Filibuster: Skyrim reveals my in-game political immaturity

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Bethesda's latest mammoth title, has me reflecting on political choice in games and how that relates to real-world political thinking. I like to think of myself as a politically savvy person. I keep abreast of current affairs and try to weigh arguments before making judgements. I get my news from a variety of sources spanning the political spectrum to ensure I don't fall foul to party political bias or spin. I even allow myself to be swayed in my opinion by the weight of a convincing argument. However, as Skyrim has shown me, when it comes to in-game politics, I'm best described as immature.

Personal politics and voting tendencies are largely a compromise. Voters tend to align themselves to a party or an ideal that best fits their value system, or vote depending on which manifesto they believe will best benefit themselves. My game politics depart from this established, sensible mantra. In the gaming world, if my views don't completely align with the politics of any faction or character then I don't participate. My game ego doesn't allow me to settle for the best of a bad bunch - it causes me to strike out on my own, to shape the world as I would have it.

Although there are numerous political factions present in Skyrim, the story is anchored in the turmoil of the civil war waged by two major parties: the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. From the outset, the game has you choosing between the two and ushers you to pick a side as the story evolves. This is where my political immaturity came to light. I found it difficult to choose. Despite playing as a Nord character native to the land, and their separatist ideals being based on Skyrim for the Nords or similar rhetoric, I found it difficult to subscribe to the Stormcloaks' view of the world. I felt that the borderline racist rants of the faction's leaders and their unwillingness to compromise made it impossible for me to join their ranks. Yes, I'm a Nord. Yes, I think the Nords' homeland should be shaped by its natives. Yes, I believe people should be free to worship as they see fit but no, I cannot and will not abide prejudice on racial grounds – and in the case of the Stormcloaks, this prejudice runs deep.

So then, to the Imperials? I like that they are holding together an eclectic and inclusive society. I like that they see the Empire as stronger united than divided and I believe that a separated Skyrim would see both the diminished Empire and the lone province more susceptible to invasion or influence from outside parties. So surely my allegiance should lie with the Empire? Well, no. I can't make peace with the idea that they would give up their subjects' rights to worship to the demands of the Thalmor, the High Elf supremacist leaders of the Aldmeri Dominion. I don't like how they appear to be the puppets of these invaders. I can't reconcile their heavy-handed approach to those who would seek political change, but mostly, I can't forgive them for trying to hack off my head without trial or due procedure at the genesis of my quest.

This uncompromising gameplay trait has reared its head in other games too. Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series all stand out to me as examples of choice-driven games in which I have been unable to compromise my sense of right and wrong to align myself politically. In New Vegas, my choice seemed to be between the “evil” Legion, or the “meddling” republic; I chose neither and my god complex led me to find my own solution. In Mass Effect, my personal politics and sense of right and wrong lead me to unleash a deadly insect race upon a Galaxy it once threatened, whilst I myself struggled to save it from another great danger. My feelings on the warlike Krogan and the genophage plague used to control the species' numbers left me struggling to trust Krogan, Turian or Salarian characters on either side of the argument.

My experience in my first play-though of most games is usually a “how would I handle it” approach, and it is in my first play-though that I struggle with political immaturity. Subsequent plays will see me acting as a shining beacon of goodness, or a despicable example of evil, and in these games I care not for the worries of politics. But when I'm approaching the game as I would – or as I would like to believe I would – a real-life situation, I find myself hamstrung by my code, my compass and the overwhelming sense of self-importance that any game engenders when it makes you the protagonist.

Is this political immaturity though, or is my reluctance to compromise a result of the fact that I don't have to? In the games I've described, players have the luxury of choice and an abundance of avenues of action, and ultimately thats what politics is: a choice between different ways of interacting with and seeing the world. Games that afford less choice, or even no choice beyond “shoot the guy in your iron-sights, or don't”, have a much less blurred political landscape. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's campaign, there is little by the way of choice, but the plot is steeped in political intrigue and interactions on a global scale. Regardless of player politics, the game will play out the same way. In Batman: Arkham Asylum you adopt the politics of the costumed vigilante and you will bring down the Joker, or you simply won't complete the game. Your choice is limited to which tactic you'll use to pummel the bad guys as you close on your target. That's not to say the run-on-rails nature of games like these makes them bad - far from it - but the lack of player choice doesn't allow for player politics to add a new dimension to the game play.

When it comes to more open world, choice driven role-playing or sandbox games, the freedom of choice and action seeds my political immaturity - because to believe you can solve the world's problems on your own and not have to forge alliances to do so is naive. In any alliance there is compromise and my inability to do so in Skyrim would have major ramifications to the provinces' inhabitants. Skyrim won't run itself and for me to leave it suffering a civil war that I could end by picking a side is politically irresponsible.

My choice is the third way: I will shape Skyrim as I see fit. And why can I do this? Because unlike real life, my limitless respawns, vast power and moral compass won't let me settle for a less than perfect affiliation between my view of the world and that of a faction I support. I don't have have the maturity to compromise and am doomed to struggle against all factions in the game - at least in my first play-through.

**This article was written for Game Kudos and can be viewed in its edited format here**

We interrupt this silence...

I have been criminally negligent with regard to my writing over the past few months. As you can see, this blog hasn't been updated for a while and I've submitted nothing new to any of the outlets I write for since August. This post simply serves to say that this drought will be ending shortly. My latest article is with my editor and when ready will be posted here and elsewhere.

By way of mitigation for my lack of content I should mention that I have spent a considerable amount time at sea during the past 6 months and 7 weeks ago my wife gave birth to our beautiful baby daughter – so it's not like I've been sat on my hands since August. Anyway, watch this space for updates shortly.

LA Noire Review

My review of LA Noire has been published at Game Kudos. I found the game to be equal parts outstanding and disappointing. Overall, the technological achievements and the main game mechanics make for an excellent interactive gaming experience, however, the choice to root the game in Rockstar’s familiar formula of 3^rd person GTA style open world exploration detracts from an otherwise excellent adventure.

I think LA Noire could be a contender for game of the year but, unfortunately, I believe the game – as good as it is – promised so much more.

The kid’s aren’t alright: LA Noire’s children

Rockstar have a habit of keeping kids out of their games. The trend is bucked slightly in LA Noire but, with only their toe in the water, perhaps they should have stuck to their guns.

For obvious reasons Rockstar’s hit games, which pride themselves on believable rendering of entire cities and landscapes, are notably lacking in one human element: children. Being the purveyors of the kind of video game violence and questionable content that anti-gaming lobbyists love to pounce upon, its choice to keep the streets of Liberty City clear of innocent ankle biters saves the developer that particular political pitfall. Somehow mounting the curb with your stolen vehicle and mowing down a group of innocent passers-by while evading the LCPD would take a turn toward the sinister if mangled prams were among the wreckage in your rear-view mirror.

I approve of this choice, as nothing freaks me out more in gaming than kids. Be it Little Sister from BioShock, the child-like necromorphs from Dead Space 2 or even “normal” kids like those from Fallout 3’s birthday party, their presence in games is unnerving to me and, with the exception of John Marston’s son in Red Dead Redemption, their omission from my Rockstar diet is greatly appreciated. That is, until LA Noire.

The streets and parks of 1947 Los Angeles aren’t filled with children, and their absence simply makes the free-roaming aspect of the game feel like a GTA title, but during your investigations the story sees you interviewing one child and hounding the father of two others in front of them after telling them their mother had been murdered. Their odd responses to the devastating and life-changing events unfolding around them are somewhat unnerving, especially when conveyed using the game’s MotionScan technology, and I actually felt a deep pang of guilt as I condemned one of them to a life of state care.

These child characters serve a purpose in the game; they add a level of believability to the family dynamic of some of the homes you investigate in the course of the game’s cases, they provide a focal point for the reactions of some suspects to help you make your judgement on their guilt. However, because there are only a handful of child characters in a city of countless sprites, their presence in the game is also to its detriment. It leads to a nagging thought in the back of your mind when playing: Why is it there are no kids anywhere else in the game but for the few cut scene encounters in those investigations? It’s not something that spoils the overall enjoyment of the game, but combined with a couple of other aspects (like the ridiculous body count) it picks away at the mortar of a superbly written story, which is delivered - for the most part - in a refreshingly new and exiting way.

Unlike GTA and RDR, LA Noire has heavy focus on protecting the population of the city and hurting pedestrians as you speed through the streets chasing down bad guys is heavily discouraged. Indeed, the game prevents you from un-holstering your weapon at inappropriate times and collateral damage is kept lower than in any other similar title I can think of. With that in mind, and Rockstar’s choice to use child characters in the main narrative, I feel it should have made the braver step to infuse the game with a more believable age range within the city’s population. Not doing so simply highlights how out-of-place the ones that are there feel.

Army of One or a cog on a wheel?

To accurately represent warfare, games must engender a sense of collaboration toward an overarching strategic aim, not focus on the tactical weeds of individual effort.

Despite occupying a significant proportion of video game content, military titles of all genres fail to depict warfare accurately. FPS are fun and exciting, but ridiculous. The game pace, number of incidents and body counts familiar to FPS fans are to modern conflicts as Rambo movies are to guerrilla warfare: a cartoon depiction. In 2011, the average number of daily battle casualties per 100 troops in conflicts worldwide is 3 (source: The evolution of weapons and warfare, T.N. Dupuy). How does that compare to the attrition rate of 2010’s Medal of Honor? Players are divorced from the actions on-screen and are prone to taking extraordinary risk to achieve objectives. Without the fear that normally comes with danger, games simply can’t recreate the true feeling of being under fire. Even if players could somehow achieve empathy with their on-screen character, the way FPS single-player campaigns are designed results in players being constantly harried and channelled to follow pre-scripted actions to progress the story.

RTS military titles are engaging but outside of a despotic society no one person has so much control over the macro and the micro as is permitted by the genre. Even games like Civilization, Age of Empires or Command and Conquer, which incorporate the economic and societal elements of war, cannot give any player a faithful experience of commanding forces at any level. Although RTS games allow players to make the mental leap from the tactical to the strategic, the sheer scope of the faculty entrusted to them is unlike anything that would be experienced by any individual within any military or governmental organisation. To return to the emotional level, players simply don’t, and shouldn’t, care about the hundreds or thousands of units sent to their digital graves in pursuit of the overlord’s aims.

These are examples of the Army of One mentality of video games. Even in multiplayer focused military games the individual is king and players are out to clock up kills and demonstrate their prowess. The number of stakeholders in any military operation, not to mention a full-blown war, is mind blowing. From troops of all spheres of warfare to logisticians, planners and propagandists, politicians and media outlets, the list endless and all have an input to the effort. I’m not suggesting here that any game could simulate the complex nature of a conflict so accurately but highlighting the stark difference between the reality of such operations and how they are represented in our gaming entertainment.

Video game warfare is largely land-centric and it is for this reason, coupled with the individual nature of console ownership, that games don’t make the paradigm shift necessary to depict warfare as the collaborative effort that it actually is. One branch of warfare that is under-represented in games, but which by its very nature requires a collaborative approach, is naval warfare. Sea power is by far the most influential of military might. Navies can legally position aircraft carriers 12 miles off any coast on the planet and influence the area for hundreds of miles around the hull. Submarines can deny access to logistically vital sea-lanes by the mere suggestion of their presence and marines can be landed on any beach by amphibious units with little or no notice. The nature of naval operations means that fighting units – ships, submarines and aircraft - cannot be operated individually and require cohesive teamwork to effect such formidable and versatile weapons. However, from a gaming perspective, the largely individual nature of gaming precludes this vast and intriguing sphere of warfare from being fully explored.

Indeed, the most notable recent example of naval warfare in video games is that of Eidos’s Battlestations: Midway. The battle of Midway is a master class in the employment of naval air power and escort warfare. The world shaping exchange between the US and Japanese carrier fleets influenced the tide of the second World War and gave the US the foothold it needed to press its advance across the Pacific. The game representing these events was woefully below par, reducing the experience to a single-player, ultimate-control farce with one person effecting the navigation, gunnery and command of naval units all at once, so as to make the experience laughable.

The mantra of naval warfare - and indeed that of land and air warfare - is that each individual is a cog on a wheel, a small but vital component in the machine. Everyone knows their job and together they combine to fight the war as directed by those in command, who are in turn guided by the strategic aims laid out by an appropriate authority. Perhaps the only video game genre that could even attempt to replicate the intricate and complex essence of military operations is MMO. If players can make the mental shift away from the weeds of individual effort, and appreciate how fulfilling their role correctly - not for personal glory, but for the collective aim – can have a huge impact on the outcome of a conflict, then they would be much closer to understanding the reality of military effort than they would by running and gunning their way through a restricted shooter map.

As intriguing an idea as this is though, I doubt it would be a viable project. It can be argued that an accurate representation of the human mechanics of warfare is not the aim of these games and that escapist entertainment is the main goal. If players want to test their hand-eye co-ordination whilst enjoying an exaggerated - albeit entertaining - storyline and revel in impressive graphics and sound then the current crop of military titles meets this. However, if players want to experience war in accurately reproduced combat situations but without the physical dangers inherent in military service, then the selection of war games available fails to provide. The dichotomy is that any game that could accurately simulate warfare would be exactly that: a simulation. It would most likely be used to train military personnel and not to entertain the gaming public. After all is a more accurate understanding of the mechanics of war actually what gamers want? Probably not.

Falling out with New Vegas

I hate that I hate the conclusion of Fallout: New Vegas. The immersive and deep Fallout universe has had me hooked for years. The franchise’s detailed back-story, the spectrum of quirky characters and the freedom of story development all combined to create the most entertaining time sink I have experienced for a long time.

I am drawn into the style and themes of Fallout. I enjoy the 1950’s based b-movie aesthetic and the nostalgic homage to Americana shrouded in the grim realisation of cold war paranoia. I love the figurative tilt-of-the-hat to terrible sci-fi, the clunky and often ridiculous technology that could be lifted straight from Forbidden Planet or Flash Gordon. So much of the make-up of the game appeals to my inner geek. In both Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the story is engaging varied and can be approached from various angles depending on player disposition. The main story, the seemingly limitless number of side-quests and the ability to roam and explore endlessly combine to provide longevity of gameplay that far outstrips most other titles.

New Vegas’s gameplay isn’t a leap forward from Fallout 3, but I still enjoyed the mix of RPG and 1^st/3^rd person shooter. The game allows players to approach combat in a variety of ways, employing stealth, strength or guile to achieve their aims, lay waste to foes and progress toward a player-choice determined conclusion. Unfortunately, despite the best part of 70 hours of gameplay and a series of excellent quests and encounters, glitches and plot holes in the ending have left me deflated.

In the story strand that I followed, my ending resulted in an encounter with a character I had not yet met in the course of the game, but who greeted me as an old comrade and referred to a previous meeting and conversation that never happened. To my great annoyance at the height of the final battle the graphics became glitchy, although I had experienced glitches in-game prior to this juncture and an internet search has assured me that it’s not a universal problem. It’s because of the excellent gaming experience leading up to the end that the below standard conclusion annoys me as much as it has.

I do not expect the game to be perfect; perfect probably isn’t possible. However, considering the time and detail put into the game, these few problems at the crescendo of the game should have been ironed out. I’m not sorry I played New Vegas – it was my favourite game since Mass Effect 2 – but I am disappointed that I hated the execution of my story’s conclusion, if not the content. I don’t feel the urge to revisit it immediately and follow the other possible conclusions, but when I do get around to it I hope they will lead to a more complete understanding of the relationship between my character and the random NPC I encountered this time. Hopefully my 360 will choose not to glitch at the critical moment too.

Don’t kill The Walking Dead

Robert Kirkman’s ongoing, Eisener Award winning, epic comic book series, The Walking Dead, has thrilled and chilled readers since 2003. Recently, a TV adaptation secured a second series, and now Telltale Games has announced that the franchise is to be turned into a video game. We can only hope the transition to console doesn’t kill The Walking Dead.

I am a huge fan of the book and I enjoyed watching the TV series, although I did think it deviated a little too much from the comic. The main draw of the franchise has always been the great writing. In all good zombie fiction, the undead serve simply as vehicle for story telling. As terrifying as the flesh-eating fiends are, they are never the true enemy. They cause the downfall of human society, a situation so far outside of every day life that ordinary people are pushed to extraordinary limits, and thus we can explore the darker aspects of humanity. As with Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, World War Z and other great films and books of the genre, the most dangerous foe in zombie fiction is always us; the people whose weakness and actions in the face of adversity are their own undoing.

Telltale Games has an opportunity to create a great title from a great franchise, but my fear is that they may attempt to make the game challenging by introducing a variety of enemy types. In big release zombie games, zombies are commonly supplemented with “boss” enemies, such as Resident Evil’s dogs, crows and Tyrants. Left 4 Dead did an excellent job of representing a zombie horde (although the creatures are “infected” humans in the vein of 28 Days Later), but again relied on more ferocious creatures such as Boomers, Smokers and Tanks to add another layer of difficulty to the gameplay. Capcom’s Dead Rising managed to capture some of the Dawn of the Dead nostalgia by setting the game in a shopping mall and, for the large part, presenting the player with a zombie we would recognise from the George A Romero classics. Admittedly, the game was darkly comic and injected a great deal of fun into zombie killing, but even Capcom’s homage chose to modify the zombies, having them become faster and more dangerous at night than during the day.

The true horror of zombie fiction isn’t the graphic violence, the tearing of flesh from bone or the copious amounts of blood and gore, it’s the loss of individuality that results from being engulfed by them and the fear of becoming lost in the mindlessness of the horde. Kirkman’s creatures conform to the Romero paradigm of zombies - slow and lumbering, easy to avoid in small numbers but increasingly terrifying as their numbers swell. Ultimately, survival depends on groups working together in the face of a common enemy. It is my great hope for the game that it will remain true to this vision of zombies, and to Kirkman’s main narrative.

The greatest enemies presented throughout the comic book series are the array of psychopathic and self-interested characters that Rick Grimes, the series main protagonist, encounters, and this material provides a more than sufficient basis from which Telltale can draw. I look forward to the game, but very much hope that Telltale avoids creating other classes of the undead in an attempt to bolster gameplay, and represent such a great franchise in the manner it merits. My worry may be groundless, with Kirkman likely to work closely with the developers, but I truly hope they don’t kill The Walking Dead.