I'd like to think that, despite all of the cynicism outside of the industry, games are capable of meaningful, artistic expression. Like any industry with growing pains, we've seen flashes of brilliance followed by long stretches of time of Call of Duty knockoffs and Gears of War ripoffs and so on and so forth.
(Or is that, Nears of War? Courtesy laugh, anyone?)
I've spoken to people about narrative, writing, and expression in games time and time again. The biggest issue I have when talking to fellow enthusiasts is that the bar for good writing in a game is set entirely too low for its own good.
I remember when film critic Roger Ebert lambasted all of gaming, essentially writing it off as something that could never be capable of true artistic expression. Being that this was also indirectly critical of gamers themselves, they did the proper thing and flooded nearly every major gaming website and message board with furious comments, saying that Ebert quite simply didn't understand.
They're right to an extent - Ebert's own understanding of games went as far as about Atari's heydays, and when your only other exposure to video games is through adaptations like Super Mario Bros., Resident Evil, and the Mortal Kombat series, I can understand his sentiment. If your only understanding of Super Mario was based on the movie, and maybe glimpses of what the games look like, imagine what your opinion would be.
That being said, no one really addressed the main issue that many in the gaming community are slowly beginning to understand - in general, writing in games is pretty terrible.
I'm reminded of this any time I see praise for (and I know this may make some readers shake their head in disgust) Bioware and their recent games. There was a time when Bioware had generally serviceable writing in their games, but they seem to have opted out of having true creativity and headed straight for the easy way out. It's a shame, given the depth and visual design of games like Mass Effect that are enormously pleasing and well designed in their own right. But time after time, dialogue and character development comes up that would be passable for a sub-par B-movie.
Why do I feel this way? Consider my experience with Mass Effect 2.
(Now, I'll stay away from going into why I feel the gameplay in ME2 was already a disappointment to the entertaining but oddball spam fest combat that ME felt like, as that would be a whole other post, as I'd like to focus on the writing itself.)
I'm going to go ahead and spoil the opening if you haven't played it already - At the start of ME2, the crew of the Normandy is patrolling for Geth when they're attacked by an unknown ship. The ship is evacuated and, after saving Joker, Commander Shephard is thrown into space and he dies when his suit fails. There's one final shot of him falling towards a planet, before the player is treated to a montage of another organization from the first game, Cerberus, reconstructing Shephards body.
Once Shephard is alive again, he's granted an audience with the leader of Cerberus, known as the Illusive Man, who essentially lays out the plot of the entire rest of the game and gives him his first real quest\mission\whatever.
This entire sequence of events has bugged the hell out of me throughout the entirety of my playthrough. Shephard is literally brought back from the dead and the furthest the interaction goes with that fact is that some characters are a little surprised you're still alive. It's less shock, more of a, "Oh hey, what's up man, heard you were dead? Guess not, that's cool." It's unbelievably casual. I get it's the future and all, but really, how many people are bought back to life? The Lazarus project is portrayed as something that took years to complete and only by a shady organization with dubious ties to an unidentified man with glowing eyes so I'm guessing it's not an everyday occurrence, right?
Shephard spends all of about two or three seconds pondering this before just taking the Illusive Man's orders to heart and bouncing off on his first quest. There's no existential quandry, no self-doubt, no kind of introverted struggle dealing with life and death - you're alive now and it's awesome.
The writers at Bioware absolutely blew it with developing Shephard's character here and allowing the player to bond with what is essentially their avatar. I understand Shephard is supposed to be an extension of the player, but none of the other characters in the game seem fazed that a comrade who bled and fought beside them for an extended period of time is back from the dead. In fact, one of your own crew mates is downright pissed you're back again, because it was the result of Cerberus' work.
I guess I can understand that, but everyone takes Shephard's re-emergence like it's business as usual. The guy gets sucked out into space after his ship is destroyed and is stone dead and everyone in the universe knows it. But, bam! He's back alive again! Nothing can keep this guy down, right?! Knew you'd pull through, buddy!
There is precedent, obviously, for Shephard being able to overcome the odds, but once someone declares you KIA after your body floats off into space like an asphyxiated ragdoll and you suddenly show up years later looking exactly the same, well, I'd like to think your old comrades would have a question or two about who (or what) you really are.
Bioware fumbles with this, and it shows. For instance, Shephard's first encounter with old ally Garrus takes all of a few minutes to get through, and Garrus responds with what amounts to "Oh, you're alive, what's up dude?" before asking for help in killing a bunch of mercenaries.
Garrus and Shephard have been together since roughly the start of the original game - that's a whole hell of a lot of time to bond and fight together - and that's his greeting? Again, no existential conflict here? Just a robotic "sup" and everyone just moves on? Bioware expects the player to simply accept that THIS IS THE FUTURE and everyone you know is totally ok with you coming back from the dead despite there not really being any precedent for resurrections.
The crew themselves have plenty of problems of their own, though. Only issue is, your ship is more of a focus group meeting for Troubled Kids than a crew of badass scientists, mercenaries, and insane aliens. What do I mean? Look at it this way:
Nearly everyone on the Normandy has daddy issues or a variation thereof.
I'm not joking. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at them:
Miranda: Hates her father. Wants to protect sister from her father.
Tali: Father gets everyone on a ship killed after screwing around with Geth.
Jacob: Hates his father.
Thane: Abandons son, who hates him. (MASTERSTROKE REVERSAL)
Grunt: Just wants to kill people. Ambivalent towards his creator (basically his father).
Mordin: Student, who is like a son, is kidnapped, turns out to hate Mordin. (see Thane)
Samara: Daughter is insane, and wants to kill her. (again, Thane)
Jack: Imprisoned as a child, hates everyone.
Garrus: Wants to exact revenge on someone who betrayed him.
The only one of these that felt interesting was Garrus, given the revenge aspect and Garrus' personality. Killing the guy seems to be cathartic for Garrus, and it's kind of interesting to see the reaction to the killing is one of general relief, instead of the typical guilt trip that many characters fall under.
But for everyone else, perhaps with the exception of Grunt and maybe Jack and Mordin, just has mommy or daddy issues in some form or another. This entire series takes place in the distant future, with various species with widely different backgrounds and upbringing. And this is the best that the writers at Bioware could come up with?
I sincerely wonder if there's some kind of Bioware RPG Character Template that they just fill in the blanks with. Like a Madlib, but only more bland and whole lot less funny.
But according to the (totally not bought out by advertising money) game critic reviews, this is what amounts to superb writing! Yes the (not bought out) voices of gaming have bestowed numerous awards upon Mass Effect, and much of the praise I've seen has been for its writing.
If this is the bar we set for good writing in gaming, then we're in bad shape, fellas.
Don't get me started on Bioware's signature illusion of choice in their games, where complex interactions boil down to decisions like "Pat the dude on the back." or "Shoot the dude in the face." or, my favorite, "Do nothing to that dude and be, like, bye, dude."
Back to the original point about Shephard's death and resurrection, it seems like Bioware continuously misses chances to truly broaden their characters and give them meaningful connections with one another outside of the players desire to pursue a "romantic" or "not romantic" relationship. There are jokes I've heard about the ME series being a large dating sim and I can understand the criticsm - should anyone really care about having to pursue a "romantic" relationship in a game where the main character is bought back to life and not as a zombie?
I'm not asking for Pulitzer-level writing here, just a degree of self-awareness and understanding that not all interactions with other people are robotic back and forth you-say-something-then-I-say-something flat angle conversations as they are in ME. Call it the limitations of the genre or games itself, I still can't fathom why Bioware has only a middling grasp of creative writing and composition, but can nonetheless create a visually deep and creative world. I believe that's what they call wasted potential?
Perhaps the staff had mommy\daddy issues? Given these are the same people that provided us with such hilarity as "gigglesquee" (look it up) it wouldn't be too far of a stretch. In the end it makes it feel like ME is some kind of young adult novel with vaguely adult themes that tries entirely too hard to be "mature" for the sake of being "mature."
Perhaps in my next post I can address some other games that fall under the same bad writing banner (there are a lot) but also ones that don't and actually use the medium as an effective means of expression (there aren't many but the list is growing.)
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