Sabotaging an Open World
I remember the moment with crystalline clarity, both emotionally and critically. As it unfolded, it confirmed for me something I'd long suspected about open world games. There I was, en route to a mission, following the orders of an NPC. His initials were in gold letters, so I knew his requests were the most important thing I could be doing at the time. But as I was nearing my destination, something caught my eye. On the corner, three Nazis were posed with their rifles shouldered. I slowed down, thinking perhaps it was another bug. It was not. I coasted up close enough to see the two civilian women cowering before them. I heard the dialog:
"Please, you don't have to do this," one said. A fraction of a second later, the Nazis fired and the two women fell dead.
Vengeance is sweeter when it means something.
My personal quest for vengeance suddenly felt incredibly hollow. The desire to avenge the death of Sean's long-time friend Jules was the motivating fuel for the missions in the Saboteur, yet he was merely one life among millions caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust and Second World War. And he was perhaps less innocent than the two women I'd just seen murdered before me - after all, Jules and I had been trespassing, and just rolled Dierker's car off a cliff... Why was Jules' life worth a revenge quest, I thought, and these two nameless women are left bleeding in the street with no one to mark their passing, let alone avenge them? Veronique eventually explains this to Sean, yet the game doesn't allow me to act on her advice.
Later, I saw more episodes of Nazi oppression. Many soldiers strike civilians as they pass, sometimes with the butt of a rifle, for no other reason than getting too close from what I could gather. I also saw a man forced into the back of a truck at gunpoint, bound for the torture chamber of Commandant Dierker, or perhaps a concentration camp, yet I stood idly by. His fate was not my concern, because he, like the two women before, did not have golden initials on the minimap.
Narratives, in linear media, are often formed around a concept of example: this is an example, focusing on a handful of characters, of the way things are here and now. Saving Private Ryan was about one private among thousands, and his story explained much about war, without profiling dozens or hundreds of other soldiers. Jules is an example of a person killed by the Nazis, and Sean is an example of someone who fights against them. Narratives in videogames are useful for motivating a player to action. Yet in an open-world game, set in occupied France, what motivation or personalisation is required? I don't need to see Jules killed to motivate me to action. I don't need an example of the Third Reich's brutality, for two reasons: firstly I already know about it, anyone who needs a personalised revenge plot to be convinced the Nazis should be resisted is beyond help. Secondly, I can see for myself how it is to live in occupied France. I see the beatings in the street, the kidnappings, the executions, all first hand. Or rather, I could if I weren't spending so much time looking for golden initials or exclamation points.
Nazi-occupied France is a note-perfect setting for this kind of open world game. There are ready-made factions, perhaps the most reviled villains in control of an interesting and historic location, justifications for wanton destruction, and the 'part of something larger' motif with room for a dramatic linchpin hero making a difference. Other games have crafted fictional worlds following the same pattern, Fable 2, Red Faction: Guerrilla, inFamous, and Assassin's Creed to name a few. Yet all of these spend much effort in trying to distract the player from the way the world works by enforcing a strict narrative plot. They insist that these are the important characters, these are the vital steps towards our goal. Anything that lies outside of it is unimportant, unrecognised and in the end, ineffective.
Hey, Listen!
If I had saved the two civilian women, or the man bound for imprisonment, what effect would it have on Paris? They are real Parisians, in so far as they actually live in the fictional version of the city. Does rescuing them not make the Resistance somehow stronger? Does eliminating the soldiers responsible weaken the Nazis in that area? Conversely, what effect do the golden initial missions have on these sorts of events? I never noticed the terrifying sound of the huge Howitzer mounted to the Pantheon in all my hours roaming Paris. Yet the man with the golden letters tells me the story, so it must be true. What does Kessler contribute to Paris? What difference does it make if he is rescued - a German defector - when I watch the real innocents die in the street? Does rescuing him prevent any of the misery I actually see or just misery and destruction that one of the golden-initialed NPCs tells me about?
In videogames we have the potential to tap directly into the systemic nature of, for example, a military-occupied city, rather than the individual stories of certain limited personalities within that city. Of course, in this kind of game we still follow the heroic journey of our player-character, but we need not force him to do the bidding of the special few with the golden initials. Instead, we can present the city, oppressed by a military power, and leave him to find his way. Do we really require an explanation that a secure base of operations is a good idea for a resistance? Or that destroying enemy ammunition dumps will make them less able to fight back? Do we have to explain why these men who kill women in the streets are bad guys, or can we let their programming do the talking? These kinds of games are able to show the player what he can do but do not need to tell him what he must do.
Perhaps if Pandemic, and other studios with similar designs, were to trust their worlds rather than their narratives, I would have saved those civilians. I would have, if I thought that it would matter.
July 2nd, 2011 - 01:32
Great stuff, Adam. It isn’t anything new for games to be criticized for poor writing, but often that criticism is misdirected and/or misapplied. That is, ‘poor writing’ in a game is chalked up to a lack of some mixture of talent and ability, and we are left to imagine that if only prize-winning novelists would write for games then we wouldn’t have it quite so bad. It’s usually not stated so, but it can be sensed lurking behind the bulk of criticism relating to narrative in games.
What I like about what you’ve written here is that you shift the focus to formal concerns, which is exactly where the focus should be. Most problems with poorly written games spring from a lack of understanding of (or a lack of interest in), the strengths, weaknesses, and requirements of games as narrative form. We might call a poet a great writer despite her inability to produce a novel worth reading; in such a case, we implicitly understand that she is practiced in one formal paradigm while lacking proficiency in others.
The scene that you describe here sounds like it was written for any form BUT a game. It might have been workable as a film, a short story, a poem, etc. It reads as written by someone who was familiar with TV, movies, and novels, but hadn’t yet grasped the formal differences between them and video games.
Thanks for writing this, keep it up!
July 4th, 2011 - 15:52
Interesting to read this – Saboteur is a game that slipped past without me really noticing, and yet I remember wondering how it would be, so this was helpful.
I’m not sure how the ideas you talk about here actually play out though. You seem to be advocating for a removal of the “traditional” approach to narrative in open world games where there are specific characters who matter and then a more general layer of “stuff happening” in the environment which matters less in some technical sense.
I completely agree that it can be frustrating to funneled into particular stories while other stories seem to transpire all around you, but I might argue that the women shot in the street, for instance, are more affecting precisely because their situation is highly abstract and thus more affecting – you make up a story yourself.
While that works to a certain extent, an entire game produced this way, with more attention to the “stuff happening” and less (or none) to specific narrative structures may not work well. Imagine Red Dead Redemption if it was *only* the chance encounters. Yes, you’d rescue a lot of people being hung and they’d be really grateful… but I suspect that kind of activity could become quite empty. Likewise, clearing out building after building of Raiders in Fallout 3, while a service to human kind, becomes super boring after only a little while.
I suppose my point is that until open worlds are genuinely rich in their presentation of the world, we’re going to need these fleshed out narratives to feel a connection. Yes, the narratives are often brutally badly written or conceived, but they still give us that *detailed* connection that the more simplistic open world interactions continue to lack.
End of two cents! Nice post.
July 5th, 2011 - 04:14
Maybe I’m missing the point, but you can save those civilians. The way you wrote about it gives the impression that you can’t intervene in those situations. But you can, and the game even rewards intervening. I think Saboteur should be praised for even bothering to include dynamic events.
I think I agree with your main point, that the linear plot presented in Saboteur is the main weakness of the game, and I think a greater focus on a dynamic, player directed, system driven plot in an open world game. The moments I really remember from open world games are usually these little seemingly random encounters, STALKER: Clear Sky being an example that seems slightly less reliant on story missions.
I always thought the Mercenaries series would have been better if they’d focused more on dynamic battles as opposed to fixed bases and scripted missions. Seeing fronts develop, jumping in to help a squad that’s trying to retake a fire base. Mercs 2 even seemed like a step back, since Mercs 1 at least had areas where the AI factions would fight one another.