Games

http://www.redfaction.com/

Developer. Volition

My second foray into storyline and narrative in video games takes place in another open-world game from developers Volition. Red Faction: Guerrilla is the third game in the Red Faction series, it was released in 2009 after a seven year gap from the second game. I was drawn to play this by the fun I’d had in Saints Row 2 and because I’ve developed somewhat of an addiction to openworld games since picking up Bully for the Wii. I have to thank my friend Jamster for getting me this as a gift during the Steam thanksgiving sale!

The original games were built around a piece of technology known as Geo-Mod which allowed for realtime deformation of the environment. It was an impressive piece of tech, allowing the player a degree of freedom in their path through the levels, but due to the constraints of both the hardware (Sony’s Playstation 2 console) and the needs of a linear storyline progression the areas you could destroy were often quite limited.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is, again, built around technology, Geo-Mod 2.0 in this case, but this new tech works entirely on the realistic destruction of buildings and structures, rather than the environment. It’s highly impressive to watch in action, with buildings collapsing under the correct kind of stresses and spreading large amounts of physics-enable debris (this basically means that it moves correctly and can damage everything around it). It’s a satisfying piece of technology and provides a level of interaction that allows for many entertaining emergent scenarios. It does present challenges though, with the storyline having to be structured around a world with a variety of destructive approaches.

In Red Faction: Guerrilla you play Alec Mason; a man drawn into a political rebellion by the oppressed miners of Mars. In the original games you play a similar role, revolting against the mining company in charge of Mars, but by the time the events in Guerrilla are occurring the original rebellious force (the EDF) has grown corrupt and become a mirror of what they originally hated. It’s a strong premise for a game that could have allowed for an interesting examination of the corruption of ideals and antagonistic forces in video games, unfortunately it ends up as little more than a piece of background fluff.

The story begins with Alec arriving on Mars to work as a miner with his brother Dan, only to discover that the EDF are a horrible dictatorship and Dan is a member of the resistance and needs Alec’s help. Alec is initially against joining the rebels, but changes his mind roughly three minutes later when his brother is shot by an EDF plane. It’s hard to convey just how fast these opening events occur. There are a few quick pre-rendered cutscenes, a moment of gameplay and then you’re suddenly thrust into the role of the saviour of Mars. It’s a shame because since the release of Half Life (with its seminal tram-ride opening) more developers have realised the importance of establishing their world and story. While not every game needs a lengthy introduction, RF:G feels underwhelming and needlessly short when it had a much larger potential to explore the oppressive world Alec has come to.

The brief introduction sets the tone for how the storyline unfolds throughout the entire game. What is already a trite tale of one man saving the planet single-handedly is made worse by being rushed and incompetently told. The motivation for Alec never evolves, he’s never seen to gain any empathy for the plight of the citizens of Mars or to actually care about their rebellion, and so he’s only ever really fighting to avenge the death of his brother. This alone wouldn’t be a major issue, except Alec is literally the only person in the rebellion doing any work! He takes on ludicrously dangerous assignments, is regularly sent on suicide missions and basically destroys the entire occupying force by himself.

I know it’s common in games for the player to be the main effective force upon the world, it makes your actions feel grand and satisfying, but there is a level at which this becomes unbelievable, especially when the story is being told has a deadly serious tone. It makes Alec some kind of godlike figure to a rebellion filled with people incapable of farting without a command.

Another major issue with the progression of the story is the way in which plot threads are started without ever evolving. There is a mission, about a quarter of the way into the game, in which Alec is tasked with recovering a nanoforge from some ruins. While searching these ruins a strange, inhuman voice speaks to Alec, referring to him as Parker (the hero of the original game) and alludes to past, and possible future, events. It’s a creepy, atmospheric moment and feels like the beginning of an interesting plot… except it isn’t, it’s never mentioned or referred to again throughout the entire game and so feels like a total waste of time. The same is true of the presence and possible implications of the marauders, a seemingly indigenous people, who are given mythical qualities but who are never really explored.

Finally one of the stranger issues with the story is that the force you’re fighting against, the EDF, never feel as desperately evil as your rebellion leader implies. You’re tasked with murdering hundreds of them, stomping through bases and cracking their skulls in with a sledgehammer at every possible opportunity, but I was never quite convinced I should have been. The Red Faction felt ill-managed and naïve which left me wondering if I would discover some greater evil at work within my own ranks. This would have been an interesting angle, given the corruption of power premise, but unfortunately came down to an error of presentation. I was supposed to be on their side the entire time.

What is difficult in the games industry is that the issues I’ve raised here do not significantly affect the mechanics of the gameplay. The destruction is satisfying, the combat adequate, the driving fun and the general tasks are decently entertaining even without a better context in which to play them. Story is a secondary concern in a game, yet all that was right with gameplay would have been enhanced with deeper, more involving story. It would lend a greater context, a greater meaning to the character and would keep people going through any issues that presented themselves in the gameplay (which do exist, primarily in the order and frequency that you receive items and abilities). What is a fun game could have been much more, and as a whole your immersion and actions are lessened.

http://www.saintsrow.com/

Developer – Volition

This blog is mostly about films, but I’d like to examine some of the elements of other mediums as well where it is appropriate to my studying. So along that vein I’d like to look at some parts of the PC version of Saints Row 2.

Saints Row 2 is an openworld game where you’re playing an unnamed gang boss who has been unconscious for several years and when they wake up the whole city they took over in the first game has been taken over by rival gangs. The aim of the game is take back the city of Stillwater.

The gameplay itself is a lot of fun, there’s a large variety of missions and distractions which are, for the most part, enjoyable and well rewarded. It’s a game that knows you want to have as much fun as possible and so throws as much at you as it can, it’s not all successful but enough of it works that you can have a good time regardless of the bad parts.

The game engine is buggy as hell and the conversion to PC is ham-fisted at best. Thankfully the majority of bugs, for my time playing, were cosmetic rather than game-altering. The only consistent and aggravating bug was that the game kept forgetting I was holding down accelerate and my car or character would just stop moving forwards. This was manageable though and it seemed to occur in odd situations rather than in common situations.

Those are the basics of play but what I’m interested in examining most is the games attempts at storytelling. The GTA series, which is SR2’s main influence, has tried to advance the quality of its stories in each game and have become highly praised for their cinematic presentation. SR2 tries, in vain, to do the same by having cutscenes before and after missions, unfortunately there is nothing more to the story than “I want to get rid of this other gang! Rargh!” There are some attempts at making a larger story with the death of a character and another getting stabbed but you just don’t care, there is literally nothing to make you involved. The cutscenes attempt to evoke gangster or action films and are generally unsuccessful due to poor direction; it’s a shame because in some of them there is the hint of a good idea that is never realised.

The protagonist is completely customisable: gender, physical appearance, clothes and even the voice can be selected by the player and altered at in-game locations whenever you wish. It is interesting because while the characters actions will never change, the voice style will instantly lend them a different quality. Each person will take different accents and inflections in different ways, leading the player to select part of the story’s atmosphere themselves. I myself made a woman with a comical male cockney accent who would appear, especially in cutscenes, as an entirely different kind of character to a suit-wearing straight laced Mafioso type. It has an impact on the storytelling in way that cannot be accommodated by the developers, which is a story problem, yet the choice for a player is fantastic.

The game highlights one of the issues with storytelling in an interactive medium. The videogames industry is as large as cinema or television these days and has broken through into the mainstream, but it is still very young. It’s evolving at a rate that the creators are having trouble keeping up with and due to the distribution and investment model there has not been a lot of chance to study and answers the questions required for great storytelling. Do you give the player choice and possibly relinquish control of the story or do you take choice away and force them down a single path? How do you tell a story in a first person shooter as opposed to a platformer? How can you handle pacing when the player is in control? Do players want cutscenes or seamless storytelling?

There are no definite answers for these questions, they rely on making a solid judgement on a game-to-game basis, but they do need to be examined and considered. The games industry needs to build a greater bank of knowledge and look towards creators in other arenas that could help them understand the elements they wish to evoke. The medium has great storytelling potential, without losing the crucial interaction, but it is currently mired in financial, distribution and management issues that take away the time for mainstream studios to examine it.