able to give narrative context to the gameplay and in turn defines the diversity of the mix tapes that much more. Let’s start with ‘Healing Touch’:
It’s the sensitive man’s plea, a complete reversal to the exuberant machismo and propulsive energy of the earlier songs. When I hear it, I can only picture Billy’s tear streaked face singing under a spotlight, eyes cast to heaven like he was Dill from The Crying Game. It’s great. And it reveals one of Kaufman’s greatest feats- every song is as authentic but completely self-aware. Listen to ‘One Inch Punch’ an exuberant Beastie Boys-inspired ode (let’s face it, probably to Stephen Seagal). The only thing missing is the head spinning break dancer and his over-sized chrome boombox.
You could just jeep going- there’s the Enya-like dreamscape of ‘Balance’ and the throaty ‘Desperation’, which has all the listlessness of a Depeche Mode song- but revealing them all would ruin the joy of exploration. Double Dragon Neon is a hadouken to the face worth enduring.
*This album is name your own price on Jake Kaufman's bandcamp page.
First impressions are tricky things. You are introduced to every character as you are every person- without context. You might have seen pictures of what they look like, heard of their stories, but until you see them with your own eyes, it’s all academic. There are only two qualities about any person that can absolutely be measured- their existence and their actions. Their motivations and psychology are nothing more than conjecture and speculation but that doesn’t mean they’re not important.
A character is any fictional entity that possesses a behavioral system and the capacity to act in relation to other entities. Sentience, or the appearance of it, is crucial as it is a requisite for the state of being alive, so frees the definition from being exclusive to human beings. A story isn’t one without characters who are acting to accomplish a goal, often in direct opposition to others. Constructed well, a character is cognitively indistinguishable to the observer from a person of flesh and blood; even though you will never meet one, shake its hand, they become friends and enemies. As we witness the unfolding events, characters become our emotional anchors- we cheer when they fight, celebrate when they win and mourn when they die.
Since every person is a combination of traits both physical and mental, an author must fully understand who their character is, what it wants and what it will do to get it. Successfully building a character completely depends on implementing the thousands of ways which everybody communicates information about who they are, even when their mouths aren’t moving. This information is characterization and every bit reveals history.
Even if a person is born at the moment we meet, their physicality is full of detail: we can deduce lineage from the structure of their bones, the color of their skin; as they grow, we can reason out their diet from its shape and constitution; we are given a recording of their experiences from their musculature, from their scars; and we get insight into their emotions from how they conduct themselves, the efficiency of their movements and the strength of their voice. At any point in a life, the evolving shape of a body is the product of the confluence of events that led them to that moment.
And a form dictates capabilities. In videogames, that form is the foundation for the mechanics the gameplay is built upon. One of the more classic correlations can be found in the size of the body- small and quick, large and strong. But, form doesn’t necessitate shape. Look at Kirby, the cotton-candy pink puffball whose defining ability is to swallow others and steal theirs- a single ability that has the potential for all. And yet, a forms consciousness doesn’t have to be limited by a body. Halo’s AI Cortana may be able to project an image in order to interact with Master Chief, but she is composed of light and data clusters and can access and interface with networks throughout the universe. Though she has her limits, she isn’t confined by physical constraints. Form dictates capabilities- don’t confuse it with appearance. That serves an entirely different purpose.
Information theory deals with how humans identify, analyze and interact with a thing on a psychological level. A tenet of the study declares that for any design that intends to be used, a tools core application and utility should be discernible by looking at it. When applied to videogames, that means the observer must be able to intuit a characters core mechanics and abilities by looking at them. We can assume that if it has wings it can fly, has a mouth it can speak or holds a gun it can shoot.
While functional design communicates a character’s proficiencies and relays characterization, it also sets our expectations. When thatgamecompany developed Journey, they weren’t going to allow the player to lift objects or grab a ledge if they missed a jump, so shrouded their protagonist in a large robe to obscure its figure, excising many assumptions and imbuing movement with a sense of speed in the process. But just because a design can communicate gameplay potential and characterization doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for the context. In Dark Energy Digital's Hydrophobia, fashion-backwards protagonist Kate Wilson dresses like a rock climber for her job as a security engineer, apparently awaiting the day the colony ship where she is employed will get attacked forcing her to climb, swing and vault through the wreckage to safety. That’s poor design that only gets it half right. Character design requires acknowledgment of the body but must also reflect the content of the mind.
And the mind is a much more complex matter to construct. When it’s young, every mind collects data on the nature of reality and contemplates its place within it. It develops a value system based on the conclusions it’s drawn and a moral code to direct its actions. It forms a philosophy. But that philosophy can be challenged over the course of a life and people can find themselves re-evaluating the conclusions they’ve held, even if those ideals had formed the basis of their entire way of life. There are many stories where this is the point, to grow and mature. For many others it’s just the start- theirs is a journey attempting to fulfill a goal that’s acceptable to the morals they already hold.
The desire can be any object, person, event or idea. The path that leads a character to their goal is plot and every step down portrays characterization. If the goal is set and directed by forces outside the character, they have little emotional tie to its success and are instead swept up in the momentum until its conclusion. If they set off on a goal they established for themselves, they must care about achieving it and their persistence and ferocity to clear greater and greater obstacles tells us about who they are and what they’re made of. Somewhere in the middle of those two types of plot are the ones that have been brought directly to a character because of their profession. These plots are about one character stopping another from reaching theirs and are the most frequent types of stories you’ll find, regardless of the format.
For their connection to the observer, these plots also start at an emotional disadvantage. We know that we connect with characters because of plot and that plot is infused with characterization, so we must ask ourselves what we get attached to in these stories and why. For mysteries, the answer is simple- the criminal. Though it adheres to the same basic rules, the emotional connection is different; rather than celebrating a hero for reaching their goal, we fear that a villain will reach theirs. A criminal has reason for breaking the law- the need to feed their family, an unquenched desire for revenge or for the sheer thrill of it- and through it we get a sense of who they are. In opposition is the detective, whose plot is to bring the criminal to justice or keep them from committing more crimes, a plot that tells us very little about who the detective is on the inside. We only get characterization from the means they use to catch the criminal. We can assume that, as people who entered the trade of their own free will, they must generally care about the process but they are in no way required to have a vested interest in the outcome of a single job.
This often creates a complex dynamic between characters within a story. The main character in any narrative is the protagonist, but that in no way means they are a hero. Every relationship is relative. People tend to be friends with those with shared interests, whether it’s having the same philosophical views, enjoying the same activities or trying to keep from being alone. In a similar vein are enemies, who usually stand in opposition of any of these areas that would have brought them together. Regardless of their role in the narrative, they all affect the pursuit of the plot- they can be the one that embarks on the quest, be the object at its end or be the blockade trying to impede it. The difference between the protagonist and antagonist is one of perspective.
In the hundreds of thousands of years of human development, physical and behavioral patterns have emerged. Our brain recognizes these patterns and organizes them into stereotypes which it uses as a cognitive shortcut to quickly identify the behaviors the next time we confront by them. Collections of these stereotypes form archetypes, a more integrated roadmap that allows us to quickly sum up an entire personality and assess how to approach them. We use similar types of mental shortcuts for everything from driving through traffic to shopping. For storytelling, these archetypes are useful as preset traits that allow us to identify what role they will play and how they will act. To illustrate, let’s use a reporter, a detective, a scientist- three professions with different fields but similar methods and aim. They all gather information, make deductions and search for truth but it’s not until you see each in their respective environments- a newsroom, a crime scene or a lab- that you know the difference.
Nobody behaves drastically out of character; if they appear to its only because we had the wrong impression of them in the first place. Even if a character has conflicting personality traits or behaviors they must remain consistent to the whole. Take The Joker, a character of pure insanity who often acts without reason; he can be cruel, playful and serious and all are consistent with his defining characteristics- unpredictability and chaos. But mechanics must also be consistent with a character or they run the risk of seeming superfluous. Max Payne can enter bullet time, a state of hyper awareness that appears to slow down time and allows him to move quicker than his enemies. Where it falls apart is that the ability doesn’t seem to be attributed to Max as a character since any player can do it in the third releases multiplayer. The mechanic also isn’t consistent with bursts of adrenaline because the painkillers he downs don’t hinder his perception or reflexes. Here, Bullet Time is a mechanic in service to style rather than characterization. This is an example of ludonarrative dissonance, an idea that deals with any disparity a videogame has between the mechanics of its gameplay and the devices and actions used in its narrative. It’s also found in every entry of the Uncharted series, where the affable Nathan Drake kills thousands of people as he seeks treasure and fortune.
That means that for videogames to cohesively weave gameplay within a narrative, the central mechanics must complement the plots goal and be consistent with the characters abilities. Solid Snake is a master of infiltration and over the years has broken into maximum security facilities, stolen intel, rescued hostages and disappeared without a trace. As Metal Gear allows the player to slip past enemies undetected, the games mechanics are built to accommodate for stealth- Snake can peer around cover, distract guards, and crawl through vents. When the situation calls for lethal force, his training in weapons and unarmed combat as a soldier help him make it out alive. These are mechanics inexorably tied to Snake, ones that are consistent with his expertise and appropriate for the missions normal people would fail. That is complete characterization.
It’s at this point that we realize what function a character truly serves for the structure of a story. As every person is a collection of beliefs that evolve into a moral code and acts within its confines, all characters are inherently devices for promoting their respective philosophy in relation to the story’s plot. They are the workings of that code abstracted into a physical, but still conceptual, form. The one who wins in the struggle, and how they conduct themselves to overcome it, are the author’s commentary on which ideas and ideals are the correct ones to hold- it’s their statement that this philosophy beats that philosophy. The reductionism of that statement can seem a callous insult to characters that we love, but there is no limit to the size, scope and landscape of the ideals a character can represent.
While living people change and grow older, most characters are created and exist in a vacuum. No matter how many times you read the same book, watch the same movie or play the same game, the character doesn’t change. For the ones that we remember fondly, the relationships we cherish, they show us a world we hadn’t ever seen before, and that’s incredibly powerful, since it’s their actions that linger in our minds. We meet them and when they’re gone, we are different than we were before.
I was born in the wasteland that was once Washington D.C. I felt joy and sadness; met people that will stay etched in my mind forever, made friends and enemies. The life was mine alone to lead and I made choices that affected it every day and with every step. I died on the other side of the Omega 4 Relay saving humanity from an enemy they didn’t believe existed.
But those were all experiences videogames provided. Just as novels and movies allow us to see places we’ve never seen, introduce people we’ve never met, videogames let us be in new places we’ve never been, do new things we’ve never done. No game gives us complete freedom of agency, access to every situation and put us in every location, but across the entirety of the medium, you can collect experiences that plant the seed for your own growth, to allow you to discover the world around and gain knowledge about existence and reality.
It can start deep in the forest of Hyrule. I have control over my own path and the freedom to go in any direction I want- east and west, north and south- but the first step of my particular adventure is to enter a nearby cave, a decision that rewards me with a sword. With it I can fight enemies and protect myself. But it didn’t have to be that way; I could have gone to a nearby dungeon, fought my way through without a weapon and claimed the first piece of the Triforce or go directly to another dungeon and get the fifth. The choice was mine. As was the choice to fight Air Man before I had earned the Leaf Shield, an item that would have defeated him in only a few shots. I got it later when I defeated Wood Man, but that was before I had defeated Metal Man and received his Metal Blade, which would have made everything easier.
No matter what direction you go, no matter what action you take, you will become stronger- a realization that is incredibly important. You’ll recognize the change when you overcome obstacles that had challenged you before. In RPG’s, that’s neatly represented as EXP and levels but those are just tangible systems that represent something that is mostly intangible- individual growth. The changes happen physically and mentally- you’ll jump higher and run faster; you’ll solve old puzzles that lead to new. Those new experiences will give you new tools and abilities and make you better capable of tackling the world.
The sheer volume of different games provide an incredibly diverse range of topics and many present an opportunity to learn new subjects and try new activities you might never have access to. You can drive and modify cars, learning about automotive engineering or fly classic and modern aircraft to soar through the sky or rocket through space; act out a simulation of detective work to solve a murder to bring justice to the victim or save them from a deadly virus; improve your body through training or learn training by working the tracks. Anything can be represented in videogames and the only limitation is your own desire to seek out them out.
Other people have made their own choices and walked their own paths and you’ll meet many as you grow. You’ll make enemies who want to take what’s yours and friends that will help you fight for what you believe in, bringing strength to areas that aren’t yours while you make up for their weaknesses. They will accompany you on your path. The relationships will develop as they witness your actions, see what you’re made of and the group becomes stronger, making your journey that much easier to complete. You can fall in love, get married and have a family. You will meet people who tempt you to stray.
And you find that your actions have consequences and will be forced into inescapable situations and make tough decisions. When Geralt of Rivia decided where his allegiances lay in The Witcher 2, he found himself in a different place, meeting people that would have been strangers otherwise. By your success or failure, you will rescue or lose people forever and never have the chance to go back, a fact that can haunt you until you claim responsibility and face them head on.
The world continues to turn when you’re not looking. Your actions have changed the world around you, for the better or worse. But it can always be fixed. On a global scale, we discover how connected everyone is and that what happens in one place, affects another and reacts to you. In Grand Theft Auto 3, that means illegal activity is met with swift retribution by law enforcement, while Chrono Trigger’s famous trial scene keeps track of small, seemingly meaningless acts at a fair and passes down judgment on your behavior.
This succession of choices, actions and events also form a narrative, build a story. Every time you crept through a Skyrim dungeon, slayed a dragon, a narrative grew organically the same way as when you were at work, at the grocery store. You set out from one place towards a goal in another and encounter greater and greater challenge reaching the end. That is story distilled down. You’ll also find it in the environments you travel, the setting for the action. Videogames are the only form with the potential to allow someone to experience a story and not just observe it. This sort of storytelling relies on the player being allowed to maintain at least one of two faculties- control or perspective. These are also the essentials for living life. It’s a journey, but one that tells an implicit story that becomes stronger on reflection but completely depends on what you are willing to take from it.
Videogames will never substitute for living our life but they can introduce us to new experiences within it, each one impactful on its own but not as significant as the collection. As your familiarity with games grows, so do you. The irony of videogames is that many of its most affecting entries can push you away from the medium and inspire you to explore the wonder, mystery and joy of a world outside your door firsthand and live life differently.
You start in Gomez’s small room. Presented as a flat 8-bit, 2D side-scroller, the room is clean and well decorated, but is obviously a child’s. Gomez can run and jump but his only initial act is to leave. Outside is the beautiful, vertically oriented village and kind but simple residents. You are beckoned to the top of the village from a mysterious old man with an eye patch and a small red fez. He tells you that it’s an important day. That’s when the Hexahedron appears.
It speaks but its words are unintelligible. When it has quieted, it gives Gomez an identical red fez the old man had. As it drops on Gomez’ head, he finds that he is able to perceive a new dimension to the world he had known and that he can walk in directions he never could before. But it’s too much for him to handle and his reality falters, the data now corrupted. The Hexahedron shatters into small Cubes and many of those break into smaller Bits. The force scatters them about the world. The system crashes and we are met with a boot screen. When Gomez comes to, he finds he still has the power. He finds that there is more to his room than he’d seen.
The village isn’t any more complex than it had always been- he’s just now able to see that there is so much more to it. That includes the door at the bottom that hadn’t ever been accessible, the only way out. Only by collecting enough Bits to build a Cube will the door unlock. But it can only be reached by those who see that there is an entire world waiting on the other side and are brave and curious enough to open it and step through. To reassemble the Hexahedron, Gomez leaves the only home he’s ever known.
A minute later, he’s on a beach, its primary landmark a lighthouse. The water stretches out far into the distance and that there’s so much beyond the village. Someone must have built this lighthouse but none of your neighbors had come this far. This is the first evidence that another civilization exists, but you soon encounter more- the mines that exhibit industrialization and development; the sewers, a sign of infrastructure; the observatory pointed to the heavens and the promise of science; the graveyard filled with the people that came before and, with it, the implication of history.
Your travels will unearth tangible pieces of that history through maps, keys and artifacts. These items hide secrets but they are each more cryptic than the last. The Counting Cube’s symbols are discernible, but don’t reveal much meaning. One cave has what appears to be a shrine with blocks. Assembling the blocks into one form whose shape differs depending on the viewing angle earns an Anti-Cube. The remnants of the civilization are everywhere and the sense of loneliness is foreboding, almost ominous.
Then you find the other village. You enter and see that while the architecture looks different, it’s residents don’t. Speaking to them is a stalemate; you don’t understand their language, they don’t yours. You also find another door, one that requires 32 Cubes. As it opens, you realize that while your adventure started in your small corner of the world, it ends in someone else’s.
The reward is a dizzying lightshow. Met with a stream of information, the universe opens itself up. When Gomez met the Hexahedron, he was granted the kernel of consciousness, and it proceeded to develop as he made new discoveries and travelled to new places. At the end it fully forms and explodes out into self-awareness.
To collect the 32 cubes needed to complete your journey, you’ve explored most every location and room. You know the world but you don’t know its secrets. Finishing once opens up New Game+ and a new gift from the stranger- a pair of cool shades. As he puts them on, Gomez no longer looks like a child. And with the glasses comes a new perspective to see that now familiar world; the ability to go into first person and discover what lies in the areas that were once obscured. And then the game crashes again. The new view further hints at the underlying scope of the game, but you have to actively seek it on your own. Fez is about changing your perception of the world around you, about going in new directions and to new places both geographically and intellectually.
Fez invites you to change your perspective.
The second adventure is a mental one- a quest for 32 devilishly well-hidden Anti-Cubes and every single one a puzzle, the bulk of which are based on inputting a unique code. Every code depends on the specific puzzle but each is derived from one of several cyphers that can be found in the world. Each time you deduce a new cypher, the sense of pride is equal only to the influx of information now available to you.
What you find is that their language is built on an alphabet consisting of the many square symbols spread about the world. You haven’t been able to communicate but that doesn’t mean their culture is impenetrable. A mural suggests a complex social hierarchy and defined class lines; it looks like they have a king but the throne room is empty, the stone seat cold. You find that their numerals are based on dimensionality, that their alphabet can be translated by breaking the code on a certain picture or solving a game-long cryptogram. You also find that your actions impact this world and that each action you perform has a defined spatial value and are represented symbolically as the classic Tetris pieces. You remember that you’ve seen these pieces all over the game, etched into the environment in long chains. Inputting the proper sequence at each location reveals its treasure.
But these symbols are strange. They are carved into walls, into the ground. They’re etched into monuments. They have a special significance in the land. They’re revered. It’s confirmed when you climb to the observatory and peer through its lens. The night sky glows in the light of the constellations, all shaped like Tetris pieces. The heavens are filled with geometry. This spirituality pulses throughout the game. It is existential theory using math, not science; numerology, not astronomy. It’s also sign of a world that is far more complicated than you imagined before you left your small village.
Fez was a platformer. Fez was a puzzle game. Now you realize what Fez really is- a parable. He left a child and grew from his experiences into a conscious individual- one that is aware of himself, society and reality. Over the course of his adventure, Gomez had grown up. This underlying narrative has also been carried by clever implementation of its retro aesthetic and its dedication to simulating old technology.
At the beginning, the game was as an unassuming 2D side-scroller made of pixels. The processor was simple and saw its world in kind. But it crashed under the strain of a new perspective. The processor became stronger and revealed polygons and a depth to the universe. A similar revelation would happen again during the change to full 3D rendering. This system crash-and-reboot sequence is a story-telling device that not only acts as a metaphor for the evolution of videogame technology but applies itself directly to the narrative. The processor is Gomez’s brain, one that became more and more complex with every step he took, every puzzle he solved. That’s what all the bits and cubes did- they added power to the processor and it found new perspectives.
But it didn’t have to be that way. Gomez could have simply jumped and played without ever looking for the substance underneath. Those that identified the questions and sought out the answers understand what was waiting for them, a world rich in information and knowledge. The adventure ends at the threshold to maturity; an age old enough to push forward in new and exciting directions but with the innocence and optimism of youth. He is not yet like the one-eyed man, who has already lived his life and had his adventures, no longer able to change his perspective. For now, he sees a world that is often colorful, sometimes scary and frequently mysterious- but always beautiful.
For as much as they’re capable of expressing complex concepts in ways no other medium can, videogames as a form have a long history of telling their narratives using techniques and styles found in traditional film. A rough portmanteau of ‘machine’ and ‘cinema’, machinima is a branch of film built in virtual worlds, often consisting of digital art and engine assets, greatly reducing cost in two mediums that are often defined by it. With close ties to animated works, machinima started with humble beginnings but deserves to be critiqued among the standards of the medium.
Developers build models that players control and interact with. Those models are designated animation routines that create a sense of movement, emotion and personality. They become characters, and they exist in reality. That reality is given boundaries and forms space, given geometry to become a world. The space is populated with more models and fills out.
Machinima’s ties to traditional film are fundamental but profound. The concept of the camera had existed in videogames since Pong; the player was provided a static view of the playing field, but when technology had advanced to create a fully three-dimensional world, one where the player could shift their perspective within, the concept of the camera evolved. Now players could choose what they were looking at, giving them a powerful tool to create their own films. Acting consists of individual models being controlled by players to create a scene that can be edited and enhanced using traditional post-production techniques.
Created in 1996 using id Software’s Quake for the PC, the minute and a half short was produced by United Ranger Films, a small group consisting of members from Quake Clan The Rangers and released online for free. Their initial success led them to produce several more shorts and again pushed the medum forward with Torn Apart 2: Ranger down, which was the first machinima product to feature recorded spoken dialogue.
Despite the fact that ‘Diary of a Camper’ is very much connected to The Ranger’s love for Quake, it’s no accident that the first machinima was produced in a multiplayer deathmatch game. One of the biggest limitations that machinima filmmakers have is their level of control to provide a narrative.
Because these early films were created within the framework of pre-existing games, the scope of the project was dependent on the programming engine and art assets created for it by its developer; a character can’t jump unless there is a mechanic for it, a scene can’t be set on a beach unless one has been constructed. With single player games, this control is even more diminished; the filmmakers story has to either remove, edit or integrate into the one the developers have built themselves and the AI on non-playable characters are impossible to direct. Multiplayer games avoid much of these issues because they allow more players to add to the production and usually offer a wide number of maps with different themes and expand the sense of scope for the narrative. Because they were using the tools of a first-person shooter, one player was literally able to become a cinematographer whose camera can zoom, pan and sweep around the action.
The success of United Ranger Film’s production’s led to an underground community for new filmmakers to experiment within the medium and as machinima rose, that community began to coalesce. In 2003, Hugh Hancock of Strange Company, who coined the term ‘machinima’, Anthony Bailey, Katherine Anna Kang, Paul Marino and Matthew Ross formed the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, a non-profit organization that offers tutorials on the fundamentals and held the Machinima Film Festival, which awards standout films produced each year.
Because a machinima’s success is so closely entwined to the game and community it’s inspired from, it would take a title of incredible cultural significance to push the form across the gulf separating underground and mainstream. That game was Halo: Combat Evolved, the film was ‘Red vs. Blue: The Bloodgulch Chronicles’.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that each of the series’ minutes-long episodes were incredibly well written and genuinely funny. ‘Burnie’ Burns applied his experience as a filmmaker to create Red vs Blue, and he and Rooster Teeth Productions became internet celebrities soon after the series premiered on 1 April 2003. Red vs. Blue’s impact on machinima must not be underestimated. Not only has its impact been recognized by the AMAS, but was selected in the New York Video Festival and Sundance Film Festival, the series entire run can be purchased on DVD and iTunes and has become so beloved by both Halo fans and Bungie, that its characters have homages in several Halo multiplayer modes.
As much as the community has done for the medium, the various developers whose hard work was the springboard for the films deserve a lot of credit for their efforts to help make production easier. Seeing the success of ‘Diary of a Camper’ id Software built basic functionality into 1997’s Quake 2, including the ability to create user-generated models and providing various editing programs to the game post-launch. Epic games did similar when they built a Matinee Mode into Unreal Tournament 2003 as did Bungie for Halo 3 in 2007 with their incredibly robust Forge and Theater modes that allowed players to rearrange entire maps in real time then record, edit and upload their final movies to their official website Bungie.net.
By then, machinima didn’t exist purely within the realm of first-person shooters. Maxis Software’s The Sims had become incredibly popular with its entire virtual worlds and characters that live, die and go about their everyday in front of the players eyes. It was a resource full of personality and activity to be exploited by machinimists. In the same vein, Lionhead Studio’s published ‘The Movies’, a PC movie-making simulator where players could script, shoot and edit movies and upload it to its official site. Programs such as Fraps enabled users to directly record from windows applications that run on DirectX and OpenGL and is responsible for saving thousands of hours of footage from games like World of Warcraft.
And as YouTube began to overflow with gameplay videos, the mainstream started to take notice. While The Simpson’s had included references to Myst in its Treehouse of Horror 7 segment ‘Homer³’, it was nothing compared to South Park’s season 10 episode ‘Make Love, Not Warcraft’ which was produced in cooperation with Blizzard Entertainment, who provided new assets, animations and a server exclusively for it.
Machinima had long ago established itself as a medium for entertainment- there were comedies, action and adventure, all legitimate expressions for the medium, but one capable of so much more.
‘The French Democracy’ was made by Alex Chen using the tools Lionhead provided in The Movies and based on his eye-witness accounts of the race riots that hit France in 2005. Those events, as they were in the film, were started when two teenagers were electrocuted to death while running from the police. ‘Democracy’ was instantly recognized by major media outlets, introducing many to the form in the process.
What’s interesting about the growth of machinima is how it’s embraced by those who own the rights to the various assets. Blizzard Entertainment, whose games are supported by a massive fanbase, has done their best to foster the creative outputs of its community, going so far as writing workarounds to its End User License Agreement (EULA), giving people new rights to their IP’s that they hadn’t before anticipated. This is in stark contrast to Activision, who published The Movies. In their EULA, they reserve all rights of ownership over anything that’s created with their product and uploaded to Lionhead’s site.
There is a lot about machinima that’s exciting- as technology develops, so too will the scope and ambition of the films that are created using the techniques. Models will become more intricate, their emotions more expressive. The ability to render worlds, to edit their contents and increasingly distribute them to the public have changed in ways that will end up making machinima an increasingly important and easily accessible art form. But, in the end, technology will only carry it so far- the future of machinima rests in the hands of creative minds that can create experiences that challenge and entertain its audience.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Red vs. Blue- absolutely should not be missed; a funny saga of stupidity that blasts culture, film and videogames.
- Splinter Cell Co-Op Theater- G4TV’s hilarious escapades of Special Agent Bob and Secret Agent Steve based on Ubisoft’s ‘Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory’.
SITES
- Machinima.org -Official page of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences
I hate boomerangs. I hate boomerangs with all my soul. They’re incredibly stupid. You throw a boomerang, it comes back. Great. Thing is, they’re not just for fun and games. There have been historical instances where they were used as weapons and they’ve definitely been used for that purpose in videogames.
The least played with boomerang in the sad history of the boomerang.
Here’s where I start to take issue: I throw my boomerang at an attacker, it only comes back if I miss. IF I THROW MY BOOMERANG AND MISS, IT WILL COME BACK. It was designed to make up for people who suck at throwing. But the dumb doesn’t end there, boyo! If I throw it and it successfully hits my enemy, it falls to the ground aND I HAVE GIVEN MY ENEMY MY ONLY WEAPON. It’s like playing a life-and-death game of catch with my boomerang (I hope for your sake your enemy is an even worse rang’er than you.)
To help prove that all design can be ruined by the liberal application of stupid, they don’t even all fly back! There are two distinct types of boomerangs, cryptically called ‘returning’ and ‘non-returning’, but do your own research on what the difference between the two is.
The age old need to have Boomerangs have caused generations of armpit-farters to make boomerangs out of all sorts of materials, up to and including bone. The way I see it, I would try to get rid of anything that could be used to make a fuckin’ boomerang- ‘Fuck you femur, I’ve always hated you. Get out of here and don’t come ba- oh my tibia!’
Would you boomerang with Mr. Boomerang?
But that’s not even what they’re mostly used for at this point. Recreational boomeranging has been all the rage for years, but playing with one is the most tragic game since I filled my Crocodile Mile with thumb tacks. People with friends throw a football. Not to belabor the point, but playing ‘rang is like drawing a stick figure on the garage and playing handball with it while groups of your classmates ride past you on their bikes smoking their marijuana cigarettes. Not even the Blues could sing this sad a song. It’s depressing.
But not nearly as depressing as having ornamental boomerangs. They can be made into all sorts of shapes that are the exact opposite of practical- turtles, large wooden mustaches, a double boomerang, I suppose. I don't completely understand the reasoning behind making boomerangs into various shapes, but that's only because I would never talk to someone who made or owned them. Or save them from a car fire.
Is it coming or going???
The most famous of all videogame boomerangs is absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, the one Ty the Tasmanian Tiger used in his three PS2 adventures. But since any real man would shy away from using the idiotic things in the first place, we’ll use an example all children can relate to- The Legend of Zelda.
Used by Kid Link in many of the Zelda games, this trusty piece of wood single handedly saved the Kokari hero from the undulating innards of the Zora’s god, Lord Jabu Jabu. Facing off against the Bio-electric Anemone: Barinade, Link hurled the weapon at the monster and severed its electrical appendages and saved the Zora’s Princess Ruto.
God damn it, this isn’t helping my point at all! Wait a second, I think I figured it out. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what happened!
Boomerang starring Norbit
Generations before this Link killed Queen Gohma and sentenced the protector of the Kokiri Forest, the Deku Tree, to death, another Link was engaged in an epic battle with his boomerang. He heroically cast the thing away but, like a Ouija board, the demonically-possessed device just kept coming back. The battle was so intense that the kingdom’s most beloved citizen, Ganon, stepped in to arbitrate armed solely with the power of love and was hit in the back of the head, dying instantly. Taking full advantage of the situation, the demon jumped into another meat suit he now called Ganondorf, and pledged vengeance forever.
Much celebration was had across the kingdom- Skylandia presented Link with their Princesses hand and promised all his children the gift of all of hers. Having earned nothing but a free pass for anytime incest for the kids and instant celebrity for himself in the annals of ‘The Legend of Zee’s Vee: Skyward Sword’, the young man finally decided to nut up. Valiantly striking the boomerang from all documentation, Link tossed the accursed object into one of the many golden chests he had opened along his adventure and kicked the fucking thing from his floating cloud house. Speeding to earth, the chest fell into the sleeping mouth of Jabu Jabu where it lay, safe, until one of stupid Links stupid descendants was swallowed whole after reading a walkthrough and discovered he had to stupidly feed the big fish a much smaller fish to save a girl-fish.
So, really, the moral of this story is that playing with stupid boomerangs will lead to your children down a dark path of bonin' each other.
*this can also be found on my blog page at Script Routine.
At E3 2009, Hideo Kojima stepped on stage at the Microsoft press conference to announce the latest installment in his legendary Metal Gear Solid series.
As the trailer implies, the core concept for Metal Gear Solid: Rising was to integrate quick, character-driven action gameplay with the ability to cut anything in the world. The change in gameplay makes sense with its story. Starring Raiden, it was going to take place between Metal Gear Solid 2: Son's of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Gun's of the Patriots and tell how he saved Sunny from captivity. Since MGS4 had already portrayed Raiden as a lethal, capable killer, this definitive jump away from stealth remains relatively plausible in what is normally a self-serious franchise.
Then the game went silent, only mentioned in passing two years later in the Kojima Productions segment of Konami's pre-E3 2011 press conference. Many assumed the game was cancelled.
Until Kojima again took stage during that years Spike TV's Video Game Awards in December to introduce the newly re-titled Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
There's a lot about this reveal that's worth thinking about, but all those directly come from the words 'Platinum Games'. Kojima Productions had teamed up with one of Japan's most radical, experimental developers who immediately scrapped much of the original content, starting by stratifying mechanics, building a custom engine and invalidating the story that had been written by placing it after the events of MGS4. This is crucial in understanding the tonal shift for the series that trailer exhibited. Even before starting Platinum Games and amassing a catalog of cult titles known for their ferocity and over the top sensibilities, these former Capcom veterans had worked on franchises including Resident Evil and Viewtiful Joe.
To help explain this decision, the Official Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance site published a half-hour documentary.
It's fascinating to get the sort of behind the scenes feature that would usually be relegated to a track on a special editions bonus disc this early in a titles development cycle. And yet, it seems almost necessary because even with the justification built into Raiden's history, trying to sell an action game to a frothing fan-base of a series that is so famous for its methodical, tense gameplay and self-serious yet absurd narrative stylings is risky.
But ultimately, if this game is going to succeed, it has to be built at Platinum Games. Their works have shown an electricity and eagerness to push boundaries and the gameplay shown in the Revengeance trailer appears more honest to the concept at the core of Kojima Production's game than what that company had demonstrated on their own.
But what is most surprising is the notable absence of what would arguably be Platinum's Games most important addition to the title- Hideki Kamiya. Days after the reveal of the KojiPro/Platinum Games collaboration, Kamiya went to his twitter account to address several of his fan's questions.
'Hey everyone, I said 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times that I have nothing to do with Metal Gear Rising.'
The creator of Devil May Cry, Okami, Viewtiful Joe and Bayonetta, Kamiya's games have been replete with deep combo systems and memorable characters that created the type of game Revengeance strives to be. But it would be insulting to assume that meant that Platinum couldn't do great work without him, especially considering he isn't the only talent on staff but remains a missed opportunity.
The game is still a ways off with a vague 2013 target window. Since the title is trying things that are not only new for the Metal Gear franchise, but for Kojima Production's and Platinum Games, it has a lot to prove. But if it can somehow maintain a balance between the narrative complexities of one and the dynamic combat of the other, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance could be glorious.
In the second part of our thematic analysis of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, we took an exhaustive look at the structural subtext of Metal Gear Solid 2: Son’s of Liberty. Starting in that game, a thematic split began to form in the narrative. The story was about the importance of ideas and information to the growth of a single individual but also looked at the interaction of many individuals to form a society. Metal Gear Solid 3 carries it further.
In the decades after World War II, the world was divided. Nations rallied in support of one of two political philosophies each with a different super power as its fountainhead- communist Russia to the East and the capitalist United States to the West. These two countries were equipped with enough nuclear technology to blow the Earth asunder at the smallest provocation- but neither side was completely ready to light the match. The stalemate between these former allies would go down in history as the Cold War.
Under the constant stress of annihilation, fear gripped the citizens of the U.S. Socially, the global rise of communism and paranoia of revolution or government infiltration by its ideology led to the Red Scare, the active hunt for sympathizers within American borders. With neighbor watching neighbor, no one was sure who was patriot and who was spy.
August 1964, above the Soviet Union- an AC-130H ‘Combat Talon’, acting as field command, soars through the sky. Its cargo bay opens and a sole figure jumps into the blazing sun of the breaking dawn. Landing among the lush forests of Tselinoyarsk, he removes his air mask, revealing a shaggy, familiar brown mullet. John Doe radios his ship. A member of the fledgling FOX unit, this master of infiltration and camouflage’s mission is to aid Dr. Nicholai Stephanovich Sokolov, Russian rocket scientist, in defecting to America. Caught in a power struggle for the Soviet Union between Premier Nikita Khrushchev and one of Leonid Brezhnev supporters, Colonel Yevgeny Volgin, Sokolov was building weapons. For this mission, John is appointed the codename Naked Snake.
Luckily, Snake has support. Among them, his former mentor, The Boss. Radiating confidence, ability and pride, The Boss is the legendary World War II soldier and mother of modern special ops. She taught Snake how to fight and developed Close Quarters Combat, a form of hand-to-hand combat. Their relationship is exceeds intimacy. She was Snakes teacher in all the same ways Solid Snake was Raiden’s.
And then she committed treason. Defecting from the U.S., she captures Sokolov from Snake and delivers him, her Cobra Unit and a Davy Crockett infantry-sized nuclear missile system to Volgin. As Snake tries to wrestle with the reality of the situation, The Boss breaks his arm and throws him into the river. The last thing John sees is the nuke The Boss gave to Volgin decimating Sokolov’s Design Bureau.
Operation Snake Eater was born from desperation. In the aftermath of the detonation, Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union was struggling to hold onto his power. Revolutionary factions within his country viewed the incident as a covert United States attack and were ready to use the incident to oust him from office and unleash World War III. Only by killing Volgin and assassinating The Boss could America prove its innocence and save the planet from disintegration. Snake once again infiltrates Tselinoyarsk.
But he lacks The Boss’ confidence because of the only lesson she never taught him- how to think like a soldier. John is naked, exposed to the world. He is a baby lost in the forest who must defeat the Cobra unit, a group of special Ops members that The Boss assembled during World War 2 based on the emotions that they carry into battle. Each member represent a different emotion derived from the experiences that a soldier feels on the battlefield as it shapes them into who they are. By defeating them, Snake is transcending them, growing.
The Pain of bullets tearing into flesh. Having endured the pain, the body becomes aware of it and aware that it could happen again. Scarred and disfigured, the body’s reluctance to experience it again creates-
The Fear of that pain and the emotional toll of a terror that stalks but can’t be seen; once it infects, its poisons run deep. Fear is invisible and when cloaked in its shroud (his camo) the strength and stamina of its wearer is sapped, which leads to-
The End of life as death comes, never seen. It lies in wait, slumbering until it must take its victims life. Its speed startling and its retreat, deafening. What it leaves in its wake is-
The Fury of having experienced death firsthand and the flaming rage that spurns destruction; the heat engulfing any that come before it. Eventually the fires extinguish, replaced by-
The Sorrow for those who have died by your hand or by your side. Only by facing them, accepting your actions and claiming responsibility for them can you move on. It is living viewing the past through the cracked lens of grief.
This is the course that emotions run through a man who must fight. They are experiences. Snake’s experiences.
And The Joy commands all emotion. It is the fulfillment of knowing what to believe in and what to fight for the rest of your life. But she’s known by another name- The Boss. As Snake stands opposite his mentor, the woman he loved, we know this is their last fight.
But something fascinating is happening. Snake’s mastery of infiltration and camouflage allow him to disappear into the thicket of flowers suffocating the battlefield, but when he reappears behind The Boss, he is engaging her with an expanded technical set he didn’t possess before that moment- he is attacking with new moves, countering ones that he hadn’t been able to before. He is holding his own against the woman who created CQC and had handily laid waste to him over and over since her defection.
And yet, those experiences are exactly why he’s winning now- he’s learned. That’s the theme at the center of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Scene. Most easily understood in its theatrical sense, the concept of scene is the information that is accumulated from interacting within the world, of acting on its stage. Every punch he took, every bullet he removed made him stronger and as Snake stands victorious over The Boss, pointing the gun she gave him at her head, the last experience you have is pulling the trigger. And for averting nuclear war between two super powers, Naked Snake is awarded a promotion- the title of Big Boss.
Big Boss was a soldier loyal to the mission, to the job he was given by his country, one he believed was virtuous. But a soldier is a tool for the government under its employ. Governments are social constructs and a society gains experiences. They grow. Their leaders come and go, generations replace generations and people die. A society’s policies are dictated by the times. But societies interact with others- they have friends, they have enemies and they learn from their dealings. But those, too, are dictated by the times.
Which makes The Boss’ sacrifice all the more tragic. As the medals are pinned to Big Boss’ chest, we learn the real history. The Boss was a true patriot. On orders, she infiltrated Volgin’s ranks to acquire the Philosopher’s Legacy; a $100 billion pool spread all over the world. She was supposed to bring it back to the coffers of the United States, a mission she thought would help lead to a unified world. But then Volgin fired the nuke. The strategy to reclaim the Legacy was revised. In order to settle the extremists in the Soviet Union, the U.S. government now needed to kill its soldier as she was carrying out their orders. But it had to look convincing so had to be done by her most loved disciple Naked Snake. From here we have a manufactured recording of history. The Boss will forever be hated around the world- as monster in Russia and as a traitor in her homeland. It’s information manipulation condensed into plot. And few would know the truth, but John Doe would become stronger.
And it’s here we learn that we’ve been victims of the same affliction since before the first Metal Gear Solid and where the themes of the past two games provide us better understanding of Snake Eater. History is a record; of events and the people who influenced them . It can be manipulated. We know Big Boss, his genes and the stories of his villainy- we believe him to be a monster and terrorist. What is so surprising is that the figure standing tall before us is none of those things. He is a man who is loyal to his ideals and is trying to work for a better world. We realize that he is the same as Solid Snake, they are born from the same mold. The Sons of Liberty taught us the nature of culture and how the stories that are passed on can change the perspective of humanity if the information is filtered and changed. Here we see it directly applied. For many people before Snake Eater’s release, the theories behind GW’s S3 engine had worked; it had corrupted their perception and colored their bias.
Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is about the beginning; the beginning of the series of events that lead to the present- of the franchise, of the ‘Snakes’ and of the world. We must not blindly hold onto ideals, must not simply adopt the beliefs of our friends and families, can’t take the values and actions of our country at face-value. Instead, we must form our own values based on how we see the world. That was what the Boss wanted for Snake, the witness to the tragedy of the Cobra Unit. Fight for what you believe in, in what the world should be, but fully understand what those beliefs are.
SOLIDARITY
Memes, genes, scene. MGS. Bodies build from a recipe of genetic information. The ingredients dictate not the absolute destiny of the organism but narrows down its potential one. Between the bookend events of its birth and death, it acts within the world and learns from doing so. It meets others, learns the stories of their experiences, discovers music and creates a history.
Many people settle together and form a society. The society propagates a culture and forms a political system to make rules about interacting within. It acts within the world and learns from doing so. Individuals die and the culture evolves. The society changes. It meets others, learns the stories of their experiences. They make friends and trade, they make enemies and fight. The society changes.
The Sons were born clones, but they are no longer duplicates. They are variations of an original- solid, liquid, and solidus objects are variations on matter as Solid, Liquid and Solidus are all variations on Big Boss. Even though his genes have been passed to them, their personalities developed in America, in Britain, in Africa with markedly different experiences. In the end, these men share fewer similarities than their genetic structure might lead to believe. This is precisely why John Doe’s’ heritage is of little importance. In his body were all the parts that made Solid and Liquid, just in a different combination.
That is a legacy. At its core, the Metal Gear Solid series is about what we pass on; the ideas we cultivate and the actions we take that affects the world that the future will exist in. Kojima’s plea comes from each successive Snake and to the next; from Naked to Solid, from Solid to Raiden; from the generation of our grandparents to our children- live life.
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