Tag: Storytelling

This post is responding to Rohan's reaction to my previous one, and to some of the thoughts that caught my attention from the comments on our sites.

First of all, I think that the concept of 'failure' has not been clearly defined in relation to games. I ought to have been more specific in my previous post since this term is so commonly linked to game mechanics. Some commenters seem to have reduced my point to this type of failure, and even Rowan refers to failure as being inherently defined by player choice.

But games are innately adversarial, either player versus the rules, or player versus the game writer/designer. For failure to be considered valid, the player must fail because of a choice she made. Failure that is simply imposed by the rules or game designer is not considered valid, not considered fair.

My example from Neverwinter Nights 2 was a type of writer-designed failure that does not interrupt the flow of the game in the way that some commenters think failure will do: because they are considering absolute situations in some cases (ceiling collapsing on your hero's head, or ultimate boss crushing you to a pulp), or because they are assuming the position of the almighty hero we have been accustomed to. In NWN2, the pinch of salt that I am advocating for was Bishop's betrayal and what it symbolised: even though you might be a hero, you are not entitled to succeed in every endeavour. Some of your followers will not agree with you. You cannot please both Sand and Qara (the level-headed mage and the volatile sorceress).

The impression I get from most AAA games these days is that you are cast in the role of conqueror, allowed to intervene in every political and personal issue for no disbelief-suspendable reason other than you being the PC. That is the feeling I get every time I play Shepard. How is it possible that one single human being might affect the destiny of so many species, with a few words? Traditionally, the scope of a player's influence upon the world was not as wide, and it required less words and more action. That is how heroism was justified. I am thinking of NWN 1 and 2, the Baldur's Gate series, etc. For me, it is easier to accept an omnipotent kind of heroism that springs from my combat prowess, because I really did earn that through countless save and reloads, than a galactic-wide parliamentary influence coupled with extreme displays of charisma in more intimate situations. Can anyone in her crew not fall head over heels for Shepard? Can we see any instances of real disagreement, perhaps leading to dissension or even betrayal? Mass Effect needs a dosage of this type of failure to make me identify with the heroine.

I want to acknowledge Dragon Age 2 here for what I believe are better-developed interpersonal relationships which allow for disagreement, even though their consequences are not as fully carried out as in older games (Baldur's Gate is notorious for NPCs free-will). There are great narrative experiments going on here in the gaming field, especially coming from indie developers. I believe that there is a specific language that only games are endowed with, and which we have not yet fully exploited. But I do not approve of dismissing the achievements of other media and engaging with games as a completely separate entity: that is very disempowering for the gaming industry. That is why I find it necessary to call attention to aspects of games that could benefit from the progress of other fields in the way that stories are told, so that we can devise how to adapt their rules to our own medium. Games are different, but only God creates ex nihilo.

Players can never actualize the role of a traditional protagonist which makes mistakes due to her human nature, because players are not engaging in a theatrical identification with their avatar, but using it as a vehicle of their will to explore and affect the world around them. Only deviant gameplay in which the player willingly allows herself to fail for roleplaying purposes counteracts this view. In any other instances, we tend to seek the best possible outcome, and we should keep trying to do so. There is nothing wrong about wanting to be heroic. What is wrong is the extremely pliable world that we are offered, where we can be archmages, master assassins, vampire-werewolves, and anything in between those and Dragonborn. Nevertheless, some silly unbelievable narratives such as what The Elder Scrolls offers are fine, as long as they do not constitute all of the hero-themed games out there.

A failure in the sense of player misperformance is also possible and can be narratively rich. Consider the death mechanics in Ultima Online, which involved much more than a corpse-run, or in Planescape: Torment; or even in palaeolithic WoW, which enabled you to talk to a ghost in Blackrock Mountain for a quest.

Finally, the idea of failure being anti-climactic, as observed by some commenters, is precisely what I do not advocate for. Failure can and should be embedded in the story in such a way that it enforces its themes. Casualties in war, the example of Ashley/Kaidan's death, is relevant within the themes that Mass Effect engages with, and has a climactic quality. I am sure you have read plenty of novels whose conclusion was not light-hearted but it was befitting nonetheless. Some characters, some plots, are destined to fail, and no other conclusion would have done them justice. I am not sure we can apply this as crudely in games for the reasons some Rohan and his commenters drew — players not accepting imposed failures, and seeking perfect 'scores' —, but it is worth considering in discussion to find how it might improve our games.

Lately I have been playing Neverwinter Nights 2, hoarding notes on various subjects for the dissertation and grudgingly enjoying my time. This is one of my favourite games... or I should rather say stories. The game itself is excruciatingly clunky. The camera is all over the place, party members have the intelligence of a comic book villain, and AI fireballs always manage to hit the smallest number of enemies.

The first few times I played it I was able to enjoy its gameplay without celebrating it. It was a distraction which later became a nuisance as the game difficulty increased to a ridiculous level, with a finale that nobody in his right mind would attempt to overcome without cheats or a dosage of something illegal. At some point in my multiple playthroughs the gameplay had to be flung aside because it detracted me from experiencing what I was there to experience in the first place.

In 1997, the first wave of IF (interactive fiction) theorists were still dealing with key concepts of narratology and other fields that could be useful in the gaming scene. Espen Aarseth, considering hypertexts as well as games, coined the term "ergodic literature", which he defines as "open, dynamic texts where the reader must perform specific actions to generate a literary sequence, which may vary for every reading." In essence, it is a type of literature that demands input from the reader/player. An amused theorist whose name I cannot remember baptised it as "constipated literature," and files all adventure games under this tag. It is true. They ask you to fight waves of anodyne mobs so that you can get to the next cutscene/dialogue/map. Imagine if you had to do the same while reading. Every fifty pages your book disappears and you're asked to punch the next person that shows up. The book deems your heroism worthy and lets you continue, only to discover that you've been reading Fifty Shades of Grey all along.

A clarification is required before I proceed any further. Under "gameplay" I coalesce the rules and mechanics of the game, not the experience of playing it. The story or narrative is in most games that which gives the gameplay a context, a casing; while in RPGs the story is the integral part of it.

And yet gameplay and story are rarely conjoined. They seem to work against one another most of the time. In order to identify when gameplay does not work, I would like to call your attention to when it does. And by working I mean when it creates a feedback loop between the story and itself, when your experience of the game mechanics affect your experience of the story.

So when did gameplay work for me in NWN2? For instance, when I tried to rob a giant red dragon of its treasure. In the safe environment of a combat-less game, a confrontation with a dragon only has two outcomes: victory by using your wits or insta-death. There can be no physical engagement with your enemy, you are never out of your comfort zone. When you are thrown into a deadly match against a dragon, your mastery of the game rules is put to test, and there is an actual physical reaction in your body, which pumps adrenaline as you are trying to force a particular outcome. Games take place in the present, where everything is uncertain and has to be driven forward by your will. In forming that illusion, gameplay can be very successful. I do not think there is any other medium at the moment which can tell stories in that particular way, thus games ought not be so easily dismissed.

It works when it forces me to stand by my decisions: killing a companion is not an abstract thing when you carry and execute the in-game commands to crush him. In Bastion, [SPOILERS] when I relinquished the hammer so that I could carry my friend, and pressed on, defenseless, through that corridor, and I was filled with arrows with every step I took, I was physically in pain, and cursing, hand-on-heart. [END OF SPOILERS] No comfortable cutscenes for you. The gameplay can have a very powerful effect, and it is a pity that game developers would see it as separate from the story, or rather the story as a necessary coating for a game about shooting stuff. Shooting stuff is perfectly fine, but why should it need a story at all, if it is invariably hackneyed and adds nothing to your game about shooting stuff?

In NWN2, I found the gameplay faulty. By gameplay I mean mostly combat, its most common manifestation. It threw too many enemies at me in brainless encounters. There is a reason for this: RPGs are pesky little hybrids, game-stories or story-games, as the critics call them, which combine two different drives without actually mixing them: the drive to play a game about advancing levels, acquiring gear and overcoming challenges; and the hero's journey, the story layout for 99% of the RPGs out there and most fantasy literature. The player enjoys those encounters from the perspective of gameplay, if said gameplay is enjoyable, but they add very little to the story experience.

My problem is there is way too much meaningless combat, mostly poorly done because these games are stories before they are games. We have games about advancing levels and gaining bigger numbers, and those are called ARPGs, and have been quite successful. They do not need much of a story, they can do fine with a few lines and some spatial narrative (game world). It actually detracts from the dungeon crawling if the story is enforced on the player (Diablo 3).

In story-games, the ideal state would be that the gameplay reciprocates with the story. Those hell ponies are not just there for you to gain a few levels before the boss; they are part of a plot which takes you back to painful memories of devoid-of-ponies childhood. A more relatable example: Amnesia: The Dark Descent works as an interactive fiction of horror because it relies on the player's actions to tell its story: what you did against the monster coming down that corridor (where you ran to, where you hid) is gameplay and story, as is your heart pumping wildly along with your avatar's. The example of the dragon is my favourite: a real challenge for a decision that cannot be made lightly. Also the little encounters along the road, like that with Zevran in Dragon Age: Origins, or any random bandit encounter, can signify in the story level as well, contextually giving out that the world is dangerous.

Hugely successful games with very little tacked-on gameplay features have been made in the past: Planescape Torment. It is not that it lacked combat, but that it was meaningful and in many cases optional. It was not entirely skippable, a decision which I laud; after all, not all conflicts can be solved with words.

PD: On Myst, one of the first commercially successful adventure games, one of its creators, Robyn Miller, said that artistically Myst was a frustrating project. He later stopped making games because he felt that the game format was too much in conflict with storytelling and character development (Aarseth 2004). What do you think about this?

First of all, excuse my inactivity over the past few days; I'm in the middle of my exams and I have essays to deliver, so I haven't been as active around the blogosphere as I would have liked, especially since very interesting discussions sparked. One which caught my attention was the opinion of a few bloggers expressing their concern on soullessness of some games. Implicitly stands the idea that, in ye olde days, MMOs used to be pregnant with brushes of something not entirely definite, which made them more life-like, or world-like if you wish. These might be related to the concept of Easter eggs, but not entirely. What exactly is the "soul" of a game, and where is it located, if games have one? In the lore tidbits scattered around the world? Inside the Maelstrom (when it was not a game location but a symbol)? Correct, and for the following reason:

The soul of a game lies where its players cannot reach, it lies beyond what is the "game" and into what becomes the simulation of a world.

MMOs are more prone to be deemed soulless than other games because of the expectation that MMOs need to fulfill in order to be deemed worthy of their title - MMOs need to render a world for the players to inhabit, whereas your average RPG needs only to deliver an experience (which is why a cinematic experience such as the Mass Effect series is considered a good game, while SW:TOR attempt at the same thing detracts it from constituting a world). The Elder Scrolls titles are also required to deliver a world, since their main appeal is that same sense of bigger-than-you space which an MMO ought to convey in order to attract us. That which we can easily master, like the storyline in most RPGs, will not haunt us afterwards with promises of more secrets to unveil, with the infinite possibilities of a world to grasp.

In order to create a life-like world, developers have to stuff it with elements unrelated to the game itself. Take for instance the signature books of The Elder Scrolls series: they do not hold a direct relation to the game but to the world, not being part of any quest, although clarifying certain game events in the light of the world's history. They confer TES a background which adds another layer of meaning to the players' own experiences, but also convey the idea of a world which is independent of the individual player's input.

But the soul of a game must not be contained exclusively in the books, or other lore sources one may come across. It can also be imprinted in the locations and NPCs, when those exist in its own sake and not to deliver a game-experience (such as a quest). In Morrowind, the player would come across many dwarven (Dwemer) contraptions and artifacts, ruins and chambers, which were there to convey the idea of a sudden vanish of an entire race, which undoubtedly would produce awe in the player's mind, since the Dwemer were out of her reach inside the game. No quest to bring them back, not even a goal for most of those ruins scattered across Morrowind; their purpose was to produce a world. They were the soul of the game.

The soul of the game lies in the sense of a world produced by events, locations, characters, objects which are not made for the purpose of providing content for the player. They must be independent of the game activities (such as questing, raiding, etc). They could even be part of a quest, provided that it is a) full of non-game content such as lore; b) not immediately accessible to everybody, like class quests, or quests belonging to a chain. They could also be locations: the soul of Karazhan was Medivh's chambers, accessed through the staircase to Prince Malchezaar. It makes sense that there would be a room where the proprietor of the tower lived, doesn't it? Yet that is missing from many game locations these days, even in TBC WoW (Karazhan was actually developed during vanilla). The soul of Skyrim was those locations in the game world which told a story on its own, without being linked to major player-controlled events (an abandoned mage tower, a cellar infested by demons, each and every NPC which had a unique dialogue but no quest to account for it).

The idea for this post originated from an Easter egg I found in old Dire Maul in this private TBC server. I had gone there with a guildmate for the sake of exploring that old and lore-sated instance which was one of my favourites. We searched for the library and for the Highborn prince (whose background always fascinated me), and came across a named skeleton on the floor of the library: "Skeletal Remains of Kariel Winthalus" Who was this man? Apparently, he was the author of some of the librams which you may turn in for the head enchants, and in his librams you may learn that he supported Kael'thas and Illidan, and sought knowledge from the Highborne in Dire Maul to aid their cause. Not only that, the character is also a reference to a legendary individual who came to be a WoW developer.

World of Warcraft is (was?) full of references like that. That constituted its soul. It is not merely the impression of a newbie MMO player from their first game, although that might have an impact for sure.

A game with a soul remains bigger than any one player, since it is not completely devoted to tell her story, but that of the world itself. I am concerned that the upcoming games might be forgetting about that world aspect and place too much importance in the game, gamifying the entirety of a world which ought to stand on its own. Azeroth achieved this, becoming bigger than the game -WoW- itself. I wonder if Telara will accomplish this as well. It requires a development team who will cherish their game enough to care about bringing life to it, not only new and shiny features. This might clash with the F2P business model, though. We shall see. I am eager to explore a new world which does not respond to me personally, but to my expectations of a place to inhabit.

The Elder Scrolls Online never ceases to amaze me with its ridiculous development decisions to cater who knows whom. No matter how preposterous they might seem, what makes me most uncomfortable is that TESO is not alone in this, and that it is merely following a particular trend that I will never be able to make sense of.

MMOs were -and should be, if you ask me- a world bigger than any one particular hero. The sentiment of bigger-than-you is better achieved when you actually cannot overcome everything on your own, when the world resists your individual influence, just as the real world does. That is why for me the world of Warcraft is more real than Tamriel or the Mass Effect universe, because I participate in it as an individual, and I am at no point the demiurge of it all. In Skyrim you could be at some point both the hero of the world and the cruellest assassin, while hoarding such a big pile of money that the next reasonable step would be to open a bank. Yes, it can be fun and engaging; but those stories are singleplayer for a reason.

Whereas in MMOs we are sometimes involved in quests that require our suspension of disbelief to work (how many times does The Missing Diplomat need rescue?), in general terms, none of the world-shaping events fall on the hands of one player. At least it wasn't that way prior to Cataclysm, after which you were fighting along with Malfurion, shoulder to shoulder. That would be to the detriment of the integrity of the world as something bigger than one hero. That would also harm the mystique of the major lore figures. Nevertheless, I don't mind being in someone else's story, so long as I can shape my own.

The last part is essential: I need to be able to shape my own story. For RPers, it'd be a more straightforward process, as they usually consider the career of their characters in narrative terms. For non-RPers, the story that surrounds their characters tells about their accomplishments, events they participated in, PvE content they downed on that character, PvP rank they obtained, the professions they took, the recipes they found, pets and cosmetic items, etc. Even the zone you quested in establishes a connection between that virtual entity and the image you have of her. The more you cull from a character's resumé, the more homogenised they become, the more blurred her individual story.

So what does this have to do with TESO and singleplayer content? For starters, the quest of the lonely hero does not make sense in a multiplayer environment, no matter how much phasing you shove into it. Even if said quest is brought forward, the developers need to understand that the career of a hero is not the very rigid quests they experienced, but rather the way in which they interacted with the world, and which distinguished them from another players/another characters they have played. The hero quest is fun the first time you undertake it, on the second playthrough you will notice how little of a special snowflake you really were (Bioware's latest innovation, the choose-your-path story, does not stand against the test of a second playthrough, as the choices were merely cosmetic). My father, who is an altoholic, enjoyed very much questing until Cataclysm, when he was forced to play through the exact same questline with all of his characters. There was no choice, no possibility of shaping his own story ("I did Nagrand on this character, skipped Blade's Edge, and went to Shadowmoon").

Then we have the example of GW2 and its personal stories. I am not entirely sure how these work, but I hope that they will not tell me who my character is, or develop my character's personality for me. If they are a development of the traditional class quests, I'm fine with it. If they on the other hand provide a very narrow path for me to necessarily walk, I might shun them. As I am not sure of what they exactly are, I will hypothesize: a) if they constitute a very personal narrative, through which your character will grow (Bildungsspiel?), I will not like it unless plenty of choices are provided. b) If they are just a questline which is freely available but does not shape your character, all is fine.

I want to define my character based on what she did in that giant bigger-than-her playground, not on what the developers write about her. If I wanted that, I would play a regular RPG, a singleplayer hero's quest.

Bethesda, please respect your world and your players. The persistent world of an MMO should not be plundered by any one lone hero, but shaped by the community. I want to see more elites roaming the world, more Fel Reavers that step on you while you humbly quest. Do not let me kill the Daedric Princes, the evil gods of Tamriel, on my own; that would make a very poor story. By all means, give me solo quests and epic storylines that my hero can tackle on his own, just do not lie to me about being the unique hero that will save us all, since I prefer to savour victory with my friends (and strangers-potential friends).

I know that everybody is too busy massacring to pay attention to why they are doing so. I understand, I have also been playing as if I had a blinker on and could only move straight from boss to boss. That's the nature of Diablo. I am a bit concerned, though, that they have made several narrative choices that conflict with this known nature.

For instance, the recorded diaries and journals. Somebody at Blizzard identified a problem: People don't want to read. People often say: "I would prefer not to." (And then proceed to revolutionarily stare out of the window). Solution: we remove the written text and substitute it with a recorded voice which will be playing while they slaughter. People love to have voices narrating some oblivious story while they're struggling with a boss pull. Maybe they didn't catch all that was said and want to actually *read* it... Then we make the access to the notes in their appropriate order so convoluted that they will desist.

There's several problems to this method. First, most of the notes are part of a large series which, unless played in order and not too distant from each other, will make their continuity falter. Secondly, the Lore tag by the corner appeared interesting at first, but is ultimately obnoxious and not readily removable. It keeps blinking until you click on it and cancel the narration. Thirdly, I found some of the diaries to be rabble which did not offer any particular insight on Santuary and its inhabitants. I found especially intrusive the boss-orders series, with Belial and Azmodan acting in their obvious villainous role. I don't know if it was intended or a by-product of the diary marketing, but I found these demons much less serious than their predecessors. What made Diablo a terrifying creature was his alienness and untranslatability. He wasn't issuing mischievous orders to petty mobs you were slaughtering. Pure evil cannot be made explicit, or it loses its abstract power. Similar to one of the suggestions that actors are given on stage: you cannot enact a pure emotion without instilling a reaction against patheticism in the audience; they'll probably laugh it off. It's difficult to take Belial or Azmodan seriously. Even with this last Diablo apparition I found it hard to feel any awe.

There has been some discussion on the subject of ambience and how D3 doesn't meet the standards set by the previous titles. They have argued that it was the illumination, which was much more contrasted in D2 or 1; the bright colours, although D2 also had a good number of sceneries that were well-lit and coloured; the music, which does not set any tone at all, much less tension. The Diablo 1 tracks were renowned for their eerie quality. No need for a big orchestra and fancy effects, they could do much more with less. Check it out:

The aforementioned arguments are indeed correct, but they have not taken into account some other aspects of the game that, no matter how gritty and dark they turned their sceneries, would ultimately detract us from experiencing any awe. The gameplay and mechanics do not allow the necessary introspection of terror. In D1 you had a hard time from the beginning, without any tutorial areas to hold your hand; the normal (not unique) enemies also required you to be alert; getting hit meant getting stuck in an animation which would slow you down, while the hordes gathered around you; the gear you collected was scarce and usually a trade-off of stats, some pieces being so wicked that they actually hurt you more than they did good; even the shrines played a part in setting an atmosphere, as you could never be sure that the next shrine wouldn't cripple you. I am ignoring D2 for the sake of discussion because it had already departed from the original idea of D1. What we have in Diablo 3 now is a tutorial mode, Normal, which can made even more simple by purchasing 3 or 4 weapons from the gold AH (even Nightmare is a breeze with one or two rares that other people dispose of); normal enemies are laughable; no stun-lock animation, thank goodness; gear is abundant, and if you don't get lucky, other people will for a pretty decent price (of gold); actually hurtful traps? None.

Regarding the sceneries, and watching the D1 video of the Diablo theme below, I've noticed that in D3 we have a compensatory abundance of gore details that do not actually provoke any response in us. Differently from the minimalistic scenery of the previous game, where there are only pentagrams, torches and Diablo. It is similar to the scenery in D2, which was still threatening despite of the bright colours.

I am also concerned with the decision of Blizzard of forcing the players to go through the story over and over again in order to farm. I cannot predict if that will make the game wear off more or less; what final consequence it will have. I had argued before that it could help set a clear, canonical notion of the game in the players' minds, much as Cain's line "Stay a while and listen" had been embedded in our gaming culture because of that same repetition. It could also prove to be tedious and degrading for the story elements.

I've taken heed of some things that D3 did well in the narrative field and that I expect to be carried into other titles when appropriate: clear-cut but not excessively rigid personalities for our PCs (unlike Shepard, who for me was less of a vessel of my personality/the personality I wanted her to enact, and more of an actress). They have found a perfect balance between allowing personal identification and delivering some character-based flavour. The same thing happens with the companions. I have enjoyed listening to their personal stories. Short but with a concise property which teased me, and did not overwhelm me with too much straying speech, which is the scourge of modern novels these days (R.R. Martin, I'm looking at you). Another neat element are the conversations that you hear from the NPCs around town. They set an unique flavour; engrossing without being intrusive. Blizzard has been doing well in this regard, except for the diaries part. Who did really think that we wanted to hear disconnected pieces of narrative while simultaneously fighting and looting?

On a final remark, I am very annoyed by the repeating lines of my Templar. My Demon Hunter is too polite to tell him that they already had that conversation before; twenty minutes ago, and two hours before, and last night. I hope Blizzard will implement an option to shut him up.

I came late to the Planescape party, and I am glad I did. When the game was released, back in 1999, I couldn't have appreciated its genius. Besides, I was too busy slashing demons in Diablo II. Some years later, still very young, I played Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn to its conclusion, and I still don't know how I did it. Apparently my teen self was much more proficient in the ways of D&D than I am. Anyway, I recently played Planescape: Torment and I utterly loved it. The friend who recommended it to me can rest assured that I will recommend him in Heaven or its surrogate if I get there first.

Introductions are in order, although I am certain that I was the only soul who hadn't played this game. Planescape: Torment (PsT) is an RPG developed by Black Isle, written by Chris Avellone, who is now with Obsidian, I believe. (I love those guys.) The game tells the story of the Nameless One, a human who has been unable to die for a long time, as his collection of scars and discarded limbs around the planes suggest. After each death, he loses his memories and sheds his current identity, so he must rediscover himself and those who accompany him in a journey to recover his mortality. Along the way, he will be confronted with complex philosophical and moral issues, with different views on existence, and with his own answer to them. Or rather your own answer.

While playing, I was analysing the game through the lenses of other, modern, video games. Actually, this was not the wisest approach, as modern video games draw their influences from a completely different source: cinema. Planescape: Torment is a text-based RPG, so much so that it could as well be considered interactive literature. Moreover, its writing is the best I've seen in the genre. Not just the writing itself, with its socratic style of discovery through dialogue, but also the plot and its dramatic structure. Even such a dismissed element as the sidequest is embedded in the narrative in such a way that it is no mere experience fodder, but an opportunity to find out more about your past.

Everything in the game is coherent with its initial premises: amnesia is not so much a rhetoric device as it is a core element of the journey, thus negating the reaction against the cliché. As a journey of self-discovery which entails the recovery of physical memories and, more importantly, one own's nature, it could not have been otherwise. The amnesia theme was developed brilliantly. Another of its premises is the clash of conflicting philosophies, depicted as factions which quite radical views on life, politics, love, death..., and how this clash, of a conceptual nature, is solved through words. It is coherent because its focus on dialogues is carried to physical confrontations too, providing an alternative, and usually more effective, way of dealing with conflicts. Even the final boss can be 'defeated' verbally. I would love to see this in modern games. I wish I would have been allowed to talk Illidan into allying to beat Arthas, for instance. Also coherent is the game's focus on frequently disdained attributes, such as intelligence, wisdom and charisma, which provide you with more insightful choices in conversations, wiser paths to solve conflicts.

What I missed from the game which is present in modern titles is a comfortable interface, with its now-assumed conveniences like a minimap, a travelling system, a decent combat AI (luckily there's few combat, and the few difficult encounters that I had, I was allowed to run away. Now, that's also brilliant as a storytelling device, because some areas are supposed to be overwhelming, not some farming spot like most of the 'dangerous' zones in modern games. My escaping from hordes of demons, although I knew that I could take them if I pulled them very carefully, is testament to the zone's real, not rhetoric, danger). I also missed some elaborate intra-party banter like the one in the latest Bioware titles, and particularly in Mass Effect 3, where the characters could be hanging around in the Normandy, talking to each other on various topics. That was surely an improvement in dynamic, as opposed to rigid, storytelling.

This game is a masterpiece. Now I can properly assent when other people mention the title. It is rare to find a game that not only stings you emotionally, but also impels you to think. 'What can change the nature of a man?', you are asked, and your answer doesn't matter as long as it is yours.

And then, the ending's catharsis. No loose threads except for those which are left for you to arrange in whatever pattern. In case you are a layman, very much like I was, and you haven't played it, I won't say anything. Go play it. Give yourself a couple of weeks, a month or two; it is a long day's journey into the night.

On a sidenote, I miss the conversation system of ye olde RPGs, where voice was almost absent, but the text was much more rich. Voiced content usually imposes an interpretation on a response, as much as acting interprets the written script (think of the many possible Ophelias that Shakespeare proposed). I like to be able to interpret it myself. I also like the amount of choice that unvoiced works allow. Such a huge narrative as PsT is would have been severely cut down because of the cost of voice acting, and what would have been gone is the roleplaying. Choosing "I promise X" over "[Lie] I promise X" would have been a lost nuance (the difference lies in the lawfulness or chaoticness of your roleplay, also along the good-bad axis, which provide alternative paths in the game). With voiced content, those long dialogues you have, thirsty for answers, would have been reduced to a cutscene. Nowadays there is little room for imagination or choice.

On a side-sidenote, the game and its protagonist remind me of this poem by Borges.

  I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about
      yourself, authentic and surprising news of
      yourself.
  I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the
      hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you
      with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

Along with the discussion of the unsatisfactory finale, some theories have sprouted with the intention of providing a more complex, suggestive theme to the ending, which would bespeak of subtlety and artfulness on the part of Bioware. It is difficult to maintain such a view in the wake of subsequent events (Bioware bending to the fan's will and promising new DLC that would provide the expected closure). Had Bioware not submitted to the fans' demands, still the discussion of the indoctrination theory would have been futile.

A quick summary of the theory: Shepard would have been indoctrinated at some point of the story, usually after the Reaper beam, right at the ending, and everything that follows is either a dream or a Reaper's contrivance to force Shepard's final decision to their benefit.

I consider this theory an unrealistic expectation on the fans' part. There are some instances of ambiguity in the story that allow a symbolic interpretation, like the final scene in which Shepard is almost stripped of agency due to bloodloss and mindcontrol. This is suggestive of the unreliable narrator of which the fan theories speak, but most likely it is a mere emotional device that intends to sunder the player's image of godlike Shepard.

Some people have argued that it is clearly not Bioware's intention, although little has been said either by Bioware or by fans to explain why this theory is wrong (if you think such things can be right or wrong, which I'll argue later). To me, the theory is disproved due to a fault in consistency. The unreliable-narrator hermeneutics is not supported by the work's tone and structure. Mass Effect had until then never attempted any plot exposition that was not direct (like showing videos of the Cerberus scientists at various locations degenerating because of indoctrination, instead of silencing the facts and allow for the player to draw her conclusions based on the environment; that simply had never been done), and surely Mass Effect had not had any dream-like sequences, any instance of unreality, ambiguity. Shepard's dreams are merely dreams, by what we gather from our previous experience of the game.

Perhaps you have played Final Fantasy VIII. I didn't, I wasn't fond of JRPGs, partly because their stories seemed purposely convoluted, undecipherable; which was precisely why they were pregnant with alternative theories that tended to read into them in a symbolic way. Regarding FF8, I read a theory that posits that Squall had been dreaming half the game since his encounter with Edea, who might have killed him, instead of just hurting him (with a gigantic shard through the chest, of which he recuperates with no further mention). The theory is supported by the game's general vagueness and dream-like quality (like most FF games), which is exacerbated after this encounter. It is a very curious read which had me amazed by its allied rationalism with fantasy.

In order to ascribe to either theory (the 'official' one, which is the literal game, or the dream), you usually go through a process of authorial invocation: how was the work intended to be read? Could SquareEnix/Bioware have thought of such an interpretation, and fostered it? It would require, as I mentioned before, a high degree of subtlety, or else the edifice of dream/indoctrination would be too evident and its impact diminished by its bluntness; no longer a symbol, if exposed. Not only you might invoke the author in this question, but you will also consider whether she would be capable of such finesse. You don't question the work, you question the author, her mastery of the craft and of the intellect. That is, unless you a) respect the author, b) respect the narrative genre (since when videogames exhibit such degrees of artfulness; in contrast, -good- literature is expected to provide complex symbology, c) the work allows for such an interpretation (the author imbues her work with a subterranean current that can be dug out. I'm placing an emphasis on the active verb here, as symbolism requires an attentive reader, 'digging out' its meaning beyond what is literal).

You may also counter this preconception. One might brandish the theory of Wimsatt and Beardsley, called 'the Intentional Fallacy': the mistaken belief that what the author intended is the 'real', 'final' meaning of the work, and that we can or should know what this is (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1995). So, it is not the responsibility of Bioware to give meaning to their work, according to such statement. I don't quite agree with it, although I admit that it has its advantages, particularly in the field of psychoanalysis, as the work of an author is also product of her unconscious, and therefore it conveys much more about her mindset and that of her generation than she thought. There are no 'wrong' interpretations: As long as you provide facts to your theory, it is valid, out of the author's reach. There have been counterarguments to Wimsatt and Beardsley's idea, but if you wish to ascribe to it and see the work of Bioware without an authoritative perspective, you might.

I won't, because I have to admit that I am prejudiced against this work and its author, and thus I cannot take it seriously when they themselves don't know how a character might look like, when they seem to have improvised the story (Crucible never even hinted until the last game, not even by the prothean beacon of ME1), when they had been very vocal about plot-twisting decisions and their consequences (and yet they revived a rachni queen in case you had killed the first one). Such game cannot have allowed the nuances of a symbolic interpretation, not even subconsciously.

I guess that it's safe to talk about the ending of ME3 now, after the posts of Gazimoff at Mana Oscura, Azuriel, Rohan, etc. Particularly relevant to the subject is the latter's, who questions the core argument for the Reaper's invasion: "Apparently, it is necessary for these synthetic life forms to kill all advanced organic life forms, because otherwise, the organic life forms will create new synthetic life forms which will kill all organic life forms. What the F**k?" Precisely my thought.

In fact, there are two main reasons that validate the Reaper's function: 1) to procure space for newer life forms to emerge, by wiping out more advanced ones who might threaten them; 2) to impede such progress that might lead to the creation of synthetic life forms that would rebel against their creators. Order is invoked in a clichéd way to account for the Reaper's task.

If this was Bioware's attempt at creating a logical argument that human beings would be able to comprehend, they failed, because nothing in the game leads to these premises, in addition to their lack of integral sense. To make matters worse, the game actually challenges its own argument by presenting the player with an organic-synthetic conflict that can be easily solved (the Geth-Quarian war that takes no more than a man with enough Renegade/Paragon points to turn into fairyland). Where are those synthetic life forms that would rebel and make life impossible, thus the Reaper's reason for meddling? Even when the Geth were enemies, they had not presented such a threat that no one man could not infiltrate their base and rewrite them to suit his purpose. Had the player ever felt truly threatened by the Geth (increasing their numbers or their fanthomlessness, instead of turning them into allies), then would it be a reason of import. As it is, it felt like an excuse.

Second, procuring space for newer life forms to emerge would make sense if we had had any reason to believe that technologically advanced races actually obstruct their successors. What we had was the example of the krogan, who had been granted technological advancements by the Salarians too soon for them to be able to cope with it. But it did not prevent them from a viable development, quite the opposite! Even more proof of the unthreatening nature of galactic contact: the Salarians did not advocate for the extinction of the krogan, they respected their right to exist as a species when they could have removed the threat they constituted entirely.

For the sake of comparing with good writing, let's consider Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series. I highly recommend the books to any of you who like science-fiction and a good read. Curiously enough, the similarities of the main enemies of Mass Effect and those of Revelation Space are numerous, to the point where I seriously considered if Bioware's writers had been "influenced" by this series.

(Spoiler-free, in case you want to read the books) In Revelation Space, there is also an unfathomable threat which seeks to end all organic life. We do not learn of the Inhibitors (Reapers' cousins, but with better logic processes) intentions until the end, as any self-respecting half-suspense narrative would require, and its revelation achieves an impact which prompts the reader to consider both sides, because the answer to the Inhibitor's mystery is of utilitarian roots. In other words, the arguments that validate the Inhibitor's mission are sound, not to be dismissed as a matter of enmity or profit.

This Bioware attempted with the aforementioned arguments, which were simply shallow, devoid of holistic logic. They could have also imbued the Reapers with a logic of their own, unconceivable by other, simpler or merely different, minds; they ought to have kept it unexplained in such case. They could also have attempted a Lovecraftian concept of evil, although I don't think that the players would have accepted such an explanation, given that the Reapers had already been established as reasonable and resolute. In any case, to have an allegedly superior race draw such conclusions (that life forms are chaotic and prone to destroy each other or drive themselves to destruction by means of creating rebellious synthetics) is just silly. It is subpar and damaging to the series' concept of itself as a serious narrative driven by complex morality issues (which is also rather ingenuous of Bioware).

Not to mention the damned star-child. That was sentimentalist in addition to silly.

Related: ME3: Towards a cinematic experience.

I'm keeping this article as spoiler-free as possible.

I have already finished the game, thanks to the kind internet pirates who have uploaded it for us Europeans who were to receive it on the 9th. Don't go all prim and proper on me, my legal copy is on its way.

I would say that the experience was enjoyable, despite the complaints that I might have risen along the journey, the most glaring of which is perhaps of a personal nature. You see, I don't like my games to resemble movies; that's what movies are for. Thus, I tend to feel irritated by an excess of non-interactive scenes. They are inherently more spectacular in that they are being observed, and that is for me a drawback. Direct experience ensures engagement, and since the beginning of the game, with Shepard being moved around the base and told about the situation, I didn't feel immersed in the plot.

Not even with the whole save-the-Earth imperative. Whatever happened in the Earth was shown in the background: the Reapers were destroying stuff, presumably people were dying, bins were on fire; but all of this was happening on the backdrop, and didn't intersect with my path through rooftops and debris-filled buildings. You may stop and look at the sights, but it is hard to disregard that it is a mere moving picture, despite its flashiness and amount of detail. But Shepard is busy jumping between rooftops. Such a background is typical of the moving pictures, whereas games tend (or should tend) to spatial freedom. There was one instance of personal experience of the civilian massacre, when one kid hides in the ducts and Shepard tries to reassure him and get him to safety, but this didn't help setting the mood, quite the contrary, as I thought of it as an over-the-top emotional trick. Much to my dismay, the kid would make further appearances. In her dreams. I tried, but I was unable to take it seriously.

Have you noticed that I have referred to 'Shepard' and not 'the player'? In this third instalment, I've felt more starkly than ever the dissociation between me as a player, and the toon I'm moving around. I still made the no-nonsense renegade choices I would have personally made (probably; minus the punching in the face of some people), but the game didn't let me do the talking. I still directed the general idea behind what I wanted to say, but those choices carried onto full-fledged dialogues in which I had little to choose. I felt like an spectator of Jennifer Hale's amazing voice-acting. This had also been an issue in previous games, at least to me, because of the reason I've mentioned above: I don't like being an spectator.

I acknowledge that voiced protagonists are appealing to a lot of people. I do enjoy Hale's acting, as a matter of fact. But that's what it is: acting. Another layer of the cinematic cake that I've swallowed, which was pretty tasty. Nevertheless, I don't like the concept behind these games. There seems to be a chasm between gameplay and story, which has led to the franchise's nickname 'guns’n'conversation epic'. Oh, and the combat is still terrible. It's functional, but not particularly compelling.

My dissociation from the character went even further when I took a particularly difficult decision, which involved killing a friend, and Shepard was not granted the lines I wanted to say, and instead covered the whole thing up. I would have liked to be honest with my teammates, but Shepard instead kept a shameful silence. I was waiting for a paragon interrupt to speak my mind, but the dialogue went its way without consulting me. I know developers cannot contemplate every possibility, but still this was an important matter that I would have had to be able to get involved in. It felt as if Shepard was a character on her own, not the blank slate I was expecting to project into. Bioware is telling her story, not mine, this much is obvious. Then, why bother with choices at all, if it is their character?

Then we have a colossal amount of cinematics, some of them completely unnecessary (like Shepard dodging falling debris/jumping to the shuttle/any variation thereof - Why can't I do that stuff?). For instance, the kid-situation I referred to before was managed from a cinematic: why couldn't I try to catch him, as a player, instead of seeing Shepard try? The other cinematics, the ones that involve briefing on the war and the Reapers attack, might be useful, although I always advocate for as much in-game action as possible. I don't know how they could have conveyed the engagement in space of the two forces without resorting to a cinematic, though.

In films and literature there is a device called 'focalization', which accounts for the alignment of the camera/text towards a particular character. The text gravitates towards the character that is focalised and highlights her presence using various narrative devices. As we are not inside the narratives, our only way to experience them is through identification with the character which is being focalised. In videogames, this is taken for granted because we are this character, and it is much more easy to relate. The developers can be much bolder and still not risk our dissociation. But I believe that Bioware has gone too far with his voice-acting, cutscenes and cutscene-like dialogues. Sometimes I felt like I was in charge, and sometimes I was just watching a movie, listening to what two actors were saying, or witnessing the heroics Shepard was executing, followed by a general praise.

Also, I was not convinced by the numerous attempts of Bioware to make me feel like a hero, partly because of my dissociation from Shepard, and partly because I'm impervious to (and irritated by) not-too-subtle attempts at emotional attachment. Another thing that irks me: could Bioware please stop telling me how awesome I am? I'm a big hero, it's a big war, I got it the first 10 minutes of cinematics.

This was a Hollywood-like gaming experience. One of those films that are jaw-dropping, and also manage to have a decent story. It shows how much they cared about it in the detail they put into the sceneries, the conversations, the amount of content. They listened to their fans and added much more interaction between teammates, and between teammates and Shepard's interlocutors; they also made the characters move around the ship, and inside the Citadel after you land. Those were highly appreciated treats. I enjoyed the game, let me state it again. I just thought this was a good opportunity for constructive criticism of a factor that I consider detrimental to the game experience: the imitation of the film medium. Games are a medium of its own, with their particular features and assets. Let's not mix them too much.

I had an impression I couldn't shake off when playing the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series: they seem much more artificial than KotOR, for instance. They have a certain feel to them that reminds me of a construction site, with all the beams projecting in plain sight.

I believe this feeling of artificiality has to do with the games' narrative balance, which is too symmetrical, particularly when it comes to companions. Symmetrical balance is a quality that can be exploited for good in many works of art, and which the Greeks praised in sculpture and architecture. Generally, what it effects is harmony and regularity; in the case of Bioware's games, it is 'equal treatment' of the characters. I also think of it as a reaction to the players' expectations, because who wants to receive the short end of the stick? I shall clarify my point with a couple of examples and comparisons.

The Mass Effect 2 structure regarding companions can be adumbrated after one playthrough. With each of the companions you have from 3 to 5 dialogues: two previous to the loyalty mission; the post-loyalty-mission dialogue; two more dialogues if you pursue the romance. I haven't gone back to the game to check out whether these are the exact numbers, but the idea remains the same: you are entitled to this for each and every one of them. Additionally, there is no real interaction between the main story and the companions, a fact which is perceived by the player as further alienation between her story and that of the crew members. In KotOR what we had was a deep connection between Bastila and the main character's story, as well as Carth; both would have minor roles in KotOR 2 which showed their relation to the narrative. There were also minor characters that were not essential to the mission, but still had a role in it, and their dialogues were not impoverished by their secondary status. Still, you would have certain characters speaking more lines because they were either more talkative, or more central to the plot, or came into the ship earlier. The Mass Effect companions are almost completely devoid of agency in the main story: they accompany you, speak their lines, but do not interact with anything beyond their personal stories. They do not even hold any special relation with any other crew members, except for the nominal dispute between Jack and Miranda, and Tali and Legion. What we had in KotOR 2 was Kreia's blackmailing of Atton Rand, for instance; or Rand's jealousy of Mical, whom he would try to irritate at any given opportunity. There had even been some cut content which featured Rand fighting on his own (although you would be controlling him) a Sith, and the negative outcome of the fight would have him tortured and dismembered; or triumphant and cocky if you won. What I'm trying to show is that companions in KotOR had a particular role that often intersected with your story.

Regarding the structure, I'm not saying that KotOR didn't have one, that's preposterous. My point is that Mass Effect's was too evident for its symmetry, which added to the way I perceived my companions: dispensable, practically equivalent to each other. Some of them I found interesting and worth having around (Garrus and... well, that's about it), but I was never under the impression that my companions mattered in the story, or that their presence would change the course of the action in any way. If each companion had had a different amount of lines and quests, at least my impression that they were all the same would have been attenuated. Had they been granted a role in my story, I would have stopped thinking of them as followers, and more as companions.

Nevertheless, what would happen if Bioware did this, like every time they attempt something 'new', is that fans would outrage. They would all want their character of preference to have at least the same treatment as the others, notwithstanding the highly artificial result that comes from it.