Never Break The Chain

I don't have a new Hit Self-Destruct post for you this week. To make up for it, I have an unearthed a classic piece from the vault (there's only one thing in the vault.) This is an old article I wrote about Bioshock that was never published on this site. It dates back to either October or November of 2007, which means it's a fairly immediate emotional reaction to the game but not exactly timeless. Who even remembers Bioshock these days. You could substitute the word "Bioshock" with something else that has disappointed you recently, like Mirror's Edge, Little Big Planet, Far Cry 2, or a colleague, spouse or child. I dropped in some new pictures to subtly modernise it. This won't be a regular feature, incidentally; I'm uncomfortable reading any of my writing that's more than twenty minutes old. I accidentally looked at the top of this paragraph and shrieked.

Bioshock: the Game that Wasn't

Here's an impression of a preview writer circa June 2007: When I look at BioShock I see a great game. Ken Levine and his team are about to unleash a revolution that will change the way we think about video games. Is it too soon to call BioShock an unqualified masterpiece? We hope not. Game of the Year? Try Game of the Century. Prepare to be Shocked. We noticed some balancing and FOV issues but we're confident that these will be ironed out before release.

Uncanny. The thing is, I'm actually being a little bit serious. I really do look at BioShock and see a great game. Caveat: the game in question isn't actually there. I'm talking about the game that's buried somewhere in the design documents in Ken Levine's office, and that the version I played only hints at.

By "better game" I don't mean one where 2K "fixed" the vita-chambers or the hacking minigame or made it more like System Shock 2 in every way. I mean a BioShock that's as good as it deserved to be, if only it hadn't fell victim to a Xenian flame-out in the final third. Much like how A.I. could have been a good movie if only it had ended right at that moment. There's no similar consensus as to how BioShock should have ended, only that it shouldn't have been that.

Let's start at the beginning, by which I mean the ending. On a strictly narrative level, BioShock's ending is underwhelming at best. It inelegantly redefines what the story was all about: it was about an underwater dystopia, objectivism versus nihilism, rationality and free will, right? Well, the ending's not. Somewhere in that final third, this game about high-minded philosophy and critical metafiction becomes a game about wide-eyed little girls and uncomplicated megalomania. From Rapture to crapture.

Make no mistake, it's absolutely important that BioShock conclude the story of the Little Sisters and — to less of an extent — the player character, Jack. It does both of these well (in the "good" ending, at least.) Neither of these things are as relevant as what BioShock omits — and I know they're relevant because the game spent over half its length convincing me of their worth. The haunting and arguably game-defining moment of meta-game commentary: ignored completely. Any kind of a synthesis or resolution to the objectivism/nihilism debate: sorely absent, and the dynamic is reduced to simple martyrs and villains.

This is unusually academic territory. For a video game, certainly, this is Foucault. Even though BioShock proved itself fairly capable of handling this material, we're admittedly dealing with the more esoteric (though still glaring) of the game's neglects. And yet BioShock disregards the completely literal element of Rapture. How can there not be any resolution on this magnificently ostentatious experiment which is both the premise and the entire setting of the game? The ending avoids the topic, not in the form of a cliffhanger, but rather it briefly confirms your personal altruism or sociopathy and throws you back to the main menu. Apparently, it wasn't that subject matter suddenly became too difficult, it's that the whole game inexplicably went off the rails.

I've glossed over a rather important point. The Andrew Ryan scene is one of the best and most worthwhile statements ever made in a video game about video games. Sure, there's hardly any competition for the title, and the statement in question is not particularly complex, but that's no excuse for not saying it. If anything, BioShock raised the bar for other developers in that respect. What are they going to do with the point BioShock just made? Interesting question, but here's a better one: what's BioShock going to do with the point BioShock just made? Well, hmm.

After that scene the whole dialectic about slaves and free will vanishes from the game. Fair enough, one could argue: the game already made its point reasonably well, and you're still playing a video game. Within the context of the story, though, Jack is a "slave" because he's being mind-controlled. The story's not about that, of course, that's just how it legitimises the abstract point about player agency: that in video games your choices are so limited you might as well be mind-controlled. There'd be less cause to complain if Jack remained under Fontaine's control the whole game, but he doesn't. He breaks free soon enough and the rest of the game plays out exactly the same. The player takes orders from Tenenbaum, not Atlas, and that's the extent of the differences. Again: could be fine, if BioShock hadn't abandoned its excuse for being so constricted, and thus hadn't become exactly what it was criticising. Every thought, every idea that BioShock compels with that Ryan scene is soon forgotten, and that wonderful moment is marginalised instead of assuming its rightful place as the cornerstone of a better game, and a better story: BioShock's tantalisingly close to fully realising its idea about being held hostage to narrative — less Truman Show and more Sophie's World. Essentially, BioShock just made a great, incendiary point about video games. Now, what's the game going to do with it?

It's not going to do anything with it.

BioShock tells you something incredibly exciting and then refuses to discuss it. What we've just seen, says BioShock, was a video game. That goes for gaming across the board. Artifical. Restricted. The implication is, now that we're fully cognisant of our limitations and have the means to remove them, we're about to see real life. It turns out reality is a lot like a video game.

It could have even been the illusion of choice; anything that wasn't the exact same thing you've been showing us and that you just damned. It's excruciating that a game this intelligent and talented drops the ball so badly. The most important choice that's actually in the game is even taken away from you: the choice between the "good" and "bad" endings. Instead, BioShock presumes to know the player's character, and this seems very much the wrong game to assume that. It could have made sense if the ending depended on the Little Sisters' actions, based on your behaviour towards them throughout, but that's not the case. That's not the BioShock we have.

Perhaps I'm being naïve. After all, who hasn't, even once, bought into marketing over-hype and subsequently been disappointed with an above-average product? BioShock isn't Fable, though — it was over-hyped, sure, but my disappointment is in response to the quality of the game itself. That Ryan scene says "we're shooting for the stars," and I believe it. BioShock is better than this. BioShock is capable of more than this.

I believe that if any game was going to show us the video game version of "reality" (as opposed to the video game version of "video game" — I know this is confusing) it would have been BioShock. After the Ryan scene, that's when we should have had our revolution. That's when it should have changed the way we think about video games. You should have been showing us free will, self-determination, autonomy, as if it's all new to us. Maybe that's too high an expectation — but at the very least, that's when it should have become a better game.

The sad reality is what I'm proposing — and what BioShock itself proposed, frankly — is somewhat impractical. A lot of games flop in their final hours. Just as many stay consistent, and a select few save some of their best stuff for the endgame. I can't think of any game that completely reinvents itself at the two-thirds mark and eclipses everything that gaming has shown you to date. The end of a game is the area worst affected by crunch time, that's where the most debilitating and noticeable cuts are made. And nobody wants to hear that the game will really get good, honestly it will, once you've sunk ten hours into it. BioShock's introduction is probably the game at its most impressive, because once you've hooked the player it really doesn't matter if they see the ending. They've bought the game. BioShock painted itself into a corner — the only way to satisfy its promises is to deliver what in conventional game development simply cannot be delivered.

We can't blame it all on current marketplace realities. The fact of it is BioShock didn't even try and fail. Worse than that, it just didn't think it through. BioShock had a very clever idea but didn't know what to do with it. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Or rather, all dressed up and then goes home and won't answer your calls. Post-Ryan, we wonder what could possibly happen next. BioShock's wondering the same thing. Perhaps BioShock drops the subject so abruptly because it literally doesn't have an idea how to end that game; the game we saw in the Ryan scene and that we thought we were playing. Fortunately for BioShock, it does have an idea on hand for an ending to a far less compelling game. Levine's mentioned how late in the process the story came together. It's sadly self-evident.

BioShock could have done it, I really believe that. If only because of its single-minded determination in getting the player to that Andrew Ryan scene and then executing it so well. What we're left with is the BioShock that is and not the BioShock that isn't there. And that's the really special one. Try game of the century.

Debate Class

[Official transcript of the West Hope Middle School debate club meeting, 3/3/2006]

DYLAN: "We are going to argue today that 'video game', two words, is the correct spelling, and 'videogame', one word, is wrong. For our first argument, we note that the Oxford English Dictionary defines 'video game' as two words, and so the dictionary agrees that we are right. Because we use the dictionary to spell things correctly, we think this is definitely the right way to spell 'video game'. Thank you."

MADISON: "Good afternoon everyone! Thank you in advance for listening to us. As our opening statement, I would like to point out that many popular videogame writers spell it as one word. For example, Kieron Gillen spells it like that. Kieron Gillen, for those of you who don't know, invented New Games Journalism, which basically is a better way of writing about videogames. Also, it's 'new'. And because Mr. Gillen knows what is new and better, we trust him about the best way to spell 'videogame'. Our opposition can hold on to their dictionary, we want to know why they don't want to hold on to the future."

ETHAN: "Now I am going to rebut you. Ol' Kieron's so-called New Games Journalism manifesto tells game journalists that essentially they can write anything they want and it doesn't matter. They can say crazy things that have nothing to do with games, or use reviews as their personal diary or something stupid like that, and it's all okay according to Kieron Gillen! So we think people should keep on spelling 'video game' as two words, like it always was, to uphold order and stop anarchy."

ASHLEY: "Another thing we would like to point out is -- "

DYLAN: "Madison! Can't you see this is tearing our relationship apart -- "

[Transcript ends.]

Friends Like These

Comparisons between Fallout 3 and Fable 2 come easily. Both games are high-profile, open world RPGs with heavy emphasis on character customization and moral dilemmas; also, their names begin with the letter 'F' and end with a number, and they came out at the same time. Michael Abbott will note that, in contrast with Fable 2's deliberately authored story, supported by memorably written and voiced characters, the NPCs of Fallout 3 appear lacking in interactive and emotional depth.

I think that the characters work well enough for the specific purposes of Fallout 3. They may never fully endear themselves to the player, and they might not be cool enough to cut it as someone's cellphone wallpaper, but they're sufficient to populate the world believably and in this game that's what matters. If there's any substantive dialogue or conversation going on in Fallout 3 it's not between the doctors, the raiders or the paladins; it's between the player and the world. Fallout 3 is a game in the tradition of Half-Life, BioShock and Myst rather than Knights of the Old Republic or Psychonauts. Your avatar is an excuse to explore a place, and you discern the history of this nuclear war through your own exploration of geography and architecture. The characters exist to show you what's happened to humanity; the world isn't there as a backdrop for their personal dramas. The main character in Fallout 3 is Washington, D.C.

Certainly, Bethesda could have extended their NPCs a couple extra layers of interaction deeper or infused their dialogue and facial animation with greater expression. As Steve Gaynor points out here, though, choosing to maintain the plausibility of environment over character requires some sacrifice of the latter. The NPCs can't exist on the higher plane of complex interaction to which Bethesda took the wasteland. If Bethesda thought they could do everything, if they'd had NPCs running all over the place trying to tell you about their personal stories at any conceivable location in this infinitely variable sandbox, then they'd have the emergent disasters of GTA IV: stealing cars and running over old people before the eyes of your oblivious date. The NPCs are limited, deliberately, because Bethesda know their limitations. While the Fallout 3 characters aren't frozen in place like they were in Morrowind, or like they are in Mass Effect, they're clearly restricted in their movements. They are confined within a radius of loci points like goats tethered to a post, to use a mathematical concept I learned when I was eleven and never thought about since until this paragraph. It's a design decision Bethesda adhere to, except when they don't. Because, sometimes, they won't.

Occasionally they'll violate their own rules and gift a certain subset of NPC -- the permanent companion -- with greater autonomy, which ends up compromising both the character and the world. Fallout 3's a personal experience, gradually revealing the world to the player, whose avatar never gets in the way. It's a compact between two parties which was never built to accomodate a third character.

Of all the potential sidekicks who can get in to the passenger seat, none of them will respond to any of the emergent events, the horrifying discoveries or the plot turns which punctuate this game. Given how exciting Fallout 3 often is, it's deflating, with your adrenaline at such highs, to have your emotions tempered by the constant presence of this unresponsive cipher who isn't interested in what's going on. The game doesn't incorporate a third character into your conversation, it ignores them and so they feel false. Their presence is an immersion problem.

The companions are out of sync with the rest of the game. Aside from fights, they won't react to any external factors, and neither the story nor any other character will ever acknowledge their existence. It's as if you have an imaginary friend, except you're all too aware of the emotional dead weight you're carrying around. They're accessories, effective only as mobile turrets and dress-up dolls.

Any NPC is believable to a point, and as soon as their scripted routines are disrupted all the flaws become quickly apparent. Bethesda largely prevents that from ever occurring, except, inexplicably, in this case. It's a technical issue. The companions can't be programmed to exhibit a convincing array of responses to all the emergent possibilities conceivably generated in an open-world playground. Games aren't able to simulate human behaviour at the level which Fallout 3 requires to be consistently credible.

What level are they at? The dog. Fable 2 knew this as well. Behaviourally, Fallout 3's Dogmeat is as sophisticated as all the other companions, but nobody would ever think to involve a dog in the plot or ask him for advice. He runs around, bites monsters, barks, and you can tell him good boy and send him to fetch things. He acts like a dog where none of the other companions act sufficiently like people. What's more, nothing in Fallout 3 provokes a similar reaction to seeing a super mutant who's beating Dogmeat with a sledgehammer. No other character makes you drop everything and tear that mutant apart. It's at once charming and surprising how instinctively the words get away from my dog will come to you. That's the goal. On the immersion meter, we're at "dog". Getting to "human" is a process.

Until then there's something special, sadly, to be said for solitude; also, dogs.