The Escapist Bulletin: Shooting the breeze

Themes, subtext and allegory may be the bread and butter of literature, but they are not terms that are often applied to gaming. While video games have made impressive strides in the last 30 years, they are still wrestling with leaving behind behind their arcade origins, and it is the act of making the process of play enjoyable that is the focus – and that is sometimes incompatible with a complex story.

You need look no further than a game like Resident Evil, which has writing so bad that you could almost start to believe that it is deliberately so, and it becomes very apparent that fun gameplay will often trump a compelling story. Sure, there are games like BioShock or Silent Hill 2 that deal with philosophy, morality and madness, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. It’s a rare game that deliberately dabbles in metaphor.

But just because something isn’t there by design, doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find, and developers often say more than they realise. District 9 director Neill Blomkamp was attached to the aborted Halo movie, and recently expressed his fondness for the franchise’s setting in an interview. In that same interview, he also offered the opinion that Master Chief was a victim of the Military-Industrial complex. Was it Bungie’s intention to portray the character as a cog in a system that would collapse without a never-ending cycle of conflict and bloodshed?

Who cares?

If Blomkamp’s interpretation is indeed the idea that Bungie intended to convey, then he is a very perceptive man, and if it isn’t, then he’s found something rich and compelling in a franchise about a marine killing aliens on giant hoops in space. It’s a win/win situation – like mathematics if subtraction had never been invented.

It’s incredibly difficult to detract from a game by exploring its story, unless you go picking holes in it, and it can be quite educational and incredibly interesting to see what video games say about us as a culture. Resident Evil may have some of the worst dialogue in gaming history, but it wasn’t designed in a vacuum. It’s the product of decades of movies and other media, which in turn have their roots in centuries-old folklore.

Moreover, it’s a Japanese interpretation of an American genre, and also touches upon the recurring Japanese theme of the dangers of science left unchecked. There’s a lot to talk about in just that one game, a game that is renowned for the poor quality of its writing, no less.

One day there will be students studying this at university, talking about the complete works of Ken Levine, or the early survival horror period. It will become stratified and defined, and while it will be respected, it will never be as free as it is right now. Maybe your vision of Halo is a culture reminiscent of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, where military service is seen as the finest thing a person can do, and the elite SPARTANs are seen as the very peak of humanity.

Well then, maybe you should go and tell someone.