I was pretty depressed this week, so writing anything was really, really difficult. But I managed somehow and am unwilling to mince time, so let’s leap
right into the meat of my next contribution: a discussion of
avatar and player. Oh, and as usual, spoilers are nigh.
Two Very Different Games
Since I’ve been on break, I’ve had the chance to play through a number of games I’ve been hoping to get around to, including Enslaved: Journey to the West, but also Call of Duty: Black Ops.
If you know anything about these titles, you also know that they have
little to nothing in common other than their shared nature as video
game, at least on the surface. Both games also present a narrative
(value of said narrative aside), voice-acted characters, and (for
the most part) a single avatar for the player to control and
experience the events of the game through.
I would argue that Enslaved offers the best narrative of
the the two. The adventure game has incredible merits as a story.
Its main characters are intriguing, likable, and the player’s avatar
character, Monkey, goes through an interesting and believable
growth arc through the events of the game. Those characters have
quality voice actors, their lines are very well-written, and the
stellar facial animation at play in the game allows for acting to
occur outside the dialogue, which is something attempted in many games, but rarely to appreciable quality. You can see a bit of that here.
The gameplay is good, but is not necessarily the thing that sets
the game apart; similar systems have been executed more expertly in
other games. What’s ultimately important about the rest of the game is
that it stays out of the way of the characters, the story, and the
gorgeous, over-grown vision of recovering post-apocalyptic America.
The game offers an experience of par with the best of similar styles
of movies, and contains similar production value. It is a good
example of game-as-art because of the worth of the tale it presents.
Call of Duty: Black Ops has a less refined story, poorer
dialogue, and is less visually appealing. However, it also tackles
individual experiences in a way that no other medium can; one
cannot envision the experience as anything other than
game. This is a trait that Enslaved cannot boast, except maybe in an
argument for the game’s pacing. Enslaved could have been just as
effective as a movie, and aspires to nothing more. In other words, at
no time do you feel like you’re anything but an observer in the story
(which, again, is admittedly fantastic).
Important Disclaimer
Before I go any farther, I want to make clear that this isn’t a bad thing. Enslaved is
still a phenomenal and fun experience, a quality game that I have
no qualms about recommending; I have encountered few stories in
a game that were as well-executed. However, it does not capitalize on
the traits that separate video games from the rest of art.
Inhabiting the Avatar
Black Ops is an interesting case. Its narrative never
becomes exceptionally engaging, and its characters are true to
type, but never truly interesting. That said, in nearly every mission
it seeks to transport the player into their avatar’s body at least
once. For instance, here’s
a scene where Mason is forced to play Russian Roulette with a comrade
after being captured by the Vietcong, though it has a surprise
ending. It’s obviously NSFW, though its
worth noting that it has plenty of naughty language in it. It’s
a decent scene, but notable because of where it places the player: in
a spot so tight that you empathize more readily with your avatar.
Another, better example of this is the ending to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
There’s no way you can’t empathize with Soap here, even if just
a little bit. Ultimately, your commands are responsible for his
vengeance. Perhaps there alternative methods of attaining equal or
greater empathy with the character, but this method (allowing
a player’s actions to correspond to a character’s actions in
a dramatically important sequence) is completely unique to video
games, and can result in a qualitatively different empathy than that produced by film or text. Other examples include the whole of the stellar Breakdown and the ending of Halo: Reach, which I’d hate to spoil here, so go experience it for yourself.
These sequences display the defining quality of video game art,
albeit in their own gory and masculine fashion. They allow the
audience to play a role in the presented narrative. Black Ops is distinct from Enslaved in that it offers players some degree of control in dramatically important moments, whereas in Enslaved there
are clear boundaries between the meat of the story, told in cutscenes
wherein players have no control, and actually “playing the game”, in
which the characters may speak to each other, but the character’s
controlled actions have no dramatic relevance. Thus, there is
greater distance in empathizing with Monkey of Enslaved than with Alex Mason in Black Ops.
This doesn’t change the fact that, ultimately, the player is much more
likely to empathize with Monkey, but that’s because Monkey is
a fantastic and fully realized character. Mason, even with the aid
of shared action in important dramatic moments, never becomes
anything more than another soldier.
Distance
I think that “distance” may be an effective term for describing
the degree to which a player occupies a character’s place in
a narrative. Distance is unique to the game. In Mass Effect,
there is lessened distance between the personality of Shepard and
the personality of the player than there is in a game with fixed
dialogue, and this allows for the player to exert control over the
character, and thus the narrative. However, even in games where the
player does not control the character’s decisions in a narrative,
distance can still be reduced by immersing the player in the
physical or mental realities of the character and by allowing
for a greater degree of control within dramatic events. Quick-time
events are the least sophisticated expression of this sort of
distance, but the Call of Duty example is much more effective because
there is closer correlation to the player’s actions and the
character’s actions.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you think that distance is an
effective concept in discussing games-as-art? Does motion-based
gameplay, such as with the Kinect, create opportunities to lessen
distance?
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