Is good writing too high of an ambition?
I was listening to Jacob Geller and Blake Hester's Something Rotten podcast, where the two men discuss Max Payne 3 and the two Kane & Lynch games. Geller brought up that he heard Hester share a hot take: that the best video game stories are only, barely, on par with mediocre movies and TV.
My response to this take evolved through three stages;
1) "omg no way! I totally teared up playing Red Dead Redemption and The Last of Us!"
2) "hmm, yeah. You're write. Games suck at writing. It's a special skill that game developers aren't necessarily equipped for. To paraphrase the oft-quoted John Carmack, story in games is like story in porn. Most games are not developed from a script first, but with a series of system and mechanic documents in place first with the story and writing poured on after like a cheap, cold tin of tomato sauce over a hot plate of pasta (at best, maybe it's more like a little garnish)."
3) "you know what, who cares? Most movies and TV have mediocre writing. Green Book won for best Original Screenplay at the 2019 Oscars. The Avengers movies made like a billion dollars. Writing isn't easy for anyone, no matter the medium. Not to mention, film, to me, is like a sensory artform. Story is cool but movies aren't literature. And even literature can appeal on prose over narrative and "character development". But cinema to me is all light and montage. My favourite movie is Michael Mann's Miami Vice, and I can't explain why because I've never really been able to properly articulate the feeling that movie's digital grain gives me. It is quite literally "the vibe". The work of filmmakers like Paul WS Anderson, Edward Yang and Pedro Costa excite me, too, purely on a compositional level. Late era Tony Scott's avant garde editing style isn't something I am equipped to talk about, all I know is when I see it I go gaga. Similarly, the collaborative work of Martin Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker just tickles a part of my brain - and I could spend 1000 years still fail to explain why and how the rhythms of their cuts dazzle me.
Anyway, my point is, I don't come to film for writing, so why should I come to games for it? I ask myself this because good game writing is still, probably, what I consider the biggest hook. Or I consider character writing, specifically, a big hook. I need someone and something to care about to pull me through to a game's conclusion... at least most of the time. I certainly don't come to games for gameplay. I mean, I do, but not really. I don't really come to games for complex gameplay, at least. I don't play games to master systems. I do return to shooters and sword-swinging adventures a lot but that's partly because, with brawlers aside, that's 2/3s of combat in combat-centric games.
What I am beginning to think, however, is maybe I come to games for the vibes; for the same visual sensory appeal I get from movies. I come to games for - oh wow, I don't want to say it... - the digital spaces. The way games create architecture and worlds and allow you the freedom to explore rich, detailed spaces is so exciting. I don't want to live in these worlds, but I want to occupy them the same way I want to occupy the Baltimore depicted in The Wire or the west from Blood Meridian. I love reading because I love when my imagination works, filling in all the visual details around the worlds. When I read Raymond Chandler and I picture 30s/40s California; when I read The Wheel of Time and picture the endless Aiel Waste (wow, I read so little, these aren't great references lol). I love how games can even better render those details, and then let you literally, physically explore them. In a way, games are living dreams.
I've lost track of a coherent thesis here.
To swing it to Judgment. I don't know that Judgment is well written. It hinges on a lot of cliches and rote twists. The dialogue isn't particularly remarkable. Characters are complex only in the sense that they're all morally grey, and the ones who aren't are just good people. Its whole deal can be summed up as "isn't the truth really cool?" But, man, as a vibe, I dug it a lot. I loved noir twinges. The smoky, cramped, humid detective office. The stale, sterile courtrooms and hospital hallways. The busy, glittery Kamurocho streets. I love the soap opera plot. I like a good mystery, and there aren't many (non-visual novel) games wholly dedicated to unravelling a mystery. At the end of the day, it is less Raymond Chandler and more daytime court TV, but I was pretty damned hooked.
A lot of what Judgment exemplifies best is what I do consider game writing though. And it's not the execution I appreciate but the set up. I love when game presents the player with a fully fleshed out, lived-in universe, especially when that universe has a footing in the real world, depicting real people/cultures. A love when a game presents you with a character who has their own thoughts and feelings and history that exists beyond the player. Judgment is maybe the best example of what I think of when I hear the term "immersive sim". Not just because the game is maybe the best execution of one of the immersive sim genre's grandfathers, Warren Spector's idea for the "one perfect block" concept. Judgment isn't exactly a living sim. And it's not an open world game per se, so it doesn't really even matter. sure, you can't interact with everyone and everything. But you walk the streets of Kamurocho and you get a real sense of place and atmosphere and life that exists independent of your actions. You can walk into enough interiors, and around plenty of pedestrians to feel like you're in a real city. It's small enough, too, to memorise after 10-ish hours of playtime.
I think in contrast, too much of the actual immersive sim genre is dedicated to bringing to life unreal places to life, not reality and of its sober doldrums. It's a genre dedicated to placing very specific characters on dedicated paths purely to serve as obstacles for the player. Every nook and cranny is explorable but only because it wants you to collect things, not take in and truly occupy those spaces. It presents you with alternate paths with both violent and stealthy, pacifist routes ahead because it wants you to feel catered to, because it values choice, even though it cannot admit choice in video games is always a carefully, constructed lie/illusion. It's a genre with its head in the clouds, and you hoisted up on its shoulders in effort to make you feel important.
I don't know how I got here but I think a really "immersive" games is one that places you in a real location, with real history, and most importantly in the shoes of a real, pre-spec'd character - one, who again, let's say has their own character sheet and could - at least, and most certainly - in the game world exist independently of the player. I think of games like Disco Elysium, the little bit of The Witcher 2 I played hours before Judgment, Red Dead Redemption II (and Red Dead Redemption). For me, when I want to roleplay, I want to be somebody else, and not in the Ready Player One/Comic-Con cosplay way where I am me but with wackier hair and nicer clothes, or one where I am, like, Godzilla. I want to be a whole person. To me, that's immersion - when a game can successfully transfer that feeling over to you and make you feel like another person for 10/20/40+ hours. Judgment does that, in my opinion. Takayuki Yagami isn't some amazingly written individual, but the game goes to lengths to give him a history and a personality and reasons to care about the people around him. I don't care that it's not as good as The Sopranos but it's as good as a show like Justified or Bosch - neither of which I think of as mediocre (actually two of my all-time fave shows) - and I think that's a safe, reasonable ambition most character-action AAA games can aim for. The best games can be as well-written as Bosch... if they want to be. Not that they really have to be.
Maybe I am overrating this but the experience reminded me a lot of what I got out of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Metro Exodus. That's starting to become the baseline for what I consider a good, modern game, I suppose.
I was listening to Jacob Geller and Blake Hester's Something Rotten podcast, where the two men discuss Max Payne 3 and the two Kane & Lynch games. Geller brought up that he heard Hester share a hot take: that the best video game stories are only, barely, on par with mediocre movies and TV.
My response to this take evolved through three stages;
1) "omg no way! I totally teared up playing Red Dead Redemption and The Last of Us!"
2) "hmm, yeah. You're write. Games suck at writing. It's a special skill that game developers aren't necessarily equipped for. To paraphrase the oft-quoted John Carmack, story in games is like story in porn. Most games are not developed from a script first, but with a series of system and mechanic documents in place first with the story and writing poured on after like a cheap, cold tin of tomato sauce over a hot plate of pasta (at best, maybe it's more like a little garnish)."
3) "you know what, who cares? Most movies and TV have mediocre writing. Green Book won for best Original Screenplay at the 2019 Oscars. The Avengers movies made like a billion dollars. Writing isn't easy for anyone, no matter the medium. Not to mention, film, to me, is like a sensory artform. Story is cool but movies aren't literature. And even literature can appeal on prose over narrative and "character development". But cinema to me is all light and montage. My favourite movie is Michael Mann's Miami Vice, and I can't explain why because I've never really been able to properly articulate the feeling that movie's digital grain gives me. It is quite literally "the vibe". The work of filmmakers like Paul WS Anderson, Edward Yang and Pedro Costa excite me, too, purely on a compositional level. Late era Tony Scott's avant garde editing style isn't something I am equipped to talk about, all I know is when I see it I go gaga. Similarly, the collaborative work of Martin Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker just tickles a part of my brain - and I could spend 1000 years still fail to explain why and how the rhythms of their cuts dazzle me.
Anyway, my point is, I don't come to film for writing, so why should I come to games for it? I ask myself this because good game writing is still, probably, what I consider the biggest hook. Or I consider character writing, specifically, a big hook. I need someone and something to care about to pull me through to a game's conclusion... at least most of the time. I certainly don't come to games for gameplay. I mean, I do, but not really. I don't really come to games for complex gameplay, at least. I don't play games to master systems. I do return to shooters and sword-swinging adventures a lot but that's partly because, with brawlers aside, that's 2/3s of combat in combat-centric games.
What I am beginning to think, however, is maybe I come to games for the vibes; for the same visual sensory appeal I get from movies. I come to games for - oh wow, I don't want to say it... - the digital spaces. The way games create architecture and worlds and allow you the freedom to explore rich, detailed spaces is so exciting. I don't want to live in these worlds, but I want to occupy them the same way I want to occupy the Baltimore depicted in The Wire or the west from Blood Meridian. I love reading because I love when my imagination works, filling in all the visual details around the worlds. When I read Raymond Chandler and I picture 30s/40s California; when I read The Wheel of Time and picture the endless Aiel Waste (wow, I read so little, these aren't great references lol). I love how games can even better render those details, and then let you literally, physically explore them. In a way, games are living dreams.
I've lost track of a coherent thesis here.
To swing it to Judgment. I don't know that Judgment is well written. It hinges on a lot of cliches and rote twists. The dialogue isn't particularly remarkable. Characters are complex only in the sense that they're all morally grey, and the ones who aren't are just good people. Its whole deal can be summed up as "isn't the truth really cool?" But, man, as a vibe, I dug it a lot. I loved noir twinges. The smoky, cramped, humid detective office. The stale, sterile courtrooms and hospital hallways. The busy, glittery Kamurocho streets. I love the soap opera plot. I like a good mystery, and there aren't many (non-visual novel) games wholly dedicated to unravelling a mystery. At the end of the day, it is less Raymond Chandler and more daytime court TV, but I was pretty damned hooked.
A lot of what Judgment exemplifies best is what I do consider game writing though. And it's not the execution I appreciate but the set up. I love when game presents the player with a fully fleshed out, lived-in universe, especially when that universe has a footing in the real world, depicting real people/cultures. A love when a game presents you with a character who has their own thoughts and feelings and history that exists beyond the player. Judgment is maybe the best example of what I think of when I hear the term "immersive sim". Not just because the game is maybe the best execution of one of the immersive sim genre's grandfathers, Warren Spector's idea for the "one perfect block" concept. Judgment isn't exactly a living sim. And it's not an open world game per se, so it doesn't really even matter. sure, you can't interact with everyone and everything. But you walk the streets of Kamurocho and you get a real sense of place and atmosphere and life that exists independent of your actions. You can walk into enough interiors, and around plenty of pedestrians to feel like you're in a real city. It's small enough, too, to memorise after 10-ish hours of playtime.
I think in contrast, too much of the actual immersive sim genre is dedicated to bringing to life unreal places to life, not reality and of its sober doldrums. It's a genre dedicated to placing very specific characters on dedicated paths purely to serve as obstacles for the player. Every nook and cranny is explorable but only because it wants you to collect things, not take in and truly occupy those spaces. It presents you with alternate paths with both violent and stealthy, pacifist routes ahead because it wants you to feel catered to, because it values choice, even though it cannot admit choice in video games is always a carefully, constructed lie/illusion. It's a genre with its head in the clouds, and you hoisted up on its shoulders in effort to make you feel important.
I don't know how I got here but I think a really "immersive" games is one that places you in a real location, with real history, and most importantly in the shoes of a real, pre-spec'd character - one, who again, let's say has their own character sheet and could - at least, and most certainly - in the game world exist independently of the player. I think of games like Disco Elysium, the little bit of The Witcher 2 I played hours before Judgment, Red Dead Redemption II (and Red Dead Redemption). For me, when I want to roleplay, I want to be somebody else, and not in the Ready Player One/Comic-Con cosplay way where I am me but with wackier hair and nicer clothes, or one where I am, like, Godzilla. I want to be a whole person. To me, that's immersion - when a game can successfully transfer that feeling over to you and make you feel like another person for 10/20/40+ hours. Judgment does that, in my opinion. Takayuki Yagami isn't some amazingly written individual, but the game goes to lengths to give him a history and a personality and reasons to care about the people around him. I don't care that it's not as good as The Sopranos but it's as good as a show like Justified or Bosch - neither of which I think of as mediocre (actually two of my all-time fave shows) - and I think that's a safe, reasonable ambition most character-action AAA games can aim for. The best games can be as well-written as Bosch... if they want to be. Not that they really have to be.
Maybe I am overrating this but the experience reminded me a lot of what I got out of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Metro Exodus. That's starting to become the baseline for what I consider a good, modern game, I suppose.