Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Stories and Environments: a Comparative Look at the Environments of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls

        As of late, on the off chance I'd have a break to play console games, I've been devoting my time to Dark Souls, the acclaimed successor to Demon's Souls that I'm sure avid gamers, especially RPG fans are familiar with. I'm close toward the end of the game, much like my Demon's Souls play through, I began the game, took a several month leave of it, then returned and began to rush toward completion in a mad dash of sorts. And I'll admit, I'm having quite a lot of fun with it. The gameplay, specifically the peerless combat system, is just as solid as it was in Demon's Souls, the characters are quirky and memorable, and the boss fights(Though I find them, just as I did in the predecessor, fairly easy going and often a quick ordeal) are gratifying.
     
         But something seems odd in Dark Souls, something is missing. It lacks the enticing spark that drew me back to Demon's Souls time and time again after I had completed it, and completely engrossed me into the world, to such an extent that I even considered naming a band after one of the characters(I didn't, hah!). At first I didn't know what it was about the game that seemed to perturb me, seemed to prevent the same obsession with which Demon's Souls grasped me. My first thought was that perhaps it was the minuscule, but noticeable, change in graphical style, which turned out to be faulty, as I quickly grew accustomed to it and found it fine. After that, I examined the characters, perhaps it was a lack of life in them that made it feel weak to me? Again, I was wrong, if anything the characters are extremely well modeled and given suitable voice actors and dialogue, making their often blatant absurdity believable, hell, near plausible.  It was obvious from the get go that the gameplay was not the issue either, and even surpasses the prior series entry by retaining a bit more balance between combat styles(I think. IE: Magic isn't OP as hell, though Dark Souls isn't completely innocent of exploitative and "easy mode" play styles) Then I turned to what I saw as the only remaining factor; the environments, and I had finally nailed it.
     
       Now, it's not the environments themselves that sort of detract from immersion for me (if that has any sliver of sense to it.) But rather, I find, the lack of their cohesiveness. When I first started to have an inkling that the environments were the primary culprit for my disappointment in the game I determined to pay a visit back to Demon's Souls to see if I could accurately state that the difference in environments, and their respective presentation and handling was the barrier laying between Dark Souls and myself.

    Part of what I think really made Demon's Souls so great was the cohesiveness and rich implied history of its various environments. The game's zones made sense, they had a developed, yet underplayed backstory to them, it fueled the ability of the player to derive stories from the zone, to imagine its past, to ponder the events that led to its current state, and what events may be in store for them in this dangerous area. Take for example, Demon'S Souls 3rd zone, Tower of Latria. Here's an excerpt from the contents of the game;


  " The Tower of Latria was a shrine devoted to the Ivory Queen in the lands neighboring Boletaria. With her husband, Latria ruled her kingdom - encompassing a penitentiary, a church, and the great tower itself - to the great adoration and respect of her people. Latria banished her husband from the lands for unknown reasons, and when the fog bathed the kingdom, Latria’s husband found himself filled with a terrible and vengeful lust. He soon discovered the source of his mad desires - a beautiful and flowing golden garb that seemed to beckon his name. When he put the robe on, a rage filled within him. The old man returned and ordered his wife exiled from her own kingdom and her family imprisoned in the cells Latria formerly governed. In each cell block, the old man commanded inhuman guards to keep watch over the tortured prisoners for eternity. He oversaw the construction of an idol made in his wife’s image to give false hope to the inmates, and with the masses of flesh accumulated throughout the years, the old man has begun creating his own army of demons, among them the ravenous Man Eaters. Suspended from the middle of the tower is a large, mechanical heart, constructed in an effort to help maintain the old man’s own existence. The souls of the damned inside of the prison are used as life-giving sustenance to keep the heart beating. In time, the old man’s body began to whither and decay, and the golden garb - the true source of the old man’s demonic rage - beckoned a new host. With the old man rid of the robe’s life-force, he breathed his last gasp of air."


The background story is simple enough. There isn't much going on, not much to digest, and yet it provides so much kindling for interest in it's accompanying visual manifestation; (Unfortunately there is a lack of screens of the zone on the web)
Now as I travel through the dark halls the though of the "inhuman guards" resonates in my mind. I encounter the first few shells of former men, the tower's prisoners... nothing but mindless corpses now, what have the guards done to them? I continue walking and suddenly, see one. One of them. The gaurds. Oh shit. It's grotesque, it's got a head resembling a squid and skulks toward me.. slowly. This is the same dude who decimated those prisoners, I feel fear strike me, not only because I know it's an enemy by nature, but I know why, I know his origins, I've seen the fruits of his labor first hand, all thanks to the environments accompanying descriptor making the whole experience so much richer.


In turn, I feel that Demon's Souls boasts a certain cohesiveness in it's environments, through their accompanying tales, and by design. Each world, feels like a specific area, one that's affected by the characters around it, each zone interplaying with the others. Each area also had a linearity to it, which some may find bland, but I found, as I said cohesive. It brings the zone to a close, making it feel the evermore like it's own entity, and as a result, like an excursion to the area as it's own grand adventure, internally tucked within the grander adventure that is the end goal of the game. 


    Dark Souls in comparison takes claim to neither of, what i consider to be positive attributes, of Demon's Souls environments.  The zone/hub system was exchanged for an open world, which i don't mind on paper, but I feel that when implemented, some of that cohesiveness I so loved in Demon's Souls, and sparked my interest in it's environments, their respective histories, and the adversaries they contained. Foremost, no such short descriptions of areas as were provided in Demon's Souls exist(At least that I'm aware of), which I believe, even though such write ups on areas were secondary in nature, greatly decreases the interest of each area of the world. No longer do I have any insight as to what I'm seeing. It essentially renders first encounters with enemies to little more than a jump scare. I don't know what they are, I have no idea, they don't make my heart pound like the guard whom I understood was capable of extreme treachery. In addition, I feel that, unlike in the predecessor, Dark Soul's environments feel rather "cut and pasted". What is supposed to serve as a traversable open world winds up feeling, to me, like a loose collection of regions. The areas seem to live as separate entities, as they did in Demon's souls, however in Demon's Souls these entities were always comprised of three smaller ones, that effected each other and were of similar topography and terrain, much opposed to dark souls where one suddenly comes out on a giant lake(Which I can't tell if it's implied to be underground or not) by going through a tree in a swamp. In fact, I feel that Dark Souls, in order to make the open world format work, while still clinging to a zone sort of formula, uses a fair amount of these transition pieces of sorts, such as trees that are strictly limited to interior views, gargoyles who fly the player over a wall, though to be fair, there aren't too many of them.


Anyway, I've gone on quite long enough, but I truly believe this is why I still prefer Demon's Souls over Dark Souls. What do you think? Do you agree with my sentiments? Is either game lacking in some other area in your opinion? Do you feel that the being dependent on immersion, or even desiring it through environment and related story is frivolous, either in general or for the particular game?


I'd like to hear what anyone who gives this a read thinks. I suppose I'm back to getting my ass handed to me while I chuckle at Knight Solaire.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Formal Review: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

















"Probably a commentary on the mid-life crisis"

I went to a graduation ceremony this past week, most of you probably have been to one, and I'm sure most have had the same experience with a commencement speaker. After a long monologue of their college career and some stories of their life, they reach the part that's "for the students", giving some words of wisdom and and "cheerio" off the the soon-to-be graduates. Of the graduation ceremonies I've been to (three thusfar), they all have at least one point in common: "Approach each day as a new adventure".

The next day I woke up with a hangover, an hour and a half long drive ahead of me, and a general distaste for everything in the world. With a recollection of the speaker's words reverberating around my head, I only now really thought about how little he really cared what he meant. He was a former NFL starter, a CIA protection agent, and an entrepreneur. I could only imagine as he said those words to us it sunk into his head that the majority will spend their days working dead-end 9-5 jobs that they really don't enjoy doing, and will likely go through the much talked about "mid-life crisis" that occurs from the monotony of those jobs. With
my hangover and grumpiness I was already going through one. I wasn't looking at the day with bright eyes and an optimistic glare; I was looking at it as another boring day I spend doing roughly the same tasks I did the day before, and the day before, and so on.

Naturally my mind slipped to Skyrim...

I remember creating my character in Skyrim. It was a couple days after going through a couple of Arrested Development episodes, so I decided to make Carl Weathers, a strong, predator-hunting Redguard with a love of stews. I follow some rebels to get my head lobbed off when this dragon comes and wrecks all those glorious plans of removal. I follow some dude (I didn't really care who it was, as little in that scenario would) around for a bit, following his words and on-screen prompts, and came to a choice to follow guy A or guy B. At this point, I still didn't care who I was following... I choose Guy B because he was closer. So, so on and so forth, I go through the tutorial dungeon and make it to the the world.

Ah yes freedom. More than just the idea that I had a free world now, the game has (literally) taken off my shackles and given me all these options to explore, so naturally I continued to follow this guy to the near town and main quest mission. I meet these people and they tell me the main struggle of this world, I'm to help  this rebellion or crush it, whatever I want.

So let's pause there. It's obvious at this point that what I choose is going to be the "winning" side, and I'm going to be the main catalyst for it. But it's not just because "that's the way a game is", but there's a narrative reason for it (seemingly): I am the DOVAHKIN (sp? idc) of lore; a mythical man and dragon tamer/translator. I've been given the role of the chosen one, destined to make some sort of change and whatever. Why is it that a game that so admires freedom puts a "destiny on you"?. Well that's pretty pointless anyway, the "destiny" is supposedly up for you to decide. What's more important, is why does every game have to make sure the player is special? Why do I have to be a destined warrior? Why am I the one all these duties fall upon? Is it just so I won't be bored?

The game makes you the NFL starter CIA agent badass that gives the commencement speech. You're allowed to look every day with a bright new glare because you're given the world and everything you can imagine to do with it... until you realize that it's as dead and decrepit as a 9-5 desk job.

In that first town I was at, I decided to walk around, pick some flowers loot some barrels... if I was going to have stew I'd have to get some ingredients... and I found a cooking pot. "GREAT" I thought to myself, "now I have the tool I need to make this stew". Well, I would if i didn't know from the start that it had no actual use, and was just given to make the world more "lively" and give it that "lived in feeling" (why is someone putting cooking pots out no where near their house?). So I sold it for some chump change and went on my way.

But let's talk about the economy of Skyrim... there is none. Each town needs approximately one store: "Things the main character needs". You get coins and you sell them to a shop, then you get potions and weapons and other assorted goods. That is, until you're midway through the game, have looted the much better special items from dungeons and have no need for the iron helmet the store is offering. The "liveliness" of the towns and stores diminishes once you realize you are the only one using it, and the items you aren't buying are just props trying to trick you into thinking the quest givers of the town have a personality.

They don't, btw. The quests are largely bland, and the dialog is certainly not top quality, but this is actually not a bad part of the game. Aside from the seemingly pointless "go kill these things" or "collect these things", they aren't terrible, and even the pointless ones have the point of making you explore.

Wait, no that is a problem. There is no reason to explore the world, for every type of player. There are some people out there that may just get satisfaction going out and looking at the different dead areas of trees and mountains. Maybe you'll come upon a cave with some bandits and a good sword.. maybe you'll get a quest. The problem is that those aren't the highlights, the highlights are finding small houses in the middle of nowhere with no one living.

Jason Rohrer once thought of a meta-game to use in minecraft. He started it by creating a file on a usb drive, and making a simple set of rules"
1.No writing boards
2.Once you die, you give the USB drive to someone else
The idea of this game is that you'd see the creations of previous players, and you'd create stories around it. You'd imagine them mining and you'd see the destruction from the different enemies of the game and this and that, and you'd think of the times they had in the world. The liveliest Skyrim ever felt to me, is when I found an Alchemist's Shack out in the middle of nowhere. Among the flowers and ingredients and stuff, there was nothing more than a note. I forget what it said, don't really care, but it left no conclusion to the story, no quest, and nothing to attack that shack to anything else in the world. I let it be after that. I thought of the idea of this alchemist, what could have happened, and where he could have gone. That was the only time I ever felt the wonderment of discovery in Skyrim. The only time I felt I was playing in a world that was lived in.

It wasn't soon after that that I approached a big spider creature I needed to get out of my way to go to the next portion of the main quest. I tapped the button to slash my sword, step backed and used some spell to attack, drank a potion as I was losing a bit of health, and carried on after looting some venom from the corpse. Every battles is basically like this. No enemies really react at all, and there's no crunch or friction in the combat. Sometimes you're not even really sure if you hit the enemy, the only clue is the little health bar moving down a bit. Well, as you go along your power attacks will occasionally cause different effects, but there's still nothing that really promotes interplay throughout the characters. I'm not asking for GOD HAND, but give me some sort of game within the combat. I don't enjoy fighting these creatures, to me they are just distractions for the walking and completing quests.

And this is where my real problem with the game lies. I don't feel compelled to explore the lifeless world, I don't feel compelled to go out fighting, and all I really feel compelled to do is just complete. This is my mid-life crisis. I don't enjoy what I'm doing, but I continue doing it on the premise that I'm getting better, and I'm getting closer to the end. I want to go get this sword, because it's going to make me stronger (even tho by getting it I'll unlock stronger enemies... thnx for that levelling system bethesda), I want to finish this quest because it will advance the storyline, etc. But as I am now, after taking a step back and looking what I was doing, I have to wonder "why?". If this is a game about discovery, the only one I've made is that I am easily distracted. That I can easily be asked to do something I don't like just to make myself fit in to a system. Skyrim is my dead end job and this endless struggle for power that comes with it is my lack of vertical, economic mobility. I've had my mid-life crisis and it's resulted in me shutting off my game.

SCORE: 2/5

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Minecraft, The Function Of Minimal Narratives in Gaming

As many others have, I fell before the Minecraft craze back when it was just beginning to generate massive buzz, while the game was in it's late alpha stage. Now as players would know,  Minecraft  has been a "barebones" game since it's origins. However, as time has passed slowly but surely the game has been improved upon time and time again, not only by the developer Mojang, and the infamous Notch, but also by the fans, in the form of custom maps, mods, and character and block skins/textures. And yet, while the game has become somewhat of a juggernaut of creative content, one element remains quite miniscule, in fact, near nonexistent.
        I am of course, referring to the game's narrative. For the few who may not be aware, Minecraft is an open world game, in which players are free to roam randomly generated terrains, build vast kingdoms, and slay fierce enemies. However, the game has close to no narrative, in other words, no story. Now, I think it's first important to acknowledge the fact that an open world game, as well as a game where the focus is player creativity, is not dependent upon the a lack of narrative. There are plenty of open world games with heavily present narratives, such as entries in The Elder Scrolls and Grand Theft Auto series, as well as player content generation games with narratives, such as Little Big Planet. So why exactly does Minecraft lack a clearly present narrative? And more importantly, is it effective, and what ways does it alter the players experience, and games re-playability? I shall address, both questions using my own experiences with the game, in an effort to examine the impact such a small to completely absent narrative has, and wether it is an effective choice for the gaming medium.

The Narrative of Minecraft


As I've stated, Minecraft has close to no tangible narrative. Even upon initial launch of the game no premise is given, no tutorial, prologue, or backstory of sorts is provided. In fact, the player is not even provided with so much as a mission or explanation of sorts to what their goal is in the game, such information must be gathered through pre-gathered information on the game, which isn't much of an issue, as very few people blindly download or purchase a product. Nevertheless, the game does have a very basic and obscure form of narrative in it's current version( Full Game 1.2.5). This Narrative of sorts is one of guidance for the player, and is conveyed solely through the achievement interface. As is standard, it provides the player with goals, as well as brings an added incentive through concealing achievements that require prerequisite achievements that the player has not yet acquired. This "narrative" serves a more practical purpose, as a loose guide for an optimal playing experience rather than traditional storytelling.
       The only other traces of a narrative of sorts that I find within the game, lies within the end credits. After completing "The End", the designated final area of the game, the credits for the game roll, displaying a conversation between two unknown parties to the player. The dialogue between the two characters is esoteric, and largely deals with unfamiliar, until this very moment, themes of the nature of existence, as it has no prior established narrative arc, nor theme to refer to. Most players reacted negatively to this small dialogue sequence, I have a few theories as to why, which I shall delve into later.
        These two facets of the game are what essentially comprises the narrative of Minecraft. As you can see, it is rather minimal.

The Effects of a Minimal Narrative, Is it Lack of Narrative Optimal For the Medium?


As established, the narrative found in Minecraft is clearly not a focus of the game. The player is given little more than simple goals of progression, which are arguably hardly even a  narrative without a constructed story and characters conveying them. This said, how does the lack of a narrative effect the gameplay experience? Personally, I think it is a very good structure in Minecraft's case. It most certainly facilitates the usage of the player's imagination during playtime.
       I recall my first outing into the world. I was alone, playing singleplayer, I gauged my surroundings a bit and noted that I was on a small beach, a forest with an abundance of trees stood nearby. I climbed up toward the forest and began clicking the mouse like a madman, as it was the only command I knew, and more or less needed(Aside from basic movement). I happened to hit a tree as I swung and noticed the small cracking animation be triggered. I continued to pound at the tree, and managed to chop it down with my fist, collecting the wood. I then took to the Minecraft Wiki to gather some information on how to access my inventories, as well as basic crafting information. To my dismay, when I returned to the game window I noticed the sun had just begun to set, and I had heard monsters struck at night. I quickly built a tiny hut and waited inside, in complete darkness. I heard them, I heard lots of them outside. Being the warm blooded adventurer I am, I yearned for the excitement of combating monsters, and exploring my surroundings even further, and so I braved  the night. I then met a swift death, in my first introduction to the creeper, which also managed to level half of my dwelling in the process...
       I could continue my tale, but you get the gist of it. It is unique to me. When i first played, and landed in my unique and random world, my mind yearned to explore the vast terrain, to conquer my foes and make my heroic stand as an adventurer.  Of course, such imaginatively driven sentiments, also allowed for great conversation about the game with others. I had convinced a friend to purchase around the same time, and while we could not figure out how to establish a proper server in order to play multiplayer yet, we could not stop conversing about the game, telling tales of our explorations and dangerous forays into uncharted lands and caves, our vain attempts at trying to defend our lands from the destructive power of creepers, great tragedies befallen us in which our hard earned materials were all lost. And it was all great fun. It also caused us to talk about the gameplay itself, as we theorized on how to craft certain items, how to create elaborate creeper traps for easy tnt materials, and what block height levels to find diamonds on. Such stories work similarly in multiplayer, only they may be even more elaborate thanks to player to player interactions and planned journeys into the unknown.
        This self story crafting aspect of the game shall, I think, be bolstered even further with the games next update, which plans to introduce the ability to compose in in-game books, allowing for the retention and cherishing of players extraordinary forays in the mysterious world around them. However, there also currently exists Non player characters, who dwell in villages currently serving no purpose. IT has been speculated that such Npcs may give quests in the future, the extent at which narrative backing is given to these quests, and if there is a "main quest" shall certainly effect this imaginative dynamic, though I cannot be sure to what extent.
      Overall, I certainly think the lack of narrative has been beneficial for Minecraft. It urges me to return to the game, though often in binges, in order to get my fill of self catered adventures. It is, in essence, a game that's limits are the players imaginative powers. What one must wonder, however, is wether such narrative absence can work in encouraging re-playability in across genres. Perhaps such success in a lacking narrative is contingent upon many other factors? Does such a model only work for intensely player creativity focused games such as Minecraft? Do you agree that Minecraft's lack of narrative benefits the gameplay and product as a whole?
        Things to mull over, in the meantime, back to crafting!