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Contact info:
stephen dot totilo
at mtvnmix dot com |
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me-vs.n'gai: The God of War II" debate (part eight, the finale) --
This entry was posted on 3/29/2007 8:03 PM and is filed under PS2 Surprises,Debating N'Gai Croal,Violent Games,Length of Games,Tearjerkers,Interesting turns of phrase.
Here is N'Gai Croal, closing the show on the mammoth exchange we had about "God of War II"... enjoy!
Stephen,
Last things first. In my February 22nd post which inspired this exchange, I did say that I wanted to savor my "God of War II" experience for as long as possible. Seriously, though, real life just got in the way of "God of War II." I got the flu, I went to the West Coast for Game Developers Conference, then I came back and had to prepare to move offices. In fact, I've been so focused on the blog this week that I'm still not ready to move. Sigh.
That's not to say that I didn't play any games. I got through a couple of levels of "Alien Syndrome" and "Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters". I beat--sorry, Alex; I completed--"flOw." And I've spent a few hours cumulatively with the third installment of my beloved "Virtua Tennis" getting my ass kicked on Very Hard. What all of these have in common is that they are experiences that are easy get into and get out of. Call it Interstitial Gaming, played between chunks of real life, or GameSnacking. The aforementioned games are perfect for this. By contrast, "God of War II," like "Okami," or "Gears of War," or "Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess," is a Main Event, a Feature Presentation, a GameEntree, something I have to make time for. And between the magazine, the blog, side projects and the NYC nightlife, I don't always make time to play this second type of game. Maybe we can discuss this further in a future exchange.
Back to "God of War II" and your defense of cutscenes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you did have some control over the majority of the sequences that you so eloquently described. Like walking down the hallway in "Silent Hill 2," or navigating your way to the bloodstains in "Killer 7," the level of interactivity is minimal, but it's still present. The scene with the Oracle in "God of War," however, is more akin to the dramatic revelation in "Knights of the Old Republic": control is wrenched from the player. My argument, which I'll elaborate upon for the rest of my final post is that even the most minimally interactive sequence is generally preferable to a cutscene. And that if more developers explore pushing as many dramatic and emotional moments as possible out of non-interactive cinematics and into gameplay--even the ones that they think can't be done, but in fact probably can, with a bit of imagination and a lot of hard work--we'll get a lot closer to fulfilling the promise that underlies Electronic Arts' provocative question from the early '80s: Can a Computer Make You Cry?
I agree with you that the Oracle's suicide is powerful. Actually, I take that back. In acting, there's a term called "indicating," where the actor plays the end result ( i.e. what the actor wants the audience to feel) as opposed to playing the character, and letting the audience members feel whatever they choose. That's what the "God of War" team did here. The gave the Oracle just enough screen time to let us know that she's horrified by Kratos, then exit stage right, suicidally. The problem here is that the scene only lasts about 30 to 45 seconds. How much of a truly lasting impression can that have when it's sandwiched between gameplay sections that last about 30 to 45 minutes, with a character that we know nothing about other than that we need to save her? Or, put another way, how much more memorable could her scene have been had the developers made it five or ten minutes long? And, no, I'm not suggesting that they take a page out of Hideo Kojima's book have the Oracle and Kratos engage in a series of philosophical exchanges about violence and justice. There are other ways to do this. (And I'm not knocking Kojima's cutscenes as it's become fashionable to do lately, but that too is a subject for another Vs. Mode.)
How do movies avoid scenes that indicate--that tell as opposed to show--and what can games learn from this? Let's take a sequence from "Terminator II: Judgment Day" that's emotionally comparable to the Oracle's suicide. It's the scene where Sarah Connor has just eluded her captors in the state mental institution. She rounds the corner and presses the button on the elevator that will take her to freedom...when out comes the Terminator, the relentless killing machine who murdered the father of her child seven years earlier, who very nearly slew her, and whom no-one else believes actually exists. Time slows. She falls to the ground screaming, scrambling to get away from her nightmare made flesh and steel, so desperate to escape the Terminator that she ignores the cries of her son and runs back into the arms of the hospital staff. As they prepare to sedate her, the Terminator strides over, takes them down one by one, then extends its hand to the prone and trembling Sarah Connor and says--in a repeat of Kyle Reese's line from the first film--"Come with me if you want to live."
This sequence works as well as it does because the majority of the audience will have seen the first film, and writer-director James Cameron has already carefully re-established the original events during the scene where the police show her photos security camera photos of the Terminator from 1984 and 1991. So with the slowing of time and the Terminator's dramatic exit from the elevator, we're plunged headlong into Sarah's subjective experience. And even though this sequence is ultimately brief, it's given enough time to breathe and sufficient emotional beats that it makes a lasting impact.
Now let's extrapolate from Cameron's technique to re-imagine the oracle scene from the first "God of War." What if rather than having her simply commit suicide after being rescued by Kratos, she instead runs away from us out of sheer terror, either back through parts of the level that we've already played or into completely new section. By using a combination of regular gameplay, shouted exchanges between the two, and button-press interactive cinematics, this sequence could have drawn out the oracle's fear and loathing of Kratos, shifting perspective between our desire to rescue her in order to progress through the game and her desperate attempts to escape from the infamous Ghost of Sparta.
Hitchcock once said that the difference between surprise and suspense is the difference between a movie where a table suddenly explodes in a restaurant and one where the audience sees the bomb steadily ticking under the table with the diners unaware of its presence, leaving viewers wondering if the patrons will live or die as the bomb inexorably counts down. In other words, the difference between surprise and suspense is the amount of time between action and reaction. The Oracle scene as originally played out in the first "God of War" is a surprise: it kills off a character we don't really know and didn't really care about other than as a mission objective; once we've completed the mission and finally meet the Oracle, she's quickly dispatched in the brief cutscene you described.
My (hopefully) more suspenseful version gives the Oracle the time she needs to make a real impression upon us, with the space for several dramatic and emotional beats. And, most importantly, the vast majority of it takes place in the gameplay. I'd still end it with her leaping to her death to escape Kratos, but by using a fuller gametelling sequence to carefully draw out her brief time upon the stage, the end result should be a both richer character and a far more memorable encounter for us gamers. You rightly applaud Jaffe for nicely confounding our expectations with the Oracle's suicide. I'm just challenging he and other developers to go even further than that. So despite your excellent selection of powerful (minimally interactive) cutscenes, I still maintain that story elements and emotional beats that are conveyed through gameplay are far more indelible than those communicated through non-interactive sequences--even if the level of interactivity ( e.g. "God of War II"'s timed button-presses) is lower than is usually the case in a particular game (e.g. God of War II's weapon attacks, magic, jumping, blocking and dodging.)
This, then, may end up being "God of War II"'s most lasting contribution to the action adventure genre: showing other developers how to better take advantage of multiple levels of interactivity, I've said before that we "see" videogames with our hands. Extending that analogy further, the way cutscenes are used today is the film equivalent of title cards during the silent film era: even though the audience came to the movies to watch people move, they had to do a fair bit of reading to get the full measure of the filmmaker's vision. Similarly, cutscenes leave gamers watching when they should be playing. Sure, cutscenes can communicate critical information; they allow for dramatic and spectacular sequences that might be too difficult to pull off interactively; they provide a nice breather or bookend to lengthy gameplay sections. But just as silent film gave way to the talkies, cutscenes need to keep giving way to gameplay so that our eyes--excuse me, our hands--are constantly engaged. It could be as simple as triggering the vibration in the controller during a cinematic as Kojima Productions does, or making the credits playable, as thatgamecompany did with "flOw." It could be more involved, like the active reload system in "Gears of War," which I'm on record as saying is a feature that other developers should beg, borrow or steal. And it could be as extensive as "God of War II," which has a base system of mechanics that make up the bulk of the experience, but periodically swaps in one of several other systems; and where the developers have given themselves a broader palette to choose from. I fervently hope that others follow suit.
It's nearly eight a.m., I'm feeling rather sleep-deprived, I'm running late to meet my personal trainer--and my only thought is that this exchange has been one of the most stimulating pieces of writing and sustained thought that I've been a part of in years. It's been a pleasure sparring with you. Finally, I'd also like to thank the patient readers who stuck with us all the way to the end; I hope you've found it as enlightening to read as we found it exhilarating to write.
Cheers,
N.
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