Game stories and a desire to go off the rails

Last night it was too hot to sleep, so I'm not exactly well rested.  Today it's too hot to think, so even without the sleep problem I'd still be likely to be non-quite-coherent.  I feel that the quality of my writing has dropped of late, today it might drop further.

Also, I am seriously out of touch with gaming, could be everything I'm talking about wanting they already have in great supply and high quality.

Anyway, I've had something on my mind.

Talking about Mirror's Edge occasionally had me mentioning AVPII because I thought that was something Mirror's Edge could learn from on the storytelling front, so I installed AVPII and it was as good as I remembered it, and I definitely think Mirror's Edge could learn some things from it, but it also reintroduced me to something that annoys me in games.  It wasn't a surprise, I knew it was coming, it annoys me anyway.

You have a tendency to arrive just too late.  One bit of ingame text says a difference of minutes would have made all the difference, frequently a difference of seconds would.

In AVP II if you should meet someone who isn't trying to kill you, and isn't terrified of you to the point of being unable to speak, there are two possibilities.  One is that you've hit a cutscene between missions.  The other is that that person is about to die.  Right in front of you, and there's nothing you can do.

It doesn't matter how fast you get to them or how hard you try to save them.  It doesn't even matter if you're in a position where you physically ought to be able to save them, they will die.

The game has its reasons for doing this, and all things considered they're not bad reasons, but doing it invites one to ponder possibilities that it will never be possible to explore.  They invite the question, "What if?" but you're never allowed to learn the answer.

People you can't quite save are one example of this, and they're not restricted to a AVPII, Resident Evil 2 had the first person you meet killed by cutscene.  You could have saved him, it wouldn't have been all that hard, but there was an extremely short cutscene, just long enough to prevent you from intervening.  That was the most explicit, but I figure there were at least three people and a helicopter you ought to have been able to save but couldn't.  Imagine the possibilities there.  Think of how completely different the game might have been then, all of the places the story might have gone.  Think of all the "What if?"s.

Or, what if in Deus Ex you joined the resistance as soon as the idea came up, you just told Paul, "Start up the engines, get this plane on the tarmac, we'll hightail it to Mexico."  And then he explained the plane was actually headed for Hong Kong.

Every mission in Deus Ex is necessitated by time pressure, The supertanker is already docked and the plague awaits deployment, the attack on X-51 is already in progress, the nuclear launch is about to commence, Page has almost completed his preparations, so on.  Arriving in Hong Kong a day ahead of schedule would have taken that time pressure off.  It might have allowed for some other missions, like say going to the White House to stop the coup, or possibly dropping by the front lines in Austin, or maybe even figuring out was was going on with that moonbase.  It might have knocked the narrative completely off the rails and allowed for the story to go in a new and different direction, which is something that, if you haven't figured out yet, I find interesting.

Similar to, though not the same as, this is the desire to play other parts of the story.  Resident Evil 3 had a part where you found a dead mercenary with a teenage girl, also dead, huddled with him for protection.  The mercenary had a diary.  It seems the girl reminded him of his sister and his soul gradually regrew as he took a brotherly interest in her.  He helped her, and her father, make it across town with him and his partner to their evac site.  The evac didn't come.  The partner wanted to ditch them, the father was an idiot, the mercenary refused to leave the girl and apparently convinced his partner to stick around.  They all died.

For comparison, the main character is Jill Valentine, a standard action hero.  The secondary character is Carlos, her male Bond-girl.*  That's not the most interesting pair.

Also if one is going to be redeemed by affection, it doesn't always have to be love interest affection or parental affection.  The idea of the mercenary redeemed by feelings of siblingish love doesn't strike me as something I've seen all that often.

So I'd like to be able to play that story, and in the playing of it make it turn out some way other than "Everybody dies."

-

Anyway, back to the original point, setting aside the amount of work necessary to make games that are completely different on different playthroughs because of "for want of a nail" choices, and the fact that last I heard most people don't give a second playthrough anyway, and all other practical concerns, the idea of games implies a kind of storytelling where you can say, "I wonder what would happen if I did this?" and find out.

I've seen it done on the small scale (consider The Nameless Mod where at one point you can mess up plan A, obliterate plan B, be forced to cobble together a plan C on your own when the person advising you turns away in disgust, deal with the massive unnecessary fallout you've brought on yourself, and then incapacitate your helicopter pilot before he can give you a ride to the next area, just to see what happens) but on the scale of sending the entire story spiraling off in another direction, I haven't seen a lot of it.

Consider in AVPII if you'd been able to save one or more of those people from the beginning you got to mere seconds too late.  With the information and assistance they might have been able to offer you might have avoided early casualties and not collapsed the defenses to the pods, which would have changed everything that followed.  I  don't know exactly what would have happened, but it would have been a different story and thus a different game.

It would be nice to have that kind of influence on the narrative.  Consider a Mirror's Edge where you don't split up with Kate, or for a severe "What if?" one where the Pope assassination could be averted.  The story would have to completely change to accommodate those changes which would lead to a lot replay value, and a sense that your choices mattered.

-

Probably not the most interesting post ever, but like I said: low on sleep; too hot to think.

-

*My nomination for best male Bond-girl is Daniel Craig for his performance in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, it wasn't a very big part, when you think about it, but it stuck with me.

Twilight: Why don't you eat people?

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

"Tell me why you hunt animals instead of people."

"Well, gee, Bella... I wonder why anyone would ever consider not murdering for their daily meal." As soon as he said it Edward realized that making a poetry reference was probably pointless. If she understood poetry she'd probably be able to understand the value of human life. He decided a different approach, "Why don't you eat people?"

In the pause that followed Edward came to the disturbing realization that she was thinking over the question and not coming up with an answer.

"Forget I asked that." Edward nearly shouted. He took a moment to compose himself and continued, more calmly but his voice still quick and agitated, "Seriously. Forget it. Never ponder the question again. Do not eat people. Eating people is wrong.

"Stick to plants and dead animals, steer clear of soylent green." Edward looked at the ceiling, no answers there. He put his head in his hands, no answers there. "I'd rather not be a murderer and I certainly hope you feel the same way." He looked into Bella's eyes and got no sign of comprehension. No sense of familiarity with the idea he had put forward. If it could have, his blood would have run cold.

-

[By the way, if this doesn't feel like it's set in a car that's because I completely lost track of time and space and thought that they were still in the restaurant when canon-Bella dropped that particular question and thus this is likewise set in the the restaurant.  So, in addition to Edward being a very different person, this conversation is also in a somewhat different setting than canon.]

[Twilight Index]

Snarky Twilight: The most important question

[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]

Edward: You haven't asked me the most important question yet.
*pause*
Bella: While that is a complete sentence its function is almost on the level of an introductory clause, and yet you've followed it with nothing. In other words: get to the point.
Edward: Aren't you concerned about my diet?
Bella: You could starve for all I care. But, "about your diet," isn't a question I could really ask, so I'm thinking that's not "the most important question".
Edward: Don't you want to know if I drink blood?
Bella: You think that's the most important question?
Edward: Yes.
Bella: Seriously?
Edward: How is it not the most important question?
Bella: Isn't it more important to ask whether you kill for your meals? Do you get it from the source or from a blood bank? What flavor of blood do you drink? Have you ever had octopus blood? I've heard it's green. Where is your blood drawn from? Does it come from willing or unwilling hosts? Is the manner of sucking closer to that of a bat or a mosquito? What effects are visited upon the hosts when you lap directly from the source? Have you ever killed anyone?
*pause*
Bella: Don't these all seem to be more important questions? Hell, I drink blood. What does that tell you about me? Nothing. As it so happens I only drink my own blood and then only when I've been wounded, and then only as a byproduct of tending wounds in the lack of proper first aid or when I'm simply trying not to make a mess. Which should go to show you that how and why one goes about drinking blood is more important than the fact that one drinks it.
Edward: I hate you.
Bella: *shrugs* Well, I hate you. (Somewhat cheerful:) Glad we're on the same page.

-

[Snarky Twilight Index]

Left Behind Lacunae: The NRA Traffic Jam

[Originally posted at Slacktivist: part 1 here (page 4), parts 2 and 3 here (page 5).  Also posted, in a single part, at the Slacktiverse.]
[A lacuna (plural lacunae) is a gap.  When you're reading an ancient text and you hit a [...] that missing section is a lacuna.  Anyway, the things in bold italics are from the original text of Nicolae: Rise of the Antichrist.]

“This reminds me of when we were first married,” Buck said as Chloe snuggled close to him.

“What do you mean ‘when we were first married’? We’re still newlyweds!”

"I mean the very moment we married.  Remember?  You, me, your father, Amanda, Bruce, and 43 words to describe the whole thing*.  You looked at me and said-"

"I wish we had an author who wasn't Jerry Jenkins."

"Doesn't this feel exactly like that?"

"Yeah, I guess it does."

"So, what do you want to do?"

"I was thinking of maybe seeing if we could head down to NORAD, boot up the WOPR and avert World War III."

"That sounds like a good plan, but I feel Jenkins turning back this way."

"Please, no more misogyny.  Please, no more misogyny."

“Shh!” Buck said quickly. “What’re they saying about New York City?”

Chloe turned up the radio. “… devastating carnage everywhere here in the heart of Manhattan. Bombed-out buildings, emergency vehicles picking their way through debris, Civil Defense workers pleading with people over loudspeakers to stay underground.”

-
-

Buck was waved at, pointed at, and hollered at by traffic cops, and he was honked at and obscenely gestured at by other motorists.

Suddenly one of them got out of her car and stood in front of the Lincoln.  Buck slammed on the breaks and the car came to a stop a few feet in front of her.

"Hi, I'm obscenely gesturing motorist number 23."

"Hi, Obscenely 23," Chloe said warmly.

"I know I'm not supposed to matter, but the thing is... I'd rather live and it seems like yours is the only car that's allowed to get through traffic."

"Hop in," Buck said.

He could feel the pressure of the narrative saying that he shouldn't be helping people.  He could feel the story crying out that he wasn't supposed to care.  He knew that Jerry Jenkins would be shocked and outraged if he knew about this act of basic human decency.

He was not deterred.

-

“So what’re you gonna do, buy a tank?”

“If it wasn’t so conspicuous, I just might.”

Buck corrected himself, "Weren't.  If it weren't so conspicuous.  I went to school for a long damn time so that I could properly use the subjunctive, but no, I'm written by some idiot who doesn't understand a simple contrary to fact conditional."

"I feel your pain." Chloe said. "When was the last time I got to use my education?"

"You know, if it's all the same to you, I think I would like a tank," Obscenely 23 said.

"Really?" Chloe asked, "Because the gas mileage is kinda crap."

"I don't think this is the kind of story where those details matter, so if you could drop me off at the tank store I'll pick one up," Obscenely 23 said.

"No problem," Buck said.

-
--
-

* As a sort of bookkeeping note, in response to the 43 word wedding I wrote five short pieces of my own.  The first was written when I misread it as 47 words and can be found here.  The next four were of the correct length.  They are here.

-

[Left Behind Index]

.hack//Sign: Kinds of Power

.hack recap: Subaru went off alone to keep an appointment.

(I recommend actually buying .hack//Sign since my words don't really do it justice.  One can get either the DVD this episode is on, or the full series as a set.)

.hack//Sign, Episode 3: Folklore, 4:50 - 6:08

Thus far we've seen Subaru in her position as head of the Crimson Knights, and just seeing her in that position somewhat masks one of the effects of holding that position. There is a vast gulf between Subaru head of the Crimson Knights and just plain Subaru.

As head of the Crimson Knights Subaru is one of the most powerful players in the game. She is the only person we will see in the series who commands an army. Other groups tend to be your standard adventuring parties with just a handful of people. They're in one place at a time, and they can't muster overwhelming force. The Crimson knights can be in many places at once, as seen in the second episode when they were able to guard every Chaos Gate in their attempt to catch Tsukasa, and they can mobilize a sizable force when they feel the need, as we'll see in episode five. They are a force without parallel, and they're loyal to Subaru (to varying degrees.)

On the other hand being head of the Crimson Knights has left Subaru as a very low powered player. Most of her time appears to be spent administrating, which she does from a boat on a canal in the root town that I call Venice (again, real name: Mac Anu) and even if she weren't occupied by running the knights, she never really needs to fight her own fights. She has never had opportunity to level up. On her own basically anyone can push her around. (Physically at least, when it comes to willpower she will not be moved.)

Something similar has happened on a social front. As head of the Crimson Knights she's a celebrity, one of the most visible players in the game, people copy her style and she's popular and adored (and hated) and theoretically at the top of the social heap. But she's also isolated. Her position doesn't lead to her mingling. When she does interact with people outside of the knights it's on knight related business. She doesn't have friends, she has subordinates.

She originally came to the game because she was drawn in by the social aspect of being able to interact with people without real life limitations and prejudices getting in the way. When she came she found that a certain segment of the population had taken the, “Decide how to play for yourself,” mandate and used it as an excuse to enjoy themselves at the expense of others. There was no rule saying, “Don't be an ass,” so they decided to be utter jerks.

The Crimson Knights were founded, almost by accident, as a response to this. They were built around the idea that just because you can push people around doesn't mean you should. Just because it is possible to be a jerk doesn't mean it is all right to be one. They exist to get everyone to play nice, and that's what Subaru has been devoting herself to ever since. It's the responsibility that she ended up with and she takes it seriously.

But lost along the way is that whole social interaction thing. She doesn't do it, she doesn't know how. She doesn't have any practice when it comes to how to interact with friends. The social contact she originally came to seek out is something she never really got. Instead all of her time is devoted to maintaining the peace.

And just as she's not likely to start making friends with others, others are unlikely to approach her. She's not Subaru who you ask if she wants to hang out just to hang out, she's Subaru who commands an army and is famous and probably seems like she's above your station if you're a normal player. In that way her position really isolates her. As time goes on and things go wrong it will become more explicit, with one member of the knights taking steps to keep people he considers bad influences from contacting Subaru.

-

Subaru is, at this moment, heading off alone to meet with Sora.

Sora is also one of the most powerful players in the game, for completely different reasons. At some point he worked hard, leveled up a lot, and is now stronger, faster, more deadly, voted most likely to win in a fight and so forth. His power is entirely individual, he even goes so far as to tell other people that if they side with him he will betray them, and it is based wholly on violence and the threat of violence.

He's a player killer, and thus the exact kind of person that the Crimson Knights was founded to stop. (Subaru is almost certainly unaware of the fact that Sora is a playerkiller going into this interaction.)

Subaru’s power flows from an idea, and the hard but not level-up gaining work that went into supporting that idea. Sora's is from physical power, and the hard work that went into gaining that.

-

Sora, as is common for him, jumps down from a high place to make his entrance, because simply saying hello is never enough for him. (It also has the effect of startling Subaru.)

After checking that this is the right person, and Sora saying he's not used to being called “Mister”, Subaru asks why he wanted to talk, he doesn't tell her at first, she threatens to leave, and then we get this:

Sora: The Key of the Twilight. Sounds interesting, huh?

Subaru: There is no such thing.

And she turns and walks away. Bear had a similar response when BT mentioned it not-by-name. (This is the first time the name has come up.) Those who have been around have pretty much dismissed this. Part of the reason we know that Sora hasn't been around is that if he had he'd know that Subaru is well acquainted with the idea of the key since at one point, back when Crim was still a part of the Crimson Knights, the knights searched the entire game for any evidence of it.

As it turns out, those who have been around are wrong, and the new generation of believers, as represented by B.T. and Sora are right.

Subaru actually took a bit longer to dismiss it than Bear. She started audibly thinking about it when Sora said “The Key of the Twilight,” and still let a moment of silence hang before responding that there's no such thing. Possibly mulling over her personal history.

Anyway, Sora doesn't give up that easily.

(While walking:)

Sora: Oh, so you don't listen to what other people say. That's not good.

*short pause*

Sora: Stop.

*extends a blade directly in front of Subaru's face, forcing her to stop*

*short pause*

Sora: C'mon, let's talk about it.

Remember what I said about violence and the threat of violence?

Subaru decides to listen to him.

We'll see later on that, “I can kill you, so do what I want,” isn't actually something that can be used to control Subaru, but in this case I think that she decided that it was simpler to just go along with the jerk. As it turned out the jerk had things to say that did interest Subaru and convinced her to tolerate his presence even once the threat of violence no longer applied.

Unfortunately that conversation happens off screen, and we only get a vague description of it afterward, so we don't actually know what information Sora brought to the table.

It ends here with her deciding to stay around at bladepoint.

-

As a programming note, I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how to break things up in this episode, made somewhat more difficult by the fact that, while I have no problem going out of order within a post, I'd like the posts themselves to be chronological, so there are things I might want to put together but they're separated by things that don't really fit.

I think that, for the moment, I'm just going to go with having several shorter posts. The down side is they'll have less content, this post basically has one scene worth of content and a page of talking about Subaru padding it out. If I stick with the idea of shorter posts then they'll have about the same content from the show, a scene each, but won't have a page of talking about Subaru. So they'll probably be pretty thin on substance. The up side is that it won't require me to jump from topic to topic to fit disparate scenes into a single post.

I'm not completely sure, but I think that's what I'll be doing. So expect the next three posts to be shorter ones without a lot to them called, “Can't give up,” “Color my world,” and “These points of data make a beautiful line.”

-

[Previous][Index][Next]

My sister has radicalized

She's been a Republican for a long time, perhaps that should have set off warning signals, but I think she got that way to vote against someone in a primary, which is the same way my father became a Republican.

Now she favors the current Republican strategy, just under slightly different constraints.  The current strategy, as you know if you pay attention to politics in the US, is to run the country into the ground in hopes that people will demand change and thus kick Obama out of the White House.  Maybe flip the Senate to the Republican side too.

To this end they've opposed ideas they once supported and generally tried to stop anything and everything that might help the country.  Honestly, the strategy seems to be working.

My sister's idea is more forward looking.  She figures that if Romney gets elected then Romney will act about how everyone expects him to act, and the Republicans in congress will act about how everyone expects them to act, and when the various Republicans start keeping their promises (and when you look at what they've done at the state level in the past couple years, they show a disturbing willingness to keep their promises) and regulations are loosened, medicare and medicade are chopped up, social security is gutted, unions are busted, minimum wage is lowered, the unemployed are left unsupported, the rich and banks are empowered, the costs of government are shifted to the middle and lower classes, pensions are raided, healthcare costs get worse, the educational system degrades, women's healthcare is further restricted, prohibitions against discrimination are rolled back, those various victories unions have won are done away with, food and workplace safety declines, child labor is put back on the table, the infrastructure crumbles, and generally life sucks because all these promises have been kept... well then it'll be time for a revolution.

And that will solve everything.

My way of looking at it is this:
1 Innocent people are dying right here right now, because of bad government policies.
2 This has not led to a revolution.
3 Letting Republicans do the things they have promised they will do if they are given the chance will cause a lot more suffering and death to the innocent because those bad government polices will find themselves with lots of company.
4 What are the odds that it really leads to revolution?
5 Assuming that it does lead to revolution, who would win?  I struggle to remember the last time I heard about a bunch of heavily armed Democrats in the woods preparing for the coming war.
6 Assuming that it does lead to revolution and my sister's preferred side wins, how is that bloody revolution likely to go for innocent people?

It seems to be, "Sure people are dying now, but if more of them were dying then their deaths might kick off a revolution in which ... more... people... would die."  Pause.  "Yay?"

So, anyway, my recommendation is to vote for Obama instead of Romney.  Even if Romney is so bad that he manages to kick off a revolution, I don't see that as the best outcome by a long shot.

Skewed Slightly to the Left: Cameron and Chloe during the war

[Originally posted at Slacktivist (page 4).]
[In the actual books Buck has a brother, not a sister.  I misremembered.]
[This would take place during the previous one, in one of the breaks.]

-

Verna approached the office Cameron had gone to to make a private call, he wasn't the only one who'd wanted to take a moment to contact family or friends.  Without actually doing any arranging they'd taken time to make such contact in shifts, never more than a few at a time doing that instead of working on the news.

As she approached she could hear Cameron talking, "I should have told you all this a year and a half ago, but I've been under surveillance and thought I could do more good by appearing loyal.  At this point that doesn't matter anymore."

There was a long pause.

"I don't expect to see you again and..." another pause, "I love you.  Please think about what I said, and stay safe.  Things are going to get a lot worse, so just..."  he sighed.  "So please be careful."

Another pause.

"And I was the one who stole your My Little Pony tapes.  Sorry about that.  Been wanting to apologize for decades but was too embarrassed to admit to it, but if this is the end I figured I should say I'm sorry.  So, I'm sorry, I love you, be safe."

He hung up and Verna asked, "Voicemail?"

"Voicemail," Cameron confirmed.  "What's up?"

"There's world shattering news coming in, and I'll get to that, but first I have to ask..."

"Yeah?"

"My Little Pony?"

Cameron smiled, "Most subversive thing I did in my life before Serbia."

"What happened in Serbia, anyway?"

"I was stupider than most people say, but it turned out better than most people think.  Credit goes almost entirely to my cameraman, and what doesn't go to him goes to, and this seems weirdly appropriate given that My Little Pony is what got us here, a twelve year old girl.  I originally though she was an orphan because, you know... but it turned out she was just doing it out of the kindness of her heart.  Her tiny, tiny heart.  I swear she looked younger than twelve."

"You're not going to tell me," Verna said.

"No."  Cameron glanced down.  "Nice shoes."

"Thanks."  She gestured toward the newsroom, " The end of the world beckons."

-

Chloe kept going back and forth between thinking that the shelter was impressively large given that they'd only had 18 months to build it, and thinking it incredibly small given the need that they'd have to fill.

If the coming war was to be nuclear they'd never be able to shelter everyone who needed sheltering, even if it weren't they couldn't hope to treat everyone in need of medical treatment.  Hopefully existing hospitals would survive and do most of the work and they'd only have to deal with the excess.

If the war weren't nuclear it would mean that the year and a half she'd spent pouring sweat, blood, and even the occasional tear into making the thing seemed wasted.  They'd have been able to do much more if their standard hadn't been one keyed to surviving a nuclear war.  On the other hand, if it weren't nuclear, wouldn't that be worth celebrating in itself, regardless of how things might have been?

Of course it was, but the waste would still be discouraging.  Planning for the worst meant that if the worst didn't happen more might have been saved by doing something else, so even if things turned out better than expected there would be little to celebrate.

Still, she'd built this shelter with her own hands, scavenged, bought and stolen the supplies to stock it herself.  She hadn't done the construction alone, but she had done it.  Now the time was coming when it would be needed.  And she wasn't going to let it go to waste.  She checked and double checked that everything was in order.  She made sure that the volunteers knew their roles, and she prepared to do battle with the second horse of the apocalypse.

-

[Skewed Slightly to the Left Index]