Indignant Desert Birds

After about three hours, I wrote up some first impressions of Dragon Age 2. It’s been about 10 more hours, so I thought I’d do a bit more writing. Also, I was prompted. To answer the question directly: the best part of the game has to be Kirkwall.

Let me back up a bit, though. With very few exceptions, I don’t really care for the combat in RPGs. Combat is what I have to put up with to get to the good stuff. A game that will let me use brains, guile, stealth and my wits will win my heart forever. Bioware doesn’t make games like that. Instead they give me codex entries. Yes, I will scour every environment to find a new dungeon just so I can find an obscure little bit of textual world building.* I’m basically here for the story, and the chance to make my mark on a (virtual) world. I want to explore fantastic locations and great characters. I want to get inside someone else’s head for a while and learn who else I could be were both nurture and nature wildly different.

Looking back, I think I started to really understand this game when I met Merill. Merill is everything my Hawke is not. She is sweet and shy and will use blood and death to shape the universe to her will. (I’ve written before about blood magic in Dragon Age). I am sarcastic, brash, and my magic is fire and ice.

Meeting Merill was grounding for me. My thoughts changed from “what is my next quest?”, to “I wonder what I need to do to make girl happy?” At that moment I was willing to lay all of Thedas at her feat, just to make her smile. At that moment, Hawke switched from third person to first.

There was a moment yesterday when I was on the docks at the city and I very nearly tried to smell the ocean breeze before catching myself. I actually leaned in close to the monitor to catch the scent before I realized I was playing a game. That was exactly when Merrill made a comment about it smelling like dead fish. That was the exact moment when I understood how much Kirkwall had become my virtual home.

But Merill, my dearest elven minx? I think I’m going to be stuck in Kirkwall for a while. If this relationship is going to go anywhere, you really need to learn to appreciate it’s pleasant stinks. That, or I’m going to be stuck buying you a lot of fancy perfumes to cover the city’s oder.

What makes Dragon Age 2 work– at least in the 11 hours I’ve played– is that I’m not the ultimate bad-ass of ultimate destiny. I’m just a person in an interesting place doing some interesting things. I’m looking forward to drinking with Varric, and slaughtering slavers with Fenris, getting Aveline to unbend. And perhaps spending time with Merill, getting to know the city we will make our home.

*Perhaps After Mass Effect 3, they should make a game where I can play an archeologist.

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The greatest strength of fantasy (a category that includes science fiction) — and it’s greatest weakness– is that it takes people with recognizably human characteristics and puts them in extreme and alien circumstances. The rules change according to the whim of the author. In the Dresden series, for instance, a wizard can create flame in an enclosed area– but the heat from it will leak out onto anything nearby according to the normal calculus of a deferential equation. In the Riftwar saga, however, Pug can toss around fireballs all day without toasting marshmallows a few feet from the flame. The trick, therefore, is to find a character to whom the rules can be explained, so that the author can fill in their audience.

We see this in non fantasy stories all the time, in fact. It’s no coincidence that so very many cop movies have a rookie cop and a days-from-retirement veteran. One person to explain the rules, and the other to be explained to. Also: culture clash is comedy gold.

Which brings me to video games. Characters in Role Playing Games (RPGs) are, just as the name implies, playing a role. We inhabit a character who has a position within and defined by the world. The problem is that our characters have names, histories, families– if they’re real people they have everything real people ought to have. Unfortunately we players have just begun the game. We don’t know the 15-50 years of back story that our character has developed.We don’t know the history they would have learned as a child the prejudice they would have imbibed with the milk of their infanthood. We are, in short, a stranger in a society we ought to know.

There are a few solutions to this problem. The most cliche is to simple give the character amnesia. It’s the perfect excuse for not knowing who their best friend is– and also gives the player an immediate goal that coincides with the character’s motivation. Another interesting way to do this is the same “fish out of water” technique I mentioned in the cop example. Commander Sheppard can’t know every alien race because the galaxy is vast and humanity is new. The Vault Dweller is fresh from a vault. All ties are cut in an alien environment.

And then there’s Hawke. Hawke is the main character from Dragon Age 2. Your Avatar in that world. The iconic image, is of course female*, though you can also play a male version of Hawke. Hawke is a different sort of person than any other I’ve inhabited. She has a mother. A brother. She has history we don’t know about. At all.

We do meet her as she’s running from everything she’s ever known, and on the way to a land that loves her not. This would almost be the classic piscis ex aqua situation, except…

In the second part of the first act, Hawke is given a choice about who to work for in the coming year. That year exists solely as a cut-scene. She develops new relationships and strengthens older ones, all without player input and without player knowledge of what is happening. Mechanically, we are led to assume that our Hawke is continuing in the direction we have pointed her, but it does lead to an odd disconnect between what the character knows, and what the player is able to learn.

One more interesting thing that Dragon Age 2 does that is worth mentioning:
In most any body of literature, we know what the hypothesis is, and thus when the story is over. A scientific paper will state this up front, along the lines of “we thought X was true, did some testing, and we were right!** the proof follows”. A work of fiction is a bit different, but generally within the first chapter we know what the goal is: “win the Trojan war”, “found Rome”, “Marry Romeo/Juliet”, “rescue the princess from the 8th castle”.*** This is utterly unlike real life. In real life, we simply do not know when our story is over. Mythologically, people who do learn this information go mad– but the fact that it’s mere mythology sort of proves the point.

In Dragon Age, the conflict takes a long time to develop. I’m 3hrs into the story, and I don’t know what Hawke needs to do yet. I’ve got a couple quests I can do, so I do them. I’m basically killing time within the story until it develops more. In this sort of aimless day to day existence, I am playing Hawke very much like an actual refugee might behave. I don’t know what to do with Hawke, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. But both of us know that she can’t just lay down and do nothing. This is a perfect marriage of character and player motivations.

Dragon Age 2 so far as managed to do something I’ve never seen a game do before, and do it in a way that I find intriguing. I’m not actually sure if this was the intended direction for the game, but I hope it was. Bioware has done something unique. I can’t wait to get back to Kirkwall.

*Suck it, Bioware Marketing.
** I can haz tenure now?
*** Yes, I did just compare Mario to the Iliad? why?

Tags: Games by Punning Pundit
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Back in August, Penny Arcade did a comic that some people found offensive. And pretty much everyone agrees that the way Penny Arcade handled someone taking offense to their work was pretty much the least-sensitive way they could have dealt with it. I don’t really want to talk about either the comic or the response. If you want to know what I think, just pretend that I, rather than Amanda, wrote this. Also, Leigh Alexander, and Ashelia have some interesting things to say on the topic. I think that’s the last I’m going to say about the controversy per se. If you’re an absolute glutton for watching train wrecks, here’s a timeline.

What interests me is this: there are at least 10 million, and perhaps as many as 27 million, people in the world for whom panel 2 is nearly-literally true*. In this entire conversation, we seem to have ignored or forgotten the slaves. No one is speaking of them, or for them. In 2011, slavery is as real as a punch in the gut. This is not a problem confined to the 3rd world.

What shocks me is the fact that I didn’t think about the slavery implications of the comic. Slavery is a fairly major hot-button of mine, both in and out of games. I don’t ever talk about “p0wning” people, and I’ve never been one to turn away from a “free the slaves” quest. Slavery is something I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking about in my life. Yet when it came up in this context, I allowed myself to forget about it.

That ends right now. If you’re reading this, and you both have money and give a damn about your fellow human beings, donate some money to an anti-American-slavery organization. Or perhaps to an organization that helps fight against slavery world-wide.

*I say “nearly”, because there is no such thing as a “dickwolf”.

Tags: Games, human rights by Punning Pundit
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War. War never changes. Those are the first spoken words in all of the canonical Fallout games. Which is a bit odd seeming. The war is over. The nuclear apocalypse came and went, taking humanity down to the basic survival level– in many cases below it. Even in the story presented by the narrator, the war for the Hoover dam ended about 4 years previously.

The government was– all governments were– smashed to atomic rubble. In the absence of government, Hobbes tells us that we are left with “A war of all against all”. There are those who take this as a good thing, and those who take this as a warning. The inevitable, bloody war between those philosophies is the focus of the Fallout games.

As alluded to in the introduction cutscene above, your character is a courier. You’re not sure what you were carrying, nor it’s importance, nor why you were shot for possessing it. The main quest of the game is trying to track down the person who stole it from you, though your motivations for this are entirely dependent upon what sort of character you wish to play.

One of the interesting things the game does mechanically is to give players a reputation ranking with various factions. Do nice things for a town, and that town will like you. If the New California Republic (NCR) sees you as an ally, they will give you a radio with which you can call for help. When the NCR representative told my character “you are not alone out here”, I was moved; the Mojave Wilderness is a lonely place. Alternately, if you go on a killing spree, your reputation will greatly diminish and factions will be ordered to shoot on sight.

One way or another, a player will choose a faction. The game pushes players towards the democratic New California Republic. If you don’t like the NCR, but want to go the “good” rout, the humanistic Followers of the Apocalypse offer another alternative. Players who want to be rewarded for slaughter, yet align with a government can play nice with Caesar’s Legion– an organization which sees physical dominance as the just reward of the strong over the weak. And anyone who wishes to devolve into simple thuggery makes a de facto declaration that they are a raider.

It’s an interesting way of meshing game mechanics with an overarching philosophy. As a player, I only spend a small fraction of my time thinking about this in mechanical terms. As I gaze into the wilderness, seeing people with problems that need solving, I ask myself what kind of world I want to build. This has lead me to siding with the New California Republic. They’re doing their best to create an orderly society– but one grounded in some principles of justice and self determination. They can be a bit heavy handed and tone deaf, but where the NCR has control, people are free to live lives, trade, and be fear from slavery.

Naturally, because I side with the NCR, I’ve been trying to clean up their mess with the escaped convicts known as the “Powder Gangers”. My policy is simple: shoot on sight.

After seeing Powder Gangers storm into several towns, killing the innocent, I decided to get more proactive. My friend Boone and I wandered into their base and started shooting. Some of them tried to flee, but we chased them down and coldly murdered them where they hid. We were methodical, we were quick, we were merciless. Every last one of them died at our hands.

As I started looting their hovels, the game informed me that I had lost Karma. As the blood-fury left me and I finally looked around at the bodies of those I’d slaughtered, the full gravity of what I had done hit me.

How was I any different than them? For all my vaunted morality, for every notion of fair play, for all that I wanted to build up a society… I walked into these people’s homes and destroyed their society. I offered not peace, but the gun.

Is that all I am? Am I just a bulldozer hoping that someone will come along behind me to build a better future after I knock down the rotted old infrastructure? Must I become a monster in order to protect people from evil?

I’ve got dozens of hours left to go in this game; I don’t have answers. I do know that I won’t consider this game over until I get an answer to those questions that I like. War never changes, but I cannot believe that the memes that push us towards armed conflict are the strongest ones.

Tags: Games, war, zombies by Punning Pundit
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I’m currently obsessed with Dragon Age:Origins*. The game play is old school, and story is deep. I’m about 17 hours in and I feel like I’m just beginning to get a handle on the shape of the story. When they say this is an 80 hour game, that’s not just marketing…

In this game, there is a type of magic which requires the use of human blood for energy. In the society as presented in the game Blood magic is evil, and when (in the past) it it had been left unchecked, slavery and tyranny were it’s inevitable outcomes. So, Blood Magic= Evil. Indeed, many of your companions like you more if you kill those who practice it.

Also, well, this game is dark. The first time I was forced to murder a demonically-possessed child, I (the player, me) was haunted. Was there anything I could have said or done differently so as to prevent that outcome? I congratulated the game makers on producing an actual emotional response in me. The second time, though, the game asked me to kill a possessed child I was livid. There has to be another way. There was.

Blood magic, of course.** The game asked me to make a moral choice: was I willing to sacrifice the child’s mother (who bears part-blame for the child’s possession), use forbidden magic, to save the life of this child? Or was I to let the child die? For me, the choice was simple. There was no way in hell I was going to murder another child. None. The pure visceral reaction I had surprised me, but again– the game had succeeded.

And I succeeded also. The child was saved. Sadly, mom did die. And yes, that blood will forever stain my virtual hands…

*Note to Cristian Game makers: I would totally buy a game called Church fathers: Origen. The selling your library, and visiting the sick chapters could be an awesome examination of early church life. I admit that the self castration mini-game wold make this an M rated game, however.

**I wouldn’t have set that up in the beginning without the payoff, would I?

Tags: Games by Punning Pundit
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Gamestop is trying to brand themselves as “girl friendly”. They’re doing this by helping women set up Wii parties, encouraging women to play a specific game.

Uh-oh.

This can’t end well, can it? What sort of pink, frilly barely functional game do you think they picked? Madden. I kid you not– John Madden football.

I’m not positive I understand the logic behind this exact choice, but who cares! Madden is fun, there’s a Wii in damned near every house, and bravo for not giving into gender stereotyping. Any Birdies wanna play?

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PSP hackers have added a ton of functionality to the handheld device. They’ve let it play games that cannot be purchased in stores, play movies that otherwise owners wouldn’t be able to watch (at least, not on the PSP), every time I’ve thought about buying one, I’ve had the hacked-on features.

Naturally Sony wants to stop this. They can’t stand the idea that they’re selling hardware at the expense of losing control of that hardware. Somehow, the idea of “giving the customer what they want” doesn’t seem to enter into the picture.

Perhaps that’s why I own a Nintendo DS…

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After searching every video rental store in the surrounding area (which is not many, let me tell you), and failing to find either Ninja Gaiden II or Lego Indiana Jones, my boyfriend and I settled down for a nice weekend of Adventure Gaming. We bought the Adventure Collection (Volume 1!) from the Adventure Company (probably most well known for Syberia), which included five games of dubious quality:

Keepsake: I’ve played this game almost all the way through before. It is not terrible puzzle-wise, though the main character is about as dull and obnoxious as they come. It stars a girl who is going to her first day at some school of magic. I would call it Harry Potter-esque, but I know this is not a new concept, and the magic school seemed more obsessed with dragons than it did anything else. Anyway, she finds that the school is empty and has to solve a number of puzzles to traverse the school and figure out why everyone is gone.

Return to Mysterious Island: Based on the Jules Verne novel The Mysterious Island, and to some extent, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which is a book you should never. read. Nothing ever happens for 200+ pages other than repetitive monologues about how amazing coral is. I thought there was a giant squid? Well, maybe for one page, but nothing ever happens with it.) This game, despite bad voice acting, a fairly unimpressive (though occasionally surprising) storyline, a few annoying chracters, and an incredible lack of length, is a model for how adventure games should be. The gimmick for this game, I suppose, is that every puzzle can be solved in multiple ways. However, this is an amazing thing for adventure games, because we do not have to rely on trying to read the mind of the developers. Not to mention most of the puzzles, however you solve them, tend to require actual thought and real situations rather than ESP.

Nibiru: Age of Secrets: We really didn’t make it far through this one, because the puzzles make absolutely no sense, and moving through the storyline often requires the stupid main character to talk to 4 stupid people 5 stupid times for no reason. Not to mention, the solutions to the puzzles do not really make sense, at least in the conventional way (maybe they make crazy sense).

Dead Reefs: This wouldn’t even work on my computer. Pbbth.

And the last one, Secret Files: Tunguska, we never had time quite to try.

One thing that caught my eye (but is not very surprising for adventure games) is that 3 out of the 5 games had female main characters. Syberia, as well had a female main character. This is even more surprising because all of these characters are fully clothed, and have fairly drab, gender-neutral outfits (with the exception of Keepsake). I am not sure of whether this is because they are trying to market these games to a mainly female market, or because many (or at least some) of the developers are female.

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