The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – “The Writer and the Numbers”

Imagine a writer that was lacking in imagination, incapable of anything but regurgitating genre plots so filled with tropes and clichéd characters, he could barely write a word without making use of the formulas he read back in college in “how to write” books. Though not technically incapable – his English was competent – this writer was also devoid of gracious form in his prose, his stylistic flair incoherent and drab, either overwrought when need be of simplicity and elegance, or too shallow and paltry when riveting poetry was required. But how he yearned for success! Now, would this hypothetical writer actually be a videogame designer, he could practice a sleight of hand and actually become the most applauded and revered of authors. All he had to do was razzle and dazzle his readers with his effort and capacity to deliver quantity instead of quality. And so, though his prose did not evoke rapture, he started to write a beastly mammoth of a book, so vast one could barely take it in hands and not feel the weight of such hard work, as the bulk of those millions of words made itself physically known, as if you actually could hold what they were intent on describing: a never-ending world of adventure and fantasy, so large and detailed and multifaceted, none could compare. It would take thousands of hours to read every tale inscribed in his epic, “1001 Nights” now but a drabble by comparison, hundreds of hours to only scour the surface of his world and read his descriptions of its landscapes, making “Lord of the Rings” seem a trivial pamphlet, and thousands more for the never-ending wars and battles, each as long as the once mighty “War and Peace”. It would be the greatest masterpiece the world had ever seen… well, at least, literally speaking. Such hypothetical epic is, of course, “The Elder Scrolls” at its more symbollic, and such ungifted artist I write of is none other than Todd Howard, the mastermind now at the helm of the series.

In “Skyrim”, everything is massive and many, but such ostensive manner lead us nowhere. For at its heart, this is aught more than a traditional high-fantasy romp in dark-fantasy garbs very much the same line as “Oblivion”, with very little to distinguish the two. Admittedly, some authors are capable of playing with expertise inside the fictional confines of these stale genres – Square Enix once did that job beautifully -, but Bethesda has few virtues to speak of, and what little it has ends up lost in the murky ocean of discardable trash which populates their games. We sit far from “Fallout 3’s” acute cynicism and socio-political satire; herein you can expect more evil empires, more dubious would-be revolutionaries, more elves and orcs and ogres and pixies and goblins and dragons and whatnot, more bearded headstrong heroes with no charisma, more flashy magic spells, more repetitive combat, more blood and guts and looting, more quests, hell, even more elaborate plots about the end of the world and civilization! Only “more” interests for this new tome. The sole twist in this new outing lies in the obvious influence of “Game of Thrones” in both narrative and world qualities of the Skyrim land, and this alone is telling of the authorial honesty of Todd Howard’s goons: follow whatever is trendy in the mass media.

But how beautiful “Skyrim’s” idyllic landscapes are! – says the public and the so-called critics. But is it really so? Well, it is true that, if there is something which was enjoyable about “Morrowind”, “Oblivion” and, to a lesser extent, “Fallout 3”, it lied in these games spatial exploration. “Skyrim” is no exception to the rule. You’ll find a plethora of naturalist environments with vague romantic flair: many a pine tree, fern, flower, mountain and misty grove, coloring the landscape with grays and whites and greens that lend themselves to the slow trot of the passerby, accompanied once again by Soule’s breathtaking soundtrack, soothing the weary eye and cleansing the soul of more mundane, quest-like preoccupations. But the composition of its many visual elements is shoddy at best. Taken in separate, one cannot deny the competent technical capacity involved in its digital designs; but textures and models vanish in their uncoordinated ad-nauseam repetition, forming unflattering blobs of samey patterns. You get to see objects and lands many, many, many times, seldomly framed with the clinical eye of a gifted digital landscape artist, with most views sticking out in a jumble of procedurally generated redundancy. But where it hurts most is in the use of light and color: elements are usually integrated into each scene by dimming contrast, so as to afford minimal cohesion. The effect robs many views of their natural beauty, either making sets too bright and bloomy or dark and bleak. Further artifices are employed to mask the lacklustre digital draughtsmanship: “Skyrim” is, on a purely technical level, a state of the art piece, home to all the graphical engineering tricks that feature in marketing check-lists, but be not in doubt that these are to no avail when employed by those whose aesthetic vision is limited to comic-book and hollywood blockbuster references.

We are quick to concede that not all scenes and objects display such absence of ideal – some Romanesque buildings are a wonder to admire in their sheer monolithic opulence, and the elemental details are particularly pleasing to the eye. The icey cave stalactites with their cold sheen, the bright fiery torches with their sparkles flying through the air, the falls and rivers and bedstreams glistening white with hazy mist, the snowy mountain peaks with their fierce gales and, last but not least, the gorgeous night sky with its ever present array of colorful (yes, colorful!) aurorae borealis – these were all conjured with a genius that is altogether absent from their surroundings (the same being true for previous “Elder Scroll” titles). All in all, the world manages to feel living enough, and given the game’s reliance on long trips (as long as one avoids abusing fast-travel), you get to indulge in its scenery for so much time that it becomes an intricate part of its appeal, perfect for geocachers and strollers. But though it can caress your inner nature-lover, it boasts a lesser, mundane type of beauty: its picturesque qualities show as brave and bold aesthetics as can be found in a random pretty tourism postcard, and even considering the mellowing comfort it can afford, it is surpassed by similarly scaled games as “Red Dead Redemption” and the recent “Xenoblade Chronicles”, both of which manage to show far greater character and authorial impression in their many lavish settings.
But lively though its lands may occasionally feel, its inhabitants share not the same quality. There is no denying the effort that went into “Oblivion’s” schedule driven AI programming, with its array of motivations and social-functions, but where such technique might have borne vital flame to these dead polygonal dolls, their visual characterization and animation blow such kindle to cold icy ash, for once again they look like crude action figures and move like stiff robots. It is true that there have been minor improvements face the fourth chapter – women are now blessed with porn-actress bodies and Xena warrior face, and men are now strong-blooded Norse Vikings instead of mushy round-faced old men – but even if they are not quite as ugly, disproportionate or uncanny, they are still thoroughly grotesque and generic. The problem extends to their aural side, as once again voice actors have their lines repeated ad-infinitum in hundreds of different NPC’s, forced-fed the same flat script, made to blurt out never-ending bibles of drab fantasy lore in quarter-hour-long soliloquies, bodies rock-steady in their vacant emotional expression, absent of any poetry or charm whatsoever in their declamation.

At the end of the day, “Skyrim’s” woes are the same as its forbears. Like the writer, it sells its numbers as measures of quality, desperately trying to hide its inability to design something beautiful, subtle, articulate and emotionally expressive. It is surely not by chance that Bethesda has never created anything that could amaze without resorting to scale! For you can find no heart or soul in their works, only the fakeness of men wanting to sell quantities of pyrite as if it were a nugget of artistic gold. But art is not measured in a scale, and such creative philosophy can only subsist by relying on the objectivist, market-driven ideals of a medium’s audience that salivates at the presence of quantifiable quality measurements. “Skyrim” is a statement, “Experience the different character and play styles, the dozens and dozens of quests, the nine metropolises and their many satellite towns, hacking your way through hundreds of dungeons, in uncountable hours of exploration and combat, hoarding the many thousands of books and items and weapons, across forty kilometers of wide open space, built out of billions and billions of polygons! And all this with massive dragons on top!” One either subscribes this, and appreciates the sheer size of its lunatic ambition, engaging in its enormous amount of entertainment, thus giving in to the mindless trek of its addiction, hours and hours of menial tasks made enjoyable, building up experience and gold as if you were a meth junky… or one may as well keep a sane mind and heartily laugh at the game’s knick knackery execution, rough edges, derivative theme and incomprehensible lack of taste. We admit that with all its faults, “Skyrim” at least manages to march away from stats and dice-rolls and text-driven apparatus (unlike “New Vegas” or “Xenoblade Chronicles”), seeking a roleplaying game more naturalistic in form, with exploration of an open fantasy world at the forefront of its preoccupations. If only Bethesda could focus on creating a rich, detailed region with a heartfelt storyline instead of a spoiled mess of a continent with a hydra of bland fantasy tales, they might succeed. But like the writer, they are incapable of doing so, for just as he cannot really write literature, only spew out words into paper, so is Bethesda only capable of spewing out thousands of hours of gameplay… there simply isn’t a videogame to be found in them.

2012
01/04
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Action
Review
RPGs
1 comment

NieR – “Pygmalion”

Surprises are increasingly rare. The medium’s vocabulary has become crystallized to such a degree that even the most virtuous of videogame examples seems incapable of presenting us with unexpected forms; a quick glance seems today more than enough to characterize works to their most intimate detail. “NieR”, though far from being a stalwart of the medium, deceives the uncouth look and carries the full weight of these times by presenting derogative superficial qualities which hide its inner beauty. It is surely a pastiche at heart, which is also probably why so few in the specialized press gave it second thought (it was shunned upon release, later leading to the disbanding of the studio).

If it were a painting, it would have in its center a scene straight from Kamiya’s brawlers (“Devil May Cry”, “Bayonetta”), even if deprived of their genial transgressive character; framing the action would be the structural architecture of an orthodox “Legend of Zelda”, only absent of Miyamoto’s elegant Nintendo-brand game design; the theme would be an outright theft of Fumito Ueda, both in its dramaturgy and dream-like aesthetic (misty landscapes, unsaturated color palette, massive ruins and bridges), and it would be elaborated through a J-RPG narrative, for this is Square Enix we’re talking about. Were our analysis to finish at such a point, we would discard “Nier” as an inferior product, undeserving of posterior reflection.

But the game proves beyond such reproval, for Yoko Taro (“Drakengard”) is knowledgeable of each and every one of his appropriations, knowing far too well how to use them to elevate both gameplay and fiction. Not only that, he revels in his capacity to evoke and parody the memory of classic videogame history. As an example, one quest sees you enter a small town amidst a misty forest; there, characters can delve inside villagers’ dreams, finding a realm where only words exist, every thought and action and dialogue now turned into white roman characters on a utterly black screen, heralding classic interactive fictions such as “Colossal Cave Adventure”. You’ll find a plethora of such far-fetched references wrapped in a subtle (for videogame standards) play of meta-humor – “Resident Evil”, “Diablo” and even bullet-hell “Ikaruga” make an appearance – and these will surely indulge the historically minded player looking for a test of knowledge, playing the “I know you know where I got this from”. Part of “NieR’s” appeal comes precisely from its uncompromising post-modern take on its references, as it builds a patchwork world wrought of unexpected aesthetic and mechanic convulsions which induce a sense of awe and bizarre that is exquisitely uncanny. Perhaps the most sui generis of these convulsions lies in the soundtrack (by Keiichi Okabe, Kakeru Ishihama, Keigo Hoashi and Takafumi Nishimura): a melancholic ensemble of choral and guitar-stringed Celtic refrains which reflect the bitter and mournful spirit of the story.

It is the storytelling accent that assuredly elevates “Nier” beyond all reproach. Though characters are poorly designed in visual terms – adhering, self-consciously we might add, to strict role-play archetypes – the off-the-wall script and witty actor delivery successfully ground its emotional punch. In this respect, we are forced to mention Liam O’Brien’s Alan Rickman caricature as a spiteful flying book, which is charmingly delightful and whose comedy is, by itself, well worth experiencing the game for. At its core, you find the tale of a father whose daughter is on her deathbed, struggling to find a cure for her mysterious disease. It develops with sinuous contours, starting with a cheery Campbellian adventure set-up in search of mystical items, but then developing into bittersweet bounding scenes between father and daughter, only to then peak in its final revelations with profoundly dark and grievous scenes which question all of players’ actions. It’s clear enough that Taro set out to reprise Ueda’s “Shadow of the Colossus” tragedy and, perhaps for the first time since it, a game comes real close to evoking the same feelings of mourning, emptiness and sadness, even if by use of far more mundane and trivial mechanisms. It is that heart – such a rare quality in a videogame – as well as its vicious and subversive punch that help elevate it above mere inflexion on past titles.

Elegy, parody and tragedy all at once, “NieR” is as the Pygmalion, a poor and unrefined work dressed in the most lavish and fashionable apparatus. But while its exterior may often seem wooden, artificial and downright fake, it hides a soul yearning for authenticity. And so, what it lacks in innovation, it makes up for in the honesty and thoughtfulness it applied in its study of genres and tropes, in the end showing far greater taste and vision than the supposedly creative mongrels that surround it.

2011
12/16
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Action
Adventure
Review
RPGs
1 comment

PN03 – “XXIst Century Ballet”

Shooters have become drab, dusty, old, lifeless. Where once was hypnotic color and lightning fast movement, today live slow trotting grunts that move, act and talk with the elegance of a world war II tank, framed in military fantasies as daft as the worst of Michael Bay films, all nitty gritty serious in the utter ridicule of their pretend violence with overblown gore and show-off pyrotechnics that express only the most basic and hollow forms of jubilation. Even from a strict mechanicist point of view, these are dead pieces, inert and bound by such tight wraps of genre chains that you can hardly fathom how the word new still manages to get tossed around when adjectivizing them. Such harshness is, we believe, the best way to describe “PN03”: by contrasting it to what today goes by the name shooter.

Rooted in classic shoot’em up tradition, Shinji Mikami (“Resident Evil”, “Killer7”) chose to conjure the clinical rigor of arcade variants inside the subjective perspective of 3rd person shooters and then arranging everything in a tempo-driven gameplay that evokes the music rhythm genre. The trick starts with Mikami breaking the dogmatic laws of usability by stripping players from controlling movements in their entirety; in a twist of design genius, the main character movement on the x, y and z planes is swift and agile, whilst any diagonal which cuts across these is hindered with resistance. From a player’s point of view, this friction results in a design inscription that forces spatial dislocations to be made only across the planes, basically turning play into a game of strict Cartesian vector movement, not unlike a 3D version of “Space Invaders”. Gameplay has you move according to specific lines as if they were instructor steps for a futuristic dance, dictated by movement limitations and placement of obstacles and enemies. The fictional framing for this choice is that the main character, Schneider (a voluptuous Samus-Aran-meets-Ulala mercenary) enjoys listening to techno while dispatching her enemies. As you play she looks like a refined elegant refrain on Neo’s shooting, as she sways and spins and jumps and wheels almost faster than the eye can see, dodging attacks with feline grace, her waist seductively swinging whilst her arms flicker in and in such flicker rain laser death upon her robotic foes.
The game’s essence is minimalist. Control is simple and because of it, playing becomes a matter of pattern acquisition – which enemies come from where, which geographical features can you use to your advantage – in the end leading to a methodical learning of the dance you must perform to end each level with success. Performance art is actually the closest notion to what you feel while playing “PN03”: somewhere between playing a classic shooter, with its frantic pace and need for quick-reflexes, and the psychological enthrallment of a contemporary dancer tuned to electronic music, moving so as to achieve perfection in every stride of beat and emotion. Shneider’s bodily animation is, in itself, a thing of aesthetic expression, her sexuality never falling to the point of vulgarity, her characterization molded by strokes of classical beauty made futurist, all lines smooth, symmetrical, balanced, god-like. The surrounding scenarios are equally grounded on minimalist ideals with the least possible amount of detail employed, either in stark contrast with Schneider – the exterior scenarios, dirty in dead brown earth, the sky acidic green – or in perfect harmony, – the interior scenarios all white clean sci-fi corridors, all brisk lines and curves (evocative of locations in “Space Channel 5” and the overall ambiance of “Breakout” reinvention “Cosmic Smash”). The soundtrack mostly consists of the diegetic music which Schneider indulges herself in, with competent but uninspired dance music dominating the landscape. Narrative also follows the minimalist ensemble in an ersatz of “Blade Runner’s” Dickian identity theme, conveyed through a couple of cutscenes and some inter-level written dialogues. If any strong criticism can be made to the videogame’s shiny exterior, it lies in the unfortunate repetition of the same models for different levels, a clear sign of the production issues which aroused from a convoluted development period.

“PN03’s” unrecognized relevance cannot be missed. The focus on dodging bullets by dancing your way through them, sliding to cover as necessary and shooting only in small windows of opportunity has become a mainstay in contemporary 3rd person shooters. “Gears of War” is the poster child of such a current, accompanied by a myriad of copy-cat followers all hailing to “Kill-Switch” as their defining forefather, but “PN03” not only implemented that gameplay loop much before, as it did it with a style and eloquence which none has acknowledged nor come close to reprise. Even Mikami’s spiritual sequel for the West, “Vanquish”, has nothing on his despised little masterpiece, for it traded women’s beauty for men’s brute strength, in an overt concession of authorship to dominant trends of the market. Make no mistake, “PN03″ is so much more than what goes by the category “shooter” that even placing it in the lineage of the genre seems like an insult. For it is not an over-indulgent piece of discardable entertainment. It is sheer kinesthetic bliss, a ballet of sights and sounds and bodily movement that has a life of its own. It is videogame expression distilled to its pure form.

5/5

2011
11/15
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Action
Arcade
Classic Review
1 comment

State of the Art – “A Play of Reason”

Erwartung" (Expectation) by Richard Oelze - 1935

Erwartung" (Expectation) by Richard Oelze - 1935

The years pass, and I keep hearing the same tiresome things – “videogames need to be fun and good videogames are fun”. Such blabber is repeated ad nauseam, as if each and every repetition would grant increased strength to such arguments. When it comes to reason, there is no strength in numbers, I’m afraid. Refined versions of this dogma are constantly discovered and implicitly subscribed by all (for example, the absurd idea that fun would actually be a synonym of a wide breadth of emotion) with very few dissenters shunning this perverse logic of mindless hedonism. The other ubiquitous dogma is that “videogames are art”, and that there is nothing to stop them from being so, since they are the product of human creativity, have aesthetic value, exist in a medium, blah, blah, etc, etc, etc, etc. These two beliefs are usually feverously defended by the same people, though they are rarely discussed in tandem. With this article, I decided to elucidate on why these two are incompatible, using a very simple rhetorical discourse. I am consciously avoiding, as much as possible, the discussion of “what is art” given that it is a hugely complex question which I am more than incapable of addressing without sitting on the shoulders of far greater men than me. And please take this exercise with a grain of salt.

So, let’s have fun with some logical play and see where it leads us, shall we? Let’s start with some axioms!

Axiom 1a. Music need not be fun. Axiom 1b. Great Music isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 2a. Dance need not be fun. Axiom 2b. Great Dance isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 3a. Painting need not be fun. Axiom 3b. Great Painting isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 4a. Sculpture need not be fun. Axiom 4b. Great Sculpture isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 5a. Architecture need not be fun. Axiom 5b. Great Architecture isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 6a. Literature need not be fun. Axiom 6b. Great Literature isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 7a. Theatre need not be fun. Axiom 7b. Great Theatre isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 8a. Photography need not be fun. Axiom 8b. Great Photography isn’t so because it is fun.
Axiom 9a. Film need not be fun. Axiom 9b. Great Film isn’t so because it is fun.

If these axioms are accepted, then by the simple power of deduction, we can establish the following:
Traditional artistic mediums, also named Art or fine art, have been established as sharing a number of defining and qualitative properties which do not intrinsically possess any relationship whatsoever to the word fun, its semantics or any popular understanding of the word.

Ergo, regarding the following popular propositions:
1a. Videogames need to be fun. 1b. Great Videogames are so because they are fun.
2. Videogames belong in the realm of the arts, to be placed alongside Music, Dance, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Literature, Theatre, Photography and Film.

The first clause, part a, establishes that “fun” is a sine qua non quality of videogames, needed for their definition. Part b proposes that “fun” is also a quality that should necessarily be pursued, as it establishes not only form, but value, and as consequence, function. The second is merely a statement that Videogames should be seen as a new object whose categorization falls in line with the same properties as those of the Art mediums. This assumes that, while not entirely the same, there must be a sufficient amount of similar properties between them, both in form and quality, that allow for the establishment of a pattern that is common to all these elements.

Thus, we can say that either

  1. Videogames do not belong, substantially, to the group definable as Art, and thus Proposition 2 is revoked, on account of different classification and valuable criteria pertaining to Videogames, namely the “fun” criterion. Videogames should therefore be inscribed in either a previously established category, say ‘play’ or ‘game’, or be presented with a previously inexistent category of artifact, for example, ‘game-art’.
  2. Videogames, to be Art, are defined and valued according to other criteria that have aught to do with fun, therefore allowing for a transposition of similar properties from previous artistic mediums, in the process revoking Proposition 1. As corollary, much of what has been written in academia and journalism about Videogames would be wrong and should instead have complied to different standards of definition and qualitative assessment, mostly as adaptations and expansions of similar criteria present in Art, completely outside the realm of “fun”. This means that “fun” can be present but its presence or lack thereof is besides any point that can be made about the videogame medium.
  3. Both proposition 1 and 2 are correct, which therefore must entail a complete overhaul of thinking regarding what is traditionally considered Art, including canonically held properties. Given the stark contrast between those of Videogames and the aforementioned mediums, then the very concept of Art which was explicitly or implicitly contained in the acceptance of such mediums as Art must be revoked. And so, we enter a Paradox, since we established these as axioms in the first place. This does not mean that Propositions 1 and 2 are false, merely that, if they are true, we must re-define Art from the ground up, looking to our past in the light of a new conception for the word and its semantics.

Now, simply take your pick. As anyone who reads this blog might have guessed, my position on the matter is that the second option is my personal answer, though 1 and 3 are equally as defendable.

  1. is a skeptical and otherwise very wise conclusion, which I feel is typically made by traditional art scholars (among them, if I accurately understand his position, my friend dieubussy), who do not accept that something so enrooted in ‘games’ and ‘play’ could ever be conceived as art proper. There is much to backup this idea, including a lot of ideas from previous articles of mine (some being available in this blog).
  2. basically revolves around the idea that we must refund all the knowledge on what defines and constitutes value in the Videogame medium, with the consequence of the term videogame itself being obsolete (for a wide number of reasons again previously discussed). Known proponents of this current are the ‘notgame’ movement and probably even some rogue narratologists and simulationists (these are extremely reductionist terms, they merely serve to illustrate what they defend, in abstract).
  3. as I see it, is the contemporary consensual answer from inside the medium. It is the way almost all scholars (from all areas) and journalists and players perceive the problem. The idea is, to put it in simplistic terms, that the many elites that defined the Arts in the past were wrong, and what we now need is a more open, free, popular and accessible interpretation of what constitutes Art, one which validates Videogames and their ‘fun’ (and most likely, many other mediums).

P.S. I’m sure many of you will find a number of fallacies in this reasoning. Please, point them out.

2011
10/18
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Editorial
State of the Art
14 comments

Wave Foam – “NeoGAF Reply”

Apparently, someone liked my “Xenoblade” review so much they placed in in a NeoGAF forum [you can read it here]. Thank God someone still reads this wretched, god-forsaken blog! And thank you for your good taste user SomeDude.

I decided to reply here to some of the comments. I would gladly do it in their forum, but activation of my account still hasn’t been possible. This text was not written to be interpreted as a defensive counter-argument – I do not feel, in any way, offended or insulted by these remarks. Many have I heard before which speak the same ideas and of the same ideals, and many have I refuted… many times before. Rather, my objective in this article is to merely discuss such ideas for they seem useful as starting points for an in-depth analysis over the nature of my criticism and its relation to the videogame medium.

As a sidenote, I will be more than glad to have anyone who wishes to discuss such matters to comment below. Finally, this is an open article which I may extend or review in the future. Have fun.

BorkBork “I’m sorry if you like her opinions, but GOOD LORD that review was pretentious.”

Indeed it was. If by pretentious one understands I tried as hard as I could to write a piece of deep critical analysis. If you mean it is pretentious in the way it seeks to see videogames as pretentious – as in “pretentious art” – I will also agree that yes, I see games as a high art-form, one which can and should be discussed in as complicated ways as possible. If anything, what videogames lack is pretentiousness itself, as authors and critics are too sympathetic with players and readers, treating videogames as toys for little children, engaging in paternalistic conversation. I say videogames and criticism need to start speaking a new language, one which challenges your preconceptions with new ideas and modes of thinking, something which is hard because in the end, hardship enriches you. We need to stop pandering to readers as amorphous masses that only want to hear what they already know, only because that is the way to get higher sales and readership numbers. I would like for us to start communicating on a basis of eudemonic growth, fostering critical thinking in readers, even if that means not all will continue reading. We should strive for a medium where players’ erroneous notions on art and videogames are elevated and educated and not reinforced and perpetuated and where radical new forms of aesthetic value are praised for their progressive and unconventional and unpopular character. For far too long we have found the discardable and redundant and consensual as worthy only on account of the masses liking and enjoying such trifle things. Cultural fast-food judged superior to cuisine. Now is the time to push for the innovative and exciting and uncomfortable and bizarre and virtuous and complicated and forward-thinking and niche and highbrow. So if this is what you would call “pretention”, yes, I am pretentious.

Feep: “This is awful, awful writing. It’s like the author just reached for a thesaurus and went to town.”

I am perfectly aware that my English is far from perfect, though I would expect that to be understandable given it is not my native language. As to the thesaurus – I actually rarely use one, but if it sounds as if I have a wide vocabulary, the better!, it only means my language skills are a bit richer than I thought. Some of the more unorthodox terms may sound strange, but that is only because their use is rare in informal texts, not really because they are not appropriate to convey the notions which I am aiming at. Every choice of phrasing is filled with intent. If you dislike it, in form or content, there is nothing I can do other than acknowledge you probably dislike me and what I think, my writing being a mere reflex of such things. Some operational terms I employ are admittedly imperfect (for example, “naturalism”), for they simplify and reduce the complexity of what is being described, but these are unavoidable when the object of description is so vast and multi-dimensional. The only moderately adequate way of describing them I guess would be to create art as far-reaching as the original, and of that I am surely not capable.

Feep: “Does he/she even know what a ludomaniac is? It doesn’t make any sense in context.”

Well, I am saddened to say that is perhaps you who do not know what ludomaniac stands for. A ludomaniac is someone who is addicted to a game, playing it compulsively even as such brings about great harm to him/her. What else would you call someone who plays to clock hours and hours and hours and hours of endless grinding, quest solving, trophy collecting and customization, only to build up stats in virtual worlds, whilst getting nothing in return? Videogames like the ones I cite were built from the ground up to engage such people, to deceive and manipulate them with psychological hacks that are also used (surprise!) in marketing. Mechanisms such as experience and action points, gold coins, affinity bars, and all that are nothing but red herring skinner boxes, elements which were not idealized in some naive, genuine way of enriching an interactive experience, by expressing emotion or thought, but indeed were conceived as elaborate ways to deceive people into thinking they are being rewarded and fulfilled for their time. Newsflash: they aren’t. It’s just meaningless hedonism.

mclem: “In other words: How *DARE* they put a *GAME* in there!?!”

It’s not a question of there being a game, but more of a game about what. What is Xenoblade , as an interactive artifact, about? When it is a game of building relationships, helping strangers, understanding new cultures, exploring beautiful new worlds, I think it is a game about something worth knowing and feeling (though others have done it far, far better). When it is a game about tactical combat for hunting game and killing monsters, or a videogame about building stats, collecting trinkets or buying better armory, it is a pointless experience with little semantic depth or emotional breadth. Not only that, but it is, above all, completely redundant in videogame history. Do we really need another game about fighting and grinding? I say we don’t. Given this is the major focus of the game, it is a point of vehement criticism.

mclem: “I mock, but, to be fair, it seems to be a very accurate review – by someone who cares about story above all.“

It’s not about story. It’s about what the whole experience is about, what it expresses and conveys to us players. This is through a story and art and interaction gestalt. Naturally in my opinion, Xenoblade whilst not having a great narrative, is still much more competent in expressing something through it, than on the gameplay end. Which is why my review may sound “narrative-art-biased”, because it reflects the strengths of the author and its work. Games with minimalist narrative and aesthetic would receive a different treatment, as other examples in my blog attest to.

mclem: “I would argue that what it did to the gameplay is new, technically marvellous, and *by no means safe*.”

A game about killing monsters, leveling up, with overbearing HUD, thousands of gamification carrots to keep you addicted, complying to practically every genre trope known and even taking various successful elements from popular games of the past  – how is that not safe? How many times must we see the same things over and over again?

SecretMoblin: “And much of it reflects matters of personal taste”

Of course it is personal. Critique is always subjective and always reflects one point of view. You have yours. I’m fine with that. I question why should I express others opinions when they are probably much better at it than I am. We need to embrace diversity in criticism. The notion that a critic has to be objective is what in the end amounts to his complete redundancy, for he is forced to comply with people’s own perverted expectations. I am here to question those with a new outlook, not repeat what others already do, and never to give you what you already know. If you like game A, fine. But don’t ask me to agree with that. On the contrary, grow from knowing different opinions which though opposite may enrich your knowledge of the medium, and of the games in question.

SecretMoblin: “Also, it’s filled with questionable statements: “still sole 3D ‘Zelda’ masterpiece, Koizumi’s ‘Majora’s Mask’, “…exorbitant, opulent ambition in terms of set design (also a whim which Takahashi seems to revel in)”, “…inherited from such ludic antichrists as “Monster Hunter”, “World of Warcraft” or “Dragon Quest IX”, etc.”

Indeed, and such bold statements are meant to be just that: bold. They were meant to question status quo and show my unique point of view. Also, how Xenoblade interacts with videogame history, which games it refers to, what does it properly reinterpret of the past, which currents it abides with, etc. That is what I call criticism.

SecretMoblin: “Also, as much as I adore Ueda, not every post-Ico game that uses soft lighting is necessarily inspired by him.”

I think there are plenty of reasons to see Ueda in Xenoblade. Not in the sense of a “carbon-copy”, but in terms of influence. The presence of two gigantic colossi is usually a big tell-tell.

mclem: “Amusingly, I’m also a proponent of the ‘games as art’ idea – but unlike the blog’s author, I don’t believe the artistry is limited to the ‘traditional’ forms of artistry: the storytelling, the art style, the audio.”

I don’t believe that and I don’t see how one review could have lead you to jump to that hasty conclusion.

mclem: “I believe that there’s an artistry of game design, too; It’s quite possible to have a visually superb game that has no *soul* (By reputation, I’d say perhaps FF13, but I’m not qualified to talk about it directly). It’s also quite possible to have an utterly visually bland game that nevertheless has an inspired design (Tetris).”

Tetris is, to me, one of the finest pieces of videogames ever made. And it is so because it is unique and immensely expressive (perhaps one day I will write a piece on that). Which is more than I can say about a great deal of Xenoblade’s gameplay. And that’s my point.

SomeDude: “Yes, but even then most game reviewers still review games like they’re refrigerators (or like consumer report). She’s a breath of fresh air.”

Indeed they do. And all I’ve been saying and writing, which some might not like is precisely because I care about videogames as more than just consumption items.

Feep: “Also, yes they are, all the fucking time.”

Not in European critique, but I must admit the blame in forgetting that US reviewing is so different (and in my view, much worse, precisely because of mantras such as “must be fun”, “must have bang for buck”). Is that what art is? “Fun”? Something to be quantatized by the hour?  To be valued face its market price?

exhume: “What I’m finding ironic is that the review is assigning a numbered score to a game they’ve tried to criticise as art…”

Critics judge value. A number is just a more violent, provocative way of getting a point across, and it has been, for many years, a mainstay in all sorts of art criticism. Of course, the text is by far and large the most important part.

Gvaz: “Also that review: “Lost Odyssey is better””

Opinions. Have a problem with that?

Gvaz: “Also she gave FO:NV a 1/5, AC2 a 2/5, dead space a 2/5 calling it derivative LOLLL, and batman a 2/5. I simply can’t agree with her.”

And I still think the same of those 4 games. Is my view different from the mainstream? Difficult to understand given mainstream values? Yes, it is. Read the reviews and you’ll understand why.

Gvaz: “I’m not going to disagree on that. She also gave LO a 5/5 which I feel is good”

Today, I might not give it such a high mark to Lost Odyssey; my opinions do change with time and that review harks back quite some years. But I still think it is more interesting, on many levels, than Xenoblade (read my review for the why’s).

Remember, the value I attach to a game, symbolized in the numeral, is not a measure of how entertaining it is, how much “fun” it is, how long it lasts, how technologically adept it may be, how economically feasible it is to buy it, nor how probable it is for you to like it. My valuation attempts to describe my judgment of each work’s cultural value, its newness, uniqueness and coherence, its genuine personality, its expression, its capacity to speak to the human condition, to arouse subtle emotions and to provoke us with exciting questions. My valuation is an aesthetic judgment, pure and simple.

Gvaz: “I just feel her other reviews put into question about the validity of her complaints with this, as it tells more about what she expected/wanted out of xenoblade rather than what it delivers. It’s not really fair to judge a game based on that.”

How come? We all judge based on a number of ideals we have composed out of our own experiences and knowledge of the field. We all judge games based on what we feel a game should be like. Imagine if a game would be crappy on purpose. Should I give it high marks for sucking, only because its authors thought that sucking was good? Or would you judge it anyway for basically sucking? In the end, you and I just happen to have different conceptions of what a valuable game archetype is. And it’s healthy to have such different opinions, as it enriches medium discourse. Imagine if everyone liked the same games and wanted them all to be alike. Oh wait…

Well, that’s it. Hope you enjoy reading this and feel free to comment. Would love to hear everyone’s opinion on these issues. Big hug to the NeoGAF forum!

2011
10/15
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Editorial
8 comments
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.