So far, it’s what I had been warned it would be: a Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance sort of thing. If you liked that game, this is for you. If you thought it was incredibly tedious, as I did, this might not be so good. But I’m only a little way into it. Maybe it will pick up.
I’ll try to post more impressions at a later date.
“What games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you’ve killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that’s usually the end of it – you’ll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.”— Matthew Devereux. “The moral cost of video games”, The Christian Science Monitor January 7, 2008.
“Awaken.” –Kreia, to the Jedi Exile. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. 2004.
I know I have blogged about this game before, but I find I just cannot say enough about it. And whenever I start to despair of video games prospects as an art form, it cheers me up to think about it.
The greatest video game I have ever played is Obsidian Entertainment’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Indeed, I consider it to be one of the finest artworks I have ever seen. It was playing this game which convinced me the medium was truly mature. (There were games made before it that rank as art, but playing it really brought it home to me.)
There are many things to recommend it: Firstly, the gameplay is quite varied and enjoyable in and of itself, and the graphics, while by no means stellar, especially today, convey subtle feelings quite powerfully, and are absolutely perfect for the story they tell. Finally, the music and sound is superb and the voice-acting is uniformly excellent—even “bit” characters perform wonderfully.
But, of course, what really matters to me is the writing; both the story and the dialogue. And KotOR II, you see, has the greatest writing of any video game I have ever played.
The story is brilliant—subtle, moving, suspenseful, funny and intriguing all at once. It effortlessly combines elements of adventure, mystery, comedy, romance, political thriller, horror and psychological drama into one perfectly paced narrative. The dialogue, too, is superbly done, containing layers of meaning and deep, philosophical underpinnings beneath its sharp, witty style.
But what is truly wonderful about KotOR II is its thematic coherence. Every character, every quest, everything in the game relates, in some way, to its overall thematic point. And it is always done cleverly and subtly—so much so that you will not realize it until you are familiar with the game’s theme. Every one of the game’s complex and rich characters serves to explore the key motif.
The obvious question is “what’s it about, then?”. It is hard to say, exactly. It touches on so many ideas about human nature, about politics, about psychology, about economics, about metaphysics that it is hard to answer concisely. The best I can say is that its theme is war, and its physical, political, psychological and spiritual consequences. But even that does not do it justice.
People may complain that its ending feels rushed and incoherent—and indeed it was rushed, but somehow, for me, it has never seemed incoherent. The coherence is what we see in the game; true, there is no total, demystifying explanation at the end, but if you really think about the message of the game, you will see that it has an awesome thematic coherence, the likes of which I have not seen in any other game, even Planescape: Torment. (Made, it must be pointed out, by many of the same people who made KotOR II)
In a recent interview with Iron Tower Studios, KotOR II’s lead designer, Chris Avellone, said the following regarding game design:
“You can pull a character through a story by having events unfold around them, or you can make it clear that events are happening because of what the player did – and *specifically* what the player did. Part of the fun of a world and a story is how your presence is causing changes in it, seeing those changes play out, and being made aware exactly how you caused those changes. Being an agent of change, the spark lighting the fuse, or the butterfly wings that spark the hurricane on the other side of the world is pretty gratifying.”
This seems to me to articulate perfectly what KotOR II accomplished, and it is a mystery to me why it is not held up as a model of choice and consequences gameplay. Certainly, the story would be robbed considerably of its power were it told in a book or a film. That is perhaps its greatest achievement; that it is not merely a great story, but a great story specific to its medium.As I re-read what I have written here, I feel tempted to explain some part of the game, some character, some scene, shed some further light on its themes—but I cannot bring myself to spoil it any more than I may have already. It must be understood by the player, and to explain more would not convey the same feeling. It defies description.
The game is a masterwork, and in my opinion nothing has come close to it since. Knights of the Old Republic II is truly a superb game, and even if the video game industry never turns out anything close to as good as it again, it alone will have justified the medium’s rank as “Art”.
According to this article by Peter Nowak, mainstream media outlets do not treat video games the same as they do television and film.
I can believe it, although I think it is changing now. I remember when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke all kinds of sales records in its debut, one could see the press realizing this was a serious medium.
The bad thing is that the sorts of games that set these records are generally not the sort that show the medium at its artistic best. But it is a start.
So, I see they’re releasing a “remastered” version of the original Halo.
I’ve never been a Halo fan, but even if you think it’s the best game ever, do you really need a remastered version of it? I mean, sure, they’ll give it better graphics, but so what? It’s the same thing. What was missing from the first Halo?
Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) writes:
“We now have proof that computer games stop children reading, withering their imaginations and filling their minds with grubby rubbish. Parents have a right and a duty to protect their young from this sort of thing. You wouldn’t give your children neat gin. Why leave them alone at the screen?”
He does not explain what this proof is, although it is trivially true that when someone is playing a computer game he is not reading–unless he is playing a text-based game–but at any rate, what significance that holds, I cannot guess. As to his other complaints; it is true that some games fill the mind with “rubbish”, but others do not. Some games are intelligent and thought-provoking.
Hitchens’ critiques seem to me to apply equally well to television, film, music and theatrical performances. Should children be forbidden from all these as well?
I’ve been playing Remedy Entertainment’s game Alan Wake this weekend. Let me state up front that it is one of the better games I’ve played, is very atmospheric, and has a number of clever ideas and quite an enjoyable story.
Nevertheless, it, along with much of what I’m hearing about Rockstar’s L.A. Noire, has made me a little concerned. It seems almost like video games are trying too hard to imitate other art forms, as if to prove that they are worthy. An understandable impulse, I suppose, given what people like Roger Ebert say about them.
Alan Wake seems to be trying really hard to prove it can do everything that a horror novel, TV program, or film can do. And, indeed, it can. As a story, it is every bit the equal of the typical specimens of those genres. Likewise, Noire–which I have not played–has been greeted with “it is like a Hollywood noir-detective story! Huzzah!”
This is good, I guess. But the thing that bothers me is that video games are not the same thing as books or TV series or films. As others have said, they are a unique form, and it would be a shame if they constrained themselves needlessly in trying to do in their form that which is by its nature optimized for others.
P.S. I should mention that a while back, I read a really good article about this tendency in games. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who wrote it or where it appeared. (Critical Missive and Sane Man of an Insane World were my first guesses, but I couldn’t find it either place.) If anyone reading this happens to know, I will make sure to add a link to it.
There’s a controversy brewing over the trailer for the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game. It seems the game depicts an attack on Britain similar to the terrible events of 7/7 2005. I can see their point, but I don’t think they should ban the game over this–this sort of thing has been done in fiction for a long time.
Activision’s statement on this, quoted in the Mail article above, is: “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is a fictional action game aimed at mature adults and set in World War Three. The scenes in the game are entirely fictional and are not intended to recreate any historical events.”
(It’s getting kind of ridiculous with this series. By my reckoning, they’re on at least World War Five by this point, but never mind.)
First, Roger Ebert has an article on movie sequels:
“No movie executive has ever been fired for greenlighting a sequel. Once a brand has been established in the marketplace, it makes sound business sense to repeat the formula…. Movie critics despair of sequels as betraying a lack of imagination and originality. There is truth in that. But they address a hunger among fans of popular movies, who currently are waging an Internet war against Paramount for deciding not to make a sequel to 2004’s Anchorman.”
Secondly, Eric Schwarz of Critical Missive has an article at Game Banshee about the possibility of a Planescape: Torment sequel.
My feeling is that people are often too quick to denounce sequels as being inherently “unoriginal”. There are many cases in which they build in clever, meaningful ways upon their predecessors. It may be unusual, but it’s not unheard of.
Video games are now officially Art, according to the U.S. government.
Admittedly, I suspect they won’t fund the very best games, and the Tea Partiers will probably throw a fit over the fiscal irresponsibility of it all–and they may even have a point in this case–but still, it’s nice to see they realized the medium was worthy.
According to a new study, playing football [This means “soccer” here] video games makes people more violent than playing shooting video games.
I don’t know about soccer, but I will say that by far the most angered I have ever been with a video game was when playing an (American-style) football game. I think it’s mostly the time issue. If you can’t get past something in Quake, you can always save and come back. With a sports game, it’s possible to play for a while, go right down to the very end thinking you’ll win, and then lose at the last second because of the AI cheating bad luck.
