I spoke about using plot pressure rather than actual pressure to create compelling gameplay in a previous post, and Halo 3 provides a perfect example of such a device.
[Spoiler Warning: Details on the end of Halo 3 follow.]
Continue reading ‘REVIEW: ‘Halo 3′ Ending Melds Gameplay and Story’
I’m still verifying this with my sources, but I think Halo 3 was released sometime this week. Look for it at your local game store, but be sure and call ahead to make sure they carry such an under the radar title.
While only the latest piece of Microsoft’s intensive marketing campaign for Halo 3, the “Believe” series of advertisements is unique even among advertisements in that it focuses almost entirely on the game’s concluding storyline.
The advertisements center around a painstakingly constructed diorama of a battle featuring detailed models of marines and aliens, eight to 19 inches in height, duking it out over a devastated city. Two of the short ads, including the latest one, feature veterans reminiscing over the war in the style of “Band of Brothers.” Another is a making of documentary, and the fourth pairs shots of the model with a little Chopin. All of them recognize the role Master Chief played in turning the battle around and giving hope to the beleaguered human marines.
The opportunity to “play the hero” has always attracted me to some games. The player takes up the heroes path, saves the world and has a tangible impact on the game’s setting, which is far more eventful than anything I can ever picture myself getting into. This aspect of games, however, is rarely used to steer a marketing campaign, taking a backseat to ubiquitous sellers like graphics, gameplay and game-related gags.
The Believe series of advertisements do not highlight new features or gameplay, or even show any of Halo 3’s next-gen visuals. They emphasize the epic nature of Halo 3’s story, and the absolutely pivotal role the protagonist plays in saving humanity, a role that the player must take up and see to the end.
While naturally done in the interest of profits, turning Halo 3’s release into the entertainment event of the year, the Believe ads show an increasing emphasis on story, now becoming a selling point for the game rather than an excuse for an interstellar shoot-em-up.
The British Board of Film Classification’s rating for BioWare’s latest venture, the sci-fi epic Mass Effect, revealed that the title features a “brief and undetailed” sex scene, reports Pro-G.As expected with a BioWare RPG, there are several versions of the scene depending on which character you chose to woo. One apparently involves nudity, possibly extraterrestrial. If you play a female player character, you have a choice between romancing a male or female companion.
Is this the next step in the evolution of storytelling in games? Are gamers mature enough to handle such explicit material?
Sex scenes and nudity have been tolerated in films for the past few decades and are often done with taste and a meaningful intent. R-rated films are by no means box office pariahs, although the same can’t be said of NC-17 films.
The ESRB has a similarly taboo rating — the dreaded Adults Only, which recently killed Manhunt 2. AO marks a game as appallingly offensive either for sexual content or over-the-top violence. But just as the line between an Mature and AO rating is only one year (17 and 18+, respectively), there is a fine line between mature content that is offensive and mature content that is acceptable and perhaps significant.
Of course, Mass Effect won’t be the first instance of nudity in video games: Who could forget BMX XXX or GTA San Andreas’ Hot Coffee debacle? But perhaps Mass Effect will handle mature content with respect and use it to further the story rather than draw in a hormone-driven crowd with promises of flashing tits. Perhaps it can drag the AO rating out of the gutter and make it just as viable as an R.
Whether they seek to educate or persuade, “serious games” only occasionally succeed commercially or even appear in game stores. But they are becoming increasingly prevalent, and more mainstream titles are picking up their new approach to gaming.
Simulation games, which seek to accurately reproduce real world systems, educate the player on those systems. Sim City demonstrated all the variables necessary for a city to function properly and rewarded efficient urban planning. Flight Simulator allows the player to fly a plane with all the controls and obstacles that a real pilot would encounter.
These games sacrifice fun and gameplay, the two essential aspects of most commercial titles, in favor of realism. Similarly, games such as Brain Age and the recently announced Wii Fit are designed for more than just fun: They are intended to improve the player, either through physical or mental exercise.
A recent slew of serious games intend to influence the player’s opinions, taking the realism of simulations and applying it to a message. Orwell Today’s simulation of JFK’s assassination challenged players to reproduce the shots which killed Kennedy, shooting from Lee Harvey Oswald’s position. While notably morbid, failure would prove that there was more than one shooter.
Even governments have seen the persuasive potential of games. The US military uses America’s Army, a realistic first-person shooter, as a recruiting tool, and Iran’s Save the Port promotes Islamic beliefs.
The utility of games for arguing a point has been picked up by commercial games as well. For example, Army of Two designer Chris Ferriera commented in an interview with Gamasutra that the very modern issue of private military contractors is an important part of his game’s setting.
Ian Bogost, the author of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames who recently appeared on the Colbert Report, comments in his blog that many commercial games–such as Sim City and Grand Theft Auto–consistently reference and provide allegorical insight into real world events.
These examples take games in a new, more meaningful direction, hinting at a future where an argument or theme is at the heart of any good game.
At this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference, Matt Costello of Polar Productions addressed the need for story and gameplay to work in concert, Gamasutra reports. Costello used his experience writing for Doom 3 and the upcoming games Rage and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 to show how the plot can shape the game.
“Add the parameters from the beginning of the session — something at stake, something dangerous,” said Costello. “It changes the tenor. It can be a dangerous and exciting puzzle. Think of an interaction that fits that world, and then think of storytelling parameters from story and books and movies.”
Pressure from the plot is an influential aspect of almost any game, whether you’re pushed into rushing forward to save the princess or stop the villain. Even in simple shooting games, shooting alien invaders becomes that much more pressing when mankind’s survival is at stake.
The plot in these situations adds something to the gameplay, making it a necessary and pointed goal rather than an arbitrary task to be methodically completed. Far too often are they developed separately and one becomes an excuse for the other.
Interestingly, Costello said that player interaction in games is only an illusion: “If you think you’ve impacted things, you’ve impacted things. The illusion of interactivity is what you want to deliver.”
Once immersed in Rapture, BioShock’s underwater city, the plot unfolds and twists in a way rarely seen in games.
The game reveals how things went wrong in the utopian Rapture primarily through the recorded comments of its residents. More convenient versions of the diaries commonly employed by games, these recordings provide background and insight into some of the more obscure plot points, such as the little sisters, without breaking the immersion of the first-person perspective.
This device works well in the complex locale of Rapture, but raises an interesting question: Doesn’t new technology allow for more creative plot devices than somewhat contrived journals and dialogue, so ubiquitous in games?
It’s unfair to bring this up in discussing BioShock, which takes many steps forward. The game’s scripted scenes are well choreographed and acted. The flashbacks and ghosts which pass through certain areas are a particularly clever ways of getting around the narrative limitations of first-person games.
I’d like to say more, but hate spoilers. Remaining as ambiguous as possible, BioShock does a near-perfect job of conveying a complicated plot and should serve as an example for game developers of how storytelling can be handled and improved.