Video games are finally living up to the narratives they've always aspired to be, ever since NES box art portrayed heroic action shots that never matched what ended up on your screen. Now, cutscenes or in-game cinematics have begun utilizing composition and dialogue not out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster. Characters are given a voice and fleshed-out backstories. Original and licensed music, voice actor caliber, marketing campaigns, everything's stepped up in a big way. The line between game and interactive movie has become thinner than ever. Yet something's always kept me from becoming a serious gamer.
The signs were always there. I spent more time reading "Sonic the Hedgehog" comic books than playing the games. The "Myst" prequel novels warped my brain as a kid, detailing the dysfunctional father/son relationship as Atrus and Gehn attempt to revive the D'ni civilization, showing us the consequences of playing gods (which was barely hinted at in the games). In my early attempts at screenwriting, I wrote thirty pages of a "Half-Life" movie adaptation, devoting way too much time into researching quantum physics and none into the loud action set-pieces that it required.
"Fallout 4" is the first title for my new PS4, which I got through a deal at Gamestop after trading in the old PS3 and games, bringing the price down substantially. What a strange moment to see the life experiences I had with these games reduced to a dollar amount, as the clerk scanned them into the computer:
"Grand Theft Auto IV -- bought at midnight release while living in Los Angeles -- $2.00"
"LA Noire -- played during the transition of a new job and first apartment -- 50 cents"
"Skyrim -- a girl you liked from high school texted you to get a drink but you were already high because it made the game more immersive so you said you were busy and regretted it so much you never finished the game -- $10.00"
"Grand Theft Auto V -- didn't leave your apartment for three days -- $8.00"
I played "Fallout 3" on my old Xbox 360 because open-world games have always scratched a certain itch in my existential views on life itself. As the open-world games get more detailed and life-like, as NPCs become less predictable and realistic, you begin to see how everything in our reality can be distilled into programmable information. And then you look around and the theories about our world being a computer simulation suddenly click into place. We could all be background players for someone's open-world video game experience and wouldn't even know it....
After work, I played ninety minutes worth of "Fallout 4". Close to the end, I hooked up with the Institute (because when you see the plot twist, how can you not?) and spent the time doing miscellaneous detective missions for a hard-boiled robot detective in Diamond City. Not being part of the main storyline, I hoped these would, in the limited capacity offered by the game, allow me to solve cases through hunting for clues and interrogating suspects. Instead, a missing persons case sent my character through an abandoned church full of super mutants and zombies to find some money to spend on ammo or armor to kill more super mutants and zombies in the infinite list of shaggy dog missions. Why can't I just enjoy it for what it is?
The developers have created a gorgeous yet sad world, a post-apocalyptic Boston (but c'mon, after 200 years you think there'd be an effort to begin a clean-up process. Broken Windows theory, people!). But despite a solid 25 hours of gameplay invested, I feel like I don't know the land like I did in "Grand Theft Auto" or even the American West in "Red Dead Redemption". Hell, I could draw you a map of the Facility in "Goldeneye" with a golden gun to my head. Part of that's because there's no vehicles to cover more ground in a shorter amount of time and somehow a focus on first-person perspective is incredible limiting. Really, it's the fast-travel option that makes moving around much more appealing and lowers the odds of being ambushed while walking from settlement to settlement while listening to classical music. And that boils down my problem with it: I've spent more time in menus and loading screens than exploring the world. That's not a game, it's work.
And the best games are played with other people. When playing "Goldeneye" or "Starfox" on the N64 in middle school, the multiplayer function required you to be in the same room as your opponents. For a summer in middle school, my friends from the block and I would eat junk food and waste the days away killing each other's virtual avatars on the same TV, each given a quadrant of the screen. After a game round ends, each player has to hit the Start button to get back to the main menu, where you can pick variables in how to kill each other again. Our friend Todd was so wrapped up in the real-life hijinks, thrilled he was horsing around with his best friends in his dad's basement, that he sometimes forgot to hit the Start button, keeping us all from continuing, so we'd yell "Press Start, Todd!" It became a running inside joke that continues to this very day, any of us busting out a "Press Start, Todd!" (even at his wedding) that brings us all back to that moment.
You can't get a "Press Start, Todd" playing against online strangers. You can't even get a "Press Start, Todd" playing against Todd because he has to be home, using his own system, in front of a separate television and the game probably got rid of that function anyway. And that's why violent video games have run the course for me. The humanistic aspects are simply a delivery device for simulated combat and success porn. It's a bug, not a feature. But there is one type of game, one that never drained my eyes raw or make me hate myself with regret. And it's the type that will ease the medium towards it's potential as true art.
Next time: adventure games.
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