AMNESIA PART 2: It's Better in Context (Or, I Know Why the Red Goop Globs)

[Writer's note: Sorry. I am so sorry. Jesus. This article took the longest goddamn time to come out. Due to a combination of being home alone trying to analyze a horror game, the stomach flu and having to actually work at a real job to support my gaming habit, I didn't get a chance to sit down and write this business for a long-ass-time. Also, I'm sorry it's only about 2000 words. This was a writer's-block article. Hopefully I'll start writing and posting on a more regular basis starting now.]

I'm a sucker for horror.

Maybe it's because I read too many Goosebumps books, but ever since I was a young 'un I liked scary things. It got so bad that in my freshman year of high school, I read nothing but stories by H.P. Lovecraft while watching all of the shitty horror movies I could get my hands on. I'm sure my parents loved it.

As time wore on, though, I started to get that bored-nerd-urge to analyze the crap I was ingesting. Questions arose, like 'Why am I scared by nasty wriggling parasites but not Michael Myers?' 'What is it about mirrors that creeps people out?' and 'How come the Saw movies suck so bad?'

soooo baaaad

Questions like this became answerable once I went to college and learned that they all basically boil down to "What makes us feel in this specific way?" and "Why does it work like that?" and--most importantly for this article-- "Is it successful?"

These questions apply to any creative endeavor, really. Horror literature in particular is susceptible to this line of thinking, however, because you're more-or-less just asking the question "Was I scared?" and following it up with the question "Why?"

So is Amnesia: The Dark Descent a scary game? Did it scare me?

Yes. But not in a good way.

I noticed that I had a problem with Amnesia when I was walking through the storage rooms early on in the game. I will totally and unreservedly admit that I was scared: it seemed like there was a nasty thing with teeth waiting around every corner, hunching over the bones of its last victim and realizing that it was still hungry. Each stretch of darkness seemed like a hundred yards, even if it was ten. I was scared to open doors.

dun dun DUN

And then I stopped and thought about it. Why was I scared? What had caused me to tense up to such a degree that my cat walking into the room almost made me shit a brick? It turns out, the background music was a minor chord.

That's it.

Just a minor chord.

Not a haunting melody in a minor key, or howling wind that sounded mournful, just modulated tones going one three five three one three five three one. It was really quiet, and to the credit of the game's creators I hadn't noticed it until then, but it was there and it was constant.

This was my experience time and time again while playing Amnesia. I was scared, but in a knee-jerk sort of way. I wasn't afraid, just twitchy. I had no trouble going to sleep that night, in other words.

When it comes right down to it, Amnesia is a game that is designed to be scary, not a game designed to be good. It's not a literary experience, designed to impart a particular vision; it's a manufactured experience, designed to elicit a reaction.

that's right. i majored in words.

I don't mean to say that Amnesia was unsuccessful, or that it's a bad game. Quite the opposite: it was successful at what it set out to do. What I'm disappointed in is the fact that Amnesia set out to scare the player, not to be compelling through story or gameplay.

I mean, shouldn't a game aspire to something more than a mechanical sense of fear? Like, maybe a contextual and narrative fear? A warranted fear, founded on the world you've created?

For instance, one of the things that I actually really liked in Castle Brennenburg was this statue:

I mean, look at that fucker. Who's decision was that monstrosity? Why the baby's face? And the legs, just chillin' on the edge there?

See, this one architectural element suggests a narrative all by itself. You see it and you start asking questions--consciously or subconsciously--like "What does this statue suggest about the owner of the castle and what I can expect to encounter in the subsequent rooms that I'll be exploring?" It sets the tone by defying the player to justify its existence. It wants you to try to explain it away, because it knows you can't.

But then you have this guy here:

It's scary, I guess. That is one thing we can firmly say about it. Having one of those bastards chasing you is pretty upsetting.

But then you ask, "Why the jaw? Why the bandages? What's with the hands?" and "What's this guy's story?" And then you come up short, because there isn't really a story here. It's just designed to look nasty. This is a monster that was put together in order to freak the player out, so they included body distentions and bloody bandages because they cause a knee-jerk reaction.

The difference between the two examples here is that the purpose of the fountain is--whether they meant it to or not--to suggest an aesthetic and hint at a bigger picture, maybe to weave its thread in the fabric of the overall game, whereas the monster is just there to scare you.

What really gets me is that the makers of the game tell you about a freaky-ass monster at the start of the game that would fit in the context and freak you out, but they never use it. Instead, they go for this guy:

the monster described at the start of the game is just a guy with a big burlap sack filled with a struggling something inside of it, which is infinitely scarier than this.

I guess what I'm trying to say about Amnesia is that, instead of trusting in their story or their world to scare the player, they come up with things that make the player jump.

This is artifice. I'm not necessarily saying that 'artifice' is a bad thing, I just think that--at a certain level--the artifice of a game can hinder the actual success of the game as a whole.

Let's take another example of videogameosity from Amnesia. The Shadow--or, 'the macguffin'--is what drives Daniel to the Baron in the first place, thereby setting the game in motion. We learn that this multi-dimensional horror is tied to the orb that Daniel finds in Algeria, and that it mutilates its victims to a laughable degree. We hear it called The Shadow time and time again, but then we see it manifested like this:

nothing says 'shadow' like abundant fungal growth

This is... bad. This is silly. This is about as videogame-esque as you can get without one-up mushrooms. In a game that stresses the verisimilitude you can achieve in gameplay, having red goo slop itself suddenly across the only exit in the castle is just lazy.

And it's not just a door-blocking mechanism. It's also the force that makes the castle scarier by blowing out the lights and causing parts of the castle to collapse around you.

Don't get me wrong-- Lovecraft proved that there's a lot you can do with an interdimensional horror that freaks people out. There are parts where the game uses this to a pretty awesome degree (like when you're taken to a prison cell, and you have to find a way out before The Shadow makes its way to the prison to eat you.) But mostly, The Shadow is just there to drive the game.

This is my problem with Amnesia. If you've ever played Dungeons & Dragons with a bad Dungeon-Master, you'll know the feeling: there's a specific instance that the directors of this game want you to experience, and they'll be as blunt as possible to get you there.

it's called 'railroading,' for those of you with a life

To summarize, I'm upset at Amnesia because it is designed to be a scary game--emphasizing the mechanical aspects of fear--and not a good game (in which the mechanical aspects of fear make sense.)

So, What Would I Do Differently?

Context.

It's all about context. The difficult thing about a horror game--any horror game--is making a player understand fear rather than just experience it.

One of my favorite examples in any game is the original zombie reveal in Resident Evil. This happens a few minutes after the game starts: you walk down a corridor in this creepy old mansion, you open one of the few unlocked doors, and you see that.

Admittedly, it's not as scary as it was when I was twelve (the original original cutscene is even less so, because we're a jaded bunch of consumers when it comes to graphics.) But what it does do well is set up the context for being afraid of the monsters.

See, by using this cutscene, Resident Evil establishes that--even though these monsters may look like normal people for the most part--if they catch you you will be eaten. If the monsters in Amnesia catch you, you will be scared.

i will walk the fuck towards you

There's just nothing in Amnesia to suggest anything other than a 'run from this dude because he looks gross' sense of motivation. The really disappointing part, again, is that Amnesia already told us about a better monster.

So let's just use that.

Instead of a pallid fish-jawed knife-handed dude that has knives for fingers, let's just have the dude with a sack.

He's a guy who chases you with the goal of grabbing you and stuffing you into a burlap sack. It's a one-hit kill sort of thing, because this is a horror game and we're not fucking around. If he catches you, you're overpowered and stuffed into this bag. The last thing you see before 'Game Over' is the shadowy face of this guy as he pulls the drawstring shut, plunging the player into a final darkness.

Why does this guy want to stuff you in a sack? Nobody knows. Where does he take you? Your guess is as good as mine. What I do know, is that this idea is scary enough to have inspired countless nightmares across the globe.

The important part here is that this monster isn't going to just 'get you,' he's going to 'get you' and stuff you into his burlap sack, never to be seen again.

context.

The Shadow presents a different problem. The player knows, through reading journal excerpts, that the victims of The Shadow have their skin boiled off and their skull split and other nasty things. This is context, regardless of how ridiculously over-the-top it may be.

What The Shadow lacks is an interesting manifestation.

Honestly, I can understand why the creators of Amnesia designed the Shadow the way they did-- it's an easy out for a videogame. Manifesting a puddle of acidic red goo can direct the player's flow. It's a handy way to prolong the gameplay. But also, it's pretty dumb.

I mean, look at the function this goo fills: direction, drive, and obstruction. This goo is the shepherd of Amnesia; the form it takes is irrelevant, so long as it pushes the player along. So really, there's no reason it needs to be a pile of red, stringy goo. This is a videogame, for chrissakes! It can be anything you want it to be!

PONIES

So why are we stuck with red goo, especially when it's the residue of a reality-shattering monster from beyond the void named "The Shadow?" Why can't we have, like, shadow? Seriously, wouldn't it be better if the monster that was eating reality out from underneath the player was just darkness and nothingness? Especially in a game that has nyctophobia straight-up programmed into it.

The best part--from my nerdy, literary, artisan standpoint--is that you could use the parts of a videogame that are exclusive to the media in order to do this. Make like George Herriman did in Krazy Kat and use the medium to your advantage! Manipulate polygons in a virtual environment to give us a terrifying bottomless pit that eats the castle away as the player walks through it! It'd be like the ending of the Never Ending Story!

with less falcor!

Or, if not a bottomless pit built from forever-darkness, then at least create something consistent with the rules you've set up in the story. Make "The Shadow" manifest itself in a way that seems like "The Shadow" could actually be behind it. Not this acidic red goop.

Make the manifested form match the context of the piece you've created. Build a thematically appropriate villain, rather than a videogame villain.

So, What Would I Do Differently in Summary? I would make the world consistent, and have faith in my ability to convince the player that they should be scared of their own volition, rather than just applying manufactured scare-tactics. I would use the medium to my advantage; rather than railroading the player through the use of artificial video-game-y roadblocks, I would use video-game-itude to build a world in which the player wanted to follow the path the story set out. And most of all, I would drop that goddamn red goop.

OKAY! Jesus. Took goddamn long enough to get that article out. Sorry, friends. Hopefully, I'll write more in a more timely fashion. Starting with Borderlands 2! There's a lot to be said about the design choices in that game! WOOO YEAH!

ADDENDUM: For a dissenting opinion on horror in videogames (that jump scares are totally worth playing a game for) check out the Jimquisition's video on the subject. I don't necessarily agree, but he brings up a lot of good points.

AMNESIA! Part One: Basic Mechanics (or, Monsters Don't Wait for You to Close Your Bag)

So I was going to write a post about Eternal Darkness, because that's one of my favorite games ever. But then I figured, it's really not that recent and I'm not sure how well it'll hold up under scrutiny (in large part because the 100% completion cutscene reveals a trans-dimensional game of rock-paper-scissors.)

So, in a bait-and-switch worthy of one of the craftier sanity mechanics featured in Eternal Darkness, I've decided to go ahead and write about a different horror game:

AMNESIA: THE DARK DESCENT!

But seriously, if I was at Eternal-Darkness level fuckery, this article would be about My Little Pony.

If you know Amnesia, you know that it's a pretty scary game. It has fantastic atmosphere and great first-person mechanics, mixed with a sanity system and a complete inability to defend yourself.

If you don't know Amnesia, the game is basically the equivalent of playing through an H.P. Lovecraft story. I took a Gothic Literature class in college, and this is basically the distilled version of that.

The gothic tropes we have in this game are (in no particular order):

-- An evil castle in the evil forests of Germany

-- A corrupt and evil Baron

-- A plucky British main character

-- An Algerian dig-site, complete with

-- A crazy artifact linked to an ancient evil, and

-- Racism.

"The men were superstitious and fearful. They argued loudly and I felt their strange language getting to me." Those crazy Algerians, with their strange and obnoxious language!

If this game were any more gothic, it would wear baggy black pants with too many jingly-bits and listen to nothing but Tool and Nine-Inch-Nails.

Strangely enough, though, it works. I'm always a fan of getting away from the overused tropes in any particular genre, but there's something to be said about using elements from a language we're all familiar with. Nothing says 'horror' like a Bavarian castle, in other words.

Neuschwanstein Nonwithstanding.

The basic set-up is that you're in a castle and you have to kill a man named Alexander. This is all we have, and it's wonderful in its simplicity. This frees the narrative up while at the same time keeping it completely focused: we have a point A and a point Z, with the freedom to create points B through Y at the designer's discretion.

The mechanics of the game are likewise limited but freeing: everything in the game is done by grabbing things and manipulating them. Basically, the only way to interact with the virtual landscape is with your own two virtual hands.

Like, say there's a door in front of you-- the only way to open it is to click on it with your crosshair and pull it open like you would a real door. You can ease it open, maybe peeking through to see if there's a monster ahead, or you can slam it shut if there's a monster chasing you.

It's the same with most of the objects in the game, from set-pieces like brooms and books to puzzle-solving levers. If there's a closet, you can open it by hand and pick up what you find inside. If there's a desk, you can pull open the drawers individually and see the odds and ends inside roll around.

if there's anything on the ground, you can pick it up and indulge your neuroses.

This is one of the most refreshing mechanics I've seen in a game, hands down. Especially in a survival-horror game like this one.

Instead of finding a set of medallion-shaped pixels that you need to use to click on a set of statue-shaped pixels in order to raise a staircase out of the floor to get to the next level--I'm looking at YOU, every-Resident-Evil-game-ever--you can just use a box to climb up.

There was a moment fairly early in the game where the ceiling of the room I was in collapsed, blocking the door to the exit with debris. I'd been so programmed by videogames to think that debris means an impassible barrier that I was stuck inside for a good five minutes before I found out that I could just move the debris aside and leave.

now if only i could break the window and leave, all my problems would be solved!

So, what are the designers of the game doing by making you directly manipulate the environment to play the game?

The answer to this rhetorical question is "making horror." Anytime you get the player to slow down and think about the world you've made in a way that they should in real-life, you've automatically immersed them just a little bit more. You put the responsibility to react to the horror on the shoulders of the player as a person, rather than the player as a character.

Does it work?

Yes and no. For this mechanic to work, you have to have complete dedication to it in your game. Otherwise, each instance of the more conventional game-mechanics looks sloppy by comparison.

the brain in my item-grid is telling me i should take it easy.

This is a fine line to tread. On one hand, dedication to this mechanic means you've got an immersive game which makes the player treat it--and react to it--more like the real world. On the other hand, menu mechanics are really hard to do realistically.

I mean, how do you make a realistic health-bar? Or keep track of the important items you have without the use of an inventory?*

This is a question that is really important if you're making a horror game like Amnesia. I've heard it called a 'physics-based puzzle/horror game,' but 'physics-based' doesn't really give credit to the whole virtual-hands mechanic-- I'd call it more of a 'realistic horror-explorer.'

The key term there is 'realistic.' If there's one thing that Amnesia is going for, it's realism.

pictured: realism

Or, if not realism, then mechanical verisimilitude ('verisimilitudistic,' sadly, is not a word.)

For those of you who aren't snobby-former-English-majors, verisimilitude is the quality of seeming real or true; Amnesia, through its use of the virtual hand, is trying its damnedest to achieve verisimilitude. You can see why that would be really handy in a horror game-- if you feel like what's happening in a horror game is real, you'll probably be scared.

The biggest thing you can do in a game to achieve verisimilitude is to keep the player from noticing the mechanics. That's why the simplicity of Amnesia's virtual-hand is so great: it's so easy to remember "click & drag" that you forget you're using a mouse and a keyboard. The only time you're brought out of the action--mechanically speaking--is when you have to go into your inventory to pull out a key or refill your lantern.

or organize your skull collection.

So, What Would I Do Differently?

This is a tough one. Amnesia does a lot right with regards to mechanics. The only fault I can find in such an innovative, fun and overall scary game--again, mechanically speaking--is the menu.

It's surprising how much a menu can affect game-play, especially when it's one of your main avenues of interaction with a game. I mean, in any given game, you spend a pretty considerable amount of time just clicking options and hoping something works, right?

So when a menu just doesn't flow with the rest of the game, you spend a considerable amount of time looking at something that seems a little bit worse than the rest of the game. Then, eventually, that's all you can think of.

Like how all anybody says about the statue of David is that he's got a tiny dick.

For answers, let's look at a couple of other horror games and how they implement inventory menus (and let's do it briefly, because this article is tedious enough.)

First up? RESIDENT EVIL 4! Or any other Resident Evil, or Diablo, or anything with an inventory that makes you consider space when picking things up. This is a cool mechanic because, A.) you actually have to consider resources versus capacity in an interactive space and B.) I've always had a boner for Tetris.

I'm not saying this is a good mechanic to have for Amnesia, because it falls into a lot of the same traps as the current menu-- it breaks up the flow of a verisimilitudistic (HA!) game by introducing a theoretical carrying case. In a game that wants to be as real as possible, introducing an intangible dream-space where you keep your flashlight is just... off. It doesn't work. What I do like, however, is that a space to maintain an inventory exists, and it takes into account the objects that you're storing.

Second, let's look at DEAD SPACE! While I don't particularly like Dead Space as a game in and of itself (another article, I guarantee you) I do really like the way it handles a menu. Instead of pausing the game to take you into a time-null item-zone, the menu of Dead Space is a hologram that the main character projects from his spacesuit onto the world at large. It's basically the equivalent of looking at a menu at a restaurant: you can go through it at your leisure, but the waiter can still come up and attack you with shoulder-blade-scythes made of hideous bone growth if you're not careful.

call stephen king, i've got the BEST idea.

It's a pretty standard menu, but I really like the fact that it's integrated into the game-space in a way that no other menu had been before it.

So why not take advantage of these two mechanics together, and just have the main character in Amnesia carry a satchel around?

Like, hey, you find a key! Cool! When you grab it, there's a brief animation of your character putting it away off-screen. Then, when you need to unlock the door, press the menu key and WHABAM! Your character pulls up his bag.

Instead of a grid, let's run with the whole virtual-hand mechanic and just have a bag. No organization mechanic, just a space where the things you pick up are stored. Using the physics mechanic you already have in place, create a space for the player dig through the things they've picked up, having to move spare matches and lamp-oil out of the way to find the key again.

It takes a second, but the flow of the game isn't really interrupted in the way it would be with the item-grid method. You're still in the world, and you're still using the one main mechanic to interact with it.

Which, interestingly enough, means you're still in the world, being forced to interact with it.

hey

Say you've found a key by sneaking past a terrible necrotic beast-monster, except now the monster knows that someone's been nearby fiddling with his key. Sneakily, you've got to make your way to the locked door and unlock it. But, just as you reach the door, you hear a shuffling behind you! The monster!

hey you left your wallet back there

Quickly, you pull  up your satchel, pawing frantically through the things you're carrying with you--matches, lamp oil, laudanum--until you find the key! Hurry! Put it in the lock! GO! THE MONSTER IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU!

dude i'm just trying to help

I make this suggestion because it doesn't break the flow of a horror game. In a horror game, flow is everything. If you have a chance to catch your breath in an inventory menu, you've kinda missed an opportunity to keep the player freaked out, which--ultimately--is your goal.

Instead of taking a breather and filling your lamp with oil while you're paused in the middle of a dark corridor, why not make the character mindful of when they should use the inventory? Make them look through their bag by a lit candle in a safe study. Make safety hard to come by. Or, harder to come by than a simple button-press.

"But Keller!" you say. "What about the health and sanity gauge? WHERE WILL THEY PUT THE HEALTH AND SANITY GAUGE?!"

To you, crazy blog-reader, I say: "Why not just have the character check his pulse?"

This is a really quick fix that engages the player much more than looking at a picture of a brain in the inventory screen does. If you press a key, it brings up your characters arms-- one hand puts two fingers over the wrist of the other and you hear a heartbeat. If you're calm and healthy, it goes bom... bom... bom... and so on. If you're going crazy, however, it goes BOM BOM BOM BOM BOM because you're about to pass out and shit yourself.

Again, this is a mechanic that forces the player to find somewhere safe before they can know how close they are to dying. It takes a second longer for the player to figure out how they're doing than it would if they could just look at a health readout. It engages a different sense than a health-bar does, and keys you into sound as a central dynamic (which always is/should be a central dynamic in horror-games. But I'll get into that in a different article.) Best of all, by checking your levels with this method you're standing still while a monster is standing behind you.

dude wtf come on

So, WWIDD? I would have an inventory that used the same virtual-hand mechanic as the rest of the game, and forced the player to consider when and where to use it. Likewise, I would replace the health and sanity readouts with checking the character's pulse, which is more interesting and fluid than pausing a game for an inventory screen (also, I didn't touch on it but I'd say get rid of the health bar entirely, like Portal did. Just focus on sanity.) (also, it would make more sense for laudanum to be used as a curative this way. Just sayin'.)

But, honestly, other than these two things I wouldn't change much with regards to the mechanics of Amnesia: Dark Descent. It is a pretty rad game and I suggest you check it out if you haven't already.

NEXT WEEK: Mechanically speaking, Amnesia is a really solid game. But how does it hold up as a horror game? Do the sanity effects of Amnesia add anything to the overall experience, or are they just obnoxious? Why can't you just hit the monsters with a broom?

Tune in next week for another exiting installment of...

WWIDD!

* I had a question written here that I didn't address because it didn't fit with the article as a whole. But I still think it's important, especially with/in a counter to what I suggested. So. Yeah.

"At which point does the realism of the game actually take away from the experience?"

SKYRIM! Narrative Part 2 (Antagonists, Protagonists, and Why Alduin is a Stupid Villain)

In the last article, I talked about Skyrim’s setup including basic plot details and what I thought about the Dovakiin’s Destiny (spoilers: I didn’t like it.) This time, I wanted to talk about the meat of the plot in some broad strokes, covering the main antagonist and the frame of the story missions, and how I really want them to work better together in order for the ending to work.

… That sounds boring.  What I mean to say is, I don’t think that Al—“the world-eating dragon”—duin is a good villain, and I didn’t really care about the climax of the game. It had no weight, because I didn’t care about the characters involved.

So. Yeah.

Let me start this diatribe by saying that I actually really like the world of Tamriel. Honestly, without joking or anything, I think that the Elder Scrolls series has one of the richest and most thorough high-fantasy worlds I’ve ever seen.

The world is so chock-full of history that you can’t walk fifty yards without tripping over the remnants of an ancient civilization. You’ve got the Dwemer, who built a huge Minoan-style civilization, and the ancient Nords who had a huge Norwegian-style civilization, and the Falmer who had a huge blood-worship-cult-style civilization.

It’s mostly a Christmas and Easter thing, though.

 It’s fantastic and awe-inspiring to see how densely packed the history of the Elder Scrolls is. Everybody has their story, and there’s a reason for everyone to hate each-other.

This is why I’m really surprised that their main storyline sucks.

Here’s a quick run-down of the main plotline after you meet the Greybeards:

You’re sent to find the horn of Jurgen Windcaller—a Nord hero and the Greybeards’ founder—in his tomb to prove that you’re a bad-ass. When you desecrate your way to his resting place, you find out that someone got to the horn first.

It’s okay though, because they left a note telling you where to find them. It turns out that the Blades—an ancient order of secret agents for the Empire—really don’t like dragons, and they’ve heard you’re the guy to come to for that. So you meet with the lady who left the note at her hideout, only to have it revealed that the Thalmor—the Evil Elf Empire—might have something to do with the dragons coming back.

Except they don’t.

After raiding the Thalmor embassy to uncover the fact that they have no idea what’s going on, you seek out a former colleague of Ms. Blade-Lady who might actually know why the dragons are coming back.

You find him, and he doesn’t really know, but he knows where you can find the information.

Just up the trail, at Exposition Peak.

You make your way to this tower where the Blades used to have their headquarters to learn that there was a war between man and dragon a long time ago. Man eventually won because they learned some secret dragon-words that nobody else knew.

After you ask the Greybeards about these secret dragon-words and they say “We don’t actually condone doing things,” they send you to talk to their High Leader who might know more.

Their leader—the only good dragon, it turns out—goes into a surprisingly sci-fi-esque story about how reality is thin at the Greybeard’s mountain because that’s where Alduin was “cast adrift on the sea of time” during the first man/dragon war. Luckily, there’s an artifact that can show you exactly what happened way back then, but it’s hidden and the good dragon doesn’t know where to find it. But he knows where you might find someone who does know where to find it.

Onwards, to the internet!

The guy you’re supposed to ask doesn’t know where it is. But he knows a guy who does. So, finally, after finding the guy that the guy who told you to find the guy tells you to find, you learn where the artifact—the Elder Scroll—is.

You find the Elder Scroll, bring it all the way back to the Greybeards’ mountain, and use it to watch three generic Nord heroes use the secret dragon-words to fail to defeat Alduin. Then one of them uses the Elder Scroll to send Alduin forward in time to now.

After learning the secret dragon-words you need to defeat Alduin, Alduin shows up and you fight until Alduin is defeated. He runs away, and you need to find where he went so you capture a dragon in the capitol building.

Jarl Balgruuf: elected on a platform of dragon-wranglin’.

Turns out, Alduin is hiding in Valhalla, eating the souls of the honored dead. You go to Valhalla—which is covered in Alduin’s Evil Fog—and find your way to the hall where dead people hang out. There, you meet up with the three generic Nord heroes and with your powers combined you defeat Alduin once and for all.

The end!

To summarize the summary, you have to ask this guy to ask this tower to ask the Greybeards to ask the dragon to ask the librarian to ask the crazy guy to ask the Elder Scroll to ask the Nord Heroes how to beat the villain.

Boss fight!

Then you have to ask the Jarl to ask the leaders of the factions in the civil war to ask the dragon where the villain went.

Boss fight!

Then you have to go to Valhalla--

Boss fight

--And team up with the three Nord heroes to defeat the villain.

Boss fight.

This story sucks. It sucks because it can be summarized by saying “I asked a few people how to kill a dragon, then I went and did it.”

Before I get down to asking “What Would I Do,” I want to ask “Why didn’t I like this ending?” I mean, it featured some pretty rad set-pieces, and it culminated with the protagonist battling a dragon in Valhalla. That seems pretty solid, right?

The problem is, even though there were some excellent set-pieces, there was no real conflict. I didn’t care about the protagonists or the antagonists. The story was ‘You & Some People vs. The Fantasy Equivalent of an Earthquake’ which is about as compelling as Pierce Brosnan & Survivors vs. Dante’s Peak.

Yes, I'm calling to report a mountain.

Personally, I didn’t care about Alduin because he was a villain with the same level of motivation as a falling rock. It made the last sequence of the game dull, because you’re basically just reacting to a thing happening.

Let’s meta- this question up a notch: What makes a good villain?

Did someone say douchebag?

A good villain, in my opinion, is someone who uses their means to try to hurt you. Not just someone who hurts you—a falling rock can hurt you—but someone who wants to hurt you. Their desire to fuck your shit up is more important than their ability.

I’m pretty sure someone said douchebag.

Alduin can fuck shit up. He’s a world eating dragon; if there’s one thing he’s got, it’s the ability to ruin your day. But his rage is directed at everything in general, and nothing specifically. He’s happening, and you have to stop him happening.

So, if not Alduin, who in the Elder Scrolls games is enough of a douchebag to warrant villain-status?

Are my stupidly large ears burning?

That’s right. The fucking elves.

I’m not just saying that because I’m a fantasy-racist (even though I’m totally a fantasy-racist.) Remember earlier, when the Ms. Blade-Lady told you to infiltrate the Thalmor embassy to see if they were responsible for the dragons? She asked you to do that because that’s totally something the Thalmor would do.

Seriously. We learn through the course of the game that the Thalmor—of the ‘Altmeri Dominion’—started a war with the Empire by cutting off the heads of all the Blades within their territory and sending them to the emperor. The war fucked both parties up but the Thalmor came out on top, and as a result of the peace 

treaty they were given oversight on basically every level of government the Empire had.

The Thalmor are big-enough douchebags to actually be the cause of the civil war subplot. Just to rub their victory in everybody’s faces, the Thalmor dictated that the worship of Talos—the founder of the Empire, the first Dragonborn, and one of the most important Nords ever—be completely forbidden. This would be like if China beat America in a war, then said “Yeah, we never really liked that Jesus guy, so…”

Also, no more McDonalds.

I mean, this is the worst thing you can do to a conquered country. Apparently out of pure spite, the Thalmor spit in the face of an entire nation’s cultural heritage while also symbolically making Skyrim their bitch.

This is a good conflict. Here we’ve got a foreign nation exerting its excessively snooty power over the plucky underdogs, when all the underdogs want to do is get right with God.

If this story was any more American I’d barf an eagle.

The Thalmor fit the villain bill perfectly. It’s not just that they have the capacity to do you harm, it’s that they dislike you. To them, you’re the antagonist—they have a reason to want to fight you other than “SMASH PUNY HUMANS!” In other words, the conflict with the Thalmor is “us vs. another us” rather than “us vs. a wall.”

So that covers my issue with the villain. The Thalmor are a better villain than Alduin, so What I Would Do is have them do more than ‘not know what’s going on.’

But that only addresses one part of the plot that I didn’t find satisfying. What about the three nameless 

heroes that I teamed up with in Valhalla to beat Alduin? Why did they make me dislike the ending?

Don’t ask me, I’m just a crab with a monocle.

To answer my own obnoxiously rhetorical question, they made me dislike the ending because I really didn’t give a shit about them. They weren’t people, they were just mooks. Recurring plot-devices. In the sequence that should have been the apex of the game, I found myself facing off against a blank wall in the company of 

cardboard cutouts.

I should say that—contrary to basically everything I’ve been saying—I’m okay with facing off against Alduin at the end of the story. In a game about dragons, it’s only appropriate that the last thing you do is fight the Baddest of All Dragons Ever. He’s just a flying Macguffin*, after all. For his part, all he has to do is hang out at the end of the game until you get there to beat him.

But if you’re going to face him with heroes, make the heroes a big deal.

More than that, make the heroes the biggest deal. It’s them you’re fighting for, after all—you’re in Valhalla at the end of the game to beat Alduin so the Honored Dead can rest without the fear of being eaten.  If nothing else, we should at least know who it is we’re fighting for.

Like the villain side of the equation, the protagonists need to want something. If they’re characters—which the heroes are probably supposed to be—they should have a desire to do something you agree with.

This is a deceptively simple problem: in a showpiece game like Skyrim, how do you make us care about something as small as people?

So, I ask myself, What Would I Do Differently?

I see what you did there!

Okay. First off, the Thalmor are the the villains. Alduin is just the plot device. It’s a similar relationship to the Sephiroth/World-Ending Meteor dynamic in Final Fantasy 7, except less stupid.

The Thalmor hate the Empire. Because they’re long-lived elves, they are disgusted by the inferior humans, and want to do everything they can to destroy them.

Elves hating you is canon. Fuck elves.

From the past, Alduin arrives once more to wreak havoc in the terrestrial realm. The Thalmor learn of Alduin’s world-eating capabilities at about the same time as the main character, but instead of seeking to defeat Alduin and save the world, they want to use Alduin to destroy humanity once and for all.

So, what if they wanted to find the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller before you did?

You show up because the Greybeards told you to seek out the horn of their founder, but instead of a note you find a Thalmor clean-up. You fight them because you’re both really surprised that the other is in this tomb, and then you ask yourself why are these ass-hats raiding the resting place of Jurgen Windcaller?

It turns out, they're raiding it because they don’t want you to succeed. They might never be able to control Alduin, but they certainly don’t want the Empire to find out that Alduin can be defeated. This fits what we know of the Thalmor, because they’re already censoring one of Skyrim’s most prominent heroes. These 

guys are all about historical revisionism; this just proves they’re proactive as well.

You go back to the Greybeards with the story of the Thalmor raiding the tomb of their founder. Maybe the Blades agent is already there, asking about a similar incident. Now we have to ask, why are the Thalmor stealing the trophies of dead heroes?

Ms. Blade-Lady doesn’t have an answer, but the Greybeards suggest that it might have something to do with Alduin’s return. They concern themselves with recovering the Horn, but Ms. Blade-Lady thinks that it might be something more important. She tells you to meet at her hideout, and tells you about the Blade/Thalmor rivalry—namely, that most of the Blades are dead because of the Thalmor—and asks you to contact one of her old comrades at his house in Riften.

You get to the Comrade’s house, only to find it being ransacked by Thalmor agents. You overhear one of them say that the guy you’re both looking for must be hiding out in the sewers, so now it’s a race to see which one of you finds him first.

Of course, since you’re the good-guy, you find him and lead him back to Ms. Blade-Lady, where you find out that the Thalmor are stealing the artifacts of the heroes that initially defeated Alduin.

So, now you have an awesome framework for the missions of the game. Instead of asking a guy for information about a guy who may know a guy, you’re trying to track down the artifacts of the Three Heroes at the same time as the Thalmor.

This gives the player a drive, a tangible goal, the possibility of failure, and a great amount of variety. You could rob the graves of heroes, but you can also maybe track down an artifact being held as a trophy of a Jarl, or being held by a Bandit Lord you have to kill. You might have to raid the Thalmor embassy for a reason other than finding out how little they know. You might have to defend the Greybeards’ Monastery against a Thalmor siege. Perhaps each artifact is connected to one of the three words of the Dragonrend Shout you need to kill Alduin, if we’re still going that route.

And, of course, each quest for one of the relics gives you some insight into the character of each of the heroes. You learn who they were and why they fought. You learn that they were people as well as bad-asses. When you see them through the Elder Scroll, you get a cool thrill because you know who they are. When you get to actually fight beside them, you feel like you’ve got to hang out with a goddamn rockstar.

So, What Would I Do Differently? I would center the story around the heroes that I want to emulate, then see how far I’ve gotten by finally getting to fight beside them. I would have an enemy that wants to keep me from being a badass, and then defeat them by becoming the hero. I want to save the world from a catastrophe by flying in the face of the people who didn’t want me to.

Also, I want to fight a dragon in Valhalla.

I guess I’ll give you that one, Bethesda.

NEXT WEEK: Some goddamn article that isn’t almost three-thousand words long. Jesus. Also, I want to look at a game that I think did things really well (Eternal Darkness!) and how the mechanics of the game helped it to tell a story.

*A Macguffin is the thing that drives the plot forward. The specifics of the object aren't central to the plot, but they can help direct it-- think the Death Star plans in Starwars IV, or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

SKYRIM: Narrative Part One (The Main Quest Intro)

[NOTE: It will help in understanding the article if you've played Skyrim. I hope you still enjoy the article if you haven't, but it'll still certainly help.]

This is scary.

I've been doing a little bit of research in preparation for writing this bit, and it's really intimidating to hear how much everybody likes this game. Every time I hear someone say "Skyrim," it's inevitably followed by something along the lines of "is the BEST GAME."

And let's face it! That's not completely true. It's a pretty good game, especially when compared to other games in its genre, but it's not the end-all and be-all of fantasy games. This is why I'm writing this bit, honestly-- I love videogames, and I want them to get better. Even if they're already awesome.

Since I went to school to learn about stories, I feel like that's a good place to start looking at the games I like. Skyrim, in particular, seems like a narrative ripe for the analyzing: a game that has a mechanic as central as "radiant storytelling" seems like it takes its story pretty seriously.

(The next few paragraphs, where I summarize the story, has spoilers in the form of a summarized story.)

So, here's what I got from the main story of Skyrim:

You play as an unnamed prisoner, captured doing some sort of crime somewhere at some point. The specifics aren't clear. Regardless of your past, you're bundled in with a band of rebels, their leader--a dude with a scarf tied 'round his mouth--and an innocent guy who gets shot as he tries to run away. Assumed to be a rebel, you're lumped in with the rest and scheduled for execution right after you finalize your character design.

Of course, since it'd be cruel to kill your character right after you made it look like you except in orc-form, a special dragon swoops down and freaks everybody out right as they lay your head on the chopping block. Through a series of kind gestures from either a Rebel Stormcloak or a Loyalist Imperial, you end up escaping from the dragon, and making your way to a tiny hamlet to begin your journey.

From the hamlet, you're told to travel to the capital of the province and talk to the leader there and warn him about the dragon getting all up in Skyrim's business. While you're there, you're told to go get a tablet from a crypt (which is a pretty typical mission-- go desecrate a grave and bring back the artifact you've torn from the cold, dead fingers of some interred hero.) Once you get back, a regular dragon happens by and wrecks a guard tower. You then kill it, and find out you have the ability to absorb its soul.

So, let's take a break from summarizing for a second to establish what we have here:

- We have a setting: "Totally-Not-Norway" during a civil war between a colonizing force and the native sons
- We have a villain: the dragon that attacked in the first scene of the game
- We have a protagonist/reason for the protagonist to BE the protagonist: you/your ability to absorb the souls of dragons.

These are pretty good elements to start the game off in an engaging way. I had a few issues with the opening scene, and most of them are because you start in a cart and have to sit there for five minutes while Rebel X says "Gosh, I like being a rebel. This guy, this rebel leader guy, he's the tits. I like the mead here, it's got berries in it. Do you like being a rebel?" and the innocent guy says "JESUS CHRIST I DON'T WANT TO DIE."

Besides that, though, pretty solid opener. We've got two major players with an inset conflict, and a brief setup of the viewpoints of each. The Rebels are patriotic sons of Skyrim, with ties to the communities and the people of the land, whereas the Imperials aren't well-liked, but they represent lawful order in Skyrim on a whole. Regardless of who you follow in the beginning, you see that both parties have native followers. Good setup for the backdrop of the game. (This will become more important in later articles, but for right now it's just a good background.)

We also have the catalyst that pushes the elements of the story into motion: the arrival of a big, nasty looking dragon. Dragons have been dead for a long time, apparently, but now they're not. So we have a mystery, too-- why are dragons happening?

In addition, there is a solution to dragons: you. Very early in the game, we find out that you have the ability to kill dragons once and for all, rather than the not-really-dead that the dragons initially were.

Okay. So, setting, major players, bad guy, you. Pretty standard. After you suck the soul from the bones of the dragon you just killed, an ethereal voice calls you from the mountain top. When you ask the Jarl about all this, you find out that you are "Dovakiin," which is dragon-talk for "Dragon Born." You go to the top of the mountain where the monastic order that called you studies--conveniently enough--dragon-talk. By talking to them, you learn you are destined to be able to absorb dragon souls and use them to learn weaponized dragon-words, because you are DOVAKIIN.

In addition to learning that you can use dragon-speak to kill people, you also get an exposition dump from the leader of the monks. Basically, the low-down here is "Big Boss Dragon is the harbinger of the end-times, but you absorb dragon souls." Then they ask you "Are you REALLY guy that absorbs souls?" and tell you to go fetch a thing to prove that you really are.

This is where I run into my first problems with this game, story-wise. It's sort of the same with a lot of fantasy stories: your character is predestined to do a thing, because of birthright/stars aligning/et cetera, so you go do it. There's no real arc here, except "Here is the thing you will do, so go do it." It's a forgone conclusion that you will, so why bother caring about it?

That might be a harsh way of putting it. But think about it this way: if you were born to be a garbage-collector, and you become a garbage-collector, where's the story? You've just followed the rails set out for you. Here in the land of Skyrim, you're doing the same thing.

Besides the coincidence of a random prisoner not being killed at exactly the right time and being told to go to the one place that he (or she) would learn about his (or her) destiny, the fact that the destiny itself is so specifically binding is a real catching point for me. You're going to save the world, because you're supposed to save the world. All the rest is just filler.

Wouldn't it be better if there was a question whether or not you could save the world?

I hesitate to use a Famicom game to illustrate the finer points of storytelling, but I find it prudent here to paraphrase Bad Dudes (1988), "The president has been kidnapped by Ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"

The key here isn't the president, the dudes, or even the ninjas. The key here, in my opinion, is the question "are you bad enough?" In Skyrim, the answer is totally. You are totally bad enough to save the world. In fact, you are the only one bad enough to save the world, by virtue of random happenstance.

This is totally one way to tell a story, and it's a totally valid way of telling a story. But what I would do--because it's what I prefer--is make it so that you don't actually have any connection to any prophecy whatsoever. It's not really certain whether you'll save the world or not, because you're just some guy/gal who doesn't want the world to end. You've got to go through all of these dungeons and learn to become a badass and hope it's enough to save everyone you love.

So, What I Would Do is this:

The game starts, and you're a prisoner. Most of the same schtick, but less "GO REBELS BOO IMPERIALS AND ALSO I DON'T WANT TO DIE" in the cart. Maybe just start it when you step off the cart, and cut out that whole "Juniper Berries are rad" part. Have the Imperial guy you can eventually follow help you up because you tripped, or apologize to you or give you some reason to follow him instead of the Rebel, because all you see of the imperials at the start is douchebaggery. Dragon happens, chaos ensues, you escape.

When you reach the tiny hamlet, have the choice not to follow the main quest. Like, in the dialog options when the Imperial/Stormcloak instructs you to tell the Jarl about dragons, include something like "I am not a bad enough dude to rescue the president. I'm just glad I'm not dead, and now I want to go hide somewhere."

This does two things. First, it lets the player experience Skyrim as he/she eventually will anyway, but on their terms-- namely, living in a virtual world. This way, however, it's their own choice whether they're going to be a citizen rather than a savior.

Second, it puts that first spark in the player to follow the main quest. Most people--because this is a videogame--are going to choose the "Heck YES I'll participate in this badass quest" option, but this way it's their choice and not their amusement-park ride. Now, instead of going with the flow, the player has stake in the quest because they made the choice to start it.

Each time the main quest is brought up in the beginning of the game, keep giving the player the option to bow out. In addition, have the non-player characters react to it. When the Jarl's magician says he needs the tablet of dragon stories (or whatever macguffin the first quest is) have the Jarl's badass warrior assistant basically say that she doesn't want to do it because it's scary. Then give the player the chance to say "Yeah, it's totally scary," or "I'll do it." Have everybody react to your choice, regardless of what it is. Like, if you say "I'm scared," the Jarl says, "Hey, don't sweat it. This shit's hardcore. Feel free to stay in my city, though." If you say "I'll do it," then have the Jarl and everybody say "... Really? You'll... You'll do it? Geez, okay, I guess."

If you do things like this, you raise the stakes. If you are going to have a quest in an open-world game, make sure they mean something to the characters in that world. The way Skyrim has it set up at the outset basically makes you feel that people raid ancient tombs every day, no big deal. Nobody bats an eye when the Jarl asks you to go deal with ancient nordic zombies. If you have people bat an eye, then suddenly it's out of the ordinary for a Nobody--the player, at this point--to go raid a dangerous tomb.

Make your story a big deal by having everybody act like it's a big deal. Make the player feel like a badass by having the option not to be a badass.

Then, when you have the player kill the first dragon, don't have them absorb the soul. They just kill a dragon. This is a big deal. Don't forget, this dragon just halfway toppled a stone tower and killed ten other guys before you even got there. When you kill a dragon, people take notice.

So when you go back to the Jarl, have him say "Woah, what? You killed a dragon? Jesus, guy! Well done!" just to reinforce the fact that you just killed a dragon. Now, instead of having the Greybeards--the monastic order that calls you from their mountain-top--call you, have the Jarl say "Obviously dragons are a HUGE problem, so I can't spare anybody for this, but there happens to be a monastic order at this mountain-top sanctuary that might know more than we do. If you want to go learn from them, I will give you money to tell me what they say. You're a bad-ass, so I trust you to do this."

This works as a good alternate to the Greybeards calling you because, again, it's your choice whether or not to go. In the game as it is, everybody says "Woah guy, they just yelled at you, you need to go. Nobody doesn't go when they yell at them. What are you, a square?" Instead of making the choice to go of your own volition, you're basically strong-armed down the plot. That's boring, in my opinion. I don't really care about going to the mountain-top because I don't really have any say in the matter.

I really like the idea of these monks who study the language of dragons. I think that it's a super cool idea. When you get to the mountain monastery, I think it is an awesome place.

But instead of the monks saying "You are DOVAKIIN, here is WORDS to kill DRAGON" why can't they say something like "Dude, we heard you killed a dragon. That's impressive. We don't condone violence, but we can't deny the need for someone to take care of this. Why don't you join our order and we can teach you how to use the power of dragons against them?"

It's here, then, that you learn how to absorb the souls of dragons. The whole training montage can go the way it still goes-- it was a little boring, but I really liked the flavor it added to the world. And then the main monk can say "This doesn't happen usually because it hurts, but we really need you to be able to defend yourself." And then he gives you the part of his soul that has learned the Unrelenting Force shout.

This whole deal changes the plot of Skyrim in some subtle but important ways. First, it isn't your destiny to learn the shouts, but it is now something you've earned. You killed a dragon, damnit! That shit should unlock some doors!

Second, having the Greybeards say "Join us, because we believe that you can do this" and then having their leader give you a valuable token of that trust--something that physically pained him to give--locks you into the quest on a personal level rather than a videogame level. You're not just the Dovakiin, you're the guy who was deemed worthy by the leader of an awesome sect of superpowered monks to take this task upon yourself and not fail. That's hardcore! You've been invested in, instead of tolerated! Now, there are people relying on you. You're a concern. The characters in the world want you to succeed.

Again, have the characters in the story act like this stuff is a big deal, and it will become a big deal. Don't rely on destiny, rely on choice to hook the player. Make the choices impressive and important, and the player will choose them.

So that's What I Would Do for the start of Skyrim. This game is based entirely on the concept of a huge, open world for the player to explore, so I would take full advantage of that and make part of the open-ness the ability to become a hero rather than have heroism thrust upon the player. I would also focus on the "world" part of this and have the NPCs actually act like their home matters to them.

Next week: The Civil War! The Thalmor! The Past and the Future of Skyrim! I examine why Alduin is a stupid antagonist, and how Bethesda doesn't really know what to do with the good things they have. Tune in for SKYRIM: Narrative Part Two!

The Maiden Post!

Hello! If you're here reading, you probably know me. Or you like what I've written in some other blog somewhere, which probably means you know me. Or you're one of my parents, so you most likely know me (just maybe.)

So, I've just recently--relatively; about five months ago--quit my crappy job at a bookstore and started working from my computer at home. This has been a pretty rad choice, because I don't really ever have to put on pants. It also means I don't really have to do anything but work and play videogames.

This lifestyle is pretty rad. About a month ago, however, I noticed a trickle of brain-juice draining out of my ear because I hadn't actually been thinking about anything for...

Um.

Since I quit my job at the bookstore.

My solution to this problem is to combine my interest in thinking with my interest in videogames. Since I have  an ego and nothing better to do, I've decided to start analyzing videogames that I play through the lens of "What would I do differently?"

This means going through the story of the game, the design choices, the mechanics and the overall aesthetics and asking the questions, "Why did they do this? What do I like/dislike about this?" and "What would I do differently if I were making the call?"

This isn't to say that I have any idea what I'm talking about. All the training I have here is a bachelor's degree in English and an unhealthy obsession with media. This is more of a "thought-exercise" sort of deal, where I try to break down games in order to learn why they're made as they are.

Feel free to chime in with any comments, either agreeing or disagreeing with what I have to say. The only way for me to learn is to actually hear what other people have to say about things. Otherwise, I'm just talking to myself.

So! Join in! Read what I have to say! Think about videogames! And always ask yourself, "Well, what would I do differently?"

UP NEXT! Since I always bite off more than I can chew, I'm going to take a look at Skyrim! It might have to be a multiple-part article, because I have a lot of beef with the game. Tune in!