Intriguing people isn't easy. One has to come up with something original, opaque, but tantalizing. Philip K. Dick was good at this, coming up with mysterious/compelling scenarios that drew in a reader. But following through on these proves to be even more difficult. Once you've wound up so much intrigue, it's nearly impossible to come up with a satisfying denoument. I've often thought that reading Dick would be much more satisfying if one left the book at the 75% mark.
So it is with 3 excellent video games I've played recently.
Half-Life 2
The first is the truly revolutionary, marvelous Half-Life 2. More than any game that has come before, the focus here is complete interactivity. Rather than making the experience explicitly cinematic (in terms of cutscenes, third person camera shots, etc.) the game never shows anything except for what Gordon Freeman sees. Moreover, during sections where one is interacting with people, Gordon can move around, turn his back on the speaker, anything he likes, really. Nearly every object in the game can be manipulated or picked up with the gravity gun, leading to the first game I'm aware of when physics is actually used to solve puzzles, rather than to just add realism.
Though the game is a 1st-person shooter, there is an astounding amount of variation to the battles, relying on the gravity gun, vehicles, command of other species, and others. One never gets a sense of monotonous, plodding shooting game. Each level has something dynamic, something new and tricky. The use of triggered events is easily the best I have ever seen in any game. Clearly, the game makers spent a lot of time making sure that something cool happened every few minutes.
The story, while sparse, is truly engrossing. Sort of picking up from the ending of Half-Life, Gordon Freeman is awakened by G-man aboard a train headed for City 17. City 17 is eastern-European-like dilapidated metropolis inhabited by a bizarre military presence and a terribly oppressed populace. As such we begin in medias res, and have to piece together what went on in the 20 or so years between the Black Mesa accident and the present day. One learns more and more about the human representative in charge, and the Combine ("our benefactors"). But the setup exceeds the ending by far:
Spoilers: (highlight text inside box to view)
| Once you blow up the bad guy, trying to escape into the rift created by the Combine, time simply freezes and G-man takes you away to, presumably, yet another dangerous situation for you to handle. That is, he puts you back to sleep until you will be useful again. There is no explanation of who the Combine are, or how they fit in with the events of the last game. You have no idea what will happen to Alex. |
With this game, at least, I'm hopeful that things will be resolved, since Valve has stated that there will be a third game, and that it will be the resolution of the series.
Myst IV
With a 3D game like Half-Life 2, the interactivity has always been there. Even though HL2 has greatly increased the possibility of interaction, we've always more or less felt that we could exist and manipulate this world. The problem is that it doesn't seem to be a realistic world like one we inhabit. Textures, multi-polygon objects, landscapes are all well and good, but even with today's advanced processors we cannot hope to approach real film-quality visuals.
The Myst games have always been very realistic, in that their graphics and sound seem lifelike, relying on pre-rendered backgrounds and node-based navigation. This puts a strict limit on interactivity, especially when it comes to movement, but also in how objects in the static frames appear not to move. In the past the game makers tried to overcome this with quicktime movies superimposed onto the 2D picture, to make it look like objects could really move (e.g., a windmill spinning in the distance). The effect never really worked, of course, because even though it was clearly moving one could not move around inside it. This is really the same problem that FMV games had, which is that while the image was very lifelike, the inability to interact with it made it still inherently phony.
Building on some techniques from Myst 3, IV achieves something wonderful, which is essentially 3D FMV. That is, they appear to be projecting 2D video (either live-action or pre-rendered) as textures onto a 3D object. The player has the ability to pan 360 degrees from any node in the game. If in one of those nodes there is a character speaking to you, you can pan left and right, turn around with your back to him, and it all works---it seems real. Put that together with the most advanced and beautiful 3D environments ever conceived, and you create a truly great user experience.
The story is also very engrossing, and much more involving than previous Mysts. The player arrives on Tomanha to meet Atrus, but he soon has to leave and asks you to keep an eye on his daughter Yeesha. One can walk around, get acquainted with the world and with Yeesha herself, who talks to you in several of the locations here. Thus you get to know the character in an inherently more interactive way than any previous game. Soon, Atrus' sons Sirrus and Achenar begin to encroach on the world and kidnap Yeesha, and you have to free her while Atrus is away.
Spoilers: (highlight text inside box to view)
| But at the end of the game, after a horribly inappropriate Peter Gabriel music video that is shoved into game, you rescue Yeesha, Achenar and Sirrus are both dead, and that's really it. There's no relevations, nothing like a real climax, as the endgame is just a stupid exercise negligibly different from a slider puzzle. And worse of all, after engaging in so much interactivity, the ending takes the player's control completely away. Its ending is abrupt, blase, and altogether disappointing. |
Knights of the Old Republic 2
Finally, we have the sequel to the earth-shattering KOTOR. The original was an amazing journey through the Star Wars universe, an epic, with tons of interesting character interaction and story development. Although the combat was done in an RPG style (which is boring), the rest of the game worked so well that one was willing to overlook that.
In the sequel, you do not reprise your role, and all character relationships from the past are basically irrelevant, as you begin as an entirely new character, an exile from the Jedi order. By emphasizing the schism created by the Mandalorian wars, the creators insert the player into a genuinely difficult moral drama, full of gray areas and uncertain decisions. The player has to deal with his days as a general responsible for countless deaths, and find a way to save the fledgling republic in its dark days following the Jedi Civil War.
The game has the feeling of Majora's Mask, which was based completely on the Ocarina of Time's engine, with the same character models essentially, but with a new story and new voice actors. Combat, weapons, all remain about the same.
After building an awesome story, they cop out at the end:
| As a Light Side character, you pursue Kreia to the Sith Academy on Malachor V, kill her, and she tells you the fates of your companions. After you leave the planet, there is a 10 second video of the Ebon Hawk flying away, and then the credits. You have no interaction with the other characters in the last 30-40 minutes of the game, leaving all sorts of loose ends such as your romances with Visas and Brianna, HK-47's boiling hatred of the clones of himself, Atton's past as a murderer, etc. One never decides to go after Revan beyond the rim into Sith territory, or even finds out what the exile will do next. And we certainly have no real idea of where Revan is or what he is doing. |
All of these games are sequels, so hopefully they will beget yet more sequels which will make up for these terrible finales. At least 2 (Myst IV and HL2) have already had sequels announced, so it may happen.