Skyrim missive

Since my parents overcame their reservations of buying their 26-year-old son video games for Christmas, I’ve had the opportunity to neglect all of my worldly responsibilities and dig into the world of Skyrim. Having been initially skeptical about the game–I played Fallout 3, encountered freedom paralysis, and truly disliked the battle system–I held off buying it in the hopes that someone would gift it to me or otherwise tell me that it wasn’t worth my time. But when I saw this video, I was sold:

What drew my attention wasn’t the hilarious glitch in the game or the beauty of the surrounding environment. Rather, it was the existence of what appeared to be purely docile and innocuous mammoths wandering the plains. The idea that creatures–seemingly autonomous ones–of that size existed in a virtual world was captivating. Rarely do you come across digital lifeforms that aren’t hostile, especially ones that dwarf you in size.

But this is beside the point. My first encounter with a Bethesda-made game was Fallout 3, which a friend lent me when I first bought my XBox 360. I played the game for a little over two hours (I think), and was instantly frustrated with the game’s pacing. After escaping to the irradiated wasteland shortly after beginning the game, the only goal that your character is given is “find your father,” which, in a preexisting world, means absolutely nothing. So you travel to a nearby town or you run off into the desert or whatever else you choose to do, but ultimately, you’re just standing in the middle of an irradiated wasteland with nothing to do, no friends, and looking for a father who you’ve never really interacted with nor know how he looks.

This was problematic for me. I wanted to explore and see things and kill enemies, and so part of my displeasure with the game was of my own doing; this is only sort of how you’re supposed to experience the game. But more than anything, I didn’t have any real direction, so I ended up being massacred by a school filled with mutant thugs, and later in a subway station filled with zombies, all of which could have been avoided had the game offered the slightest bit of instruction as to where I should go next; the last thing I want to do when I enter an open-world environment is go off on a side quest for some straggler in a bar. So I was skeptical of Skyrim but willing to give it a shot. I wanted to walk by those majestic mammoths and find a skeletal dragon, which, alas, I have yet to encounter.

Skyrim begins with your character riding a paddy wagon to have his head chopped off when the ceremony is serendipitously interrupted by a dragon. After hacking your way through a dungeon of enemies, you’re unleashed on the world with one caveat: there are dragons flying around and by God, if they’re not killed, the whole world will end. That’s your goal, and it’s a very real one. You know what dragons look like and they really will kill you if you’re not careful in this game. However, there have been complaints about the game’s forced structure and adherence to fate–your character is Dragonborn, which, long story short, means you can kill the baddest of all the dragons. For many fans of the genre, this is a cardinal sin–if I want to be a beggar, let me be a beggar–but it also allows the game to flow very naturally.

The problem with many of these complaints is that no player ever enters Skyrim anew. Whether you like it or not, the world has existed before you started playing and would continue to without you. Regardless of what character you choose, there will still be a civil war brewing, there will still be dragons flying overhead, and there will still be mammoths walking the plains. Your existence as the Dragonborn hardly changes what you’re able to do. Though its status gives you a few special powers and easier access to various various perks, the decision to reveal yourself as a Dragonborn is entirely up to you.

This logically leads to the question of autonomy. How much autonomy can a player actually be given and can you give a player full autonomy over their virtual life?

I don’t play games simply to exist. The wear marks on my favorite pair of jeans say I do. What open-world games offer, and Bethesda games in particular, is the ability for people to exist as whatever they want. The complaint about Skyrim is that by forcing the player to be Dragonborn, that freedom is impinged upon. But to exist in Skyrim as anything other than a Dragonborn is to not exist at all. Without this birthright, you are but another villager or knight or high elf, roaming the countryside, choosing an allegiance in the impending civil war, and eventually, having your world destroyed by a bunch of dragons which you are ultimately powerless to stop. You’re existing in a world that prophesy states will end, unless you–or rather, what you’re supposed to be, Dragonborn–appears, which, for the record, is not a guarantee.

The ability to barter, pick locks, sell items, improve your single-handed weapon skill, these are means to an end, not ends themselves. If the purpose and goal of Skyrim is to allow you to interact with and impact the world in some way, you have to be Dragonborn. Otherwise, the world doesn’t exist. Doom is always imminent. Not being the Dragonborn is the equivalent of playing a Star Wars game as Luke Skywalker except without the high midichlorian count and ability to stop the empire. If the key is to exist in the world, there has to be a world to exist in.

Skyrim is a brilliant game with many flaws, but to criticize it for being what it is, misses the forest for the trees. If your character is not Dragonborn, you might as well be playing Knights of the Round Table or Dungeons and Dragons or Medieval Shop Owner. Skyrim exists because of its mythology, and your place in that, regardless of what you choose to do, is essential.

Back to Karkand thoughts

After a two-week hiatus, both because of the release of Skyward Sword and because of my real-life work obligations, I returned to Battlefield 3 a few days ago in anticipation for the Back to Karkand map pack, and found the game to be just as pristine as I remember. Not only has it locked down my Top Game of 2011 spot, but I’m willing to say that it has surpassed Resident Evil 4 as my favorite game of all time.

The new map pack features four “new” levels, a few new vehicles, and new weapons (and ways to unlock them). While all of the levels are fan favorites from previous Battlefield titles, it’s difficult to see why. Or rather, it’s clear why people enjoy them, but the reasoning is disappointing.

With these new maps also comes a new dynamic, the loss of the dedicated spawn point (the game mode is referred to as Conquest Assault). All of the Battlefield 3 maps to date have had a dedicated spawn point for dead players to return to. Spawning here–ostensibly the end of the level–isn’t necessarily always the best option, but it does provide respite, an area to pick up vehicles, and a clean entrance (for the most part) to the level. In Conquest Assault, neither team has a dedicated spawn point, forcing players to essentially spawn in the middle of action.

This is hugely problematic for the goal and gameplay of Battlefield 3: that of combined ops. What makes Battlefield spectacular and sets it apart from similar shooters is the necessity of the team to work together. The most successful teams will have various players acting out their roles in each class. Teams full of snipers will rarely succeed, but a team with two snipers and the rest a combination of support, engineering, and assault classes  working in unison creates a unit that can handle any problem that it faces.

Battlefield 3 is about problem solving. You need to identify what an opposing squad is doing and find a way to counteract that. As I mentioned in my review of the game, Battlefield allows you to do that. If there’s an unreachable sniper in a building across the street, you simply blow up the building. While you may not have the tools to do so, if you’re on a competent team, someone should have the means (ie, someone should be playing the role of engineer and be equipped with the proper rocket launcher).

A word that I frequently use when discussing Battlefield gameplay strategies with friends is “depth”. Battlefield is not about who can rack up the most kills. It’s about how you can accomplish the most toward the team’s ultimate goal without dying. The way to achieve this is to play at the right depth. For example, a sniper (my preferred class/role) isn’t very effective in close-quarters combat, so the depth they have to play at is considerable. To be an effective sniper, you either have to camp on one objective (which typically doesn’t accomplish much) or move toward an objective with your team at the right depth. If you fall too far behind, you’re not an asset to your team. If you get too close, chances are you’re not capable of being effective.

The depth order, from longest to shortest, is intuitive: Recon – Assault – Support – Engineer. If you have a four-person squad attacking a specific objective, this is the order of proximity in which they should be to the objective. Engineers attack close range, Support provides cover fire, Assault helps kill enemies as they come into view, and Recon/snipers spot enemies for teammates and picks off any stragglers. This dynamic is the reason that Battlefield is such an achievement (to say nothing of the addition of vehicles, both land and air, which further change player roles). A team that really excels will have skilled players in all four of these roles, playing at the right depth and supporting one another. When this happens, the flow of the game is simply unprecedented.

Unfortunately, the Back to Karkand maps (all but Sharqi Peninsula anyway) evaporate that dynamic. When opposing teams spawn on one another, depth is removed; everyone has to play that close-range role. For me, this is an annoyance, for other players, this is Call of Duty (ie, good). There’s a noticeable difference between Call of Duty players and Battlefield players, even in Battlefield matches. The Call of Duty fans play almost exclusively as the engineer class and use sub-machine guns in close-quarters combat. This earns a lot of kills and personal experience points, but it doesn’t win games.

A friend recently sent me the Battlelog profile of the highest ranked player across all platforms. Much to my surprise, despite his gaudy kill total and experience points, his win/loss ratio was only 1.19. Mine, a significantly less-skilled player, is 1.27. While it’s true that a single player can’t make or break a team, on a squad of only 12 players (I’m speaking from a console standpoint, obviously), a single player can significantly impact–and has to if they’re going to be successful over the long term–any given match. When you see a player with such insane kill totals have a lower win/loss ratio than someone who plays true to the game’s dynamic (myself), it’s illuminating. And at least for me, it’s rewarding: the way I play, while not the most flashy, proves to be a bigger asset to my team than the culturally dominant style of play.

The Back to Karkand maps ultimately cater to one style of play, that of the prevailing FPS culture (Call of Duty), which is unfortunate when what makes Battlefield 3 great is its dismissal of that culture. I get that these maps were nominal fan favorites and in a world where Battlefield is still second fiddle to Call of Duty, catering to that population, especially before the holidays is probably a way to boost sales and increase interest, but the hope is that with future map pack releases, the designers focus more on the dynamic that made it the year’s best game.

Skyward Sword review

First a caveat: this is the first Zelda game that I’ve played extensively since Wind Waker. Though I don’t think that actually changes much, I do feel it’s a necessary note to make.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is everything that’s brilliant and terrible about the series condensed into possibly its best offering to date. You still control the silent hero Link while trying to save princess (or sister or goddess or whatever form she takes in the various releases) Zelda from some spiritual evil. If you’re looking for innovation in story or writing, Skyward Sword is not it. The most-hyped revelation was the realization of the Wii’s initial promise, that of one-to-one motion with swords, slingshots, etc. But this is really a tool to enable the game’s crowning achievement: level design.

Though it also acts as a governing system for how long you can play Skyward Sword in one sitting, every single environment in the game is a puzzle. Though that may seem common for frequent Zelda players, I’m not just referring to specific dungeons that you’re forced to work your way through. Instead, any progression through the game, be it thematic or physical, is achieved through the solving of a new puzzle. Skyward Sword owes as much to Tomb Raider as it does, say, Ocarina of Time.

As the story goes, Link’s native land Skyloft was floated into the sky centuries ago, distant enough that no one on the floating island town has been to or can even remember earth. Through the forces that be, Zelda is carried away and Link has to descend beyond the clouds to try and save her. Everything on earth is new to Link, so winding forests that, in previous Zelda iterations might just be chock full of baddies, are instead perplexing environments that require specialized tools and techniques. (This alienness allows the introduction of traditional Zelda items/tools–slingshot, bug catcher, bombs–to be truly impactful and realistic.) Not only are the dungeons themselves full of your standard Zelda puzzling fare, but the massive environments leading up to them are similarly taxing.

This is both a good and bad thing. While it adds weight and a sense of purpose to the exploration of these widespread areas, it’s also difficult to put in a significant amount of time in any one sitting. When playing Skyward Sword, you’re always on, which is to say that your brain is being constantly taxed. By the time you arrive at any of the predetermined “dungeons”, you already feel like you’ve done the heavy lifting. Now I get to fight the boss, right? Instead, the dungeons–at least at the point I’ve progressed to, about 16 hours–introduce yet more environmental dynamics to interact with.

This constant relearning and appropriation of your existing tool kit is draining. However, it also speaks to the game’s depth. While the one-to-one swordplay is fun (mostly; I still have significant issues with its response to my motions, causing much frustration and cursing), the most impressive feat is how the game appropriates your tools. Each tool that you earn has an obvious use, but as your immediate surroundings evolve, those tools prove to have more unique functionalities. So while you’re constantly toiling through puzzles with a fairly limited tool kit, it’s a testament to the game designers that none of those puzzles ever feel repetitive.

All of this innovation, combined with the games RPG tendencies, encourages exploration. In previous Zelda games, there were only a few things to do: find rupees, kill bad guys, save Zelda. With the introduction of customizable weapons and tools, thoroughly exploring your environment is no longer reserved for people interested in finding a few Easter eggs. Finding and catching bugs or uncovering new relics act as an incentive to look around. But the exploration is intuitive. Since the entire game is built around puzzles, most exploration is born out of habit: I’m going to have to solve this puzzle eventually, so I’ll complete and interact with all the features of this area. It’s brilliant level design and player interaction that essentially force this exploration.

Ultimately, the puzzling gets a little life-sucking though and you have to put the game down. Whether it’s figuring out what sword swing a particular enemy can’t block or trying to open those oft-gated doors, Skyward Sword is not for the casual gamer, which is why it’s unfortunate that the user interface and discovery of new items is treated like it always has been: like you’re a 12 year old. That’s not enough to really harm the game’s style or enjoyability, and the innovations in level design make Skyward Sword both the most innovative game in the series and its best.

Battlefield 3 review

Yesterday, EA released the epically hyped Battlefield 3 after months of heavy advertising and a PR battle with existing king of the hill Call of Duty. The hype train leading up to its release was inevitable given the competition from the CoD franchise and its stranglehold on the current console FPS market. And though I was a serious fan of past Call of Duty games, Battlefield 3 makes not only CoD, but all other video games look like toddler toys.

First the easy stuff: Last night, EA was having a ton of trouble with their XBox servers. People weren’t able to play online, so I played the first two missions of the single player. It’s fine. It’s absolutely beautiful but, as the game designers said in an interview a few weeks ago, it’s a tutorial for the multiplayer. It’s pretty dull. I read a review of the single player in which the reviewer said that he kept dying until he figured out exactly what he was supposed to be doing. That’s spot on. There are a lot of sudden attacks/explosions that you just need to be in the proper position for. If you’re not, you die and have to try again from a different position. This gameplay is not what anyone cares about and I’d be surprised if I even finish the single player mode.

As for the multiplayer, the graphics are similarly unparalleled. There is no video game currently on the market (maybe the Forza series) that has graphics anywhere near as beautiful as these. There’s so much detail and subtlety that you can spend entire matches just looking at stuff. The “backgrounds” (about those scare quotes in a second) are stunning. On Operation Firestorm, there are plumes of black smoke rising in the background from bombed out oil refineries. At Caspian Border, there’s a forest fire in the background that looks to engulf the entire map. But you could find something in almost every level to marvel at. There’s no point in listing them all.

The reason I put scare quotes around “backgrounds” is because these levels are basically limitless. The larger, more open levels allow players to use jets, which move so quickly that you’ll often overshoot the level by about 100% (at Caspian Border, you can actually fly through the forest fire that is otherwise unreachable). When you’re in the sky, the levels take on a life of their own. That said, flying is extremely difficult. Any videos of someone successfully flying are really impressive. It’s very, very difficult and often ended with me crossing myself up and nose diving into the ground.

Referring to the levels as limitless may be a misnomer, but in practice they are. The game mode I played the most last night was Conquest. In Conquest, there are either three or four bases/flags that you need to capture and protect. There are essentially two ways to go about this*: get in a tank and follow your teammates to a base that can be locked down, or sneak around the entire edge of the level and try and pick off a base that people don’t expect you to attack. The latter, even in Call of Duty, has always been my preferred option, but I digress. These levels are built to scale and I would guess that running directly from one end of the level to the other unabated would take about four minutes. If you hide for cover and take the game more seriously, it takes close to eight minutes to get from one side to the other. But if you do it properly, you’ll move cover to cover, lay in wait as enemy tanks rumble by, find shelter to hide from enemy planes that might spot you, and avoid enemy contact for the majority of the time. It’s a singular experience unlike any other in gaming.

It’s the pacing of this game that makes it so perfect. When there aren’t any new vehicles at your spawn, it might be a hassle to run for 30 seconds to a minute before even seeing a firefight in the distance, but that’s what gives the game it’s reality. These maps truly feel like war zones. They’re so large that you can be attacked from almost anywhere if you’re not careful. So when you really immerse yourself in the game–checking your cover, supplying cover fire, and methodically moving through the level using front and follow with teammates–it feels real.

It’s cinematic in a way that I never thought imaginable. You feel like you’re in a movie. There are these indescribable moments of jaw-dropping brilliance that just open up to you. So many times, things happen exactly like you would expect they would in real life and it’s something that no other video game has ever accomplished (eg, spotting an enemy tank a few yards away before it spots you and laying prone for cover until it passes).

My most memorable experienced occurred as I was bringing a tank into the heart of a city scape. An enemy jet spotted me and made two swooping passes over my vehicle, unloading on the tank and doing a ton of damage. After the second pass, I realized that I had an aircraft-locking rocket launcher. I got out of the tank and hid by the side of it for cover. I watched as the jet made a swooping turn out in front of me and came back for a third run right over the top of the tank. I locked onto the jet and fired just before it got to me, and watched it explode and crash into the ground right over my head.

Though the size of the levels was initially a problem for me, it soon because the game’s most impressive feature. The same levels on the PC are made for 64 players simultaneously. On consoles, you only play with 24. While the game has made its name on mixed ops (using different classes and vehicles in tandem to dominate positions), freelancing on your own is a heart-pounding experience. There’s nothing worse that hiding out sniping down range when you hear an enemy tank roll up with infantry forces and you’re forced to take cover until its gone and then check the surrounding areas for anyone who might surprise you.

It hit me today why this game, and FPS in general, will be/are so popular. For most gamers, autonomy is key. This is what development companies like Bethesda thrive on and why open-world games have become so popular. But the more functionality you offer people, the more limiting it becomes (eg, Why does Townsperson X always say the same thing? Why can’t I blow up this building? etc). If you give gamers free reign and call something a sandbox game, they will inevitably push those limits and question why they exist.

FPS are unique because they are designed to allow the player to perform any action that he might need to in the existing situation. You’re out of ammo and need to pull out a pistol? There’s one available. Like that dead guy’s gun better? You can take it. But there were clear limitations. For example, if you’re getting shot by a sniper hiding out in a building up the street, the best you could do was hope to shoot him before he saw you. Battlefield 3‘s Frostbite engine gives you another option, the kind of option you would logically use in that scenario: explode the sniper’s cover with a rocket launcher. The game allows you to interact with the environment in every way you can imagine. And the size and scope of the levels puts you in a real world setting where logical strategies apply.

In my many years playing video games, I can confidently say that Battlefield 3‘s multiplayer is the greatest gaming experience I’ve ever encountered. The breadth of landscape, abilities, vehicles, strategies, and game modes combined with the game’s physics engine and solid gunplay create the most realistic digital experience to date. If this isn’t the Uncanny Valley, it doesn’t exist.

*There’s a third that I’m not very good at, and it involves teaming up with another friendly jet and having both people circle a base. It’s really cool watching these things swoop in and out to protect a base. I only saw it happen once and it was against my team, but it was spectacular to watch.

Cowboys and Aliens: Critics’ worst nightmare

I saw Cowboys and Aliens over the weekend, and much to my surprise, it didn’t afford any narrative to write about. Cowboys and Aliens is exactly what it’s billed as: cowboys fighting aliens who are trying to wipe out humans in search of the earth’s resources. There are a few hammy White Man Gets What’s Coming to Him moments and some contrived looks between bigoted Harrison Ford and some Native Americans who are now his only hope of survival, but other than that, Cowboys and Aliens doesn’t try to do anything other than pit cowboys against aliens in a non-ironic, realistic way.

This led the increasingly deranged Roger Ebert–this man gave a positive review to The Zookeeper, for Christ’s sake–to write,

Cowboys & Aliens has without any doubt the most cockamamie plot I’ve witnessed in many a moon.

Though Ebert gives a relatively positive review of the film, that quote brings to light something about Cowboys and Aliens which is unlike almost any non-b-rate movie: this is a film that tosses out any conceits to a traditional quality storyline and takes a straightnosed approach to making a movie that’s pure entertainment. Aside from a fairly wooden romantic sub-plot, Cowboys and Aliens doesn’t care if you find this movie believable or even reasonable. It’s about cowboys fighting aliens, that’s all.

But honestly, is the idea that cowboys and aliens co-existed at one time more preposterous than any number of movies produced on a yearly basis? Is it more outlandish than extracting dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes to recreate dinosaurs or the US government training super soldiers that can speak countless languages, suffer little if any physical pain, and outsmart the entire agency that trained them?

When I was a senior in college, I took a lower-level English course (I majored in English) to fulfill a requirement. We read a short story by Aimee Bender, and I can’t remember the premise entirely, but it revolved around her husband (I believe) turning into a frog. When we discussed it in class, most of the students tried figuring out What It All Meant, when in actuality, it’s a story about a woman whose husband literally turned into a frog. It’s referred to as premise fiction. The author tells a real-world story that happens to include one or two premises that need to be accepted. Cowboys and Aliens is precisely this: everything about the film is realistic except for the fact that aliens also happen to exist and are on earth to <MINOR SPOILER>mine for gold</END SPOILER>.

But movies and literature are wildly different mediums, especially with regards to critical reception, the former of which, both from movie goers as well as critics, is often chastised for assuming these logical incongruities but maintaining a functioning outside world. Cowboys and Aliens gives the middle finger to anyone of this narrow-minded belief system and offers an unflinching action film with a storyline that’s not nearly as unrealistic as critics would have you believe.