Eurogamer has a retrospective on DX: Invisible War.

I very much agree that the poor Invisible War has been unjustly ripped to shred. Some of the gameplay choices I’m not too fond of, but moving away from the incoherent patchwork of conspiracy theories definitely was for the best.

As far as I am concerned, the setting, the character and the stories in DXIW were fresh and significantly better than in the original. Should receive my copy of DXHR soon, but I’ve heard great things about the writing in this one…

A few things I’ve learned during first let’s-get-serious-about-writing session:

1. Writing is 10% writing, 90% re-writing: Cowering in horror at your first draft is perfectly natural (because let’s face it, it sucks), but it’s a reaction that needs to be fought off (with violence if need be). This is why you need to force yourself to write. Hell, finishing that first draft is, in itself, a challenge. Duct-tapping yourself to your desk might be a lousy solution, but hey, if it’s the only one…

2. Clearing your head in between rewrites: It’s good to stop thinking entirely about a story while it matures. And the best way to get your mind off of a story for a week or so? Working on another story. Juggling with several stories works, but it means organizing your schedule meticulously (and sticking to it). More dedication.

3. Letting go: Any work of art is a tug-of-war between perfecting the work, and moving on to bigger and better. When you have an infinite supply of ideas, the temptation is to botch up the current project to jump to the newer, sexier idea. Which gets you zero results. The other extreme is to keep polishing your turd to make it shine just a liiiiittle bit further. Which doesn’t get you anywhere, either. Depending on who you are and what type of project you’re working on, you always run the risk to wander in either of those directions.

The curse of writing? It’s never over. There are plenty of collaborative medium where the work gets pulled and stretched in all directions until it pops out at the other end of the process (movies, videogames, etc). But if you’re medium of choice is the written word? Forget it. Anything you might think of changing is just 2 clicks away, so why not indulge yourself? Yeah, well, don’t. In the words of the great Tyler Durden: LET! GO!

What’s interesting is, I knew all of this before I started. But it just so happens to be (much) easier said than done. This all requires a dedication and an organization I didn’t quite grasp. Well, now that I do, onto the next one!

Found on Gamasutra:

Conscience Is But A Word: Why videogames need better villains, by Xander Markham.

Great article. Plenty of valid points are also made in the comment, but I’ll specifically second Jeffrey Wilson’s opinion: bad guys who do evil stuff just for the sake of being bad guys are flat out uninteresting  (and I’ll add, those who do it simply for their own good can get boring pretty quickly).

The audience needs to know enough in order to connect with them: understand what they want and why they want it, and then reject it.

Now let me be clear, this isn’t a request for more violent games. I’m fine with violent games – something ignorant people all over the globe think will be the downfall of mankind, but that’s not what this is about.

I was initially taken aback a bit when it became clear that the largest DLC for Mass Effect 2 (Overlord) was about Geth. I wasn’t sure why, but now that I’m going through it, it becomes clear that it isn’t the fiction bit that I have a problem with – the Geth are quite fascinating, but the combats themselves:

I feel nothing.

And yet I remember enjoying the ME2 combat system very much during parts of the campaign. As I recall those moments, however, I can only points out to combats against Organics. Because that’s what’s happening here: I don’t care that I’m mowing down dozens of Geth, because they’re only Geth to me; the times it felt like I was truly going to combat were those times I had to go through squads of screaming, cursing and oozing Organics.

And I guess this comes from what Mass Effect is about to me: an epic story about sacrifice – except it’s not always mine. As I’m playing as a 100% renegade, the fiction in my mind is as follows: I have a mission of supreme importance to accomplish, and the loyalty and secondary missions (those with mercenaries) were simply delaying my oh-so-important mission. So I slaughtered them.

And it was a great feeling to buy into this larger fiction, this tale of horrors done for the greater good. But dismantling 22nd Century tin cans is taking that away from me.

So please BioWare, make the next DLC a bit more fresh, will you?

A lot of people have been asking about why they’d put the boring stuff in Heavy Rain. I think the goal is simply to lower the Emotional Baseline: most games are all about the shooting (or the action of some kind). Now there might be some more subtlety in the storyline, but it’s usually told through cinematics or non-interactive means, so every time the player does have the controller in hand, he’s always right there in the middle of the action, killing dozens, business as usual. By resetting the Emotional Baseline to a lower (mundane) level, the developers made it so that when something out of the ordinary happens, it does feel like something out of the ordinary to the player.

Or at least I think. Can somebody get me a PS3 over here ?!

It’s actually done only every single time in movies: rare are the ones that start with action right off the bat; it always begins with the hero living his ordinary, everyday life, right before the terrorists/aliens/bad guys show up.

First off, let me state clearly that I really loved the show. If it looks like I’m covering my ass, though, it’s because I am: this post mostly rambles about what I didn’t like about the finale, and I didn’t want to sound like a hater. I’ll just issue a WARNING about SPOILERS, and we’ll get right to it.

what I’ll remember

Without a doubt, the face-off as a mid-act climax was beautiful. I had actually forgotten everything about the death of Cally, which made Tory’s reminder that “No matter what we learn about each other, we’re all Cylons and we’re all capable of making mistakes” extremely intriguing. During a magical few seconds, I found myself clumsily browsing my memories in high speed and in reverse, trying to figure out what she meant, all the while wishing for the episode to slow down, as I didn’t dare pause it during this obviously climactic event. For the best! The punch line came to me as strongly as it did to Galen (well, almost). The consequences sent me collecting my jaw off the floor:  everlasting peace between Cylons and Humans was at hand, only to be swept away by the emotional, impulsive reaction of an individual that’s not even human! I reckon this will remain one of the highlight of the series, as well a classic of scifi.

Good call killing Starbucks, too. This will humble up all the people that thought the writers wouldn’t have the guts to kill Starbucks (OKAY! Including me, what’s your point?). I’m sure many writers would like to be able to kill a character while keeping her on-screen and get away with it.

Kudos as well for that scene where Cavil / Number 1 / John blasts the Final Five for the miserable body they’ve imprisoned him into. Seriously, if I was an artificial person, I’d be just as pissed as he is.

what I’ll gladly overlook

Roughly, the second half of the last episode.

I was a bit surprised that, after 4 seasons of hanging to survival by the skin of their teeth, the last humans decided in blissful unison to settle and let themselves wither and die. I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with that if the tone of the ending was pessimistic, but somehow, an upbeat Lee Adama manages to make giving away every last bit of comfort sound pretty attractive, so be it. I’m aware that it’s to start anew without leaving their ill-fated legacy to the new world, but how much do individuals care about that? I mean, look around.

More importantly, the series failed to deliver a surprising ending: the revelation that those humans we’ve been following around are not our descendants, but that we’re actually theirs doesn’t come as much of a surprise  (although the use of the name “Earth” to mislead the audience across the series was pretty good). An explanation as too what Starbucks really is remains nowhere to be found, as well as more information as to who exactly pulls the strings of this flock. In the same vein, the vision of Caprica 6 and Baltar taking Hera away from Athena and Roselyn holds no profound meaning whatsoever, given that there is no form of antagonism between those two groups, so what was the point?

The credits roll, and no breaking news came to startle the audience and explain everything. Just a neat ending with a bow on top.

As Ron D. Moore did mention that the finale was about the fate of the characters more than it was about wrapping up the plot, what’s wrong with that, you may ask? Just that I don’t think it fits this type of series so well. If you take a series such as, say, The Shield, you see the seasons  follow each others quite naturally: like a chunk of life, there are always open threads and no real closure. A series such as Battlestar Galactica, however, has this epic feel about it that has the audience sit in Fate’s Roller Coaster, expecting everything will eventually climax in an overwhelming revelation.

Indeed, we’ve seen glimpses of a mind-blowing endgame since the second season, with recurrent visions (Roselyn and Athena coursing through the opera house) and themes (Starbuck being advertised as the Harbinger of Death)… that ultimately don’t hold anything. The bulk of the series registered to me as one constant buildup, ramping up to one big fat ending; so naturally, by the time the writers ended their run, expectations were bound to be ridiculously high and disappointment to come accordingly easily.

A reasonable thing to do in such a situation (expectations growing beyond the writer’s control), is to gently terminate them, without letting the audience down. This can be achieved by deflecting the audience’s attention to something else: you make this new thing you just introduced DWARF this other seed you planted a long time ago. Which doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time growing it up, au contraire! It helps measure how important and life-altering this new thing is!

This actually has been used earlier in the season: from the moment we’ve heard about the Final 5, there’s been a buildup to find out who they were, and 4 of them were delivered to the audience at the end of the 3d season. Halfway through the 4th season, the identity of the 5th Cylon looks a lot like the key to unraveling all mysteries, so you expect another escalation. The writers defused the situation by revealing the identity of the 5th Cylon, and not making a big deal out of it. Because what came afterward was even bigger.

what bore me on the long run

Closing the final lid on it all left me with a mild sentiment of repetition and immutability:

Gallen is the top example: I see him helping Sharon escape the Galactica (and stabbing everybody in their collective backs in doing so) and I seem to remember him in and out of the brig, each time betraying the Admiral, and each time getting out. I can’t help but wonder when the Adama will put a stop to this. He won’t.

Another example is the arc some (important) characters lack:

Baltar is basically a really constant character who first and foremost looks for himself. There was this one time in the middle where he looked really lost and ready for redemption, but snap! he was back to business as usual before anything came out of it.

Tom Zarek, however, is the Most Frustrating Character Award recipient, for the 4rth year in a row. So much potential thrown out the airlock! From beginning to end, Zarek is the guy that a) Always starts some shit b) Is always wrong. C’mon! Flip a coin for every decision he makes in the series, what are the odds of him being wrong about every single one of them?

On the contrary, Admiral Adama and Roselyn are systematically right: they are reluctant to change their minds at first, but when they do, they always manage to do so and look like the heroes. When a decision comes up, not much work is required from the audience: side with them, they’ll be right eventually!

Placing some of the “good guys” on the wrong side of Choice would be a nice way to force significant change. One event I’d have spinned differently is the uprising: it would have been nice – and very credible – if Adama and Roselyn had been on Gaeta’s side. After all, they’ve been pretty conservative since the beginning, on top of being the ones living with comfort (however relative it may be), so why would they change anything? The civilians, on the other hand, are living in dreadful conditions and are likely to have grown weary of the fight. As imperfect as Zarek may be (like, huh, bombing people to make a point?), he is a man of the people in his heart and should want nothing more than a quick resolution. An extended hand from Cylons is exactly that, so why would he slap it away? Having Adama and Roselyn hell-bent on the old ways, only to be proven wrong by a convicted terrorist. Quite a sight this would have been!

In the end, Battlestar Galactica’s plot suffers many loose ends, but managed to carry the audience (flying) to the finale.  If the story is all about characters, then okay, getting us to the finish line is enough. But if it is, I can’t help but wonder why someone would make such a convoluted story, given that characters can very well go through hell and back to the audience’s pleasure without it: it only get people like begging for more!

Game developer Infinity Ward has got to be running out of storage space for all the awards Call of Duty 4 has brought home! More than a year after its release, the game has just been awarded in  3 different categories at the UK-based BAFTA video-game ceremony, including Story and Character. Even though some might find surprising to reward a FPS with this distinction, I think it is some well-deserved recognition: writing in video games is still at its infancy and people are debating back and forth on what influence storytelling should have on the development of a game.

And in comes COD4, first and foremost a competitive shooter targeted at hardcore gamers; 10 years from now, most people will remember it for the dozens (or hundreds) of hours they spent playing online, and all those war stories they used to tell their buddies.

And yet , the solo campaign was a note-taking exercise for me, as it is a reference of what storytelling should be in shooters: it strikes a perfect balance between gameplay and story. Indeed, the later is remarkably non-intrusive: most of the story is unveiled either through briefings during load times or with in-game dialogs during combat downtimes; at no time is the player pulled out of the action to be briefed on something he might not care about – the Holy Grail of videogame storytelling.

When it comes to characters, a lot of work has been done on each member of the ensemble cast (5+ recurring characters): each of them has a tone, a personality and some quality voice acting to support them; with their destiny tied to the larger events at play, tension and drama remains very present until the end. I’ll take for example the chopper pilot that gets shot down at some point: I barely know her (in game space), but the urgency in her voice urges me to haul ass to the crash site.

Congratulation to writer Jesse Stern, as well as to the Infinity Ward team!

I’m using the recent news that Ridley Scott is going to adapt Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War” for the big screen to list all the similar projects I’m keeping an avid eye on:

Neuromancer was announced a long time ago and went through some mutations; Chuck Russell and Chris Cunningham were successively announced as directors, Joseph Kahn being the latest – and hopefully not the last. To quote William Gibson quoting scifi author and blogger Cory Doctorow in a post resignedly titled “I’ve forgotten more Neuromancer film deals than you’ve ever heard of”:

“I’ve noticed that everything in Hollywood always appears to be in a liminal state of nearly there, with enormous, gallumphing enthusiasm all around, then long periods of indifference. I get almost weekly calls about the amazing things that are just about to happen for me. I go to studio meetings with people who tell me about the amazing things we’ll do together. Somehow, nothing much comes of it… It reminds me a little of bubble-era tech entrepreneurs, especially the business development people who always seemed about to close a GIANT DEAL.”

Warning shot…

Altered Carbon, by British author Richard Morgan, caught the eye of producer Joel Silver and director John Pogue. To quote R. Morgan:

On top of that is the fact that Warner Brothers took out the option at the behest of Joel Silver [...] so any SF writer has got to feel that the project is in the right kind of hands.

and

I know there’s a first draft script out there, hammered out in a frenzy of enthusiasm by John Pogue, the guy responsible for The Fast and the Furious, [...] So that makes two high profile figures who are behind the thing

This was in 2003. Not a word since.

Then there’s Orson Scott Card‘s Ender’s Game. It was announced in 2005, with director Wolfgang Petersen acting as a catalyst for the whole enterprise. Plagued by constant rewrites, the project is now in Heisenberg mode, as it supposedly doesn’t have either a director or a final script.

Not a peep either.

And now there’s The Forever War. I guess I’ll wait for something more concrete to come up before letting my enthusiasm loose. You know what you can do while you wait, though? You could read these jewels of science fiction I just mentioned.

As I grew up without a TV, I can’t say I watched a lot of these TV series. However, every time I caught an episode of a series or another, I didn’t regret anything: it was cheesy and had no credibility whatsoever. Especially in terms of scenario, it didn’t stand comparison with what Hollywood could produce: each episode was like an mini-film with its own plot, and nothing bled from one episode to another: there was no capitalization on previous episodes. I guess the point was that you could watch episodes randomly; it resulted in poor entertainment.

I think the movie-vs-TV-series tendency has been reversed; by leveraging on what characterize a TV series, writers are the ones who inverted this tendency. So what characterize a TV series? Hours and hours of entertainment. Even a series with short seasons – such as Dexter – is made of 4 to 5 hours of plot.

Now if you want to keep the viewer interested – better yet, captivated – during this amount of time, your story better be well-furnished. The good side of having hours to unfold your story is, you can take your time to introduce and build characters, plot elements, etc: you usher them in in the background, and bring them forward later. If you do it right, your story is organic and natural. The downside of it is, though, it can become harder to keep each episode interesting. That can be achieved however, by letting the main story rest for a bit while you add side-stories that enrich the whole and add depth to the characters; movies avoid interesting secondary characters to keep you focused on heroes, while series cultivate them for their potential.

The Shield, Battlestar Galactica, and to some extend 24 (who started this trend, but somehow got lost in the way) are all good examples of how to apply these techniques.

As an example, let’s compare a movie with a TV Series; this can be done pretty fairly by comparing 2008 movie Street Kings with Fox’s award-winning series The Shield, as both have somewhat similar backstories and setup (beware of spoilers):

In The Shield, when you get to the point where trust falls apart and team members start doubting each others, it’s no short of heartbreaking: you have seen them going through so much together, that you just don’t want them turning on each others!

When the same occurs at the end of Street Kings, I just. don’t. care. Everything’s going so fast, I just met everyone; I can’t feel for them. Now if you didn’t like the movie, you can always blame it on the direction if you like, but still, you just can’t have the viewer as involved in a 1.5-2 hour movie as you can in a 7-season series.

Now, nobody in particular said it was – that I know of – but with the increasing number of talks regarding emergent gameplay and freedom in games, I thought you might think so.

Just let me point out two of the best games I’ve ever played: Call of Duty 4 and Portal. Both were critically acclaimed, receiving numerous and various amounts of “Game of the Year”, “Most Innovative Design”, “Best Writing”, and “Best New Game Mechanic” awards (I’m probably even missing some). And yet, you can’t tell me of game that’s more linear than these two. So what have we there?

Historically, games were made by programmers and artists: they had an idea, tried it out and got it out the door if it worked for their friends. But of course, no matter how skilled they are at what they do, they’re not necessarily skilled at the craft of making games.

So what ways are there to expand the world of possible in a game? I see two of them:

• The cheap one: you write a game based on smart interoperable modules; an AI that’s responsive to the environment, a well-integrated physic system, a set of user inputs that lets the player free enough, etc. That’s how you get a sandbox-typed game, from which comes emergent gameplay. Deus Ex, GTA, there are plenty of other examples, as it is the easiest way to increase the quality of your game, because it uses the resources companies already have at hand: programmers (hence the “cheap”, which wasn’t meant to be pejorative).

• The elaborated one: you elevate the craft of making games to an art. You have people that are aware of the narrative technics specific to games; you integrate your linear storyline with your game mechanics. You might end up with something incredibly scripted and linear, but if it’s as immersive as COD4, how is that a bad thing?

I think this more elaborated way of making games is still a very young one, but let’s get ready for more: the game industry is maturing, and this is a sign of it.

PS: On a side note, if you’d ask me to name a company that’s doing this well, I’d have to go with Valve; they have a lots of interesting publications on this topic over here, notably Stylization With a Purpose and Integrating Narrative and Design.