Choosing to Be the Other

This is part of Blogs of the Round Table run by Critical Distance.  The original topic can be found here.

Almost none of the games I have ever played have made me empathize with the characters.  I say almost, but I'll get back to that.

Growing up, I had a Super Nintendo and the family computer.  All of the games I played were either branded by Nintendo or educational games, such that they were.  Narrative complexity was something I didn't know existed and wouldn't experience until I was much older.  However, I don't resent those games for being simple.  Mario, Link, Samus, Kirby, and Donkey Kong were all characters that I enjoyed playing as, but I could never connect to their situations and actions, though I don't think I was meant to.

This continued into further Nintendo generations: N64, Gamecube, and the Wii.  These weren't characters that I couldn't wait to become, but more like good friends that had a story to tell me about that one time they got lost in the woods or the one day when they "just wanted some cake, but you wouldn't believe I had to do when I got there."  Even when I started getting into the Sony crowd, it felt like a new circle of friends making new stories.  Despite all the bigger and better RPGs and storytelling experiences, I couldn't connect to anyone.

I may be able to blame my relatively limited gaming scope, but I have only truly felt like I was firmly inside a character's shoes in two games:  Mass Effect and Bastion.

I was late to the Mass Effect party.  I bought it on Steam at a discount, and only because I heard that it was absolutely amazing.  I had never played a game by Bioware before so I had no expectations going into the experience.

I enjoyed my time playing as a Male Paragon Sheppard, but because of my chosen alignment, I felt like all of those tough decisions were automatic, filtered through a binary process of "Is this good or bad?" and I would choose "good" without thinking.  That is, until I got to the end of the game and had to make a decision about which of my squad mates would live or die: Kaiden or Ashley.  The game essentially pauses and asks what I should do.

Up until this point, I hadn't used either one of them (I used Garrus and Tali because if I'm playing a sci-fi game in future-space-times then why would I want boring Humans on my team?), so the choice held no stakes in my enjoyment of the game.  This also wasn't a simple selection between right and wrong, morality wasn't even a factor.  The decision was completely divorced from any gameplay mechanics.  Whatever choice I made was going to kill someone, and it was my duty as the commanding officer to choose.  

Wait, where did that come from?

I had to walk away from the computer.  I had no idea what to do, and I needed time to think.   That got me even further into Shepard's mind: I wouldn't actually have this much time to think about this, I need to give an order.  I felt squeezed by my obligation, and I couldn't rely on any game metric to choose for me.

I ended up ordering Kaiden to his death.  I thought that there would be a greater chance of him surviving than Ashley, but when we escaped the planet he wasn't on board the Normandy.  Making that call didn't make me feel any better.  It was even worse when Ashley stopped by my quarters for a "visit."  I had flirted with her a couple of times but I had no designs for us being together.  I knew what she was doing and I wanted her to leave, I shouted at her, told her to go away and leave me to stew in the consequences of my actions.  No matter what I said, though, she stayed, and what followed didn't provide me with any comfort or solace, I just felt more and more empty.

Um.  So yeah, Bastion.

I love Bastion to death.  It was my absolute favorite game of 2011, and I have to restrain myself from going off on tangents and simply gushing about the thing.  I need to wield some precision gushing, here.

Before I get into anything, I need to talk about the story and the world and how well it's built.  I love the narrator and what he adds to the story.  No, I'm not talking about the "reactionary narration" thing because that lasts for all of one level in any meaningful way (maybe once again later on), and I'm not talking about the sex-tacular gruffness of his voice, though that is nice.

It's what he says and how he says it and how narration and information becomes a kind of commodity for the player.  In the beginning you march forward to each area with little reason other than "you have to" and Rucks fills in the who's and the why's when you get there.  Even with the Middle of Nowhere challenges, story is the carrot that's dangled in front of you between each round of battle.  It becomes the reward and it sinks in even further as a result.

This spills into the game's choice at the end.  There's really two choices, but I saw them as one.  The first choice is whether you should carry Zulf to safety or continue to haul around  your new-found death pillar and wade through a massive Ura resistance force.  The second choice is between pressing the Bastion's world-reset button (as was its intended purpose) and pressing the evacuate button, scrapping the idea of starting over again.

These two questions were really one question for me.  Leading up to my choice with Zulf, the narration was revealing the true function of the Bastion and essentially laying out the final choice before I had to make it.  This made me weigh my options with both situations in mind.  Zulf was a traitor and actively helped his brethren to destroy everything you had worked for, but his entire life was destroyed by the calamity and blames the only people left for his misfortune.  Also, if I reset everything then saving him is pointless, but if I choose to evacuate then I would feel terrible about leaving him to die.

Taking all of this in, I remember Rucks's stories of Caelondia, how it was a beautiful place and a great society, but that it had also committed atrocities like abusing nature and the Ura.  Then I thought back to the retelling of each character's history in those Middle of Nowhere levels, how Zia had a terrible life filled with discrimination and hate, while Zulf had a comparatively great life before the Calamity.  As for the Kid, well, he just had a life.  It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible, so he could choose either way.  In that moment, all of the history and triumphs and sorrow of each character and place filled my head like an over-blown balloon.

Some people complained about the last minute choices and how they were simply levers to pull to see the ending you wanted.  To that, I say: perfect.  Similar to my choice in Mass Effect, I was severed from any game systems that could make my decision for me.

(Quick aside.  This is actually somewhat untrue.  If you choose Zulf then you move slowly and can't attack as you trudge through waves of attacking Ura, unlike the battering ram which makes you an unstoppable beast, but the distinction here is that the new weapon makes you much slower as well, and feels much less free than the rest of the game.  I love this as a metaphor for the burden of power and the burden of sacrifice, but regardless the section following this is maybe a minute long, so the importance to gameplay is minimal.)

This was an instance of the game honestly asking me what I should do.  Again, like Mass Effect, I had to stop and think about it.  I thought about what my decision would mean to the people I had met, how their lives factored into it, how I felt about the whole situation.  There was no right or wrong, just the option to try again, or move on.

I chose to save Zulf, which also meant that I chose to evactuate the Bastion.  Those choices go hand in hand, any other combination doesn't make sense to me.

Games are a soup of tiny decisions, every moment we choose to pull a trigger or jump or swim or steal a car or swing a sword, and it's all done without much thought.  However, when the game goes beyond the automatic and asks you, honestly, what you would do, that's when I can feel the full brunt of what it means to be that character.

Even if it's only for a few minutes while I wrack my brain for an answer, cursing my decision to play a game that makes me think so hard.

Zelda and Time Shenanigans

No one puts a cracked-open door into a game without thinking someone is going to look through it.

I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the first time.  I've gone through all the tutorial business in the starting town and I've made it to the surface world.  The Sealed Grounds is a shock after spending thirty minutes above the clouds.  Not that I'm surprised to see it, but the contrast of the vast spiraling hole against the empty skies above was jarring.  In a good way.

I take the time to wander around a bit, fight a few carnivorous plants, strike an ancient spike with sacred beams from my sword in order to unlock an equally ancient set of doors.  You know, regular stuff.

I go through the doors and I'm met by an empty temple, save for an old woman bathed in a single dusty shaft of light.  I walk up to her and she recognizes me as the Chosen Hero and gives me some Cryptic Advice.  I'm about to leave through the side door when I notice the bigger doors the old lady is sitting in front of.

They're cracked open.

It's worth noting here that I had avoided almost every piece of preview material for this game.  I am discovering every detail on my own in the most intentionally spoiler-free experience I've ever had.

I run over to the doors (because I can in this game) and try to interact with them.  Nothing.  No prompt or button indicator appears.  I talk to the old lady again, but she's giving me the "repeated NPC dialogue" treatment.

I switch the camera around Link and can see a space beyond the doors.  I enter into first person view for a better look.

It's another section of the temple, but it seems to be outside.  There's grass all along the floor and vines cling to every surface.  In the middle of the room is an orange crystal.

What?

I talk to the lady again, thinking I may have triggered an event, but she doesn't say anything different.  I put the controller down and rub my forehead.  How is it that everything in this game is spelled out for me except for the story?  I can't go five minutes without my helper telling me that it would be a good idea to complete the objective I was already in the midst of completing.  Why is the game holding back now?  I mean, I appreciate that the entire story isn't unloaded all at once, I just want some consistency.

I angle my viewpoint in an effort to see the whole room, shifting around the hole like a peeping tom, but that's all there is.  Plants and an orange crystal.

I file it under "mysterious" and move on.  I don't spend too much time agonizing over its purpose because I'm about to enter the first area and I've waited for this game to be released for too long and I just want to play I just want to play.

Many hours later, I am face to face with Zelda.  I have chased her through the entire game, got put down by Impa for not chasing fast enough, got jock blocked by Ghirahim at the Time Gate, got told by more than one deity (I think) that I wasn't that great of a hero, fought the sealed form of the source-of-all-evil twice, traveled into the past through a secret Time Gate after completing the Skyward Master Skymaster Sword, and I have reached her at last.  We are having an actual conversation, at least as far as a silent protagonist can have one.

We are talking in the sealed room from earlier.

That fact hasn't sunk in. I'm as dumbstruck as Link is.  I am too enraptured by the moment to care about much else.  Yes, I'm itching for some answers to this crazy situation, but I'm more excited that Zelda is alright.

She enters exposition mode, filling in the gaps in my knowledge of the situation.  They are extremely important details, but there's only one that is important to this story: she has to stick around and keep the seal on the source-of-all-evil intact.  Before I have time to really understand what that means, Zelda is surrounded by a swirling mass of orange energy.  Energy that coalesces into a crystal, trapping her in a deep millennial sleep.

I drop the controller.  I can't play the game again for a half hour.

The concept of time travel is not new to the Zelda franchise: Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages both had it as a central game mechanic.  However, Skyward Sword, in my opinion, does the concept justice.  In those other two games, different time periods worked exactly like a dark/light world (I'm exempting Majora's Mask from this due to its Groundhog Day narrative).  Here, time travel and the manipulation of time is more intertwined with the narrative and how you interact with the world.  The whole purpose of Zelda visiting each shrine was so that she could eventually make her way into the past.  The little robots in the desert are mining for timeshift crystals with the permission of the local dragon deity, who you have to revive through the use of time manipulation.  You're able to float around in a dead sea by using a timeshift crystal.  In that same area it's hinted that pirates were stealing those crystals because they were a new source of power.

Given all of this, I should have seen it coming.  However, I wasn't shocked by the revelation, or that I had lost Zelda almost immediately after reaching her.  I was flabbergasted that I was shown what was going to happen in such a subtle way.

In books or in movies, the reader needs to be shown something like this somewhere within the text or film or else the twist will seem contrived and hollow.  The best writers are able to pull this off deftly and without drawing attention to themselves.

With video games, there is the opportunity to throw every story detail into the game and have the player discover them on their own.

I wasn't shocked that I was told what the crystal was and didn't recognize it.  I was shocked because I discovered the detail on my own, thought it wasn't important, and reeled from the revelation because it felt like my own personal discovery.

I vent like I've just heard the best/worst pun and eventually sit back down to play.  Seconds afterward, I figure out that Impa and the old woman are the same person.

I turn off the system and go to bed.