Defending Imagination: Movement in the First Person

Last time I explored ways in which moral choices can be impactful without directly effecting gameplay. Today, I’d like to explore another way our minds can make the roles we play in games a bit more vibrant by exploring ways to interpret character movement in an FPS.

Character animation in a third person game has always been important. Indeed, it’s what makes games like Uncharted and Prince of Persia look so good. Recently, this has become more of a trend in first person games. Mirror’s Edge did a fantastic job of putting you in the shoes of a skilled traceur (that’s someone who does parkour). Games like Bethesda’s upcoming Brink look to further this trend.

But in a way, these intricate ways of moving through the environment is nothing new to me. Whenever I play a first person game, I never visualize the character just clumsily jumping over a small wall. I always envision myself expertly vaulting over it. Sure, it’s not directly spelled out for me, but in my head, my character can be doing cool and unique every time I push a button.

To illustrate my point, I’ll share some tales of my Khajiit thief in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The movement in the Elder Scrolls games (and by extension, Fallout 3) is typically described as floaty and not particularly intricate. This becomes magnified when you play these games in their third person viewpoints. (By the way, if you are, you’re doing it wrong.)

One common thing I’ll do in the game with my thief is to jump across rooftops when I’m sneaking around at night. From the game’s third person perspective, I get a somewhat canned looking jump animation as my charter quasi-floats about. But from the first person, in my head my character is skillfully leaping from roof to roof stealthily and quietly thanks to my feline agility.

I’ve done this in countless other games, since the days of Quake. When I strafed to avoid a rocket, I imagined my space marine leaping out of the way for dear life. When I did the crouch jumps in the original Half Life, I saw Gordon Freeman leaping up to narrow spaces and pulling himself up.

Now what I do not mean to do here is excuse lazy developers. When such animations are properly implemented, the experience can be great. It’s most important in a game like Mirror’s Edge, where these animations are an integral part of the gameplay. But does anyone clearly remember the “first person actor” elements of Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway or the full body animation of your character in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? It didn’t really serve any function in the game aside from graphical flourishes, and even then they weren’t particularly memorable. One has to wonder if that development time and effort wouldn’t have been better spent elsewhere.

Defending Imagination: The Means to the End

Last time I took a look at the silent protagonist and the ways in which our imaginations can give that character life. To further the trend of storytelling in games, I’d like to examine moral choices in games.

These days it’s all the rage to have some sort of morality system in the game. However, many gamers complain of the binary nature of such systems and the fact that typically these choices have little to no effect on the story or gameplay. I’m here to argue that these choices don’t need to.

Let’s take a look at Bioshock. The game’s key morality choice focused on the decision to harvest for release the little sisters. If you did, you got more Adam and the game’s ending cinematic would differ. Many claimed that there was no real moral consequence, that the decision was a matter of what ending do I want and how hard do I want the game to be.

But in truth, these decisions can drastically shape the character you’re playing. Bioshock features a (mostly) silent protagonist. He’s really a blank canvas for you to paint. If you decide to save the little sisters, you’ve created a character that is a good soul. By this logic, all of his actions are now motivated by a desire to save himself and the other innocent denizens on Rapture. If you decide to harvest the little sisters, you’ve created an evil, power mad anti-hero who would stop at nothing to gain ultimate power and control of the underwater city no matter who he hurts along the way.

Now doesn’t that sound more interesting than one of two pre-rendered cinematics? It gets even more interesting if you actually care about the relationships between your characters. Many people viewed the romantic relationships in Mass Effect as little more than an excuse to watch some soft-core digital porn. But if you play up those relationships in your head during the entire game, great moments can occur. If Liara is in your party and you’ve been created a romance with her, then anytime you do something in combat to save her or help is now motivated by that love.

We don’t need a tangible result for these choices. It should be enough to have our perception of the characters altered. Is Wander right or wrong when he takes down a Colossus? Is it right or wrong to nuke Megaton? Is it right or wrong to hug your Fable II wife or fart in her general direction? The ending may be the same, but the journey there is completely different. It’s the means to an end, people!

Tune in next time when I tackle player movement and interaction in the first person perspective. It’s more interesting than that sounds, I promise.

Defending Imagination: The Silent Protagonist

Gamers are a strange bunch. We indulge in a very creative medium. Games cover a wide array of art styles, stories, play styles, and experiences. And for all our love of this wondrous medium, we’re an unimaginative bunch. Gamers rarely want to leave aspects of their games to their own devices. The developer must have every element of a game front and center or we will not consider how it could be.

To explain my point, I’m going to explore three different scenarios. This first article is a defense of the silent protagonist, particularly Gordon Freeman of the Half Life series. Many gamers criticize Gordon for his lack of a voice. Because Valve did not hire a voice actor for Gordon or write lines of dialogue for him, many write him off as a soulless avatar with no personality. And yet, when I play through the Half Life games, my opinion of Gordon couldn’t be further from that assessment.

In my opinion, Valve wants us, the gamer, to fill in for the role of Gordon. Gordon doesn’t speak so that we may give him a voice. No lines of dialog are written lest they conflict with how we want to character to react to the world around him. Now I’m not saying you have to speak out loud in response to everything Alex says to you (although I have found myself inadvertently doing that on occasion), but even some subconscious thought can do the trick.

I’ll draw an example from a scene in Half Life 2: Episode 2. This could be considered spoiler territory, so consider yourself warned. There is a point in the game where Alex becomes mortally wounded. Gordon is left stuck under rubble as Alex desperately reaches out to him before she is struck once more by a Hunter. Now there are several ways for this scenario to play out.

For me, I was desperately hammering on my W button, even though I knew it was futile. I was desperate to save Alex, but there was nothing I could do. I actually felt helpless. Alternatively, Valve could have had Gordon actually shouting, “No! Alex! No!” or what have you. It may have worked (depending on the quality of the voice acting), but most I fear people would have found it cheesy.

But what mostly happened, is that people just sat there and watched their cut scene. In some level, they would have preferred the second option above. But by using some imagination, the scene was far more powerful than any passive cinema could have been. This is why I watch movies and play games. There’s a difference, and it is left to us to make that difference.

And that’s just one example from that game. When Dog found me in the rubble of Episode 1’s opening, I was glad to see him. When Alex hugged me, I actually felt loved to some degree. When Dog  jumped that Strider, I was relieved, excited, and actually shouted out, “Fuck yeah! It’s Dog!”

Many other games work on this level. The Myst games come to mind. By Must IV, Atrus feels like an old friend. The news of his passing in the opening of Myst V left me genuinely sad. Fallout 3 allowed me to fill in the shoes of the wanderer, making that character my own. By the end of the game (warning, another spoiler), I felt this strange connection to my in game parents when I entered the final code into Project Purity. It was this almost strange and calming moment as I faced certain death. I pity the person who just saw that as some puzzle, punched in the numbers, then complained about the final cutscene. That was one of the best endings I’ve ever experienced in a game.

Tune in for part 2, where I’ll explore why moral choices in games don’t necessarily need to have a direct impact the game’s story or gameplay.wordpres

Pricey Sony Proposition Gets Offensive

So this Thursday, Sony will be releasing the PSP Go. It’s their all digital PSP first introduced to us at E3 (after it had already been leaked). Will you be buying one? If you answered no, you are correct. If you said yes or maybe, keep reading. I’m going to try and save you $250+.

The PSP Go is a fundamentally good idea. Create a more portable version of the PSP that forgoes the system’s ill conceived UMD drive for an all digital approach. Journalist who first used the device claimed it to be quite comfortable. Sony had at the time a number of games available to download with more releases and digital version of UMD games appearing each week.

At their press conference, Sony announced the price of the system. $250. Echoes of 2006’s 599 US dollar PS3 sounded throughout the room. A PSP 3000 can be bought in a basic package for $170. Another $30 gets you any number of bundles, such as Rockband Unplugged or Dissidia: Final Fantasy. And these bundles even include various sizes of memory stick pro duo cards and a movie. What would come with the PSP Go? The system and a charging cable. Now granted, the system does have 16gigs of internal flash memory, but you are also losing the UMD drive. So how does Sony justify this price? They very plainly state that they are targeting early adopters.

Ok, fine. If Sony wants to go for early adopters, then surely they’ll put a little icing on the cake? How about a free game? SCEE revealed that those buying a PSP Go in Europe before October 10^th would receive a free digital copy of Gran Turismo. Not bad. Soon after that announcement, rumors began to fly that SCEA would be giving American PSP Go buyers a free copy of Rockband Unplugged. And why not? It’s a great game that uses a lot of DLC. It makes perfect sense on the PSP Go. Then we find out that it is not the full game, but a lite version. It’s still compatible with DLC, but apparently Sony couldn’t find it in their hearts to part with the core game.

So I’m supposed to be a PSP Go early adopter? That means I’m probably a PSP early adopter. And in fact, I am. I still own a perfectly functional PSP 1000 (aka the PSP Phat). I’ve been forced to watch incremental upgrade after incremental upgrade with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. Smaller size? Eh. Microphone and Skype? Don’t need it. When the PSP Go was shown, I thought this might be my chance to finally upgrade the old girl. But what of my UMD library of games? What would become of them? If Sony wants me and my kin to buy, then they surely have some plan to take care of us. And they were working on it.

The above link takes you to a Gizmodo story from June 4, 2009. John Koller, Director of Hardware Merketing for Sony, said at the time that they would be “unveiling that soon.” That was June. The UMD trade in program would certainly be a big sticking point for me as to whether or not I would be getting a PSP Go. Months went by with either a no comment or a we’re working on it. Finally, we reached Tokyo Game Show, a full three and a half months later and a scant two weeks before the PSP Go’s retail release. First, SCEE announced their plan. Previous PSP owners would still need their old PSP and a UMD. They could then log into the PSN and download three games off a (laughable) list of 17 titles. According to Kotaku, this news came out at 6:30 am.

Then at 4:40 pm, Kotaku published a story announcing that there would be no UMD conversion program for the US. Well why not? Sony’s response is as follows: “We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time.” Really? “Legal and technical reasons” are preventing you from offering anything to the early adopter, UMD owning fanbase that you are targeting? I mean, was SCEA seriously not aware that 10 hours ago, SCEE had announced a program. A terrible program, but a program nonetheless.

Now, we are left to assume one of two things transpired here. The first scenario is that someone at Sony got drunk and decided it would be totally awesome to release a digital PSP, started making them, and didn’t tell anybody, leaving the rest of the company essentially caught with their pants down. The only other scenario is that they just simply lied to us. They knew there would be no way to have every PSP game ever released on UMD ready as a digital download and knew they would be no way to convert your UMDs as a digital copy, so they bought time by lying, waiting until a week before the system’s release to give us the bad news. I mean, in this Destructoid interview from September 21, three days before they made their announcement of no trade in program, SCEA’s Eric Lempel said they’re still looking into it.

And it doesn’t end there. For the dozens of you who own a PSP peripheral such as the camera or GPS antennae, you are not left in the dust. You just have to use this thing.

It doesn’t even look like the system can open with this atrocity on. Why not just design the system to use the existing hardware? It’s your system! You can do whatever you want with it. I guess PSP Go owners will not be playing Invizimals.

At least in Japan Sony has had a history of releasing digital titles slightly below the retail price. And why shouldn’t they? There’s no manufacturing or shipping costs. There’s no retailer cut. It’s pure profit. Oh, but then comes SCEA once again to defy all logic. In that same Destructoid interview, Lempel says that matching the MSRP is part of their strategy. Sony wants a “level playing field.” Ok, let’s have some fun with numbers. As Andrew Yoon points out at Joystiq, many games are found more cheaply at retail than online. And let us not forget things like Best Buy Rewardzone points or Gamestop trade ins. Level playing field indeed.

So let us recap. Sony wants you, the early adopter, their loyal customer, to buy a $250 version of a system that you already own and could buy new for $80 cheaper. They then want you to buy all of your games over again at their too high prices. And if you were so dedicated to the company and the platform that you bought one of their underutilized peripherals, they want you to buy a cable that makes your new system look like a Frisbee. They are not so much targeting early adopters as they are taking advantage of them, pure and simple. Quite frankly, I’d rather wait a couple more weeks and buy the $200 Gran Turismo PSP 3000. Way to support your product, Sony.

Does this thing work?

Just testing some iPhone and wordpress functionality. We’re trying to decide on a blog platform for the Alt Project Trip.

Windows 7 Beta – Very First Impressions

I am typing this from Windows Live Writer, a part of Windows 7. I gotta say, this is pretty nice so far. Though I can’t really comment on stability yet, I would like to point out some nice, new features.

The new system tray is very nice. Click that little arrow, and all your typically unused icons appear in a neat little box. It’s much less clutter. I set up Steam and Twhirl to always be visiible, since I use those all the time. And see that little rectangle in the bottom right corner? Mouse over that to make all windows transparent to see your desktap gadgets. Click it to minimize all.

Shades of Mac OS X, but the new taskbar is great. You can pin programs you always use to the bar itself, and open programs will come and go. I can’t really grab a screen grab to show it, but mousing over an icon gives the Vista style preview. But mousing over the preview gives a full screen preview. Also, mousing over the active IE 8 window gives previews of each open tab.

I like the empahsis on floating gadgets without the dock. They they’ll still sticky to the sides if you like having a sidebar, the aforementioned tranparent to desktop view makes custom layouts of gadgets extremely useful. Also, you can pick a whole bunch of wallpapers, and it will cycle through them. It just did it as I was typing that sentence, in fact. Crazy!

See?! Crazy!

Wordpad actually looks like a word processor now. Handy since my Office 2007 key stopped working after I did a reformat a few weeks ago.

I’ll continue playing with this thing and chime in with more thoughts. Also, I took all these screen grabs with a nifty new utility called the Snipping Tool. Fun and productive!

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So long, 1UP Show. To all those who lost their jobs yesterday, I hope you land on your feet soon. I’ll be eagerly watching for your next endeavors.

Testing photo taking

Just trying out the way my phone can take pictures right to wordpress. This is my holiday gaming setup.

iPhone!

Whoo! I can do wordpress from my iPhone. This is crazy.

On MGS4 and Story

I originally posted this over on the Squadron of Shame board, but wanted to share it here as well.

I’d like to go on a side rant about the story in MGS4. You know what killed it for me more than anything? Just about every major cutscene was shown as “trailers” before the games release. I’m going to get into spoiler territory (though I guess Konami doesn’t consider these spoilers), so be warned.

One of the very first trailers for the game showed Snake vs. Liquid inside of REX and RAY. I mean, wtf?! That should have been an amazing moment in the game. First getting to pilot REX, then the showdown with Liquid. But as soon as I went to Shadow Moses, I knew exactly what was coming up. There was literally no excitement going into what should have been a huge payoff for the entire series.

Speaking of Shadow Moses, that suprise was ruined in a later trailer. Again, how awesome would it have been to just hear, “We’re going back to Shadow Moses.” But no, we get once again a “trailer” that not only gives it away, but even gives away the MGS1 part.

I keep putting trailer in quotes because these weren’t really trailers. They were just the cutscenes. No changes made or anything. I remember watching the Vamp vs. Raiden fight like 2 years ago. When it came up in the game, I was bored. It’s cool, but it’s really long. And of course I didn’t want to skip it, because I was holding out hope that they had added something (which they didn’t). Same with all the soldiers going crazy, the intro of the Beauty and the Beast unit, and even Meryl’s introduction.

I don’t know. For a game that unashamably relies on its story, why did they give away so much? There very little to be surprised about in the game when I finally played it. I mean, imagine if the second trailer released for Empire Strikes Back was just the “I am your father” scene played in its entirety with a release date slapped on the end. I still enjoyed in, but I feel it could have been elevated to a much higher level in my mind without all these spoilers.