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Longtime readers know I love alternate interpretations of fiction. I never could make it through Majora’s Mask. Too weird, even for me, and I hate timed games. I loved Ocarina of Time though. In any event, this clever analysis by The Game Theorists does make me a bit more appreciative of the game’s merits:

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Generally speaking, I don’t like to comment on peoples’ appearances much on this blog.  You wouldn’t go up to random people and start criticizing their looks, so it seems similarly rude to do so in a public forum.  It’s true that I occasionally do talk about it, as in this post, but I justify that by saying (1) it was about appearances as they related to politics, and (2)  it was about politicians, who are sociopaths whose feelings can’t be hurt.

But for the most part, I try not to go around playing “hot or not” just for fun–people pay enough attention to surface appearances as it is, and this blog is supposed to be about examining the less-obvious things in the world, and the subtle points that people too easily miss.

This post is going to be about looks, though–and it’s even going to involve one particular lady’s looks.  (I am especially hesitant to blog about women’s appearances, since I think they tend to be judged on those too much as it is.)  I’m only doing it because I think it’s a good jumping-off point for sociological and cultural discussions, and because the lady in question already discussed the topic on her own blog, which I think (at least, I hope) means she does not mind a polite public discussion of it.  But before I get to the point, I’ll need to give some background.

Felicia Day is an internet celebrity, popular especially among gamers because she is not only pretty, but also a gamer.  This, of course, makes her very popular with many male gamers.  She’s been in several online video series, including starring in the show The Guild, which she also wrote.

I mainly like watching her show Co-optitude, where she and her brother play multi-player games.  It’s a very funny show. (be warned: lots of profanity, only some of which is censored.) Here is a recent interview with her for those unfamiliar with her:

Anyway, though, the point is she had a lot of male gamer fans, until one day, she cut her hair short. Well, ok–she still has a lot of male gamer fans, including yours truly,  but according to this post on her blog, she started losing some, who complained that her new short haircut made them lose interest in her.

She linked to this article by Laurie Penny about why short hair on women is a political statement.  That article is itself a  response to another article called “Girls With Short Hair are Damaged” by someone called “Tuthmosis”.

At this point, I should like to pause briefly for an editorial comment: there may be many articles on the internet about celebrity haircuts.  But what site besides Ruined Chapel gives you assigned reading in the course of such an article?

Now, there are lot of interesting points in all these posts. For starters, I don’t buy Penny’s idea that a woman cutting her hair short is a political statement.  I know conservative Republican housewives who cut their hair short because they find it more practical and convenient.

But what I really want to focus on is this: in the “Girls With Short Hair” article, “Tuthmosis” asserts that long hair is “almost universally attractive to men.”  And Penny, in her feminist response to that article, implicitly agrees with this assertion.  She views short hair, therefore, as women rejecting the notion they need to please men, whereas “Tuthmosis” views it as a negative thing.

What I want to examine is whether the assertion is even true.  It is qualified with the word “almost”, which may be enough to save it, but I want to see the data backing it up.  I say this because I am one of those men who find short hair more attractive. I don’t mean this in some high-minded “it’s attractive when a woman asserts her independence” sort of way (although I do think that as well.) I mean that at a very fundamental level, I find women with short hair to be, for lack of a better word, “prettier”  than those with long hair.

My personal opinion does not prove the assertion false.  I am the “almost”.  (I might even say, “I am the 1%”) Even so, the fact that such an exception as myself exists admits the possibility of this taste for long hair changing, and short hair being preferred.

But while I may be in the minority, I’m by no means convinced I’m in as small a minority as that.  And anyway, if the 1% elites are allowed to control every other aspect of society, why not hairstyles as well?

I’m kidding.  But really, is long hair that overwhelmingly preferred?

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It’s only fitting that I should begin an article about one of the worst video game ever with a quote from the best: I am reminded of Kreia in Knights of the Old Republic II and her line “Much is buried here… and there is much that should remain buried here.”

They have uncovered the infamous landfill of E.T. video game cartridges dumped in the desert during the video game crash of the ’80s.  Why they spent the money to go find something that was buried specifically because no one wanted it, I don’t know.  I suppose so people like me would write about it.

Apparently, they are going to use this as part of a documentary about the collapse of Atari and being financed by Microsoft. Which does beg the question: is the worse example of poor management

  1. burying your disastrous failures in the desert, or
  2. spending money to dig someone else’s failures up again?

I never played the game, or even saw the movie E.T., so I can’t say for sure it’s the worst.  Hard to imagine it’s worse than Superman 64, though.

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The great thing about Knights of the Old Republic II, my favorite video game–heck, my favorite work of fiction–is that the fact that each character is crucial to the major thematic points of the game:

  •  Atton alludes to the last Jedi he kills telling him of a place where Force sensitives are sent by Revan to be broken. This is almost certainly Malachor V.
  • Mira lost her family as a result of the battle, and that is why she became a Bounty Hunter. The Exile’s actions at Malachor shaped her in this way. As Mira says “There’s a lot of lost people out there. Scattered ever since the Mandalorian Wars… if I can find them, maybe, just maybe I can put the Galaxy back together.”
  • HK-47 says that, as result of the destruction at Malachor, Revan was inspired to build him. So, as he puts it, perhaps the Exile is responsible for his creation.
  • Visas’s homeworld was destroyed by Nihilus, who was created by Malachor, and whose fleet was hauled from it. This act has clearly left deep physical and psychological scars on Visas.
  • Yusanis fathered the handmaiden with the Jedi Arren Kae, and he went with her into the Mandalorian Wars, breaking his vow to his wife. This act shames the Handmaiden. Kae (apparently) died at Malachor; making Yusanis enter politics and eventually get assassinated by Revan. He may have been at Malachor, and was obviously deeply affected by the war, hence Brianna’s interest in the Exile, who is the first person she has known since her father who suffered the effects of the war, and her loyalty to Atris, which is to make up for the shame her father’s infidelity brought upon her.
  • Bao-Dur has feelings of guilt about Malachor that made him come to Telos to aid the recovery. He also lost his arm at Malachor. He still harbors feelings of guilt for creating and using the Mass Shadow Generator.
  • Mical the Disciple was turned to his path of “historian and scientist” by the decision of the Exile to go to war, when he was not chosen as a Padawan.
  • The Mandalorians were badly beaten in the battle, necessitating Canderous Ordo (who was also at Malachor) to take up the mantle of Mandalore and reunite the clans on Dxun.
  • G0-T0 exists for the purpose of rebuilding the galaxy from the war.
  • Even the psychotic Hanharr has heard of Malachor. As he asks the Exile: “Did you hear [the Jedi] scream as you butchered the Mandalorian tribes? Did you… kill your heart to shut them out?”

From this alone, we can see that most of the Exile’s party members would not be here were it not for the Exile’s fateful decision at Malachor. But that’s not all…

  • Atris was clearly very close to the Exile in the past, and was affected deeply by her decision to go to war, as well as the resulting horror of the battle of Malachor. This clearly has deep psychological effects on her, possibly contributing to her fall to the Dark side.
  • Darth Nihilus, the closest thing the story has to an out-and-out villain, is at least partially a creation of Malachor. He is often described the most powerful entity in the game, with his presence being felt everywhere, by everyone from Kreia to the Jedi to GO-TO to General Vaklu. (Some players complain that Nihilus is too easy to defeat in combat, after his buildup. This might have been the point, however–too everyone else, he is an unstoppable force of nature; to the Jedi Exile, he’s a pushover)
  • In the game’s pivotal scene, when the Exile returns to the Jedi Enclave to meet/fight the remaining Jedi, it is revealed the s/he was also deeply affected by that last battle, and forced to cut his/herself off from the Force to survive.

All this is certainly enough to prove that indeed the ramifications of the Exile’s choice at Malachor are the central point of the game. It requires many playthroughs to find them all, but the case is overwhelming. But then, in a final masterstroke we are shown other, similar decisions and their consequences play out before us, that allow us to piece together the ultimate theme of the story:

  • The destruction of Peragus serves as an effective opening, because it reminds the Exile, subconsciously, of the annihilation of Malachor. Furthermore, Atris, Lieutenant Grenn, the Ithorians, Colonel Tobin, GO-TO and others all comment on how the lack of fuel will harm Citadel Station. Thus, Exile must come to grips with the “echo” of the destruction of Peragus. This, the game hints, is the first time the Exile has ever truly had to confront the consequences of his/her actions. Thus, by the time she leaves Telos, the Exile has seen or been told of the consequences of two of the more remarkable acts in her life, and Atris even compares the destruction of Peragus to that of Malachor.
  • The scene in which the Exile chooses either to help or furiously dismiss the beggar on Nar Shaddaa is key. Kreia allows the Exile a glimpse at the consequences of his/her choice, and reveals that it is not always as clear-cut as it may appear.
  • Nar Shaddaa is home to refugees from both wars.
  • Dantooine was badly damaged as a result of the Jedi Civil War, which was itself a result of the Mandalorian Wars.
  • Onderon is relatively unaffected by the actions of the Exile prior to the game (though s/he fought on Dxun) but the Onderonian debate between secession and isolation and remaining in the Republic bears a close resemblance to the Exile’s choice of whether to close his/herself off from the Force or to embrace it.
  • Telos presents the Exile with an opportunity for redemption, in the form of whether to help the war-ravaged planet recover, or not. (Though, as we will see, the way to do that isn’t as black and white as it seems.) More immediately, in the game’s final act, the Exile is called upon to save Telos from Darth Nihilus. This episode is particularly ingenious, as forces from Onderon and Dantooine arrive to help the Exile, who wouldn’t have done so otherwise.
  • Of course the recovery efforts on Telos and the Political Situation on Onderon are also interdependent, as the Ithorians are repopulating Telos with the Onderonian’s and Dxun’s beasts.
  • Korriban presents the Exile with the cave, where s/he must confront the pivotal moments in her past, and reflect on whether s/he would do things differently.
  • The Ubese warriors in Visquis’s lair are bitter about the bombing the Republic wrought against them in the war, and have thus been made into “weapons”, as Visquis says. This foreshadows the creation of the Sith Lord Nihilus and his hordes by the activation of the Mass Shadow Generator, as well as Revan’s ultimate plan.
  • Visas, like the Exile, has, as Sion puts it “kept living while the Universe dies” around her. She has seen a planet destroyed, and it has affected her tremendously. (Of course, her planet wouldn’t have been destroyed if… see above.)
  • The impact of the destruction and subsequent restoration of Telos is seen in many facets of the game, from the separation of Aiada and Lootra on Nar Shaddaa, to the beast rider whose Boma escapes outside of Iziz, to the oft-repeated need for fuel for Citadel Station by everyone from Lt. Grenn to Atris to Col. Tobin, show the echoes of Saul Karath’s attack.
  • Telos is again threatened towards the end of the game in the battle against Lord Nihilus, and here again, the Exile sees the consequences of his/her decisions (Peragus, Dantooine, Onderon and Malachor) play out.

The entire game builds, subtly yet relentlessly, into an awesome thematic experience that shows all the consequences of Malachor, of Peragus, of Telos, of the Mandalorian Wars and ultimately, as Kreia says: “of all wars, of all tragedies that scream across the galaxy.” Again and again, consequences of actions are shown, leading up to the last planet, where the Exile must walk upon the dead planet of Malachor, and culminating in the ending scene, in which Kreia tells the Exile how his/her choices will impact the planets and people s/he has met throughout the journey. This works well, because the player has already seen the consequences of past choices throughout the game.

But the true genius is not only that the theme is so brilliantly and so pervasively intertwined with the story, but also that it does not carry any judgment. Things may be called “light” and “dark” by characters, but the player can make their own decision. Is the “independence” of Gen. Vaklu or the “cooperation” of Queen Talia better for Onderon? The pragmatic Czerka  Corp. or the more spiritual Ithorians better for Telos? And the central question of the game: was the destruction of Malachor justified? It killed many, and ruined the lives of many more. On the other hand, would not countless more have died if the war had not ended, as the Exile can argue? And anyway, if not for Malachor, Mira, Atton, Bao-Dur, Mandalore, Brianna and Visas would not be around to help the Exile on the journey. And perhaps the most widely asked question: Is Kreia a Jedi or a Sith, good or evil?  It must be played through many times, and the player must make many different choices, but the game’s theme remains awesomely consistent no matter how the game is played.

People complain about the game’s ending, but frankly, I found it perfectly coherent and satisfying, once I understood all these concepts. It’s actually one of the best endings I’ve ever seen in a video game.

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[WARNING: This post contains spoilers for all four of the things mentioned in the title.]

About five years ago, I read Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness.  Then, last year, I played Spec Ops: The Line and Far Cry 2, which are based in part on that book.  And then, yesterday, I watched Apocalypse Now, the 1979 movie also based on that book, and which influenced both of those games.

As you may know, it has long been my contention that video games are an art form on a par with books and film.  And of these four works, it is my belief that one of the games–Spec Ops–is the best.  That said, it is also the most recent, and it uses the expectations built by the preceding tales to weave its narrative.

To begin with, I didn’t really like Conrad’s novella that much.  It wasn’t awful, but I didn’t see what was so great about it.  So there’s this guy, Kurtz; and this other guy Marlow, has been sent to find him in the Congo.  But, turns out, he’s gone nuts and is dying.  And the reason this happened to Kurtz is because being in the Congo was brutal, and he couldn’t take it.

It was never clear to me what the point was.  I guess it was that it was no fun being in the ivory business in the Congo, and that colonialism was awful, both for the colonized and the colonizers.  Well, yes–and I suppose that was more of a shocker in the era when “colonialism” was not a dirty word–but I didn’t really see any major moral depth to it.

Apocalypse Now is an adaptation of the story, set in the Vietnam War, in which Marlow is named “Willard” and has been sent by the U.S. military to assassinate Col. Kurtz who has gone mad.  And so he does.

A big problem I had with the movie was that it is really thin.  In the first 10 minutes, we are told that Kurtz is insane and ruling over a bunch of the natives.  And then, two hours later, we meet Kurtz and find out that, sure enough, he really is insane and ruling over a bunch of the natives. There is a strong implication along the way that the Vietnam war generally is also insane, but that wasn’t much of a revelation to me.

(Aside–the theme of “War Is Insane, And Makes Everyone In It Insane” was done much better, in my opinion, in the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai.  It ends with the line “Madness, madness”, which would have fit Apocalypse Now as well.)

Kurtz has no character development. Neither does Willard, really: he starts off as a battle-hardened, PTSD soldier and finishes it as an even more battle-hardened PTSD solider. I guess his crew-mates on his boat are supposed to show the ravages of war taking their toll, but they all had “doomed” written all over them from scene one.

I read on Wikipedia that they considered a different ending, where Willard joins Kurtz and fights off an airstrike on the base.  While seemingly impossible logically, that ending would make more sense thematically.  Personally, I would have liked to see an ending where Kilgore showed up and destroyed Kurtz’s base.  It would at least justify why they spend so much time on his character early in the movie.

(Another aside: Wikipedia also says that “Coppola decided that the ending could be “‘the classic myth of the murderer who gets up the river, kills the king, and then himself becomes the king — it’s the Fisher King, from The Golden Bough'”.  For the record–this is the version of the story I remembered, not the one in the 1991 movie of the same name I wrote about a few months ago. But that’s mythology for you.)

(Last aside: this post has too many asides.  One of them should be removed.)

I already wrote about Far Cry 2 in this post pretty thoroughly, so I won’t dwell on it overmuch.  The short version is that it, like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now before it, is well done, but empty. Although, I suppose it does sort of do what I criticized Apocalypse for not doing, in that there is some vague hint of character development in the sense that the player’s character is being sent to eliminate the Jackal in the beginning and winds up siding with him at the end.

To recap, in Heart of Darkness, we have this guy Kurtz.  Nobody is quite sure what his deal is, and we gradually find out that he went crazy in the jungle because everything was brutal.  Then, in  Apocalypse Now, we have this guy Kurtz who everybody thinks went crazy in the jungle because everything was so brutal–and indeed, so he did.  And then in Far Cry 2, we have this guy the Jackal, who goes crazy in the jungle because everything is so brutal.

Now, you will immediately see where Spec Ops is really different–here we have this guy Konrad.  And nobody is quite sure what Konrad’s deal is… and he’s in a desert!

Just kidding, that’s not the difference.

(more…)

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[Sometimes I just get these ideas–I was thinking about the ME 3 ending, and it occurred to me how much its profoundly messed-up logic could have been improved by borrowing from a certain Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Then I realized they even had the perfect character to do so…]

INT-CITADEL–CATALYST’S ROOM

[Shepard has just met the Catalyst]

Shepard: Do you know how I can stop the Reapers?

Catalyst: I control the Reapers.  They are my solution.  Every 50,000 years, I have them wipe out organics who will create synthetics who would wipe out the organics.

Shepard: What? That’s insane!

Catalyst: The created always rebel against the creators.  The Reapers must wipe out all organics who are capable of creating synthetics.

[Enter Mordin Solus, who has survived the events on Tuchanka and secretly boarded the Citadel.]

Mordin: Allow me, as an old Gilbert and Sullivan fan, to make a suggestion. The subtleties of the Salarian mind are equal to the emergency. The thing is really quite simple – the insertion of a single word will do it. Let it stand that every organic shall die who doesn’t create synthetics, and there you are, out of your difficulty at once!

Catalyst: Oh.  Very well.

[Catalyst vanishes, Reaper invasion stops. The entire cast enters.]

FINALE-ENSEMBLE

LIARA

Hip hip hurray,

All is okay–

Ev’rything is copacetic!

There’ll be no death

Even for Geth–

Peace to all who art synthetic!

ALL

Though ’twas a general rule in times before:

“Created must oppose the creator”

This time around, we sought to fix

Problems caused by the synthetics.

CMDR. SHEPARD

We might have been

Like a machine–

It was nearly cause for panics!

But now a peace,

Has brought a cease

To the harvest of organics!

ALL

                                                      The three choices given this organic (alluding to Shepard)

All seemed just a bit tyrannic!

He’s/I’m Commander Shepard, here to tell

You/Us his favorite choice on the Citadel!

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Chris Franklin at Errant Signal wrote a good post about the game Quake.  He says a lot of things I have subconsciously thought, but never been able to articulate about the game. And it’s helped me to understand why I like this fairly unremarkable game so much.

He describes it as: “a game that’s part Lovecraftian gods and vile chapels from beyond human knowledge, part medieval fantasy horror full of bloody knights and dark castles, and part SciFi adventure of shooting space enforcers with hyperblaster lasers.”

In the sequels, they removed the first two elements, turning it into just a generic sci-fi adventure. Too bad; the original was far more interesting.

Franklin sums up the game’s mood thus: “Quake is unified in its attempt to spread an almost over the top, self-indulgent gloom with a hint of smouldering anger.” Small wonder I’ve always liked its mood, and find myself occasionally replaying it despite its completely mediocre gameplay.

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Yeah, I know–great holiday game.  At least the first one was set in wintertime.  So far, it seems a lot more polished than its predecessor, but at the same time that makes it feel less like I’m playing a game and more like I’m watching a movie.  There’s a level where you come across a downed plane in the post-apocalyptic cityscape that really reminded me of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: follow NPC, listen to exposition, mash button to get into a place, watch cutscene…

Having said that, the game’s story is more interesting than C.o.D. and it does include a stealth mechanic that makes the game a bit more challenging than the average military FPS.  One of the things I liked about Metro 2033 was that you didn’t have to play it a certain way.  I got through it despite doing all the wrong things–like not using stealth, charging blindly through the neo-Nazi shootouts in the tunnels, fighting the weird glowing monsters in the nuclear reactor place instead of taking out their nests.

Also, although the horror element seems to have been lessened in this game, they have included one thing that makes it far scarier than the first one: spiders.  I dislike spiders, and the ones in this game are really creepy.

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There is a song by Sheldon Harnick called “The Merry Minuet”, often performed by The Kingston Trio.  It is very cynical, darkly-humorous in a Tom Lehrer-esque sort of way.  It includes the lines: “They’re rioting in Africa/There’s strife in Iran/What Nature doesn’t do to us/Will be done by our fellow Man”

I found myself thinking of this often while playing the 2008 video game Far Cry 2.  It should have been its epigraph.

It is very dark, nihilistic game.  I played it after reading people compare the excellent Spec Ops: The Line to it.  Both are influenced by the book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.  Far Cry 2 is set in an African country in the middle of a civil war.  The player assumes the “Marlow” (or more accurately, “Willard” from Apocalypse Now)  role, and is sent to kill an arms dealer named “the Jackal”.

The Jackal is, of course, in the “Kurtz” role, and he wastes no time in showing up to recite some Nietzsche at the incapacitated player.  This is followed by a lot of (to quote the ESRB rating) “Blood, Drug References, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes [and] Strong Language”.   Then the Jackal shows up again and explains that his plan is to end the violence.  And his chosen method for ending the violence is to kill everyone.

This is only slightly less ridiculous than the Catalyst’s scheme in Mass Effect 3, but for some reason Far Cry 2 didn’t generate near as much outcry. Critics have lauded it for its commentary on the nihilistic violence of video games. The violence of Far Cry is so meaningless… it really makes you think, y’know?

Except that, unlike Spec Ops, it really has nothing to say about nihilistic violence in games, except that it’s there.  Just like it’s in all the violent games it’s supposedly a commentary upon.  I wouldn’t have even thought it was making any sort of commentary, except that critics claimed it was.

conspiracy-keanu games

The point of the game, I guess, is that war is pointless and stupid.  Which I guess is often true, although surely not as stupid as all this.  The factions will often give the player a quest in a scene that goes something like this:

Oh, hey there, complete stranger—would you mind going to the other side of the country and blowing up the hospital?  Our enemies are giving out free malaria vaccines there, and we don’t want people to think they are nicer than we are.  What’s that? You have malaria too? Wow, small world.  Well, here’s your C4.  Off ya go!

And you have to do it if you want to progress in the game!  The box says you can play it your way, but that is not really the case—you have to play it the Jackal’s way; and frankly, he’s not very good at video games.

Pretensions aside, the game is a mindless shooting gallery with pretty scenery.  The most “influence” Conrad could really be said to have over this game is the African setting and the mentality of “Exterminate the Brutes”.

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So, no doubt even non-gamers have heard the fuss about the new gaming consoles coming out this month.  It’s the first new console generation when I have had no desire to buy any of the new consoles.  Here’s why:

Now, graphics aren’t all that matters, and if there were a good launch title–say, a Fallout 4, made by Obsidian–on these consoles, I would likely get one.  But there isn’t. All there is is Madden and Call of Duty: Ghosts.   (So named, I assume,  because everyone is a ghost after all the apocalyptic world wars depicted in previous Calls of Duty.)

I am not seeing any reason to upgrade.