During Round 2 of the inaugural edition of Vs. Mode, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo declared that God of War II is one of the first sequels that is unable to outstrip its predecessor because the original was simply too good to be surpassed--and that this represents a step forward for the medium. We responded with a close reading of the game's take on Greek myths, and dared to draw an analogy between the two God of Wars and the first two "Godfather" movies. In Round 3, Totilo came out of his corner rope-a-dope style, shifting the "previously recorded" email conversation to which gaming mechanics he liked and which ones he didn't. We decided to hang back as well, setting aside assertions of God of War II's greatness in favor of a meditation on the importance of tightly binding story to gameplay. We'd
like you to join the discussion, so be sure to add your own
comments in the message boards.
***
To: N'Gai Croal
Fr: Stephen Totilo
Date: March 21, 2007
Re: It's All Greek to Me
N'Gai,
I read what you're saying, but it's all Greek to me!
Oh, how I've been waiting to use that line. Thank you, thank you.
I
don't think I was mis-remembering the first game. It was a revenge
quest, ultimately involving Kratos' guilt and desire to reclaim his
family. I care about that more than the reclaim-the-Macguffin-sword
motivation of War II.
And did you see at GDC that Peter
Molyneux is talking about the need for gamers to care about the
characters in games more as well? Peter's with me, so long as this
isn't another one of his acorn stories. We're in the gaming age of
Aquarius, man. It's all about feelings.
I would like to continue
relishing in this rare victory of an older game to not be surpassed by
its sequel. That hasn't happened as often as I think it's going to in
the future.
I like your anti-hero reading of God of War II,
though I do want to test you on that. To anyone who hasn't read their
Edith Hamilton, the God of War II versions of Perseus and Prometheus
and their ilk might seem like just another set of grunting evil bosses
and helpless NPC's. Do you feel the game does a sufficient job of
setting up their mythological, noble characters? Or does it suffice to
you that people will only share your reading of the game if they know
the lore. Certainly it's clear that Kratos is no class act; I get that
when I'm tapping the circle button to make sure he's ramming a guy's
head in the door. But the heroic nature of the people he encounters is
likely lost on those not steeped in the myths. The solution may have
been to include dossiers, cut scenes or some other element that would
take you out of the gameplay, and who's a fan of that?
(May I
share one possible end-run around that? It's one of my crackpot ones:
include some Cliffs Notes on the lore that can be uploaded to PSP. So I
play a PS2 or PS3 game at home; and then study up on the back-story
while I'm on the road. Hell, (Hades?) I'll even take some
story-buffering cutscenes for my PSP and watch them on the go too.
Take anything that would bring me outside of the game and bring it to
me when I'm outside the game, on my Sony handheld. Are you with me? No?
OK. How about using the PSP as a rear-view mirror? Nope. Didn't think
that would do it for you either.)
Back to Kratos and game. I'm
writing this letter to you on a Wednesday. That's fitting, because, as
in an episode of Lost, you've let my pressing questions from last time
go unanswered. You did tease me, though, with the notion that you're
going to share what you think are the game's big successes and its
areas in need of more improvement. I want to join in.
Stuff I've been digging:
- Player-friendly
check-pointing: I like a game that allows me good forward momentum.
That doesn't mean I don't like backtracking. I love a good Metroid. But
when I die in a game, I don't want to have to do too much over. God of
War II respects its player's achievements and rarely forced me to
re-play a challenge I'd already conquered.
- Fast climbing. I
appreciate a good climbing animation as much as the next guy, which
probably isn't very much at all. So let's hear it for the team at Sony
Santa Monica who made their anti-hero the kind of world-beater who can
double-time it up and down the sheer face of a cliff. This guy Kratos
kicks boxes; he speed-climbs; he climbs-down extra-fast. Next you're
going to tell me I don't even have to waste my time angling the camera
for the best view of the action. This is indeed a user-friendly game.
- Good
gesture controls. Sources say that the Dualshock controller for PS2 has
no motion control. I consider this fact about as solid as the notion
that Sixaxis will never have rumble. The first God of War capably
demonstrated that the twisting off of a Gorgon's head is rightly
triggered by the twisting of an analog stick under the thumb. The
second one does too. Whether this is the kind of move you want to feel
good about triggering is for another debate. I also believe that
sometimes the best gesture control is a good button-mash. Nothing gets
a player's body more physically into a tense moment like the
requirement to frantically spam an action button while an enemy is
trying to muscle their sword past Kratos' guard. My whole upper body's
going rigid while I'm crushing that button. Not all gesture control
needs to involve swinging controllers to and fro.
Stuff I haven't been digging:
- Subweapons.
I hate when I feel like I'm missing out on something important. I hate
even more when I can't tell if the thing I'm missing out on is
important. Where some see beautiful choice in the ability of a video
game character to have more weapons and subweapons than is needed to
finish a game, I instead see wretched over-abundance. Please,
developers, give me less! Seriously. I understand that some people
actually pay full price for their games. Those people might feel
they've gotten their money's worth only if the need to level all
sub-weapons via a second play-through extends their overall play-time
of the disc to more than 100 hours. But I think Cory Barlog and Co.
deliver a full-price experience with that first play-through. I don't
feel ripped off. But am I missing something because I chose to power up
the mighty hammer and not the staff that shoots pink energy? Why did I
need a choice, unless there's some Freudian litmus test going in here
that Sony is using to profile my future purchases?
- Block-pushing.
Being able to kick blocks into their proper alignment was a God of War
advance. A God of War II advance would have been to kick block puzzles
out of the game. They've only been worth having in these games if it
leads to a scene in a God of War movie in which the lead actor has to
to push a bunch of giant blocks around to open a door. Make that scene
10 minutes. Put it right between big action scenes. Not awesome? Then
why's it in my game? Kratos is such a tough guy, I should be able to
press L2 and force some minions into pushing the blocks for me or
something.
I'm going to keep my pros-to-cons count at 3-2 for
now, just so I can seem like the positive one this time around. Take it
away, N'Gai.
***
To: Stephen Totilo
Fr: N'Gai Croal
Date: March 25th, 2007
Re: What Porn and Videogames Have in Common
Stephen,
I accept your assertion that you cared more about the reasons behind
Kratos' quest for vengeance in the original God of War than in the
sequel. And I agree with Peter Molyneux' desire to create more
characters that we care about in games. But answer this question for
me: how much did you care about Kratos during the gameplay
as opposed to during the cutscenes? The challenge that all videogames
face, and action games in particular, is that a) the ratio of gameplay
to storytelling is 95-5 or higher; and b) what little story there is
must be spread over 8-12 hours of gameplay. How much would we care
about John McClane in "Die Hard" or Neo in "The Matrix" if the ratio of
action sequences to regular narrative was 95-5? (That ratio of action
to story reminds me of another medium that Doom creator John Carmack
once famously compared the purpose of plot to: porn.) At the same time,
people come to videogames for interactivity, so inverting that ratio
isn't the solution.
Story is what makes us care about a
character, but in the vast majority of videogames, the story is simply
the context for the gameplay, rather than the story being woven into
the fabric of the gameplay, right down to the game mechanics
themselves. A terrific example of the latter is Ico, where one the
game's core story value--the chivalry and protectiveness displayed by a
boy towards a blind older girl--is actually expressed far more
emotionally in the gameplay than in the handful of cutscenes. The
designers' use of inverse kinematics to allow the boy to guide the girl
ahead at a walk or yank her forward at a run; their cleverly writing
her blindness into the story as a cover for the just-reasonably
accurate pathfinding that allows the boy to call her to him--all of
this is near-perfectly realized in the game. And it's why the majority
of the people who played Ico say that they were moved by the game.
The
original God of War achieved this only once, but when it did, it was by
far the game's most memorable segment. It is, of course, the part of
the game where Kratos must protect the souls of the wife and son that
he inadvertently slew from an army of Kratos doppelgangers. Here, God
of War a) recontextualizes one of the game's well-established
mechanics--the Circle button grapple attack--as an animation that pulls
his wife and son into an embrace that; b) heals the wounds they've
suffered at the hands of his doppelgangers, but at the expense of
Kratos' own health, forcing you to; c) continually weigh the health of
Kratos against that of his wife and son, because if either dies, it's
game over, but best of all; d) it expresses Kratos' moral and spiritual
degradation with a compelling metaphor--you as Kratos, defending
yourself and your family against an Army of You. It's simple yet
extremely powerful, and it's something that more action adventure games
should incorporate.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!
So far--and yes,
I'm still at the end of the first beta disc, which means that I haven't
gotten any further since I left NYC for GDC--there hasn't been anything
as engaging as that in God of War II. There was one attempt thus far
that I'd point to: where after defeating the Colossus of Rhodes, a weak
and bleeding Kratos tries to fend off one last foe before being killed
and sent to Hades. In this gameplay section, his health bar has been
shrunk to half of its previous limit; his animations have him
staggering and weaving like a drunken sailor to depict his severely
diminished physical state; he's slow to respond to your button presses
to show that he can barely fight, defend himself or dodge incoming
attacks; and ultimately, he's slain. One of the things that separates
the God of War team from most other developers is that they don't put
all of the coolest, craziest moves in cutscenes, leaving us gamers
wishing we could pull those moves off ourselves. Instead they put as
many of them in the interactive part of the game as possible, whether
as regular combat or as timed button-press cinematics. The latter are
only minimally interactive, but there's just enough skill involved
that, when paired with the phenomenal visuals and direction, are just
as thrilling as anything else in the game. (Thank goodness the makers
of Spider-Man 3 and Heavenly Sword plan to adopt timed button-press
cutscenes as well.)
This leads into one the "things that could
have been done better" that I alluded to in my previous email. The
aforementioned sequence, whose narrative must end with Kratos' death,
could have easily been dispatched in a cutscene. I'm very glad that
they didn't. But they didn't go far enough with it, and as a result it
feels a bit more perfunctory than it should. I would have preferred it
if, despite Kratos' mortal wounds, the game's creators had made me feel
as though I had more of a chance of somehow pulling off an upset than I
actually did. Maybe Kratos could have pulled off every fifth attack in
this section at three-quarters speed, then been left winded and
vulnerable, or charged himself up for a one-in-five full-speed attack
with button-mashing or analog stick-spinning. It's tricky, because I'm
effectively asking the God Squad to extend a sequence that must end in
failure. But done right, this could have been one of the most riveting
failures ever. (Also, because this sequence occurs fairly early in the
game and after a hard-fought victory over the Colossus of Rhodes, I'm
willing to bet--no, not my dreads, Stephen--that gamers would have
granted the developers a lot more leeway. And there's an interesting
article on Gamasutra devoted to this very same point.) Furthermore,
what if your opponent were pulling off zoomed-in special attacks and
button-mashing/analog stick-spinning, timed button-pressing super moves
on Kratos? In other words, take the visual and
interactive language that has been reserved for we gamers and turn it
against our avatar, Kratos. That would have one-upped the Army of You
moment from the first God of War, and perhaps even earned it a Stephen
Totilo Late-Generation Videogame Innovation Award.
The other
major missed opportunity comes right near the start of the game. When
Kratos shrugs off Athena's advice to halt the expansionist march of his
Spartan army lest he further incur the wrath of his fellow
Olympians--hmm, is that a Daily Kos T-shirt I see peeking through
Jaffe's clothes?--and descends in Giant Kratos form to help his Spartan
brothers lay siege to Rhodes, Athena descends in the form of a bird,
steals the bulk of Kratos' divine powers, and bestows them upon the
Colossus of Rhodes. Kratos shrinks to human size and must now battle
not only the Rhodesian forces, but the angry Colossus as well. But
since we ended God of War I with Giant Kratos overcoming Giant Ares, a
better choice would have been to have Athena first simply bring the
Colossus of Rhodes to life; that way we could have picked up where we
left off, with Giant Kratos and the Colossus going toe-to-toe and
laying waste to massive portions of Rhodes in the process. Once the
gamer eventually gets the upper hand on his stone, iron and bronze
adversary, then is when Athena steals some of Kratos' power shrinking
him to two-thirds the size of the Colossus. After more mano a mano, she
reduces Kratos to one-third the scale of his enemy. And finally, as the
game does now, she shrinks him to his original height, and we proceed
from there. That would have been a blast to play, and I hope that the
Gods of Santa Monica continue to build on their efforts to push more
coolness out of cutscenes and into gameplay.
I think that covers everything.
Cheers,
N'Gai
P.S. Just kidding--I haven't forgotten about your questions. Here goes:
- The Jaffe Giveth, and the Barlog Taketh Away.
I don't have strong feelings one or another on the Metroid-derived
approach of starting us off with full abilities, then taking them away
and having us regain our abilities one at a time. It helps introduce
newbies to the control scheme while giving veterans a refresher course.
Also, it provides us mice with the cheese we need to keep running
through the maze. Besides, if we started with all of our previous
abilities and weapons, wouldn't you be stuck in...
- ...The Fresh Hell of Subweapons
more than you already are? Personally, I'm more sanguine about
subweapons than you are; to continue the lab rat analogy, at its best
it's like biting into a nice brie after a steady diet of top-notch
sharp cheddar. At it's worst--games where subweapons are simply there
to pad the game out, or aren't properly balanced--it's like a bad
bottle of Cheez Whiz. It does create a dilemma as to which weapons to
upgrade, but this is interactive entertainment, and a properly
selected, designed and tuned set of player choices--as I would argue
the creators of God of War II have done--can only be a good thing.
- Thank the Gods for the Coming Sevenaxis controller.
I like rumble in games, and it's used very well in God of War II, from
combat to the reprised off-screen threesome mini-game. (As wittily as
this one renders its low comedy, I've just thought of another
complaint. This is a sequel, where everything is supposed to be bigger,
better and cranked up to 11. So shouldn't Kratos be laying siege to
three or more women now, since he already had a menage a trois in the
original? Cory? Dave? Shannon? Bueller?) As for the Sixaxis, having
played flOw and a preview build of Lair, I think there are tons of
possibilities for motion control in God of War III, from combat to
flight to timed button-press cinematics to, yes, more sexually-themed
mini-games. (Could the Amazons be in Kratos' future? Cory? Dave?
Shannon? Bueller?)
- And the Award for Best Cinematography Goes To....The
camerawork in the game, as in the first, is spectacular. There are some
people, like my Player Two contributor Rolf Ebeling, who are so used to
controlling the camera that they find it somewhat off-putting that the
game itself selects angles that are both dramatic and playable. I love
it. But it involves a lot of work, and I know a number of developers
who just don't want to spend a chunk of their schedule on that. So I
wouldn't expect to see more game designers pick up this baton, but I
hope that the God of War team keeps it going.
- Is That A PSP In Your Pocket, Or...?
You're right, I don't think that putting all of the cutscenes on PSP is
a good idea. But I do think there's a kernel of an idea that other
developers are already exploiting: using other forms of media that are
better suited to narrative to expand on the story. A God of War movie
(already in development), graphic novel, Web comic or animated prequel
(like the Grand Theft Auto San Andreas DVD prelude) are all good ways
to enrich the universe that the developers have created. I'm skeptical
of novelizations, however, because I'm more into a literary fiction
than pop fiction, so novelizations rarely pass muster with me. On the
other hand...
- ...Kicking It Old School With Block Puzzles
really doesn't bother me that much, because I haven't played nearly as
many videogames as you have. Perhaps if I'd finished every Zelda known
to man, I'd be peeved. But, I haven't, so no. Ta.
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