Apocalypse How?
So why did they feel the need to incorporate a second explosion?
The first brought cancer, disfiguration and mutation on a scale that even continues today, not to mention stretching radiation scares all the way to the shores of the United Kingdom through bio-absorbed radiation in fish and water particles. The Zone of Alienation is still a huge area of the Ukraine that has been left bereft of medical assistance in most areas, with crime, poverty and disease rife. A breeding ground for desperation if there ever was one, surely? It’s not just lazy games design that entices developers to fabricate on top of perfectly usable historical material; it’s fear. Fear of offending those who lived through the tragedy, or the family and friends of those who didn’t.
It seems bizarre in a medium that’s just released a title in which you can massacre innocent civilians in an airport, a scene that shocked the mainstream news, disgusted a fair few games journalists, and personally brought me to tears with the sheer brutality and realism of the level in question. We can bring this devastation, this – and I quote Infinity Ward themselves – “gut-punch” mechanic into millions of living rooms over the next few months, but we can’t address the only real post-nuclear example we have in the West? And if not Chernobyl, why not Hiroshima? It’s time to do away with future narratives, second-guessing history and ridiculous approaches to dropping the Big One somewhere on Earth. Deal with the reality, and you’ll find an audience you didn’t know you had; gamers and non-gamers who are finally struck by history to the point of – and it’s a rare word in this medium, trust me – edutainment.
The obstacles aren’t just in design, however, but in the wasteland itself. Physics anomalies and mutant dogs are becoming clichéd and tired, their oft-overused image becoming synonymous with the big-headed alien and the undead as icons of lazy enemy design. However, the dangers of isolation and near-genocide will have a more profound effect on the player’s sanity than their health bar. Perhaps the health bar should start leaning more towards how mentally stable we are as players, venturing through the warped wilderness. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem turned sanity and the fourth wall into an art form, but unfortunately, their decision to engage the player directly and not the protagonist was the downfall of the experience.
It was fun to have the volume go up and down, controllers mysteriously unplug themselves and seemingly random gravity glitches mangle the player’s perspective – haunting, even. But what if you were venturing towards a super mutant in Washington, hunting rifle in hand in anticipation of that sweet, accurate (read: VATS-assisted) headshot, only to have control taken away so the Lone Wanderer can talk to a nearby sign post? It sounds humorous, but envisage the panic as the avatar’s sanity slips away at crucial moments. Walls bleeding are dangerous if you’re wearing shoes with poor grip. A pair of hiking boots won’t do much for someone developing multiple personality disorder as a result of extended social isolation.
Not just this, but the very real danger of cancer. This would add many new definitions to the concept of a countdown in the corner of the screen. Would there be any way to conduct a scan of your abdomen in a post-nuclear wasteland with no electricity? Would you die suddenly of a brain haemorrhage, or slowly and painfully? To deal with real historical issues opens a door to dealing with any issue that isn’t “entertaining” to those who can’t cope with games that don’t feature aliens, breasts and machine guns.
And if you’re going to wipe the poor bastard’s memory, do it with some forethought. No longer will designers use amnesia as a get-out clause for not incorporating enough character development early in the narrative, in the design studio in my head. Now, they will use it as a technique to immerse the player into the character through the realisation that both entities are being born into this fictional game-world at the exact same time. The avatar does not recall the world before the “new game” option and neither does the player. To form a bond between creator and destroyer is to form stability that becomes key to survival and caring about the protagonist in a situation where they are entirely disposable emotionally due to their fictional, digital nature. Could you really leave a character in a deserted mansion whilst eating dinner, knowing that they are just as lost and terrified of the situation as you are but unable to look away from the television screen?
All of this is worth thinking about as I prepare to delve into Borderlands in earnest this Christmas, all the while doing the classic journalist tactic of “playing the critic card” every time I find a section difficult or a particular bit of fluff hard to understand or accept. But my universe, my Earth, may also soon suffer the apocalyptic event that will change it forever. The current political climate beckons us into a new era, a level of war we are terrified to accept as inevitability. Someone will eventually drop the Big One, and how we deal with it will be up to our humanity and survival instincts, and not how many bobble-heads we’re willing to find.
