The Age of the Dragons, part II: The Tragedie of Kirkwalle

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

In my 9th grade English class, we read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.  Nearly every public school freshman class in the United States does this, still, and has done for decades.  It's an educational rite of passage: turn 14, read about two horny Elizabethan teenagers and how they died.

At the time, I hated reading Romeo and Juliet.  I resented everything about it and only began to change my mind when Shakespeare in Love was released a few years later.  With the full force of ironic detachment that only a teenager can muster, I knew that it was "stupid."

But my English teacher was a wise woman.*  I remember very little of the details of her class, half a lifetime later, but I remember her teaching the prologue.  The tension, she explained, came from knowing that the story would end badly.  The core of the tragedy was in the audience understanding as the play unfolded that disaster could be averted, but having foreknowledge that it wouldn't be.  The story, from the outset, was a tale of doom, and in that knowledge lay its art and its power.

Romeo and Juliet and I eventually came to a truce, and while it's still not among my favorites, I respect it for what it is.  But in 10th grade English, a scant few months later, I took to Macbeth immediately and have remained a fan of the art of the Tragedy ever since.

"Maybe it's not as simple as you imagine..."

The typical model of a video game -- and particularly, a BioWare video game -- is to collect your allies, fight your enemies, and save the world.  These stories might have nuance in the details, but ultimately their shape is unambiguous and Romantic.  They're all variations on the hero's journey, and the player character is front and center to the story.  He or she is the lynchpin of all that happens in the game world, and his or her actions and skills can guarantee a positive outcome for The Good Guys.

Players went in to Dragon Age 2 expecting the arc of Star Wars and instead got handed something out of Sophocles.  Saving the world, after all, is par for the course.  No wonder so many were disappointed with what they got. 

"I'm not interested in stories.  I came to hear the truth."

"What makes you think I know the truth?"

"Don't lie to me!  You knew her even before she became the Champion!"

"Even if I did, I don't know where she is now."

"Do you have any idea what's at stake here?"

"Let me guess: your precious Chantry's fallen to pieces and put the entire world on the brink of war.  And you need the one person who could help you put it back together."

"The Champion was at the heart of it when it all began.  If you can't point me to her, tell me everything you know."

"You aren't worried I'll just make it up as I go?"

"Not. At. All."

"Then you'll need to hear the whole story..."

 

The events in Kirkwall leading up to the beginning of the Mage-Templar war centered around Carias Hawke.  She was quick with her wit and quicker with her daggers.  She was ruddier than her dark-haired sister Bethany, but anyone could tell they were sisters at a glance.  She tried to help apostate mages like her sister as best she could.  With all of her family lost to her, over time, she found unexpected comfort and love in the arms of a fugitive warrior elf from the Tevinter Imperium.  Although she knew him for seven years, she never did really understand what drove Anders -- once a close friend -- to recklessness, madness, and disaster.  Despite being deeply betrayed, she could not make herself betray in turn and so she chose to let Anders live, sending him away with the unspoken promise of a knife between the ribs if he should ever dare to show his face again.

The events in Kirkwall leading up to the beginning of the Mage-Templar war centered around Owen Hawke.  He was even-tempered, if prone to sarcasm, and though he was always willing to use his magical talents he, like his late sister, spent a lifetime carefully (if ultimately unsuccessfully) avoiding Templar attention.  In looks, he favored his brother Carver.  With all of his family lost to him, over time, he found his way into a torrid, passionate relationship with a fellow apostate and runaway Grey Warden.  He always knew what danger lurked within Anders but felt that maybe, if he didn't poke at it, they could avoid recklessness, madness, and disaster.  Despite a zealous, selfish, and destructive betrayal, he wouldn't turn on the man he loved.  With no small measure of worry, he chose -- for a while -- to accept his lover's apparently sincere desire to remain in his life, and after the fight at the Gallows they disappeared into the wilds together.

The modern BioWare RPGs are, in a critical way, always about your story.  The initial approach to one is the story the player has chosen to tell, for whatever reason: moral self-insertion; a pre-written, pre-determined RP approach to a character; the fine art of just picking things in the moment because you don't give a damn.  It's an individual story, and the first playthrough becomes the story that the player tells about the events of the game.  (This is true of both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, to date.)

The first story is my story.  Carias (which sounds better than it's spelled) Hawke is my canon Hawke, and when Dragon Age 3 inevitably rolls around the events of her life are the tale I will import and carry forward.  Hers is the story I have chosen to tell, and the game supported and encouraged my telling it.

The second story feels closer to being the story.  Owen, through his outsider status as a mage and his relationship with Anders, uncovered huge swaths of motivation, narrative, and foreshadowing to which Carias was not privy.  His was the second story I chose to tell, and the game not only supported and encouraged my telling it, but embraced it.

The key to reconciling these two different stories -- full arrays of different choices -- against each other and the fixed nature of the plot is through the mechanic of after-the-fact narration.  It's interesting, seeing where the "Eye of God" viewpoint falls in Dragon Age 2.  The story the player chooses to tell always meets some of the same goalposts, and while Varric's narration of events has a few tweaks, it's fundamentally immutable.

Indeed, for all that the player controls Hawke, in a meaningful sense the player is better represented by Varric.  His presence as narrator -- and a potentially unreliable one, as far as both Cassandra and the player are concerned -- echoes and underlines the entire concept of the player making choices in what is ultimately a forced linear tragic narrative.  "Here's how it really happened," the player says, and no one can particularly gainsay it because the ultimate sequence of events is still the same: Hawke came to Kirkwall in 9:30, in some way knew these 7 or 8 individuals, and in 9:37 was present when Anders destroyed the Chantry.  Cassandra may stop Varric in moments of true absurdity but otherwise, she believes the story he has to tell about Hawke, no matter how it unfolds.

A brief diversion: one theory of visual arts (in particular, film) holds that the viewer's participation is a necessary part of creating meaning, including narrative meaning.  The director and team who assemble a movie can give visual and aural depictions to their hearts' content, but true meaning comes from the viewer's foreknowledge and ability to make connections.  For example, a shot in which the camera pans through a poor, downtrodden city neighborhood relies on the viewer's knowledge of urban poverty, or at least common cultural symbols of urban poverty, in order to work.  Viewers with different backgrounds will create sightly different interpretations of such a shot and the film of which it is a part.

In the game, the player's participation in creation of meaning is more concrete, but in the same vein.  Essentially, we at the keyboard or holding the controller are standing in the wings, feeding Varric his lines for Cassandra.  The narrative on-screen is fixed: Hawke will always find the Thaig in the Deep Roads, Quentin will always kill Leandra, and Anders will always explode the Chantry.  But much of the why is up to the player's interpretation and manipulation of the text.

"A last toast, then: to the fallen."

The stories of both Carias and Owen Hawke are arguably tragedies, in the classic sense.  Only one of them gives all of the necessary markers along the way such that the player can see the shape of the story, understand its tragic nature, spot the oncoming disaster before it comes, and realize that Hawke in fact is not the center of the bigger tale.

The game more or less works no matter how one chooses to assemble its pieces.  Any combination of friendship and rivalry, any combination of party members taken adventuring, and any Hawke class or set of skills -- all will add up to a total story.  The player takes control of this Fereldan refugee and fills in the blanks however s/he likes, and it flows.

But rather than punishing the player for not making the "right" choices, Dragon Age 2 uses something of a carrot rather than a stick approach to authorial intent.   The game rewards certain choices by adding layers of character background and motivation to certain stories and certain party combinations.  My Hawke never knew that eventually, Fenris and Isabela could start a relationship -- and my other Hawke only found out by chance.  My Hawke missed out on some of Anders's political passion, but my other Hawke found his lover's manifestos lying all over the house during the years they lived together in Hightown.  My Hawke relied on Fenris to help her negotiate tricky moments with the Qunari; my other Hawke convinced Isabela to give the tome back.

I didn't feel shortchanged, at all, the first time I played through the game.  (Or the second, which immediately echoed the first, with nearly identical choices but with a better understanding of how it all worked and eye to foreshadowing.  Owen's game was number three.)  I never regretted the decision to roll a female character, to play a class other than mage, or to avoid the Anders romance.  I like that story, and that Hawke, and stand by the impulse to make it "my" canon.  But that "other" Hawke -- the mage who had to deal with Carver, who lost Bethany, who chose Anders -- seemed to get the full story, in the shape of so much dialogue I might never have known was in the game.  And while the game never forces a single direction on the player's character, when playing the "real" canon story, the "right" story, there's a feeling to be had that one has fallen very smoothly into the story that the game wants to tell.**

"There's power in stories, though. That's all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine."

The fun part is, no player would ever be able to discover the difference -- to hear all of the details of the story -- without playing through the game at least twice.  Usually when we say a game has "replay value," we aren't talking about the strictly scripted, generally linear, straight-narrative games.  After all: their skills are easy to master and we know how their stories go.  Why revisit?

To me, the reasons to revisit Dragon Age 2 (beyond the same "old friend" reasons I revisit favorite books and movies) seem obvious: because this time, your concept of context is well enough honed to hear the prologue.  Varric's words can no longer slide through your consciousness and back out: when he describes the state of the Chantry and the Circles, when he intimates doom for Hawke's sibling on the Deep Roads, when he convinces Cassandra "if Hawke had only known..."  In all of these moments, Varric, our narrator, is helping us create the tragic arc.

Foreshadowing, after all, is a particular kind of thrilling agony when the player (viewer, reader) does, in fact, know what's going to happen as the story unfolds.***  And sometimes, it's the core of the entire thing.  And so we find ourselves winding back to Shakespeare and to Aristotle, back to stories that advertise up-front that there is no winning solution to be had.

"I removed the chance of compromise, because there is no compromise."

The true story of Dragon Age 2, especially when thought of as the middle chapter of a story that began with Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening, is the tragedy of Anders and the Chantry.  Hawke is a lens for understanding the story, rather than an end unto him- or herself.  Such a construction directly contradicts nearly everything players have been led to expect from 20-30 years' worth of tradition and history in the western RPG.

Subverting expectations and deliberately playing with tropes is tricky, and Dragon Age 2 paid a price for its efforts.  Close to a year after its initial release, player and critic opinions still stare each other down from across a mile wide, love-it-or-hate-it canyon.

In the end, perhaps it doesn't matter.  Dragon Age 2 was exactly the right game, but it seems to have landed in the wrong franchise, or at the wrong time, or with the wrong marketing.  BioWare's official position as they unofficially talk about Dragon Age 3 seems to be that they're willing to be carried at least in part by the tide shouting that this tragedy was a misstep.  The internet clamors for the combat-focused, exploration-driven, skill-and-inventory driven classic party-based RPG that Dragon Age: Origins was heir to.   DA2 instead brought a city full of companions to life and mainly gave the player's avatar a reason to be a witness to the inevitable bubbling over of violence that began the Mage-Templar War.

That war could yet destroy Thedas, and so whatever avatar takes center stage in the final installment of the trilogy will, I'm sure, be out to save the world.  No doubt he or she will briefly meet survivors of both the Fifth Blight and the Battle of Kirkwall.  And I suspect that he or she will find Thedas to be salvageable, and so help create a brave new world.

And stepping forth upon a new and mysterious shore, with all the problems of the world untangled?  That one's for the Comedies.

***

For further reading on the telling of tragedies in video games: Line Hollis, Four Types of Videogame Tragedy.  And for excellent further reading on Hawke and the Heroine's Journey, see here, on Flutiebear's tumblr.

* Mrs. Lucy Myers, of Belmont High School. To whom I owe rather a lot, not least of which is thanks for putting up with 14-year-old me.

**The Mass Effect franchise does this even more strongly than the Dragon Age franchise does.  Although Shepard can make a limited variety of choices along the way, particularly in the area of romance, certain decisions (Liara) have less friction against the rest of the text in ME / ME2 than others do.

***Leandra's cheerful, happy talk early in Act II of finding a suitor is pretty much yell-at-the-computer heartbreaking on a second go.

On Choosing a Role

[This is all straight-up personal blathering about me playing Dragon Age games, talking it through to myself in more than 140 characters.]

One of the things I'm really noticing this week, while adventuring (and occasionally struggling) through Dragon Age: Origins, is to just what a high degree subconscious and indirect cues affect my perception of a game.

The first time I tried DA:O, I played a female city elf.  That's a character who has it pretty bad, all things considered: the city elves are a thoroughly disenfranchised, oppressed, despised people who live in a literal ghetto.  The origin story basically involves attempting to rescue a cousin from rape and on the way out giving a whole bunch of oppressors a sword to the face because they're there, among other things.

On that first run of the game, I made it to the battle of Ostagar, then got turned around twice somehow trying to get to the tower and light the beacon -- so really, not very far at all.  The entirety of my opinion on the game was based on the origin chapter, and my take was that Ferelden was a perilously grim and serious world, and that the Warden was a cynical, jaded, sarcastic person.  The Warden, in that game, stood in the gutter under the totem pole of society's hierarchy and had nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

I didn't feel like exploring the city elf story again this time, because I already had, and woodland elves never really were my sort of thing.  Neither are magic users, and I didn't feel like being a dwarf, so I rolled a human.  The only origin for non-mage humans, though, is Human Noble.  I also had some indecision, some mouse jitter, and a rather large glass of wine while I was customizing my would-be Warden in the character creator, and as a result some of her physical attributes are not what I ordinarily would have chosen.  Basically,  her eyes are enormous.

The end result is a character I did not expect: I now have a Disney-eyed deposed heir to a minor throne, who grew up in a full life of privilege and plenty, comfort and love.  This Warden, while still "me" in a sense as all my characters are, is a me of decades long gone.  She's the me I would have thought at 14 that I'd want to be -- young and idealistic, but trying oh so very hard to do the right thing in the world.

As a result of the character's backstory and appearance, I've realized I'm actually playing a much shallower game than my first pass.  This Warden is straight out of a fairy tale, and she knows it -- and she believes the world actually works that way.  I the player actually found myself squirming in mild embarassment in my chair last night (thank goodness the spouse was too immersed in multiplayer assassinating to notice) when I realized how very juvenile I felt my approach to the whole game becoming.

So juvenile.  Because I had every intention of deliberately avoiding the Alistair romance.  I know in advance, thanks to years of spoilers floating around, what the Warden's options are going to be, to stamp out the Blight.  I had a feel for what would be the right thing to do, in this game, and when I played the sequel first I told it that's what had happened.  Maybe the Warden and Zevran could have one really good before-the-world-ends romp, just for fun.

But then this Warden happened.  And something possessed me and honest to god now I'm playing fanfiction or something, I don't even know, but all those dialogue options came up at the bottom of the screen and my hand picked "hey let's go make out and be in love like teenagers" and now my brain is getting drunk in the corner out of disgust while Alistair and the Warden make puppy eyes at each other.  And they're such dorks, and I'm such a softie, that now I know I don't have it in me to make the "right" choice anymore, and Wynne was right to give her lecture, and I was all, "No, mom, I know what I'm doing" and *headdesk*.

I barged into Ferelden and felt like The Doctor: just this once, everybody lives!

I think some of it's a reaction to external factors.  I've been thinking about Mass Effect 3 and discussing it with a lot of other gamers lately, and I expect that game to be nothing but a wall of impossible choices, destruction, really upsetting character deaths, and sacrifices for the good of the many.  (In fact, the game cannot be nearly as tragic and joyless as I imagine it will be, because no-one would play it.  Still: grim.)  Somehow I'm not only choosing to spend March immersed in that drama, I'm also looking forward to it.  So some part of my spirit is rebelling.  Like a little child, I'm throwing a massive tantrum and declaring that this time, the hero gets the prince and that everyone lives happily ever after.  (Except the bad people.  Naturally.)

The end result, though, is that I'm playing a totally different game than I thought I was -- and a totally different game than the one I thought I'd use to set up Dragon Age 2.  DA2, to me, is more like the way the me-of-today perceives the world.  Hawke is a person who has been through some traumatizing events, surrounded by some likewise damaged people.  She and her friends have all come to each other as a family of choice, after losing their blood families, and they make their way through life in this big strange city together, knowing the others are out there.  They have each other's backs, even the crabby ones. 

That's the game I played.

The Warden has a different cast around her.  They're loyal to her, more or less, or at least becoming that way, but their backgrounds are not like hers.  Every one of them, except maybe Leliana, is in some way an outcast from mainstream society: Sten the qunari, Alistair the bastard, Wynne the circle mage, Morrigan the apostate, Shale the golem, Zevran the elf fleeing his failure...

But this Warden is of a noble house.  True, her family died around her due to backstabbing, disloyalty, greed, and politics -- but the lives of the nobility were always thus.  Her personal tragedy is still the mainstream story of her society.  In short, she has buckets of privilege.  And although she may be camping in the woods with a gang of misfits for now, the arc of her story has her heading back to power and privilege later.

That's the game I seem to be playing.


The reason I think it's worth playing is because when my husband sat down and spent dozens of hours on Dragon Age: Origins, he saw the story of a young man: a circle mage who had to bear the gift and curse of magical talent and who met a pretty red-haired Orlesian bard he couldn't resist.  Another friend sat down with the game and found the story of a dwarf, who had to manage culture and politics and found the Wardens as an unexpected refuge.  And then of course there's the city elf whose story I didn't finish: she would have been constantly in an uphill fight, with her gender and her race aligned against her, until earning enough respect to lead the fight against the darkspawn in the end.

So very many different games...

There are still a lot of things I don't like about Dragon Age: Origins in the realm of its mechanics and design.  And I think as an experience, I actually still like Dragon Age 2 better.  Its characters feel more real, its city feels more navigable, and since I really didn't buy the game for its dungeon delving I couldn't care less that all mines have the same floor plan.  But finding out what kind of story I choose to tell, and how that story and I both change at whim, has been a really interesting experience.

(And now I know that some part of me, deep inside, never did let go of that Disney upbringing.)

The evolution of the RPG... and me.

A year or two ago, I (rather infamously) drew my line in the sand: I do not like party-based games, I declared, and never had.

Following this assertion (brought on at that moment by disliking Dragon Age: Origins), I've played both Mass Effect games, am currently in the midst of Chrono Cross, and just devoured the entirety of Dragon Age 2 in a few days.  And yet in many ways I stand by my original statement -- so what's changed?

I'll be honest, lady rogue Hawke pretty much always took Fenris, Varric, and Merrill, by the middle of Act II.

I'll admit that in part, I've changed.  Though I've been loving games and digital worlds since I was a kid, my consumption of various game types has really ramped up in the last three years and I've been exposed to, and learned patience for, some kinds of game design that I hadn't gained wide experience with before.  Game appreciation, like film appreciation, is tied to a sense of time and place, and an understanding of the history of the art.  My sense of history is still developing.

Crucially, though, the games themselves have also been evolving.  The difference in feel between Dragon Age: Origins, which hearkens back to an older era of games, and Dragon Age 2, which feels very modern, really crystallizes that evolution for me.  Thanks in large part (though not solely) to BioWare's recent design choices, I've been able to narrow down a bit what it is I actually hate about party based gaming.

In a word?  Micromanagement.

For some people, this is fun. I will never truly understand those people.

For me, the joy of playing has never been in the numbers, the tactics, or the methodical min/max situation.  I am fundamentally a lazy gamer: I don't want to control a hundred things at once.  I'm willing to be responsible for one character and for her tactics, skills, attributes, gear, inventory, and personality.  I tend to gravitate toward one character type and I tend to play that type the same way across games.* I like passive skills and quick kills, and I prefer not having to overthink every single character placement or tactical choice.

If I'm playing a game where character development is the focus -- in broad strokes, the RPG genre -- then what I want is to take control of my avatar and to understand and master her personality and talents.  I don't want to be responsible for controlling others.  It's a selfish impulse ("don't be dead weight I have to drag around") but also a self-protective one ("I just can't manage both of us correctly at once; you'll get short shrift").

My aversion to having to worry what others are up to has led to some downright comical contortions. During my EverQuest II years, I was three solid months into the game and level 28 (back when it was much less solo-friendly)  before I ever joined a group.  The folks I grouped with were all in the same guild and I joined up with them a few days later.  That's how I eventually discovered the pleasure of watching a plan laid and executed with a minimum of communication.  Everyone knew their roles: tanks took the hits, healers healed, chanters controlled crowds, and DPS damaged things.  Sure, for special bosses or raid zones (or one memorable five-Fury group) we discussed strategy at greater length, but each character always knew her role because each was controlled by an autonomous being somewhere, an individual man or woman at a keyboard just like me.

Some of those raid strategies worked better than others. Running a new x2 zone on Test, June '05.

When handed Divinity II and Dragon Age: Origins in the same week, I gravitated to the former because I could simply strike out into the world as I pleased, without worrying about what others wanted, needed, or thought of me.  I've been bored, in the past, with having to make the rounds among companions and crew to check in on each and every one of them and their personal needs.

I've been thinking about the "why" a great deal over the past week.  I think it's because for a long time, in many of the games I played, companion characters' personal needs either felt mechanical, pointless, or kind of unhinged.  That's a personal assertion, and not necessarily a quality-of-games one; it has to do with my own particular wiring.  As much as I hate to admit it, because I'm a book-lover through and through and an imaginative one at that, I think what's actually hooking me into this new RPG era is the voice-over work.

When I play a game like Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross, everyone sort of sounds the same.  Yes, I imagine characters speaking differently, with different cadences, accents, and mannerisms, but in the end every voice is still, on some level, mine.  I can't give other characters inflection that I can't imagine and active as my imagination is, in a text-only world my interpretations might run counter to the scene's intent.

In fact, I'm running into this fairly often in Dragon Age: Origins, which I'm now giving another try.**  With an unvoiced Grey Warden, it's up to me to guess whether a comment she can make is sarcastic or genuine, and whether that comment is made jokingly or earnestly.  As a result, other characters' responses are not necessarily what I expect or what I'm aiming for.  I've run into some disapproval situations that I didn't see coming, because I didn't realize the Warden was going to be perceived as confrontational rather than as politely direct.  (Also because Morrigan disapproves of roughly everything.)

And when Morrigan disapproves, she lights you on fire. It's just her way.

Having companions find their voices has upended the way I view these NPCs in my games.  It's an emotional connection to the narrative and its world that isn't a new concept, but that makes me personally care a great deal more.  Even in a silent protagonist, fundamentally single-player game like Fallout: New Vegas, companion voices make me feel differently and realign my priorities.  I want to earn Boone's respect, not his easily-granted disgust.  Hearing Arcade move from self-effacing sarcasm to honesty over time makes me feel trustworthy.  Disappointing Veronica makes me feel like I've kicked a puppy.  And actually getting to hear Christine talk and explain, after she had been rather violently robbed of her voice, is deeply satisfying.

The recent BioWare titles (the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises) have done a rather extraordinary job of surrounding me with characters I care about.  Between advancements in game tech and a strong investment in decent writing, I'm able to immerse myself in the illusion that my [Hawke / Shepard / Warden] is surrounded by other people, as real as my intervention has made the PC, with their own voices, stories, and personalities.  And they can control themselves.

Should I be so inclined I could order Garrus which baddies to shoot and when, but I never have to.  (I choose not to play on difficulty settings where that level of tactics would be required.)  I can take control of Isabela or Aveline, or issue direct commands to them, but I don't have to.  Without very much intervention (adding health potions to their tactics), Fenris knows how to watch my back and stupid Anders knows how to heal the party as needed.  Varric doesn't need me to issue a complex set of numbers and commands in order to seriously own that crossbow.

The ability and choice for the player character to have intimate and meaningful one-on-one conversations with non-player-characters has reframed the way I relate to a game.  If I need to make a complex or consequential decision in Chrono Cross, I look at a guide, or I talk it over with a friend (i.e. the spouse) who has played the game before and can give me non-spoiler guidance.  But when I need to make a complex or consequential decision in a game like Dragon Age 2, I have Hawke talk to her friends.  They become her guides and, by extension, mine.  Does Aveline disapprove of a choice?  She must have a reason and it's worth asking her before I act.

I'm used to NPC companions either feeling burdensome or feeling invisible -- for all that I liked, say, Lucca and Frog in Chrono Trigger, taking their turns in combat just meant me moving through one list of all options, and switching party members roughly meant switching combat tactic options and not much else.  That both game design and I have reached a stage where player companions feel almost like MMO buddies has been revelatory.  For the first time, when given the choice I care more about my companions' quests, evolution, and goodwill than I do about exploring every corner of the world (though I still do) or about the main story (which always comes around again in due time).

I haven't always particularly enjoyed characters' quests (bite me, Anders) or supported their loyalty missions (you too, Zaeed).  But as this year in gaming starts to wind down, I'm realizing that now, the companion quests are the ones I want to appear more often.  I enjoy making it a point to wander around the Normandy, or around Kirkwall, or around the campfire.  Fenris, Anders, Aveline, Varric, Isabela, Merrill -- their stories, their trust and forgiveness (or betrayal), are what was important to me in Dragon Age 2.  And as I look toward 2012 and Mass Effect 3, I know that Shepard can stare down the Reaper threat, but what I really want is to be sure that Garrus, Liara, Wrex, and Tali will trust her and stand by her side while she does.

Until then, back to Chrono Cross, where Kid is Australian and Poshul is desperately annoying -- but everyone is as silent as Serge. 

*For the record, that type is rogue / thief / assassin, heavy on the stealth and dual-wield or, in a futuristic setting like ME, on sniper tactics.  Sneak-and-stab or sneak-and-shoot: if they see me coming I'm doing it wrong.

**Because seriously, I want to see if I can find out why [DA:O character who appears at the end of DA2 with Cassandra] shows up then and there, 6-7 years after the events of DA:O.  Context: I needs it.

~~~~~~~~~~

And for more discussion on party-based gaming, that happened to come up while I was in the middle of this personal meditation, see Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Horde on The Future of the Computer Role-Playing Game.

Punch Anders in the Face, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Bomb.

I'm playing Dragon Age II, as everyone who follows me on Twitter will have heard a thousand times in the last week.  At the point of this writing I'm in the middle of Act III, with a female rogue Hawke.  Spoilers for 2/3 of the game (and predictions about the remaining events) follow.

Because this is a BioWare game, Hawke picks up a number of companions along her way.  And because this is a BioWare game, those companions are strongly-written individuals, with their own stories, characteristics, personalities, and lives.  Despite my low-level general dislike of party-based gaming even now (which is a longer post that I've started writing but put on the back burner because this post was more urgent), Hawke's companions are the entire reason I'm playing DAII.  I love them, they are fantastic, and I want to spend more time with them.

Especially Fenris who, while always brooding, doesn't always look quite that murderous.

Bethany, Aveline, Varric, Merrill, Anders, Fenris, and Isabela -- these are the seven characters whose story this game is here to tell.  (I'm aware that if I had any DLC, there'd be more.)  And dropped into the middle of their lives, the thread connecting them all and drawing them and their stories together, is Hawke.

I like to think of myself as a generally decent person, with a healthy amount of self-respect.  I'm a constant work in progress (who isn't?), but I'm a reasonably well-adjusted adult and I make a point of surrounding myself with non-toxic people: with good friends.  Sure, some of us don't call as often as we'd like, and I've got some friends who have opinions I disagree with, or who have made choices I don't like.  But generally, we're respectful of each other, we trust each other, and we don't use or lie to each other.

This Hawke (blue-eyed red-haired Miriam), like my Shepard before her and my Courier and Lone Wanderer before them, is an extension of me.  She looks quite a bit like me, she shares my preferences and tastes, and she shares my moral compass.  That's how I like to play an RPG of this sort.  When Varric and Merrill are good friends to Hawke, I then feel that they are good friends.  This is by design; especially on a first playthrough, we're often meant to put ourselves, the players, in the hero's shoes.

So when Aveline, flustered, comes to Hawke for help with her love life, I feel like I'm helping a (hapless) friend.  When Varric good-naturedly gives Hawke shit just because he can, I feel like I'm joking around with a friend.  When Merrill bares her soul to Hawke, I feel like I have been trusted by a friend.  When Fenris walks around town wearing Hawke's crest on his belt, I feel a little more gushy than "just friend" ( <3 ).

Which means when after two acts -- seven story years -- of friendship, Anders lies to Hawke and uses her?  I get angry with the betrayals of a "friend."

Anders wants to justify himself.

Through the first two acts of DAII, I kept working toward friendship with Anders because, overall, I agreed with him.  Mages really do get the short end of the stick in the society of the Dragon Age games, and it's a big problem.  Knight-Commander Meredith in particular is a power-hungry ass and a liar and I'd like her deposed promptly, possibly even at the point of my dagger if that's what it takes.  There are enormous problems of inequal rights and prejudice all over Thedas and I'll even concede that, despite my strong personal preferences, solving them might require violent tactics rather than diplomacy.  And I'm always good for fighting injustice.

I had no strong reason to be rivals with Anders.  Our means were different but our goals, overall, the same.  I could set aside his overbearing righteousness with an internal eye-roll, pick witty dialogue, and have us continue along our mutual goal of "kill ALL the monsters!"  And of course, one of my biggest issues as a gamer is the deep-seated need for everyone to like me.  Nearly always. 

So I was inclined to give Anders a chance, despite his flaws and quirks.  He's a prominent NPC and a party member: surely I'm meant to cut him some slack?

Demonic posession is kind of a big personality quirk, IMHO.

I managed benign disintrest with Anders until reaching his Act III quest, "Justice," at which point I instantly developed an overwhelming desire to punch him in the face.  Twice.  The quest is nothing short of infuriating.  By the point in the game at which Anders asks you to go gather some ingredients for him, the game has made sure that Hawke knows (1) there hasn't been a known way to separate a demon and host without killing them, and (2) dwarves and Qunari both make, steal, or have gunpowder / explosives.

And so, Anders sends Hawke forth to collect saltpeter and sulfur for him, assuming:

• That she is too stupid to know what these ingredients are
• That she is too stupid to know what these ingredients do
• That she will trust whatever it is Anders tells her
• That she doesn't actually need to know what she's up to, because Anders said so
• That she'll be fine with this gaping and suspicious hole in knowledge
• That she won't actually put together the ninety million clues surrounding this request
• That his cause is so righteous that it's all right to hurt everyone and everything else for it...
• ...including the people he supposedly wants most to help.

I can get behind a lot of suspicious behavior, in a game.  But a supposed friend lying to me in order to go make a (potentially suicide) bomb and blow the shit out of people whose fight this isn't?  I don't think so, friend.

I stewed over this for quite a while.  My first concern came from a game mechanics perspective: helping Anders, or indeed aiding magi in general, make it challenging to maximize friendship with Fenris.  Having chosen the Fenris romance, and choosing to believe that the character has a better nature that Hawke can appeal to, I find I need to be very careful in what order I choose to help people.  And so at first I'd framed the problem as, "How can I be sure to do everything I need to with Fenris first, so that then I can do what I need to for Anders?"

After sleeping on that for a night, though, I finally realized the solution: to hell with Anders.  If a real friend of mine in the flesh-and-blood world pulled the sort of shenanigans he's up to, I'd be unable to remain close to that person.  Our relationship would strain and although I might feel wistful for the loss of what once was, I wouldn't feel guilt about cutting ties.  So why I have been letting my pixellated avatar be guilted or bullied into giving support that I wouldn't give?  If Hawke is modeled after my gut and my ethics, why on earth would I let her put up with this?

For all that I've always needed to maximize the number of NPCs who like or respect my PC, I've never particularly needed the bad guys to like me.  Why would I?  They're terrible people and I'm perfectly comfortable being morally opposed to them.  The Legion, the Reapers -- their disapproval is a point of pride.  And for all that I try to avoid conflict and remain friendly in the real world, there are some people out there whose approval I've never sought.  If the racists and homophobes of the world ever start singing my praises, I'll have a serious and urgent need to re-examine the course of my life.

What Dragon Age II has done for me is that it has allowed me to bring that last, formerly missing piece of my personal moral core with me into my characters.  You know what?  I don't need Anders to like me!  I don't need to help him.  And if he's making a series of poor choices that harm Miriam Hawke's life and her other relationships?  He can go to hell.

For all that I raged and agonized about Kate Shepard's inability to keep both Jack and Miranda loyal in Mass Effect 2, I appreciate that it happened.  Sometimes, when you're surrounded by people with different priorities, you do find yourself in conflict, and there's not a soul on earth powerful enough to resolve every single conflict among his or her peers just through the force of good will alone.  Companions might choose a (metaphorical) hill to die on that ends a friendship, or co-workers might join cause for a common goal even if they hate you.  That's how the real world works.  And if I'm looking for mature nuance in my game writing (which I am), I have to be able to acknowledge that there are some hurts that my heroes just can't fix.

I've avoided spoilers regarding the rest of the game, but I'm pretty convinced at this point that Anders is going to blow the shit out of a major part of Kirkwall with or without Hawke's help.  As a result, innocent people are going to die -- a lot of them.

Knowing that, and knowing that Anders is so set on his path that he won't even tell Hawke the truth, to let her give him aid freely or not at all?  He can well and truly go to hell.  Blackmail is no mark of friendship, and I'm over it.  Anders has cured me of one small portion of the ego of the gamer, and brought me to a more mature approach toward my characters as a consequence.

I'll still create characters who are essentially me and play as if I were there, because that's half the fun.  But I the player have the self-respect not to take abuse or cavort with assholes, and now I've realized: Hawke does too.

I'm choosing against friendship and I'm choosing against helping, and those go against my grain. 30 years of RPGs have taught me to accept every quest and seek every approval, and 30 years of female socialization have taught me to be careful when and how I make waves.

But 30 years of moral judgement have also taught me right from wrong.  Anders is wrong, and feeling that I can and should tell him so is surprisingly satisfying.  I just wish there were a "punch in the face" animation to go with.

Let's talk about sex!

I had an unexpected amount of video game time to fill, this past weekend.  After an hour of Bastion and an hour of Chrono Cross I cast about for something new, feeling at odds.  What I really wanted to play was Mass Effect 3, and that's physically impossible for another six months.  I tried other games as a distraction but none of them actually satisfied my craving, no more than a bag full of carrot sticks actually satisfies a craving for a bag of chips.

Everyone on Twitter gave helpful, thoughtful suggestions for what I should try, and in the end I ignored every last one of them and got sucked into a marathon six-hour session of Fable III.

This is my pretty pretty princess, kicking your ass. She had a piratey hat but NPCs made fun.

Fable III isn't exactly challenging, as far as game play, story, or game design go.  And yet, it has challenged me in a most unexpected way.  I knew, offhandedly, before I started playing that this was considered a "mature RPG."  And yet I was surprised (pleasantly so, but still taken aback for a moment) to find that among the character attributes for nearly every adult NPC in the game, there is a sexual preference qualifier.

The game was telling me, bluntly, in no euphemistic or uncertain terms, which of the characters I was interacting with were straight or gay -- and, by extension, letting me know up front which men and women were considered to be in the dating pool for my character.

Knowing all of this, and knowing how the Fable franchise prides itself on a choices-and-consequences approach, I was still surprised further to discover that the bed in a player's house can be interacted with -- and on interacting, the options are "sleep" and "sex."  Sleep has essentially an alarm clock option, and sex can be chosen in the protected or unprotected varieties.

I am in my thirties and have been playing video games since the middle of the 1980s, and this is the first time I've ever seen the existence of sex, as an event unto itself, so explicitly and practically addressed in my pixels.

To be sure, I have played my fair number of games that contain romantic interludes, or the plain ol' bumpin' of uglies.  Divine Divinity contains an unmarked quest for finding the main city's brothel, and rewards a large amount of XP for employing services therein.  (The brothel in question has both male and female staff, and the player character can pick either, without comment and with equal experience awarded.)  Then of course there are the just-barely-offscreen quicktime event shenanigans in God of War (I, II, and III), in which Kratos turns his ragey gusto toward anyone with boobs for a time.

Fallout: New Vegas does not tread the BioWare-style path of party member romances, but sex workers (both voluntary and involuntary) feature fairly prominently in quests and on the Strip, and there are indeed some questionable fade-to-black moments the player character can select if so inclined.  And then of course, there are the BioWare games, with their array of party member romance options, based on conversation and consummated in a carefully choreographed fade to black.

I ship this so hard, but I'm actually grateful for the fade to black.

Indeed, the fade to black is what I'm used to seeing in games (with "suggestive offscreen noise" its crass and less-often seen cousin).  We all know how this goes: provided you've said the right things throughout Mass Effect 2, someone comes up to Shepard's quarters during the last quiet moment on the Normandy, they exchange a few more words, there's some suggestive motion, press "F" to continue, and it's the next morning.  (Relatively speaking, since they're in space...)  The romance option with Liara in the first game was much more explicit, but even so, probably less tawdry than many R-rated movies I've seen.

It's actually just as well that ME2 fades to black; if, later, you choose to call your special someone back up to Shepard's quarters, the "couch" and "bed" animations might actually be the most awkward, least natural, most static, least romantic, and least sexy interactions on Earth.  Even as PG rated cuddle sessions, they fail.

It's not just a body-shape thing; male Shep with Tali is equally wretched but you can image search that one yourself.
(Warning: don't image search that one.)

Still, the real surprise for me with sex in Fable III is not that it exists; sex is implied in plenty of games.  The surprise is that its existence is announced independently.  By adding "sex" to the bed options, and indicating NPC sexual orientation (and flirtatiousness levels) in info boxes, the game is putting out there the idea that sex is a thing your PC might do for any combination of fun, profit, and love, depending on any number of whims, emotions, and circumstances.

Almost like the real world, there.  How novel!

Now, I know I'm late to the discussion, and I haven't played Fable or Fable II.  (I was interested in Fable II but there's no PC port and likely never to be.)  I knew going in that a wide array of player choices existed in the game, but "vague understanding they exist" and "actually having a choice in front of you to make" are two different things.

For what it's worth, my Princess hasn't shacked up with anyone yet, mainly because she hasn't met a soul worth her time.  Most of the NPCs she's encountered and interacted with are neither attractive nor interesting, so "friend" is more than enough work there.  (Also I can't actually find the way back to my house, which was free DLC content and doesn't appear on the world map that I can find.  I may need to buy an apartment in town.)  I certainly have no moral objection to my character having (safe, consenting) sex.

Once again, though, I've been surprised by the baggage that I the player bring into this world with me.  Although its wardrobe cues are drawn from the 16th - 19th centuries, Fable III takes place in a version of the 1820s that never existed, where most fantasy RPGs take place in a version of the 13th or 14th centuries that never existed.  Its "Albion" is yet another false Britain, and so I find myself instinctively guarding against the roles reserved for women in the Georgian and Victorian eras.  In that environment, I feel that marriage is not actually an option for my female character.  In order to remain a successful, independent, respected agent, my gut says she needs to stay single.

These are totally assumptions I the player bring to the world, and really I only notice and question them because I take the time to write here.  I mean, as mentioned, I have no problem pairing off my Shepard.  Yes, I felt that not only did she have the burden of representing humanity to the galaxy, but also of representing women.  But when forced to examine it, I find that in a sci-fi, future-based environment, I feel that a woman can be partnered and yet also successful and respected.  Plus, the Commander was a renowned, accomplished hero in her own right before a partnership option entered her life.  She has a strong identity and can keep being herself, and the world in which she lives will support that.

Intellectually, I'm keenly aware that this Albion is not actually England in the dawn of the Industrial Age.  I know that it's a game in which I can make any choice the mechanics allow, and still reach one metric of success as a player.  I'll be able to complete the story regardless of the side-choices my Princess makes.  But in my gut, I still feel the pressure of a few centuries' worth of feminist issues.

Realistically, I don't actually think the mechanics of the game will enforce any kind of social penalties for marriage.  Based on what I've seen so far, the biggest impact on the overall story arc I can imagine is NPC gossip and chatter around me in towns.  But this unnamed Princess is right now forging her place in the world.  She's trying, very hard, to become a leader and to earn the loyalty of an entire kingdom through hard work and hard fighting.  She's aiming to place herself at the very head of a nation-wide rebellion to oust her lousy brother, who's a terrible king.  That's no small task!


And yet while I feel that a permanent partner (even with divorce easily available in-game) would hold this nameless lady back, I'm not at all averse to her having some sexual interludes for fun, if the right NPCs show up.  Somehow I don't feel that the Princess openly having gentlemen or lady visitors will set off any actual consequences with her people (though they may gossip); we'll consider this the "never existed" half of the culture.

Sex in games (and everywhere else) has a way of falling into a certain trap, though.  Alex Raymond wrote a really interesting piece a while back on how video games perpetuate the commodity model of sex:

To give an example: a guy I know once received a call from a couple of his friends, who asked if he wanted to go to a strip club. He said something like, “Why would I want to go to a shady bar and pay a random stranger to show me her boobs when I can have sex with my girlfriend?” And his oh-so-clever friends informed him that Hey! When you think about it, you are still just paying to see boobs! Except the payment is in dinners and dates and compliments, rather than dollar bills.

Ha. Ha. Get it? Because all women are prostitutes.  ...

So what does this have to do with video games? Well, some video games allow the player character to have sex with NPCs; even more allow the player to have romantic relationships with NPCs. What the vast majority of these games inevitably do is present relationship mechanics that distill the commodity model down to its essence–you talk to the NPC enough, and give them enough presents, and then they have sex with/marry you.

This design approach is extremely simplistic and perpetuates the commodity model of sex–the player wants sex, they go through certain motions, and they are “rewarded” with what they wanted (like a vending machine). Furthermore, when sex is included in a game, it is generally framed as the end result–the reward–of romance, rather than one aspect of an ongoing relationship/partnership. For example, one gamer commented that the romance in Mass Effect seemed like the romantic interest was really saying, “‘Keep talking to me and eventually we’ll have sex’”. The relationship is not the goal; the goal is the tasteful PG-13 sex scene. The NPC’s thoughts and desires aren’t relevant; what matters is the tactics you use to get what you want. This is a boring mechanic in games and dangerously dehumanizing behavior in real life.

Fable III is most certainly and emphatically guilty of what Alex describes; the mechanic of all relationships in the game is purely an item-exchange, level-up sort of thing.  And yet it actually feels more like a free choice than in most other games I've seen.  Although mysteriously my assumptions about marriage in-game are framed by a historical understanding of the 19th century, my assumptions about sex remain grounded firmly in the 21st: any number of adults can do whatever they all willingly and openly consent to, and should do so as safely as possible.

In pretty much every other game I've ever played, sex for a player character exists in one of two contexts: (1) within a romance arc (not necessarily leading to marriage), or (2) as a literal commodity, traded for money or information.  The avatars I've controlled have encountered a number of sex workers in their times and likewise my player characters have on occasion used seduction as a tool to advance.  But sex as a choice, with a willing partner, just because we're both there and it seems like fun?  Not so much.

This, then, is the paradox I find.  While sex in Fable III is to every pixel a tradeable, level-able commodity, it's also a free and open choice, presented without judgement.  If there is a "doing it right" to be found, I'm certain this game isn't it -- but it's also, in a strange way, closer.

With the recent release of Catherine, "how does game design approach actual sex and actual relationships?" is a question flying around criticism circles at the speed of the Internet.  In almost all cases, I think that answer is still, "badly," with a chaser of "inadequately."  Ultimately, all of our games still rely on sets of numerical mechanics and rules.  They're a series of unbreakable "if, then" statements and our heroes (and villains) can't decide to take a left turn to the established rules of reality the way a flesh-and-blood human can.

In this one small way, though, in this one tiny instance, my Princess can break the rules.  Maybe the next time I see "sex" as an in-game choice, it will be in a game where the NPCs are actually designed to be characters, rather than a half-dozen fixed sound bites and gestures.  Society's head might explode.

*If you hear Salt-N-Pepa singing in your head, congratulations: you, too, are an old.  Now dance!

The JRPG and Me

I've described before how I grew up listening to movie scores.  When I was in high school, I went on a tear of renting the movies whose themes I had loved, figuring that I should start getting some context.  And so it came to pass that I learned although The Abyss did not live up to its musical promise in my eyes, The Terminator certainly did.  (I was and remain undecided on Willow.)

The last decade has brought me more into the gaming sphere.  Although I've been an avid computer gamer since 1986, the only console I ever had was a used NES I bought in 1993.  Sony and I were like two ships in the night for a very, very long time.

But in 2008, my now-husband got a PS3 (the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle) for his birthday.  And although my entire games collection was stolen in 2006, he -- also an avid collector -- managed to avoid a similar misfortune.  And so, for the last three years, I've been catching up on a number of classic games and series I missed in the 1990s.  Thanks to a PSX emulator, M's PS1 discs, and a classic theme that's always drawn me in, I... am playing Chrono Cross.

I'm this guy now.

It's amazing how slow and clumsy I feel, attempting this feat.  Everyone else played games like this when they were twelve, and part of me wishes I had, too.  Like learning a second or third language, I seem to have reached the age where these skills are harder won than they should be -- even with my guide at hand.

The first JRPGs I ever successfully played to completion and enjoyed were The World Ends With You and Chrono Trigger, both on the Nintendo DS.  The former is DS native; the latter, obviously, a remastered re-release.  The fact of the matter is, I rarely enjoy Japanese or Japanese-style RPGs.  I don't tend to like controlling a party and the slow-paced, half-mystical, often incoherent lyricism of the writing often grates on my fast-paced American sensibilities. 

But then there's this.

And in fact, the first place I ever really heard the music was at Video Games Live, in 2009.

Frankly, that theme is too good to keep passing up, especially as my husband's original PS1 discs are running very smoothly in my gaming rig.

So that's where I am: wandering around outside of a village, using a skill / spell system that everyone on Earth understands intuitively but I have to struggle with, accompanied by a pink dog with a lisp.

I might hate that dog a little.  But right now its my only friend in a hostile world, and that's how bonds are formed...

I wasn't expecting to like Chrono Trigger either, when I first started it.  I had to be wheedled into giving it a try.  And I didn't like the world or the characters or the navigation, and then suddenly I did, and I was traveling through TIME YOU GUYS OMG TIME TRAVEL LOOK AN APOCALYPSE and the next thing I knew the number of hours I'd put into playing it had passed my ability to track.

So I'm giving Chrono Cross its due.  There are huge swaths of gaming history I missed along the way to where I am now, and I need to make good on my quest to understand how the history of our art led to its present day, and leads to its future.

"Attack" I can handle.

Sometimes I remember that watching silent film didn't come naturally to a child of the 1980s, either, but that I adored The General when I finally saw it.  So this, too, is a language I can learn... one turn at a time.