Many thoughts on all the games I’m playing; no opportunity to type them because I’m dealing with wrist issues again and the computer is the biggest culprit. But I will say:
I’m feeling indecisive about Hawke’s characterization in Dragon Age 2. I’m generally adept at falling into the role of character-as-self—me-as-Blair, me-as-Minato—adept almost to a frightening extent. But for various reasons, those characters all tend to be variations on what I’ve called a “magic mirror”:
blank in his own right, but he changed his image depending on what he faced to reflect the aspects and interactions that others wanted and needed to see. He was passive, distant, somewhat humorless, and a little cold, but capable of intense empathy and adaptation in a way that, despite his distance, made him an ideal friend.
In a game like P3 this is of course easier, because it’s easier to predict what others want and need from you-as-protagonist. DAII is dead set against that, chock full of gray morality and difficult choices.
But I never know if it’s them or me—whose fault it is, I mean—that I’ve yet to call it me-as-Hawke. I named him Aaron and somewhat true to form am playing him as roguish, relying on defusing but somewhat off-color/ill-timed humor to conceal conflicted feelings about family, loyalty, and the relationship between government and the individual (i.e. mages). And he’s growing on me, although the repercussions of that attitude are not always what I expect. But could I even play my normal protagonist type in this game? Would I want to? Western RPGs—and indeed any Western game with a morality/choice/relationship system—is a spectrum between extremes like friendship/rivalry, good/bad, moral/amoral; DAII is often a complex riff on the theme and I appreciate it, but it’s still a … different social landscape than the one I know how to traverse. It’s more complex than saying or not saying what someone needs or wants to hear, as in the few JRPGs that are role playing in more than stats and classes, but in a way its additional complexity and depth makes it more restrictive. Literally so: a silent protagonist is a contrived trope but an effective one for allowing the player put words into the character’s mouth. But more than that, when you introduce so much complexity but still fail to provide infinite complexity, I’m trapped with three or more choices and … none of them are what I truly want to say—I as player, or I as protagonist.
All of this is also almost to miss the point of what left an impact on me—games about the futility of choice, and that futility’s impact on choice making, are rare and fertile ground, but I’ve played Loved (go play that too, while we’re on the subject—it’s short, free, and in-browser; you have no reason not to) and so I’ve already had those thoughts. And they were good thoughts! But I’ve had them.
What I haven’t had is the fourth wall so brutally broken that I walk into an untextured room or see scenery bits and wall textures thrown around willy-nilly, and the effect is devastating. I have a fondness for self-aware media—whether that means genre savvy characters or lampshade hanging or, at its most basic and delightful, simple trope inversion. I’m also insist on maintaining suspension of disbelief. Let me tell you about the hatred I have for real world photo and video in video games! No actually, don’t, it would bore you, but—I find suspension of disbelief particularly important and fragile, perhaps because I rely so heavily on escapism and yet am so critical in my media consumption.
Because no media (except perhaps computer animation) is so artificial as video games, no media relies so heavily on suspension of disbelief; at the same time, few media do such a shitty job maintaining it. Standards for suspension keep changing (sometimes even within a single game), texture flicker is everywhere, and we insist on using live action video in cutscenes for some unholy reason.
And The Stanley Parable takes all that and throws it right out the window. It breaks the forth wall, it repurposes textures and objects, it mentions that what the hell you look down and you have no feet; it doesn’t just question how and why and whether stories are or should be meaningful, it question stories—and how unique and contrived this specific vehicle for them can be, and how absurd that it is, and how discombobulating it can be to realize it.
After playing Second Life and Sims, after becoming interested in video games as medium and the creative process thereof, I’ve become increasingly aware of those aspects: of why alpha flicker happens, and how we design levels; of games as manufactured art form. But that’s always been fascinating, incidental background; in The Stanley Parable, it’s half the point and purpose. It fucks with my head in a way which delights and discomforts me. For me, it’s easily the best of the game.
Um, what am I watching. (What I’m watching is the town’s new vampire drink Ghost’s blood, but could it be any more unsexy jesus christ.)
So once upon a time I chronicled the sim adventures of Ghost (light hair) and Aaron (dark hair) over on my LiveJournal. As I get Sims up and running again, and cross my fingers that nothing corrupts and crashes, I figure I might as well post some ridiculous sims spam.
Should you be interested, here it is.
I’m sure that one day I will look back on pretty-much-out-of-box pets (I fudged the cat’s eye color and nothing more) and think they’re as unimpressive as EAxis sims, but for now this is just about the cutest thing.
Okay, now I really really should take a break. (And go water flowers in Animal Crossing.)
Dear Ghost: I apologize for what I am doing to you right now, but I want to see all the new content. Sorry.
Because let me tell you, at this particular moment everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
Context, for the rest of the world.
gouenji replied to your photo: All tests successful, all mods updated, loading…
I’m just going to sit here eagerly while I wait for Ghost and Aaron posts. (Also I never noticed the name for this before.)
La, don’t tell anyone (as I make a public post, but) they’ve always had that name. It was a whim during their character creation which became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and on the whole I think no one is complaining.
I was a bit nervous about getting the game running again, for a billion reasons, but it is so good to be home. I hope I do find myself writing the boys again soon.
