Fallout 3
FALLOUT 3 SPOILER (to the extent that I say something about how I feel about the ending)
Man, you know when you're playing your big open-ended RPG and you can do whatever you want, and like, there's this one time where you told a guy you would go kill some dudes, but then you talked to those dudes and they seemed ok, so you helped them work things out with the guy who wanted them to die? And you're all "hah, I chose how I wanted to resolve that issue and found a solution with very desirable results!"
And then you think about some of those other RPGs where your choices are pretty much limited to playing the game or not playing the game. Or those games where you get YES/NO choices, but if you answer wrong, they'll ask you again until you answer correctly. And you think, "haha, this game involves me much more than those games! I'm finally important somewhere!"
And then that big open-ended game suddenly tells you what to do, and you're like "wait, that's a terrible idea, what it is that you're telling me to do. I have a better idea, wait here" and you try to choose how to resolve the situation in a way that would yield more desirable results and the game is like "no, man. Fucking do what I told you to do" and you look around and realize that you're being date raped. It was all flowers and free dinner ten minutes ago, but now it's a cock in your ass. Maybe that's a little overstated. It's more like spending sixty bucks on a LEGO set with bricks that can be assembled in hundreds of different ways, but for some reason the last brick won't fit where you want it to go no matter what you do.
In other words, Fallout 3 is not an open-ended game. It is an open-middled game.
*Note: Only read the comments if you want spoilers.
16 comments:
That's precisely the problem Roommate had with it..
and I do, to some extent.
I mean.. Charon or Fawkes are right there, and capable of doing the deed, without.. you know...
The game's really nice, and yet.. there are small bits that make you want so much more from it.
Like faction quests. I wanted to actually JOIN the outcasts or at least have my getting in good with them do something for me... or having skills matter in more than one way.. having companions actually do something besides fight..
Or having quests.. matter elsewhere? and not just in their small area?
Becuase.. there's so much RIGHT about the game.. going into stealth and listening to raiders or supermutants bullshit? Watching scavangers hunt down Talon Mercs. who took a shot at them?
Hell.. ALL of the DC 3-sided fights...
This is kinda what I hope to write about for Bowling Green's next pop. cult. Conference, too...
only talking about Chrono Trigger..
Because.. the game is an illusion of openness... or in Trigger's case, an illusion of deterministic change...
Doing things doesn't really impact the larger world in either case, though. In Fallout, it's negligible except that you have great or crap karma, so Talon or Regulators hunt you.. In Trigger, sure, you stopped Magus from invading.. but... now Ozzie is.. or now it's Azala summoning down Lavos, now it's the Queen whatszername...
etc.
Basically, looking at the tension between a narrative skeleton and an "open ended" body.
blergh.
I had Fawkes standing RIGHT THERE, but he's worried about my destiny. You hurt me, Fawkes. Hurt me real bad.
I was kind of surprised when it turned out that your party didn't matter in most situations. Take a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin down to see the ghouls? Nobody bats an eye. Take a mutant to go see the BoS? Cheers all around! I understand finite time and resources to put things into a project, but in all honesty I would have accepted 5 costume choices and party members that mattered. On the plus side, I never had a party member rip me to shreds with a mini gun like Marcus used to do in Fallout 2. Likewise I never had a party member blow my legs off because I accidentally hit him with a stray bullet.
I did accidentally shoot an NPC during a fight with a Mirelurk in FO3, and that NPC did die, and the people in that town did bar me from ever returning, which is cool. Just like when I accidentally brained that kid in Vault City back in the day. Good times.
But as for the illusion of openness: it seems like a lot of games, be they open or not, tend to divide the game into episodes and what you do is a big deal in that episode, and generally immaterial in all other episodes, barring of course for the ones that advance the main arc. I guess that's just a restating of your point.
So, I take it that you got the bad ending?
"But as for the illusion of openness: it seems like a lot of games, be they open or not, tend to divide the game into episodes and what you do is a big deal in that episode, and generally immaterial in all other episodes, barring of course for the ones that advance the main arc. I guess that's just a restating of your point."
I think that "open-ended" RPGs are a good example to use when explaining free will.
Given Causality, reality is scripted events. You certainly have the illusion of choice, the illusion that your selection of a reply from a dialog tree matters, but in the causal chain of reality your particular replies are actually meaningless to the larger scripted event which is reality.
You've already made the decision that will result in your getting the bad ending. You can have some illusions that every now and then you can make a choice that might affect the outcome, but she's already married someone else so it doesn't really fucking matter what you do; you're already getting the pre-determined scripted event at the end.
[drink drink drink]
That's the problem, Jay.
All the endings in Fallout are the "Bad Ending" by that metric.
As far as I know, there's only ONE that allows you to stay alive..
and IT? Requires you to have good karma, and then decide not to do the deed at the end (a bad act)
Otherwise, Good karma or Bad, you get stuck with the action of the ending, with clear alternatives around you that you can't choose.
You're right about the npcs in this, Adam.
They basically never cause you real problems, but.. then.. they don't do much beyond shoot for you and occasionally shout something funny.
Or find you shit, if it's Dogmeat.
But there's a lot that's well done about them... they GENERALLY have pretty good AI.. and aside from Fawkes, hooking folks up with neat gear is pretty cool.
Charon looks dashing in Button's Wig and Naughty Nightwear, packing Lincoln's Repeater for example.
I guess they're one step further on your "episodic" thesis... namely that they're "episodes" in and of themselves... interactions with them are pretty much confined to that, and they don't interact WITH the story...
"As far as I know, there's only ONE that allows you to stay alive.."
Just going to bold and italicize that. Because i'm drunk and mean.
Really? So there's no open-ended world exploration at the end? It's all "fuck you" and the game ends?
I thought Fallout 2 was completely unending.
SPOILERS CONTINUING IN EARNEST
Fallout 2 is unending in the sense that you can keep doing things after the main story is over, and certainly not in the sense that there are infinite new things to do.
The idea of the Bad Ending is interesting to me, because I think it's a fundamental aspect of interactive fiction and a fundamental roadblock in games being considered art. I should say, the Bad Ending itself isn't the roadblock, but the attitude on the part of the player that the ending they are seeing is "The Bad Ending" is a roadblock. There's nothing inherently wrong with bad endings, but when the player reaches one, and knows that there must surely be "Good Ending"s, then he probably isn't focused on the message of the Bad Ending so much as he is trying to figure out how to get the goddamned Good Ending and see how the events REALLY end. And maybe that's the root of the problem: Bad Endings are incomplete endings in the mind of the player.
Castlevania, for example, has Bad Endings and Good Endings, and the Bad are definitely incomplete versions of the story, with the Good being the definitive version of the story. Or is it? Does the fact that the Good Ending takes a little extra work and a little more time in the game to achieve and that it has a different outcome make it better than the Bad Ending? Could it be that they are equally valid outcomes to a story over which you, the player, have a degree of control?
Aside: Can we understand the endings in AI to be Bad and then Good endings?
When the player has control over the events of a game to the extent that he does in Fallout, and the player is sophisticated enough to recognize the extent of his control, then he will surely recognize the times when he is powerless, and will accept the events that unfold at these times, just as he would in a closed games with events over which he never has power. I would say that if the game ended in a way that your player had to die and there was nothing you could do about it, that would be ok. I mean "nothing you can do about it" in the sense that there are no alternatives that follow the rules of the game world. Your dad dies in a closed room, the door to which cannot be opened. There is absolutely nothing within the player's power to change your dad's fate. When you die, there are clear alternatives and even fucking precedent for them working, but the game dictates that you die.
But then I think the idea that the player maintains the illusion of control right up until it is stupidly taken away leads into the issue of the un-winnable RPG boss fight. The fight is for the most part a regular battle, and the player appears to have control over the event, but he can never win (some exceptions, but for the most part, it's impossible). I may have just simply gotten used to these, and categorize them under "nothing I could have done, so I accept this otherwise unwelcome turn", but aren't these virtually identical to dying in front of Fawkes in FO3 just because the game made you?
"he will surely recognize the times when he is powerless, and will accept the events that unfold at these times, just as he would in a closed games with events over which he never has power."
This is an assumption on my part. If you watch Aeris die and seriously wonder why nobody's getting out Phoenix Down, then I'm not talking to you here. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I disagree with how you understand story telling in games. Not that I agree with how story telling in games works, but certain concessions, sadly, must be made.
1) I understand the Bad/Good ending distinction to be subjective. Games with multiple endings simply provide multiple endings. The "bad" or "good" of those endings is subjective to the player's desires.
2) Aeris died?
3) "If you watch Aeris die and seriously wonder why nobody's getting out Phoenix Down, then I'm not talking to you here. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I disagree with how you understand story telling in games."
That.
That. That. That.
That's my fucking problem with "games as art". It's that convoluted player control / game designer relation wherein you have control to a point and then jackass programmer says what happens. Because it is simply an example of soft-determinism.
The soft-determinist says that "God" or "causality" or "whatever" controls "the big things" in one's life but little, average, day-to-day things are "Free" and "uncaused" or "uncontroled". So, to the soft determinist, God knows and has determined who you will marry...but God is uninvolved with your decision of which toothpaste you use. Because God does not care about that. God only cares about who you fuck.
Video Games ARE that soft-determinism. Fallout 3, as it has been described, IS that soft-determinism. WoW is that soft-determinism. Games which employ that over-arching story method of structure are soft-determinism.
And I HATE soft-determinism.
I'll say that Animal Crossing is purely open-ended. Different events happen at different times, but these are simply events. It's not really "controlling" a player to have Gracie show up on the 3rd thursday of the month to offer a Fashionista badge. That's simply an event which one can ignore. A player is not bound to it.
That's probably the distinction I would make: boundness.
The good and bad ending aren't always subjective though. Especially in games with sequels. The sequel will almost assuredly assume a certain ending, and go from there. If you didn't get that specific ending, then the sequel may not make the most sense to you.
Isn't Animal Crossing the absolute ultimate in Soft Determinism, though?
You WILL owe Tom Nook.
This has been Ordained since the very founding of BitchTittington or Whorevile or Upper East CocksDicksLol upon Thames or whatever you name your village.
And YOU WILL Meet Resetti, if you dare power off without saving.
These things have been predetermined. They WILL Happen, they are BOUND to happen and you will be BOUND to experience them, if you cause them to happen.
Soft Determinism is more about controlling than it is expectations. That's how I would simply describe the difference.
Once one pays off a certain loan then another loan will be forced upon the person. Is that determinism? It's causal, sure. Paying off a debt causess the next debt to be thrust upon a player. But it is not determined that one will ever pay off the first debt or that one must pay off the first debt.
If it were "you will pay off debt X and then have debt Y" it would be determinism. "If you pay off debt X then you will have debt Y" is more causality.
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