Story – TOM CLEMENT | PRODUCER

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019-2023): An Analysis

February 3, 2024March 25, 2024Posted in UncategorizedTagged 141, Barry Sloane, Call Of Duty, Campaign, Coalition, Design, Farah, Games, gaming, Ghost, Graves, Konni, Makarov, Modern Warfare, Online, Open Combat Zone, Price, reviews, Story, Trilogy, Video Games, Warzone, WritingLeave a comment

I always have a sense of excitement and trepidation when picking up a new Call of Duty game.

I don’t play online shooters so I know I’m not the target audience who love their team deathmatches and their Battle Royale modes, rather I drop my cash for the story.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare sparked an interest in this sometimes-maligned side of CoD with its depiction of stealthy SAS toughs behind enemy lines as well as the big bombastic spectacles of an invading US force.

When Modern Warfare got rebooted in 2019 I picked it up to see what new narrative threads had been added. I wasn’t too bowled over (you can read more here), but I was interested to see where the franchise went next.

And so a few days ago I played through all of the new Modern Warfare games to get a full overview of the for a deep dive analysis.

“Bravo Six Going Dark” – The Modern Warfare Reboot Trilogy: An Analysis

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best paced games in the history of gaming.

Its sense of timing and when to ratchet up tension is perfect displayed by its two playable factions, the SAS and the US Marines.

The SAS sneak and use subterfuge while the US Marines use every weapon known to man to obliterate their enemy.

It is a balancing masterclass of the switchblade and the sledgehammer.

CoDs from World at War through MW2, Black Ops, MW3, and beyond dialled back the switchblade in for more sledgehammers, until 2019 when the first of the MW reboot released.

This game is 90% switchblade, a complete reverse of the previous CoDs and in retrospect quite refreshing.

Super sneaky “tactical” games had been popular in the years preceding CoD4, mainly helmed by the Rainbow Six series and it seemed that the new CoD was going to take more of a stealthy approach to a first-person shooter.

This is exemplified by the most well-known mission from MW 2019, “Clean House”. The player works as part of the SAS and clearing out a terrorist cell that has set up shop in a town house in north London.

Bathed in the green light of night vision with hardly any musical notation, the mission is tense, with many tight corners, hidden terrorists and tough calls needing to be made on the use of lethal force.

_{A night-time raid on a house in Camden Town is tense and thrilling, with tight corners and hidden enemies. (Source: callofduty.fandom.com)}

The coin-flip of rules of engagement and civilian presence is highlighted quite a lot in the game, with “Embedded” and “The Embassy” asking the player to leave unarmed civilians to be hanged or shot and “Old Comrades” putting the player on the other side and threatening a terrorist’s family with a gun.

These missions show the new face for the story in relation to the hot contemporary political topics of the time. CoD4 visually referenced the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and CoD 2019 takes similar inspiration with terrorist attacks in highly populated areas, siege events like Benghazi and female-led resistance forces.

Speaking of which, the character of Farah who is the head the resistance of Urzikstan (the fictional Black Sea country and centre of conflict) is very welcome in a game series that does not have much space for female roles. She speaks both English and Arabic, and its refreshing to have entire sections with subtitles, again, something that until recently wasn’t widely accepted in gaming.

Players experience a lot of key moments with Farah and her brother Hadir, with a memorable missions including the two as children and having to use improvised weaponry like scissors to defend themselves from invading Russian forces, or being waterboarded when they are taken prisoner.

The rest of the cast are also good characters, with CIA instrument “Alex” being entrenched with Farah and the rebels, his handler Laswell (another female character and one in authority), and then the two British lads, Kyle “Gaz” Garrick and Captain Price. All the actors put in stellar performances.

_{From L to R: “Alex”, Price, Gaz, and Farah, the main characters of Modern Warfare (2019). I was happy to see all of these characters returns across the trilogy. (Source: metro.co.uk)}

However, the reasoning behind Gaz and Price being involved in the story is an annoying stretch. Price is with the SAS and Gaz is part of the CTSFO but then the CIA spook Laswell can just call up and get him to seemingly abandon his post to hunt down a terrorist leader.

It’s a weird exceptionalism that was pervasive towards the end of the previous MW trilogy, of Price playing four-dimensional chess with his enemy and being excused because he is the only man capable of averting world destruction.

Price even says that to Gaz towards the end of MW 2019. Gaz is frustrated by the rules of engagement in the CTFSO and so Price recruits him for his taskforce. But when Prices threatens and unarmed woman and child as “leverage” over a terrorist, he moralises it to Gaz, saying,

“End of the day somebody has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty and the world stays clean.”

Price talks about the blood on his hands and lines in the sand and it feels like it’s going to crescendo with a message, a personal story of violence and limits to rationalise his view, but it’s left as it is and ends more as an encouragement rather than an indictment of morally grey warfighters.

_{In “Hometown” a seven-year-old Farah has to defend herself from Russian troops, but doesn’t have the physical strength to pull the trigger. (Source: callofduty.fandom.com)}

The game ends on a sledgehammer peak with all the characters joining forces and sieging a Georgian chemical plant and taking back Farah’s homeland from the invaders.

It’s notable also for the death of “Alex”, who doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory, firing his weapon with one hand and killing several enemies, but instead with a smile and a “yes ma’am”.

The bombs the team places are damaged and someone has to stay behind to detonate them. Farah is ready to sacrifice herself to her cause, but “Alex” tells her someone still needs to deal with the rogue Russian General Barkov and that should be her task.

“Alex” says, “I’ve been on assignment my whole life. This…is one I believe in.” While he is dedicated to the fight, he can’t win the war for her. It has to be Farah to free her country from Barkov and in the end she “orders” him to blow up the plant while she defeats the general.

It’s a great moment of small heroics and knowing where one is placed in the grand scheme of the world and the only downside is that “Alex” is a warm and calming presence in a game of dark and cold look through inhumanity.

_{“Alex” and Farah’s connection is one of the lighter points of the story and something rarely seen in shooters, let alone a CoD game. (Source: YouTube: BabyZone)}

So the world is saved, Urzikstan is freed, and Price talks with Laswell about a new taskforce with some choice friends from the SAS. He names himself, Gaz, Soap, and Ghost as his core team and gives them the name 141.

Obviously being a reboot there were going to be some mentions of characters, places, events and reworks.

Garrick being revealed as Gaz was nice and lends a smidge of diversity to the core characters, but apart from that there wasn’t any big or well-reasoned connections to the original.

Sgt. Griggs returns in a blink-and-you-miss it role in “Hunting Party”. General Shepherd, Zakhaev, Pripyat, and Al-Asad all get name dropped in the end credit scenes.

The most egregious references for me were of memes from the original Modern Warfare.

The line “check your corners” in CoD4 became an internet joke due to the way Price performs ands repeats it in the level “Crew Expendable”.

The line is used again by Price in the reboot during a terrorist attack in “Picadilly” and would fit the moment…expect it has over a decade’s worth of meme-baggage attached to the phrase.

The same happens in the mission “Highway of Death”, where while testing a high-powered rifle the player is asked to shoot a piece of fruit.

When a shot is landed a friendly NPC says, “His fruit-killing skills are remarkable.” Again, it could fit the scene, but just pulls me out of the moment.

But with that final note, let’s move onto Modern Warfare II.

For the following, MW2 will refer to the 2009 game and MWII will refer to the 2022 game.

_{From L to R; Alejandro, Soap, Ghost, Price, and Gaz, the leads of MWII and TF141. (Source: callofduty.com)}

Modern Warfare II follows in its namesake’s tradition of being bigger, bolder, and brasher than its predecessor, dialling in a few more sledgehammers but having them disguised as switchblades.

Like the original MW2 the previous story is mostly left in the past, with only passing references to the Al-Qatala (AQ) terrorist organisation and Urzikstan. Instead MWII carves out its own special forces story and to most intents and purposes it succeeds…just.

Just like MW 2019, it has a great collection of characters who perform the hell out of the script, with interesting locations and missions.

Mexican Special Forces characters Alejandro and Rodolfo are cool additions to the multi-culti team of 141 and add the sense that global terror can lay anywhere (with a large dose of dialogue in Mexican Spanish with subtitles).

Ghost and Soap join the gang, with a fun buddy-cop dynamic between the two adding a great dose of levity throughout the game. Farah returns for a fun vehicle-based mission, and Gaz and Price seem to have grown further than a simple mentor/mentee connection. Everyone gets more to play with and there is a real sense of teamwork and camaraderie between the factions.

We also get a clearer introduction to another player in the MW series, Shadow Company and its leader, Commander Graves.

Shadow Company always struck me as an curveball inclusion in the old Modern Warfare series, but that was before I understood what PMCs were and what they did.

Still, it’s still unclear what Shadow Company is in relation to Shepherd in the original but in the reboot I think their uneasy quasi-affiliation with TF141 is an interesting comment on the nature of a modern war setting.

_{Graves is charismatic and calculating, always with a smirk on his face. No wonder he became a villain. (Source: rumble.com)}

Like the original MW2, the story of MWII focuses on the power vacuums left after Western aggression and what fresh horrors arise when left unchecked.

The stealthy aspect is back with the majority of missions featuring silencers and night-time settings.

Some standout set-pieces including infiltrating an Amsterdam harbour through water, avoiding enemy patrols in Mexico during a rainstorm, or breaking into a cartel lord’s mansion for a face-to-face confrontation.

Every other mission feels new for the series with dialogue sequences, improvised weapons, swimming, climbing, and rappelling, and rarely are they one-and-dones, trotted out for a single sequence and then dropped like previous titles.

Instead most missions layer these aspects atop one another, leading to a more versatile play session.

The references to previous games are a 50/50 split on how they land. Two missions highlight it perfectly. First is the mission “Recon by Fire”. Taking notes from what is considered to be the best mission in CoD history, “All Ghillied Up”, “Recon by Fire” is a sniping/stealth mission on a remote island.

Price and Gaz are in Ghillie Suits, they have their long range silenced rifles, and they are heavily out-gunned by the occupying force, just needing to get to their objective with as few casualties as possible.

It even remakes the hiding-in-the-grass-as-enemies-pass scene from CoD4, with Price voicing a one-to-one recreation of MacMillan’s lines. And it just doesn’t work for me.

Part of “All Ghillied Up”’s charm was its tension. You had to use stealth and tactics because you were extremely outgunned. When the tanks rumble past as you hide in the tall grass it’s meant to make you feel small and powerless.

In “Recon by Fire”, no tanks roll past, just a squad walks around you. A squad that two minutes later I could take out with my rifle with no issues.

The game goes semi-open world with how to approach its objectives and how to shoot, giving the complete opposite of having to be stealthy and tactical because at some point the bullets have to start flying.

_{A lot of the news posts and videos name “Recon by Fire” as “All Ghillied Up 2”. Nearly twenty years on it is still the high point of Modern Warfare. (Source: sportskeeda.com)}

Contrast this with “Dark Water”, a double mission where the player first has to infiltrate an oil rig hosting missiles and then a container ship close by which has the launch capabilities. It is a direct reference to “Crew Expendable” and “The Only Easy Day…Was Yesterday” from the first two MW games respectively.

But while it recreates similar settings, it has the player do different tasks. On the rig it’s a search and destroy rather than a rescue, leading to different tactics. On the ship, the cargo containers are sliding around, creating hazards and blockages for the player.

That isn’t to say that MWII is just a greatest hits of previous levels. One levels that I feel is unique is “Borderline”, with Mexican Special Forces leads Alejandro and Rodolfo seeing an Iranian major smuggled over the US border wall and following him over despite knowing they are breaking the rules of engagement.

The mission is a suspenseful evening chase through the backyards of a sleepy border town, with short but punchy engagements and civilians getting mixed up in the action.

Several times the civilians will threaten and attack Alejandro and Rodolfo as the two follow their target. The NPCs hold baseball bats or reach for guns with the player instructed to “de-escalate” the situation…by aiming their gun at the other person.

It’s a little shocking at the start but questions start to arise as soon as it appears. Alejandro and Rodolfo break into these peoples’ houses to follow their target. They could easily call out that they are Special Forces to pre-emptively de-escalate the situation and move on as quickly as possible.

In later levels the game uses a wide branching dialogue system so the thought could be why not use it here to verbally de-escalate? Instead the only option is to threaten anyone who gets in the way.

Branching dialogue is used a lot in “Recon by Fire” between Gaz, Price, and Laswell and it’s delightfully charming and light banter, something I wish the game had more of.

_{“Borderline”‘s pacing and escalation of combat encounters are good, with spikes of controlled gunfire punctuating the tense atmosphere. (Source: medium.com)}

But a final point I want to make is that while we have these great set pieces and characters…yet there is an underlying hardline conspiratorial edge to the story.

While the Americans in MW 2019 annoyed me for their frat-boy egos and Captain Price unnerved me with his “Hard Times Deserve Strong Men”-esque speech, MWII ties together both Middle Eastern terrorist organisations and the Iranian Military with Mexican cartels and traffickers.

It sounds like the most buzzworthy radical viewpoints born out of too much Fox News and a Tom Clancy marathon. They even try to rationalise it when Alejandro says, “terrorists don’t cross the southern border”, only for Laswell to reply, “They know that and we know that and that’s exactly why they are going to do it.”

There are multiple conversations between Gaz and Price and Alejandro with the rest of 141 about how the relationship between Iran and the cartels work, but most of it comes down to “money” or nebulous “power”, without any further dissection of the topic.

While the original MW trilogy could never be thought of as critical of American military might or nuanced with geo-political matters, it never got deep into outright paranoia over the enemy.

All the previous Russian baddies were labelled as “Ultranationalists” to differentiate them from the state and people of Russia. In MWII it seems as if the baddies are a cabal of different groups all bent on weakening the West.

As usual with MW sequels, there are several twists and turns on loyalties and alliances throughout the campaign. While I saw breadcrumbs to a final surprise, in the end I was preparing for a curveball that never came.

There are subtle references that the Mexican army have taken over cartel business, or that fan-favourite Ghost was taking orders not from 141 but General Shepherd and Shadow Company and it felt like there would be one final twist on who can we trust.

But no, MWII ended rather like how MW2 ended, with Shadow and Shepherd pushed to the sides so that the stage was free for series baddy Vladimir Makarov to take centre stage in time for Modern Warfare III.

_{The great moustachioed one returns, with new actor Barry Sloane giving Price both warmer tones and darker shades. (Source: news.blizzard.com)}

Modern Warfare III released only one year after MWII with a development time of only sixteen months.

It was an incredibly rushed development schedule and I do not want to pour scorn on the developers, artists, writers, producers, QA, sound, and anyone else who helped make these games.

It seems every aspect of the game from campaign to multiplayer has already been criticised for its lower quality, but I wanted to make a mention of it before I got to my position first.

Because the game does have some excellent moments, including its opening.

We start literally and metaphorically in the dark, with only a submarine’s sonar blips for a soundscape. We see soldiers in wetsuits preparing for a stealthy mission, swimming through the darkness and surfacing outside a island prison fortress.

The missions title “Operation 627” indicates that this will be a breakout mission, referencing MW2’s famous “The Gulag”.

As the team ascends the fortress walls and picks off lone guards, they all speak with British or American accents. They use slang words commonly used by Price and Gaz. Their use of weapons and tech indicates they are highly trained.

A diversionary explosion allows the soldiers to slip into the prison, where they then descend, taking out guards along the way and freeing prisoners as an extra layer of chaos for their escape. The intruders reach their end goal, freeing a prisoner in solitary confinement, who turns out to be Vladimir Makarov.

The whole operation was a bait-and-switch, giving the impression of a 141 mission but instead conducted by Makarov’s private military.

_{Makarov was front and centre for a lot of the promotion, being almost a deuteragonist of the Modern Warfare brand. (Source: pixground.com)}

It’s a cool opening, heavily-scripted as the start of most CoDs are, and it has a great contrast of both switchblade and sledgehammer woven throughout. While some may call it a cheap switch trick, I think it’s a short yet strong opening to pump players ups and get them into the action.

We’ve had Russian characters speaking English before (one of the most infamous lines from CoD is “No Russian”) and the 627 is more a wink and a nod to players who remember.

Makarov’s return was inevitable, yet it seems to have fallen rather flat in comparison to the original.

While Makarov was also first introduced at the beginning of MW2, I think players saw him as a “bogeyman”, always being just one step ahead of the player, in our minds but never in our crosshairs.

This was strengthened by “No Russian”. Having Makarov next to you gave him a sense of permanence. In MWIII, I feel he has a cutscene quality, always somewhere but never a strong presence.

While names in a reboot will always bring a form of background knowledge, Makarov’s credentials in MW2 were strengthened by his association with original MW baddy Imran Zakhaev.

Here, he’s just a guy who wants to watch the world burn. But maybe the vague impulses of Makarov will come clearer later in the game. So let’s move onto the next mission, “Previous Cargo.”

We welcome the return of Farah…and then blink and scratch our heads at the return of “Alex” and Commander Graves, both apparently alive and well after their supposed explosive ends in MW and MWII respectively.

When I saw “Alex” and Graves return I had to search if I had missed a cutscene or a line of dialogue that indicated they had escaped alive in either campaign.

Sure the player never sees a definitive end of the two characters, but “Alex” being alive negates his character development in MW, and Graves being alive and then also a “friendly” hurts the Shadow Company arc of MWII.

I think this is what people refer to when they criticise the game, the fact that two dead characters, one from nearly five years ago, just pop up without a hint of how they survived.

Farah’s mission twists unexpectedly with the arrival of the “Konni” group attacking Farah’s militia and stealing missiles. While Konni haven’t been mentioned by name before in the series, they did feature in one mission in MWII, and are Makarov’s private army.

I’ll forgive the name not being dropped previously. Game scripts get cut and shuffled around numerous times so it could have been a point that was announced earlier that didn’t make the final cut.

I do actually like the background we get on Konni being a private military army with an aim to bring glory back to Russia.

_{“Timing…is everything.” A lot of the cutscenes in MWIII focus on Makarov and his Konni soldiers, fleshing out the organisation. (Source: dotesports.com)}

Makarov’s abilities in MW2 and MW3 were always a bit tenuous, committing a terrorist attack and framing the USA, that works. But then the logical leap to Russia invading the USA, then Makarov somehow orchestrating an invasion all of Europe as well. It just stretched plausibility on how logistically it all works.

Having Makarov’s soldiers be a private military group with a stated goal of restoring a nation’s glory, and have funding and resources for their “missions”, it works better than what in the original seemed to be a single terrorist cell conducting World War Three.

Konni steal missiles that the USA had been giving Farah to use if her country was ever invaded again with their next target being a chemical plant in Russia. 141 deploy but arrive too late to stop Konni from taking them.

Some of the chemicals get leaked and Price nearly succumbs to the gas, falling unconscious once he gets outside. It’s interesting to see the lead character and face of the franchise be put into a situation like that but as Price is a superhero he just sleeps it off on the helicopter ride out.

In the helicopter ride the team discuss what type of gas was being stored there and Gaz mentions that it is, “remnants of Barkov’s program.”

The rogue Russian general that invaded Urzikstan in MW 2019 and the invasion and chemical weapons are mentioned a lot in MWIII, which makes me think that this story might have started as a direct sequel instead of MWII.

I have no inside knowledge on the development of the story but just the connections made with MW 2019 and the return of “Alex” and Farah outside of cameos that were completely absent in MWII make me suspect they could have been plot points that just got shuffled into the sequel.

_{“Alex”‘s appearance gets little explanation (apart from him now having a prosthetic leg) and has only one in-level appearance in the story. (Source: theloadout.com)}

So with both Farah’s missiles and the late general’s chemical weapons, Makarov combines the two and plans to launch from a disused Soviet bunker, and Price and team along with Farah go to stop, but only succeed stopping one missile, which hits Russia.

The whole mission is a reversal of “Ultimatum” from the original MW, of missiles being launched from disused Soviet bunkers.

In the original MW the launch was during gameplay while here it is in a cutscene. It would have been nice with today’s graphics to see such a jaw-dropping sight in-game, but it’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things.

Since the missile that was fired originally belonged to Farah’s group, the world starts to believe that they are committing terrorists acts on Russia. Makarov then sets up another terrorist act, one which looked to be familiar…

Of course the sight of Makarov in an airport, in front of departure boards sent anyone with memory of “No Russian” reeling. Of all the missions to recreate, that one? Well no, not quite.

Again, reboots play with names and iconography and “No Russian” will go down as one of the most infamous missions to ever be in CoD, and the new mission, “Passenger” does try and hit the same note, but with less of an interactive component.

Playing as a retired member of Farah’s female militia, Konni members kidnap the player mid-flight and straps a bomb to her chest, allowing her to take the fall for their plans. There are moments of fighting against air marshals and Konni members, but for only a few minutes.

The missions ends with Konni and Makarov escaping via parachute, and pushing the player character back into the passenger area. While the character pleads with other passengers to help them disarm the bomb, instead the other passengers attack and subdue her, with the bomb exploding and the plane crashing in the wild.

_{As with “Recon by Fire” and “All Ghillied Up”, “Passenger” is referred to as “No Russian 2.0”. (Source: dotesports.com)}

With two terrorists attacks to their name, Farah knows the world is about to turn on her militia and country, and so head to the crash site first to delete any data that would incriminate her forces. She does so…and then it never comes up again.

It’s a bit odd that this thread just ends, instead of Makarov having maybe some backups or other events ready to go, instead betting all is hopes of these two events. The story feels like it has three ending peaks…and its actual ending isn’t any of those peaks, but we’ll get to that later.

With 141 and now the US military on the hunt for Makarov, the team once again join forces with General Shepherd and Graves’ Shadow Company and Price tells the story of his first meeting with Makarov.

Cue flashback sequence, where 141 are responding to a terrorist attack in the fictional city of Verdansk, with Makarov having two locations which may have bombs in them but only enough time to stop one. It’s a classic Dark Knight villain plan and it’s a cool mission, fighting Konni troops in a football stadium filled with fleeing civilians.

It culminates with Soap and Price seeing for the first time Makarov in the flesh, arresting him and exfiltrating, only for it to be revealed Makarov planned another decoy, detonating bombs in a different location.

_{Makarov attempts to flee in an ambulance, a nod to the ending of MW2‘s “No Russian”. (Source: gameranx.com)}

Makarov sneers at the team as their helicopter flies away and tries to goad Soap into shooting him, but they instead let him go to prison, hence his breakout.

Okay, so we get the reveal of why Makarov was in prison, it works, I get it. But the arrest of Makarov doesn’t really fits with the characters of the reboot.

As mentioned before, Price has threatened innocent civilians with a gun and in the original has beaten targets to a pulp. Later he will carry out an illegal assassination in the seat of military power in Washington USA. But here…he leaves Makarov to face his crimes.

Also Makarov seems overly evil. Sure, he’s a terrorist, but I feel Makarov from the original was always a bit cowardly, never fighting his battles, always fleeing or getting others to do his bidding, which gave him some texture. Here he is right in the action and begging 141 to kill him so they are reduced to his level.

Again, this feels like a direct sequel and a wow pop ending for CoD, of getting Makarov but failing the mission, of his indirect win over 141 (ya know, the second in a trilogy always being the darkest thematically), and his cryptic threat of seeing Soap again at a later date.

Back in the present, Konni are about to detonate a bomb in London, and obviously the four Brits that compose 141 are not about to let anything happen to their home turf.

The team fight their way to the bomb site, where Soap and Price work together to try and detonate the bombs…when Makarov appears out of nowhere and shoots Soap in the head, killing him.

Lots has been said about the scene, about the casual way Soap, THE original playable character in CoD4 and a figurehead of the Modern Warfare brand, is offed without a big show, just during an incoherent scuffle and then boom…yeah it does kind of sting.

Soap does die in the original trilogy in MW3. Players help carry a wounded Soap through an entire level and then see Price break down into sobs and screams as his friend takes his last breath and all in-game as well.

It’s then followed up with another iconic scene, “Why in bloody hell does Makarov know you?”, creating a bookend to the character across the trilogy.

_{Soap’s death in the original MW trilogy was drawn out for extended pathos. In the reboot, I wish we had got to spend more time with the man. (Source: callofduty.fandom.com)}

And then MWIII ends. The three remaining 141 boys scatter Soap’s ashes, Graves and Shepherd escape their comeuppance at the Supreme Court so Price kills the latter.

Makarov escapes to fight another day…which I guess makes this trilogy analysis a bit underwhelming, as it’ll be another untold amount of games until the one-man war between Price and Makarov ends.

***

I’ve had a whole lot of feelings across this trilogy.

When I first saw the announcement trailer with Price and the name Modern Warfare being used, I thought it was a purely cynical release.

CoD had been struggling in the years before the MW reboot.

2016’s Infinite Warfare’s trailer had at one point the second most-disliked video on YouTube. CoD4’s remaster, releasing at the same time, was only available via Infinite Warfare’s collector’s edition.

2017’s WWII was seen as a naked attempt to course correct from the increasingly future-based combat, and then Black Ops 4 didn’t even have a single player story mode.

So it seemed to me and many people that 2019’s offering was going to play it safe, a nice jaunt down memory lane with Captain Price and be nothing more. And while I had issues with MW 2019, I was interested in seeing where it went afterwards.

Not to mention, in 2020 there was Black Ops: Cold War, one of the best first-person shooter campaigns of its generation, which also took a series which was skewed to sledgehammers and did the same 90% switchblade reverse to tremendous results.

_{Everything in Cold War, from its characters, to its pacing, twists, and even how it ties back to the original game make it one of the best CoD campaigns to date. (Source: news.xbox.com)}

MWII‘s story and new additions have grown on me the more I played it with time, and I wished that it had carried over a few more points into MWIII.

Speaking of which, MWIII isn’t bad. And I get the story is probably the thing which takes lowest priority in comparison to multiplayer and Warzone. Not to mention the incredibly rushed development time probably wasn’t the best place to write in.

But with Makarov only really coming into the trilogy in the final game, coasting on his reputation from the original, and then fleeing the scene just before the end credits, the death of Soap, and the muddy nature of continuity, I just have to say I’ve lost my spark of interest for now.

Give it some time and a proper development schedule and I’m sure it can come back to greatness. I think that’s a wish we can all get behind.

_{Banner Photo Source: twitter.com}

Bully – Discovering a Classic

December 22, 2023March 13, 2024Posted in UncategorizedTagged Anniversary, Bully, Canis Canim Edit, Design, Games, gaming, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, GTA 6, Jimmy Hopkins, Rockstar, Rockstar Games, San Andreas, School], Story, VI, Vice City, Video Games, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve recently been doing a backlog binge of older open-world games I never got to play the first time around.

Titles have included the Guy Ritchie-inspired The Getaway, which simulates ten square miles of London for its story. Another is Mafia, which uses its city more for immersion into it’s 1930s world than for regular open-world hi-jinks.

The other old open-world game that I’ve been playing and has recently captured my heart is the infamous Bully.

Bully (also known as Canis Canim Edit) is such an unique game, even among Grand Theft Auto clones.

Despite releasing originally on the sixth generation PlayStation 2 and then rereleases on the seventh, eighth, and now ninth console generation, the game never got a sequel, which I feel is a terrible pity.

I wanted to write about my experiences playing, because Bully deserves to be experienced, even so long after its time in the spotlight.

Dog Eat Dog – Why I Love Bully

Bully was developed by Rockstar Vancouver, a Canadian offshoot of the “Rockstar” brand, known for Grand Theft Auto.

While Rockstar North developed GTA, other studios effectively built GTA clones. Rockstar San Diego created Red Dead Redemption in 2010, and in 2006 Vancouver created Bully.

It’s both amusing and interesting to see GTA, the ultimate adults-only game, have to fit the mould of a schoolboy simulator.

Each new scenario where you could see what GTA would do took me by surprise as the game has to get creative with everything.

The missions, vehicles, characters, authority, Bully has all the ingredients for GTA but they are tweaked just a little to accommodate both the cast and the age rating (Bully was released as a 15+ rather than the 18+ of GTA).

Things like spray-painting offensive words onto walls, riding a BMX into town to go to the carnival, Halloween pranks, Christmas snowball fights, Sports Days, it creates a charming atmosphere of being made for rebellious teens who can’t get GTA without patronising them.

And while some games could lose shine as more time is spent in them, this charm of “new-yet-familiar” kept me coming back to Bully, both for the boarding school role-play and simulation, as well as the wilder moments that it invents for the story.

_{Hiding from the prefects after dropping a firecracker down the toilet…again. (Source: rockstargames.com)}

Bully does actually play a lot like a roleplaying game with its school timetable. There are six classes; Chemistry, English, Art, Gym, Shop, and Photography.

While some main missions require a particular level (the second half of the game focuses a lot on photography), a player can easily play truant and miss out on classes all together, with no real consequences unless they are caught.

However these classes give you different abilities once you pass. Chemistry allows for restocks on the player arsenal (all schoolboy things like firecrackers, bags of marbles, and stink bombs among others).

Art allows the player to kiss girls and boys for a health boost, and Shop lets the player upgrade their BMX, one of the better ways to get around the world.

The game also works on a yearly calendar, starting with the beginning of school term in September and finishing sometime in the summer. This allows for standout missions around Halloween and Christmas, but it’s more than just one-off episodes.

Being set in New England, the seasonal change is dramatic. At the start leaves are coloured anywhere from red to yellow and occasionally fall from the trees alongside the odd the rain shower.

In the third chapter winter has come to Bullworth, with the cast now sporting big coats, hats, and gloves. The trees are leafless and it gets darker earlier. New props such as snowmen, snowballs, and shovelling snow as a detention are only available in this season.

Once the snow is gone and the trees sprout their new leaves, the rain continues to pour until the final chapter where the sun comes out and signals the start of an endless summer.

_{Climbing a tree and raining down chaos with your slingshot…a true schoolboy experience. (rockstargames.com).}

Bully doesn’t have the most expansive of world compared with stablemates Vice City and San Andreas, but I think it is far more detailed that either of those games.

The school on its own is rather impressive with dorms, a library, gym, locker rooms, football stadium, basketball court, swimming pool, frat house, auto repair shop, and observatory.

Then the main building also houses the headteacher’s office, cafeteria, and the four classrooms, all of which are open and explorable in the game.

The town of Bullworth is split into four distinct areas. Old Bullworth Vale is for the preppy students and faculty members, with mansions overlooking the water and lighthouse.

Bullworth Town is a major shopping district where the Geeks hang out in the comic book store. New Coventry is an run-down urban estate for the Greasers, and finally Blue Skies is a Trailer and Industrial park where the Townies stay.

On top of the four neighbourhoods Bully also has a map full of extra locations that are used for maybe one mission or even usually driven past but give an extra flavour to the world.

Things like the Happy Volts Asylum, a fully working train yard, The Bullworth Dam, a church and graveyard with a preaching vicar, abandoned tenements, Billy Crane’s Travelling Carnival, and the half-sunken pirate ship next to of one of the many islands off the coast, each one gives a little extra spice or history to Bullworth and makes the city fun to explore.

_{Bullworth Academy is only one part of the map, but could easily be its own game. (rockstargames.com).}

Bully does suffer from the same strong neighbourhood lines that were in Vice City and San Andreas, where distinct seams were visible between say the shopping district and the industrial estate, but it’s forgiven for its age.

And despite its small size, I think it feels richer, mainly due to the level of detail that could be afforded a smaller world.

One thing I do enjoy about the game being a small map is that I get to see the same characters again and again wandering around Bullworth.

While in GTA and Red Dead you do see a few of the same faces in the gang hideouts or the saloon, they soon became background characters to the main character’s individual pursuit, only to be interacted with in cutscenes.

With Bully, I always felt this growing sense of getting to know characters, even if there isn’t much outside of a simple positive/negative comment that I can throw out at them.

It perfectly mirrors being a new kid at school, slowing getting to know people as they pass by in the corridor or school grounds, some saying hello or others stopping you with a quest, some that don’t have any greater role in the game or cutscenes that just being a recognisable face in the crowd.

_{School’s out…but sliding down the handrail will still get you into trouble. (Source: rockstargames.com)}

And after a while it’s fun to pass through the school and be able to recognise people; Gloria the kleptomaniac, Mandy/Pinky/Angie/Christy of the cheerleading squad, Algie the nerd, Russell the slow-witted but beefy tank, and Pete, the only sensible and rational character in the entire game.

But as the location is a school, it’s not just school kids walking around. Teachers walk around from class to class, giving a real sense of a school working to a timetable, rather than just cycling through character and animation loops.

And Jimmy Hopkins, the playable lead, seems alright. He does act like a proto-form of a GTA character; he’s brash, confrontational, with streaks of sadism and misogyny, but I’ll excuse it due to him literally being a fifteen year old child.

While Jimmy is definitely ruthless, he is also shown to comfort other characters when they are feeling down and being heroic in other instances like putting out fires in the school.

Jimmy is actually quite interesting as a Rockstar lead, mainly due to his ambivalence to the entire school system. When he first arrives at Bullworth, Jimmy doesn’t look to take over and become its leader. He just wants to get through with the least amount of hassle and then leave.

It’s only to get back at the sociopathic schoolmate and current school ruler Gary that spurs Jimmy forward. The plot is relatively simple in its driving force, but once again it’s the surrounding essence that makes it shine.

The fact that Jimmy has to defeat all the head of the school gangs before ruling the school, how the different cliques vie for control and actually fight in the corridors and grounds, and how most the cast that give missions act like adults in a GTA game when none of them are older than sixteen is endearing.

It reminds me of games like Yakuza or films like Brick, where young characters have latched onto what they thinks makes someone “cool”, where in reality they are just massive dorks acting like their are in their own personal movie, with Jimmy being one of the only “straight men” in the game.

_{Every character in the game takes themselves way too seriously and it makes for some of Rockstar’s funniest work. (Source: rockstargames.com)}

Like I said right at the start of this piece, the theme of Bully is its strongest suit, but that’s not to diminish its other qualities. It’s a classic sixth generation console game, with a strikingly detailed world, a strong and hilarious story, and a great mix of action, exploration, and set pieces.

So if you’re waiting with anxious breath for GTA VI and wanting something to hit that Rockstar itch, or you are just looking for a open-world game that has a different pace and flavour, I think Bully might just be the thing for you. And hey, maybe one day we’ll get a sequel…

_{Banner Photo Source: rockpapershotgun.com.}

South of the Circle and Love, Memory, and Lost Moments

April 16, 2023April 17, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged 11 Bit Studios, Antarctic, Clara, Design, Dialogue, Ed Critchley, Emotions, iOS, Love, Masculinity, Memory, Peter, Screen Print, South of the Circle, State of Play, Story, Traditional Gameplay, Video Games, WritingLeave a comment

Romance has become quite the topic in the gaming landscape.

I’m a sucker for a good romance and am always interested in where the game will focus its attention.

While love stories have been a part of the medium forever (one of the most famous cases being “save the princess”), it’s only in recent times that gaming has started to take on some more bigger and mature themes when it comes to romance.

Ideas like teen romance (Life is Strange Season 1), infidelity and commitment (Catherine: Full Body), and reconciliation (It Takes Two). I’ve written about love, death and endings in games like When The Past Was Around.

And it just so happens I’ve played another game recently that tried to tackle deeper themes with love.

South of the Circle is a narrative game first released for Apple Arcade in 2020, but was released late last year for consoles and PC.

I was immediately struck by its visuals and sound design, but was drawn in by it being labelled as a love story.

South of the Circle takes on the development of a whole relationship, societal pressures and conventions, but its main theme is memory, its failings and faults, and it perfectly works its way into the gameplay.

Best of British Luck – Love, Memory, and Lost Moments in South of the Circle

South of the Circle’s story focuses on two people, Peter and Clara, both lecturers at Cambridge University, how the two meet and fall in love, before a breakdown in communication leads to tragedy.

We play Peter throughout his time with Clara, but also during a research trip to Antartica, taking place after the two’s romance. This double story, of Peter searching for rescue at the South Pole and his growing relationship with Clara forms the narrative hook of the story.

The pair first meet on a train from Scotland down to Cambridge. It’s a perfect romantic introduction; Peter offering to help Clara put her suitcase on the top rack, her offering to share the carriage as everywhere else would be full.

_{South of the Circle‘s art design is evocative of screen prints from the 1960s, full of clean lines and stark contrasts. (Source: mezha.media)}

The main point of interaction in the game is dialogue choices, but instead of seeing a preview of words, you see a shape that gives a general emotion.

A red circle indicates panic, confusion, or concern. A green circle indicates caring and honesty. The black square is for being strong an assertive, a pink circle is negative and shy, and finally a sunshine image is for enthusiasm and interest.

Not all emotions are accessible with each interaction, only three at one time. It’s a great concept for a replaying a past love story, of people thinking back on moments and regretting acting in a certain way, whether shyness or being too forthright, and it’s great to get a general sense of how Peter could have reacted differently.

It’s also interesting that in certain conversations, one of the prompts comes up before the other. For example, when Peter helps Clara with her suitcase, two options come up in response, one being strong and assertive (the “be-a-man” approach) or honesty and openness. For a few seconds, the strong and assertive is the only prompt on screen.

It gives Peter a little bit of depth; so many characters with dialogue choices can change on a player’s whim in a certain situation, leaving their backstory a little vague and blank as to why they are acting in a certain way, but here it gives a small detail as to Peter’s background.

The two keep crossing paths once they arrive in Cambridge. Peter drives Clara to work when she misses catching her bus in the pouring rain, and she sits in on his lecture and asks question about his work. Again, it’s a perfect romantic setting, of two people in their element, thrown together by fate, both seeing sparks fly as they talk.

Chance meetings turn into coffee dates, into a night at a funfair, into seaside holidays, and finally into secret Scottish highland hideaways (with Clara remarking “I don’t know what my father would say about me bringing an unmarried man up there.”)

It’s a gradual and believable slide into comfort and romance, yet it’s fleeting. It’s tableaus and snapshots, of little inside jokes (the game remembers what choices you’ve made and the characters reference them), the sort of thing someone remembering a relationship would envision.

_{Happy memories of times gone by. (Source: news.xbox.com)}

Alongside the development of Peter and Clara’s relationship, we get further flashbacks into Peter’s life, such as his childhood and him with his fellow researchers.

His childhood doesn’t seem to be filled with fun, with an over-protective mother and a quick-to-anger father. A lot of the prompts in these sections are delayed; we see the prompt appear but it doesn’t become clickable for sometimes five to ten seconds, as if Peter is finding the courage to speak back to his parents. His responses are usually the panicked or negative choices.

With his friends, Peter is still a little shy and reserved, but given a few seconds the “man-up” choice is presented. A lot of the talk with his friends would be regarded as “locker-room talk”, with the two researchers always hunting for new “conquests” and seeing Clara as, quote, “inspiration” for Peter.

_{Peter’s childhood and social life is also explored in the game, giving glimpses into other areas of his life. (Source: mezha.media)}

And to be fair, they are right with Clara being a muse for Peter. For three years he has been writing a research paper and has been stuck for a long period. But when Clara comes into his life, she reads his work and helps him complete it.

From there, their relationship takes a turn for the worse, as society starts to turn its eye onto the couple.

First, it’s the time period. The game is set in 1964, the height of Soviet paranoia, anti-nuclear marches, and Russian spy rings working inside academia.

Second, the location. It’s only been fifteen years since women were first admitted to Cambridge University, and some of the old guard still believe they are “not built for academic work”.

It’s both the sexism of the time and guilt by association that causes the breakdown of Peter and Clara, the British “stiff-upper-lip” being the finishing blow, of words left unsaid, and memories now tarnished with emotion.

While half the game is set in the English countryside and sunlit offices and streets, the other half is of Peter and his ill-fated research trip to the Antarctic.

_{Maps, radios, and scientific equipment are all used to great effect in mini-puzzle sequences. (Source:} _mezha.media)

The game takes a little while before explaining the contrasting locations. It drops little hints and off-hand mentions of geography and weather patterns at the start, only really coming to the forefront once Clara and Peter have settled into their relationship.

The scenery is bleak and other-worldly, yet it works perfectly with the developing romance back in England. It says that even in chaotic and unsettling moments there is always some pin of normalcy, of hope and clearer skies at a later date.

The story in Antartica is as desolate as the landscape around it, with an increasing sense of foreboding and mystery. I won’t spoil it here for the story takes some jaw-dropping twists and turns as Peter stumbles through the tundra.

The snow and cold starts to affect Peter, blurring the line between memory and locations, with conversations, atmosphere, and even set design switching from Cambridge to Antartica.

It’s interesting visually if a little jarring the first time; editing cuts like this haven’t really been done before (lest people think their game is lagging for the quick cuts).

It keeps Clara in the forefront of the mind, this warm presence that may be lost to Peter, but he is fighting to find her.

_{There is no camera movement in SotC, but there is always something on the horizon to guide you forward. (Source: polygamer.com)}

The story is very structured with only little spaces for Telltale-style branching, which can lead players to feel frustrated any the lack of choice, but that is the central point of the story, that memory can be influenced by emotion, but can’t change what happened.

Peter is in the Antarctic no matter what; that is the present and everything else is in the past. Events and choices start to contradict, yet Peter is always seen as the sympathetic one and Clara starts to over-react.

While Peter is the protagonist, we as players have to come to the realisation that he isn’t presenting us with the whole truth. It reaches an apex as Peter sets off for the Antarctic, with the player’s feeble attempts to change what happened, but for Peter mentally torturing himself by the final moments.

It’s a devastating ending to come to, that all choices lead to the same conclusion for our protagonist, and it’s only how he chooses to remember himself (and how we as players guided him) that gives him comfort.

It’s a hearty mix of mature themes and aching loneliness and despite the short run time (an average of three hours), I highly recommend it as a great interactive story.

Banner Photo Source: nintendo.de

Why You Should Play – The Pillars of the Earth

September 5, 2022January 9, 2023Posted in Video GamesTagged Book, Click, Daedlic, Design, Games, Ken Follett, Narrative, Online, Pillars of the Earth, Point, point and click, Story, tomclement1, Video Games, WritingLeave a comment

As the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X finally cement their place as ‘current-gen’, we should take a look back at some of the games that defined the eighth generation of consoles.

We’ve seen multiplayer greats like Call of Duty and Battlefield reinvent themselves with both the old and the new (WW1 for Battlefield and CoD with Modern Warfare).

We’ve watched CD Projekt RED go from critical darling with The Witcher III: Wild Hunt to an out-and-out failure with Cyberpunk 2077.

And narrative behemoths have graced our screens like Red Dead Redemption 2 as well as smaller indie hits such as Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch.

Today I wanted to talk about one of my favourite games from the last generation and hopefully turn a few players onto the gem that is The Pillars of the Earth.

Based on a 1000+ page historical novel by Ken Follett and set over forty years in 12th century England, The Pillars of the Earth is about three characters, Phillip, a monk, Jack, an outcast, and Aliena, a former noblewoman.

The story sees the three cross paths as they try to grow their town of Kingsbridge, fend off rival noble families and vengeful bishops, and build a cathedral the likes the world has never seen before.

_{Jack and Aliena meet when both are still children and we get to see them change with age and experience. It’s an interesting scenario that hasn’t been explored much in gaming. (Source: amazon.de).}

It’s not the first book to be translated to gaming. The most famous examples are the aforementioned The Witcher and the excellent Metro series.

But in comparison to those two franchises, The Pillars of the Earth doesn’t sound like it would be a blood-pumping adventure full of swords and shields. It’s a historical novel, not fantasy, so there are no mages or sorcerers to liven up the mostly downbeat and dark mood.

But it’s the moments where the characters cross paths, the battle of wits and scriptures, and the twists and turns as the lead characters sow the wind and reap the whirlwind that make The Pillars of the Earth one of the best narrative games of its generation, and why I want to talk about today.

By God and the Devil – Why The Pillars of the Earth is Great

The Pillars of the Earth is one of those games where everything perfectly comes together to build something remarkable. The artwork, the music, the 40+ hours of performance, and the story, each one is a singular piece that makes the whole that much more enjoyable.

The game is a point-and-click adventure that uses a large canvas as the background, scrolling left and right when the player character moves. The scaling is incredible, with entire cathedrals, estates, and even towns explorable, but still retaining exquisite details.

Due to the ‘static’ backgrounds, the game camera works almost like a film camera, highlighting points it wants to draw attention to but without taking control away from the player. This allows the player to feel like they are naturally discovering each location and the secrets they hold.

One repeated location, the crypt at the bottom of the cathedral, is one of my favourite spots in the entire game just from its atmosphere. The use of light and darkness in this one small room is played with so well that it can evoke fear or fascination, just with a simple change of lighting.

_{The crypt merges from dark and disturbing to a place of comfort and solitude, all through the lighting and camera focus of the stage. (Source: mathlidesound.de)}

Part of the excellent atmosphere comes from the music by Tilo Alpermann. Since the game is primarily about religion, the majority of the music is ecclesiastical, mixing male choirs with strings and woodwind instruments with heavy brass approaching in Book 2 and 3. However, it’s in the less traditional aspects where the music shines.

Tracks like ‘Hell’, which incorporates faint chimes and cymbals into its rolling strings, or ‘Bishop Waleran’s Wrath’ which uses an electric guitar for its main beat and what sounds like reversed strings or brass on the second beat give this strange sense of foreboding, of power beyond the characters we control.

_{The tracks ‘Hell’ and ‘He That Committeth Sin’ blend in one of the darkest and disturbing moments of Book Two. (Source: gamingcypher.com)}

While I love the graphics and the soundtrack, the story is the high-point of the game for me, and anyone wanting to experience a deeply engaging and philosophical narrative from the last generation should seek it out.

Set over three ‘books’, each with seven chapters, the story is expansive and slow-build, moving at an almost glacial pace at the start to set the major conflicts, but also the tone of those chapters.

Even the main menu helps establish the feeling of each book. Book One is dark and cold, with many thinking the Devil walks amongst them. Book Two is lighter, showing the characters and their town starting the rebuild. Book Three is shrouded in dust and debris as chaos reigns down once again. It’s a masterclass in simple yet effective narrative design.

_{The start of Book Three: “Eye of the Storm”, sees death and war come to England, with the landscape in every chapter shrouded in dark fog. (Source: cosmocover.com)}

The game switches perspectives throughout, from Phillip, to Jack, then to Aliena, and back again, each character adding a tiny piece of the narrative puzzle until it all comes together for the final couple of chapters of each book.

You could in fact play each book as a standalone story as they build, climax, and resolve like a standard plot structure, but the fun is watching characters in Chapter Twenty-one reference decisions you made in Chapter Four.

At the end of every chapter you get a itemised list of what you did, what actions you took and who you spoke with. A lot of nouveau point-and-clicks like Detroit: Become Human, Life Is Strange, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead have these similar lists.

With The Pillars of the Earth there isn’t always the reference to something that didn’t happen like other games, it’s solely on what did happen, which I feel make it seem more personal, rather than a somewhat A/B approach to narrative.

The main gameplay loop is through dialogue, with your words and tone carving a pathway through the story. While it does have set story beats throughout, there are small paths of deviation that lead to gigantic turns later on, sometimes even in a different ‘book’, so far removed that you might have even forgot what your previous actions were.

_{Dialogue choices and quick-time-events from the main crux of the gameplay loop, yet from simple premises your choices can destroy families, lead countries to war, and even cause the optional deaths of central characters. (Source: daedlic.com)}

While the story is mainly character-based, a major point that dragged me into wanting to see the next chapter are the themes the narrative plays with. Ideas like religion and devotion, sin and violence, even love and sex are explored deeply in The Pillars of the Earth.

Each book features powerful moments that make the story come alive with meaning and emotion. Scenes where characters find or lose their faith while others see the Divine and the Devil amongst them are seared into my mind due to the way they shake the very foundations of the cast, and how there hasn’t been many games that tried to do something similar.

The game also spans the entire development of a romantic relationship, from shy smiles and holding hands to spending passionate nights together (this game actually has my favourite sex scene in all of gaming), and eventually settling down and starting a family, something that up until recently games haven’t tried to depict with any meaningful, long-term effects.

_{The water mill, where Jack and Aliena’s romance begins to flourish. (Source: steampowered.com)}

It’s a mature story, not with depictions of violence and nudity but with its ideas and implications, and that’s why I absolutely loved every moment.

I hope that this short post has teased your appetite to experience this incredible game. The Pillars of the Earth was an absolute delight and I can’t wait to dive back in again to one of the best games of the last generation.

_{Banner Photo Source: iphonelife.com}

Assassin’s Creed, Evie Frye, and Older Female Characters in Games

October 9, 2021January 9, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged Assassins Creed, Design, Female Character, feminist, Games, gaming, Online, Sexism, Star Wars, Story, strong, Video Games, WritingLeave a comment

I recently finished Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’s Jack The Ripper downloadable add-on. It was a fun little side story featuring some stand out moments and mechanics, but what really sucked me into the story was the change to the playable character, Evie Frye.

Evie and her twin brother Jacob, the two playable characters in Syndicate, are in their mid-to-late twenties during the course of the main story. The Jack the Ripper DLC is set twenty years after the conclusion of the Fryes’ narrative, making the twins both over forty in the game. Jacob is missing from the story, having being kidnapped by Jack, meaning the entire narrative is played from Evie’s point of view.

And that struck me as something quite unique. When was the last time I had played as a female character over forty years old? Heck, when had I ever played as a female character that made a point of them being over thirty?

The gaming landscape is becoming more diverse with each game that comes out. Characters that are male or female (or in some cases neither), black, brown, or white-skinned, and LGBT+ are increasingly common on our screens. The only outlier is age, I can’t remember a playable character with graying hair or a few wrinkles.

Well, apart from male characters.

Some of the biggest characters in gaming are men in their later years, such as Ezio Auditore in Assassin’s Creed and Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell/Rainbow Six (around fifty years old), Max Payne in Max Payne 3 (forty-eight years old), Joel from The Last of Us (late forties), Geralt in The Witcher (late forties), and Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 (who even though is canonically forty-two years old, looks closer to eighty), yet I couldn’t think of a single female character that could fit the same age bracket.

So I went for a look.

More than a Number? – A Search for Older Female Characters

First, some people might take umbrage at my liberal use of the phrase ‘older female characters’. One person’s idea of old might be another’s thought of coming into the best years of their life. I’m going to use the phrase ‘older female characters’ just as a catch-all term, but I’m trying to match male for female characters, like the male characters listed before.

And secondly, this is only for PLAYABLE characters.

The first older female character that came to mind was Iden Verso, the lead character of EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II. Iden is a member of Inferno Squad, the special forces of the Sith Empire, and her story plays out from the end of Return of the Jedi, as she slowly changes sides from the Empire to the Rebels.

Iden’s story comes to close a few months after the destruction of the second Death Star when she is still in her thirties, but the rest of her story continues in a downloadable epilogue, dubbed Resurrection. Here, Iden, now with graying hair, brings herself back into the fight against the First Order. However, these final levels amount to three playable sections out of thirteen overall levels.

_{Iden as she appears in SW: Resurrection. Iden was one of the only older female characters I could remember playing (source: reddit.com).}

Evie and Iden are of the same cloth; the most elite warriors of their day, brought out of retirement to bring the fight to enemies once again (funnily enough they almost mirror each other, being brought away from familial duties by the disappearance/death of a loved one, to do battle against a former friend turned enemy).

And after Iden and Evie, I had to do a deep dive to find some more older female characters, which was much harder to do that I previously thought it would be.

First was Selene, the main character of the recent sci-fi-Souls-like Returnal. Selene is middle-aged in the game, but is just as smart, capable, and agile as any of the thousands of playable white men in her same age category. Without giving much away, Returnal is all about the passage of time, and so an older character with skills and knowledge that a younger person does not possess factors in pretty well.

Another character is the ‘Crime Granny’, Helen Dashwood, from Watch Dogs: Legion. This character, despite being nearly eighty years old, became the stand-out character of the E3 Reveal Trailer, and when she became freely playable in-game, we found she was just as capable as any of the other resistance fighters. However, Helen must come with a caveat; she is an optional character to play as, as all characters in Legion are, and so doesn’t carry the same weight as Evie, Iden, or Selene.

_{Helen fights to free London and isn’t afraid to pull out the big guns to get the job done (source: tweaktown.com).}

Rainbow Six: Siege has twenty-five out of its sixty-one operators identifying as female. Most of these characters are actually in their thirties, with only a few outliers in their late twenties. The oldest is the Peruvian operator Amaru, who is forty-eight, but the oldest male operator is Zero (Sam Fisher under a different codename), who is sixty-three in the game.

One place I didn’t think would have older female characters were fighting games. While all fighting games have at least one old man archetype (usually doing some powerful ancient martial art), I didn’t realise that Chun-Li from Street Fighter is fifty-three in the most recent game. The same goes for Sonya Blade from Mortal Kombat, who in MK11 is now well into her fifties. But while these are both kicakss older characters, would we ever see Chun-Li reach the same age as Gen, one of the older men of Street Fighter, who is believed to be in his seventies?

***

So from everything above you could say there are quite a few older female characters. But all of these characters come with asterisks; most are character selections, or if they are the main character then they are relegated to a downloadable extra or an epilogue. Why is that? Why have older female characters not taken centre stage like older males?

Plausibility is out of the window. Iden and Evie are raised from birth to be fighters. Selene is an accomplished astronaut. Helen is a retired police engineer. All of Rainbow’s operators are hand-picked due to their combat skills. Chun-Li and Sonya have dedicated themselves to perfecting martial arts. Each of these women have learnt the skills to be competent and capable video game protagonists.

Is is just…the ‘M’ word? Possibly. But I would also posit that age factors into that discussion as well, as a younger woman on the cover is an easier sell than an old-age pensioner in the same position.

But then I have to think, are people coming to these games for the female characters, and not say the frenetic multiplayer, or the fact it’s another Souls-like game, or high review scores, or the myriad reasons that people chose to play their games?

Again, possibly. But somewhere there is someone playing the game because there is a woman in the main role. Anecdotal evidence aside…it’s me. I was drawn to Evie Frye for being the first female Assassin in the series, in the same way as I’m drawn to Kassandra and female Eivor. And upon learning that Evie was approaching middle-age in Jack the Ripper, I was hooked.

_{Time has changed Evie, both inside and out, and it was cool to see how she had developed into a different role and personality (source: steamcommunity.com).}

An older character can give us something unique, bringing up questions that have rarely been explored in gaming like ageing and the concept of change. Losing skills that were once easy, a defiance against advanced/unemotional responses in war and peace…or even just to see a character grow and mould over time.

Not to mention, women are going to have different responses and issues to grapple with than their male counterparts, would this not also be something new and interesting for the industry to show?

And even if a game doesn’t tackle personal drama and age is relegated to cosmetics, just making the character look older would be something special.

I want to see Lara Croft raiding tombs in her 50s.

I want to see Chun-Li with graying hair still being able to go toe-to-toe with Ryu.

I want to see Ellie in TLoU3 be older than Joel was in TLoU2.

It’s possible and there is no real reason why it can’t be so.

***

_{Banner Photo Source: steamcommunity.com (User: EndsWithABulletOnline)}

Why Splinter Cell Conviction’s Non-Canon Ending is its Best

January 22, 2020January 9, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged Blacklist, Buy, Canon, Choice, Conviction, Design, Games, Ghost Recon, Mercs, Michael Ironside, Narrative, Online, Pre-Owned, Sam Fisher, Splinter Cell, Spy, Story, Ubisoft, Video Games, Wildlands, Writing2 Comments

I love Splinter Cell and its lead Sam Fisher. I am a Tom Clancy fan and love playing the games bearing his endorsement filled with his pulpy action and ultra-competent badasses.

While Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon have the fun of being a member of an elite squad, Splinter Cell always held more of a draw for me. Perhaps it was because a fan of James Bond, being a lone operative and relying only on your wits and tactics to survive seemed much more thrilling.

While I did enjoy the first four games in the franchise, with Chaos Theory being the best of that set, I am only truly a mega-fan due to the fifth entry, Conviction. This may raise some eyebrows among other SC fans as Conviction is seen as a lesser game for its shift towards action and linearity, but I love Conviction for its story and presentation.

While the narrative is the usual Clancy stuff about secret government conspiracies, industrial espionage, and spy vs. spy standoffs, the story of Conviction is a good deconstruction of the entire series to that point. However, the deconstruction only works if you pick the non-canon ending.

Everybody Walks – How Splinter Cell: Conviction’s Ending Deconstructs the Entire Series

All games have messages. There has been debate recently with games like Modern Warfare (2019) and The Division 2 (another Clancy game), over messages and political leanings in games. Splinter Cell, along with other games in the same stealth genre, are not immune to adding messages and themes in their games.

The Metal Gear Solid series was famously anti-war and dealt with themes of marginalised servicemen and women, the military-industrial complex, and the repercussions of Mutually Assured Destruction.

The earlier Hitman games had subtle hints on the dogmas and doctrines of Catholicism such as original sin, the capacity for God, and absolution (so much that they subtitled the fifth Hitman game Absolution).

Splinter Cell’s overarching theme is family and friendship. From the beginning of the series there has always been a sense of camaraderie, of not just co-workers, but of intimate connections. These can be seen both in the larger frame of the story as well as in individual scenes.

During the first three games Sam has a tendency to crack some jokes and have some light-hearted banter with his handlers over the radio. He argues with Grim over whether lasers or a 90s spy thing or 70s spy thing in Chaos Theory, discusses relationships and religion with Frances in Pandora Tomorrow, or asks a guard he has taken hostage if the coffee machine in the room uses ground or dried beans, again in Chaos Theory.

Michael Ironside Sam — Michael Ironside was the voice of Sam Fisher until *Blacklist*. He sat down with Ubisoft to flesh out Sam’s character, making him more human and less gung-ho. (Source: YouTube.com)

In terms of the story as a whole, friends and connections to Sam appear in every game. His daughter, Sarah, has been a major figure from the start. Her inclusion gives Sam something to focus on outside of work. In the ending cutscene of the first game when Sam laughs at the news covering up all the spy intrigue, Sarah says she hasn’t heard him laugh like that, “…since the Reagan administration!”

Sarah is also the focal point of the Conviction storyline. Sarah is supposedly killed by a drunk driver at the start of the previous game, Double Agent, but it is revealed her death was faked so an enemy agent couldn’t use her as leverage over Sam. Upon hearing his daughter’s voice for the first time in three years, Sam audibly clams up, stuttering over his words. His reunion with her later in the game has no dialogue, just a look between the two before they embrace.

Splinter Cell Sarah — During *Conviction* we see Sam and Sarah before he lost her, strengthening the bond between the two. (Source: splinter cell.wikia.com).

During the events of Pandora Tomorrow, the second game, Sam saves an old army buddy, Douglas Shetland, from a guerrilla camp. In the sequel, Chaos Theory, Shetland is a valuable asset to Sam, helping with logistics and even offering him a job at his mercenary company if Sam wanted to leave the spy work behind. However, Shetland had been using his contacts to fuel a war between the United States, Japan, Korea, and China, and Sam confronts him at the end of the game. Sam and Shetland level their weapons at each other as Shetland starts to monologue about his reasoning. He ends with, “You wouldn’t shoot an old friend…” Sam can either shoot him, or if Shetland goes to shoot, Sam ducks and stabs Shetland with his knife, before pushing him off the roof they were on. Sam replies, “You’re right Doug, I wouldn’t shoot an old friend.”

During Double Agent, Sam has conflicting allegiances between the NSA and the terrorist group John Brown’s Army (JBA). He obviously doesn’t align with the JBA, but does emotionally connect with Enrica, the weapons expert of the JBA. The two become romantically involved and plan to run away together by the end of the game. Enrica is killed by another Splinter Cell just before the finale. Sam murders the Splinter Cell in a fit of rage before fleeing.

Another major event that happens in Double Agent is the death of Irving Lambert, Sam’s boss and friend. Lambert is taken hostage by the JBA, and Sam is forced to either shoot him or blow his cover. It is confirmed in Conviction that Sam did in fact shoot Lambert. When the scene is referenced in Conviction, the narrator, Victor Coste, says, “Lambert died that day by Sam’s hand. And so did Sam.”

Victor Coste is another of Sam’s army buddies and tells the story of Conviction via flashbacks. During the Gulf War Coste saved Sam after enemy forces captured the latter. Upon saving Sam, Coste chuckles, “You don’t leave a brother behind Sam. You don’t leave family.” Another theme present in Conviction is paranoia, with the voice of Sam, Michael Ironside stating in an interview, “Sam doesn’t trust anyone…” (1:31). His former handler, Grim, has seemingly become a turncoat, both helping and hindering Sam. It is seen through flash-forwards that she shoots Sam and captures him for the bad guy, Tom Reed.

Splinter Cell Grim Airfield — When Sam meets Grim face-to-face after she had him captured and tortured, his trust in her has already started to crack. (Source: steamcommunity.com).

Grim holds Sarah hostage and forces Sam back into duty if he wants to see her again. During the climax of the game Grim reveals that it was Lambert who faked Sarah’s death to make sure Sam couldn’t be compromised. She plays Sam a recording Lambert made before he died, explaining his motives and saying how he, “…lied to his [my] best friend.” Grim follows up by saying that she never held Sarah hostage, “That was just a bluff to get you in the game and for whatever it’s worth…I’m sorry.”

And we finally get to the ending of Conviction. After killing all the remaining Splinter Cells and saving the President, Sam has the traitorous head of the NSA, Tom Reed, at gunpoint. There are two options; kill him dead or spare him. Killing him is the canonical ending. Sam has been ‘activated’ again by the events of the game and is back to being a spy. In the final custscene of the game he breaks Coste out of the prison cell that he has been telling his story from (with Coste repeating his line about being ‘brothers’).

In the non-canon ending, Grim shoots Reed. The game ends with the following conversation.

Sam: You didn’t have to do that.

Grim: I disagree.

Sam: There was a time where you wouldn’t have said that.

Grim: Things change Sam.

Sam: Yeah, things change. Remember what you told me Anna, when this was over? Everybody walks. I’m walking.

Grim: You can’t. There is too much left to do.

Sam: Ask Lambert. I’ve done too much already.

Grim: Sam, please. I don’t know who else I can trust.

Sam: Trust? Funny you should say that. Goodbye Grim.

Throughout the entire series of Splinter Cell, Sam has always had his morals. Even when friends have become enemies, such as Shetland, he has always rationalised killing them, seeing them as bad guys.

After all that he has seen over the narrative of Conviction and the revelations of Grim and Lambert, he is an old and broken man. He may have got his daughter back, but he has lost everything else. And when Grim tries to reconcile and make it just like the ‘good old days’ Sam snubs her. It makes total sense that he would walk just like he did after Lambert’s death.

Splinter Cell Grim — Throughout the game Grim is constantly switching sides, leaving Sam never knowing if he can truly trust her. (Source: steamcommunity.com)

While I enjoy the sequel, Blacklist, I feel that the original run of Splinter Cell should have ended here with Sam coming to terms with his former allies and retiring into the sunset. Blacklist could have been a reboot as they changed the entire principal cast, with a new voice for Sam and Grim (as well as not having Sam Fisher, who is pushing fifty-four in Conviction, still be a spy).

By the time of Conviction we see those friends and relationships finally break down and rot, held together by only lies and deceit. It is a beautiful melancholic arc that punctuates the end of not just Michael Ironside’s last performance as Sam Fisher, but the last performances of the original voices of Grim and Lambert, Claudia Besso and Don Jordan respectively.

So while it was good to see Sam back in action both in Blacklist and more recently in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, it is here where Sam’s story came to a fitting end. When Sam leaves the Oval Office, he has nothing but Sarah. After years of field work where he would never get the recognition for his sacrifices, losing friends and lovers, until he can longer trust those he never thought would betray him, he still has a reason to go on.

It is the best ending the man could hope for despite the circumstances and one of my favourite narrative conclusions.

Banner Photo Source: moddb.com

Assassin’s Creed, Jacob Frye, and Bisexuality in Games

April 11, 2019January 9, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged Apex Legends, Assassins Creed, Bisexuality, Design, Games, Gay, Jacob Frye, Juri Han, Lesbian, LGBT, Marvel, Mass Effect, Maxwell Roth, New Normative, Online, Overwatch, Representation, Sex, Sexuality, Shepard, Story, Susana Valdes, Syndicate, Trevor Phillips, Video Games, Writing1 Comment

I recently completed Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and loved the entire experience. While I have enjoyed certain aspects of each Assassin’s Creed since the exquisite original, none of them have really captivated me as a whole.

While I enjoyed the majority of the predecessor, Unity, Syndicate really felt like a step up. The setting of Victorian London was a great location, and the constant liberation missions through the boroughs were on the right side of grinding for me. But the major selling point that got me interested in the game were the dual playable characters, twins Jacob and Evie Frye.

I was excited at playing as Evie due to her being the first playable female Assassin in the main series and loved her no-nonsense attitude and bubbling chemistry with fellow Assassin Henry Green. I at first neglected Jacob for his more charming sister, but became intrigued at reading online that he was confirmed as bisexual. Jeffrey Yohalem, lead writer for the game, confirmed Jacob’s identity on The Assassin’s Den podcast, and the official Assassin’s Creed Tumblr posted,

“Jacob Frye is bisexual. This is canon. The end.”

AC as a series has always tried tackling serious topics in the games. Religion and hypocrisy managed to fuel four games, but the series has also turned an eye towards colonialism, slavery, and the idea of ends justifying the means.

Even Syndicate manages to debate imperialism, with Evie trying to convince Queen Victoria to retreat from India after the end credits. Syndicate also includes the series’ first openly trans character, so if the game wanted to focus on one of its leads sexuality, I was all for it.

Jacob’s sexuality is brought to the fore in Sequence 8, where a vaguely flirtatious relationship is developed with bad guy Maxwell Roth, culminating in Roth kissing Jacob as the former dies. It was a small moment, and Jacob’s reaction can be read in numerous ways.

Despite being an avid gamer, I can only name a few game characters that are bisexual. Compared to the gay and lesbian characters (both open and can be read as) that I could rattle off with ease, it was a struggle. So, in a bid to both better myself and hopefully learn something new, I decided to go for a look.

“Of course, people do go both ways”– (Scarecrow, The Wizard of Oz) – Researching Bisexual Characters in Games

There is one place that bisexuality does come to the front in gaming spheres; role-playing games. The houses of Bethesda and Bioware have an amazing hold on one subsection of games because they cater to gamers who want to explore a different identity or play as someone similar to themselves.

As Keza McDonald says in the documentary How Video Games Changed the World,

“In Mass Effect your character is basically bisexual by default. You can flirt with whoever you want and pursue a relationship with whoever you want…” (1:02:26)

Games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls and Fallout start off players in the middle and then allow them to move in any direction they want.

While there are characters like Steve Cortez in Mass Effect that will only romance you if you are the same gender, most characters can be romanced by both genders. There was even some fan backlash when character Kaidan Alenko, who had been a heterosexual character, became a romantic possibility for a male main character in Mass Effect 3.

However, my issue with RPGs like the ones listed above stems from that openness to player choice. While Mass Effect has been thoroughly mocked for its “input-gifts-output-sex” approach to sex and sexuality, it is entirely player driven, and not part of the default character of Shepard.

Games that use the Marvel properties give a massive boost to LGBT representation. Characters like Mystique, Prodigy, Deadpool and Lightspeed are either bi or pan, and have appeared in everything from Ultimate Alliance to Lego Marvel, games catering to all ages and players. Yet these characters are from another medium, they aren’t solely bi/pan within their games. And that is even if the topic of their sexuality comes up during the experience.

In a similar vein, games of other properties have confirmed bisexual characters like Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Korra in The Legend Of Korra. But again, does it count toward representation if their sexuality doesn’t come into the game? According to the LGBTQ Video Game Archive, the character of Asami from The Legend Of Korra (and girlfriend of the eponymous bisexual heroine) is omitted from the game, taking away a large amount of bi visibility from the franchise.

And what of people from history that would have identified as bi or pan? In AC: Unity, Marquis De Sade is one of main character Arno’s contacts, and embraces his relationships with both genders. While it is only really found in side-missions rather than the main game, it is nice that it is included.

***

Before doing some research into the topic, I could only name two other bisexual characters besides Jacob Frye. Those two were Juri Han from the Street Fighter series and Trevor Phillips from Grand Theft Auto V.

I like Juri, she’s a fun character and her crazy fighting style in Street Fighter IV drew me to her. All of her dialogue in the games points to her attraction to other characters or being sexually aggressive. When she squares off against Chun-Li in the latter’s Rival Fight, Juri ponders whether Chun-Li has “a schoolgirl crush” on her. However, none of Juri’s flirting is confirmed within game, so it could just be Juri’s way of mentally screwing with her opponents.

With Trevor, the game is explicitly up front about his sexual preferences, with his LifeInvader profile stating that, “any hole’s a goal”. When asked by his friend Franklin if he is gay, Trevor responds,

“No. Yeah. Whatever. Labels, bro…”

He seems indifferent to who his partners are, just going along for the ride and propositioning several members of the cast. That makes a debate on whether Trevor is bisexual or pansexual, but he can be easily identified as ‘not straight’.

With Jacob, it is more layered when it comes to his sexuality. I’ll link here to an excellent article on New Normative by Susana Valdes, which goes into more detail than I ever could. Valdes breaks down all the subtext and personality traits of Jacob, highlighting how his sexuality is foreshadowed throughout the game.

Conclusion

There is one genre that I have neglected to talk about in this post; dating sims. A notable one in recent years was Dream Daddy, a dating simulator game where all the characters that can be romanced are fathers, with the player character being gay or bi, cis or transgender.

And sure, dating sims are a great way to have that diversity, it is inherent to the product. But Jacob’s story is one that I wish we could see more of. Something different to the ‘bisexual-as-sadist/psychopath’ trope that has been perpetuated for years in media (highlighted by Trevor and Juri), or not just as someone to bed like in Mass Effect.

There has been a massive boost to diversity with games like Overwatch and Apex Legends, where characters preferences and sexualities are highlighted, but are never more than a bark or backstory, one that we may never see.

I’ve only really scratched the surface in this short post, and there are much smarter and more qualified people to really dig into the stuff I’ve mentioned. But there is a reason I wanted to write about this topic. While I wholeheartedly approve and promote for more representation and inclusivity, I want to add to it. It was an important first step to show LGBT characters, now I would like to see mainstream games tackle issues around it.

Some of the best books (Giovanni’s Room), television shows (The Sopranos Seasons 5-6), and films (Call Me By Your Name) have been about coming out, homophobia (internal and external), and civil rights, why not games? The only game I can think of that has broached these subjects is Persona 4. In that game, punk biker dude Kanji Tatsumi struggles between his outward masculinity and his sexual identity, which he feels are incompatible with each other. His internal battle is something rarely seen in games and it helps develop a compelling character in the process.

It doesn’t have to be for a whole game, but have it as a continual thing in the background, waiting for its chance to come into the limelight, rather than being thrown out for a level or two. I want to move the focus to the main character, where their relationships are part of the main story. Player and avatar don’t always have to be in sync, and I feel that’s where the best stories are found, where the player lives in another’s shoes.

Let us step into those stories, experience a character’s world, and who knows, we may find ourselves identifying with them more than we could have ever known. That can only be a good thing.

The LGBTQ Video Game Archive has been instrumental in the creation of this piece. Check out the website here.

Banner Photo Source: assassinscreedfandom.com

How Animations Help Build Character

January 23, 2019January 9, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged Animation, Assassins Creed, Character, Design, Fluid Animation, Frames Per Second, Games, Lego Batman, Online, Personality, Scarecrow, Story, Timesplitters, Tomb Raider Anniversary, Video Games, WritingLeave a comment

A sense of character is one of the things that I look for when playing a game. I play games mainly for the story and a large part of that is the character. If we can’t get emotionally attached to the protagonist, it can create a disconnect between them and us. I have stopped playing games because I can’t see or connect to the main character’s motivation.

Games are an interesting medium to view characters due to player input. Can a character be labeled a badass secret agent if he has trouble navigating tables? In this feature I wanted to zone in on an aspect that can highlight character traits, that being the animation.

Small animations can help fill a character backstory or tell us something about their personality, usually without an ounce of dialogue. To modify an old saying, “A picture paints a thousands words. And an animation at 60FPS conveys a book.”

The inspiration behind this post was the animation of Doom Guy from 2016’s Doom. His animations are intentional. The way he nonchalantly pushes computer screens with vital intelligence on them aside or smashes scientifically important power sources in direct violation of orders shows so much of his personality, all without ever seeing his reactions (here is a video by critic Jim Sterling highlighting these points).

An example of an accidental animation could be how Ned Luke, the actor who plays Michael De Santa in Grand Theft Auto V, moves during gameplay. Luke is deaf in his right ear and in cutscenes he will move to his right if someone is talking to him. This can be seen as a happy accident as it fills in Michael’s backstory. Being partially deaf could be an indication of him being close to guns for a portion of his life (for example, the entire opening of GTAV). Michael was also meant to be slower than the other playable characters Trevor and Franklin, so Luke put on weight for his motion-capture.

So here are five animations that give us a peek at a character’s personality. These aren’t in any ranking, but just five from my some of my favorite games.

Cortez’s gun spin in Timesplitters: Future Perfect

When a character picked up a gun in the first two Timesplitters games it would simply pop up on screen. That changed in the third entry, where each weapon had an equipping animation.

The animation I want to highlight is in the third game, at the very start of the second level. Main character Sgt. Cortez is sent back in time to 1924 and teams up with WW1 veteran Captain Ash to retake a Scottish island from some vaguely foreign types. After landing on the shores of the island, Ash gives Cortez a Luger and the duo head off.

When control is given back to the player, Cortez equips the gun and spins it like a Wild West gunslinger.

We’ve seen in the previous mission that Cortez is kind of a super soldier; crashing his spaceship in the middle of a battle zone, holding off Splitter charges singlehandedly, and sniping enemies from impossible distances. But throughout the story he shows a goofier side; fan-boying over his future self, dancing with the R110 war robot, and constantly saying his catchphrase, “Time to Split!” which everyone but him thinks is incredibly uncool.

The gun spin is a distillation of these two traits. It shows his “cool factor” off by being able to pull off the move, but also shows his incredible dorky side that he would do it, instead of just lock and load the gun like very other pistol in the game.

(Start at 2:11)

Haytham Moving Through the Audience in Assassin’s Creed 3

We start AC3 playing as Templar Agent Haytham Kenway on a mission in the Theatre Royal in London. He has to assassinate a British Assassin and steal the First Civilization Medallion that said target keeps around his neck.

It is a great opening to the game and gets us invested in the character. Haytham sits down in the auditorium with Templar Master Reginald Birch as they talk about the performance that night. During his dialogue with Birch, as well as with the Assassin Miko, Haytham displays a veneer of civility, a quintessential Britishness.

After receiving his mission to kill Miko, Haytham starts to make his way past the audience in the auditorium row. As he goes, Haytham whispers out apologies, “A thousand pardons…my apologies…”

One audience member decides to stand up to allow Haytham to pass by. WHAM! Haytham roughly pushes the man back down into his seat and continues moving through the audience. It is such a small animation, but the ferocity and power behind the gesture shows there is much more behind the warm front that Haytham puts on when speaking.

(Start at 2:00)

The Scarecrow’s Running Animation in Lego Batman: The Videogame

The great thing about the Lego games in their infancy is they had to communicate plot points entirely through gestures. While I’m not bashing the later games in the series, it was hilarious to see them riff on Indiana Jones and Star Wars in the vein of Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy (especially in Episodes IV-VI, with scenes like this 3:54-4:25).

When creating the first Lego Batman game, the folks over at Travellers Tales created their own plots. These stories made allusions to the films, television shows, and comics, but were mainly their own thing. While they have the building blocks (aha!) of the characters, they need to transpose them to the Lego world. So let’s look at Scarecrow.

The major factor in Scarecrow’s run is his arms. When Batman runs, his arms pump up and down to indicate his strength and stamina. When Poison Ivy runs, her arms sway, demonstrating a delicate side. When Scarecrow runs, he holds his arms out in front of him, as if he were a frightening monster chasing someone.

His shoulders bunch up as he runs and there is a definite swing to his movements. The former is indicative of his desire to reach forward and catch whoever he may be chasing, the latter shows that he having fun and delighted that he is chasing some poor, frightened citizen.

Scarecrow doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in the entire game, yet he manages to portray a multi-faceted personality through his over-acted run.

(Start at 3:34)

Larson Conway in Tomb Raider: Anniversary

Switching up the structure here, as this is an enemy rather than a playable character. Yet the animations portray a very layered individual.

We can tell from the start of TR: Anniversary that heroine Lara Croft and anti-hero Larson Conway know each other. The two are on first name terms and have some flirtatious banter (1:34). This banter is important because it feeds into Larson’s later fight animations.

When the two square up against each other, Larson declares he “…prefers a more hands-on approach.” He leaps at Lara and she fends him off using her fists. As Lara continues to best him, Larson becomes more irate until he finally pulls out his gun. The fight takes place during a quick time event and Larson only draws his gun on the final button press.

During another quick time event involving all of the scheming bad guys, Larson doesn’t shoot at Lara, instead trying to strike her with his gun (18:27).

Designer Toby Gard revealed in the developer commentary that Larson has a soft spot for Lara (56:13). You can see this in the animation. He never tries to kill her, instead going for non-lethal attacks and only pulling out a gun when she does the same to him. When she flees during the aforementioned quick time event, he intentionally pushes away other bad guys and aims his shot wayward (18:42).

They are small tweaks but create a character that isn’t a straight-up bad guy, which gives his death at Lara’s hands later in the game a sense of pathos.

Captain Walker’s Changing Animations in Spec Ops: The Line

I love Spec Ops: The Line partly because it is a great deconstruction of the art form as well as being a fun “tactical” shooter.

I’ve talked about how the visual design of Walker changes through the course of the narrative with his design becoming less and less human with each important moment within the story. But this decline is also featured in the audio clips and the animations.

At the start Walker and his team are professional; knocking people unconscious with either the butt of their rifle or with a swift punch/karate chop. But as Walker’s mind slowly descends into insanity, his animations become more violent.

His rifle strikes become longer and more sadistic. He jumps on fallen enemies and gouges at their eyes with his fingernails. He starts breaking necks with ferocity but also indifference, doing so without a second’s hesitation. And when he has finally snapped, Walker drops all pretence of professionalism and starts executing unarmed soldiers with a gunshot to the head.

The cool thing is that most of these are hidden due to player choice. While the player will have to take on close range enemies it is entirely possible that a player could shoot them and not have to engage in hand-to-hand combat. The developers could have just had one or two repeated animations, but decided to have a variety with the possibility that a player would never see their hard work.

Despite the optional aspect, there is one “mandatory” execution in the twelfth chapter (5:28). This helps show the descent into primitive violence without taking control away from the player. In the sequence, Walker ziplines between buildings and lands on a soldier. While it is possible to shoot him, the “execute” button flashes up. If the player chooses execute then Walker goes crazy, smashing the soldier’s head in with his rifle, much to the shock of his sidekicks Adams and Lugo.

And just like the character design and voice barks, the change in animation is seamless. This slow but steady change makes the game that much richer and expresses Walker’s character excellently.

(Start at 3:13)

Conclusion

There are a series of smaller animations that are also great examples of character backstory. Silent Hill 2 is a great example of a variety of animations. The main character James Sunderland has the habit of looking down when people are talking to him, indicative of a feeling of shame or embarrassment. He also has the habit of touching his head when remembering, as pointed out by the YouTube channel The Gaming Muse; I’ll let them explain the reason behind the animation.

Silent Hill 2’s creature animations are also fascinating. Art Director Masahiro Ito said his, “…basic idea for creating the monsters…was to give them a human aspect…then I proceeded to undermine this human aspect.” (16:24). He based the movements on, “…drunk people or the tentative walk of a young child.” (17:19). This is reflective of the idea of the “Unheimlich”, a Freudian concept of something being both familiar and unknown, and is used constantly in horror games and films to create a sense of unease.

The recent Splinter Cell games also have some small animations that lent to the character. In the fifth entry, Conviction, secret agent Sam Fisher has gone rogue, trying to find his daughter’s killer. His hand-to-hand animations are incredibly violent, using pianos, urinals, and even flag poles to interrogate enemies. Much like Walker in Spec Ops, this shows how far the former spy has fallen, but also shows how far he would go to find out what happened to his family.

Another small set of animations that caught my eye were the idle animations of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Part of the appeal of MUA is creating your own four-person squad of heroes from Marvel Comics. When you choose one from the Heroes Gallery, the hero has a ‘move’. Iron Man powers up his suit, Captain America salutes, Human Torch fixes his hair, Luke Cage cracks his knuckles, Spiderman does the “Spider-Man Crouch”, Deadpool spins his guns like Cortez, it goes on and on. Each tiny move tells us all we need to know to get a general idea on the character without learning their backstory.

Talking about how animations feed into characters is a simple idea and I’m definitely not the first to talk about it. I just find it fascinating that entire characters can be found in the smallest movements. That we can find meaning in a wave of a hand, the twinge of a smile, or the placement of a foot.

Photo Banner Source: dumeegamer.com

Battlefield V’s Campaign: A Follow-Up

January 6, 2019March 20, 2019Posted in ArticlesTagged Battlefield 1, Battlefield V, Campaign, Cutscenes, Design, DICE, EA, Female Soldier, Feminism, Games, Nordlys, Online, Portfolio, SJW, Story, The Last Tiger, Tirailleur, Under No Flag, Video Games, Writing, WWII1 Comment

In my last article I wrote about the opening of Battlefield V. I hadn’t completed the campaign at the time of publishing, just wanting a first snapshot of my feelings. I was a little unimpressed, feeling that BFV had lost the spark that BF1 had due to the latter’s setting and time period.

So with a hint more apprehension I booted up the narrative proper.

And damn, I was hooked. I had missed out on an excellent addition to the opening. So I needed to follow up.

I adore Battlefield V’s campaign and it fixes the small problems I had with Battlefield 1’s (also stellar) campaign. My fears of the War Stories not comparing to BF1 were completely unfounded. The dialogue, performance, and design are of the highest quality (DICE always makes things looks pretty), with each story having a different tone yet all to feeding into one another.

BFV continues where BF1 started (quite literally with the still that opens the game). It features the lesser-known stories filled with misfits and malcontents, the people usually not remembered in sanitised history books. I was particularly looking forward to story featuring the young female resistance fighter in Norway, echoing the story of the female Bedouin fighter from BF1.

bfv nordlys — With throwing knives and hit-and-run tactics (courtesy of a handy set of skis), The Norway section of the game carves its own niche in WW2-set games. (Source: junkee.com)

It was nice that after the bombastic opening that the game settled back into a groove, allowing the player to approach how they wanted. It can be easy to guide the player through a linear story progression and keep up that cinematic edge (I love Remember Me), but having the player tackle each task how they want fits for a series like Battlefield (obviously gearing up for the multiplayer). Compared to the limited open-ended sections in BF1, nearly every story in BFV has a degree of player choice, allowing players to tackle objectives in any order.

While the gameplay is open, the story is a little more guided. The main issue I had with BF1 was the lack of narrative cohesion. Each story was self-contained and focused on a different aspect of the war. While getting to play the levels in any order is great for individual personalisation it means that you can’t effectively have a difficulty curve or sense of progression.

BFV now has that through line yet the story is still free form. You can play the story in any order, but if you play the game chronologically (as they are listed in the menu) starting with “Under No Flag” and ending with “The Last Tiger”, the game builds with each new step adding on from the last one.

“Under No Flag” starts as a stealth mission with an AI buddy and enemy squads far apart. “Nordlys” continues the stealth aspect but with you alone and with enemies in closer proximity to each other. “Tirailleur” puts you as a member of a squad of soldiers pushing through German lines, before “The Last Tiger” casts you against overwhelming odds and fighting alone. Each level builds on the last by putting you in familiar territory yet changing a small aspect each time. This slowly but surely ratchets up the difficulty curve without any immersion-breaking spikes.

Due to “The Last Tiger” not being available at launch a lot of players (including myself) would have played that chapter last. It is a fitting end and not just for having the word “last” in the title (other games such as Timesplitters Future Perfect, Halo 3, and Tomb Raider all follow this model with level names referencing their place within the story).

I had railed against the cinematic introduction to BFV, but “The Last Tiger” pulled the game into morally dark territory (and not just because we’re playing as the Nazis), ending the game on a perfect note. With the surrounding landscape wreathed in flames and the framed Nazi banner on the final bridge burning up, it paints a perfect metaphor for the tank crew and player character Müller’s unravelling allegiance to the Swastika. The darker edge fits better as an ending in general, having the player reminded at the end of the game of the destruction of war.

2002758 — “The Last Tiger” is the high point of not just *BFV* but most campaigns in the franchise. (Source: eurogamer.net)

I also really liked how “The Last Tiger” broke tropes. When the radio in the tank is busted, Müller goes out in search of one. At first I believed we were going to go on an extended on-foot section to find several radios to repair, but it turns out there is a radio right next to the tank. Having a large map to explore would have killed the tension that the final section was building up and it was nice that pacing was chosen over an extended gameplay segment.

After hearing the broadcast on said radio, enemy tanks and soldiers roll in during gameplay. From the POV of the Tiger tank, the following sequence is setup like a stage; there is a slight border (mimicking curtains) and a raised section where the Allies appear. It is a beautiful tableau (in a game full of awe-inspiring vistas) and the fact that it is during gameplay makes it that more memorable.

In the end it almost felt like the opening was a bait-and-switch, aiming for a broader audience by being a bit more “intense” instead of mournful like the opening to BF1. Whether it was deliberate or accidental, I still love this campaign and look on it more fondly than I did when I started.

Photo Banner Source: digitalcentralmedia.co.uk

1500 Words Gushing Over Mafia 3

October 26, 2018January 9, 2023Posted in ArticlesTagged 2K, Alex Hernandez, Cassandra, Design, Father James, Games, Hangar 13, Italian Mob, John Donovan, Lincoln Clay, Mafia, Mafia 2, Mafia 3, New Bordeaux, Online, Sal Marcano, Sequel, Story, Theory, Thomas Burke, tomclement1, Trailer, Video Games, Vito Scaletta, Writing1 Comment

I recently finished Mafia 3 after a good few months playing it. It was one of the first games I got when I upgraded to the newest console generation and I was pretty much playing it non-stop, leaving other newer games by the wayside just to come back to this one again and again.

And after finishing the game I’m certain this will be among my favourite games I will play on this system.

Not since Remember Me has a whole game caught with me rather than just one or two good parts of it. So I thought a little breakdown about the points that hooked me into staying in New Bordeaux for much longer than I would ever imagine…

“We are a cruel and wicked people”– Why I love Mafia 3

The Story and Characters.

The story is the high point of the game. Telling the story of bi-racial orphan and Vietnam veteran Lincoln Clay, the narrative is told in a documentary flashback format. Characters tell their story in interview format, evoking recent films like Precinct Seven Five.

This feeds into the linear game structure, as we are being told a story (much like the previous Mafia games) which helps keep the pace up which can sometimes suffer in a game where you can go anywhere, anytime.

Despite having this linear structure the multiple endings all fit the character depending on the player’s reading of Lincoln.

I was surprised we didn’t start in Vietnam, similar to Mafia 2 starting in WW2 Italy, but that added to the characters, leaving us open to interpret Lincoln actions in Vietnam from his and comrade Donavan’s stories.

The story is beautifully realised with several standout characters. We have the three main bosses, Burke, Cassandra, and Vito, each with their own unique quirks. Vito is especially interesting, it’s fun to see a once playable character from the other side (again), where his simple layers in Mafia 2 (due to being a playable character) become a lot greyer with age and antagonism.

The second-in-commands too are well defined and have some interesting layers to them, making them more than cardboard cut outs that sometimes arrive with games as big as this. Emmanuel, the once refugee-saver reduced to dope peddling, Alma, the businesswoman not afraid to use female charms for her own gain, and Nicki, a woman struggling with her sexuality in a time and place that does not care for it, they all add something to the game, all through optional dialogue (which I am a big fan of ever since I first encountered it in PoP 2008).

But highest praise must go to Alex Hernandez for his portrayal of Lincoln Clay. Convincingly switching from cocky and confident to anger, sadness, joviality and eventually blood-driven when the time comes, he is truly an asset to the game.

Mafia_III_Characters_Artwork — (From L to R) Father James, Sal Marcano, “Cassandra”, Lincoln Clay, Vito Scaletta, Thomas Burke and John Donavan, some of the most layered characters I’ve played alongside. (Source: mafiagame.fandom.com)

The Missions

One of the main criticisms of Mafia 3 is its mission structure. Very much like the first Assassin’s Creed, the game centers itself around taking down members of the Marcano crime family one district at a time.

Once you talk to a contact in the district you have several tasks dealt out to you, but these always follow the same path; kill some people, interrogate a member of the crime family or destroy their shipments. Once done then you can take over the rackets in that area before going after the main controller of the area.

This is just going to be one of those cases where I find enjoyment that others don’t. I think it might be because I really enjoyed the driving and combat (more on the latter next) so I had fun being given new scenarios lasting a few minutes to make my way through.

Hangar 13 said their approach to the missions, at least side missions, was “Lincoln doesn’t go fishing”. Essentially, this means the mission must make sense for the character to do (why does psychopathic murderer Michael De Santa do yoga in GTAV?). This feeds back into the story, again, keeping the pace and flow up rather than bogging the game down.

The Marcano capo missions are fun due to their added story and setting with each one being a completely unique situation; a shootout on a sinking steamboat, sneaking into a swanky whites-only party, breaking up a KKK-inspired cross burning, the list goes on and on (all involving excellent and period-fitting musical accompaniment such as the Rolling Stones, Del Shannon, and Janis Joplin).

2K_MAFIA3_NVIDIA_KILL_LOU_STALKING — With missions in mob-enforced saunas, partially built casinos, supremacist rallies, burlesque houses and drug dens, *Mafia 3* can at least boast of having some memorable places for action sequences. (Source: geforce.com)

While most devolve into shootouts the combat is so fun I never got bored. Speaking of which…

The Combat

I can’t actually remember how long it’s been to have a combat system this satisfying, but it was probably at least back on the PS2 (I’m going to have a wild guess and say 007: Everything Or Nothing).

It’s your standard shooting, melee, and stealth tri-factor, but each one is done so well.

The gunplay feels responsive and sounds meaty, with a vast array of weapons to choose from.

At the start I was on-the-fly, picking up weapons due to limited ammo. Then I specialized in a sawn-off shotgun and sniper for both range advantages, before coming round to silenced pistol and assault weapons for an action/stealth combination. This is a perfect distillation of Hangar 13’s motto, “Every player’s story is unique”, and can be seen in the multiple approaches to combat as well as hidden pathways through the missions.

The animations in combat as well are a nice detail. With lovely smooth transitions from running (where Lincoln holds the gun one handed), to ADS, to the short sidestep after coming out of sights, the little points make the game feel rich and loved by the creators.

While the melee can become stale after the fiftieth whistle-come-stab, it does have moments of intense fun especially with the running takedowns. Only in a handful of games have I audibly “oohhhed” at the brutality I’ve dished out on NPCs (Sleeping Dogs is probably the main one), and Mafia 3’s American Football-style takedowns are poetry in motion.

You can choose between lethal and non-lethal attack as well. Even if the change is hidden in the pause menu rather than switching in gameplay it’s nice that you at least have the option. Especially since most games just give you “kill” as a catch-all for their combat.

2K_MAFIA3_OFFICE_TAKEDOWN_06 — The feeling of combat is one of the better from an open world game, and has several variables and the opportunity to customise. (Source: geforce.com)

The Open World and Travel

The world of New Bordeaux is a lovely city to drive around in. The cars seem more arcade-y than the previous Mafia games (there is an option of a Simulation mode for purists in the option menu). Lincoln’s signature vehicle is a classic, wheel spinning, fire spitting, drifting muscle car, and sliding across three lanes of traffic or 180 hand brake turns are easy to pull off and create that sense of spectacle and wonder we want from games.

As usual in Mafia games the setting is an approximation of a real city (this one being New Orleans), but has enough of its own style to stand out rather than feel like a copy/paste of Google Maps. The South has been the setting before in games, with indie hits like Virginia being in, well…Virginia, Telltale’s The Walking Dead Season 1 in Georgia, GTA: Vice City in Vice City (a version of Miami) and Left 4 Dead 2 in a swathe of southern states.

I would say only the latter two come close to creating a sense of place as good as New Bordeaux with Vice City also having Haitian and Cuban influences (but better at creating a sense of time rather than place) and L4D2 having a wide range of locales like Mafia 3 (but most feeling more like shells rather than a fleshed-out world). Mafia 3 is the first one that actually feels like a living place with countless indoor locations, pedestrians, and drivers.

Talking of the variety of locations, Mafia 3 has a selection to rival most other open world games. With settings such as the bayou, junkyards, quarries, downtown areas, and its own version to the French Quarter, the city has a tremendous scope of backgrounds for Lincoln to dish out punishment on the Italian mob.

And despite having these completely distinct sections the map, New Bordeaux doesn’t feel disjointed when moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, which has happened within other open world titles focusing on rising criminal empires.

With customisable cars and easy inputs to pull of a variety of stunt-worthy moves, the driving is a wholly enjoyable experience. (Source: microsoft.com)

Conclusion

The interesting part about my time with Mafia 3 is I was completely sick of open world games when I started. I was sick of the endless stream of side missions, the “revealing” of the world through climbing towers, the largely meandering story that can sometimes come with having a sandbox as big as it can be.

I had been wanting a more refined experience and Mafia 3 delivered. That’s what sets it apart from its contemporaries; GTA has the bustling modern metropolis filled to the brim, AC has the historical fiction, Fallout has the nuclear dys/utopia, and The Witcher/Skyrim have the magical fantasy. The Mafia series works because it has a focused central story that fires straight as an arrow carving out its niche in the market.

And that niche made me adore Mafia 3. Add in a cracking sense of time and history, as well as vivid locations and brutal, satisfying combat sections, Mafia 3 is a gem in my game library.

Photo Banner Source: wccftech.com