#meant to write a simple starter but the exposition got the better of me

[denverneumann]

It was with not just a little bit of trepidation that Denver took her first steps into the Tower since she'd been escorted out. It hadn't even been that long ago. Snow, what had it been, a week? Two? Time seemed to be in a state of flux, or else a kind of liminal stasis. In a world without Games there were no bookends to the seasons, no touchstones upon which to ground one's sense of reality. And what a painful reality it had been. But Denver had been promised it would be okay this time. She was going to be okay. She had walked in through the front door, and no one had arrested her yet. Besides, even if someone didn't believe she was here on business, she was still just a low-level loyalist. A rich girl without a rich name to back her up. She'd be safe.

Her kiosk was gone. Denver wondered idly as she passed where it had once stood if there had been any satisfaction in tearing it down. Her manager was dead, she was certain. As best as she'd been able to gather, all of the upper management for the Hunger Games Museum were dead.

She walked in nearly a straight line until she reached the back of the Tower, a window in one of the old lounges. No arrest. She was okay. She sighed at that, a mix of relief and sheer uncertainty, and took a seat. She pulled out her notebook and a pen, lucky finds from the BEEF gift shop, and started taking notes of the world around her. So wrapped up in her observations was she, so bent on mastering the art of recording history as it was actually happening, that she'd missed someone coming up to her until she felt the presence right by her side. She jolted up, startled.

"Hi," she said, resisting the urge to insist she was allowed to be there. "Sorry, I didn't realize anyone was there. You must have quiet feet or something." She gave a laugh and a smile, but gripped her pen tighter.

[musingsofonehuman]

Like you, for the past week, I’ve been reading reviews and critique about The Last of Us Part 2, interested in Naughty Dog’s latest adventure, now, I have no intention of playing the game, for starters, I don’t own a PS4, so I can’t even if I wanted to, but Naughty Dog games have never been my thing. I remember playing a few hours of Uncharted 3 a number of years ago, and I found it quite dull, the story didn’t drag me in, the graphics were as expected, but it was the gameplay that didn’t click for me, it was mundane, simple, it didn’t seek to do anything innovative, and so I didn’t care to finish it.

Big budget games have this problem, envy. Specifically, envy towards films and TV. When I was growing up during the 90s and 00s, games were still trying to be accepted as a legitimate medium, always seen as the younger sibling of films and TV, they weren’t seen as a story telling medium but rather a children’s toy, so there was always this resentment towards Hollywood, that we weren’t seen to be as good as them, and for a lot of people, that resentment has stuck. In the years since then, thanks to advances in technology, games have been able to tell more complex stories, show more complex animations and generally become bigger than what they used to be.

But there’s a problem, see, video games are a unique medium due to one key aspect, interactivity. You cannot interact with a film or a TV show, but you interact with a video game, you drive that video game and what happens during the course of it, you are the mechanical cog turning the clock, and so because of that, video games have a unique opportunity to tell stories in a way that films and TV shows can’t. For me, this interactivity is why I love playing video games, being able to take part in these games rather than watching from afar is the best thing about games for me, yes, story and graphics are important, but to me, the most important part of a video game are the mechanics of the game and how they play out.

And yet, a lot of big budget games that come out today fail to capitalise on that, ignoring the interactivity of the medium, opting instead for elaborate cutscenes, big Hollywood names and structured set pieces that play out before you, and all of this is very pretty and can be stuck on the back of a box or put into a marketing campaign to sell the game, but it’s not enjoyable to play, you are not interacting with the game, but more watching the game play out from afar, you are not part of the game, you are merely a bystander watching the game unfold before you.

That’s why I’ve been so interested with The Last of Us Part 2 (henceforth known as TLOU 2), many reviews and publications have been calling this game a masterpiece, a game of the generation, something that only comes by once a decade. Now, this immediately made me suspicious, I’ve learnt that when a video game gets such universal acclaim, there’s something being omitted from the reviews, so I decided to read about and do some research, and it turns out there are a few reviewers that have problems with the game. One of the biggest problems seems to be that’s it a game where you kill people using excessive violence, and yet it’s a story all about how excessive violence is wrong, characters don’t seem to learn from their mistakes so they keep on killing, even though it’s wrong.

Now obviously, I’m judging all of this based on reviews and a plot synopsis, I would imagine playing the game is different to reading about it, but there does seem to be a clash of ideologies here. If the idea is to tell a story where violence is wrong, then surely the characters should learn from that, and yet that doesn’t seem to happen until the very end of the game, when the player has murdered a lot of NPCs, like, a lot, as in...let’s just say more than you’re currently thinking. So how does that work then? If the idea is that the characters learn to not use violence, then the gameplay should reflect that, and yet that doesn’t seem to be the case, it seems the violence goes on for a while, almost to a point where some reviewers wrote that they were becoming disturbed by the violence. So surely then, when the payoff happens at the very end, it doesn’t have impact, because at that point you’re so disturbed by the violence, you’ve been screaming at your TV telling the main character to stop because you’ve realised what the game is trying to tell you far sooner than they did.

So why all these reviews then? Why are all these reviewers calling TLOU 2 a masterpiece? I believe it might have something to do with the resentment I mentioned previously. Since many of us grew up with this resentment, there’s always been this feeling of wanting to prove that video games are better than films and TV shows, so whenever a game does come along that looks fantastic, has big name actors and a complex story that touches on many issues, it’s generally heralded as a masterpiece, not necessarily because it is, but because people want to prove that their passion can yield great achievements, basically, they want to prove the naysayers wrong. That’s not to say that TLOU 2 isn’t a great game, again, I haven’t played it so I can’t really comment on that, but there does seem to be this conflicting ideology that doesn’t seem right to me.

This is why I believe games should focus on interactivity, games can be used to tell complex and interesting stories, but they should use interactivity to tell those stories, not pretty cutscenes, because then it’s just a film, and films do cutscenes far better than games can. There is nothing that can compare to sitting in a cinema watching a film on a giant screen in a big chair, I know because I love it. Movies have the power to tell big and expansive stories, because that’s what they’re best at, they don’t have to worry about interactivity, so they can out all their effort into telling a carefully scripted story, they don’t have to rely on the player missing out on story beats because they didn’t go to a certain area, movies guide the viewer through their world, taking them on a journey, so they can make sure that every part of the story makes sense, because they’re not trying to fill time, there’s no in between sections with films, it’s just story.

So can games tell stories? Yes, and I believe there are a few examples of this. The first is a game called Celeste, in it, you play as Madeline, a young woman who is committed to climbing a mountain for her own personal reasons. This game does use cutscenes, it does have narrative, but it doesn’t use exposition to get everything across. A lot of games feel like they have to use elaborate cutscenes so you can connect with a character, and yet Celeste uses the gameplay instead, by climbing the mountain, you begin to feel the struggles of Madeline, you connect with her determination, her pain, which only makes the story beats more impactful, because you’ve been through those moments with her, you’ve guided her through the mountain. The game itself is a 2d platformer, and it is difficult, I failed many times while playing the game, but that only made the connection with Madeline stronger, because I was struggling as the player, I connected with Madeline, I understood her struggles and the pain she was going through. I remember reaching the top of the mountain, that pain, that determination, it turned into joy, into relief, that I had conquered the mountain, I had achieved, but the game never told me I should feel that way, there was no cutscene that said “you should be happy”, because the gameplay told me everything I needed to feel. Through playing the game, I felt determined to succeed, determined to achieve, to conquer the mountain, so when I got to the top, I felt like I had succeeded, achieved, I felt those emotions because of what I did, not because of what I was told.

There’s another example I’d like to talk about, which is why I’m writing this article in the first place, Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons. I played this a few days ago, and I honestly believe it is one of the best games ever. Brothers tells a story of two brothers on a journey to a magic tree to heal their father of a sickness he has succumbed to. The game itself is a one person co-op game, you play both brothers using one controller, each brother has a stick and a trigger. You may think that’s a bit odd, but that’s how it’s meant to be played, for reasons which I will explain later. The game itself is a good game, it’s not stunning and there are a few control problems, but it is built to tell a story in a way I’ve never experienced before. While the game does have cutscenes, there is no spoken language, the cutscenes are mainly gesture and sound, leaving you the player to interpret the story, and the thing is, it works. Throughout the game, you bond with the two brothers through their adventure, guiding them through peril and danger, all in a way that could only be told through its control scheme, the game itself is only 2-3 hours long, but in that time, I became attached to the brothers in a way I’ve never felted for many characters.

But it’s the ending that showcases why this is one of, if not, the best example of storytelling through gameplay, I cannot talk about it, because to talk about it would be to ruin the game, it is a moment that you cannot understand by watching it, it is something you cannot get from a video on YouTube, you have to experience the game for yourself in order to properly understand it. But that moment was powerful, I’ve never felt anything like it, and again, there was no cutscene that told me to feel that way, no graphic that said “this is the emotion you have to feel”, the game told me everything it wanted through the natural progression of playing the game, and because of that, that moment was more powerful than a game with traditional cutscenes could ever be.

This is how storytelling in video games should be, using the unique mechanics of the medium to tell a powerful story, rather than relying on elaborate cutscenes to convey their story, because for all the technological advances and big budgets some studios have now, they will never be able to tell a story as good as films can while they are trying to chase them. Unless they embrace the interactivity that video games offer, the stories in video games will never compare to the stories in films. Unfortunately, it appears that TLOU 2 will be revered across the industry, it will sell millions of copies, and because of that, other big budget studios will now look towards TLOU 2 as a benchmark for how stories should be told, instead of looking towards games such as Brothers and Celeste. It’s a shame really, because I feel like this is going to take us back a few years within gaming, yes they will look remarkable, yes the actors will give outstanding performances, and yet, the stories that they will tell will always be good, but never as good as films. If only they would learn to embrace interactivity, then storytelling in video games could be so much more, but alas, it appears we are destined for more sub par Hollywood style games, what a shame.