Though intended for commercial release from the get-go, the game was announced in low-key fashion on the Adventure Game Studio forums in 2008, and then later Kickstarted in 2009, long before the “Double Fine” explosion of 2012, back when the landscape and prospects were vastly different. By the Kickstarter campaign, however, the game had already been in the works for over 2 years!

As with their other recent offerings, in Primordia and Gemini Rue, Wadjet Eye’s Dave Gilbert swooped to XII Games‘ aid to make finishing Twelve’s project a reality. With good reason: It’s no secret, by now, that Resonance is a very good game – one of 2012’s best adventures.

If anything, Resonance must be the most lapidary, evenly-spread, thought-out game in the already excellent Wadjet Eye publishing catalogue. To wit: If making games were a performance, Resonance would be as flawless a take as it gets. Hitting all the right notes, or perfecting a choreography doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the very best, however: Little blemishes here and imperfections there can, after all, give a video game a little bit of that special “charm” or “character” that makes it ultimately more memorable. Resonance’s character, in this way, is cool and collected.

Resonance’s major selling point is Twelve’s original take on discourse and puzzles: A simple interface, for storing and recollecting both long- (LTM) and short-term (STM) memories, adds the ability for the game’s characters to “remember” hotspots, which can then be later “recalled” in discussion. Using the system comes to the player very naturally, and slightly resembles the parsers of text adventures of yore, only with a little less trial and error.

For example, should you want to introduce a specific painting to a person (on the left), you’ll simply store the painting in one of your character’s short-term memory banks, and then take it up with the person you need to discuss it with. This is the way in which most puzzles are in fact solved in Resonance – that is to say, in addition to a fair bit of inventory management and some cleverly orchestrated specialized puzzles and events, some more time-sensitive than others.

Each memory, short and long, can be discussed with everybody in the game. Theoretically, different characters all give a different response to everything, though Twelve has noted the Resonance team “could have spent another two years just filling in extra text”.

The system also means that all four lead characters in the game have differing long-term memories, which play an equally large a part in the game. They also have access to very different circles and walks of life: Detective Bennet, for instance (on the right), has law enforcement resources at hand, while Anna Castellanos’ position as a health care professional opens up some doors at the local hospital.

Each of the four controllable characters plays an integral part in the game’s storyline. As generic as the cast seems to be at first, with Anna Castellanos the sensitive, downtrodden soul, Tolstoy Eddings the introverted and clumsy science type, Winston Bennet the boisterous, hard-boiled detective and Raymond Abbott the untrustworthy journalist, their stereotypes are later somewhat adjusted, tinkered and even toyed with, to the point of reaching a rather fully-formed feel.

Resonance is very much at its best when Twelve gets to reveal tiny little cracks – moments of foreboding, or inner turmoil – in the surface personalities of the cast. Though much of the game is spent racing and pacing quickly from one objective to another, when time finally stands still just for a moment, and you get some real tangible access to the inner workings of the characters, the game really shines.

“Racing” above should be understood (mostly!) in positive light; it simply means that Resonance’s puzzles are integrally woven into the game’s narrative as it progresses. Barely anything in the game is done without due cause or reason, and actions feel strongly motivated by inner logic (one of Castellano’s puzzles at the hospital especially so). The kind of antisocial plunder and theft that often mars adventure games is reduced to its bare minimum, which gives the game a very realistic feel.

In fact, much of the puzzle-solving in the game is not so much spent on coming up with solutions, but rather figuring out how to best convey them to the characters via use of the memory system. In this way, the game can feel a little on the easy side – players should nearly always feel completely in control – with frustration stemming only from your own failure to implement a particular solution. A few of the puzzles have alternate solutions, too, some of which award achievements.

Resonance does feel like it loses some momentum around its middle part, given that everything happens quickly at first; once the game begins to branch out, and more locations to visit open up, it takes a while for the game’s narrative to catch up again. Around here, Resonance also contains by far the most elaborate and lavish item retrieval puzzle that I have ever had the pleasure of solving. This multi-stage puzzle is ultimately resolved by organizing a highly complex series of actions using three(!) of the four characters. I actually found myself wondering whether I’d ever seen a “hard”, prolonged puzzle of this kind that I’d have felt satisfied in solving. Perhaps this was it?

No amount of polish, however, could have ever streamlined the complexity that comes with having four different main characters, each with separate memories and inventories of their own. This aspect of the game necessarily results in a fair bit of juggling items back and forth between the cast. It also means players need a good short-term memory of their own: “Whose memory was that? Who’s carrying what?” A fair bit of repetition and redundancy, at least for me, were the end result of this particular problem.

Truthfully, a majority of the game’s puzzles could have very well been implemented conventionally, sans Twelve’s memories; at its core, Resonance is not paradigmatically different from other adventures, even if the memory system does give players a more vivid sense of interaction and exchange between the characters in the game.

No, the system is not the kind of quantum leap in adventure gaming that it might have – could have – been, but it still succeeds in giving the game a unique feel. I’m not sure, however, whether this is ultimately testament to the system itself, or rather Twelve’s major commitment and attention to detail. The few times that you do witness the memory system uniquely at work, though, seems to justify the game’s long development time, and also give the game a distinct sense of the new.

So far, I’ve mentioned nothing of the game’s audiovisuals, which too have a great deal of finesse and detail. From lead artist Shane Stevens’ detailed sprite work and animations to Nauris Krauze’s backdrops and Nikolas Sideris’ background music, the game oozes workmanlike aesthetic sense. Birds swoop up and down, smoke lingers beautifully in the distance, electric particles sizzle and fizzle.

Edward Bauer (Ed), Sarah Elmaleh (Anna), Daryl Lathon (Ray) and Logan Cunningham (Bennet, he of Bastion) are all well-cast; only the executive decision to not vocalize the cast’s inner thoughts befuddles, as the abrupt switches from speech and silence can be somewhat jarring, especially in the beginning.

To summarize: When have we last witnessed a game that was exactly the sum of its parts – nothing more, nothing less? Resonance is that game:

1x workmanlike writing and design
1x unique UI twist
1x sensible audiovisual direction
2x obsessive-compulsive quality control
= 1x one of the best indie adventure games both in my STM and LTM.

Indie adventure games are often an acquired taste – diamonds in the rough. Resonance, then, is as cut as a gemstone can be.

Resonance is available now, on Wadjet Eye Games, Steam and GOG.

Start spreadin’ the news / I’m leavin’ today / I want to be a part of it / New York, New York
These vagabond shoes / are longing to stray / Right through the very heart of it / New York, New York

From 2006 to 2009, Wadjet Eye Games‘ “Blackwell” adventure game series provided three fantastic gaming events, each more popular than the last. The series finally culminated in 2009′s magnificent “Convergence”, which bordered qualitatively on those mid-90′s classics with its sense of place, atmosphere, intrigue and immersion.

The fourth part, The Blackwell Deception, now included in the ongoing Indie Royale “Fall Bundle”, was quite the cause célèbre in 2011, with most reviewers finding it “must-play” for existing fans, and an apt enough continuation of the para-normal puzzler series.

I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. Doubtless “Deception” is a great, great adventure game. Next to the rest of the series, however, it is also Dave Gilbert’s weakest professional effort to date (even if Richard Cobbett thought it best!). Although very finely tuned as always, “Deception” had one major, inherent flaw.

The earlier Blackwell adventures, though fairly conventional, even rigid in their own right, had nevertheless managed to wow gamers with their intangibles over the generic – character dynamics, lifelike portrayals of human beings (and ghosts!), and New York City, of course. Everything seemed to align with “Convergence”, which was a total, all-around package in every respect. Here was “Deception”, then, sandwiched in-between the hyped releases of Gemini Rue and Resonance, two of the best retro adventures of the decade. Expectations were running undoubtedly high.

And for a solid while at the beginning, “Deception” seems to affirm its place. Only after the game begins to bog itself down, case after case reminiscent of the previous episodes, does a hard truth begin to dawn on the player: “Deception” has the rather curious distinction of being both the longest and least interesting Blackwell episode to date.

The major flaw that I hinted at before is this: “Deception” feels almost entirely self-contained. Gilbert’s masterful treatment of the overarching Blackwell, uh, saga(?) has always been the real meat of the series – yet for the very first time, the game’s narrative goes nowhere fast.

It’s not what’s in “Deception” that disappoints, but what isn’t: Rosangela and Joey’s relationship, so reliant on Gilbert’s knack for writing, is left hanging. A new schism between the two is hinted at but never quite developed. Neither is Joey’s secret past, even if the game’s marketing orbits around this very concept. Another major character – NYC – is also largely absent. The city simply doesn’t figure in the storyline so much as in the previous episodes. This is a great shame. While these omissions are understandable, there simply is rather little narrative reward in “Deception”.

Perhaps the game’s episodic, generic case-based structure finally caught up with its story? Be it as it may, more cases and more ghosts is not always better. Imagine that – a paranormal detective with a bad case of déjà vu! Most players will probably not feel too demotivated by the repetitive structure, however, as each Blackwell sticks to its case-based generic formula, after all. It’s just that “Deception” is drawn-out where the others are concise, and its pace of puzzling meditative at best.

Where audiovisual restraint was nothing to scoff at with the Blackwell budget title “Unbound”, the consistently weaker look and feel of “Deception” too feels out of place coming right after the series’ high point in “Convergence”. To be sure, there are good pixels and bad pixels, and the fact that the game’s art was reportedly done at 320×240 and then blown up to twice the size matters little. “Deception” is not so much straight bad, but rather unashamedly parsimonius, quickly drowning the player in what can only be described as fiscal prudence. What might have been a fully animated introductory scene in the earlier games is now but a wall of text.

In my mind, the game’s greatest aesthetic blunder is not so much a lack of quality overall, but rather stylistic inconsistency that piles up between its various audiovisual elements. Ben Chandler’s highly personable, whimsical sprite work seems ultimately better suited to his own games, and Daniel Rubinstein’s portraiture is wooden and inconsistent. Indrek Plavutski’s industrial-style background art interfaces rather poorly with the other artists’ work. It’s probably just me, but I could swear even Thomas Regin’s background music has but half the jazz of “Convergence”. Where “Convergence”s art, in a word, converged, “Deception”‘s feels discordant.

If you discount redundancy and lack of audiovisual polish – both extremely common indie adventure gaming sins – then yes, “Deception” does succeed. It offers gripping puzzles that often force the otherwise mediocre presentation to take a back seat. Gilbert’s writing remains highly lucid – if only it didn’t feel so recycled.

The Blackwell series has always relied on the strength of its puzzles, with discoveries, revelations and epiphanies pacing the narrative progression like a clockwork. This all stems from great balance. Like Gilbert’s first bigger success, The Shivah, Blackwell too has always been a series that can be recommended to non-adventure game players. But even in this way, “Deception” simply feels insubstantial.

Theoretically, it has all the charms of the previous games, but none of the flair in practice, and its look and feel alone makes it the weakest link in the Blackwell chain, and the first non-essential part in the quadrilogy. Yes, it undoubtedly remains a top-notch adventure game, but at this pace, I wonder whether Gilbert’s series is being redelegated as the flagship of Wadjet Eye Games?

Perhaps it wasn’t just my shoes that wanted to stray, but also Gilbert’s? Time will tell.

The Blackwell Deception is part of the Indie Royale “Fall Bundle”, also available on Steam, Desura and directly from Wadjet Eye Games.

The Journey Down: Over the Edge

The new The Journey Down: Chapter One, then, is the first part of an episodic adventure series in the Monkey Island-Full Throttle-Grim Fandango mode – as good a trinity of influences as any! The game tells the story of Bwana and Kito, two adopted brothers, who have been left in charge of captain Kaonandodo’s “Gas and Charter” enterprise ever since his sudden disappearance. The brothers are however left hanging high and dry after the mysterious Armando Power Company initiates a dastardly money grab – just as a damsel in distress appears knocking on the brothers’ proverbial door!

The original indie release was a critical hit. “Over the Edge” was one of the – if not the – best medium-length indie adventures of 2010. I personally thought as much. Two years after the fact, however, reviewing the all-new remake, seems oddly unfair as well as difficult: What was the feature, exactly, that made the original so very enjoyable, and more importantly, how to once again accurately convey it?

Was it the game’s wistful nostalgia combined with surprisingly effective comedic relief, or the “Fandango”-like injection of the African Chokwe/Makonde masks that so successfully gave the game its unique touch? Or the stirringly sharp hand-painted 2D backgrounds? Or the expert pacing and flow? The carefully-crafted, balanced puzzle-solving? The jokes?

Looking back, in my original review, I did claim The Journey Down’s primary feature to be its visual direction. This fact should be altogether apparent just from screenshots alone, however, which makes me want to revise my previous statement, instead focusing on the one thing every prospective Journeyman and -woman should know:The Journey Down is an infectious adventure.

Its excitement is contagious, its joys palpable. When brother Kito exclaims, at the very beginning of the game, “Let’s mess it with man!”, you simply can’t not agree! Let us indeed! The game’s register, of both humour and writing overall, is bubbly, genuine, and all-around excited!

This is also why reviewing the remake feels to me so much like a tough nut to crack; adventure games are a particularly agonizing bunch to replay (even if we do it all the time), and with the game’s experiential flow somewhat broken by foreknowledge, it’s almost impossible for me to accurately recapture the joyful feeling that is by the game’s expert use of puzzle flow.

Above all, the game is a coherent whole, a fully realized project, and one that begs to be played, experienced!

It should come to us as no shock that the game is being released on a plethora of platforms, as adventures have always been largely platform-indepedendent, with most Sierra and LucasArts titles familiar to owners of all kinds of platforms, all the way from the C64 to the Sega CD! But with the recent influx of adventures on phones and tablets – in part thanks to Telltale – what does it mean for The Journey Down to run on such a wide variety of rather different platforms (iOS and Android included)?

It means that the game now runs on SkyGoblin’s own purpose-made proprietary engine and the game’s interface is based on drag and drop! The forthcoming tablet release surely influenced this feature – not often seen in adventures – but is not at all a negative one. The inventory itself is icon-based, and features some combination puzzles to go. Even for a hard-nosed PC player, the controls are intuitive, as you can abort movement (although double-click exit is still missing) and the game is quick and sleek to control.

The cursor changes to a red arrow to help locate entrances and exits. This is helpful, given that the game is portrayed in relatively dark tones and hues, making it sometimes difficult to locate hotspots – something that may be further exacerbated while playing on a tablet. Hopefully a brightness slider will be available by then. Perhaps the game’s future tablet origins have also to do with limiting save game slots just to three? (Though even this is an improvement from the original, given the AGS version only has one. Why limit this on the PC, though? We demand save games!).

On the outset, the game’s new engine (by Johansson & Larsson) seems tailor-made for laptop gaming, and works especially well in widescreen resolutions, a fact that further emphasises the game’s beautiful scenery. My review copy, however, stole more than half a gigabyte of memory, and would intermittently jitter and sputter in windowed mode. According to the team, animations run at 15fps, which additionally makes some of the game’s animations seem a little choppy at times. Choppy or not, the all-new 3D animations are for the most part professional, and the colourful cast more than makes up for whatever slight omissions there may be in terms of polish. Not to mention some of the game’s wicked animated sequences, which bode well for future episodes.

The game is an intriguing hodgepodge of genre. As is perfectly evident just from the game’s exposition, The Journey Down blends a multitude of generic modes – beginning with the classic bildungsroman (adoption, abandonment, character growth), comedy, crime, mystery, action adventure and so forth – all in a very naturalized, effortless way. At no point does the game’s storytelling and writing feel forced, and even when a potential pitfall occassionally emerges, the game’s designers are more than willing to take shots at the admittedly silly conventions of their chosen genre.

The game provides plenty of moments for smiles, even laughter, yet also provides moments of introspection and nostalgia. Never does the game feel like it’s stepping too far beyond its strangely loose, almost undefined boundaries!

The transition from 2D to 3D models means the retro-riffic two-dimensional charms of the original are, of course, gone. Gone! Those of the cast, however, are not, and even the most hardcore of adventurers would probably admit that the new 3D graphics do not in any way pale in comparison, even if Waern is above all an expert painter, as evinced by the breathtaking backgrounds out and about.

The all-new voice acting is, on the whole, solid. Anthony Sardinha’s Bwana is especially good, as is David Dixon’s Kito, a special favourite of mine out of the extremely diverse cast of characters. Scott Stoked (the Dockmaster) and Cassie Ewulu (Lina) also do a fine job of conveying their characters. For an indie production, the voice cast is top-notch, and minor ups and downs in the recording quality and/or volume are easily forgiven and forgotten as they come to pass. What I really enjoy is the cast’s dedication to the characters’ personalities – each and every character comes with their own manner of speech, each with their own little quirks and stylings.

So you’ve played the original, and now considering buying this HD upgrade/remake? Do be “warned”, then, that this is, for all intents and purposes, the same excellent game – if only in a fancier suit yet. For Mac/Linux gamers, or iOS/Android tablet owners, The Journey Down will be some of the best adventuring your money can buy. PC players already familiar with the AGS original may feel a moment’s hesitance, sure, but then again, it’s not as though they’ve invested money into the freeware version in the first place. Gosh, if only there were a season-long preorder subscription model of some sort, à la the Dream Machine on Steam!

For players unfamiliar with the freeware version, in any case, The Journey Down stands out of the crowd: In an era where most commercial adventures border on unwitting, garish pastiche, and are burdened with nonsensical puzzles and writing, The Journey Down comes off as a hard-working indie success, and is living proof that comedy can still be an earnest, gripping, exciting mode in adventure games.

It also proves, in a big big way, that its African look and generic homages are not mere gimmicks. Simply put: The Journey Down is classy adventure gaming. Period. SkyGoblin have posted a list of various digital download shops that carry “Chapter One”, and finally, if you’re interested in how the game got here, you can refer to our 2010 interview with Waern, and a detailed review of the original AGS version can be found here.

Note: A review copy was provided by SkyGoblin for the purpose of this review.

slowdownvg

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The Slowdown

Every two weeks we are going to feature a new community campaign on our servers. We will feature one campaign at a time to make it is easier to find games. We’ll be keeping it featured for two weeks so people can familiarize themselves with the maps for competitive play.

Though we wholeheartedly agreed with Valve on their choice to start their campaign off with 2 Evil Eyes, their subsequent picks have not been as bold as we had hoped, as the team has since gone on to pick Detour Ahead, City 17, Haunted Forest, Dead Before Dawn, One 4 Nine and I Hate Mountains. Now that the slow trickle of maps seems to have dried up – sans Cold Stream, of course, which is still a river running wild – we wanted to introduce to old and new players alike a list of five great Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 custom campaigns – that is, the best maps Valve is yet to highlight.

We applied a loose criteria to this list of Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 maps. First and foremost, each level was to be available for both games. Second, we expected proper playability on the “expert” difficulty setting. Third, all these levels enjoy a degree of popularity in the community, so as to make finding servers and players easier.  Fourth, we did somewhat consider artistic merits like overall look and feel, setpieces, setting and brushwork.

Fifth, we also sought out campaigns that would adhere to the gameplay standards and Left 4 Dead fiction as defined in practice by Valve. This meant no nasty surprises, traps, or major changes to campaign flow. The reason all the campaigns below have been tested and completed on the “expert” difficulty level is because we found that this particular setting best reveals the extent of balancing (or lack thereof) in terms of campaign length, pacing and structure.

In order to play the campaigns below, all you need to do is download Left 4 Dead Add-on support in the tools tab of the Steam library. Installing a custom campaign should be as simple as double-clicking the .vpk file that is extracted after uncompressing the downloaded archive. Off we go – feel free to recommend other campaigns in the comments, too!

Dam It 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)

Dam It 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1) may only have one really strong suit, but the map sure does wear it to work: The entire three-level campaign is built around one of the best set pieces in recent gaming memory, as the levels stretch around and about a magnificent hoover dam. Highly polished level design and cool architecture allow you to experience this massive construction from a wide variety of positions and angles as you progress through the campaign’s levels – a great artistic achievement that is overshadowed only by the expert flow of the campaign layout.

It’s very rare to see a campaign stick to one core idea in both its setting and narrative; even Valve’s official campaigns are sometimes guilty of meandering about. Dam It, though, is all about the dam, all the way. While the ending does have its own share of balancing issues and is quite flawed from a technical standpoint, and although the map only comes packaged with three levels, some of them are vastly longer than is the standard for Left 4 Dead 2.

Of final note is the clever and functional reapproppriation of the game’s existing voice recordings, something that not nearly enough campaigns take proper advantage of, especially given that the game’s voice actors recorded unused banter meant solely to be used by modders anyway!

Dead Echo 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)

“Dead Echo 2,” (for Left 4 Dead 1) another gem of a campaign ported over from the first game to the second, is best characterized by its solid five-level length. In fact, compared to Valve’s own levels, Dead Echo 2 is actually longer than the standard. The campaign, which very much sticks to what is a proven formula, proceeds via a scenic route through urban and rural areas, finally topping off the adventure at the titular “Echo” military outpost in a finale with several simultaneous tanks. Nuts.

Unfortunately for first-time players, like Dam It, Dead Echo’s campaign finale can appear slightly confusing in addition to being rather long and challenging. Though not superlative in any one aspect, Dead Echo nevertheless comes close to reaching Valve-level quality simply by being polished, challenging and enjoyable at the same time. This is quite the achievement in and of itself.

Death Aboard 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)

“Death Aboard” (for Left 4 Dead 1) seems like a standard-fare campaign on the outset, only to break out of the mould with its momentous fourth level, transforming the map from kinda decent to a unique experience. The campaign is set around the surroundings of a half-sunken tanker ship, which is a rollercoaster ride with excellent use of angles combined with functionally sound level design and balancing. Although its beginning, a prison facility – a surprisingly common location for Left 4 Dead maps – is more of a chore than it need be, once your team makes it closer to the actual tanker, which offers some simply fantastic geometric implications – things will be on the upswing.

While the Left 4 Dead 2 version has suffered a little in conversion, with the level’s barebones brushwork shining through more in the new dusk lighting than it did before, the campaign does nevertheless fit the Left 4 Dead 2 aesthetic just as well as it does the first. In fact, the campaign’s final level is actually improved by the bathing of the gentle, radiant beams of the sunset.

A highly recommended, creative campaign defined especially by its fourth level.

Fort Noesis (for Left 4 Dead 1)

Next up, “Fort Noesis” (for Left 4 Dead 1) from Noesis Interactive, peddlers of tutorials. This medium-length three-level campaign, though often hampered by artificial roadblocks and labyrinthine floor plans that have nothing to do with real-world buildings, nevertheless remains very playable and sometimes actually reaches its lofty goals.

A curious lack of polish – including possibly the longest, most agonizing camera run ever at the very beginning of the campaign – nevertheless befuddles, especially when taking into account the company behind the campaign. Even with its flaws fully apparent, the campaign remains surprisingly enjoyable, especially for skilled teams – as with the other campaigns on this list, Fort Noesis’ finale has too been designed to push players, with nary a camping spot on offer. Players of the finale are truly left to their own devices – and skills – to work through.

Heaven Can Wait 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)

Heaven Can Wait (for Left 4 Dead 1) is an ultra-long campaign that has a longer first level than most custom maps are in their entirety. I kid, I kid, but I swear you’ll feel that way after you’re done with it. The campaign begins with an aircrash (as always) and quickly sequences into a labyrinthine Blood Harvest -like forest, ultimately culminating in a challenging, large-scale finale that is further enhanced in the Left 4 Dead 2 upgrade, which comes with all-new weather effects.

The campaign is jam-packed with scripted sequences and sports some impressive brushwork and a realistic flow from beginning to end. In fact, its foundation in reality might very well be the campaign’s greatest strength and weakness: Especially on your very first try, finding the correct route can be a difficult task.

On the one hand, this can make for a frustrating experience. On the other hand, the campaign allows for exploration and rewards players for looking around its various nooks and crannies – quite the rarity in Left 4 Dead on the whole. Whether you consider this a positive or a negative is up for debate.

Be it as it may, Heaven Can Wait is best enjoyed especially with a group of familiars and friends.

TL;DR Downloads:

1. Dam It 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)
2. Dead Echo 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)
3. Death Aboard 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)
4. Fort Noesis (for Left 4 Dead 1)
5. Heaven Can Wait 2 (for Left 4 Dead 1)

All in all, the one common factor that very much ties all these levels together is how they all utilize a single core set piece to produce an exhilarating finale in addition to providing eye candy; we’ve already seen this occur with Left 4 Dead 1’s I Hate Mountains, Dead Before Dawn and the utterly fantastic Suicide Blitz. Hopefully you’ll enjoy playing these custom creations as much as we did.

Special thanks to the go-to Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 campaign hub, l4dmaps.com.

The Binding of Isaac

I had (erroneously) assumed that I would never, ever be writing about s#$t in video games, but after recently posting my conceptual/generic analysis of The Binding of Isaac, questions of merit, value/quality and meaning, as well as the overall relevance of video game criticism, emerged – chiefly at Rock, Paper Shotgun, as usual, the Mecca of Video Games that it so happens to be (props to the poster Hexagonalbolts for the tip).

A swift return to the wonderful, wonderful world of Isaac is thusly in order. Obviously, being the hotbed for argument that it inherently is thanks to its religious leanings, The Binding of Isaac has been more or less at the centre of critical attention ever since its release.

Still, the mere idea of taking Isaac, well, seriously, seemed to produce in some commenters a more intensified response yet, and indeed, many questions were asked, more arguments had, with many an opinion ranging from the honest to the ironic. The question seemed to be, isn’t it simply too much to write about Isaac like this? Here are a series of strawmen of some of the aforementioned:

• Are video games worthy of or suitable for analysis?
• Is The Binding of Isaac worthy of such a critique?
• Shouldn’t video game criticism be just about play and/or quality?
• Are any of these meanings intended? Why look for them if they aren’t?
• Why bother?

I’m not so sure that I can come even close to answering these questions in just one article, but on the whole, the question of “Why bother?” seems to encompass the rest of them. We’ll stick to that, for the most part. The reason I’m quick to jump into the fray with an in-depth response is that I find this particular discussion, of meaning, to be relevant for video game criticism on the one hand, and separate from the “games as art(?)” discourse on the other, even if this doesn’t appear to be the case first-hand.

The one chief aim of this article, then, is to answer the question of “Why bother?” especially as it pertains to the semantic/narrative functions of video games, as well as to discuss our understanding of video game criticism (its aims, objects, uses). As mentioned, I will rather try work my way around the question of “art”, only ever dipping my toes in its waters with the intention of otherwise staying firmly ashore.This discussion revolves around the presence of meaning in video games – on how it is formed, accessed, received and analysed. The reason I’m talking about The Binding of Isaac once again is simply to kill two birds with one stone and illustrate how the game might be relevant to our interests. As a final note, I am in the process of compiling a page of definitions that should hopefully open some of the terminology present in this post, should anyone find this particular aspect of the post lacking. Thanks for your interest!

Is This Games Journalism, NGJ, or Critique?

Nope. Some observers were keen to point out that perhaps this discussion (of merit, relevance, value/quality and meaning) relates to what comic author and ex-Rock, Paper Shotgun games writer Kieron Gillen originally and famously characterized as New Games Journalism (or NGJ for short) in 2004.

This is not the case. Simply put, NGJ (as I understand it) is experientiality-based journalistic reportage of (game)play that engages the reader via contextual embellishment and the use of first-person narratives in an attempt to convey the experience of playing. Quoth Gillen,

What a gamer feels and thinks as this alien construct takes over all their sensory inputs is what’s interesting here, not just the mechanics of how it got there. Games have always been digital hallucinogens – but games journalism has been like chemistry, discussing the binding reactions to brain sites.

The manifesto famously stated that:

[The games journalist’s] job is to describe what it’s like to visit a place that doesn’t exist outside of the gamer’s head – the gamer, not the game, remember. Go to a place, report on its cultures, foibles, distractions and bring it back to entertain your readers.

This Gaming Life

Jim Rossignol’s (also of RPS) book, This Gaming Life (2008, available in full online), is at least to me very much NGJ exemplified. The same can be said of Tom Bissell’s book Extra Lives (2010). Among other things, these writers delve in the realms of experientiality, opening doors and windows to particular boxes, rooms, houses and worlds of gaming.

(What Rock, Paper, Shotgun do overall, however, is pretty much write whatever they want in a way that interests the authors as much as their readers. They have a knack for that, but I’m not so sure that it’s too NGJ most of the time. No matter, some people thought NGJ was $%#t as early as it first emerged.)

Either way, as a games writer, you can hardly go wrong with Rossignol’s modus operandi:

[Games]‘ve changed people’s lives, and my motivation is as simple as that: they changed my life and I’ve been writing about that for years. Games have provided much of the cultural backdrop to our lives, and have the same emotional resonance as movies, novels, or music for the people who play them.

The Question of Journalism

You can probably already see a clear-cut difference in approach emerging; where an application of NGJ would more interested in conveying the experience of playing, we are more focused on how the functions and effects of the experience of playing are formed in the first place.

As for definitions of the aforementioned – journalism, critique and criticism – I believe that insofar as contextually relevant opinions and objects of interest are reported, that is journalism. If opinion is present, that is probably critique. Finally, if emphasis is placed upon the (in)validation of that opinion, then, that might as well be criticism.

In terms of video games, journalism and critique are conventionally pretty much the same thing, and also something that we too do in our reviews here. That being said, I can’t not mention that a whole discussion of the nature video game criticism already exists, with for instance Mr. Dan Cook claiming that what the world needs is more “game analysis”, suspecting it is “too late for the field of game criticism to ever again broadly mean ‘critical thoughts about games’”, to which Ben Abraham responded in kind, wondering whether Cook should “reconsider whether he’s actually interested in ‘criticism’ or not; as a practice more like art, and one that does not depend on a utilitarian purpose.”

Critical, schmitical, blah blah blah! In other words, a conversation exists for those willing to participate. I understand that allegiances and definitions are important, but for the time being, let us talk about meaning, the primary object of study in criticism.

So, About That S#%t You Mentioned?

A Link to the Past

Discomfort is sometimes an indication of your psychological defense mechanisms flaring up. I think most of us are/were somewhat uncomfortable with The Binding of Isaac, so why not go all in. Or knee-deep, as they say, at the very least. In this case, then, we must posit the question: What are the functions and effects that make the game an uncomfortable experience?

If there’s one thing that most of us can probably agree on, is that The Binding of Isaac does some things very differently, even if you perceive the game as a coiled-up bunch of derivative, unoriginal, blasphemous angries. I can’t and won’t deny the existence of such a convention; it just so happens that this convention is not one that is prevalent on Valve’s Steam platform.

It’s different. Take its representation of and reference to the external world, and compare it to previous games of the same style: Again, Zelda’s visualization and world-building is based on a much more conventional system of verisimilitude, influenced by and in essence an attempt of modeling Shigeru Miyamoto’s experiences as a child. It looks and sounds like the “real” world of games. We know this because Miyamoto himself often repeats this as fact:

Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games.

Isaac Fan Art

Isaac, then, is a psychedelic versioning of Miyamoto’s whimsical interpretation of the Japanese environs. That simultaneously makes the game also very much more of the same, something that makes the game so interesting.

The Binding of Isaac deviates from the standard on the two facets of the game: the semantic and the ludic. On the former level, the game is a parody, a carnivalesque of Zelda (I am error!) – in its genre, style, substance and content, and use of symbols (For the brevity of this argument, let’s not even go into its position as a perverted parable from the Bible) among other aspects.

On the latter level, then, in its gameplay, the game borders on pastiche and even direct reapproppriation in its Zelda-ness. Pastiche, as much as parody, is a form of critique, for it cannot exist but in relation to the object of pastiche. This is something to consider in a different story, though; instead, let me briefly discuss the question of difference on a more rudimentary level yet.

Difference

So far, we have only really established that The Binding of Isaac is both different and more of the same at the same time. How is this relevant in the context of the overarching argument, which is, to say, “Why bother?”

From a critic’s point of view, The Binding of Isaac is a ridiculously exemplary object of critique, given its moderate scale, semi-indie, auteur-like metatextual qualities, distinct audiovisual style, and exceptional correlation with other works of art (cough!). Due to its relative closeness to other games as pastiche and parody, The Binding of Isaac is extremely representative of the ludic/semantic dichotomy in video games; of the relationship of gameplay to audiovisuals, of rules to narrative exposition. It simply demands to be discussed as an example.

As you know, meaning is not engendered without reference. Modern semiotics (or semiology, whichever is your cup of tea) still relies, to a degree, on Ferdinand de Saussure’s assumption that meaning is based on difference. Language, to de Saussure, was (among many other things) “a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas”

Is That a Hobby Horse?

This may sound needlessly complex at first, but consider this: Before de Saussure and his peers, human beings didn’t really think (or talk, rather!) of meaning the same way they do today. It’s an incredible proposition: Modern linguistics is barely a hundred years old. Video games emerged, in many ways, at the single most opportune moment for us to discuss them, to analyse them. We must seize the moment and use these beautiful tools of interpretation. Your parents did not have them. Our current conception of pastiche, for instance, is literally all-new.

One can point at the technical advancements of the 1960s and 1970s, but from my multimedial perspective, video games emerged in succession (as well as in conjunction) to other forms of art such as modernism, postmodernism and pop art. All this talk about observers lacking the competency to analyse video games? This couldn’t be further from the truth. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have the linguistic tools to discuss MEANING or LANGUAGE, let alone GAMES, the way we do today.

For that, we should thank de Saussure, Chomsky, Foucault, Pierce, et cetera slowly dripping downwards into curricula. This is, again, something to consider – as is video games’ status as a “young medium”. (I should think that classifying video games as an “old medium” is like classifying radio or television, or the LP as an “old medium”. From my point of view, neither is true. This does not mean, however, that we lack the competency to appropriately deal with them, which is what the aforementioned article rails against, as well).

(Any moment now, someone will creep out of the woodwork and say, “But different doesn’t mean good”.)

Authorial Intention

Right. It really doesn’t. In a more contextual sense – rather than theoretically – “difference” actually has a bad, bad rap, given the apparent hegemony of certain concepts to others (occident to orient, white to black, right to left, light to dark, and so forth). As much an aside as it is for the sake of the overall argument, it has indeed been established that The Binding of Isaac is a pretty good game. Metacritic shows the game with a critic average of 84. Another proof of the game’s successes is that McMillen & Himsl are in fact shortly to come out with a DLC package called Wrath of the Lamb.

But even then, not everyone is convinced; there must be some sort of observable, tangible quality present, hidden within the game, that warrants our attention. Could “effort”, “time” and “vision” alone be worthy of our critical respect? After all, McMillen’s Isaac devblog (“for gay nerds”) reveals to us that something was indeed done. Destructoid’s Jordan Devore called, in his review, The Binding of Isaac a “A deceptively deep game”. Devore, though, doesn’t actually mean what you think he means based on the context of the citation. He’s actually talking about the ludic richness of the game.

This relates to my point. The question of “depth” relates to a historical mode of criticism, one that has yet to leave us and quite possibly never will, which is the question of authorial intention, which is the attempt to discover – or rather, recover – the hidden meaning(s) of a particular work via the use of biographism – association, contextualization and background research. This mode, I think, is what most of us consider to be the default mode of “criticism”.

Which, then, leads us to ask the question, “What led Mr. Edmund McMillen to subvert the established convention of shrubbery with piles of s#&t? (In conjunction with a hidden hypothesis: Surely it was his upbringing! Surely his childhood! Surely Freud!)”

We have now entered the realms of McMillen and Hinsl’s artistic integrity. Let me throw out some more potential theses: Perhaps Mr. McMillen is a perverted sort of chap – a coprophiliac? Surely we must entertain this possibility in relation to his game? Looking at McMillen’s back catalogue, which includes games such as Cunt and Time Fcuk, it’s apparent that we can conceptualize and sketch out an image of Mr. McMillen’s persona: Clearly, this is a prepubescent, at the very least an adolescent persona. It all meshes and gels.

(In case you didn’t notice, I’m joking. We don’t have a designated font for irony here. I’m not assaulting McMillen’s character, but rather illustrating the style and mode of criticism.)

Interpretation and Video Games

Consider Wolfgang Iser’s view, already from 1976, that it seemed as though art itself had begun to “react against the traditional form of interpretation”. Here, Iser was referring to the emergence of postmodernism (and/or metafiction) and postmodern art, but might just as well have been talking about video games, which are inherently bound to question their own meanings in practice due to their form.

Video games, by default, have a tendency to resisting interpretation that seeks to point out an intention or a hidden meaning; not only are video games an extremely co-operative form of creativity and produce, but additionally, just think of the modern shooter: The good guy is a really, really bad guy. Killing is actually scoring points.

As I attempted to illustrate in my article on The Binding of Isaac, this is simply the practical result of the form: Ludic function conflating and flattening together with the semantic. Consider Michael Abbott’s (of Brainy Gamer) poetic way of describing this idea:

I believe video games naturally facilitate collisions between what a player does or thinks; what is represented or enacted on screen; and what all of this means.

This awful mockery of biographism above simply exists simply to illustrate the inherent problems relating the questions of “quality” or “intent” (collective, artistic or otherwise – or more importantly, lack thereof) to a video game. The “games as art” discussion, especially, goes off the tracks in being so very bothered with questions of authorship or intent, when it should rather be invested in the collisions, the gaps, the relationships, the contexts that engender meaning. In killing as equivalent to scoring points.

On the Meaning of S#%t

Lookin' Good There

To your great great disappointment, I’m sure, I promised to talk about $h¤t and yet have largely failed to do so. This, then, is my present to you. I shall very quickly attempt to illustrate how the ludic functions of s#&t in The Binding of Isaac tie in with the semantic. None of this is to be taken seriously, of course, but rather as a model for analysis.

Human faeces carries with it many connotations: Of taboo and humour (taboos stemming from humour, and humour stemming from taboos). It carries with it a sense of social and societal rule. Convention. Control. Culture. Hegemony. Growth. Development. Banality. Necessity. Deprived of these, it carries with it a connotation of sickness, illness, inhumanity, barbarism, even bestiality.

It also activates connotations of childhood. At once, it activates within us a feeling of secrecy, of forbiddenness, of relief. In terms of visual or auditory response, we find ourselves to be disgusted, repulsed – or at the very least slightly annoyed by its presence.

Even in taking just a few of these meanings into account, playing The Binding of Isaac becomes at the very least a more private enterprise. It makes our response to the more inhumane thematic aspects of the game vastly more personal. It bothers us, teases us, annoys us with its many meanings.

(Questions of response would be better served in an NGJ-oriented article, however.)

Consider this: As far as this one sprite, the turd – this spiral-shaped, hilarious-looking comedic bottle of joy - The Binding of Isaac and Zelda are joined at once into a metonymical (a part of a whole, metaphorical or concrete) relationship. Consider manure together with plants. The former helps the latter grow, as fertilizer. That Zelda and Isaac are already engaged in critical interplay, via the latter’s use of parody and pastiche, only makes this relationship all the more intriguing.

Additionally: What can be found on the floor/on the ground, can be stepped into/onto, hacked into pieces, and can house items, but is not a barrel or a box?

Well, sh%#t.

S#%t

Sh%#. It’s surprising to discover how well it actually fits into the established ludic conventions of the Roguelike, or in fact, into conventions established by wildly different generic conventions, like breaking boxes in first-person shooters like Half-Life, cutting bushes in Zelda, head-butting or stomping on tiles in Mario, and so forth. Most players will instinctively chop away at any of the aforementioned in any new game. Even if they don’t, at first, they will eventually come to think of the aforementioned objects as sources of rewards.

Even in its parodic form, The Binding of Isaac’s piles of excrement make almost as much sense as Link finding an endless stream of Rupees in the shrubbery. But do consider the literal implications of the idea of the turd as a ludic reward – or that they can sometimes be used as defensive cover (like in the case of Larry Jr.). No matter what McMillen actually sought to achieve with his sprite switcheroo, he’s definitely managed to create a, uh, a real mess of meanings.

To conclude, we must ask ourselves – what are the effects of deviating from the standard? What are the meanings that emerge from not retaining a more conventional representation of the shrubbery – or barrels, or boxes? After all, to better fit the thematics of the genre, to adhere to a more standard form of verisimilitude, it could have been… urns of ashes, or piles of whitened bones.

To the ludologist, the representation of this particular item seems, by default, to be an extraneous question of player feedback. To us, difference alone renders it significant that we are in fact dealing with a pile of s#%t.

Wilful Semantic Ignorance

Let’s once more consider Iser’s view of texts initiating “‘performances’ of meaning rather than actually formulating meanings themselves”. Consider this rather in conjunction with the video game. The ludic (programmatic, rule-based) coined with the semantic (meaning-related, representative) aspects in video games together invite the player to act as agent within the game’s diegesis, its game world, which functions in accord with the rule systems as devised (but again, not always as intended) by the developers.

For example, players of The Binding of Isaac are not only invited and dragged into to the narrative context or “situation” of Isaac, but also, perhaps even chiefly, to learn and even master the game’s controls, figure out the enemies’ patterns of movement and attack, learn the management of the game’s multiplicitous items, and for some players with more experience, to mirror their experiences against the conventions of the Roguelike. And so forth.

To borrow from Iser, playing is performing is learning is creating meaning according to the rules of the game as defined by their author(s). Consider this: As much as we’re invited to perform as agents and subjects in the ludic component of the game, to grok (Koster) it, why should we not also be invited as “players” and “subjects” to the semantic component? If it’s perfectly okay to discuss the “various possible effects” of the ludic component – again, the various aspects of the gameplay – why should it be wrong, then, to ask what we can make of the semantic component, and furthermore, what are the meanings that emerge in the collisions of the ludic to semantic?

My overarching thesis is this: The ludic and the semantic both need to be considered observable functions of the game. Both components are equally systemic, structural and contextual, and both are equally functions and effects of the particular game. (Note: If someone *cough* argues that narrative is not a mechanic, either they are misguided, have an agenda, or their conception of either gameplay or narrative is funky. But that is a discussion for another time.)

Fandom, Fetishism and Ludology

I often wonder if the negative sort of response to criticism or analysis of popular media products is more broadly related to the existence of fandom, and not just a specific tendency of the video gaming community. Fandom is indeed a curious thing: Some of us are very much into books, video games, movies, comics.

Fetishism is the ultimate form of objectification, wherein the meaning of the fetish is supplanted by the fetishist’s feeling for this item. Once something becomes a fetish, then, looking below the surface seems to the fetishist largely an attempt to ruin their fun and enjoyment. Why would a fetishist want to know what the fetish represents, means, or what its functions are?

A Theory of Fun

A pronouncedly ludological approach to game theory often equally reminds me of, well, fetishism. Despite claims to the contrary, to many players, the programmatic nature of video games is in fact clear-cut and requires no greater explanation. Especially to competitive players of shooters or MMOs, the process of understanding the rules of a game, or grokking, is key to the enjoyment and, ultimately, mastery of the game.

In this manner, the ludic functions of the various objects and items in the game often completely supplant their semantic meanings over time: All that remains, in the player’s view, is the object’s function in the game’s rules: Shooting a gun in the game world becomes but a form of scoring points – and ultimately winning. All games tend to reveal their gameness through what some commentators call ludonarrative dissonance (or harmony, if the ludic and semantic components are seen to be appropriately congruent).

From this angle, it seems the ludologist is right: Whatever elaborately painted, represented and framed win/lose scenario ultimately seems to be reducible (or reduces) to 0s and 1s. Someone wins, someone loses.

Just a Function

Bits of code and art in video games both often have their basis in someone’s experiences, like Miyamoto’s in Zelda. McMillen himself claims that The Binding of Isaac was based on his experiences of Catholicism, as outrageous as that may sound:

The majority of what I’m drawing on is my experience with Catholicism, the pros and cons, I guess. It [is] honestly me having a conversation with myself about how I felt about religion growing up, and that’s how it came out.

Sid Meier's Colonization

Whether they like it or not, even the most solitary of programmers write code in the real world on the basis of their personal experience – both in the sense of learning how to code, but also as learning to code as members of society. This is also why games most often masquerade in well-known genres of fiction that naturally support the ludic component. This is the reason why we “play” war. This is also the reason why so many old board games are actually simulations of either war or, more broadly, conflict. When Trevor Owens explains, in relation to the game Colonialization, how

…we could say that we can see the colonialism of the game represented in the colonialism of the code. With that said, it is clear that this is a relatively efficient way to write code for the game’s peoples. The Natives are not the result of special creation. In effect, the scripts speak them into existence at the level of code as a defunct, stripped, and inhibited version of their oppressors.

You may laugh at the slight awkwardness of the object of his study, but if anywhere, this is where the conception of “nativity” as semantic meaning collides with the ludic. As long as video games represent something, anything, verisimilitude is introduced, and the game’s models, textures, architecture, genre and topos will always and forever affect the player’s perception and interpretation of the game’s world.

Ludonarrative Dissonance

BioShock

In my article, I have sought to illustrate how the player’s position as a learning, performing agent in video games begs us to also consider the manner in which the ludic components of video games collide with the semantic.

Clint Hocking’s “Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock“, wherein he introduces the conception of ludonarrative dissonance in illustrating how BioShock 1‘s player/game contracts, attempts to explain how the game’s ludic and narrative facets seem to be on an interpretative collision course and thus take players “out” of the game’s fiction, making suspension of disbelief harder if not impossible. Even more telling is Hocking’s disappointment with this “dissonance”:

To mock us for accepting the weaknesses of the medium not only insults the player, but it’s really kind of ‘out of bounds’ (except as comedy or as a meta element – of which it appears to be neither).

Here, I have rather sought to portray games more as sums, networks and bunches of colliding meanings rather than wholes of coherent intention, like Hocking’s analysis would seem to imply. In his response to Hocking’s classic piece, Michael Abbott actually acutely posed the following question:

Does the road to ludonarrative unity really lead us where we want to go? Is the destination reachable? Is it possible to embrace a design aesthetic that takes us in another direction that could be just as fruitful, if not more so?

Here, Abbott is probably referring to the video game’s potential as simulation, of something so hyperreal that you can no longer “tell” the game from reality. But even if this were to be the case one day, meanings are never going to be fully congruent with each other. Will emergent ideology, sexism, racism or bigotry take you out of the “game”? Is that also meant, intended, or part of the immersion?

If it’s inherently natural for games to carry these collisions between the ludic and the semantic, inherently producing interpretative dissonance, then, it seems to me only natural for criticism to leave the notions and conceptions of immersion, or suspension of disbelief to, say, New Games Journalism (no disrespect meant) and instead focus on these emergent collisions of meanings. Like Abbott says, “…sometimes the mechanics are just as interesting as the story itself.”

The Dictators of Meaning

El Presidente

The sole reason I have sought to avoid both the “games as art” discourse as well as the “narrative as mechanic” discussion so far is because neither seem to have been very invested in the above question of meaning. This article has been my heartfelt attempt at illustrating why video games criticism should care also for the semantic component of a video game, for our conception of and our relationship with meaning has profound effects on the ways in which we discuss “art”, “narrative” and “gameplay” in turn.

Even with the advent and subsequent twilight of existentialism, for instance, meaning(lessness) is still very often handled poorly by human beings. It’s as if we were inherently programmed to hunger and desire for coherence, even where it does not exist. That such a dislike of uncertainty, introduced by the multiplicity and duplicity of meaning, should lead to an unwillingness to look at video gaming’s interpretative possibilities as the sum of a conventional (or non-conventional), generic structures, effects and functions, is a fully understandable one.

That a meaning should exist within the game not as a coherent, harmonic givens, but a function to be performed, construed, and even analysed, can be a puzzling, even angering proposition. Collisions of meaning (insta-killing Mother with The Bible in The Binding of Isaac) occur, and will occur in the future, as long as games bear any resemblance to reality, really. Furthermore, games make this question all the more difficult, for there exists almost the requirement to turn a blind eye to these collisions of meaning; after all, the various semantic meanings of a video game can be a source of distraction to players trying to grok the ludic facet of the game.

Ultimately, however, reacting negatively to the actual question of meaning is to me a sign of immaturity and wilful ignorance. In choosing explicitly not to entertain the potential emergent meaning(s) of video games, the commentators – players, journalists, developers, critics and researchers alike – are nipping a constructive discussion in the bud.

“But The Binding of Isaac is s#%t.”

But you know, s%#t is a function and has meaning to it. Let’s look at it!

Not much longer now before the Reapers arrive to wipe out galactic civilization.

Mass Effect 3 is almost upon us, and I’m hardly ready. For anticipation is not just a case of checking the calendar and willing the days to advance quicker, there is work to be done before March 6th comes around. Few games in history have featured what is the Mass Effect series’ main selling point: the ability to carry your save forward into the sequels in order to retain your character and the decisions you have made over the course of the games. So fans aren’t just looking forward to playing the last instalment of a trilogy, they’re looking forward to playing the last instalment of their trilogy. Every decision you make defines your Commander Shepard, decides your relationship with other characters – possibly even their fate, and shapes a universe that is unique to your save. Loading up a game with that save will bring a story that recognises you and remembers what you have done. The series has already provided an unprecedented level of player authorship over narrative, and it only remains to be seen whether the final chapter can deliver a satisfying conclusion.

Over the past few weeks leading up to the release, while catching up on my Mass Effect lore and replaying the games, I have been observing the frantic rush of replays by people in various communities. There is definitely a sense of a communal effort; people relating their plans for their ‘perfect’ Commander Shepard and what kind of universe they want to forge with his or her decisions, as well as providing each other with tips on how to tackle certain spots, things to look out for and optimal strategies for keeping companions alive. Moreover, at this level of fandom, there is much at stake, and therefore much speculation and hope that the game lives up to its hype. And boy is there some dedicated speculation out there.

Canon to the Right of Them, Canon to the Left of Them

What fascinates me about this series is how personal the experience becomes, to the point that in theory, no two players’ playthroughs are alike. With the ability to tailor the story to your preferences, every single player’s game spawns a unique ‘canon’. There is no universally accepted retelling of the series of events that make up the ME saga; as such there is no canon in the traditional sense of the word. Of course, you could start up the games without uploading a save; obviously there will always be new players who haven’t played the previous instalments, and with them in mind BioWare provides a clean slate. Indeed, PS3 players had no choice, for the first game was never released on that system. In ME2 for the PS3 is the ability to set a few of the key prerequisite decisions by means of an interactive comic that brings you up to speed on the story. But all the little choices and details are left to the discretion of BioWare, setting in stone things that the player had no say in either way. But BioWare has been careful to point out that even this ‘vanilla’ set of decisions is not canon.

It’s not canon. We have a rule in our franchise that there is no canon. You as a player decide what your story is. But we choose a default path that gives you access to a lot of cool things. It’s like how a character like Jack Bauer has to make some decisions where he feels empathy in one moment or feels particularly brutal in another moment. We weave you through a default path that switches between those.

- Casey Hudson, Executive Producer, BioWare

On a personal level, having a series-wide persistent character changes the experience in a much more profound way than I had anticipated. I should note before I continue that BioWare’s other current franchise, the Dragon Age series, also features this mechanic. Playing Dragon Age: Origins, I had similar feelings with regards to making choices. When it comes to regular RPGs, I approach the story decision-making with little more attention than the tactical combat decision-making. That is to say, I am forging a path through the game but it’s not so much that I expect to lead the story where I want as I am letting the developers take me on a ride and I enjoy pulling it in the directions that I can with whatever freedom that is provided. The choices in most RPGs span the length of the game, the 20-odd hours adventure, after which they no longer hold meaning. Provided with a choice to kill someone or let them live, for example, I am only thinking as far as a few hours ahead at most, when I’ll see the consequences. The context, the characters involved and my attachment to them all play a part in this decision, but it’s only within this tiny continuum that the decision and the results exist and have significance.

Consequences Will Never be the Same

In a modern BioWare game, however, a decision has the potential to create events spanning multiple games. Results may not manifest in the same adventure, but may in fact surface to haunt you in the sequel. I am no longer thinking about how a cutscene or my route through a level is going to differ as a result of my actions, but what series of events is going to occur and when I am going to witness the aftermath. In this kind of coherent and persistent world, having such an impact makes the experience all the more immersive and personal to me. I don’t expect that the world I have helped shape is very much the same as any other player’s, and this makes it feel like something only I have witnessed and taken part in. Moreover, the decision-making feels more profound, I treat each question as a pivot point; there is more weight and significance to what I do because the world around me will change to reflect it, even after I finish one particular story arc. A character with a favour to ask may return later, and depending on how I treated him he may present reward or revenge. The fact that I’ll stop to think about a decision and what it could mean for the long term is indicative enough to me that we are approaching a point in games where we have to treat the worlds and the characters with reverence.

Sometimes the potential of a particular choice is tantalizing enough that I’ll take a few minutes to think about it whether I expect to see a consequence or not. In DA:O there is a quest deep underground that leads to a summoning of an ancient demon. You can either let it go free and receive material reward or defeat it and gain experience. Choosing the greedy path will no doubt bring misfortune to others, and even though that plot thread may never return in future games, the thought of what kind of havoc could be wreaked in the long term is too tempting to let this opportunity slide. Out of pure reckless glee I’d rather let it go and have an impact on the world. Similar situations arise in the ME games, where the future of entire species lies in your hands. I’d rather let the destructive Rachni live, for example, in order to see what complications they bring to the fold than remove them from the possibility space.

As far as character creation and development goes, I know many gamers prefer to place themselves in the role of the protagonist, as for myself, it’s not me saving the galaxy. I subscribe to Martyn’s Avataritis critique of role-playing video games as yourself, hence a character I create in an RPG is not me, but an avatar that upholds my values and represents the virtuous ideal. And with the arguably superior voiceover chops of Jennifer Hale (with no disrespect meant to the talented Mark Meer), I’ve chosen to go with femshep. My Commander Jane Shepard is the most badass space marine ever to headbutt a Krogan and take down a Thresher Maw. Before breakfast.

I’m Commander Shepard and This is my Favourite Series on the Citadel

The character development is just as important to me as the world-building. This Shepard is growing and forming connections with characters in the way that I prefer, becoming the kind of hero I want there to exist, saving the world in the way I envision. Accompanying Shepard on her arduous quest, it’s easy to form an attachment to her and her companions, a bond that raises the stakes and gives weight to their mortality. Interestingly enough, I have observed that in treating the main character in this way, it’s easier to make choices that I wouldn’t necessarily choose myself in the given situation. The ME series lets you approach your tasks with two different attitudes, pretty much Light side/Dark side equivalents: Paragon and Renegade respectively. To take the Paragon path is, as one would expect, to be the good cop, the nice guy. The Renegade path is interesting in that it allows you to be a jerk, while still being the hero. Jack Bauer in space, you could say: ruthlessly efficient, less concerned with the means as with the ends. Back to my point, the Renegade choices aren’t always easy to make, being as they are the less than friendly route. But by playing a third-person avatar, that one level of separation possibly allows for a kind of distancing from that discomfort; Shepard can take that tough road I would never be able to.

At this point, I have high expectations, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous. So much is riding on this final release, and as enamoured of the series as I am, BioWare’s record hasn’t been impeccable. As great a sequel as ME2 was, it wasn’t without its flaws. Putting aside the various mechanical changes from its predecessor, some of which were successful improvements and others which were not, it was BioWare’s first chance to demonstrate the persistent save feature. While in theory it’s a fantastic idea, in practice it hasn’t proven itself fully just yet. For a start, a number of limitations arise when it comes to the middle episode in a trilogy: it needs to bridge the gap between the first and last parts, and therefore it can’t branch off wildly lest it become impossible to carry forward. The more variations in the story that there are, the more complicated it will be to manage all the different plot threads. As it is, the developers have 700 or so variables to keep track of. So while the narratives of the first two games must stay convergent in order to retain a manageable end state to continue the story from, ME3 can be as divergent and open-ended as the writers want it to be, ending in however many different ways they can dream up. Indeed, it has been hinted that there will be “degrees of success” in the endings that you can achieve.

It’s understandable for a developer to want to avoid making drastic variations that cause the player to miss out on whole avenues of content, due to the sheer resources required for work that may not even be seen. Characters who could have died in ME1 are given tiny cameos in 2, with minimal involvement in the plot, since they won’t even be appearing in some players’ stories. It is worth pointing out that there are studios that have taken this kind of risk with branching, CD Projekt being one of them with The Witcher 2, in which there is a segment where you can play either one level or the other, and the only way to see what you missed is to replay the whole game. So ME2 was already limited in its ability to reflect all the changes in your save. And being the bridging story, it also did a lot of delaying on much of the payoffs; most of the big choices thus far are still unacknowledged let alone effective, and we’ll have to wait a bit longer to see where they lead. The fate of the Rachni, for instance, is still unclear, and the most that we find out is a little hint that sets up yet more anticipation for later. In this way the story has very much been back-loaded with all the setups and hooks in place to make ME3 one hell of a bottled up enigma. Even after having seen a few of the trailers and media fluff pieces, I have no idea how all these elements are going to play out and vary the outcomes. One interesting side note here is that apparently players would be well-advised to keep their ME3 saves as well! For what nefarious purpose, only BioWare knows.

I’ve mentioned the hurdles that BioWare has to overcome in order to deliver satisfactory payoffs, but that’s not even considering how difficult it is to please everyone. Some plot threads that seemed important before are given but a mention, an email in sent in gratitude by a person you saved, for example, or an overheard news report chronicling your previous actions. Personally I like all the little ways those details form the unique whole, but I know there are players still not satisfied. Given how much attention BioWare has paid to their community’s feedback in the past, I would not be surprised if they have gauged the interest in the various plot threads and characters and focused their efforts on those that are most popular. With the depth of player statistics they have at their disposal, they would be short-sighted not to.

So with the final chapter right around the corner, I am rushing to prepare the perfect save for my Renegade femshep who will spare no cost and pull no punches in order to gather the galactic armies to face the Reaper onslaught. Without even having played ME3, every decision has been weighed carefully, the mere potential of every choice illustrating the disquieting responsibility of the fate of the world on her shoulders.

Mass Effect 3 launches for the XBox 360, Playstation 3 and PC on March 6th in North America and March 9th in Europe.

The article in question is altogether complete in its own right, but also lacking in discussion of the themes, concepts and terms that are nevertheless utilized in the analysis. In this way, I shall be focusing on the things that are left unsaid (intentionally or unintentionally) in Williams’ story. In my complementary article below, I will attempt to shed lots and lots of extra light on what I perceive to be these omissions, which include the genre of body horror, the grotesque, Freud’s conception of the uncanny, as well as the concepts of abjection and the abject.

Isaac, Body Horror and Abjection

Williams’ characterization of the game (emphasis mine), that “…the whole horrific nightmare world that Isaac explores is just a series of grotesque body horrors” is a sentence filled to the brim with meaning, and a supreme starting point for any article on The Binding of Isaac.

The game is indeed that, but I beg to differ – even if bordering dangerously on semantics schemantics – that The Binding of Isaac is in no way just a series of “grotesque body horrors”. Although Williams brings up here both the concepts of the grotesque as well as body horror in one fell swoop, he manages to discuss nor define neither, even though they function to contextualize the game for us by association.

Body horror, for instance, is reduced simply to “headless corpses, disembodied heads, flies and maggots gathered around excrement” and so forth. Which is fair enough; merely paying attention to the fact that many of the monsters bear resemblance or associations to human beings is an excellent starting point.

Nevertheless, a broader connection between McMillen’s admittedly zany gallery of monsters and the actual genre of body horror could have been made. Readers are surely familiar with such exemplary filmic renditions of the genre such as Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, or Alien (or say, Species, mwah!). In essence, vagina with teeth, impossibly distorted bodies, giving birth to something less (or more?) than human. This proposition, of the body and the self as both unfamiliar and dangerous, has always struck fear in the hearts of men. Joseph Cambell, according to Barbara Creed, found

a motif occurring in certain primitive mythologies, as well as in modern surrealist painting and neurotic dream, which is known to folklore as ‘the toothed vagina’ – the vagina that castrates.

The classic Alien films, for instance, utilize the xenomorph in the development of suspense not only in external, but also in (body-)internal terms. Creed, in her article “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection” (1986), analyses the original Alien film in this manner.

Abjection, popularized primarily by the regrettably incomprehensible Julia Kristeva, is the no-man’s land between the subject and the object; the space between being the self and the other. Creed’s reading of Kristeva, for instance, focuses on abjection as it is produced by society, both culturally and symbolically, in the formation of the border “between human and inhuman”, “between normal and abnormal.”

Though Creed utilizes Kristeva solely as a tool for the discussion of the feminine, its broader uses are obviously manifold. Creed herself points out that “The abject can be experienced in various ways – one of which relates to biological bodily functions, the other of which has been inscribed in a symbolic (religious) economy”. The former is plain as day in the context of The Binding of Isaac: “vomit or menstrual blood or shit”, like Williams blurts it. The latter would include, for instance, “dietary prohibitions”, which are central not only to Catholicism – both the source and target, subject and object, of McMillen’s critique – but Abrahamic religions on the whole. Just take lent. More on this later.

To summarize, one could say that the concept of abjection is vital, even crucial to horror, and startlingly many classic horror movies are based solely on the idea that something dear, beloved and familiar becomes unfamiliar, hostile, or even dangerous. The Binding of Isaac, for instance, utilizes this formula down to a tee: The mother becomes monster-like both in the Genesis 22 -influenced frame story as well as the game’s diegesis (that is, as its boss monster). Indeed, Creed would be more than delighted to see how McMillen utilizes the concepts of motherhood and the maternal – after all, more than a third of her paper deals explicitly with the abjection of the mother figure.

The Uncanny Abject

Is That a Hobby Horse?

Williams also mentions, in the first sentence quoted above, the concept of the grotesque. Before discussing this, however, I would also like to briefly segue into Sigmund Freud’s original definition of the uncanny, Das Unheimlich, or, “…that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.”

Obviously, I’m not citing Freud as any sort of a psychological authority – which he isn’t – but rather a reader and connoisseur of fictions. To this day, his conception of the uncanny is still very much in agreement with our experience of horror as much as it is in accord with the idea of abjection. Indeed, a mother turning unfamiliar on his son is a perfect representation of both concepts.

And It Was Good

In the context of The Binding of Isaac, abjection is a two-way process. In the beginning, Isaac and his mother are juxtaposed side by side, peacefully, and implying to us the idea of harmony. (An allusion to the intertext in the game’s very name, of course, already gives to us some indication of the troubles befalling upon Isaac, but no matter.)

“Life was simple, and they were both happy”, the narrator states dryly (check out the intro video embedded below). Immediately, however, the mother’s face changes to a blank, emptied visage, an indicator of the escaping humanness, humanity, and a dwindled capacity for ethical judgement.

In other words, on the symbolic level, the mother forces Isaac into a social abject – not good enough to take part in the social order, and in fact, bad enough to die for his so-called “sins”. Yet the mother herself is also an abject, beyond the grasp of normal social order, and as such occupying the liminal state between human and inhuman. In the first case – with Isaac – the definition is first given symbolically from above (and later, as I will attempt to show, embraced actively as a form of fighting back). In the second case, of the monstrous mother, the abjection is less symbolic and more tangible, even in McMillen’s utilization of Genesis 22 as the backdrop. Hopefully this example illustrates the duality of the concept to some degree.

Abraham, Kierkegaard and the Grotesque

Geoffrey Galt Harpham, in his book On the Grotesque (1982), explains that the word grotesque “designates a condition of being just out of focus, just beyond the reach of language. It accommodates the things left over when the categories of language are exhausted.” The Binding of Isaac – not the game, but the Biblical story – can be seen to have been the starting point of the existentialist movement through Søren Kierkegaard, whose book, Fear and Trembling (1843), is a discussion of Genesis 22.

I want to discuss Harpham’s view of the grotesque above in relation to Kierkegaard’s evaluation of Abraham. Late in the book, Kierkegaard homes in on Abraham’s choice to hide God’s request from his family and friends, acting out God’s plan in silence and secrecy.

In the case of Isaac the game, the actual visual rendition of the mother figure, spread out on the sofa with a remote controller in hand, is in my mind blatant social commentary of the splintering of the American society, the community, the family unit (where is Isaac’s father?), family roles and the degeneration, and ultimately absence, of responsibility. The dulling effect of TV written on the mother’s face and the turgid, bloated body covered by a shapeless dress. The self-induced solitude, the blissful ignorance, and the intentional individualism, even separatism.

In fact, Kierkegaard’s critique is based on a similar conception of ethics. According to him, a man’s “ethical task is to develop out of this concealment and to reveal himself in the universal”. In other words, ethical judgements are to be made in relation to their “intermediate ethical determinants”, or, in Abraham’s case, his family: “the ethical had for Abraham no higher expression than the family life.”

Looking at McMillen’s rendition of the mother character, we players instantly deem her clinically insane. Her actions make her seem utterly inhuman. But then again, we have an established backdrop of parental and religious abuse to help us with our judgement. But Kierkegaard asks, what if it was true? What if Abraham heard God? At the heart of Kierkegaard’s argument is not only the apparent pettiness and detestability of such a deity, but moreover, the impossibility of human communication and interaction in the face of such a request.

In a word, the situation is grotesque. Abraham cannot tell his intermediates that God has told him to sacrifice his son, for there is no established practice for doing so. Anything said would only result in misunderstanding:

[Abraham] is able to utter everything, but one thing he cannot say, i.e. say it in such a way that another understands it, and so he is not speaking. The relief of speech is that it translates me into the universal.

Amidst such a complete perversion of the relationship between father/son, parent/child, and even man/god, communication offers no way out. This grotesqueness is contained within the game, too, but in a different, more postmodern sense, as both Isaac and her single mother seem largely cast out of society in the first place. Much like Isaac is imprisoned by the mother, the mother-son unit seems equally imprisoned by their social status, lacking in support systems.

What would Isaac’s mother say? Who would she speak with? What could Isaac tell her friends? There is no “relief of speech.”

In a more generic sense, The Binding of Isaac could be seen to be a Bahtinian carnivalesque of its intertext, Genesis 22. It treats its subject matter so nonchalantly, so liberally, that there is no room to use words such as “inconsistency” or “incoherence”. The game doesn’t merely attempt to interface with its intertext via the use of grotesque parody and irony – which it also does – but simply to play with the topos. This playfulness is especially visible in the game’s democracy (one could say absence) of symbolic meaning in the actual gameplay – one that I will attempt to illustrate below.

Grotesque and the Roguelike

Lookin' Good There

But back to Harpham’s definition of the grotesque: “The grotesque is the opposite, the least ideal form. The circle’s tension is perfectly controlled, but the grotesque is always a civil war of attraction/repulsion”. Here, Harpham could just as well be describing the relationship between Isaac and his immediate surroundings. The basement that Isaac escapes into is completely devoid of humanism.

In a very different sense, Isaac’s levels are a grotesque rendition of (the dark world of) Zelda. (It is rather curious that Zelda, too, is built on this very dichotomy by itself). Even if there is no mirror world, no better place to return to, its existence is hinted at in a generic, conventional sense. Take the piles of shit, for instance, which clearly in their ludic function fully mimic the shrubbery of Zelda. The same goes for the shopkeeper, the inhabitants of the secret rooms. And so forth; the ideal is always present at the very least in the form of parody.

Harpham also states that “The perception of the grotesque is never a fixed or stable thing, but always a process, a progression”. As off-putting as the scenery is in the beginning, the landscape becomes – if possible – linearly more repulsive as the player gets closer to the “Womb” levels. Yet the impact of our receiving this imagery in all actuality lessens. With the Binding of Isaac, the progression of the grotesque is actually wholly coherent with the standard pattern of the roguelike.

In a sense, the very first playthrough of The Binding of Isaac has to be the “most” grotesque, due to the shock of recognition: “Is that really a pile of shit I’m seeing?”

Each surprise, each power-up, each newly engaged boss monster is – if not a shock – at the very least a surprise. But like with all roguelikes (and in a way, all games!), playing the game is reliant on our becoming more and more familiar, even comfortable with its grotesqueness. Its rules, its operational modes. The lines of the signifier and the signified begin to blur. What might have been a signal of “gross, a pile of shit” becomes “possibly a coin under the pile of shit”. And cry away at the pile of shit you do.

The Ideal

It is through our familiarization with the grotesque that a third form of abjection emerges in playing the game: The stronger Isaac becomes, the more grotesque his shape and form. Harpham continues “…grotesques are marked by such an affinity/antagonism, by the co-presence of the normative, fully formed, “high” or ideal, and the abnormal, unformed, degenerate, “low” or material”. This applies not only to the location, as I explain above, but also to our image of Isaac.

Isaac, as he is represented throughout the game’s various cutscenes, is an ideal one. Isaac never changes in the imagery; he is constant, a representation of the purity of the child. Within the game’s ludus and diegesis, however, he often becomes a monster more powerful than Mother, more powerful than Satan, even. Does that make Isaac an ultimate of sorts, then? Hardly: Although this ideal state and the concrete state of Isaac’s being are constantly juxtaposed visually, the player hardly ever notices this incongruity, for the abjectional process – and the progression of the grotesque – is so integral to the game’s play.

We don’t even stop to question that Isaac is being transformed into a monster before our very eyes. It seems natural since he is battling the process of external abjection in the game’s ludus as well as narrative – all the while the player grows more and more comfortable with the grotesqueness and uncanniness of it all.

Power-Ups, Meaning and Transformation

Items Upon Items

In The Binding of Isaac, players are confronted with a gargantuan (largest predefined array of unique power-ups ever, perhaps, if not counting those generated or randomized on the fly?) amount of equipment, most of which has now been outlined in an extensive wiki. In his selection of power-ups, McMillen strikes a curious balance between items that are congruent either with the religious context of his intertext, or with the more banal, memetic aspects of the game.

Vastly more important than the intertext, or the ways in which the game utilizes it, is rather how the game’s world, its diegesis, can be seen to be the manifestation of the desperate escape fantasies that form in Isaac’s mind during the moments of his distress. This explains the ways in which the banal plane – Isaac’s real existence, being tortured by his insane mother – blends into the fantastic, producing a grotesque combination of the two planes. The grotesqueness of it is obviously enhanced by the fact that we’re dealing with the confabulations of a child in harm’s way.

It’s just that McMillen’s juxtapositions do not strike us as being particularly strange due our inherent familiarity with McMillen’s style, as it sits comfortably at home in our postmodern experience of the online space. After all, we are deeply, almost unsettlingly familiar with outrageous juxtapositions and meaningless mash-ups, in which meaning is only produced by their/our pointing at the very lack of meaning. We are accustomed to things making little to no sense in terms of cohesion or harmony.

Super Meat Boy by David Rapoza

Therefore, a “Shoop da woop” or a “Dr. Fetus” (from the Super Meat Boy game McMillen worked on) power-up is not nearly as out of place in the game as it should. Be it as it may, one could certainly analyse the item catalogue in view of the game’s pseudo-religious theming: “The Bible” item, for instance, transforms the player character into an angel. “Dead Sea Scrolls” spawn random items. “The Necronomicon” damages all enemies. Other marginally related items, such as Ouija boards, and other occult materials also persist.

But vastly more interesting than the actual “powers” of the “ups” is rather how the items work to transform little Isaac’s body, the representational body canvas of the protagonist. The game’s shaky Flash base allows McMillen to transform the player character(s) almost at will with each new item; from a crown of thorns to growing fatter, or from having a bigger head to gaining a third eye, the transformations seem almost endlessly combinatory.

What IS That!?

Not nearly all of the aforementioned transformations of the body are beneficial to the player character, either. At the end of nearly every playthrough, successful or not, you will have created a new monster of your own. What is Isaac, at that point, but an abject – cast away in a basement, endlessly changed, transformed, and startlingly inhuman? To put forth the idea in the form of a cliché, Isaac becomes a Frankenstein’s monster.

What is the meaning of all this? A simplistic interpretation is simply to take it as a givens that to fight grotesque injustice, you have to become grotesque yourself. Even empowerment, in the face of a totalitarian abjectifying power, is corruptible, for there is no language but their language, no way but their way, a deeply unsettling and unsatisfying vista.

So, What Is The Binding of Isaac About, or, What Does “The Bible” Do?

In order to truly succeed at The Binding of Isaac, players either need to memorize the effects of each power-up, or be permanently hindered to the point of certain defeat. (Note: Williams also briefly touches upon this.) Isaac’s body must be transformed to meet the emergent challenges both in a particular and systemic sense: By both completing achievements in the game and managing to beat the game’s various bosses, the game begins to spawn more better items with each subsequent replay. Or rather, the game first rewards players for getting better, then later punishes them by ramping up the difficulty.

Sniff

On its basest ludic level of interaction – the interface of the character to the game world -, then, The Binding of Isaac is about coming to terms with your habitat. Navigating the dangers of both the banal and the ideological. Like other roguelikes, The Binding of Isaac is ultimately about exploration, finding out how things work. What does the Wooden Spoon do? What does the Bible do? What does the Magic Mushroom do? What does Mom’s Underwear do?

In this light, the game becomes a metaphor for the trials and tribulations of childhood and puberty, of growing up, becoming adults and members of society by internalizing rules, patterns and ideologies. That the effects of these power-ups are so viscerally identifiable upon the player character gives an extra incentive for players to memorize the right items to use in the right situations (or use the aforementioned wiki).

All the more curious is the game’s lack of visual congruence. All that players are explicitly told, with “grotesque body horrors”, progressions and transformations, is to not question the ethical or moral repercussions of the various items, but rather judge them solely on the basis of their function. In The Binding of Isaac, you look at the world as a series of trade-offs. Making a pact with Satan? Here are your hearts.

As fans of McMillen’s game will know, the pseudo-religious items have their uses. But so do the occult, the banal, the medical, the outrageous, especially the memetic. For one reason or another, McMillen’s design has resulted in a complete conflation, a flattening of meaning, where each motif of the story on the same level as items. Of course, it can easily be argued that the power-ups flatten into equal value because of their function as power-ups in the game’s ludus. And even then, their price points are different in the game’s various shops.

The Binding of Isaac’s gallery of items is filled to the brim both with symbolic and ludic functions. Even if McMillen intended otherwise, the ludic function almost always overrides whatever symbolic meaning is present; in other words, in the ordinary, rudimentary circumstance of gameplay, function rules all. This results in a kind of absence of meaning that gives to the game a kind of heartfelt subtlety – one that might have been replaced, in a different context, with a violent bombast instead. In any case, one fact remains: Before you have memorized the transformative power of an object, everything in the game is on the level. A Dead Cat is juxtaposed to a Small Rock is juxtaposed to The Book of Revelations.

Isaac and Catholicism

Last and very much least, I want to quickly discuss the portion of Williams’ article wherein he discusses McMillen’s portrayal of Catholicism. He astutely remarks that

Catholicism has frequently been much less terrified of the body … Consider the embrace of the physically grotesque as an expression of her own theology in the writings of Flannery O’Connor, for example.

He also says that “McMillen’s vision of evil and the body being almost inextricably linked almost feels more like American Puritanism than Catholicism.“ This is true, even if Williams conveniently omits that Catholicism to this day – in the form of the much-maligned, Dan Brown -sensationalized Opus Dei, for instance –  is in fact still obsessed with abusing and controlling the body and its functions. As long as the Pope is anti-contraception, and Roman Catholic priests sworn to celibacy, that particular discussion is a done dada.

Therefore, I find there to be a kind of unwillingness, on Williams’ part, to ask the right question. We should ask not, “How is McMillen’s game influenced by Catholic grotesque?” but rather, “How can religion be so grotesque”?

Surely the game takes part in the latter discussion rather than the former? Surely The Binding of Isaac is not only a “reflection of” but also a “response to”? Again, when Williams states that “pietas and crucifixes place the emphasis on a body broken for adherents to the faith, unlike the more abstracted, empty cross of Protestantism”, this kind of fetishization of bodily harm and physical suffering – or like both in the case of Jesus and Isaac, the killing of your own son – would be exactly the kind of thing that McMillen would be discussing and reacting to with his game, right?

That Williams manages to see The Binding of Isaac as a reflection of the “shame and terrors evoked by the body”, yet refuses to explicitly acknowledge religion’s role in it is a little troubling. Recall Kristeva’s remark of “dietary prohibitions”, for instance. Again, Lent. Purity rings. One could just as easily cite phrase upon phrase from Leviticus to bring into focus the idea of menstruation as unnatural, or cite Deuteronomy as reminder of the dangers of shrimp. Or simply bring up the tradition of male circumcision – indeed a “grotesque body horror” – still an overwhelmingly prevalent practice in the United States.

But in many ways critiquing Williams over that would already be beside the point. Still, I do find that not portraying The Binding of Isaac as anti-Abrahamic would be intellectually dishonest. But at the same time, to pretend that religion is the only thing that makes the game tick would be equally dishonest: Even if the game’s ludic functions in fact do reign supreme over the symbolic, it shouldn’t discourage us from trying to reach and poke at the symbolic level – even if analysing the game’s thematics almost certainly results in an untenable interpretation simply because of the chaotic thematic make-up of the game. But that’s McMillen for you.

Insofar as it pertains to its generic make-up, however, The Binding of Isaac is in fact relatively, even surprisingly coherent. This is perhaps the gist of my overall argument. As I’ve tried to illustrate in my article, carnivalesque, at its heart, functions to overthrow the establishment – even if just for one day. Grotesque, though already cast away from the establishment, exists solely to creep back in as body horror. Finally, abjection moves us into uncanny social and ethical territory.

Again, my utmost thanks to G. Christoper Williams for opening up the discussion. You can read more articles by Williams over at his blog, Banana Pepper Martinis, as well as at the excellent PopMatters. Thanks for reading!

Western? Western.

The genres for the aforementioned – do feel free to bring these up in the comments section below; after all, genres are all about giving name tags and definitions to a loose set of features, so it’s all up to debate – could be listed as follows:

School fiction, crime fiction, crime, slasher, hardboiled, detective and modern western.

As you can instantly see, most of the company’s output resides under genres and modes of fiction that are best defined not by the presence, but by the absence of a common framework of ethics and morals.

Hold on, that’s not quite it: What makes all the aforementioned genres (including school fictions) so intriguing to us are in fact their own, more specialized codes of moral operations – of vigilant and mob justice, of manliness and masculinity, of revenge and payback, of responsibility and servitude, and so forth -, the codes of a detached, separate group or a kind of people, society within society, like the mob, the underground, or the underworld.

These are all systems of interaction that do sometimes fall under the principles of humanist dogma, but not in a way that’s applicable to our shared system or society on the whole. We get these windows and avenues – textual, audiovisual or otherwise – into worlds and settings that we know could/would be out there, but do not touch or reach us in tangible ways. That is, if you count out TV news, the morning newspaper, and so forth.

This brief run through Rockstar’s generic choices basically answers the question above. It’s not that the company is so much “soulless” as their games are – from a strictly PoMo humanist vantage point, anyway. Rockstar’s vice presidents and resident lead writer brothers Dan and Sam Houser have, in my eyes, displayed a great fondness and aptitude towards these types of fictions in both their own games and in their publishing of titles by other companies and developers such as Remedy or Team Bondi.

For example, think of your position as a member of society in Grand Theft Auto – say, the two endings to GTA IV. Think of the ways in which Max Payne redeems himself after being framed. Think Manhunt. These games, though clearly displaying certain specific modes of ethics, deal with people for whom the idea of black and white right and wrong has been permanently blurred.

In many ways, the games are better or at the very least more intriguing for it – but it also means that Rockstar is going to step on the toes of acceptability and good taste every now and then, “Hot Coffee” or not. The Housers, in fact, utilize this grey area very knowingly, as one of their modus operandi has been pushing the envelope of what is possible in video games. We should applaud them for that.

It doesn’t change the fact, however, that Grand Theft Auto IV is as dark and bleak an experience as any!

To summarize, one of the primary reasons as to why Rockstar’s games are so successful in their storytelling is their understanding and grasp of genre and convention. Nearly every first-person shooter on the planet has a highly questionable sense of what it means to be a “good” guy, even if some of them do poke fun at it – for the better or worse.

Yet only in playing Nico Bellic, who is quite possibly even more gagged, tied and bound only to react and respond to misfortune as it comes to him, do we feel like the game has any dialogue whatsoever with the concepts and ideals of ethics and morals at all. By subverting the whole discussion via the use of genre, Rockstar Games actually awards us with more insight to the human condition.

The Housers’ idea and conception of the “human condition” makes you feel really, really bad though, so it’s definitely “soulless”, ok.

Anyone interested in a more through assessment of the concept of genre in Rockstar’s games? Let me know in the comments.

In addition, The Love Letter is also a little marvel of economy in design: Not only does it very convincingly, effortlessly and fluidly tie in a) setting, b) narrative exposition and c) gameplay to each other, it also manages to use them, co-operatively, in conveying to (and thus actually reproducing in) the player emotions such as pressure, hurry, constraint, annoyance and relief.

With an amazing absence of complexity to boot. We are talking about an itsy-bitsy one-room, one-button five-minute minigame about arriving late to school, finding a love letter stashed in your locker, and setting out to find whomever wrote it.

Super KISS.

I do need to take a quick detour to point out how there exists a reason why school-based fictions are popular among kids, teens and adults alike. We all know the reason, too: Kindergartens, schools and universities are all human terraria, aquaria, and sometimes even shark tanks. Schools are distilled humanity in a bottle. They have everything. Interaction. Integration. Relationships. Groups mechanisms. Power relationships. Knowledge.

…Stupidity. Etcetera etcetera.

In this respect, it’s almost surprising to note that compared to television or movies, for instance, very few western video games are actually set in school. (One might speculate that this follows from the utter inappropriateness, detestability and loathsomeness of school violence and bullying; in other words, it’s extremely difficult if not impossible for developers to incorporate the most common forms of VG gameplay (BANG! KAPOW! SPLURT!) into a school setting. Rockstar, soulless as they are, were able to do even that, in the form of Bully.)

In Japan, it could be said, the school topos seems to me more popular than in the western world, as lots of anime, manga and video games deal with the concept in more (or less) creative ways – I’m immediately thinking of the prevalence of romance simulators, the Persona series, and for a really mainstream example, Final Fantasy VIII.

The point is simply this: School life is inherently reproducible, repeatable, and most importantly, relatable. It’s the one shared experience that we all have as human beings – sans being born, and dying, maybe, if only those two weren’t so inherently unrelatable.

Back to The Love Letter and its three axes of setting, narrative and gameplay. What makes the game rise above its peers is its masterful marriage of these three axes to the fourth component that I mentioned at the very beginning of the post:

Emotional response.

Again, the game’s premise couldn’t be simpler: Read your love letter before next class begins. End of story. The whole set-up has extreme implications, though, due to the way the situation is framed. You MUST read the letter in its entirety to discover the writer’s identity; otherwise your opportunity to meet your potential love interest will vanish in a heartbeat. Given that you were absent during the day’s very first class, you know your schoolmates WILL now be eager to see what “SUP!”. Doubly so, should they catch you red-handed with a love letter!

Gosh! You simply CANNOT let anyone find out what you’re reading, or you might be to subjected to ridicule – or worse still, put the other person in an equally compromising position. This is a massively believable, relatable scenario.

I am not in the least implying the need for fictions to be realistic in order to be successful, or to adhere to real-world conditions (this is all nonsense); I am, however, trying to illustrate the way in which The Love Letter manages to make great use of verisimilitude, or the varying adherence of a media product to our shared set of expectations.

Therefore, it is not only the game’s successful pairing of gameplay WITH narrative (this would be ludonarrative harmony/dissonance, if you want to go there); it’s also the developer’s clever utilization of our shared understanding of all the various topoi, the generic conventions, that come pre-packaged specifically with school life as a distillation of social interaction on the whole. In other words, everything about the game’s narrative, setting and gameplay work hand-in-hand to underline and emphasise the situation player is projected into.

Social life, as we know, is performative, and if you perform well, you’ll be awarded certain rewards based on your successes. (This is why we gamers dread gamification so much. We don’t want MORE performativity in our lives.) The be-all, end-all of human social reward, of course, is love. Love as the final and only reward for your performance. Beyond elegant!

As the school clock counts down to the beginning of your next class, with the chances of uncovering your secret admirer dwindling down with each passing second, right as you’re being forcibly swarmed by your curious, well-meaning classmates, you really do begin to observe in yourself a feeling of chaotic haste, of pressure, even distress, as well as a marvellous annoyance and indignation towards the kids crowding you – all out of their very real human interest towards you as a social being in a social situation. With this, the game has just become a simulation, in some ways evoked the exact kind of feelings and emotional responses that a situation such as this would in the real world.

I’ve not yet mentioned how the game is controlled, but even that makes perfect sense: The protagonist simply moves towards wherever the mouse cursor is being pointed – in a very free-floating manner, no less, as if swimming in a sea of students, further contributing to the metaphor of school (life) as aquarium. The letter, then, is read simply by pressing down the left mouse key – again, an action that needs no further explication.

In less than five minutes (that is, if you’re successful in finding your love interest), The Love Letter manages to grasp something of reality in a way that is incredibly artful; and by this I refer to the ability of distilling a vision of reality – as it is experienced by human beings – into an artefact; something tangible, touching and shareable.

Startling, fresh, yet somehow understandable. Something gained.

The game has depth beyond its apparent simplicity, too. In its subtle, pixelated way, the game hints towards the protagonist being something of an outsider; only you, the player, have had your hair dyed black. You… and your secret love interest! Bang! Two more tropes – the soulmate, and the outsider – are introduced and combined ever-so-subtly and sweetly, to provide more motivation still, should the player still require more.

Though simplistic both outwardly and functionally, The Love Letter is jam-packed with meaning. It just so happens that we are so deeply familiar with its conventions, and that it happens to convey all its meanings so elegantly, that without specific reading glasses on, we in a sense fooled into experiencing a very tangible psychological reward in the form of a little bit of annoyance. This is the game’s greatest achievement.

At the end of the day, The Love Letter achieves all this simply by positing to the player a very simple observation of reality: That human interaction in a social setting can be a challenge.

(That, and how love is sometimes attainable – against all odds – with a tiny bit of perseverance. Which will always and forever be darned cute.)

Encouraged by the game’s overwhelmingly positive reception and feedback, and the initiative of esteemed level designer Robert Briscoe, writer and designer Dan Pinchbeck set out to remake the original, which has now been released on Steam. At the end of 2011, Dear Esther’s popularity and anticipation had reached a deserved fever pitch due to Briscoe’s amazing visual work, and indeed, just a mere six hours after release, the developers had already successfully recouped their investment from the Indie Fund.

Yet here I stand, a review copy in hand, feeling a puzzling hesitance over reopening the metaphorical wounds inflicted by the original. Certainly, I had nothing short of thrusted the ghostly modification upon all my videogaming friends, toting its expert writing and unrivalled narrative exposition. Nabeel Burney wrote about the specifics of the mod here on the Slowdown.

Like Nabeel, I too enjoyed – if that be the word (probably not) – the game immensely. That was not the problem.

The problem was, I simply was not so sure that I would ever play Dear Esther again. (I am reminded of Amnesia, in a sense.) I certainly wasn’t planning to. The uncomfortable truth is that while the game does carry with it some contextual features that might warrant a replay or two, the game conveys such a powerfully disconcerting, isolating experience, that reliving it appropriately might be, in a word, impossible. At the time, the game certainly felt like once in a lifetime.

Choosing to re-view the re-make only further distorts the narrative: Given the singular nature of the original – its lasting, profound effects – it’s difficult (if not impossible) for me to decisively make out where one Dear Esther ends and another begins. But I digress.

Dear Esther Menu

In finally braving the game, though, what immediately stands out is the elegant minimalism of the menu design to the right. That a first-person video game can be controlled with just five buttons – the usual W, A, S, D (and an optional Q for swimming up) and zoom – is inherently shocking. I can no longer remember whether the original game came with the zoom function, but it certainly enhances the position of the player as viewer, as gazer, as onlooker.

Given the overall expectations – be they hype, or my own memories -, merely entering the very first shack in the game’s luscious landscape instils me with a curious kind of fear, and expectancy; can this… thing really deliver the same experience twice?

(At this juncture, what was unconscious, a feeling only, now becomes textual, as I’m thinking out loud for the article).

All games are of course highly artificial in terms of their make-up and construction, but for a game so focused on experientiality, Dear Esther strangely reminds me of its gameness with its rigid insistence on the duality of its progression. Two paths, forever forking in two, separated with artificial fences strewn about as if naturally unnaturally formed – if anything, the definition of simulacrum – yet always leading the player towards his or her goal, signifying the very artifice, the gameness of the experience.

Therefore, taking the low road in this game fills me not with the expectation of progress, but of experience. This is but a detour. Dear Esther is not about choosing or taking a road, it is about taking in the road. Possibly due to the game’s mindbogglingly belaboured pace, I am surprisingly stirred, even alarmed by the game’s very first phrase of spoken dialogue. Its emergence is heralded by a deeply familiar musical cue (by Jessica Curry, whose soundtrack I had fully immersed myself in before) but the effect is there all the same. I am surprisingly moved.

(I am also moved, in a very different sense, by that shamefully familiar crunching of bones that sounds off as I carelessly experiment with the upper pathway.)

Painting tools

Much like the binary construction of the pathways, the feeling of inevitability combined with the total absence of action, renders me tense with anticipation. It is bewildering how gameplay can breed a powerful, visceral experience through its absence. By all means, judging from my psychosomatic response, playing Dear Esther is just as powerful as playing any other first-person game. Perhaps moreso.

Certainly, any other game would have thrown me into fits of rage with its deliberate walking speed and lack of control. In this sense, my judgment is clouded by foreknowledge. Yet even then, my left-hand little finger hovers over shift, my thumb toying with the space bar, testament to the strength of our shared generic expectations. Of course, the established mode of control – of running, jumping and gunning – does not apply here, but nevertheless underlines the selective nature of our preprogrammed expectations.

The deliberateness of the pace, the ample space and the narration all contribute to a feeling of restlessness. In other words, in playing Dear Esther, I am not at ease. I find myself stumbling about the landscape, often performing cumbersome 360 degree turns, ogling and bumbling about backwards as if in a haze.

Foliage

I am peculiarly stirred by the contextual flashlight underlining the choicelessness of my being in the game world. The gentle clack of the flashlight’s on/off switch is but a signal of my position not as player, but as puppet. Crouching automatic.

(I also stop and pause to carefully listen to the narration expertly and evocatively voiced by Nigel Carrington, even when not explicitly told. Good boy.)

The density of the foliage present is beyond that of any other Source-based game, simply breathtaking, but I am strangely perturbed when I notice it still adheres to the 1990s rule of rotating itself to always face the viewing player. No matter. The scale, the scope of level design – architecture, really, is what it is, and the game hints at this in its dialogue – is utterly incredible. The heart-rending vastness and stillness, so preciously laid out for the viewer by Robert Briscoe, is further enhanced by the slowness of your movement on foot. There is a sense of distance traversed.

A beautiful cavern

(Drinking coffee now, with the cup in my mouse-hand, pressing forward with my left. Failing to focus appropriately, I miss a downward slope. While backtracking, if anything, I am disappointed at myself for failing to pay attention – not in the least at the game.)

Some lines of dialogue in the game are more contextual than others; a few of them are only attained by careful discovery, a change of pace in this age of screaming indices and symbols. It is now an established convention in video games that everything be discoverable with the help of an arrow, a checkpoint, an overlay urging you towards your goal, a persistent blip on your radar.

Dear Esther does no such thing. It has no HUD at all. You get what you take in during your search for the gameness within, perhaps in the form of each new canister of fluorescent, luminous paint strewn across the landscape to function as a signifier of, a testament to your tedious advancement and, if I may use the word, achievement. Each shed beckons simply with the promise of more shed.

The Buoy

Beyond narration, barely any contextual response emerges during the game. Beyond the landscape itself – and it is indeed rendered alive by the expert presentation – the only other actants in the game sans the player are butterflies, buoys and radio towers with their gently pulsating, blinking lights. In and out. In and out, in waves. How can a mere buoy leave such a lasting impression? How can a radio tower mean so much?

That is the magic of Dear Esther. Tangibility and transformative action is beyond reach; your only response is to the audiovisual. What could be interactive is only ever experiential in Dear Esther. Yet this is no downgrade, not as I stop at a small trickle of water gushing down a path formed in-between a row of pebbles, its little waves throbbing gently. Beauty has perhaps never been so expertly rendered in a video game.

Each location a photograph.

What of the stories within? There are several threads, several different layers, both formal and temporal: Of loss, of local folklore, of biblical reference, of disease and insanity. Of mortality. The game is both morbid and macabre in its oddly effective and affective unintelligibility.

The Moon

To the left, I stop to look at the pale white moon, for what feels like minutes, to contemplate the meaning of it all. The misery, really, of it. It beckons me to ask, “Have you ever stopped to ponder the implications of a video game within a video game before?” The answer is, of course, seldom if ever.

I might have stopped in 2008, but I can no longer tell, because the juxtaposition of the locations and their musical cues to the lines read out by Mr. Carrington are intensely familiar to me, not only in layout and structure, but also in their emotional causality. Yet this profound familiarity had little to no effect on the affective quality of the experience.

I am deeply disturbed, and drawn in all the same. Just like before. And so, once again feeling dejected, shaken and oddly moved – unsettled -, Dear Esther comes to its end. In a sense, an ending.

Indeed, senses are key to buying, owning and playing Dear Esther in 2012. Is a profound experience you’ll perhaps never forget worth paying for, even if it’s not inherently “enjoyable” in the basest meaning of the word? Is it worth paying for an experience that seems focused on making a statement about video games as a medium of experientiality as compared to “entertaining” interactivity? Is it truly worth paying for something that exists to make you feel so ill at ease?

And what of the discussions that relate to its relatively short length, its lack of gameness, its replayability? Is it worth it?

Concept art by Ben Andrews

In a word, yes, yes it is. Thechineseroom’s Dear Esther, by Dan Pinchbeck and Robert Briscoe, is now available on Steam for the price of 7,99€. For a very different take on the original 2008 modification, you can read our article here.

Note: A review copy was provided to us for the purpose of this review.

The message for the games industry is clear: you don’t have to have pretensions to art – because here is a game that could not be more unpretentious in an artistic sense – for your game to have a serious message. Even the manshooter can be about something, without having to carefully distance itself with irony or hyperbolic absurdity. But crucially there is also scope to do shooters differently on a mechanical level. They do not have to be linear rollercoasters, nor multiplayer menageries. They can be slow. Even contemplative. -Jim Rossignol, “On The Importance Of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Most of the key people involved in this publish, on the game team and our platform side, have been here very long days and every day leading up to this. I just had to tell some folks that had been here for 30+ hours to go get some sleep. If there was any way I thought we could be certain you’d be able to play with everything correct tonight, we would have done that. -Rich Lawrence, SOE CTO, on the EverQuest II F2P downtime

No, I did all the art, I did all the sound effects, I wrote every line of text, I wrote every line of code, I wrote all the manuals, the prequels and all the way up though Ultima 4 were almost entirely solo endeavors, in every aspect. It was a one-man band. -Richard Garriott, in interview with IndustryGamers

“You just sit there and watch the explosions,” Gilliam said. “I couldn’t tell you what the movie was about. The movie hammers the audience into submission. They are influenced by video games, but in video games at least you are immersed; in these movies you’re left out. In films, there’s so much overt fantasy now that I don’t watch a lot because everything is possible now. There’s no tension there.” -Terry Gilliam @ Hero Complex