God of War II

Note: This email exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo ran on N'Gai Croal's Level Up, in four separate installments, from March 26th-29th 2007. We now present it here in its entirety, under a single permalink, for easier printing, emailing and archival purposes.

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God of War II

In last month's rave about Sony Computer Entertainment's God of War II for Playstation 2, we termed MTV News' Stephen Totilo our gaming sensei. That's because back in 1999 when we began seriously covering videogames at NEWSWEEK, Totilo was an intern fresh out of Columbia's School of Journalism. He had far more experience with interactive entertainment than we did, so we tasked young Totilo to help fill in the massive gaps in our knowledge base as we got up to speed. He did so while delivering terrific reporting for some of our earliest videogame stories, and for that, we are forever grateful. Nearly two years into his job as the videogame correspondent for MTV News, Totilo is turning out what is likely the best cultural reporting on this medium, with on-air features, stories for the Web site, an MTV blog called Multiplayer and a blog of his own, where this discussion is also being posted. Yet he still makes time to help us keep our gaming skills finely honed.

Beginning today, in a "previously recorded" email conversation that's as epic as the game itself, we tackle such varied topics as how much originality and innovation we should expect from a sequel, whether God of War II is a late-in-the-console-life-cycle triumph on par with the likes of Paper Mario or Yoshi's Island, and why God of War II may be one of the best-written videogames in recent memory. First up: Stephen Totilo.

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To: N'Gai Croal

Fr: Stephen Totilo

Date: February 26, 2007

Re: Challenge of the Gods

N'Gai,

I'm ready to tell you how I feel about God of War II. And I don't think it's what you're expecting. Actually, it wasn't even what I was expecting. Back on February 22nd you were kind enough to let the world know that I am your gaming sensei. This is true. I sparred with you. I made you do push-ups. I even had you break boards with your bare hands. It was all so you could be a better gamer. On the 22nd you also mentioned on your site that you were eager to know what I thought of God of War II. You were immersed in your review copy of the game and were quite convinced that I was be as bowled over by it as you, that I'd also nominate it as a late-system great.

I was certain you'd be right.

I started playing the game on a Saturday, a couple of days after you wrote that. By Sunday I had played the game so much that when I finally stopped midday, went to the bathroom sink and closed my eyes to wash my face, I could see God of War icons (to be specific: the circle-button cues that appear above the trolls when they're vulnerable to a grapple attack). I had locked six serious of hours of play. I'd dug deep, even as I'd found some time to mess with Sonic and SSX on the Wii. (I didn't see any icons from those when I closed my eyes).

Much of the game was indeed bowling me over. To keep the Greek theme, consider that I was Sisyphus with poor reflexes, getting bowled over in mighty fashion again and again. The opening of the game is stunning and epic, doing what every great video game level does: letting me vicariously do something I never knew I wanted to do and making sure I had a great time doing it. I'd read about the Colossus of Rhodes. I never knew it would be fun to run away from it, have it peek a look at me through a window at the end of a long hallway and then let me run and that eye and stab it with a sword. Good stuff! (By the way, I know we're planning on making this exchange public. I just wrote a spoiler. But it's a level-one spoiler! Fair game, right?)

Anyway, the game is epic in all the right ways. I feel powerful. And not just is this game epic on its own terms. It's epic when compared to other games. In fact, one of the best touches of the game is a moment when I feel like its basically talking smack to Zelda. The moment? Well, I don't know how far you got, but let's just say that Zelda has gotten some good mileage out of Link riding a horse. Kratos, being God of War's Link-on-roids, shows that up by riding not one horse but four big ones. Remember the scene? I don't know if it was intentional, but I think it was. Let's have more games "talking" to other games like that.

To my point: how did this game actually not meet my expectations, or the expectations you had for my expectations? In your NEWSWEEK post you cited me citing Paper Mario and Yoshi's Island as great late-system games. Like God of War neither were wholly original. Paper was sort of a successor to Super Mario RPG, itself a highly regarded (though I didn't like it) late-gen SNES game. Yoshi's Island was merely a sequel to Super Mario World. Ah, but here's the thing. Both of those games were radical departures from the old. Paper Mario introduced the whole pop-up book conceit to the game's graphics and gameplay. Yoshi's Island boldly challenged side-scrolling convention by making its lead character invincible. Like God of War II they were games made with technically confident hands comfortable with a familiar console and adept at flexing artistic muscles. But the games you cited me citing took advantage of that situation to challenge the fundamentals of their genres' design.

God of War II doesn't do that. It's got artistry in spades. Phil Harrison wasn't just doing good marketing when he said the game was the apex of PS2 development achievement. But the game feels safe. It reminds me, actually, of Twilight Princess, another sort-of late-gen game (Gamecube game, remember?), in that gamers get a beautiful game, but one that goes places previous games in the series have already been. Kratos put in a situation where he has to sacrifice a pleading soldier in order to solve a puzzle? In the first game, and in the second game too. Kratos walking across giant real-world objects to span massive chasms? We had the broadsword bridge in game one. A giant chain as a bridge in game two.

I've only mentioned two examples, but these were two of the most striking things in the first game. The first was a triumph of using level design to define a character's personality; the latter was a victory of using a smart art choice to put some wow into the game world. I feel like this new game, in using these same two devices from the previous game, is trying to express the same fine qualities about Kratos and his world but is doing so by showing a disappointing lack of imagination about how to express those qualities in a new way. That's why I'm surprised to see you praising the writing of the game. Yes, the dialogue is specific and flows, but what the game is expressing--and the way its expressing it--is something we already got in the first game.

So I'm feeling, six hours in, like I did playing Twilight Princess. The game is a virtuoso piece of design. It's beautiful. And if I didn't know any better I'd say it's among the best games made in years. But it's also re-treading A LOT of material and A LOT of tone. Twilight Princess did too, mostly ripping off material and feeling from Ocarina of Time. I was torn with that case, because, from a technology standpoint I would have to recommend Twilight Princess over Ocarina to a Zelda neophyte. But, really so much of the ground it covered has already been traveled. That left me disappointed in the Zelda team. And I'm feeling some of the same concern here.

I'm hoping to be proven wrong. But what do you think? Is God of War II excelling on its own merits for you? Do you agree that so much of what it does was already done by the first game, and, if so, does that drag down your opinion of it at all?

And how far in the game are you anyway? You did get past the eye-stabbing Colossus of Rhodes part, right?

-Stephen

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To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: February 28, 2007

Re: It's called God of War II--what did you expect?

Stephen,

Your email perfectly demonstrates why you're my gaming sensei. You've reached back into the gaming pantheon, knowing perfectly well that I've yet to play more than an hour of any single Zelda title. There, I've been forced to out myself as a gaming philistine. Advantage: Totilo.

That said, I must confess that I'm completely baffled by your line of attack on God of War II. You're effectively complaining that it's--gasp--a sequel, with all that entails. In my paean to the game, I didn't praise it for being original, I praised for being incredible. You write that it's, "re-treading A LOT of material and A LOT of tone." Um, it's called God of War II--what did you expect?

Now, I'm not saying that games can't be faulted for a lack of originality. And since aesthetic criticism is simply a way to articulate one's in-the-moment responses--both emotional and intellectual, gut and head--to a piece of art or entertainment, I'm certainly not trying to delegitimize your response to the game. If you're feeling an unconscionable amount of deja vu while playing through God of War II, then yes, that would be the fault of the team at Sony Santa Monica. But before our readers rule on your objection, you're going to have to be A LOT more specific (see what I did there?) about exactly what you're objecting to here--and why. Because the objections you've raised here seem rather piddling. Kratos ran across a giant broadsword in God of War...so he shouldn't be allowed to run across giant chains in God of War II? Kratos sacrificed a soldier in the first game...so there mustn't be any of that in the second? Sensei, I'm going to have to disagree.

Furthermore, you write, "I feel like this new game, in using these same two devices from the previous game, is trying to express the same fine qualities about Kratos and his world but is doing so by showing a disappointing lack of imagination about how to express those qualities in a new way." Isn't it possible that maybe, just maybe, Kratos is the same guy that he was in the original God of War--an angry, grieving, guilt-stricken *** with a death wish? That the fulfillment of his god complex at the end of the first game hasn't brought him any peace? That Kratos deliberately sabotaged himself so that he could be brought low and forced to start all over again from the bottom, making a whole new set of powerful enemies so that he can have a machine to rage against? (By the way, doesn't all of the above sound A LOT like a certain outspoken game creator?) And if Kratos is the same guy, doesn't it make sense that he would do many of the same things?

Three other points:

1. If your weapon of choice is an encyclopedic knowledge of games, mine will be comparative media analysis, especially since my entree into writing was as a film major/movie critic in college. I've written some about music, and I've dabbled in theater. So let's try this analogy on for size: many rappers who've been in the game for a minute will sometimes quote their own earlier lyrics in subsequent songs; some producers will even sample themselves. And as a fan of true school hip-hop, you'd judge such tracks on their entirety, right? Or would you dock them points for doing so? You stated that you'd like to see more intertextuality in games, so why do you have beef with intratextuality in games? (I think I just made that word up, but you know what I mean.)

2. The original God of War wasn't all that original to begin with, something that series creator David Jaffe has freely acknowledged for many moons. He voluntarily confessed to ripping off numerous videogame classics--foremost among them, Super Metroid--in order to craft his magnum opus. So if Jaffe freely borrowed from other games to create God of War, why wouldn't his successor Cory Barlog freely borrow from the first game?

3. My music sensei, screenwriter and veteran journalist Cheo Hodari Coker, once said of P. Diddy's myriad critics, "Never let your mind get get in the way of acknowledging a song that makes you shake your ass." Now Diddy may never be the producing equal of DJ Premier or the Bomb Squad by whatever criteria you or I would choose to employ. But I guarantee you that even now, ten years after it dropped, that if you were to go to a club and the DJ played "All About the Benjamins," the whole crowd would be on the dance floor shaking its collective ass. And since Jaffe has become a fan of musical analogies, I'll happily apply one here: God of War II may not be perfect--and I'll get into that in a subsequent email--but it is unquestionably a game that will make you shake your ass. And that's my point of departure when assessing the quality of my gameplay experiences. Not originality.

Cheers,

N'Gai

Next: Totilo comes off the ropes to land some haymakers of his own.

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God of War II

In Round 1 of the debut edition of Vs. Mode, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo praised God of War II's epic feel, but accused it of covering familiar territory in its level design and story. We countered with our position that the quality of gameplay is far more important than originality or innovation. After returning to our corners overnight, Totilo and Level Up came out swinging for Round 2 of our exchange. If a game is so good that its sequel can't be improved upon, does that prove that the medium is maturing? Can a videogame's story match those of ancient myths? Read on to find out.  

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To: N'Gai Croal

Fr: Stephen Totilo

Date: March 5, 2007

Re: Why God of War II Is A Different Kind of Sequel

N'Gai,

I confess. God of War II made me shake my ass. Happy now?

I'm on a flight to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, having left my PS2 and GOWII in New York, with the game saved a little past the halfway point. (You forgot to tell me how far into the game you are. Let me know next time, ok?)

So your email: you're trying to squeeze some honesty out of me. You're trying to get me to acknowledge the undeniable ass-shaking power of Kratos' second heavy metal album. Well let me clear something up. I like the game. I said so the first time. I'd recommend this game to quite a few gamers. (Not to everyone mind you-.I see God of War II as a somewhat alienating taste: picture a world the opposite of ours, in which almost all games are played by women and girls. Some suit in marketing decides The World Needs Games for Boys and Men Who Miss Being Boys. They produce their equivalent of some girl-game with ponies and a pink box, a game starring a snarling, muscular action-figure who rips off his foes' sword-bearing arms the better to stab them with, snaps the backs and twists the necks of beautiful women who live to harm him and pulls the wings off bugs before crushing them beneath his boot--all that's missing is a magnifying glass secondary weapon and salt for the slugs.)

Anyway...don't get me wrong? The game's damn good. But you brought me into this with your initial Newsweek post, and in the process raised the idea that this fine game is part of a special breed of fine game: the kind of late-gen triumph the likes of Paper Mario and Yoshi's Island. It is to that standard I held the game while playing it and then writing an email about it to you. And it is that standard that I feel GOWII doesn't quite fit, not for entirely bad reasons, as I'll get to in a moment.

First, though, let me answer your questions about originality and my apparent demand for it. If I really can't stand [a lack of] originality I've certainly chosen the wrong favorite type of entertainment. Hell, I think the first game I ever owned for a home console was K.C. Munchkin. So I knew what I was getting into. Also, I've bought enough pints of the same flavor of ice cream to certainly relish the return of certain, familiar sensations.

So you asked me if I'd dock an artist points for sampling themselves. Probably I would not, but I did stop buying Mobb Deep albums quite some time ago, because a couple of albums after the impeccable "The Infamous" they were still rapping about the same stuff to the same style. Why should I care for their carbon copies when I can get more enjoyment from the original? Games are different, though, right? They tend to get better in sequels? Repetition and refinement of content benefits the gamer? So shouldn't GOWII be the better for repeating stuff? That's what this Pikmin 2 and Sly 3 devotee would have thought. But, no, there's a difference.

Your other question, asking why Cory Barlog shouldn't be able to borrow from David Jaffe, is similar enough that I want to handle this all at once.

Okay now: Why GOWII Is A Different Kind of Sequel.

In the history of video games, there are a few examples where simple technology didn't prevent creators from Getting It Right the first time. Donkey Kong needed no improvements. Nor did Tetris. Most everything else, however, benefited from repetition and refinement. Artistically sublime as it is, Super Mario Brothers is not as fun as some of its sequels, and if you don't agree with that, you probably can about enough other big game series--Final Fantasy, Zelda, Metal Gear, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto--to agree with the notion that video game sequels are often better than their predecessors, far more frequently than movie sequels and Meatloaf albums are.

Complains of sequelitis are, from a consumer-who-wants-good-games standpoint, a canard. The Bestest Games Everrr lists are always loaded with sequels.

I bet we agree on this. The shifting sands of the shifting silicon used to power ever more advanced game systems have given game developers the technical headroom to always push game design further. So games, mostly, keep getting better. This has been going on even as so few fundamental problems of creating interactive entertainment have been solved: how to make a memorable character, how to make swimming fun, how to keep a camera focused on what the player needs to see, how to make video game characters not seem dumb, how to make complex controls intuitive for novice, how to write one memorable line of speech as memorable as "I'll be back" or "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn," etc. Technological improvements aided the effort to solve some of these. But still, game developers have had a long list of achievements to get to.

So may I say, uncreative, chattering reporter that I am, that with so little truly and timelessly accomplished in video game creation, it has been (about to get myself in big trouble) EASY for games to stand out as being great, especially when improving on the ideas packed in games that came before?

Moviemakers have it comparatively rough. There have been dozens--hundreds?--of movies that were brilliant from start to finish. There have been thousands of movies (more?) that have had brilliant moments or qualities. You can articulate this better than me. Film is one of your fortes. But games? The teams making these things are juggling so much and working with such temporary technology, that few games they create can't be trumped in years--sometimes months. Last year's graphical breakthrough game would get lost in the crowd by next year. The game-with-great-control-innovation of 2007 may merely the source material for a new standard three years on. So it goes. It makes things exciting. The tide of quality rises year after year; it's yet to recede because more smart people are pouring in every year.

Eventually, however, there will come a time, when technology either stops improving, or the technological improvements cease to matter as much as they used to. And when this happens I believe games will become more like movies. Game developers will be getting their genius creations right the first time. Classics that are made will remain classics a decade later with no caveats needed that you have to be in the right frame of mind to tolerate their frame rate or other archaic aspects.

Getting to the point--finally!--I think God of War II and my reaction to it might signal that, for me, gaming is getting really close to the milestone I just described. The reason is because this second game confirms the first's excellence.

I think God of War (the first one) is great. It's exciting. It's fun. It's svelte in design. And I cared about it. That last comment is a bit weird, I know, because caring isn't widely seen as a standard for games. That it's not is actually potentially odd to an outsider. Hit TV series are often hits because you care about the characters. Same with hit novels. But caring was never a prerequisite for gaming. I didn't really care about Princess Peach or Mario's quest to save her. I just did it, because I knew there was fun in doing it. God of War surprised me, then, in making me care about Kratos. In between savoring the wonderful combat mechanics and spectacular set pieces I found myself caring about the life of the man I was controlling. Was it because he started the game leaping off a cliff to kill himself and I was playing out a flashback? Was it because the twin stock plots of selling one's soul for power and losing one's family to greed somehow added up to a compelling quest for revenge? I felt Kratos' anger. His sufficiently violent stabs and strikes triggered by my fingertips felt proportionate. He was pissed. He was guilty. And I was going to help him work his issues out, one severed head at a time.

The first note the sequel hits involves an homage to the suicide dive of the first game. Nice touch. Then we get a wonderful battle against a colossus, establishing a game-long visual theme of Kratos in combat against giants. Fun stuff. Then we get the plot: a god betrays Kratos, a powerful sword is lost. And I've got to say, I didn't real care. I cared when his quest involved his family. With the sequel: this time it's impersonal.

Believe me, not caring about this new quest isn't a showstopper. The game is really fun. But I don't care about what's going on. I feel like I'm controlling a Kratos who signed up for a return role just to cash in. As such, I feel like what this game lacks in heart. It's compensating for that by trying to one-up the artistry and spectacle. In many levels it is succeeding. Ultimately I find the second game sumptuous but less driving.

So when I see Kratos running across a big chain or sacrificing a soldier or plunging to Hades I appreciate the nod to the past, but I wonder if the game has the stuff to be greater than the first. This was not the standard I held Yoshi's Island and Paper Mario to back in the day for two reasons. For one, both games tried to do some fundamental things different than their series predecessors (I mentioned those things in my last letter). For two, their predecessors didn't leave as much room for improvement. That first God of War does character, place, adventure, gameplay variety, spectacle, fun all so well, that its sequel has a brutally tough act to follow.

So here's the siren going off in my head while I'm playing it: I'm playing the rare game sequel that can't trump its predecessor because the original did too much well that still holds up.

In my book this is great news. The harder it gets for game sequels to trump game firsts - the more things get like movies - the more advanced we can measure game design's overall progress to be.

Now let's dig into this game. Here come the spoilers. SPOILERS!

-Kratos loses his abilities early in the game and has to get them back--or get new powers--one by one. Just like in all the Metroid games. What do you think? Archaic design? Or necessary gameplay device to train new players into the game and give veterans a new way to feel themselves becoming empowered?

-Kratos is no longer propelled by his own guilt. Now he's looking to find the sisters of fate. Do you care as much? Does it matter if you do?

-The blocking button. I never use it. I'm probably not getting the most effective combos because of that. But who cares? I button-mash this game, with the occasional moment of picking a specific attack. You?

-Player can't control the camera. I like this! The game controls the camera well enough. As I wrote recently in my MTV Multiplayer blog, we gamers should get to be actors, not forced to be cinematographers. Agree?

-Rumble vs. gesture. I'm loving the rumble feedback I'm getting during combat. And I couldn't tell you what motion control could add to this. Maybe better Pegasus controls. That it?

OK. You talk some specifics too. What do you want me to chew on?

-Stephen

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To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: March 13, 2007

Re: We're Definitely Not on Sera Anymore

Stephen,

We've previously discussed your observations about the nature of videogame sequels (that they generally get better) as compared to movie sequels (they're often worse), and I of course agree. I also agree that God of War was a great game that, when all summed up, God of War II hasn't surpassed. I even agree that so far--when I left New York to go to San Francisco for GDC, I was at the end of disc one, trying to get disc two to load [Note: while a pair of review discs were sent to journalists, the finished game ships on a single DVD]--it hasn't had an emotional hook as strong as Kratos stepping off the cliff to fall to his death, or an emotional beat as powerful as the revelation that Kratos had inadvertently killed his wife and son--and that his ghost-white pallor resulted from their ashes being bonded to his skin--along the gameplay that ensued following that story point. (Though you're misremembering the original when you say that the quest involving his family is why you cared about that game. First of all, his quest was for revenge against Ares; second, you didn't find out that his family had anything to do with his quest for revenge until the last hour of the game.)

My caveats notwithstanding, you're still dead wrong about the game's accomplishment--it is a late-gen triumph. Here's why:

The vast majority of videogame sequels don't make any radical changes to the lead character between games; while situations may change, the characters rarely do. So when Cory Barlog and his collaborators at Sony Santa Monica sat down to outline God of War II, they must have already decided that despite his ascension to Olympus, Kratos was still going to be angry with the gods and pissed off at the world. Hey, if I'd killed my wife and child under a god-inspired berserker rage, I too would still be pissed. But by not letting go of my rage, I'd be petty, childish and tragically human--the same attributes that typify the major figures, divine or not, in Greek mythology. And if I were the petty, childishly human side of a newly minted god, I just might engineer my own fall from grace, and use that as an excuse to let a whole new crop of deities taste my rage.

That's good writing.

Barlog and co. took their creative constraint--that Kratos has to be more or less the same man that he was in the original game--and used it as the jumping off point for a compact, compelling premise. It's not as simply moving as the opening of the first God of War, but it's psychologically sound, and it's far from impersonal, as you wrote. They didn't phone this one in.

SPOILER ALERT!

Where God of War II becomes even more thrilling is in the setup that comes immediately after the opening chapter, which concludes when Zeus deals Kratos a mortal blow. Kratos is then saved by the narrator of the first and second games, who finally reveals her identity: she's Gaia, one of the Titans, the elder gods who birthed the deities of Olympus. That came as a surprise to me; I thought she was just the narrator. Then Gaia (re)tells the story of Zeus slaying the Titans--a story that in the usual telling, casts the Titans as the cruel antagonists to Zeus' heroic protagonist--from her own point of view. And in her telling, Zeus becomes the cruel antagonist, punishing all of the Titans for sins committed by his father Cronos alone.

Gaia then offers the assistance of the Titans to Kratos so that he can kill Zeus, which Kratos eagerly accepts. (Notice how he's always getting the gods to help him get his kill on?) Does this make Gaia good and Zeus evil? Or is Gaia merely another capricious god with her own agenda, whom we perceive as "good" because she's helping our protagonist? Was Gaia watching Kratos all along to see whether he could serve as her instrument of revenge against Zeus? Those questions hadn't been answered by the point at which I put the game on hold to get on a plane for San Francisco.

This is terrific writing. Most games don't raise such questions or support such interpretations.

MORE SPOILERS AHEAD!

In the first God of War, when Athena was Kratos' patron deity, his enemies were the traditional villains of Greek literature: harpies, Cyclops, gorgons and the Minotaur. But in what is God of War II's narrative and gameplay masterstroke, now that Kratos is backed by Gaia and the Titans, encounters, he's not just fighting the same old villains--he takes on the heroes from Greek mythology: Prometheus, Theseus, Jason and Perseus, as antagonists, rivals and boss characters. In the first game, Kratos was a literary anti-hero; in the sequel, he's literally an anti-hero.

We're definitely not on Sera anymore. This is incredible writing.

It's good enough to stand alongside the original myths. So fine, Paper Mario and Yoshi's Island were late-generation gameplay innovators, whereas God of War II is a late-generation refiner. But I seriously doubt their storytelling was as innovative as what Barlog and his collaborators have achieved here. If this were the story of Theseus, Jason or Perseus, Kratos would be their Minotaur, their Medusa, their Polyphemos; a test that they would face on the road to completing their respective quests. But it's Kratos's story, and these legendary heroes are the tests that we must face in order to complete the game. With this shift in perspective from the first game to the second embodied not only in the narrative, but also in the gameplay, the "gametelling" (that's my second neologism in this series, for those of you keeping score at home) in God of War II is easily among the best of any game I've played.

Were the College Board to hire me to revamp their SAT analogies, God of War II would be to God of War as "Aliens" is to "Alien," as "Terminator II: Judgment Day" is to "The Terminator" or--dare I say it?--"The Godfather Part II" is to "The Godfather": creations that, while they don't surpass their predecessors' out-of-the-box high water mark, are still great works in their own right. When Universal Pictures bought the film rights to God of War, I thought that it was a great premise for a movie bolstered by a strong visual hook, but I didn't really see how they could make a great movie from the source material story without beefing up the story. But after playing through half or more of God of War II "and having experienced the series of revelations at the end of Act I, the reversals of perspective and the confrontation with one Greek hero after another--the world that David Jaffe created and Cory Barlog expanded upon is finally rich enough for a movie, a novel, or any other narrative-first medium. That's why God of War II is an unquestionable late-gen triumph.

I'll stop here so that we don't lose our remaining readers. But in my next post, I promise to tackle your questions. And I plan to point out some areas where the gameplay--and the gametelling--could have been improved.

Cheers,

N'Gai

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God of War II

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.

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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.

-Stephen 

***

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:

1. 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...
2. ...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.
3. 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?)
4. 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.
5. 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...
6. ...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.

***

God of War II

The end begins ... now, with today's final round of Vs. Mode. In Round 3, MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo countered our storytelling-focused haymakers from Round 2 with a flurry of jabs about his gameplay likes and dislikes about God of War II. Our more plodding, deliberate style of combat left us slow to adapt; we opened Round 3 with an examination of how tightly Ico and the original God of War integrate storytelling into the fabric of their respective titles, before switching up in an attempt to match Totilo blow for blow with our own list of could-have-been-done-betters. In today's Round 4, our opponent issues a stout defense of cutscenes, leaving himself open for our final salvo: an explanation of why dramatic moments in videogames must move out of cinematics and into gameplay--and how it can be done. Click on the link below to read the final round of our exchange in its entirety.

***

N'Gai,

I'm using my Dell desktop subweapon to write this, my final letter in our series. I could have used my Apple laptop or texted this whole thing over my cell phone. But I wanted to level up my home computer.

Now you've made something perfectly clear in your previous letter. You're a gameplay guy. You're not one of those people who is going to be seduced by a pretty screenshot or tricked by a lovely cutscene. No sir. You demand quality gameplay, not pomp and circumstance. If only the marketing divisions of gaming companies shared your values. I know many gamers do. And rightly they should.

But allow me to pound the terrain at your feet a little to see if you still want to hold as steadfastly to those values. Allow me to praise some non-interactive moments in gaming history.

I'm taking this tack because of a question you asked me. I said I was more moved by Kratos' quest in the first God of War than in the second. You asked me: "How much did you care about Kratos during the gameplay as opposed to during the cutscenes?" You provided a superb analysis of how, in Ico, the gameplay and control mechanics define the characters and develop the player's attachment to them, no movie scenes required. You also praised what you feel is the sole example of story being woven into the game mechanics in the first God of War: Kratos fighting a horde of himself. Here comes my Phoenix Wright "objection!"

I believe that in the interest of defining and praising games as interactive entertainment, a bias has arisen against those moments that are not interactive. My issue is that some of the most powerful moments I can remember experiencing in games occurred in scenarios I literally had no control over. (I'm going to deftly avoid spoilers here, as best I can):

• Knights of the Old Republic: The game's big reveal--the one no KOTOR gamer will ever forget and that stands as one of the best plot twists in the medium's history--occurs in a cut-scene. It's rendered in-game, but it's something the player has no control over. It involves the discovery of who a key character really is and involves a slow pan from behind the character to the front. If the player had control, they might have swung the camera the wrong way and missed the amazing revelation. If they had any control of the character in the scene, they might not have had the experience I had: sitting, waiting, watching the scene develop and having it dawn on me, split seconds before it happened, what I was about to see. The power in the scene is that you cannot do anything about what is happening.
• Silent Hill 2: At the end, after you find out how your player-character's wife really died, you're given only minimal control: you can just walk the lead guy down a long hallway. As you walk, you hear a letter from your dead wife sorrowfully explaining everything and justifying her own murder. You can't turn back during this walk. You can't control the pace at which she reads. You can just shuffle on in shock. (It reminds me of the scene in Metal Gear Solid 3 that I know you liked, when Snake slowly climbs straight up a really high cliff, a trek made long enough to allow Team Kojima to turn the scene into a musical set-piece).
• Killer 7: I'm going to spoil this one flat-out, because who that is reading this and hasn't played it is really going to go to the end? You spend the game using clunky controls to maneuver seven different scarred and beaten hitmen in a series of shootouts against creepy enemies. One of the seven who you control seems like a wimp. He's the rescuer. You use him to run into the field and rescue any of the other hitmen if you get them shot down. But his gun is weak, and he carries a big briefcase that he seems to have no use for. He's quiet and kind of lame. Late in the game you take control of this wimpy guy and make a return to a hotel level, which, if memory serves, is now depicted in black and white. There are no enemies for you to fight; just several splotches of blood to investigate, one or two per floor. You approach the first and a wholly non-interactive flashback cutscene is triggered. In it, you see your wimpy guy gunning down a healthy-looking version of one of your hitmen. You check out another blood spot and see your wimpy guy gun down another healthy version of another one of the hitmen -- in cold blood. By the third, fourth and fifth one, you realize what is going on. His character, who you used to think was the weakest and was the one you never really liked controlling? Well, before the game began, he apparently murdered the other six you've been playing as. You've really only been dealing with his delusions that the others are still alive. You've only been controlling him. And in that briefcase he's been toting? That's where he keeps the weapons he used to murder each of them in cold blood. The power of this comes from the hotel cutscenes. It's an incredible sequence.

I'm not trying to badger you with my more-encyclopedic-than-thou knowledge of games. Rather, I've never previously articulated the emotional value I now realize games can generate by switching to a non-interactive mode, subjecting the player to an impotent state and walloping them with a strong emotional moment. I didn't pay much mind when Gears of War scripter Susan O'Connor recently boasted about a scene in which the game's designers chose to kill off one of Marcus Fenix's commanding officers in a cutscene. She pointed out that the scene rendered the player as helpless to interact and try to stop things as was Marcus, who was pinned under enemy fire the whole time.

Getting this back to your question about whether the gameplay or the cut-scenes in the first God of War made me care as much as I have stated about Kratos' quest, I need to talk about my own favorite scene from the game. It uses a great blend of interactive and non-interactive moments. The scene comes a couple of hours into the game. At that point I've done many bloody, barbaric things as the puppeteer of Kratos. I ripped people's arms off and stabbed them with their own swords! Just nasty stuff. Fairly early in the game, while the siege of Athens is still under way, Kratos is tasked with rescuing a woman--I can't recall who and it doesn't really matter--from the second floor of a temple of some sort. Normal video game flow would have Kratos hacking up the bad guys and then winning the affection of the beautiful lady. Not so this time. The player hacks up the bad guys and then runs up toward the lady. She has more of a moral compass than most video game damsels in distress and is horrified by the brutality of her rescuer. So in a cut-scene--while Kratos can do nothing--she flees and runs right off a balcony. She falls to her death. Out of the hands of the player and out of the grasp of Kratos, that scene gains its power.

The function of most of the rest of the cut scenes in the first God of War was to deliver information about Kratos' past. Since his past is the story of an uncontrollable lust for power I again don't' might having no control as I watched that story unfold.

I agree with you that gameplay is pre-eminent, but I don't see a fault in the artful use of non-interactive moments to hit certain emotional beats. Now if we were talking about some Final Fantasy-style cutscenes being used solely to express how heroic the hero is, what a great and lovely flower-dancer the dainty love interest is or how awesome the crew's traveling air-ship is, then I'd be calling for the editing scissors as quickly as would you.

I guess I should mention God of War II at some point in this letter. Like the fact that I beat the game. I want to bounce a few things off you about the tail ends of games, without, of course, giving too much away.

Revisiting scenes from earlier games: Don't worry, I'm not going to ruin it for you--not completely. Just know that near the end of God of War II something will happen that will transport you right into a scene from the first game. Now if there's a kind of interactivity you really want me to praise, it's this kind. Consider that the malleability of all video game scenes is an illusion. Once you do something in them, you've played through--maybe, at best, created--an event. Because games and game levels can be re-played, we can re-open those chapters and try to have them play out differently. Invariably, though, they don't change too much and scenarios stay fairly fixed. A game sequel, however, can re-use or re-create familiar assets and literally drop you back to a moment you've already been and let you mess with things from another angle.

When this kind of thing happens in the movies, as in, say, "Back to the Future," you're merely watching Michael J. Fox interact with his past. That's cute and all, but in God of War II you're able to interact with a past you were--virtually--in yourself. It's a neat sort of pseudo-time-travel games can suck you into. Other games that have done this that I can recall are Sly 3, which has you go back and play the "memory" of a boss battle that you would have played in an earlier Sly Cooper game. Late in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas you get to run a mission in Grand Theft Auto III's Liberty City. The most familiar example to SNES-era gamers would probably be Super Metroid, which follows up a prologue with an eerily quiet return to the battle-torn environment that players probably last ran through in the closing, catastrophic moments of Metroid on the NES. I would like to see more game designers exploit this advantage of the gaming medium: the ability to return players to their past and, better, to have them interact with it. It's a magical feeling.

Sequels that say goodbye to hardware: My second-favorite game of all time, the side-scroller Yoshi's Island featured several end-of-level boss battle. The bosses were always based on normal enemies who, when sprinkled with a wizard's spells grew to screen-filling giant size. Yoshi's was one of the final major games on the SNES and therefore one of the last 2D console games Nintendo was going to be making in a while. I'll always take it as a tip of the hat to the old and new generations alike that that final sprinkling of the game made a little Bowser grow not just to screen-filling size, but into a third dimension. While all other bosses essentially stood at screen-right, giant Bowser approached, Godzilla-style, as a giant from the background. He bore right down on Yoshi, who suddenly wasn't able to throw his eggs left, right, up or down, but instead into the background--into a new angle of the playing field. And then the game ended and the Mario world went into 3D.

God of War II wraps with a cut-scene (uh-oh!) that sets up the premise for the sequel. Without giving anything away, just trust me that what is being shown is a situation you'll want to play through, but which you'll know the PS2 could never render in real time. So in essence the game ends with a message: Kratos' adventure is about to get so big, the system you're playing on can't handle it. I think that's a great touch.

I need to wrap up now, with nary enough time to tell you that Okami did the thing you were talking about regarding giving the enemy characters in a game control of the same visual and interactive language as the player. You spend the first half of Okami tossing enemies around with calligraphy brush-strokes. Then you fight this one boss enemy. When you draw a stroke against him, an enemy brush crosses it out and draws it's own. It's a great touch, and one that you're right to encourage for future God of War games.

As this is my last turn in this exchange, I'd like to thank you for batting the ball back and forth with me. This was a fun experiment. You're going to get the last word, so speak on whatever strikes your fancy.

I have one request: I would like you to handle one question for me. You raved about God of War II in late February. For a time you couldn't stop playing it. Then you did. Some people complain about the length of games. Some find difficulty a turn-off. Others might think a good game should be savored as long as possible. I'd love to know what you think. Did you think back in late February that you'd be done with the game by now? If so, what went wrong? You or the game? Or is this the way gaming should be? What motivates us as players and what gets in the way of that is certainly a ripe topic for discussion.

It's been a blast...

-Stephen

***

To: Stephen Totilo

Fr: N'Gai Croal

Date: March 29, 2007

Re: James Cameron's School of Game Design

Stephen,

Last thing's first. In my February 22nd post which inspired this exchange, I did say that I wanted to savor my God of War II experience for as long as possible. Seriously, though, real life just got in the way of God of War II. I got the flu, I went to the West Coast for Game Developers Conference, then I came back and had to prepare to move offices. In fact, I've been so focused on the blog this week that I'm still not ready to move. Sigh.

That's not to say that I didn't play any games. I got through a couple of levels of Alien Syndrome and Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters. I beat--sorry, Alex; I completed--flOw. And I've spent a few hours cumulatively with the third installment of my beloved Virtua Tennis getting my ass kicked on Very Hard. What all of these have in common is that they are experiences that are easy get into and get out of. Call it Interstitial Gaming, played between chunks of real life, or GameSnacking. The aforementioned games are perfect for this. By contrast, God of War II, like Okami, or Gears of War, or Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, is a Main Event, a Feature Presentation, a GameEntree, something I have to make time for. And between the magazine, the blog, side projects and the NYC nightlife, I don't always make time to play this second type of game. Maybe we can discuss this further in a future exchange.

Back to God of War II and your defense of cutscenes. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you did have some control over the majority of the sequences that you so eloquently described. Like walking down the hallway in Silent Hill 2, or navigating your way to the bloodstains in Killer 7, the level of interactivity is minimal, but it's still present. The scene with the Oracle in God of War, however, is more akin to the dramatic revelation in Knights of the Old Republic: control is wrenched from the player. My argument, which I'll elaborate upon for the rest of my final post is that even the most minimally interactive sequence is generally preferable to a cutscene. And that if more developers explore pushing as many dramatic and emotional moments as possible out of non-interactive cinematics and into gameplay--even the ones that they think can't be done, but in fact probably can, with a bit of imagination and a lot of hard work--we'll get a lot closer to fulfilling the promise that underlies Electronic Arts' provocative question from the early '80s: Can a Computer Make You Cry?

I agree with you that the Oracle's suicide is powerful. Actually, I take that back. In acting, there's a term called "indicating," where the actor plays the end result (i.e. what the actor wants the audience to feel) as opposed to playing the character, and letting the audience members feel whatever they choose. That's what the God of War team did here. The gave the Oracle just enough screen time to let us know that she's horrified by Kratos, then exit stage right, suicidally. The problem here is that the scene only lasts about 30 to 45 seconds. How much of a truly lasting impression can that have when it's sandwiched between gameplay sections that last about 30 to 45 minutes, with a character that we know nothing about other than that we need to save her? Or, put another way, how much more memorable could her scene have been had the developers made it five or ten minutes long? And, no, I'm not suggesting that they take a page out of Hideo Kojima's book and have the Oracle and Kratos engage in a series of philosophical exchanges about violence and justice. There are other ways to do this. (And I'm not knocking Kojima's cutscenes as it's become fashionable to do lately, but that too is a subject for another Vs. Mode.)

How do movies avoid scenes that indicate--that tell as opposed to show--and what can games learn from this? Let's take a sequence from "Terminator II: Judgment Day" that's emotionally comparable to the Oracle's suicide. It's the scene where Sarah Connor has just eluded her captors in the state mental institution. She rounds the corner and presses the button on the elevator that will take her to freedom...when out comes the Terminator, the relentless killing machine who murdered the father of her child seven years earlier, who very nearly slew her, and whom no-one else believes actually exists. Time slows. She falls to the ground screaming, scrambling to get away from her nightmare made flesh and steel, so desperate to escape the Terminator that she ignores the cries of her son and runs back into the arms of the hospital staff. As they prepare to sedate her, the Terminator strides over, takes them down one by one, then extends its hand to the prone and trembling Sarah Connor and says--in a repeat of Kyle Reese's line from the first film--"Come with me if you want to live."

This sequence works as well as it does because the majority of the audience will have seen the first film, and writer-director James Cameron has already carefully re-established the original events during the scene where the police show her photos security camera photos of the Terminator from 1984 and 1991. So with the slowing of time and the Terminator's dramatic exit from the elevator, we're plunged headlong into Sarah's subjective experience. And even though this sequence is ultimately brief, it's given enough time to breathe and sufficient emotional beats that it makes a lasting impact.

Now let's extrapolate from Cameron's technique to re-imagine the oracle scene from the first God of War. What if rather than having her simply commit suicide after being rescued by Kratos, she instead runs away from us out of sheer terror, either back through parts of the level that we've already played or into completely new section. By using a combination of regular gameplay, shouted exchanges between the two, and button-press interactive cinematics, this sequence could have drawn out the Oracle's fear and loathing of Kratos, shifting perspective between our desire to rescue her in order to progress through the game and her desperate attempts to escape from the infamous Ghost of Sparta.

Hitchcock once said that the difference between surprise and suspense is the difference between a movie where a table suddenly explodes in a restaurant and one where the audience sees the bomb steadily ticking under the table with the diners unaware of its presence, leaving viewers wondering if the patrons will live or die as the bomb inexorably counts down. In other words, the difference between surprise and suspense is the amount of time between action and reaction. The Oracle scene as originally played out in the first God of War is a surprise: it kills off a character we don't really know and didn't really care about other than as a mission objective; once we've completed the mission and finally meet the Oracle, she's quickly dispatched in the brief cutscene you described.

My (hopefully) more suspenseful version gives the Oracle the time she needs to make a real impression upon us, with the space for several dramatic and emotional beats. And, most importantly, the vast majority of it takes place in the gameplay. I'd still end it with her leaping to her death to escape Kratos, but by using a fuller gametelling sequence to carefully draw out her brief time upon the stage, the end result should be a both richer character and a far more memorable encounter for us gamers. You rightly applaud Jaffe for nicely confounding our expectations with the Oracle's suicide. I'm just challenging him and other developers to go even further than that. So despi