Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. This cannot be taken for granted, now. Think of the sheer multiplication of works of art available to every one of us, superadded to the conflicting tastes and odors and sights of the urban environment that bombard our senses. Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.
- Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation
If I can describe the experience with words, then why are we even making the game? People like to ask us, and we would like to tell you, “Oh, we would like to make a sense of awe.” But what kind of awe is that?
Over the last few years, the original Bioshock has become a classic, a staple in the collections of both blast-em-all-to-hell shooter fans and gamers who wish to see the medium as something greater than a form in which you can blast em all to hell. Bioshock was set in an underwater Atlantis-in-ruins called Rapture. As the tale goes, the city was founded by the uber-capitalist, Ayn Rand-following Andrew Ryan (get it Ayn Rand/Andrew Ryan) in an attempt to create a society without the limitations imposed by anything that hinted at equality or morality. The protaganist, Jack, stumbles upon Rapture after a watery plane crash to discover a city teeming with violence and drug addiction. That's where the action starts.
With a kill-or-save stab at morality and a philosophically-inclined backstory, Bioshock became a favorite of Ethics 101 students round the globe. Plus, it was pretty exhilirating and creeped the shit out of everyone. Bioshock 2, developed not by Irrational Games, but by 2K Marin, was heralded by the casual game press, but didn't acheive the same sort of cult status or receive the same type of recognition from intellectual, snobby types like myself. It was heavier on the action, adding a multiplayer mode and tighter gun fights, and lighter on the philosophizing.
Bioshock Infinite, not so much a sequel as a similar game with a similar relationship between aesthetic content and philsophical backstory, seems like a return to form. Irrational and its leader Ken Levine are back at the helm, and their new project delivers a completely new story in a completely new game world, albeit one with clear structural similarities to Rapture. Infinite takes place in the floating city of Columbia, a place whose aesthetics mesh carnivale culture of 1930s America with the sense of futuristic decline that pervaded Rapture. Gone are the original's muddy tones of underway decay, replaced by a blazing sunshine and colors bright enough to slap on a flag. Something seems amiss though, as the contrast between the game's showcase of natural beauty and man-made crumminess illustrates.
How cool is this concept art?
In Infinite's game world, capitalist nut-job has been replaced by socialist distopia. An extreme version of a 1960s-style grand society/commune, Columbia was established by the American government and then quickly abandoned after a scuffle between city officials and Chinese nationals. The player takes on the role of Booker Dewitt, an ex-Pinkerton detective in search of a mysterious woman named Elizabeth. I won't go any further, so as to avoid any spoiling of the story.
This game has all the elements in the right place. The story sounds pretty cool, the floating city looks great and I'm glad to see the franchise again taking on a complex, imaginative story with political and philosophical undertones. Still, I can't help but feel a little disappointed by the repetition of the setup from Bioshock 1. I can picture it now: "Okay, guys we did capitalism, let's do socialism next." While I applaud the effort to move away from Rapture after two games, I wonder if there wasn't a more nuanced direction to take the thematics. It's like a new Starburst flavor rather than a new fully-fledged artistic project. Still, when you see screenshots or videos from the thing, you'll be hard-pressed to bitch about the story, which isn't bad even if it does borrow elements from the original. It is a sequel after all.
Conclusion: with this new iteration it seems that Bioshock holds its place as the king of the blockbusters with intellectual tendencies, at least until Fallout 4 comes out (fingers crossed). Bioshock Infinite is set to be released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC sometime in 2012.
E3 2011 has come and gone, and with it a whirlwind of information on upcoming video games and consumer electronics, all of it filtered through the corporate mouthpeices of game companies, with snippets from the nerds whose work keeps them talking. The main focus of E3 is on huge commercial productions like Call of Duty 37, Halo 16, 3D Playstations and novelty consoles from Nintendo. Along with these chest-thumping endeavors, though, is the feeling of the new, the novel, the changing, The Future. Even for ideas and promises that won't see fruition or that will clearly bomb, E3 has a largesse for optimism, freely imbuing anyone who follows it with an excitement for what is to come. It is with this mind to seeing how gaming is changing and how it can be changed that I begin this list. I wanted to highlight a few games, some big, most small, that I'm most looking forward to.
Papo & Yo
In Braid, Jonathan Blow sought to create a game whose mechanics directly related to and deepened its themes. The game garnered heavy praise and I personally enjoyed it thoroughly; it was also one of the few that my girlfriend got hooked on. However, serious critics gave Blow a good deal of flack, claiming that it failed to properly achieve its aim, that the connection was lacking between thematics and gameplay. I tend to agree with them. The poetic level introductions set up a decently mature storyline and we were told, both in-game and through promotion, that the gameplay mechanism of time manipulation was meant to serve as a philosophical correlary to the story. Press square. Reverse character motion. Induce reflective moment. When I actually played the game though, it felt like a very clever platformer/puzzler with a beautiful aesthetic that was enhanced by the story set-up. The reflective part never really came into the equation for me.
In hearing about Minority Media’s first full game, the upcoming PSN download Papo & Yo, I’m wondering if we have a new shot at Blow’s dream, a game that does emotional depth through its gameplay. I’m guessing it won’t turn the gaming world on its head, but the possibility is still exciting. Despite its shortcomings, Braid was still a fantastic game head and shoulders above most, and if Papo & Yo feels even half as fresh, it’ll be worth the price of admission.
The game’s title is a thinly vield Spanportuglish mishmash that translates as Father and Me, a reference to creator Vaner Caballero’s experiences growing up with an alcoholic father in Colombia. The metaphorical stand-ins for father and son are a boy named Quico and his pet monster, Monster. I’m already endeared. The game’s adventures occur in Quico’s imagination as he attempts to escape the harshness of life in an unnamed South American favela. Monster tags along to help out on the puzzles and challenges that arise in Quico’s mind quest. Monster, however, is not as sweet as he seems at first: he is rabidly addicted to eating frogs and will sometimes act so impulsively in his pursuit of more frogs that he screws up Quico’s pursuits. I’m not much for summary (and I’m summarizing from what I’ve read anyway), so I’ll leave the rest of the description to a quote from IGN:
In his mind Quico can adventure in a surreal world where he can move houses simply by pushing around cardboard boxes, or where he can tug magical ropes to make stairs raise out of the ground. It's semi-realistic looking in its presentation, but mixes in enough strange scenery and bizarre looking environments that playing it is akin to moving through a waking dream. It's striking.
Video games tend to be an insular, thematically slight medium in which much of the meaning that is explicit often refers back to other games themselves (I’m still looking at you Braid). Whoever observed that there are more books written about other books than any other topic would have something to say about the nostalgia binge of the last five years. In this light, it’s exciting to hear about an atmospheric, thematically ambitious game that not only takes on the typical, if excellent, triumverant of nostalgia, coming of age and fantasy, but does so with a clear consciousness of weighter issues, namely global poverty and the harm it wreaks on families. I’m not going to get into the possibility of game published on Playstation Network potentially implying methods of resistence to the neo-liberal order (a guy can dream can’t he), but I’m already seeing monstrous potential for this game to mix fantasy, personal emotion and political reality in stunning ways (pun intended). All it needs to do is be touching though, and I’ll love it just the same.
