Indie | Edmund

By Fraser McMillan

I’ve bemoaned mainstream games’ lack of cultural relevance too many times.

For the record, it’s perfectly okay to enjoy, as Noel Gallagher described it, “somebody getting their fucking head chopped off with a samurai sword while getting fucked by a goblin up the arse with a laser.” But does every single one of our interactive experiences need to be this shallow and inflexibly limited?

Years ago, at least a few triple-A titles did their bit to present something more complex than the norm. The secret to Final Fantasy VII’s far-reaching success, for instance, lay in the emotional rollercoaster ride it put players through. By brute-forcing early attachments to the characters and then giving those deeply personal bonds dozens of hours to develop, it made you care. Even excluding all of the bluster about tears over Aeris’ death, a spectrum of sentiments are felt throughout – be it anger at Shinra, perverse sympathy for Sephiroth, frustration at Cloud’s stubbornness, shock at his later admission, relief for finally reaching that save point, fear of the Marshlands Zolom, hope for the future, awe at the game’s dying stages, some combination of laughter, sadness, trepidation, wonder or any of the myriad other special moments throughout. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time similarly owes the cherry on top of its perfect cake to a zen-like balance of astonishing sequences and more subtle and contemplative stare-at-the-wall instances.

There’s not a lot of that now. Every JRPG has some kind of half-baked environmental agenda and Zelda fails to blaze quite the same trail by sticking ironically close to that aged formula. It’s not like we used to glean any deep social commentary from those experiences, but they went beyond “fun” to discover something infinitely more fulfilling as a whole.

Those early 3D games should have paved the way for further development in this direction, but the phenomenal second coming of the twitch shooter and popularisation of large-scale multiplayer gaming has seen that trend off nicely. I’m afraid I’ll have to say it again: it’s left to the independents to expose the potentials of the medium. Ironically, this is often achieved in just two dimensions. Barring Glum Buster and Love, my hyperbole has possibly reached a little too far, but you can add a third game to that list.

//Here’s Eddie
Edmund is the result – and winner – of TIG Source’s recent Adult/Educational competition. The first build was released little over a month ago by creator Paul Greasley (alias Farmergnome), and within the community it has been rightly very well received, and not because it’s “neat”, “cool” or “fun”. It’s none of these, not even close. What it is is mature, harrowing, and far more important than any upcoming pre-Christmas console title.

I have done things in Edmund that I had never expected nor wished to in a videogame. Once again, that’s an inappropriate and inadequate descriptor; there’s nothing remotely “game” about this. It’s a piece of interactive art about rape, a theme wholly unexplored in the medium short of slightly creepy Japanese PC hentai titles and Tale of Tales’ haunting The Path, if not explicitly displayed in the latter. No, it’s not conveyed in an overtly titillating – and some would say abhorrent – manner, nor is it simply implied. Rape happens onscreen and it’s not pleasant to watch, never mind partake in.

Part of Edmund’s genius is that participation in the crime is the bar to progress. It may just be a few taps of the X key and some positioning with the arrows, but I was effectively forced to commit the act. Of course, I could have refused and physically left the computer, but through curiosity or compulsion, I did it. Twice. On each occasion I glanced down at my hands in disgust in an all-too-Hollywood, “what have I done?” way that shouldn’t happen in the real world. The uncensored but blocky visuals, chilling atmosphere and disturbing sound effects create a sense of unease and dread, even as the predator in the situation, and the act itself brought all of this crashing unbearably to the fore.

There are two “levels”, and it’s highly recommended that the bottom one is experienced first, if only for chronological consistency. From here on we’ll refer to this as “level one” and the other as “level two”. It takes roughly five minutes to get through both, and they’re worth revisiting because each has two roughly parallel  endings. Before I spoil the experience, go and play it right now.

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