Christmas 1997 – The Year my World Shifted

Christmas 1997 – The Year my World Shifted

To this day I still look back to the Christmas of 1997 with a certain degree of envy. It was over that festive season that I went from being an avid, yet fairly typical, fan of videogames to something of an obsessive. It was the point at which I realised what videogames could be and how, in a manner not matched by any other medium of fictional storytelling, they could draw you into their worlds. It was a time in which I genuinely felt my world shift a little. Unfortunately, it was also the point at which I became something of a cynic.

It was Christmas Eve and, like every year up to that point in my thirteen short years on this planet, I was spending it with the rest of my family at my auntie’s house. With supper over, I decided to leave the adults to their wine and jazz music and headed upstairs to the study room. It was, I knew then, to be a monumental night… my last ever with my SNES.

Having pestered my mum with countless coercive notes and some not so subtle hints for over six months, I knew what laid ahead of me the next morning. I knew because I’d rummaged through the entire house looking for the thing two weeks prior… I was getting a Sony Playstation.

But still, my SNES was near and dear to me, and I wanted to honour the occasion by booting up one of the first games I ever owned on the system. Nope not one of the classics like Super Mario World or Mario Kart, but my much loved, FIFA International Soccer. Let’s see out the SNES with a bang I thought as I steered Brazil to a 15-0 win over Canada.

Not but 20 minutes had passed when my older (and by older I mean he was a grown-up!) cousin arrived at the door telling me to turn the thing off because he wanted to play something. Being the little brat that I was, I quickly told him where to go, but then I saw what was in his hands… Ohhh he’d only gone and brought up his very own Playstation… The SNES was unceremoniously ripped out from the back of the TV quicker than you can say “Whatgamesyagot?” and I sat their barely able to contain my excitement… CDs??? WOW! BLACK CDs???? OMG!!!!

But then what my cousin decided to play confused me beyond words. I sat there decidedly bummed out while he proceeded to play some game full of text and weird blocky characters. “Final Fantasy VII”, he said. “Oh”, I replied as I slumped down into my armchair in a sulk. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what I was looking at. Having never been exposed to the JRPG before (my 13 year old self was not even aware that there was such a thing) I had nothing with which to compare it.

A few minutes later there appeared a large red dragon type thing on the screen. “Neo Bahamut”, my cousin said. “Oh”, I replied. Well that seemed pretty cool. I was still utterly confused as to what was happening, but my interest was a piqued a little.

My cousin kept playing for a while before then deciding that he had probably better go back downstairs and socialise with the adults. He contemplated leaving the Playstation hooked up (so he could no doubt play some more later once I had gone to bed), but upon deciding that I was not to be trusted (rightly-so) he pulled out the cables and took the console away. Still in somewhat of a daze I hooked back up the SNES and booted up Super Mario All-Stars. But something wasn’t quite right. It all just felt a bit childish somehow. After five minutes I gave up. My confidence in my ability to enjoy this new breed of adult videogames was shot. Dare I say it, I even felt a little scared to receive my Playstation the next day. I went to bed and slept a fretful night.

Suffice to say, I opened my present in the morning and was immediately back in my comfort zone having also received the football management sim, Player Manager. That odd text-heavy game from the previous night now nothing more than some distant fever dream. Confidence was restored.

So it was then a couple of days later when I was out in town looking to spend my Christmas money on a shiny new game for my console that I came back into contact with it. The cover art so simple and uncluttered, the CD case double tiered and solid looking (it comes on THREE CDs??) and the name so obtuse and beguiling. I stood there for a good thirty minutes just reading the same blurb on the back of the box, entirely unsure as to what to do. Tomb Raider seemed the obvious choice here, but that strangely named blocky game kept pulling me back. After much deliberation I plucked up the courage and took the double tiered case to the counter and parted with forty of my Christmas pounds.

It would be easy for me to sit here and list off all my favourite moments from Final Fantasy VII and tell you how I think it’s the best game ever blah blah blah, but knowing how many articles there are already out there doing just that, I won’t. To my thirteen year old self, it truly was the greatest thing ever and I held that conviction for many years to come (backed up by a number of good friends who tended to agree with me), but I am now able to look back with more objective eyes and judge the game on its own merits and failings.

What is undeniable about my experience with Final Fantasy VII though, is that it set the early benchmark for what I demand in terms of narrative engagement from games. For many of its failings, the game is entirely successful in creating a world which you grow to care about.  The atmosphere is viscous and all-encompassing, the characters varied and charismatic. These many elements come together to form an eccentric yet cohesive whole that not many other games are able to match. Devoid of the blandness or mono-cultural focus of many mainstream games, Final Fantasy VII was able to flourish in its mash up of quirky and dystopian themes.

That is not to say that it actually is the best game of all time (neither objectively nor using my own subjective view point), as it has very much been surpassed in the years following its release (and by other games the preceded it). Other games have told better stories, have had more interesting worlds, have created more engaging characters and have delivered more impactful moments, but few have been able to draw me in to their clutches at quite the same level. It would be easy to dismiss this as simply a combination of nostalgia for the game and a youthful naivety on my part for not knowing that there was more skillfully created work out there, but I don’t think that is fair. Final Fantasy VII is lauded as being a landmark title and in my view justly so.

It is then something of a shame that its shadow still looms so large over my experience of videogames. As much as I try to enter into a new game entirely bias-free, I always end up making the same comparison – Do I love this game as much as my thirteen year old self loved Final Fantasy VII? But how could I? In 1997 I was young, naïve and primed to fall in love. In 2016, I am older, more haggard and a whole lot more cynical. In 1997 I was able to look past Final Fantasy VII’s failings and embrace its whole. In 2016 I am often unable to get past the slightest contradiction in a game’s narrative. In 1997 Final Fantasy VII set the bar unattainably high and then made the initial playing field decidedly uneven.

But if you ask me would I delete my memory of playing that game back in 1997, then the answer would have to be a very definite “no”. My world shifted a little back then and I remember my first adventure through those three black discs as acutely as if I were actually there. I feel the heat of Nibelheim in flame, I shiver in awe and trepidation as Sapphire Weapon approaches Junon and I shout in despair as Cloud hands the Black Materia to Sephiroth.

These are memories that will stay with me for the rest of my life and they are the reason why Final Fantasy VII will remain my most pivotal point in gaming. It may not be the best or even my favourite game of all time, but it is definitely my most cherished.

Firewatch and a Struggle for Identity

As the credits on Firewatch rolled and Etta James’ soulful tones whisked me up and out of Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, I could not help but give the slightest of shrugs.

Was Etta telling me to reproach myself for turning a blind eye to the suffering of Julia? Was she singing a wistful contemplation on my ultimately curtailed relationship with the Other Woman, Delilah? Or were her lyrics symbolising my wilful regression back into my guilt-ridden self? With this natural refuge now a blazing inferno of rapidly carbonising trees, self-imposed jail cells, homework copy books and the skeleton of a young child, my guess is that she was doing any, or all, three of them.

I feel like I was predisposed to like Firewatch. I don’t just have a patience for this new breed of narrative driven “walking simulators”, I actually like them. I would even go as far as to say that they have been some of my favourite experiences of this current generation (see previous post on The Chinese Room’s Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture for more on that). So, it is then somewhat surprising that I walked away from Firewatch with such a feeling of ambivalence.

There is a lot to like about Firewatch. In fact, it starts on the exact right foot. The introduction skilfully and sensitively sets up your (Henry’s) backstory and motive. You are lost and you are desperately seeking validation. And in the shadow of your partner’s rapid decline into Alzheimer’s disease, and your actions around that heart-breaking situation, who wouldn’t be? I’ve never had to deal with such an issue in my own life, and I can only imagine how incredibly hard it must be to do so, but Firewatch was able to elicit a genuine emotional response in me that not many games have done so before. By the time I arrived at my tower and got my first look out over the jumble of peaks, troughs and interconnecting pathways of the Shoshone National Forest, I felt the scene was just right for a journey deep into my guilt and insecurities. (Surprise! I enjoy pretentious games!)

Delilah, my mirror, my validation, my partner in crime, my tormentor, welcomed me through the gates into this world of purgatory in the only way she knows how… by being inappropriately forward in her tone and questioning. Ten minutes in and I was setting myself up for a real slog through the rest of the game as I was forced to deal with this inane woman on the other end of the radio. However, being the generally polite creature that I am when in unfamiliar surroundings, I tried to respond as amicably as possible. This was hardly the time to cast off the weighted shackles with which I ascended up to the tower, but equally I could not simply dismiss this other person who is just trying to say hello. Thankfully, her chatter was brief and I was soon able to go to bed. It had been a long fourteen years and I just needed a little time to process things.

A couple of hours later, and contrary to my expectations, I actually found myself missing Delilah’s voice when it wasn’t there. The world felt muted without it. Perhaps that is the nature of being deep in a forested northern wilderness like Shoshone where silence is the norm (a jungle city of wildlife it is not), but as time moved on I increasingly found myself contacting her on the merest of pretences (yes, I wish to report an abandoned outhouse, please… Now give me another wise crack to take my mind off the crushing guilt of it all). Delilah was both the person to interrupt my descent into mental self-flagellation and also the one to facilitate it, depending on my willingness to divulge, and I quickly came to rely on her. As questionable as some of her own decisions that summer were, and as socially awkward as she could be, Delilah was the lifeline with which I dragged myself over to and out the other side. I could not imagine Firewatch without her.

As I’m sure you can tell, I very much enjoyed this aspect of my time with Firewatch. The game managed to confound my early misgivings and create, in a very short space of time, a solid sense of friendship with this dismembered voice at the other end of a virtual radio, and for that it deserves a lot of praise. However, it is also the point at which my enjoyment of the game begins to waiver.

I tried not to read or listen to too much about this game before playing it, but one of the few comments I did hear being floated around was that it had something of the air of a 70s thriller. And sure enough, it did contain many of the elements you would expect to find in such films, riffing hard on the intrigue and conspiracy leanings of movies such as The Conversation (only this time YOU are the one being listened to). Towards the opening half of the game, this is the element that dominates, and the atmosphere is neatly wrapped in a blanket of unease and tension. However, as you move further forward and the in-game calendar gathers momentum, you begin to learn more and more about the story of Ned and Brian, a sad and ultimately tragic tale of a slightly unhinged father and his young son.

While Ned and Brian’s story was an interesting and moving one on its own (albeit slightly tempered by the underwhelming reveal in which you discover the fate of Brian), it was disappointing for me to discover that, in the end, the two narrative threads tied together so definitively. Of course, the lack of an actual conspiracy to transcended the obsessions of yet another guilt-ridden male hiding out in the woods may actually lend the game a greater sense of realism than it would have had should it have ran with the government meddling plot device employed earlier, but personally I was in it for the wilder and more fantastical trip and what I was served was not what I had ordered.

This is a tough point for me to argue, as I am sure there are many people out there who prefer the direction the story took, but I can only speak about how I felt after the game and what I felt was just a little underwhelmed. After such a strong opening narratively speaking, the latter half of the game, to me at least, simply whimpered away into a bit of an anti-climax. I wanted the tension ratcheted up to unbearable levels, but what I actually got was a bit of a soggy bottom.

My hesitations in wholeheartedly recommending this game also stretch to other areas of the game (both in terms of execution and design).

While having such a strong and real-time through-narrative was a wholly welcome change of pace for the “walking-sim” genre, it did also have the perhaps undesired effect of stopping me from fully exploring my environment (and therefore uncovering some of the subtler aspects of the environmental storytelling). Compelled to press on in the interests of maintaining narrative momentum, I often found myself at pains to not leave the main path and explore the map in all its minute detail. However, saying that, I do not know to what extent this would even be possible should I have given in to this impulse to explore, as on the few occasions that I did find myself wondering off into the bush (more often than not as a result of being lost), I found myself either blocked by an obstacle to which I did not have the tools with which to pass, or alternatively urged by Delilah to stick to my objective. Given that I have talked in the past about the momentum killing effects of open exploration on narrative driven games (see post on The Witcher: Wild Hunt) I am aware of sounding churlish here, but ultimately it is something I came away from the game feeling very acutely.

Even putting all these narrative-based concerns aside, there are still the enormous performance issues that plague the PS4 version to contend with. I am not typically somebody who would be too hung up on drops in frame-rate and pop-in etc. (I have no problems enjoying Fallout 4 for example), but the constant stuttering I encountered during my playthrough of Firewatch was enough to drive me to distraction and to even consider leaving the game alone until patched. I stuck with it in hope that I would simply acclimatise, but from start to finish the game was a mess in terms of final execution. I could perhaps understand if I was looking at something breathtakingly beautiful, but while looking pretty, Firewatch is far from stunning. I like the art, and I like the world Campo Santo made, but performance issues like those I encountered left me with a definite bitter taste in my mouth when I finally put the controller down. Maybe what Etta was actually getting at was for me to close my eyes and experience the game solely on the audiosphere? Hmmmm…..

Firewatch was a confusing experience for me. I enjoyed my time with the game in a lot of ways, but that time was also tinged with a few elements that simply did not sit particularly well with me. Most of these elements are probably more down to my own sensibilities than through objective failings in the game’s design (and in truth I have enjoyed the game more in hindsight now that I have had the time to process it), but whereas I came into it expecting to love it, I left it in something of a huff (yeah, cheers for ditching me Delilah!).

The emotions run deep in Shoshone and the writers deserve a lot of credit for the way they introduced such a sobering and mature, yet subtly delivered conversation in a medium that generally struggles to produce more thoughtful narratives without becoming overblown and overly saccharine. It is just a shame for me that the final narrative hook that pulls you over the finishing line was so blunt.

Trying to Break Back into the JRPG with Persona 4 Golden

Despite being in the somewhat enviable position (depending on your perspective) of being a Japanese videogame translator, I have traditionally taken little away from my time with JRPGs. Well that is not strictly true in that, like many of my age, I did spend far too much time in my early teens obsessing over classics such as Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, Tales of Mana etc., but in general, as time has passed, my interest in the genre has faded. I dabbled in the beautiful Ni no Kuni on the PS3 and also in later entries in the Final Fantasy series (even managing to derive some element of pleasure from XII), but otherwise the genre has been lost to me for over a decade now.

But when passing through the pages and forums of the gaming magazines and websites I respect and enjoy, I all too often come across the sentiment that I am missing out on something truly special if I do not give the Persona series a fair chance. Not doing so, it seems, is at best just being willfully ignorant, and at worst tantamount to sacrilege. So when Persona 4 Golden appeared on a recent PSN sale I felt compelled to purchase it. Despite my leanings away from the genre, I was curious and was eager to see what all the fuss was about. I did not go in expecting to be converted to a JRPG fan overnight, but I did hope to gain some insight into what it was that inspired such fandom in so many people.

First impressions were entirely favourable. A grounded and slightly sinister animated opening followed by an unorthodox, yet intriguing, set up. The game brimmed with potential. I couldn’t wait to see how it explored the many complexities of Japanese teenage-life, balancing the often contradictory demands of attending class, taking exams, forging an identity, making friends, avoiding bullies and dealing with an existence in a strange and slightly alien countryside town. Add to that a narrative thread that promised to delve into the complex relationship between your now guardian uncle, a single-father all too often absent through work, and his precocious yet lonely daughter, and I was hooked. As the first day of school ended with police sirens and a dead body dangling awkwardly over a household’s television aerial, I felt like I was on the verge of something great.

It is difficult to say exactly when it was that Persona 4 Golden lost me, but by the time I saw the credits roll all I felt was elation that I had finally escaped the drudgery. So much of the promise shown early on in the game had given way to the exact same trappings that had turned me off other titles in the genre previously, namely repetition and a puerile take on storytelling. What could have been unique and interesting side activities, such as going to football practice or joining a social club, quickly became dull, monotonous experiences that were nothing but a chore to sit through. What promised to be a mature look at teenage life was soon watered down to a level that would make Saved by the Bell appear edgy in comparison.

Grinding, be it through these side activities or through the main game’s dungeons (in their various forms), is, like every other JRPG I have played, a central core to the game’s progression. For all the subtleties involved in the Persona and Social Link systems, the battles still essentially come down to a contest of stats, and that, after a while, just becomes a slog. Fail to level yourself up enough and you run the risk of being defeated in one fell swoop, regardless of your approach to the battle. Now I will freely admit that it is unfair of me to hold this one aspect against the game when levelling up is common throughout many genres (and is present in many games that I love), but when it is combined with the uninspired JRPG dungeon-crawl then I simply cannot find enjoyment within its structure.

I could perhaps forgive the side activities at least if there was some element of interactivity to master in them, but the game would not even give me that. Instead what I got was a number of short and almost entirely passive scenes through which the game delivered me boosts in certain personality stats. Again this can almost be looked past given that some of these mini-dramas were actually quite interesting in concept, if not execution, but the truth is that when my time in the town of Inaba came to an end I felt a lonely character. Upon reaching a max level social bond with my football teammates they suddenly stopped asking me to practice. Upon achieving the maximum level bond with Chie, she suddenly stopped asking me to go out on dates. Sure, I may have achieved certain unique abilities or boosts in battle and in my Persona card dealings through these friendships, but from a story perspective what was the point in my spending so much time with these people? I guess I could always have tried to become better friends with Yosuke or Yukiko or whoever, but as I found their personalities a little grating, why would I force myself through that? It’s a role playing game after all and I played the role as close to reality as it would allow me. Maybe my ultimate loneliness says more about me than the game, but still that is how I chose to play the game and that is as valid as any other way.

If I come across as a little cynical then I guess it is because the game genuinely promised so much, but ultimately (for me) delivered little. Even when I thought it was going to be brave enough to tackle the issue of a young male character (Kanji) learning to accept his apparent homosexuality it pulled up short. I have read interviews with the developers explaining that they wanted the gamer to draw their own judgements on whether Kanji actually was or wasn’t gay, and heard arguments from others defending the assertion that Japanese sensibilities to these issues do not naturally accommodate such black or white conclusions, but for me that is a cop-out. The game goes to great lengths to show us how every other character MUST come to accept their true selves if they are to be happy, yet with Kanji that acceptance seems to be one of accepting that he is in limbo rather than one of accepting his true feelings (be they gay, straight or bi). It is just another example for me of the infantile approach the game takes to what are actually incredibly interesting issues. The same can be laid at the feet of the story between Nanako and her father. The game constantly hints at their fraught relationship, yet never has the balls to confront it directly. There are moments, such as Ryotaro coming home drunk and aggressive, or Nanako’s desire for her “big bro” to keep her company where it comes close to breaching this wall, but again the conclusions are always skin deep. Perhaps if I had chosen to develop my bond with Nanako further then I may have learned more, but through the prism of my playthrough I found the whole affair shallow and more than a little disappointing.

Persona 4 Golden is a game that has a decidedly partisan fan base, and I doubt my thoughts on the game will do anything to change that. As with all opinions they are entirely subjective, and what I might take from a game will be completely different to what the next person will. Therefore , I do not wish to denigrate others who did actually enjoy their experience with the game, just simply express a counterpoint to what seems to be a commonly held assertion that this is a classic of the genre. Sure, many of my opinions are probably clouded by my general dislike of JRPG tropes, but I would like to think myself old and experienced enough to overcome these biases. I gave the game a fair crack of the whip, and for a while, I was right there with it. But when I took that last train out of Inaba and back to the big city I felt little in the way of sadness or longing. I simply felt relieved that I could finally leave that episode in my life behind.

Did Persona 4 Golden re-spark my interest in the JRPG genre? Sadly, the answer would have to be no. If it would have had the confidence to stick to its early guns and tell a more thoughtful and mature story with none of the more monotonous genre trappings then I might be sitting here singing its praises, but as it is I find myself exhausted, deflated and in dire need of venting. I think for me, the genre will forever be defined by my first experience with Final Fantasy VII, and while I accept that many love this style of game and find no frustrations in the places where I do, in the end it is probably best I just accept (as the game wills me to do) that I simply do not like it. Final Fantasy XV though… Hmmmm

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Review – PS4

The air in the fictional Shropshire village of Yaughton, the setting for The Chinese Room’s latest offering Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, is suffused with sadness. As you walk its picturesque yet empty lanes and streets melancholia lingers restlessly, desperately seeking a soul unto which it can impart its story before time renders it diffuse. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is an experience that could not exist in any time but now, yet equally is one that lies squarely within the millennia-old traditions of human story-telling.

“We leave nothing behind but our stories, and the hope that others will tell them”. These words from Iain Banks hounded my time in Yaughton, and more than two days after the credits rolled, I find myself still unable to shake the sentiment. In a period of profound uneasiness over the future of our species on this planet, The Chinese Room have asked us to explore the question as to what our legacy would be if we were to suddenly depart this plain. In the minds of designer Andrew Crawshaw and director Jessica Curry that legacy would be the idyllic rural English villages of their childhood memories.

It is on a glorious warm summer’s afternoon on the 6^th June, 1984 that the story of this very British apocalypse unfolds. Something has happened at the observatory and the village finds itself faced with the unusual prospect of being under military quarantine. Played out in audio logs, the explanation as to why Yaughton, and presumably the entire world is so suddenly devoid of life is revealed piece by piece through radio broadcasts and telephone conversations found throughout the village and the surrounding countryside. Many of these snippets of information take time and patience to seek out, but ultimately how much of this you hear is dependent entirely on you and your desire to hear it. You may end your time in Yaughton none the wiser as to what has befallen its people, but in a game that constantly encourages you to look to the skies and use your imagination this should not be necessarily taken as a negative.

However, it is in the tales of its people that the real Yaughton story is told. Revealed little by little through the faint echoes of light found throughout the map, the final day of the villagers is acted out with a warmth and humanity only to be found in the trials and tribulations of the everyday. Despite the military occupancy and rumours of a conspiracy, the interactions between the villagers remain remarkably grounded and even mundane. Beyond one local woman remarking her surprise at there being a soldier with a rifle in Shropshire, the villagers seem at times barely concerned at what is happening around them. There are conversations that do touch upon the greater issues of race and religion, but on the whole the 6^th June, 1984 is no different to any other pleasant summer’s day.

Yet, it is also within these quiet moments between the village folk that the greatest emotional impact of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is to be found. Be it the fraught and exhausted nerves of one mother too afraid to venture upstairs for fear of what she may find awaiting her, or the unquestioning belief by an elderly resident that the jets passing by overhead are there to rescue them from whatever evil has taken root within Yaughton, it is in these gentle scenes that the heart strings are pulled at the hardest. As you look once again to the beautiful night sky above, it is this time the words of Carl Sagan that feel the most apt: “In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

The village of Yaughton itself is also drawn with an enviable clarity of vision. Not all of us may be lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been brought up in such idyllic surroundings, but the thick sense of nostalgia dripping from each mantelpiece and rotary dial is tangibly real (at least to those of us from the British isles). Much of this extended mise-en-scène (an occasional Commodore 64 or a menu board listing a bag of chips for just 10p for example), is incidental to the story itself and serves mainly as grounding for the period, but hidden throughout are also numerous other more telling props, placed deliberately with the purpose of adding extra contextual details to events. These props, be they a spilt pot of paint, or a trestle table in the meeting hall covered in half-drunk cups of tea, all lend a heartfelt, yet subtle poignancy to the experience that less thoughtful eyes may have missed.

All of this is executed with a beautifully keen aesthetic. For those of us not spoilt by the graphical capabilities of more powerful PCs, the village of Yaughton and its surrounding countryside, bathed in a Constable-esque summer’s glow, shine warmly and invitingly. From the perfectly rendered side path separating two neighbours’ gardens, adorned with all the vivid colours and flowers of late spring, to the lonely windmill perched atop the gently undulating hills of the Shropshire countryside, every element lovingly brings to mind the exact time and place. They say you should always write about what you know because it lends an intimacy that is wholly welcoming to others, and it is difficult to deny that train of thought when working your way through Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.

When it finally came down to it, it seems that the end of the world in Yaughton was somewhat of a gentle experience. There was no looting, no mass violence, no roaming gangs of cannibals preying on the weak. There was a determined attempt by all to just carry on and to not make a fuss. The rapture arrived and people decided what was best was to have a cup of tea and put on a play of Peter Pan for the youngsters. It was British understatedness at its most heartfelt and at its very best.

When we depart this planet, what is it we will leave behind? What is it that would we choose to leave behind? Personally, I think we could do a lot worse than leave behind the village of Yaughton.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

The Chinese Room

Robert Hill

Problems Combining Coherent Narrative in Third Person Open World Games, The Witcher: Wild Hunt

So I woke up this Saturday morning full of beans. The football (soccer) season was starting up again and for once my weekend was completely free of obligations. Great I thought, I’ll boot up my PS4, get a few matches of Rocket League in, get through a few races in Project Cars and then dedicate a solid six or so hours into the Witcher. I live in Ireland and so therefore can avoid the guilt of not doing more wholesome outdoor activities instead. Sounds perfect.

And Rocket League and Project Cars were just that. I got exactly what I wanted out of those two games… Fun.

BUT then I loaded up The Witcher…

Not but five minutes in I found my eyes gazing over at what my partner was reading on her computer (recipes for some kind of healthy smoothie)…

On screen Geralt was talking to some fat cockney about a bard named Dandelion… I had apparently wronged the Cockney somehow and he was a bit put out by it.

I tried to focus to try and get myself back in the game, but try as I might, my partner’s screen kept drawing me back.

So what was the issue? Was it that my mood just was’t suited to playing a fantasy style RPG on this Saturday afternoon? Was it that I just really fancied a smoothie made out of oats and kale? Or was is that I was just bored of the Witcher?

Well the truth is it was none of these.

It’s true I was bored, but I don’t think it was the Witcher itself that I was bored by.

The Witcher is a beautiful looking game and I won’t deny that I’ve had a lot of fun riding around its world exploring its various nooks and crannies over the 30+ hours I’ve spent on the game thus far. But over the course of this play time I have found myself becoming increasingly detached from the central story of the game and therefore from Geralt.

I have thought long and hard about why this is the case, and I think I have managed to work out why.

It would be too easy and unfair of me to simply dismiss the story-telling as below par, as I have certainly given games with similar or even more poorly written narratives a free-ride in the past. Sure, The Witcher isn’t Dickens, but I think that bar a few exceptions we generally set lower bars for video games than we do for other narrative mediums. That’s fine, the nature of our interaction with the medium is different and therefore our expectations are also.

What I think is really the issue with The Witcher is the disconnect between player, a third-person Geralt and a quest-based mission structure.

CD Project have clearly put a lot of thought into their side and sub quests and for the most part have done so to good effect. However, by offering the player these secondary quests (including Witcher contracts) I feel that they have inadvertently diluted the flow of the game’s main through-line.

In a first-person game, such as say Fallout or the Elder Scrolls series, this effect is largely mitigated by the perspective (and therefore by its immediacy). How you choose to tackle the game is on you. You created your character and you essentially inhabit that world as your own digital avatar. What you do is your decision. Don’t want to chase that dragon? Don’t want to hunt after your missing father? Don’t worry about it. There’s plenty of caves and vaults for you to explore instead. The world maybe coming to an end, but you can afford to be lackadaisical about it. Your accuracy with a Chinese Assault Rifle will ensure the job gets done when you’re good and ready.

But change that perspective to an authored figure and that camera to an over the shoulder one, and cracks in the mission-based structure begin to appear.

Geralt does not suffer fools gladly and pays short shrift to time-wasters. He has a girl to find after all. But these bumbling peasants and devious lords and ladies are being frustratingly tight lipped with their information. However, you’re in luck, running errands seems to be the global lip lubricator you’ve been looking for. It’s easy… head out into the fields, examine some footprints, kill a wraith, examine the remains of little Jenny and then return to divulge the whole sordid affair to the grieving mother and father. These devastating stories will pull at your heartstrings in what is ultimately a sad, sad world, but in return they will tell you that they saw the one you seek two blocks down not but three days ago. Happy days!

The hunt is back on! No time to waste!

But then, given how apparently imperative it is that Geralt finds Ciri as soon as possible, why does he insist on stopping every 100 metres to help all and sundry with menial fetch quests and their provincial murder/werewolf mysteries? It’s not like he needs the money. The main quest line offers plenty of moolah, and if financing is required in the short term then I’m sure there are some corpses he could pilfer a few florens from. Does he just have a good heart? Nope, not even that. Geralt makes it clear that witchers have severely stunted emotional growth, having barely evolved anything more complex than contempt since they were expelled from the royal stromatolite lineage of Oxenfurt many ages ago.

No, we know the reason why he does it. It’s because we, as consumers, demand that this beautiful world that CT Project have created be more than just an empty shell. We demand that we be paid recompense for spending the past 30 minutes of our humdrum lives trekking through dense virtual swamp and vegetation to the furthest reaches of the map. We want there to be a reason for us to get there other than simply the achievement of doing so. We quest for those question marks.

But then, don’t you have to find this girl before those ghost pirates do? Perhaps they’re off busy helping some old hag in the fields also? Perhaps…

You see, for me, the nature of the authored narrative in this game becomes redundant once you’ve spent more than five minutes away from it. How could it not when you’ve spent 60+ hours diving for treasure and no more than 10 on the very thing you’ve been placed in this world to do?

But this doesn’t have to be the case. For an example of how to maintain narrative interest in a third person game look at The Last of Us. Joel and Ellie’s adventure keeps you engaged not because of the game’s mechanics, but because it is mature and confident enough to stick to its core story. Would the game have been so effective if you were given the freedom to do side quests for the Fireflies? Almost certainly not. The authors knew they had a good story to tell and they ran with it.

Now I know comparing The Last of us and The Witcher may seem unfair as they are on the surface completely different games, but when it comes down to it they both share an authored core and both want desperately to tell a story that is affecting and, for want of a better word, mature.

Could CD Project learn from Naughty Dog’s example? Could The Witcher not enforce a playthrough of its main story with no diversions before then opening up the world for the secondary stuff? Given the effort that has gone into the writing of the game, does it not seem reasonable that the main quest be given the structure it deserves? I know this would entail lots of those immersion-breaking artificial borders restricting where you could and couldn’t go in the world during this period, but if the narrative imperative was strong enough then I’m sure such restrictions could be justified within the walls of its own fiction.

As it stands, I feel like I will struggle to re-involve myself back in The Witcher’s world in any meaningful way because, quite simply, I have lost my way within its structure. This is extremely sad because clearly the game stands up on so many other levels. It just happens to have drowned itself in its own substance.

For me, if the developer chooses the third person perspective (i.e. controlling an authored avatar) along with a driven through-story, then the imperative should be on bringing the player on that journey as the author originally intended. The game’s open world would still exist, but just within its own post-story state. Geralt can stop and take in the views once he’s found Ciri.

Perhaps CD Prokect could look to Rockstar for another example of how to author third-person open world experience such as this. GTA V succeeds where The Witcher fails because of the pacing of the main story. At what point main and side quests will be given to you is handled carefully, and as a result you rarely lose sight of what your ultimate purpose in the game is.

The Witcher is a great game in many ways and CD Project seem like an awesome studio who care passionately about their fan-base, but unfortunately I am afraid that I am unlikely to see their latest release through to its final conclusion. And that is sad for me as I can see that it is a product of real quality.

Tonight, I intend on starting Everybody Has Gone to the Rapture. It will be interesting to see how their radically different take on presenting narrative compares.