The Narrative Failures of Far Cry 5

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Far Cry 5, video games, writing

As a game, I thought Far Cry 5 got a lot of things right:

• The sandboxy, open world is enjoyable and amusing
• The physical setting is gorgeous and nicely rendered, with a good deal of hidden detail for those who like to investigate the game world deeply
• The cult members, who make up the bulk of the disposable foes, mostly feel like a suitable challenge, and it feels good when you defeat them
• Sometimes it’s an adrenaline-fueled adventure just getting from point A to waypoint B, especially in the early game when the highways are often no-go areas swarming with enemies and their reinforcements
• As you help the resistance in fictional Hope County, liberating cult strongholds and turning them over to the everyday resistance fighters, there’s a nice sense of progression and the map changing, bit by bit, to favor your side
• The companions, which Far Cry calls ‘specialists,’ are on the whole well thought-out with some very amusing dialogue
• Even most of the side quests, when they’re not the vanilla ‘fetch this’ or ‘kill this’ kind, are fun to do with nice emotional rewards

Unfortunately, as with so many other games, the main narrative thrust of Far Cry 5 is a mess.  It becomes muddled in order to shoehorn in (often regrettable) game mechanics.  The story quickly becomes clichéd, even when it attempts to be self-referential, and ultimately collapses under the weight of its own cumbersome, artificial structure without any emotional payoff.  Dan Hay, who worked on a previous game in the Far Cry series, acted as producer of this game with Drew Holmes as Head Writer.

I’ll unpack what I see as the narrative failures of its main story below.  I will investigate and critique to hopefully train myself to be a better writer by recognizing the game’s narrative failures.  I also provide some thoughts on how the game’s writer and producer could have avoided or fixed these problems.  My analysis includes significant spoilers if you’ve not played and finished the game. 

The Basic Plot and Gameplay of Far Cry 5

A doomsday cult, led by a preacher named Joseph Seed, has taken over a county in rural Montana.  They’re preparing for an upcoming unspecified armageddon by kidnapping, murdering, brutalizing, pillaging, drugging, and terrorizing the locals, presumably to increase their numbers (although the goal is no much beyond “they’re evil psychopaths”).  They speak in a lot Dominionist clichés with some Biblical verses thrown in, especially from the Book of Revelation.

Joseph has three siblings (although the sister is not really related to him) who each control a third of the game map.  John is a psychotic televangelist type who runs his own torture dungeon.  Faith manufactures a powerful hallucinogenic drug called “Bliss” which she uses to create mindless living zombies she terms “Angels.”  Jacob is an ex-soldier raising a fanatical army through abuse, psychology, and a lot of coded mens’ rights speeches about rejecting “soft” modernity and returning to a more pure, primal state.

The player takes the role of an unnamed deputy (also called “rookie”) who travels to Hope County with a federal marshal to arrest Joseph.  Things go wrong and everyone in the arresting party is captured and imprisoned by one of the Seed siblings.  The player character is rescued at the last minute (one of many such rescues) by a doomsday prepper veteran named Dutch who takes the player character back to his bunker.  Dutch starts the player character on a journey to lead the resistance against the cult.

The player is then turned loose on the map and can travel anywhere (except back to Joseph Seed’s compound).  Most game activities involve attacking the cult, often by destroying or capturing their resources or eliminating their regional strongholds.  Every defeat the player deals to the cult strengthens the local resistance, made up of newly militant civilians, and draws the attention and ire of the three Seed siblings (depending on the region affected).

The meta-narrative of the game encourages the player to escalate attacks in a single region at a time, forcing a show-down with each sibling culminating in the sibling’s defeat and liberation of the region from the cult’s influence.  Once John, Faith, and Jacob are all killed, the player can finally confront Joseph and end the game.

Problem:  Capture and Re-Capture

Each Seed sibling reacts directly to the escalating actions of the player character at least three times (Faith is more attentive).  The player triggers these interactions by reducing the influence of the cult in the regions.

Almost every single interaction with the siblings requires the game to concoct scenarios involving the capture and disabling of the player character.  The old ‘villain captures the hero’ cliché is hugely overused, robbing the player of autonomy and control simply to allow cut-scenes where the villains can gloat and provide exposition in person.  It’s also an incredibly lazy writing tool used to manufacture a reason to repeatedly get the player and villain in the same locale.  On my play through, the irresistible, immersion breaking, borderline ‘magical’ ways the story achieves these captures also resulted in rolled eyes far more often than dramatic tension.

In John’s region, the player character is captured three times by ‘magical Bliss projectiles’ that render the player helpless so they can be captured and taken away to be brutalized by John in three different cut scenes.  After the first, the player is rescued by the Resistance.  After the second, the bound player is able to escape (through sheer luck), find a weapon, and fight their way out of captivity.  After the third, the quick-thinking of an NPC and a cut-scene attack leads to another round of combat and a chase resulting in John’s death.

The many times Faith intervenes to harangue the player character over their actions, all she has to do is giggle, say “Welcome to the Bliss,” blow a Bliss kiss, and the player is transported away from the map to a magical dreamscape.  Most of the time in static cut-scenes, the player can only listen to Faith yammer on.  The few times control returns to the player, the player is only allowed to perform a specific action to return to the map.  Twice this involves rescuing another captured NPC, and once it involves watching the murder of an NPC while being unable to prevent it.  None of this involves any player choice or agency, and only serves to violently slam on the breaks in a game when we’ve been up to that point kinetically running around shooting cultists and blowing things up.  Each time I put down the controller, sat back, and simply waited for Faith to shut up.

Jacob is perhaps the most remote villain, mainly barking orders during the player’s brief time with him.  His encounters are also forced through more unavoidable ‘magical Bliss projectiles’ shot at the player once they accomplish enough prerequisites.  Military-themed indoctrination and brainwashing occurs, although not to the extent that the player is unable to return to the main world of the game and pick up where they left off before they were whisked off to Jacob’s château by unseen hands.  After the first encounter, Jacob merely has to play a song to render the player ‘captured’ again and subject them to more lukewarm brainwashing.  Out of the three siblings, Jacob is the only one that seems to have a goal in mind: to get the player to kill an important NPC.  The player can in no way can resist this killing, rendering any drama or regret at the action moot since it’s merely another unavoidable beat in the script.  (In my playthrough, I had barely met the NPC before I killed him under Jacob’s nefarious influence, so the intended emotional stakes were even less relevant.)

In all of this capturing and re-capturing, there’s no clear reason why the player character is not simply killed when they are incapacitated by the villains (the old Bond Villain Cliché).  Joseph has some vague lines suggesting the player is special and that their coming was “foretold,” and by joining the cult the player character can atone for their sins, but since pursuing this option this would mean not actually playing the game as designed (liberating regions, killing the siblings, etc.), it is not a meaningful course open to the player.

So instead, the player watches as their character is captured, and recaptured, and captured again, placed in danger where there is no moral danger (Joseph does not want them killed), without the option to refuse or accept whatever salvation is on offer.  It’s simply a “wait until the cut-scene is over” situation, followed by a convenient scenario that sometimes necessitates a “shoot-em-up” escape.

In the end, the main quest narrative of the game over-relies on this capture/interrogate/lucky escape narrative cliché to the point where every single encounter with the Seed siblings uses it simply to force an encounter.  And more often than not, the encounter that results is simply passive and tangentially related to the actual business of playing the game.

What could have solved this problem:

• Limit the number of capture/escape scenarios so they did not occur at every interaction with the siblings
• Really—just don’t use capture/escape scenarios as they’re incredibly lazy clichés and also often immersion-breaking
• Find other ways to get the player character and the villains into the same location
• Don’t remove player control simply to advance the plot
• Don’t tease player options (“You can be saved.”  “You can reject a leap of faith.”) where there are no options

Problem:  The Bunkers

Each Seed sibling has a bunker fashioned out of a nuclear missile silo (although Faith’s is also possibly in the Bliss dreamworld, it’s unclear).  Once the player kills a sibling, they must then infiltrate these sanctuaries, rescue prisoners, and destroy the bunker while fighting against random cult soldiers (who don’t run away even when the bunker is collapsing around them).  This is the final step toward liberating a region.

It was an odd narrative choice to ultimately divorce the bunkers from the siblings since all three are already dead by the time the player breaks in.  This renders the bunkers simply obstacle courses full of anonymous, disposable baddies.

The bunker missions all also strike the same narrative beat:  First the player frees hostages (in John’s bunker it’s random locals, in Faith’s bunker it’s the Sheriff who was somehow captured off-screen, and in Jacob’s bunker it’s a brainwashed deputy).  Then the player winds their way through a maze of rooms, shooting cultists, while the place collapses around them (but not enough to harm the player, another action-movie cliché).  There’s little variety and all three bunker sequences seem repetitive in structure and intent.  With the villains missing, they feel anti-climatic, rendering the final fight in each region not with the sibling that’s been menacing the player during entire game, but with a group of interchangeable cult drones.

What could have solved this problem:

• Flip the order of bunker liberation and the final combat with each sibling
• Remove the same infiltrate/fight/destroy/“escape while place falls apart” trajectory of each bunker narrative
• Give each sibling something other than a bunker as a symbol of their power in their region

Problem:  The Bliss

The Bliss is supposedly a powerful hallucinogenic drug manufactured from white flowers and brewed by the cult.  Nebulously defined and used, it becomes the mechanism for whenever the game narrative wants to remove control from the player, which the game does quite often.

While out in the wild in Faith’s region, animals and enemies will suddenly appear in a puff of green smoke, often morphing into another hostile entity.  There’s no explanation for this other than “it’s the Bliss,” although attacks from Bliss-spawned enemies hurt just as much from normal enemies in gameplay mechanics.

The Bliss lacks any limitations to its power.  It’s like a magic system in a fantasy novel that is not very well thought out, with absolutely no consequence for the bad characters that rely on it.  It also happens to work exactly as the narrative needs rather than from any external sense of logic, structure, or method.  Its magical properties sit at odds with the realistic, albeit satirical, world of Hope County.  Bliss becomes merely a lazy crutch to move the main plot forward, especially in Faith’s region.

What could have solved this problem:

• Turn “Bliss” into something realistic, or at least give it concrete parameters that fit within the world of the game

Problem:  Faith Seed as a Villain

Faith’s backstory is buried in the texts scattered around Hope County, inside her own dialogue, and within the spoken musings of random NPC’s.  It suggests Faith is not her real name, and that she is merely the latest in a line of women to occupy her position as the female sibling in this cult.  But she’s also often referred to as untrustworthy and a liar, casting doubt on whatever the player can glean from her  words.  Ultimately none of this really has any bearing on her role in the game as the main antagonist of a hostile region who must be defeated.  At no point can the player utilize anything they learn about Faith.  In order for the game to progress, she must be overcome and killed.

Every singular encounter with Faith begins with a flirty giggle and blown Bliss kiss toward the player.  She often grasps the player’s hand and pulls them through her Bliss dreamscape world.  Her white dress and expression of seductive purity is meant to contrast with a scarlet backstory that teases references to sexual assault.  In short, Faith seems written to appeal to a certain straight male gaze.  She is embodied in a manner unlike any male antagonist.  She is always framed in soft focus and allowed to seductively touch the player character in every encounter (John only touches the player character once, to attempt a drowning, and Jacob not at all).

I at first thought, or hoped, she might represent a critique of how sexualized purity is used within the Dominionist community (Purity balls, etc.), or the interchangeability of women in real-world examples of Christian cults.  This would at least suggest something was at work with Faith other than straight male fantasy, but I soon found absolutely nothing there except her direct role as seductive temptress in a game written by straight males.

Her final boss battle is ridiculously reductive.  Faith suddenly becomes able to launch (easily avoidable) projectiles at the player character, who needs to only run around and keep shooting her, backed up by stockpiles of ammo that appear in her Bliss dreamworld for some reason.  We’ve seen this artificial, repetitive mechanic a million times in games and it’s never satisfying, especially from a narrative point of view.

Also, in one of the final encounters with Faith, I don’t buy a Montana hick suddenly giving a lesson about the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis to make a point the dialogue writer wants to use as context for an unavoidable plot point.

What could have solved this problem:

• Make Faith’s backstory (really the only significant backstory given to the three siblings) relevant to her role in the narrative
• Allow the player to choose how they react to Faith (not every player is a straight male)
• Make the final showdown with Faith something other than a cookie-cutter boss battle from a Nintendo game circa 1999

Problem:  The Silent Protagonist

Following on from the problems with Faith Seed as a character is the problem of the character the player spends the most time with.  A narrative choice was made to craft the player character as a blank slate.  This is usually done in games (such as the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Dragon Age series) so the player can map onto the player character the personality they wish to play (within the framework of the game world).

Far Cry 5 conspicuously removes any ability to create a personality for the player character.  Many NPC’s talk to the player character and comment about actions accomplished (usually attacks on the cult), but apart from three occasions all leading to the end of the game narrative, choice is never allowed.  To play the game, the player must simply attack the cult through activities across the map and follow quest markers.

The player character therefore seems more like bland cipher which NPC’s are, inexplicably, drawn to compliment (if part of the resistance) or despise (if part of the cult).  Playing the game becomes a carnival ride for a camera.  Often the player character is literally strapped down, watching the narrative chug forward on its own path.

In my playthrough, my player character never interacted with John, Jacob, or especially Faith Seed in a way I would have chosen, but I had no option other than to watch passively as a cut-scene showed my character performing what the writer wanted me to do.

The head writer for the game is a straight male and his viewpoint creates the only allowed viewpoint inside the game.  This is clearest in the game’s depiction of Faith Seed, but also colors every narrative strand in the game.  Apart from one easily-missed note, gay people are entirely absent from this world.  Players choosing to play a female protagonist report dissociative experiences going through the game’s narrative in a female body:

“In a scene in which your character is interrogated, their shirt is being ripped apart to expose (presumably) the chest. If you were to play a male character, the way the scene plays out would not be extraordinary. Playing a woman, this scene feels incredibely (sic) disjointed and out-of-place…  You play a silent protagonist, but everytime my character grunts, screams or is visible I am reminded by this profound sense of dissonance that pervades my experience of playing Far Cry 5. It’s like my character doesn’t belong into the world she saves and influences so thoroughly. The way other characters interact with me, the way they look at me and the way they refer to me does not match the person I am playing as.”

The game fails to include gay people or adequately prepare for the experience of female player characters.  The writer seems to have constructed a narrative and game with himself, and his outlook, as the only possible default.  His choice to only allow the player to experience this singular narrative was, by definition, a political choice.

In Far Cry 5, I had no autonomy, and therefore at the end of the day, did not really care if my player character succeeded or failed.  I neither knew him as an individual nor recognized him as a representation of myself.

What could have solved this problem:

• Hire diverse writers able to conceive and write narrative views that are not their own, or simply wish fulfillment by proxy
• Craft meaningful options into your narrative to personalize even a blank-slate protagonist

Problem:  The Shallow Theme

Critique of the writing of Far Cry 5 generally falls into two main categories: thematic and structural.  I’ve mainly focused on the latter, but should briefly address theme.

In his astute review of the game for gameinformer.com, Javy Gwaltney gave an interesting analysis of the general shallowness of Far Cry 5:

“On paper, the premise (of the game) sounds terrifying, something that could result in an unapologetic, bold portrait of American home-grown terror of modern times. A game that could look upon controversial subjects such as gun rights and the intersection of religion and violence with an unwavering, critical gaze…  However, the problem with Far Cry 5 is that it doesn’t do the groundwork for the terror and paranoia it supposedly seeks to inspire. 

“The game spends a large amount of time telling you that you should feel a certain way instead of actually trying to get you to feel that way…  Instead of letting you see the means to which such groups trap people into their way of living, Far Cry 5 is content to rely on lazy tropes, like drugs being used as a way of mind control…

“The cult followers you fight in Far Cry 5 are functionally no different than the pirates you fight in 3 or the fascists you fight in 4. They either run at you screaming, firing blindly, or they stick to cover and shoot at you. They’ll insult you. They’ll say they’re giving their life for Joseph Seed, so on and so forth, the kind of barks you expect from all first-person shooters. You don’t really get to know any of these people or the cultural symptoms that made them the way they are. You’re just expected to believe what the game tells you: that these people, through one way or another, came to be a part of Seed’s cult and now they have to die. I understand that the genre requires you to see these people as targets more than characters, but given the deadly serious subject matter, that Far Cry 5 doesn’t bother to try and humanize the cultists, to try and make you understand why they’ve fallen under the sway of a madman, is a fatal flaw in the game’s attempts to create an unnerving, bleak world.

“Instead, Hope County is a strange, hollow playground. It’s a land where, one moment, I’m looking up at a dead man hanging from a billboard, his guts spilling into the street, and in another, I’m cutting off a bull’s testicles for some hick festival. Far Cry 5 wants to be wacky and fun, wants you to kick turkeys to death and ride ATVs off mountains while, (and) all in the same breath, point a finger at America’s decayed institutions and have some profound realization that never comes, because, again, the game hasn’t done the legwork…

“Far Cry 5 has no stance, has nothing substantial to say about cults, religion, politics, or the world at large. It’s simply a run-and-gun exercise through a poorly built nightmare world.”

I generally agree with Javy Gwaltney about the tonal disconnect between the serious issues the game wants to use as narrative instigators, motivations, and mechanics, and the real-world corporate need to produce a game with the tongue-in-cheek style of the series.  It is perhaps a tension that was never going to succeed in a AAA game.  This results in a story that plays with edgy themes, but only uses those themes as shortcuts to communicate shallow elements of the plot.  As with the game’s lack of engagement with sexuality and gender expression, the decision to not engage with the political ramifications of its theme was a political choice.

Problem:  Joseph Seed as a Villain

At first glance, Joseph Seed ticks a lot of villain boxes.  He is clearly a religious psychopath who has scarred his own body.  He speaks with a muted intensity, and his yellow glasses draw focus to his eyes which are often disturbingly trained on the player character (Greg Bryk, the actor who voices, and presumably did the motion capture for Joseph, deserves kudos for his portrayal).  Joseph is clearly modeled on David Koresh of the Branch Davidians religious cult, and brings that nefarious, real-world baggage into the game for those who recognize the connection.

Unfortunately, Joseph is kept in the background for most of the game, only occasionally appearing in a passive cut-scene to recite a menacing soliloquy at the player, then disappearing back to his compound to wait until the player kills his siblings and liberates the three regions.  His motivations are also not clear.  He speaks often of hearing God’s commands, but this is in itself a vague incentive that the player is encouraged to disregard and disbelieve.  And certainty the sheer brutality, violence, and suffering he is responsible for in Hope County is reason enough to wish him defeated.

When he is finally brought forward in the finale, he becomes only a bullet-sponge boss, zipping around the battlefield with the aid of Bliss until the player shoots him enough times to be brought down.  No realistic reason is given why it takes so many bullets to do this.  His hushed intensity is discarded in order to turn him into a maniac with an automatic weapon for the duration of the final combat.  As with Faith Seed, narrative characterization is abandoned and the main instigator of the story’s conflict devolves into just another end-level obstacle.

As an aside, I also suspect the reason why Joseph is so often seen shirtless in the game is to unfortunately associate his male body with homophobia.  In a similar way that Zack Snyder utilized the uncomfortable nudity and effeminacy of Xerxes in 300 (2006) to embody a barely-subliminal threat to a certain type of straight male viewer, Far Cry 5 repeatedly puts Joseph’s lithe, marked male body on display to make what it considers its default viewer uncomfortable.

What could have solved this problem:

• Instead of making Joseph all powerful, show his weaknesses, or possibly how matters with the cult got out of hand and veered away from his intentions
• Give his plans depth and his characterization nuance
• Provide Joseph with likeable qualities so he is not such a cardboard cut-out baddie
• The story may also have benefited from Joseph being the only villain, as currently he is judged alongside John, Faith, and Jacob and because he is only in the background for 90% of the game, does not fare well in comparison
• Bring him forward in the narrative so he is not simply lurking in the background, and when he receives focus, keep his portrayal consistent (and not simply turn him into an end boss)
• Allow the player to defeat him

Problem:  The Ending

Few aspects of Far Cry 5 have infuriated and incensed players as much as the three possible endings to the game.

The first is possible within ten minutes of starting the game.  The player can refuse to arrest Joseph with the federal marshal and credits roll, but this is mainly a glorified trolling on behalf of the developers before the gameplay even starts.

 

At the end of the game, after dispatching all three Seed siblings, the player travels back to Joseph’s compound to face him.  A simple binary choice is given, either to resist Joseph’s murderous, barbaric, psychotic take over of Hope County, or to walk away.  The game mechanic only sets up one possible choice as valid, since “walking away” after spending 40+ hours mowing down cult members is a ridiculous option that makes neither narrative nor gameplay sense.  Again, artificial choice is not a legitimate choice.

Once the player chooses to resist, the camera pans around to show the player character’s friends emerging behind them.  These are the quest-giving NPC’s and companion “specialists” the player has been unlocking and adventuring alongside the entire game (and which the game mechanics conveniently strip from the player when the player has to face Joseph and his siblings).  At this final stage, it doesn’t matter what camaraderie or affection the player has developed for these characters because… (heavy sigh) they all have green Bliss-induced clouds dancing around their heads.  Somehow Joseph has managed to corral, enslave, and transport all of the significant NPC’s to his compound just in time for a final boss battle.

The mechanics of the boss battle are, ridiculous, tired, and uninspiring.  The player must shoot the Bliss-induced NPC’s (with actual weapons) which doesn’t kill them (as actual weapons actually would).  Instead, downing an NPC with a weapon breaks them out of their Bliss stupor and, after you revive them by helping them stand back up, they fight alongside you as you try to shoot as many bullets as you can into Joseph, who is running around trying to shoot you.  Pumping enough damage into Joseph causes him to disappear in a puff of green Bliss smoke for a few seconds until he reappears and resumes his assault and brings in another wave of Bliss-induced NPC’s.  Until he stops respawning and you finally down him, packing his body with so many bullets that he’s reduced to crawling on the ground on all fours.  Then it is time for another cut-scene!

This final boss battle has no narrative function.  Joseph’s use of Blissed-out NPC’s has no precursor, rationale, or explanation beyond “we need enemies for this fight.”  Bliss is once again used as a magic wand without rhyme or reason to create a game scenario, a scenarios that is immediately nullified by the easy way the player can remove the Blissed state of the NPC’s.

The writing wants to use the player’s emotional connections with the NPC’s to create an emotional stake in this final battle.  It doesn’t, but if it did, that would also only detract from the emotional stakes that are supposed to be in the final battle between the main antagonist Joseph and the player.

It’s a mess.

But there’s worse to come.

A downed, bullet riddled, but somehow still capable, Joseph Seed spouts some more religious pabulum in a cut-scene, then three nuclear explosions go off in Hope County.  Mushroom clouds arise over the mountains.

No clear explanation is given for these explosions.  One possibility is that Joseph set them off (somehow, remotely, on cue).  The only previous references to nuclear weapons in the game come from one of the bunkers (John’s) which was a missile silo at some point, so presumably the cult could have access to nuclear weapons.  Some other commenters have suggested that the explosions represent an external attack on the US (on rural Montana for some reason) that occurs exactly when Joseph wants it to, proving him right about armageddon (if not proving the need for his cult’s widespread murder, kidnapping, animal brutality, and forced drugging).  Neither alternative is clear in the writing or the experience, and neither makes sense to the larger narrative.

Control is returned to the player for one final run through an obstacle course.  The player has to drive the screaming cop NPC’s and a now-handcuffed Joseph through a hellish landscape of falling trees and burning deer.  This evokes, for the fourth time, the repetitive scrambles through the collapsing bunkers earlier in the game.  The car flight will ultimately end in an unavoidable crash that conveniently kills the NPC’s and, even more conveniently, results in the tenth (at least!) capture and incapacitation of the player character.

A shirtless Joseph Seed, having survived all of the bullets the player put in him, a nuclear attack, and a car crash that killed three people, is able to drag the unconscious player from the wreckage, break into a bunker (handily located nearby), kill its owner Dutch, and bind the player.  Upon waking, the player has to listen to Joseph explain how this was all foretold, including everything the player did, and declare that with his other siblings dead, the player character is now his new family.  Credits roll.

All three endings lead to a victory for Joseph and the cult and a defeat for the player.  Far Cry 5 is a game designed to pit the player against a doomsday cult, facilitating all manner of violent combat alongside a narrative story of resistance, which is impossible to win.

Unfortunately, this means Far Cry 5 is not a game.  Like many of its long cut scenes, it’s only a vehicle for passively experiencing the written narrative with occasional bursts of futile agency.  Ultimately, nothing you do in the game matters.  You can not win. After all the hours you spend in Hope County, and after all of the story you are shown, there is no catharsis.  There is not even on a meta-level a Brechtian attempt to subvert catharsis to provoke definable real-world action.  The game simply ends.  The player loses.  Always.

 

It is incredible to think that the production team and beta testers at Ubisoft played through the game’s main quest with its instances of the player character being captured over ten (!) times and approved the main narrative, but that is what seems to have happened.  This is so unfortunate because in many other ways Far Cry 5 is an enjoyable game, but only in spite of its narrative.  I only felt happy I’d purchased it when I ignored the main quest, something the game itself often prevented me from doing.

The game’s story, with all of its false illusions of choice, is riddled with narrative failures.  It is nihilistic, bloated with cardboard villains and video game clichés, ridiculous in its internal logic, cowardly in its choices, tonally schizophrenic, and uninclusive.

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Telling Stories in Games: Rewriting the Narrative of Fallout 4

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fallout 4, gay characters, video, video games

I’ve played many, many hours of the post-apocalyptic adventure game Fallout 4.  I’ve finished the over-arching main quest and hundreds of side quests.  I’ve saved the bombed-out Commonwealth around a destroyed Boston and become powerful.  Although games like this give you the feeling (sometimes the illusion) of being open-ended where you can do whatever you want, I thought the main quest of Fallout 4 was ultimately quite controlled, cliched, and disappointing.  It was certainly the least rewarding part of the time I spent with the game.

After some time away, I got the itch to return to Fallout 4, but knew I didn’t want to jump through the same hoops with a new character.  So I decided to use player-created mods (scripts you can add to the game to change parts of it) to make a new way.  To ignore the badly written main-quest and just enjoy the game mechanics, side quests, and fun of running around in an interesting and compelling world.

One of the things I also wanted to do was make the game narrative more LGBT-friendly.  The company that makes the Fallout series, Bethesda, has a mixed history of creating inclusive and diverse games.  Their handling of non-heterosexual sexuality has always been clumsy, and their handling of gender often ridiculous.  I hope to use mods and other tools to overcome the many limitations Fallout 4 imposes upon the player character regarding identity and sexuality.

With this return to the radioactive Commonwealth of Fallout 4, I began to think about how I could create my own narrative in the game.  Freed from the overarching narrative imposed by the company that made the game, how would I anchor my character’s decisions and actions?  Games like this encourage exploration.  Going out and finding your own adventure.  How would I tell my story?

I decided to record my play through and provide narrative commentary.  I’m still quite new to this, so the first couple episodes I’ve recorded are a bit more about the game mechanics than building a narrative, but I’ll hopefully hit my stride soon.  I’m looking forward to using the game to tell short stories– to use my character as a protagonist and explore narrative through game mechanics (and the language of video editing).

How to Watch:  If you would like to watch what I’ve done so far, you can find the videos on this YouTube Playlist.  I’ve given the series the title “Carousing Through the Commonwealth.”  I’ll post more as I embark upon a new (for me) way of creating narrative.

Ready Player Re-Done

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bioshock infinite, dragon age, fallout 4, games, GTAV, guild wars 2, saints row, the secret world

A brief twitter thread chat between @RandomiseUser, @Endo_Chick, and myself got me thinking about character appearance in games.  I set out to put some ideas down as to how games structure this, and why I’m so drawn to character appearance in the games I enjoy.

Cool games that force me into the skin of a pre-made, pre-packaged protagonist, quite frankly, annoy me.  Those set player characters rarely interest me deeply, and have never been close to any real concept of who I would prefer to be.  So the experience often becomes one of merely driving around an avatar designed by someone else, and ultimately enacting someone else’s story (no matter how many narrative ‘options’ the game design gives me).  In the end, I really don’t come to care about those characters.

But of course, this mirrors real life.  We don’t choose to have the skin, complexion, sex, hair, eyes, shape, or attributes we’re born with.  We have some control over some aspects (increasingly even those once thought immutable), but we all learn to deal with the design we’ve been given.  Or we seek to tweak.  There’s a role for games that purposefully inject you in another sex, body, or race as part of a larger narrative or moral goal, but I’m speaking purely about games that pre-design the protagonist primarily as your vehicle for experiencing the game world.

Playing modded Skyrim in Roman armor

In the triple experience of gameplay, narrative, and character, I usually gravitate to character the most.  I can forgive a lot of crappy gameplay in good faith (too much grind, clunky mechanics, repetition, etc.).  As a writer, sloppy or clichéd narrative bugs the shit out of me, but to be honest, we don’t turn to games for well-written stories with nuance and depth (although there are some exceptions, such as Bioshock Infinite).  But if a developer puts genuine thought and effort put into customizable player creation, I come back to that game again and again.  It holds meaning for me.

Games I enjoy make this work in a few different ways, both single-player and MMORPGs.

Guild Wars 2 (Human, Norn, and Silvari)

Some have a limited template of designs (hair, faces, shapes, etc.) that you can mix and match in various combinations.  It’s the bare minimum of customizing your player character, and sometimes causes the unfortunate circumstance of running into your twin in the world as you encounter someone with the same look as you.  I suspect some rendering limitations in that game’s engine are the probable technical reasons behind this choice.  Often, good games will help temper this with providing a wealth of outfits for your character, usually in the in-game store.  MMORPG Guild Wars 2 has innovative but limited physical forms for your avatar, but a huge range of expanding options for clothes, weapon types, and accessories.  It has a consumables system that allows you to apply any unlocked look to any armor or weapon you use, so you don’t need to surrender your look when you upgrade your gear.

The Secret World MMORPG

Similarly, The Secret World (the best MMORPG you’ve probably never heard of or played) has hidden “combat armor” and allows you to present your avatar dressed however you want given a wide palette of options, reward clothing, and purchased looks.   Weapon customization is not as flexible as Guild Wars 2, but it exists.  As a serious game that uses a modern, real-world setting (albeit one infused with Lovecraftian monsters, aliens, and secret societies), you might think it would skew toward prioritizing modern, Western fashion.  But no, it’s quite common to see people dressed like Roman soldiers, future robots, death’s-head demons, and killer squirrels running through the world hubs.  Players in The Secret World often wear the dream cosplay outfits you expect they would wear in real-life if they could.

Dragon Age 2, pre-make Hawke (left) and my Hawke (right)

Elsewhere on the spectrum of customizable character creation is the pre-made protagonist character that you can “make over.”  In single-player Dragon Age 2, you play Hawke, who has a mostly-linear story-line that you can influence, but you also have the option to mold his appearance to better fit your imagination.  The same is true for the female Hawke option.  The Dragon Age series aims for an immersive fantasy experience, including scripted romance between your character and some of your companions, so I find it a welcome option to be able to craft your avatar’s appearance.

Saints Row IV pre-made protagonist (left) and mine (right)

On the flip side is Saints Row IV, an amusing (in its own right), tongue-in-cheek parody of games like the Grand Theft Auto series (which have no real first-player story physical feature customization and force you play as pre-made characters).  But the generic Slab McBulkhead main protagonist of Saints Row IV can be customized as in Dragon Age 2.  This is a welcome expectation of a free-wheeling game that also allows you to fight with guns that launch toilet plungers and elastic dildo bats.

First-person only view in Bioshock Infinite

The final category I’ll briefly mention is the first-person only games that coyly prevent us from viewing or customizing our character in third-person.  Booker in Bioshock Infinite is a fully fledged and voiced character, but his appearance remains off-camera (except for a few brief glances).  Such first-person shooters have a genre history of keeping player appearance vague, but the same mechanics are on view in the new No Man’s Sky and other exploration games.  One might think that keeping things first-person would foster greater self-identification and immersion with the player, but that’s not the case for me.  Since the action is always happening on a flat plane (my monitor), I experience such a game as I would a movie.  My life-long conditioning with this structure has been to disengage and observe.  However, when I can rotate the camera and see my avatar fully embodied in a 3D space, running around the landscape as a body and not just my gaze, my own self-identification and immersion is actually greater.  There’s still a screen between us, but that screen is not built directly into the mechanics of my gaze.

The Sole Survivor in Fallout 4 (you may have noticed a theme or two)

Not everyone prioritizes character design.  It’s not something that matters to all (most?) players.  There’s a long list of games offering only a bland, interchangeable, and ultimately disposable character model for the player, where the developers have given only cursory thought to appearance.  However, I do give it a great deal of thought, and effort, and I’m probably seeking a mix of comfort, self-identification, wish fulfillment, creative input, and a pleasant objectified gaze when I play a game with a custom character.

A friend of mine once described the kinds of games I like as “Barbie for boys.” I love character building and appearance crafting.  Along with all the fun stuff the game lets me do (fight monsters, explore space, survive in the radioactive wasteland…), and a strong narrative journey I can help enact, I’m drawn to the creative process of character design.  It doesn’t matter if I’m just goofing around and causing vehicular havoc in downtown Los Santos with friends or slaying the great dragons of Tamriel alone, I’m happiest if I can join with the effort of the game designers who have already crafted the world and the adventure.  I’m eager to bring the main character.

(Go follow @RandomiseUser and @Endo_Chick for deeper and better game analysis than mine.  You can follow me at @gmdevore.)

 

 

 

 

The Narrative Failure of Elder Scrolls Online

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Elder Scrolls Online, games

I’ve been playing the beta of the new Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) since last year and have seen its development. I’m a huge fan of the single-player Elder Scrolls games, and was greatly looking forward to a massively-multiplayer version of Tamriel which drops this upcoming week. Unfortunately, while the game basics are fine (if not all that different from other MMORPGs), the storyline and quest dynamic fails like many multiplayer games before it. In short, no attempt has been made to explain why there are hundreds of other people running around your world.

The main story (no spoiler warning needed, you find all this out in the first five minutes of the game) falls back on that tired and trite fantasy cliché that YOU are the chosen one. Only YOU can save the world from great evil. This is a canard I wish all fantasy writers could finally expunge from their narrative repertoire, but apart from being a lazy way to infuse a plot with meaning, it taps into our deep-seeded desire to be special (and not just one of 7 billion other people on the planet with no real exceptional talent or chance to be remembered).

We all know this is a cliché. We are familiar with books and films about the extraordinary hero who is the only one who can defeat the great evil because of something special he (or rarely she) possesses: an ability, a power, a special weapon, etc. This was even true in Skyrim, the latest single-player Elder Scrolls game, where you not only had special powers, but you were also singled out among all others by virtue of your birth (only YOU are the Dragonborn). While clichéd, this narrative device mostly worked in Skyrim because you (the player) learned about your fate and your abilities as your character did, and the other characters in the game began to treat you as someone who was indeed special.

In ESO, you learn that YOU are special in a (rather rushed) prologue teaching you the basics of the game. At first, there is the suggestion that there are others in your situation. A massive prison escape (a prison-oriented beginning is a staple of the series) suggests that there are others like you that have special abilities because your soul has been stolen. They are all running around with you (as NPC’s until you finally get into a full combat area). But then, within the first few minutes, you are waylaid by a beautiful woman warrior (cliché) who enlists your aid in saving a Prophet (cliché). To get to him you have to do some uninspired fiddling of gates and monsters, talk briefly to John Cleese in a wasted cameo, and open the prophet’s cell. The beautiful woman sacrifices herself to save the Prophet (cliché). The Prophet, voiced by Michael Gambon (certainly a typecasting cliché), tells you how to escape the prison and thereafter he sits in his hidden HQ (cliché) and is the guide (cliché) and deliverer of exposition (cliché) on your adventures to overthrow the big baddie. The big baddie himself stems from the breaking of a fellowship (another common cliché in games that I sense stems not only from Tolkien but also game designer’s fond memories of their old D&D parties, see Guild Wars 2s Destiny’s Edge too).

So far, so Skyrim. You will play the game and improve your character, preparing, with the unique help of the Prophet, to defeat the great evil that has descended upon the world. An evil only you can defeat because YOU are special (here “the Vestige” instead of the Dragonborn). A standard fantasy plot line, even if it is stitched together from left-overs of most every other fantasy fiction out there.

However, as you travel and explore and quest in the new world where you find yourself- helping citizens in peril, rescuing NPC’s in danger- you see a bunch of other people running around too. They’re in the landscape with you, sometimes frustratingly claiming that randomly spawning crafting resource or treasure chest before you can get to it. They’re in the same quest zone as you, killing that monster or enemy before you can do it, and sometimes just standing around to pounce on a re-spawning boss, the same one you need to kill to finish the quest and get your reward. Sometimes they’re also donning a disguise and infiltrating the same bandit camp as you to rescue the baron and his family which they find…. Wait, why did the guard captain send me to do this if he’d already sent six other people? Why didn’t he tell me about them? If four other players are standing around me, why is the baron thanking me for saving him?

In short, this is the narrative failure of ESO (and, it must be said, most MMORPG’s). No provision is made to accommodate (or even address) the other players around you outside of pvp. Many times while playing the beta, I got to the end of a dungeon or quest area and other players had already taken out the big boss I was supposed to take down (the feared necromancer, the bandit chief, the head orc, etc). Most of the time I just had to tap my foot and wait for an artificial respawn, although once the quest “completed” by just standing there. Many a “secret passage” taken to sneak into a captured keep or hidden headquarters was heavily trafficked, with other players running and jumping past me. An orc teamed up with me to help on an adventure, and we ran around with half a dozen other people who all also happened to have an orc companion with them.

One quest had me crouch down and receive a magic spell that made me glow (illogically) in order to secretly follow a villain as he walked through a town, noting who he talked to and eventually searching the building he stopped at for clues to uncover a conspiracy. I counted ten people, all also glowing in crouch mode, doing the same thing at the same time. We all ran into the building together filling it, and rifled through everything, eventually finding an incriminating document helpfully left behind in plain sight. Then we all hurried back to the official who sent us on our super-secret mission, presumably to tell him that no one had spotted the small glowing army conducting its subterfuge in broad daylight.

As one player said on zone chat once while I was playing, “This is like playing an Elder Scrolls game where everyone just gets in your way.” ESO kept many of the same quest structures of a single-player game (go recover this thing, sneak in there, kill that leader…) without acknowledging the multitude of others around you doing the same things. Some MMORPG games, like Star Wars The Old Republic and Star Trek Online and parts of Guild Wars 2, choose to hide people through instanced areas (where you only see yourself and any teammates) in an attempt to “explain” other players. But in ESO, with the plot and game mechanics, the developers have produced a clichéd, static narrative that asks you to kindly ignore and accommodate everyone else’s actions on your solitary journey for no real reason, while clumsily expecting you to pursue your special destiny. As a savior, it hardly seems a world worth saving.

Best Games of 2013: #3- Guild Wars 2

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games, guild wars 2

Guild Wars 2 (published by ArenaNet)
Fantasy-themed MMORPG
(free-to-play once purchased, around $50)

Few MMORPGs possess as much fun, whimsy, challenge, and sheer breadth of opportunities that Guild Wars 2 does.  I had never been much of a fan of the first Guild Wars, but I’ve taken GW2 to my heart.  Most gamers know about this game (it has been out since 2012) but it was this year that I finally adopted it.  With continually updated content, a huge world, and a wide range of things to do inside the game, GW2 easily became one of my favorite games of 2013.

Players in GW2 choose one of five races that thankfully think outside of the standard fantasy game tropes.  Each one also comes with their own look and fully realized culture:

• Asura (rat/mouse like people obsessed with magical technology)
• Charr (warlike cat-like race)
• Norn (large spiritual shape-changing Nordic Vikings)
• Sylvari (nature-loving living plant people)
• and of course humans.

The classes are more traditional, although each has its own general play-style and learning curve:

• Guardian (defensive melee)
• Warrior (flexible melee)
• Engineer (guns and turrets)
• Ranger (bow and pet class)
• Thief (complex flexible chain builder)
• Elementalist (utilizing four different types of magic)
• Mesmer (offensive and defensive magic)
• Necromancer (magic pet class)

Although, all classes have aspects of what is normally thought to be a hybrid class, and all players have a range of heal self and/or others abilities for maximum flexibility in play style

Each playable race is given a linear main quest line that takes them all around the sizable world.  Quest oriented cut scenes are done cleverly with attractive visuals and full voice acting.  Mostly these are engaging.  A few times along the main quest story arc the different races’ stories merge which means some repetitive play if you play several different characters.  This is a minor complaint (although if I never drive the undead away from Claw Island again in my GW2 career I’d be very happy).  A more serious annoying feature of the game is the fact that all of the main quest episodes can be soloed (when of the appropriate level) but the finale goes out of its way to require you to find a partner or party to finish.  As a player who enjoys the solo experience, and can not easily find someone else to adventure with, this has stopped cold my quest progression on all characters.  They are stuck at the penultimate stage with no chance to complete the last quest on their own (despite soloing everything up to that point).  It is a great annoyance.

Speaking of grouping, as to be expected with a game called Guild Wars, a lot of careful attention has been paid to give players who want them the tools to create public and private guilds for group play.  This system is seamlessly incorporated into the game itself.

Adventuring through the GW2 map is often a dynamic experience.  Along with static quest-givers, every map has many ‘automated events’ that run independent of any player interaction.  Players can join in and help with the event, allowing for a degree of spontaneous cooperation without having to formally group.  Another aspect of the game that helps cultivate a collaborative environment is that anyone who assists in any combat receives experience and treasure, preventing any kill-stealing.  Similarly, crafting recourses on the landscape persist until each player receives their share.

The art direction of GW2 is often stunning, although sometimes it veers close to World of Warcraft type cartoony-ness with huge unrealistic melee weapons and absurd armor (and the female armors tend to skew toward the busty and revealing).  The maps are varied and a range of climates and terrain types hold some amazing vistas.  One of the most detailed and impressive is one that the players get to learn well– Lion’s Arch, a city lovingly constructed out of decommissioned ships and other naval vessels.  The first time you encounter Lion’s Arch with its buildings made of ships piled atop each other, sails still fluttering, it is truly a jaw-dropping sight.

Guild Wars 2 always gives you a range of activities you can tackle.  There are standard quests and combat, but also many jumping puzzles, games of skill, and opportunities to make items.  Almost everything you do in the game gives you experience.  You could level up (albeit slowly) just by gathering materials and crafting.  Every day the game also gives you a random list of about 10 activities you can complete (kill so many veteran monsters, revive so many fallen allies, collect so many craft items, etc.) for bonuses and special treasure items, encouraging the player to tackle this ever-changing list, and see it through to the end every time they are in the world.  A built-in achievement system possesses a wide range of rewards for succeeding at a variety of tasks.

Combat is both intuitive and simplified without seeming dumbed-down.  Every weapon type has usually up to 5 special “attacks” that can be unlocked depending on how it is used (main hand, two-handed, off-hand, ranged, or underwater), and the class of the person using it (i.e. an elementalist can do something different with a dagger than a thief can).  This allows a good deal of changeup based on class, play style, and monster encountered, and some weapons complement each other when used together.  Additionally, and this is something that tends to blow your mind when first encountered, GW2 has underwater combat, with a range of underwater weapons and equipment.  When fighting underwater, combat exists in 360 degrees, with the ability to move in any direction, and requiring brand new strategies.  It also helps that the underwater vistas are beautiful, and the transition between the dry and aquatic worlds handled very well.

The world is constantly updated and expanded.  Sometimes this involves completely altering a landscape, as was recently done when some signature monsters cooperated to take over, and transform, previously lush rolling grassland in their own twisted way.  Regular content updates also sometimes change or improve areas of the world you may have not visited since you were low level, necessitating a new visit and providing new experiences.

As with many MMORPGs, holidays receive attention, usually with numerous special events, treasure, and activities.  For example, GW2 created a very fun game for Halloween open to anyone of any level.  A group of about 12-15 players were placed in a maze-like build without weapons or armor.  One player started as a ghost, possessing powers that could kill other players.  Scattered through the maze were several items that the non-ghost players (called “villagers”) could pick up and use against the ghost (balls of gunk that could be thrown to block visibility, sticky webs to slow pursuit, big hammers to fight back, etc.).  When the ghost killed a “villager”, that player became a ghost as well and joined in the fight to chase and convert the remaining “villagers”.  After a time limit, special prizes were given to “villagers” who survived and ghosts who converted the most.  It was a well-thought-out, fun game and was only one of several themed events for that month.

Finally, Guild Wars 2 has been the only game I’ve played where I found any enjoyment fighting other players.  GW2 has two kinds of this content- world vs. world (WvW) and player vs. player (PvP).  WvW consists of four maps filled with keeps, castles, supply camps, and other strategic points where players from three different servers can contest against each other, and ultimately provide server-wide bonuses for everyone.  This is often fast moving with a healthy dose of teamwork.  Although it does not offer as much reward as direct combat, I found great fun using siege weapons to attack rival castle while the rest of my team battled to break down the front door.  Players from different servers are blocked from communicating with each other, or even seeing each others’ names (although Guild names are visible).  This keeps the experience team-focused, which is probably why I enjoyed it.  I dabbled in the regular PvP but found it, as always, full of petulant “hard-core” players who either screamed and yelled at team members for not doing this or that correctly, or who were just interested in killing you and being a dick about it.  PvP is where the 13 year-olds (real and metaphorical) hang out so I tend to give it a wide berth.  I did find WvW enjoyable, however.

Crystal Desert is the unofficial LGBT-friendly server in GW2 and where I play my range of characters (illustrated in this post).  Several LGBT guilds call it home as well.  Come find me there in Guild Wars 2!

Best Games of 2013: #2- State of Decay

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games, state of decay

State of Decay (published by Undead Labs)
Zombie post-apocalypse sandbox-style game
(currently $20 on Xbox and Steam for PC, DLC “Breakdown” is $6.99)

State of Decay is both an amazing game experience and sometimes an amazingly frustrating game. I am usually not a big fan of zombie games (and I am often wary of their bloodthirsty fan base), but I really like State of Decay, and it was definitely the second best game I played this year after The Secret World.

Also like The Secret World, I only stumbled upon this game by accident and got hooked early. Unfortunately, being an early adopter meant that I was also a victim of State of Decay’s many early bugs and errors which should have been fixed before launch (some of which still persist), as well as some annoying imposed restrictions and hoops the developers inserted into the gameplay. But what fun gameplay State of Decay has when all things work well!

State of Decay is meant to be a zombie post-apocalypse sandbox-style game. You manage a group of survivors who band together in a fortified building and scavenger for supplies- everything including food, building materials, medicine, weapons, and of course ammunition. You gather supplies by heading out into the zombie infested towns and countryside that make up the game’s 16 square mile map. There is also the chance to find special weapons and tools that can increase your community’s chances of survival.

Most of the time, if you’re paying attention, taking out one or two zombies on your own with just a pipe wrench is no problem. But of course, zombies like to congregate in groups, often forcing you to become creative. The player that just storms into a ‘deserted’ house looking for supplies will probably not last long, as all that noise will attract wave after wave of shambling undead. Special mutant zombies also add to the difficulty, not to mention the need to manage the personalities and tempers of your group of survivors.

You don’t control a single character in State of Decay, which is understandable because all that scavenging and fighting is tiring. You can switch between characters that you have ‘befriended’ through helping them out, and renew the search for goodies while a tired character catches some much-needed sleep back at the homestead. During the day, searching for supplies is always harrowing. At night, the number and strength of the zombies ramp up as the darkness encroaches. You can never let your guard down while playing, even if you’re just taking an abandoned car across the map to check out an old factory. The game gets the balance between survival horror and progressive gameplay right.

And if your character dies at the hands of a roving zombie horde, they’re gone forever. All the time you spent to level up their abilities is moot. You can only now switch to one of your other community members, and hope your people don’t now begin to panic at the loss. Similarly, once a house or factory or store is searched and cleaned out of supplies, that’s it. The building remains empty for the rest of the game (although some zombies may move in– zombies, unlike supplies, are infinite). All supplies, including cars, are a limited resource. In the main game, a central quest line urges you to find a way to escape the valley (and certain death) before all the supplies you can get run out. In the DLC that has just been released, called “Breakdown”, you can play the game without the main quest and ‘renew’ the map with increased difficulty (number of zombies, frequency of harder mutant zombies, fewer overall resources) at each incarnation.

The art direction of the game is really great (although the character models could use a bit more diversity in style- although a healthy dose of diversity in race and gender is thankfully included). The landscape, and the attention to detail in the builds, is phenomenal. There are some issues around lag and texture popping (memory limits were pushed for the original Xbox release, and not much optimization was made for the PC version), but you can play around these limitations for the most part if you’re cautious.

Special praise must be singled out for the game’s sound direction and music. You must play with the sound on because often the noise of a zombie approaching is the only warning you have before you’re attacked. Also the way in which the game uses audio is amazing. The music is by legendary game composer Jesper Kyd and both perfectly enhances State of Decay’s visuals and evokes a range of moods including terror, pathos, humor, and of course, hope. The soundtrack can be entirely previewed on Jesper Kyd’s site  and purchased on iTunes and other places.

One negative aspect of the game is that when you stop playing and shut off the game, the action still continues. The survivors in your community still venture out into danger to look for supplies, still consume resources, and sometimes still act in bizarre unhelpful ways (like running away and hiding somewhere on the map when they get scared). This goes on for as long as you are away from the game (although not exactly a 1:1 ratio of hours). The developers have never really given a helpful explanation as to why they implemented this feature beyond just purposefully imposing events that are out of the player’s control. They say this would just be like managing a real life group where you couldn’t control everything, but in the end it just frustrates the careful player who can log on and find (especially in the early days of post-launch) all the work done to stabilize the community completely undone with dead characters and destroyed group morale. This feature also hampers both the player that can play a lot (diminishing the results of many straight hours of effort) and the casual gamer (who gets penalized for the time they are not in game, and punished by the offline consumption of resources). Thankfully, much of this feature has been neutered in subsequent updates, so large was the initial outcry from players, and now is just a minor impact, which usually can be tempered with smart gameplay. But from the beginning it was a bonehead feature that provided no real benefits only penalties.

The team that put out State of Decay, Undead Labs, is small, which probably contributed to the fact that the launch game had lots of game-breaking bugs (I once logged in to find one of my survivors had shot and killed the radio operator who gave me quests. She was dead on the floor of the safehouse, but was still talking to me on the radio. That game had become borked while I was offline, and all previous work wasted). Over the past months, many of those bugs have been solved, although there are some (the dreaded “Seek and Rescue” bug that will permanently wreck a character’s mood if you actually go and find them when they run away) that inexcusably still persist. Launching on Steam also seems to have introduced some others, usually with work arounds if you search their forums.

But with all of its unpolished nature, and all of its persistent bugs, nothing comes close to the joy of sneaking around a small deserted town, trying to find a decent weapon and some food for you ragtag group of survivors holed up in the abandoned trucking warehouse, while roving hordes of zombies attempt to find you and make you lunch. All players have stories of that time that they barely escaped the grocery store after being surprised by a horde, only to run into a feral zombie down the street. Piecing together the clues of what caused the apocalypse (the game does not tell you directly) is fun and most of the characters are interesting. With enough raw materials, resources such as gardens, machine shops, and even libraries can be built into your base. You can see your enclave evolve in real time, and your stable of ‘heroes’ become lean, mean, zombie killing machines.

And as an added bonus, there’s even a (very brief but memorable) same-sex relationship portrayed positively as just another aspect of life after the apocalypse (Jacob and Eli above).

While State of Decay has its issues, it also has fun by the barrel-ful for those interested in a hybrid of a sandbox resource gathering game with relentless zombie smashing combat. And it’s only $20 on both Xbox and Steam (for PC).

Best Games of 2013: #1- The Secret World

Tags

games, the secret world

The Secret World (published by Funcom)
Free-to-play MMORPG after purchase of the game (currently $30 on Steam)

This is the best game you’re probably not playing/never heard of.  I only found it myself by doing a random search on Steam.

The premise of The Secret World (TSW) is that worldwide secret societies, conspiracy theories, mythological tales, are all true.  The player joins one of three secret organizations (the Templars, the Illuniati, or the Dragon) and plays through a clever and well-written main story line.  Players battle H.P. Lovecraft inspired monsters that have taken over a New England town, an ancient evil in the deserts of Egypt, and resurgent vampires and werewolves in Transylvania.  Artfully done cut scenes with impressive voice acting set up each quest, which is usually its own mini story.  Players can only focus on a single quest (and up to three side quests) at a time, which helps with the immersion.  The art direction is top notch, with vistas and builds that you spend your time admiring, not just running past on the way to the next objective.

Perhaps The Secret World’s most impressive feature (amid a whole host of impressive features) is it skill system.  There are no classes, no levels, and no armor.  You can wield up to two weapons at a time:  blades, hammers (including axes), hand weapons, elemental magic, blood magic, chaos magic, pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles.  Each type (melee, magic, or gun) has a whole host of unlockable abilities, and it is possible (like in an Elder Scrolls game) to use any combination of types, and even eventually unlock them all.  In addition to active attack or support abilities, there are a host of passive abilities available to unlock, and you can ‘slot’ on your hotbar up to 7 active and 7 passive abilities at a time.

The key is to find combinations that compliment each other.  For example, my favorite is elemental magic combined with pistols.  I can cast a spell that (hopefully) traps a monster in an electric cage for a few seconds, enough time for me to lay down a ring of fire around them.  A passive ability I’ve slotted gives me a brief bonus to my critical damage when the ring of fire is active.  This allows me fire off my dual pistols five times, building enough focus to then unleash a special ‘covering fire’ ability that sprays bullets.  By this time the monster has usually broken free and is charging me.  Time for an icy frost spell that will freeze him in his tracks for a few more moments, enough time for me to do a back flip to get some range again, and start the ring of fire/pistol combo again.  This strategy doesn’t work against all enemies, so I might even have to switch to a sword/elemental magic build I’ve assembled, which keeps the combat fresh and fun.

With no armor, players are free to outfit their character however they want.  Some dress in contemporary clothes, others adopt outfits that make them look more like a superhero, goth, ninja, pirate, or even Roman soldier.  Unlocking abilities and earning achievements also unlocks special outfits that can be combined to a unique look.  My white sport coat with electronic current symbol details (which glow in the dark) is my favorite so far.  I got it by unlocking all of the pistol/elemental magic abilities, and many achievements give outfits.  “Armor” comes from invisible talismans that the player can find or create, and then augment to compliment their playing style.  My only artistic gripe is that the choices for designing a character’s face/hair/etc. are rather limited.  I’ve run into doppelgangers several times because we all chose the same visual combo.

The secret world tries (mostly successfully) to step outside the static and generic MMORPG model, and does so with stunning art direction, engaging and well-written stories (which are also often very funny), impressive gameplay, and a healthy dose of open-ended character creation.

The game does have PvP functionality, but I usually ignore this aspect of MMORPGs.  There are smatterings of interesting gay characters you encounter in your adventures, although my favorite has to be the May/December romance between Oxford archaeologists investigating ancient curses in an Egyptian valley of tombs.

Come find me on the Grim server and join in the conspiracies of The Secret World!