Cat in a Box: Side Quest

Quantic Dream is a unique video game studio. Indigo Prophecy intrigued me, but fell flat in execution.

Heavy Rain had much higher production value, but hit at the wrong time in my life - as a new father, it was seriously depressing to play as a father who lost a child, especially since the next segment involved him failing to be a good part-time father to his remaining child following a divorce. It disturbed me. I guess that’s the actual goal - David Cage, if you’re reading this, you succeeded! You gave me a deep, emotional experience. It’s just that it made me stop playing your game.

Finally, a friend made me play Beyond: Two Souls, and it really struck a chord with me. As a premise, crossing the supernatural with the technological is always fascinating to me. Threading the plot with an extremely personal story starring Ellen Page was a great choice. Her Character, Jodie, is immensely relatable, and due to the nature of the time-hopping storyline we manage to see her at her best and worst in every major age demographic leading up to adulthood. We see her in family situations, we see her trying to fit in with new friends as a child, we see her struggling to be independent as a young woman, and we see her on a cross-country trip just trying to find herself. The execution of the story is top-notch, the game mechanics are fun and follow more interesting rules than the “press X to not die” formula used over and over in Indigo Prophecy.

So everything was great, and I loved it all - but what stuck with me the most?

I distinctly remember the full experience of being an angsty teenager. Ellen Page’s excellent voice work and motion capture come to life in a scene where you’re told bluntly that you can’t be like the other girls. The video above (about an hour in) only shows the cutscene content of that series of scenes, but between each one you totally get to harrumph around your room, swinging your arms melodramatically and sighing loudly so that everyone knows how you feel.

Katamari Damacy was a fantastic series created by the critically acclaimed weirdo Keita Takahashi. The relaxing and delightful lounge music perfectly complemented the quirky cutscenes, the insane king of the cosmos, and the bizarre gameplay. 

For the uninitiated, the game’s core mechanic is rolling a sticky ball around and picking up larger and larger objects. The more objects you pick up, the larger the ball becomes, which enables you to pick up larger objects. Near the beginning of the game, you pick up erasers, pencils, books, plants... then suddenly you’re pickup up cats, and dogs, and mailboxes... by the time the end of the game rolls around, you can literally pick up islands, mountains, and continents.

In all of the strangeness, all of the bright colours, and all of the craziness that is Katamari Damacy, what do I remember most? I remember the magical size, somewhere around 1.5 meters, at which you can roll up human children.

This game is perhaps the only anime space opera I’ve had the pleasure to play. And I describe it as such with no reservations. It’s a bizarre story of children raised to be pilots in a war that seems like it was inevitable yet unexpected, where all the main characters have been friends their whole life, the climax involves a giant planet-sized super weapon wielded by an insane dictator, and the final conflict is resolved through the power of friendship between the two best ace pilots on either side (which happen to be those childhood friends).

Magnificent!

However, the part that actually stayed with me is a direct expression of the game mechanics and art direction. What stayed with me was the sense of being completely overwhelmed in combat. I loved the sensory overload that accompanies the anime cliché of ridiculous space battles.

It was hard to find a screenshot that does it justice. The game offers six degrees of freedom, so there is typically no real “up” to orient yourself. Combine that with the fact that dozens of enemies can be flying around with the same freedom at the same time, and all of them are too far away to be displayed as more than a single pixel, and the game becomes a complicated HUD with numbers in motion everywhere at once.

Late in the game, some weapons can lock on to 60 enemies at once. The only catch is that you have to hold down the lock button while maneuvering the enemy into your sights. When you let go, a swarm of missiles is sprayed from your ship, and each little stream of white finds its mark. It’s glorious, insane, and utterly incomprehensible when done right.

In the Nintendo 64 era, I became addicted to racing games. Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, even Wave Race 64. In the end, the speed king for me was always Extreme-G.

The game itself was not great, but it appealed to my OCD level-memorization impulse. Here’s how the game is supposed to look:

Given my need for speed, I eventually discovered the ways to achieve maximum speed. And, either by design or by accident, when you go too fast, the entire view frustum inverts:

Shadow of the Colossus, Ico before it, and The Last Guardian after, have been engineered to deliver a precisely calculated emotional experience. At least, the entire internet assumes that The Last Guardian will do the same thing - it seems obvious that there is a formula to this spiritual series.

The basic setup, for the uninitiated, is that the entire game sets up an emotional attachment between the player and an AI companion, only to present a gut-wrenching twist or series of revelations near the game’s conclusion. I suppose there isn’t just one of these moments in Colossus, but rather an hours-long sense of foreboding, with hope and grace and beauty intertwined with a sullen sense of inevitability.

From the beginning of the game, the player character has a beautifully animated companion - Agro, the horse. This horse (with the exception of walking through sparse forests) was at the time the most realistic, most impressively animated horse in a video game. It seemed to have personality, it was always there to help, and it was indispensable. Agro felt like a friend. Perhaps the bar for horse AI is lower than the bar for human companion AI, but Agro felt pretty real to me by the time this game was done.

And then, without warning, this happens:

A stone bridge collapses with you and Agro on it. It’s not enough that Agro falls to his death, or that your character does not want to accept this fate, oh no. The subtle, split-second’s worth of animation clearly shows that Agro bucks to throw you to safety.

As a disclaimer, I never actually played this one myself. I’ve never played a single Metal Gear game myself. I have, however, put tens of hours into watching the ridiculous movie marathon that is the Metal Gear franchise...

In University, we had a projector set up behind two rows of couches facing a large white wall. We watched movie marathons, tv shows, and above all played a ton of video games.

My housemate Zamir played through MGS 1, 2, and 3 in order. The series is wacky at times, made with a sensibility borne in the mind of a foreign culture’s auteur. Hideo Kojima spans the whole range of game design, from incredibly serious content to fart and poop jokes. He can create a scene with meaningful, emotional impact and follow it up with a series of closeups on butts.

Many scenes in the game series are memorable, and are constructed to be so. Without much trouble, I bet most gamers could recall a ton of scenes surrounding the more memorable characters (which number in the dozens by now). However, that’s not what stuck with me in this series - no dialog sequence stands up to my lasting memory of MGS3:

There exists in this game a scene where you climb up a really long ladder, and an a cappella version of the main theme music plays. 

When starting this climb, you have NO idea how high this ladder is. You might even feel like it’s a joke - maybe the ladder has no end? Maybe you feel the urge to climb down. Maybe you stop to google it, to see if you’re insane. If you climb up, and don’t stop or slow down, it will take you a full 1:45 to get to the top. All the while, the game’s main theme music gets louder and louder, a beautiful song that evokes James Bond...

I honestly expected to find a radio playing the song at the top of the ladder, but to my knowledge no such diegetic mechanism existed. 

Thank you, Hideo Kojima! You’re wacky and wonderful, just grow up a little bit more, would you?

Here’s the full video for anyone interested in watching it as I watched it:

I love Mass Effect, there’s no doubt. I’ve tried to analyze why that is more than once, and there’s no simple answer. Perhaps my lasting impression of the first instalment will shed more light on the situation.

I love the simple, relatively innocent relationship that I fostered with Liara in the game. I loved the depth of the world, and the extent to which the world was indifferent to your personal struggles as a result. I loved the races, the world building, and the politics... but the moment that stuck with me, that forever hooked me on the core concept, was on Asteroid X57.

Batarian terrorists have set up fusion torches on an asteroid, and are trying to ram it into a human colony on a planet nearby. Once you stop the torches and fight your way into the central compound, a classic hostage situation plays out:

Kill the leader, Balak, and all the hostages will be blown up immediately via a dead man’s switch. Or, let the leader go and save the hostages here and now, knowing full well that Balak will conspire to murder more humans until he is caught.

The game had me so wound up in its reality that this was actually a thoroughly moral decision. There were no gameplay side effects that I’m aware of (except that choosing to kill Balak might result in another brief combat segment?). I stared at the screen for literally minutes on end, trying to decide what I would do, or at least what my commander Shepard would do.

In the end, I decided that my Shepard was a golden-age Shepard, and that everyone including the bad guy should live. Future consequences were a problem for future Shepard, and would be dealt with in a similar nonviolent manner.

This was an interesting game at an interesting time, an epic addition to Star Wars canon (which has since been deprecated), during the early days of 3D gaming.

Do I remember the amazing Jedi powers? The lightsaber mechanics? The classic internal and external battle between light and dark sides of the force? No. What I remember is far stupider - but perhaps indicative of my continued interest in game design and seeing past the facade of presentation to the designer’s intent below. I remember helping a friend in high school get through the very first level of the game.

In the imperial complex that you and your partner storm through, there’s a secret passage hidden in the floor. My friend did laps all around the level, not finding any doors or switches or keys to help them advance. Finally, they called me over, and in about 10 seconds flat, I pointed out the slightly different texture on the floor underneath a specific crate:

I suggested that they shoot the crate, and sure enough - blam! The floor opened up to reveal a hidden passageway to the next section of the level.

This game was a lot of fun, but to this day I don’t remember anything about it except for that weird floor texture.

Here’s the video, in case you want to see what the game looks like in action:

There was a time when LucasArts was a force to be reckoned with in the gaming industry. One of my favourites from that era is The Curse of Monkey Island, mostly due to its quirkiness and sense of humour. I actually don’t really like adventure games anymore; I have no patience for their insane internal logic.

That said, the story I tell again and again from this game is not the rhyming insult sword fighting, it’s not the silly gambling mechanic whereby you always had “a bit of money” that you had to turn into “a lot of money”, and it’s not that time that I learned about hangovers from the “hair of the dog” puzzle (which to a child is far easier than it is for an adult, being as literal as possible in the end)... it’s this scene:

The setup is simple, you must get these pirates to work. Why won’t they work? because they’re too jolly and just want to sing sea shanties. Why doesn’t asking them to stop help? Because anything that you say is turned into a rhyme, and incorporated into their sea shanty. So how do you use this to get them to stop?

Simple: end a sentence with “orange”. I’m actually pretty sure the sentence you can select is “I bet you can’t rhyme with orange”... to which the pirates sputter out, mumbling tentative lyrics to themselves, one of which is a weak, questioning... “door hinge?”

Now, I have to admit - I was tempted to not do it at all, and was actually tempted to remove my apps from the app store instead. I mean, if I’m embarrassed by the (declining) quality of my apps, but they still cost real money to purchase, what does that say about my integrity?

One option is to spend the time required to maintain my apps, and release updates as necessary, despite diminishing revenue/engagement, and the fact that I have a day job and a growing family that deserves my full attention. The default option is to leave the apps, unpatched, in the app store and continue to charge full price for a product I know is broken (ick). The most decisive option would be to remove the broken apps from the app store, but that has the drawback of removing apps from users’ purchase history and is the most sanity-restoring but worst for all of my past customers. One option presented to me was to set the app prices to free - that way, the apps stay in users’ libraries, and new customers don’t waste their money - but it still wastes customers’ time and reflects poorly on us as developers.

Almost on a whim, I decided to update the apps. Honestly, I thought it would be a big deal, and I didn’t know how far I wanted to go. Should I update all apps with new resolution targets (iPhone 6/6+)? Should I restore internet multiplayer functionality to Red Conquest (GameKit realtime matches)?

As I started, I was immediately discouraged. I felt like I shouldn’t update the apps unless at the end, I’m presenting the best possible product. The amount of work was daunting.

And then I realized that what people want, at a minimum, is just for their app to not completely break when a new iOS version comes out. So I fixed the iOS 9-related crash bugs, integrated Crashlytics so that I could automatically be notified if there were any new major crashes, and put all the apps out the door.

Really, the conclusion of all of this is that simply making your apps not crash, and allowing your users to continue using your apps is actually less work than I expected - and your apps don’t need to be perfect, they just need to work as originally intended.

Many of the apps don’t even have iPhone 5 resolution support, yet the response I’ve gotten from fixing the iOS 9-related crashes alone has been overwhelmingly positive.

Deus Ex is a game that I had the pleasure of enjoying before I became an independent human being. At a time when I thought the worst thing I’d have to endure in life was the mean kids on the city bus ride home from grade 12, this game opened my mind to a world filled with fear and hope and serious, unavoidable philosophical struggles.

The part of this game that has stuck with me the most isn’t the deep and varied upgrade system, the numerous methods of completing a level, the moral and ethical choices that arose as a natural extension of gameplay mechanics, or the incredibly shiny office lobby floors.

The part that stuck with me is the turning point of the very first mission on Liberty island, when you meet the NSF “Terrorist” leader. [full script]

Terrorist: “Don´t believe me? It´s all in the numbers. For a hundred years, there´s been a conspiracy of plutocrats against ordinary people.”

JC Denton: “Do you have a single fact to back that up?”

Terrorist: “Number one: In 1945 corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent. Number two: In 1900 90 percent of Americans were self-employed; now it´s about 2 percent.”

[A lengthy discussion follows]

When I hit this conversation, it’s like something inside me was unlocked. I ended up re-selecting this man’s dialog chains over and over again. I tried to do some minimal research on my own, on the primitive internet of 2001. I became more aware of the world around me, and how interconnected we all are.

I don’t think I became a better person or anything so cheesy, but it was the right provoked-thought at the right time for me.

Deus Ex has stayed with me because it helped to place a stone on the path to the man I am today.

The Last of Us (Remastered) was a beautiful game, incredibly well-executed, with fun and balanced game mechanics... but do I remember the emotional introduction? Perhaps the thrilling climax? Did the affecting and personal DLC pack, Left Behind, stay with me? No. This stayed with me:

A simple road trip, far away from zombies, away from danger and crazy weirdos. Ellie was just being a typical annoying teenager, rambling and claiming not to be tired when Joel tells her to sleep.

Jump cut to the near future. Joel is in the same position, the sun is in roughly the same position, the scenery hasn’t changed much... but Ellie is asleep.

Gold.

I’m not even sure if this was just masterfully cut and timed, or if it’s funnier because I’m a dad now and can easily imagine a somewhat older child doing exactly this, but it was an exquisite moment for me.

I’ll be looking at all three major entries in the series that targeted the seventh console generation. Namely, Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. I will not be discussing Mass Effect Galaxy, Datapad, or Infiltrator.

Why It’s Supposed To Work

BioWare wrapped their classic storytelling and world building prowess with an accessible mass-market-friendly third-person-shooter. What they promised players was a universe where humanity is the plucky underdog - giving every single human player (presumably nearly all players) their motivation - we have to prove our worth on a galactic scale. The original tv commercial said:

“Many decisions lie ahead... none of them easy.”

With that one line, BioWare made it clear that Mass Effect would be all about explicit, deep player expression. How you express yourself would have real consequences in the game world.

Why It Works: Choices That Matter

Some choices, like which human squad mate dies on Virmire, may seem shallow or forced - but they affect the rest of the series. There’s side content, conversations, a loyalty mission - two sets of these were produced, but only one stream can be accessed, based on who survives the Virmire mission.

Other choices, like sparing the Rachni queen, releasing the Thorian’s thrall Shiala, choosing between capturing the Batarian leader and saving the hostages on asteroid X57 - all of these choices have ramifications later in the game. Any time you choose who lives and who dies, it further shapes the galaxy around you. It’s not always easy.

I remember distinctly standing there, at the final moments of the Noveria mission, weighing the scales when deciding whether or not to let the Rachni queen go. Honestly, the choice was too big for me. I was too invested in the world. I sat there, honestly, for five full minutes, wondering if it was too good to be true - were the Rachni simply exploited at this base? Were normal Rachni peaceful, and did they really just want to sing their thought-songs across the galaxy where nobody would bother them? Or if I let her go, would she destroy the galaxy that despised and feared her? All I had to go on were my morals, my best intentions, the bits of history I’d gleaned from the moments leading up to the decision, and the delicate pleas of the Rachni queen...

Eventually I chose to spare the queen, though that simple binary choice truly worried me for quite some time after I left Noveria.

Why It Works: Choices That Matter (To Me)

The game also contains hundreds of teeny, tiny choices. How should I respond to this reporter? Which is my favourite shop on the Citadel? Should I agree with the husband or the wife arguing on this sidewalk? Do I respond angrily or do I empathize? Do I accept this mission flatly, or do I accept it with just a wee smidge of attitude?

Most of these decisions have no effect on the plot. Some have an effect on future decisions, by way of awarding paragon/renegade points. But I would argue that all of these tiny interactions matter, because they let the player define the Commander Shepard in their instance of the game.

Why It Works: Player Expression

More accurately, all of those tiny decisions amount to the player expressing themselves through Commander Shepard. In an action/shooter game, player expression commonly manifests as skill-based execution of the continuous nature of the controls. In an RPG, it’s common to allow the player to name themselves, adjust their appearance, select party members, et cetera. Mass Effect has all of that, plus the generally well-executed conversation wheel - arguably the most central game mechanic in the Mass Effect experience.

Instead of being a mute character like Gordon Freeman, a static template on which the player can project a personality of their choosing, Shepard is a living actor in the world of Mass Effect, ready to effect change (even if just verbally) at the whim of the player. It’s easy for the player to empathize and even identify with Commander Shepard, because she can literally talk like we wish we could talk, do what we wish we could do, and does it for us with the ease and grace of the conversation wheel that’s become so iconic for BioWare titles.

Why It Works: Epic Presentation

From the opening cinematic to the battle at the Crucible, from the first hard choice at Virmire to the suicidal assault on the Reaper factory, from the survival instinct of the Thorian to the patiently hiding Leviathan - everything is made to feel big. The graphics were always state of the art (for console), and the larger-than-life music inspired me to be the best damn SpecTRe that I could be.

Why It Works: The Combat Was Good Too!

With so many garnishes, it was sometimes hard for me to remember that this game tree’s leaf nodes are comprised of squad-based shooting segments, or off-roading with the Mako. Thankfully, the Mako didn’t crash the whole experience for me, and the combat has always been at least serviceable.

Which I suppose brings us to the namesake of the series - the Mass Effect! I’ve always loved the biotic powers in the game. Sometimes I play as a Soldier, but often when I play through I’m either a Vanguard or an Adept - gotta get in on that biotic goodness! Biotic powers are based on the idea that there’s new physics out there that enables both interstellar fast-travel and the ability to throw people with your mind. Needless to say, coming up with a way to use The Force outside of a Star Wars title was a great idea.

Why It Works: Stories, Moments

And this is why I will always love the series - the ability to bond with someone over an important, shared experience. The Mass Effect series is so effective at creating those special moments, those incredible scenes that you just want to relive - but it does so in a way that you can modify them, to tell your own story. It’s gratifying to be able to share your version of those events with others.

“My Zaeed died on the reaper base assault...”

“Did you do his loyalty mission? It’s so hardcore. He’s more likely to survive if he’s not distracted by his past.”

Remembering the first conversation with Sovereign, tracking down the Leviathan at the bottom of the ocean planet, assaulting the Reaper on Tuchanka alongside a Thresher Maw, falling in love with a crew member (your choice, if they’re also into you), or that time Joker had to escape through access hatches in the Normandy in order to unshackle EDI and fend off a Collector incursion...

There are too many to remember - which is likely why I enjoy replaying it so much.

It Works

Player expression that’s been taken up a notch, good graphics and great music, a truly epic plot and story that yearns to break the invisible chains of fate stretched across an entire galaxy, and a healthy dose of the mundane choices we make in conversation every day all worked together to make Mass Effect a unique and compelling experience.

Here’s looking forward to the next one!

What I Expected

Improved laziness: I wanted to able to triage notifications at the wrist-level, without having to pull my smartphone out of my pocket.

Some fitness tracking: I like the iOS 8 "Health” app, so adding a heart sensor to the data stream seemed like fun.

A timepiece: sure, clocks are actually everywhere these days, and I always have my smartphone, but as it turns out glancing at your wrist is marginally easier in many cases! Who knew.

What I Got

Improved laziness: triaging streamlined notifications on your wrist is fantastic for a person who must always be connected. The subtle tap-on-the-wrist haptic buzz is great, and far more noticeable than the vibrate-in-my-pocket buzz of my smartphone.

Fitness tracking: I now regularly use the workout app to track my lunchtime walks, and it’s great to see the extra data reported in realtime, right on my wrist. It taps my wrist periodically to encourage me to continue - like every kilometre when walking, or every 5km when biking. It’s more effective than I expected it to be.

Time awareness: checking my wrist for the time gets me a bit more - it also shows me the next thing on my calendar! Since I got the watch, I haven’t missed a single appointment notification, and actually anticipate some.

All-day battery life: I consider myself a fairly heavy watch user, but on average I have a 50% charge at the end of the day. I’m up at 5:00-6:00, and in bed around 10:00. (note: I have the 42mm model, and I’m often in a place with good wifi signal) Sometimes, it has gone down to 30%, but I don’t think I’m worried about it anymore after three weeks of usage.

What I Had To Do

Streamline notifications: Something not too annoying on the phone can seem like a personal imposition on the wrist.

My work email was a bit of a firehose, so I set up some filters.

I actually uninstalled some apps that I never used, because every now and then they’d send notifications to remind me to open them again.

Organize my apps: automatically installing all applicable watch apps is great, but accessing your apps isn’t all that easy on the tiny screen. Personally, I picked my six favourite apps and then wrestled with the UI until they were all arranged around the central watch app. (Workout, Weather, Activity, Stopwatch, Timer, Photos - for the record)

Remember that it tells time! I found myself still taking out my phone to check the time. I’ve been trained to do this for the last decade, and it’s a hard habit to break.

What I Don’t Like

The screen doesn’t always turn on when I want to look at it, especially if I’m not standing/sitting upright - in bed, sometimes it simply refuses to turn on. Alternately, it blinks on briefly before deciding that it’s in a wrist-reclined position and turns off.

Sometimes apps are a bit slow - even the build-in workouts app. Hopefully the improvements in WatchOS 2 and iOS 9 help to clear this up. For now, it’s workable.

Sometimes I don’t notice the wrist-buzz, though I miss it less than I miss the vibration notifications of my phone. I think the issue is that the 3rd rung is slightly too tight on my wrist, but the 4th rung on the strap is a little loose.

The heart rate sensor is either a bit wonky, or sometimes my heartbeat hits 30-40? So either the sensor is wrong, or I have an extremely fit resting heart rate.

What Changed In My Life

Fitness: I look forward to filling the three rings from the activity app each and every day. It’s been remarkably difficult to get 30 active minutes into each day, because the device measures this by heart rate - so a 30 minute walk may actually give you 20-25 active minutes, depending on how vigorously you’re travelling.

Social: the watch itself is a conversation starter, but it’s far more interesting to people around the office when they hear that you’re only walking around because your watch told you to. If you haven’t stood up for a minute within each hour, it taps you on the wrist to remind you to be a bit less sedentary. If you follow its advice, be assured that any coworkers at your desk job workplace will ask about your strange behaviour.

Smartphone battery life: oddly, my phone has more charge at the end of the day, despite the persistent bluetooth connection. My theory is that it causes me to use my phone less - there are fewer behavioural cues for me to unlock the phone and poke around on Facebook.

What I Want To Do Now

Become a more fit version of myself!