Last year, for my Master’s Study and Development of Games discipline I developed, alongside with my dear friend Jorge Sousa, a little video game called 均衡 (yeah, it’s supposed to be in Japanese). For copyright reasons, I was obliged to gather enough money in order to pay for the licensed soundtrack, which is why I am only making the game public this week. Now, I would like to invite anyone who likes video games to play around with it and tell me what they think. Since this time I can’t review it, I would encourage anyone who feels like doing so to review the game on their own terms in the comment page. Time for payback, in other words 😉 Any insight you would like to give, or ask for, please do so as well. I will appreciate criticism as I always do, no matter how different your opinions may be of mine. Hopefully, you will afford me an interesting debate, as you always manage to.
So, to install the game, just download this package and use the “Install and Play Notes” file as guidance for any question you may have. The game runs in Windows, with near zero hardware requirements, so you only have to install some Microsoft stuff as described in the file, and then you’re ready to play.
I won’t explain anything about the game, though. It’s supposed to be experienced with a clean slate. That’s also why there are no tutorials, hints, text messages, objectives or score-cards in the game. Play it as you will, interpret it as you will – it’s your call. It’s a small, somewhat buggy game, that I admit, has some flaws and ingenuities that if I were to design the game today I would mend, but it still is something I am proud of. I really hope you enjoy it, and if you do… please spread the word.
[Also, from now on, I have an email for exclusive blog use. If you want to contact me, email me at “metavideogame@gmail.com”… And sorry for the shameless self-publicity.]
A few weeks ago, IGN editor Michael Tomsen committed one of the worst sins a game journalist can commit: he reminded the world that video games still are just games for kids. Invited by ABC news to come forth with a name for “our” <<Citizen Kane>>, he chose “Metroid Prime” as the most eligible candidate for that honor. I won’t bother you with the justifications he used to back up his choice, as Anthony Burch, in his somewhat truculent style, already addressed them with the necessary criticism in this interesting read. Suffice to say, IGN’s editor might’ve been better off not saying anything, instead of spewing such ridiculous statements, that serve only to show the lack of culture most game journalists possess.
The formulation of this question is not new. Where is the <<Citizen Kane>> of video games? This problem is very ambiguous, and the way in which it was phrased can lead to a host of misinterpretations on what is being discussed. The most important disclaimer in this regard is – I am not, in any way, about to compare cinema with video games, they are different mediums with different expressions, and we would do well to accept the differences. The truly relevant question which lies hidden in the “Citizen Kane” conundrum is this: what video game can you show the world that will convince it of the medium’s legitimacy and maturity as a means of expression?
Whether someone chose “Citizen Kane” or “Metropolis” or “Nosferatu” or “Birth of a Nation” or any other film for the comparison is irrelevant. The reason why someone thought of “Citizen Kane” probably derives from its relative closeness to present day, and to the profuse knowledge most of us possess regarding film and its history (as opposed to the illiteracy we show towards older art forms). It is easy for us to track the relevance of film as an art form as a consequence of the study of certain works, in which “Citizen Kane” plays a major role. Also, film, being a product of the XXth century, emerged in a somewhat similar social and economic climate to that of video games, making its process of maturing from a purely commercial business to a wider, more encompassing artistic medium, seem replicable in our means. This is why we should crave a “Citizen Kane” – we want video games to achieve the same status as cinema did, and so we await eagerly the prophetic light of a piece of art so profound, that it can turn the blindest of skeptics into an illuminate, devote follower of video games. But what features made “Citizen Kane” relevant enough as to establish film as more than a form of entertainment? The answers are many and highly subjective. What follows are my own answers, and anyone is free to give theirs to help the debate.
The most important of “Citizen Kane’s” qualities is, without a shadow of a doubt, it being a true film. It isn’t a piece of theatrical performance set in an intangible stage, it isn’t a novel with its text hammered into spoken words by both narrator and actors, no! It was pure image and sound in narrative form. The cinematic language employed in Welles’ masterpiece was so powerful and visionary, that it would take more than a quarter of a century for someone to even consider updating it. Welles took all the potential of cinema and attempted fulfilling it, by virtuously condensing a story into an expressive piece of celluloid, captured thanks to a beautiful (and revolutionary) cinematography, exquisite soundtrack, and an outstanding work in terms of actor performance. Every framing, mise-en-scéne and camera movement serves as a vessel of metaphor for the telling of Kane’s life – these are the only true words of the language used by this audiovisual book. This is what eventually lent artistic legitimacy to cinema – “Citizen Kane” was a work that could not be replicated in other formats without losing its greatest strengths as a work of art.
The second, sometimes forgotten, quality of “Citizen Kane”, stems from its universal, perpetual appeal. “Kane” may bear a special figure as a man, being a magnate like we have seen so few, but his story was personal, human… familiar. We can all relate to his life in some way, to his desperate attempts at happiness through all the wrong ways, his wild spiral of triumph and decay, his moral and emotional contradictions as a human being, his ever frustrated obsessions with money, power, love and immortality. Forget the outstanding nature of the characters, this film addresses life, period. These are the challenges that all our lives hold in storage for us, our own existentialist anxieties and psychological dramas. And “Kane” doesn’t touch these subjects with superficiality or carelessness, it is pondered, ambiguous, profound and life-like. As Roger Ebert put it: “Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery.”
Last, but not least, there is the matter of it being a work that is unique, personal, authorial, unbound by genre conventions or pre-determined notions of what films should be, and, of course, not oriented in any way with a commercial logic. It was not only ahead of its time, as it was honest and true to its authors’ visions. This is their tale, their ideas, their craftsmanship, their art. This is a movie about their message, and it’s that notion which governs everything in it, from the seemingly meaningless stage prop to each earth-shattering dialogue. This is probably why it wasn’t a commercial success and why it was shunned by the producers of the time (despite marginal profit!), eventually leading to a troublesome dispute with Welles throughout the remainder of his career, with several unauthorized edits to his works that, still today, rob them of their artistic value. “Citizen Kane” is a work of art, something which in the world of money… is usually misunderstood. Despite all this, “Citizen Kane” lives on still today, thanks to the continuous recognition by many critics and scholars (heck, even the Academy recognized it with several Oscar nominations!), and by a growing interest of the public in the work throughout the 1950’s and beyond. It became a symbol – a popular one at that, I might add – that film can be art. Many haven’t seen it (and if you’re one of those, stop right now, and go watch it), but everyone knows that “Citizen Kane” is considered the greatest film ever made.
Now returning to what lead us to this film. Where is our <<Citizen Kane>>? What video game has become a symbol of our medium’s maturity and legitimacy as art? So far, I’d say none. No one sees, and rightfully so, video games as artistic objects. Perhaps the question then is, does a game with the qualities I’ve mentioned before even exist? Namely, a game that fulfills the medium’s potentials, that has an adult and universal discourse, and is an authorial work? And if it does, how can we make that game a symbol? Is that even possible? How and where can we find our own Rosebud?
“Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn’t have explained anything… I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a… piece in a jigsaw puzzle… a missing piece.”
[More unanswered questions in the next article concerning our <<Citizen Kane>>.]
Ah, Tetsuya Takahashi, how I wish things would have turned out different to him. His story is so ill-fated and downright unlucky, it almost bears the same traces of tragedy which his games revolve around… It’s a long winding narrative that would transform one of the most visionary storytellers of a stale, immature genre into an almost unknown figure. To this day, he only lead two projects – “Xenogears” and “Xenosaga Episode I”, and much to my dismay, neither of his titles were ever released in the old continent. Both were received with relative disregard, only establishing themselves as cult classics in a very strict niche of J-RPG lovers.
Takahashi’s career is small, but impressive. After several collaborations in art and graphics departments, of the best Square titles of the early nineties (“Final Fantasy IV”, “V”, “VI”, “Chrono Trigger”, etc.), Takahashi rose to the director’s chair in “Xenogears”. And it’s no accident that his first project is such a landmark in J-RPG history, so oft revered as one of the best games ever made in its genre. Comparisons with “Evangelion” abound, and with good reason, for besides featuring similar themes and aesthetic elements, they both represent strong signs of a mature intellectual discourse in what are otherwise immature means of expression. “Xenogears” clearly shows that for Takahashi, story is not a complement to game-design as much as it is the other way around. Which is not to say that his games’ RPG mechanics aren’t good, quite on the contrary, but the focus is ever the story. The infamous second CD of “Xenogears”, bearing almost no actual gameplay, is the ultimate proof of Takahashi’s commitment to telling stories. Though many attribute it’s existence to a lack of funds (a startling parallel to what happened to the ending episodes of “Evangelion”), I personally feel it was the right call for the game, as the gameplay-thin second CD is actually one of the most memorable parts of “Xenogears”.
The grand scale of the plot-line is “Xenogears” most powerful aspect, with hundreds of different threads weaving together into a fabric that touches so many different areas of human knowledge – philosophy, religion, science -, while maintaining classical narrative structures and themes – love, betrayal, death. It’s a testament to both Takahashi and his wife (co-author of his games), that in the end, all of it makes sense, with every storyline fitting perfectly into a sprawling network of events covering thousands of years, deep in meaning and subtext. In their games, every dialogue counts, and there’s always a new revelation hiding beneath each word. Add a flavour for the erudite, with constant references to Nietzsche, Wagner, Jung, Kubrick’s “2001”, “Soylent Green”, amongst many others – and you have the sort of work that is especially rewarding for those who appreciate deep ramblings [i.e.: me]. Sure, there’s always an element of adolescent pretentiousness in such writing madness, but it beats teenager mediocrity everyday.
But it’s not just the script, as its conveying that makes Takahashi’s stories so powerful. His cutscene direction gave a whole new meaning to the term operatic, with stylized framing of characters giving them a theatrical poise which transformed every line, movement and scene into a small piece of cinematic magic. And considering that in 1998 Takahashi already employed in-game cutscenes with such finesse, gives him all the more value [see an example below, and notice how, with such meager means and technology, the cutscene still manages to retain such a dynamic flow]. Yasonuri Mitsuda was critical in this aspect, as his compositions always added a great deal of dramatic effect, manipulating pathos through the delicious alternation between melancholic lullabies and heavy brass lines in pounding tempos, making you jump out of your seat in anticipation for the each upcoming twist.
Alas, a whim of lady luck would have Takahashi release his masterpiece less than a year in “Final Fantasy VII’s” wake, eventually casting his game in the shadow of the most beloved Japanese role playing game of all time. His game was never given a chance, despite being superior in many ways to Kitase’s own breakthrough. With a tighter budget, Takahashi not only delivered a far more profound narrative, but also a 3D world unlike anything at the time, much more lively and interactive than “VII’s” beautiful, yet static, pre-rendered backgrounds. But unlike “VII”, “Xenogears” lacked mind-blowing CGI, and wasn’t accessible to the younger audiences of Playstation, as its flair for the erudite, complex and operatic made it too obscure and obtuse for younger audiences.
Despite lacking George Lucas’ commercial success, Takahashi seemed to share similar delusions of grandeur – “Xenogears”, an epic game if I ever saw one, was actually the fifth tome of a grand saga of six episodes, a fact revealed in the last of the credits screen, and further dissected in the “Perfect Works” art-book. But despite positive reviews and moderate commercial success on part of “Xenogears”, Square never supported Takahashi to pursue his original creation and design the remaining 5 episodes of his saga. Surely feeling betrayed by the fact, he left Square with other dissidents to found a new company, “Monolith Software”, lead by Hirohide Sugiura, and funded by Namco.
Despite being unable to continue his saga directly, for Square remained adamant in upholding author rights over the original “Xenogears”, Takahashi was now granted the creative freedom to pursue his original work… or so he thought. He started working on “Xenosaga”, a six tome work very much like the one of which “Xenogears” was part of. It was a re-write of sorts, different enough only as to not be made the subject of a copyright’s quarrel between Monolith and Square. But once again, Takahashi suffered at the hands of fate, releasing “Episode I” a year after the big Square title of the time, Tsuchida and Toryama’s “Final Fantasy X”. Comparisons were drawn, and “Episode I” sit inevitably on the short end side of the stick: it lacked the mainstream appeal and, let’s be honest, the budget to be able to compete in the same league with “Final Fantasy”. Critics were dismissive, and it failed to sell. Personally, I find but one element that detracts from Takahashi’s work in “Xenosaga”, and that’s in the aesthetic department, with its super deformed anime aesthetic which made a serious work look seriously childish. As to the rest, I find it as clever and provocative as “Xenogears”, though few seem to agree with me.
Namco was not pleased with the results and decided to take charge of the project. As a result, “Episode II” wouldn’t be handled by Takahashi or his wife, Soraya Saga, as both were removed from any involvement with the project. With them, also left Yasunori Mitsuda, series composer and long time friend of Takahashi, and Kunihiko Tanaka, character designer. In an attempt to make the game commercially viable, Namco changed character design and voice-overs to become more western-friendly, and ordered a complete re-write of the script penned by Saga. The result was a plot-thin, fast-paced, action-heavy sequel to “Episode I”. Irony of ironies, Namco’s aggressive posture would get them no credit. Takahashi’s fans felt betrayed and were disappointed with the end-result, and new-comers wouldn’t be drawn in to the series. Sales were poor, critics remained unmoved. Curiously, by some random act of production policy, the second episode was actually released in Europe, with a cutscene filled DVD to make up for “Episode I”. This was obviously a huge disservice to Takahashi’s vision, and a commercial failure nonetheless.
“Episode II’s” failure convinced Namco that “Xenosaga” was beyond commercial success – it was too niche, too outside the box, too uncommercial for its own sake – and so, the following episode would be the last, the remaining three canned. An attempt at compromise between the teams from previous episodes was made for the final whisper in Takahashi’s grand opus, and he was re-instated as creative consultant. As a positive outcome, he tried to recover Saga’s original scripts, and in what must have been a gargantuan task, attempted to wrap up the saga by fitting all remaining episode plot-lines into one neat finale. Despite being a convoluted mess, it almost felt like a Takahashi game. Once again, his six-episode saga remained untold, only this time, it will likely remain so forever.
Eventually, Namco sold its share of Monolith to Nintendo, with whom the company had had good relationship regarding the “Baten Kaitos” series. It is doubtful that Nintendo, a very conservative company, will ever award a big enough budget and amount of creative freedom that would allow Takahashi to continue his works in the same line as before. From an economical perspective, his career is a total flop. And so, under Nintento, Takahashi limited himself at producing “Soma Bringer”, a DS RPG… only released in Japan. Meanwhile, the J-RPG genre continues to decay: increasingly generic, unwilling to break from its tropes and juvenile tone, and lacking commercial appeal to westerners, it is a genre slowly waiting to die. Simultaneously, a visionary remains unheard, a man who I am sure could have taken the J-RPG genre to a new level, with his (and his wife’s) superb writing and storytelling capabilities. If he already delivered one of the most mature and thought-provoking games of its genre, more than a decade ago, who knows what he would be able to come up with today, with different (dare I say, more mature?) audiences and advanced technology and storytelling mechanisms? I’ll keep on hoping that history will give him a chance, and prove me, and Takahashi, right. It is a vain hope, I’m afraid.
Not everyone recognizes that there is a problem with the current state of videogames. Most are content with the mindless “fun” they afford players, and those that aren’t content, tend to cower beneath the towering weight of money-grubbing companies that just want to maximize their profit. But there are those rare few who have their eyes out on more ambitious goals for videogames and who aren’t afraid to stand up and be pretentious. David Cage is such a man, as this recent presentation shows; as always, it makes for an interesting read coming from someone who actually has something which is worth reading about. Ever since I remember reading about him and his games, he’s always been yapping about games’ legitimacy as art-form, and how he is trying to tell stories through games. He’s perceptive and culturally knowledgeable; like all those who watch a movie or read a book every now and them, he can tell that videogames lack the maturity and emotional depth that other artistic mediums live by, and so he struggles to bring videogames one step closer to those other means. Sadly, his ambition never panned out as much as one would hope, as his games always ended up being shallow replicas of the future for videogames that he so heartily stands by.
“Omikron” (a.k.a. “Nomad Soul”), was a visionary attempt at capturing the sense of a living breathing world, completely rendered in 3D. Two years before the open-world breakthrough of “Grand Theft Auto III”, Cage was already fiddling with notions of scale in space, gameplay and narrative, which most designers would’ve run from like a devil from a cross, so ambitious they were for that time. It was a game only rivaled (and let’s be honest, in many ways, surpassed) by the contemporary work of Yu Sukuzi, “Shenmue”. Cage’s work was not without merit though, he managed to devise an entire fictitious world, a provocative, gaudy blend of science fiction aesthetics, deeply rooted in cyberpunk culture, Philip K. Dick-ean themes of personality and identity, and some post modern elements. He was avant-garde in every sense of the world, and even managed to bring David Bowie in to collaborate as actor and singer/composer of the game’s original score, further establishing “Omikron” as an artistically legitimate venture. The game was far from perfect, as the cacophonous mix of gameplay styles (adventure, beat’em up and first person shooter) was convoluted and ill-balanced, and the game suffered from a myriad of bugs and technical issues, all of which reviewers of the time took at heart.
His next game would suffer a better fate in eyes of both public and critics, though in the humble opinion of this writer, was far less progressive and experimental than its spiritual predecessor… and equally unbalanced. Cage’s self presented challenge in “Fahrenheit” (a.k.a. “Indigo Prophecy”) was to create an interactive narrative system that would permeate seamlessly through game-play. The game eventually became known both by its modern adventure game trappings – which gave players the sort of choices which the old-school linear adventure games had seldom afforded -, and by it consistent use of quick time events, which curiously enough became known as such precisely due to Suzuki’s “Shenmue”, even tough the mechanic itself dated back to “Dragon’s Lair”. Once again, ambitions proved superior to Cage’s capacity to fulfill them: the use of QTE’s was excessive and repetitive, with endlessly drawn out actions sequences (in a sort of daft copy of “Matrix’s”) forcing players to mindlessly mash buttons in Simon Says fashion, and the narrative system, though certainly interactive, yielded some of the most ridiculous and over-the-top story-lines ever to grace a modern videogame.
Both his games failed, yes, but criticize as much as we can, we cannot help but admire his achievements and his courage for taking risks. “Omikron” and “Fahrenheit” were attempts at adult forms of storytelling that were genuinely serious and mature: “Omikron” had a virtual space that was palpable and brimmed with character, and “Fahrenheit” (before blowing up with its outrageous plot twists) had realistic characters and an ingenuous sense of suspense and mystery. Even today, the vast majority of games cannot accomplish what David Cage did in his only two games. He may very well be a thinking man’s Molyneux – a sort of pretentious wanna-be that aspires to the moon, but ends up with his knees deep in the Earth’s mud – but he will always have great aspirations and capacity of self-criticism (as his constant recognition of his past failures clearly shows), something which is sadly lacking in most designers. Hopefully (let us pray in tandem), he will soon realize the potential of his ideas in “Heavy Rain” and finally flesh out the sort of mature interactive narratives his games always hinted at, but failed in achieving.
I’ve been known, on occasion, to defend Eurogamer. Why, you may ask? Well, maybe because they have shown to be independent enough to review certain games in a less than unanimous way (“Metal Gear Solid 4’s” “outrageous” 8 in 10 comes to mind), maybe because they have good journalists who know how to write properly (unlike myself), or maybe it is just because they’re European like me, and us Europeans need to stick together, right guys? I guess it has something to do with us old-continentals having a different acception of what criticism stands for, one that is less commercially oriented and broader in terms of conceptual analysis. I guess you can call it a more serious, and heck, why not say it, pretentious way of looking upon reviews. Not that Eurogamer always shows that particular posture towards game journalism, but for some reason I seem to find it in their texts, from time to time. Like any redaction, Eurogamer has good critics and journalists and its fair share of not-so-good ones. But, like all magazines and newspapers, be they online or not, what truly defines them is their editorial criteria in terms of content. In other words, what and how they spend their hard-earned English with.
This morning I came to read this interview to Epic’s Mark Rein (“Gears of War”, “Unreal Tournament”). I don’t even know what got me into reading the interview in the first place, since I am not that big of a fan of Epic (they design good shooters, yay)… but I guess I was just bored with the absolute lack of news regarding video-games (I do have to write about something!). I recommend you read it, if only to see what passes for journalism in lala land (video-game land, that is). The gist of the interview revolved around Ellie Gibson (the “journalist” conducting the interview) having a one-on-one joke contest with the interviewee. Exaggeration? Quite frankly, no. Sure, she inquired about Epic’s plans for future games, DLC and all that silly talk gamers take for informative news, but for some unidentifiable reason, she decided to pose almost every question as a witty remark, which of course, solicited the same sort of response from Rein. The result is a funny interview that is almost completely devoid of any real information. She asks things like “You’re like a badass factory?”, “I’ve got about £3.97 on me, could I get one [Unreal Engine] for that?“, or simply states absurdities like “You sound like you’re on the shopping channel[…]. I keep expecting you go to, ‘Hurry, we’ve only got 42 Unreal Engines left!'”. When Mark actually got to explain something regarding the Unreal Engine, she edited the interview, replacing it with this: “at this point, Rein delivers a lengthy monologue about the benefits of Unreal Engine 3. For the sake of brevity, it can be summarised thus: ‘The Unreal Engine’s quite good, buy one.'”. I guess she just wanted brevity, after spending four pages with funny jokes. Or maybe his opinion just wasn’t funny enough. Well, this was just the tip of the iceberg of a really lengthy interview. It was clear the interviewer was having a laugh with this, and made sure the whole interview served to amuse herself and her readers. In the process, any informative quality that the interview might have possessed was thrown out the window.
Now, I love humor as much as the next guy, and I can even understand that the particular style of a journalist revolves around some clever remarks, but this is a whole new level. It actually reminded me of a piece done by Gametrailers where Geoff Keighley did an impromptu “interview” of Cliff Bleszinski, and the whole thing ended up with a discussion on how more “badassness” Cliff’s games could muster, and how many chainsaws and blood he could insert in one game. Perhaps Epic just likes to throw funny interviews. But perhaps this is a sign of how poorly journalists spend their time, whilst listening to what the industry has to say. Sure, you might advocate, like myself, that the only thing Mark Rein could ever say that is remotely interesting is precisely the sort of whimsical non-sense the interviewer got him to speak. But that brings up a much more prominent point – if that was indeed the case, why bother interviewing him in the first place, and not someone else?
This sad interview is symptomatic of the media we have access to. We’re in an industry of toys for kids that never takes itself too seriously, or speaks in a serious manner (lest the kids lose interest). We’re in an industry that very rarely lets the real authors speak, and when it does let someone speak, it’s usually some corporate suit that knows as much about games as a recently hired Gamestop clerk. And now the industry wastes these (so called) journalists’ time with interviews that bear little to any significance to the subject at hand: video-games. We do get to laugh at some pretty funny punch-lines, right? Meanwhile, somewhere out there, is a designer with something really interesting to talk about, and the only thing we get on the receiving end is some guy covering how badass a game can be. This is game journalism.
