ctrl+alt+defeat jan-feb 2012
Four
Ico Final Fantasy VII Chrono Cross Chrono Trigger Megaman Star Force Dragon Age II Shadow of the Colossus Fable III Persona 3 Persona 4 Prince of Persia Passage Catherine
+ amazing game photography & cosplay galleries 1
2 Just Friends? by ~SimLuna on deviantART
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Love and friendship, and the feeling of closeness are powerful catalysts. They motivate us to create amazing things, conquer seemingly impregnable fortresses or jump over impossibly high barriers. They bring colour to our everyday lives, turning grey into bright pink, emerald green, navy blue or rainbow shine. Our relationships with family, friends and loved ones are an essential part of who we are and we expect to see them everywhere. We are emotional beings and often prone to feel first and think later. Love and creativity go hand in hand and their collision over time has left us an enormous heritage of poems, novels, songs, movies, operas and musicals about love. Great love stories have been told since the dawn of time. They have always mattered, regardless through which medium they had been communicated to us. We all know the great love stories in literature and film, but are there any such stories in video games? Where is the sweet and soft side of the virtual world and have we found friends and lovers there?
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ctrl+alt+contents
ctrl+alt+defeat Issue 4 (Jan-Feb 2012) Love ctrl+alt+publish
Dilyan Damyanov Vanya Damyanova
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Dilyan Damyanov
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Kate Cox Dilyan Damyanov Brad Gallaway Scott Juster Amanda Lange Alex Maunder Alex Raymond Daniel Weissenberger
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Dilyan Damyanov
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David Terhune jmont KenshinGumi559 Poramed Chonrattanakun Viktor E
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Beth Martinez-Carrol Iain Andrews Ken AD Nicolai Andrews Rona Keller Sammy Lee SimLuna wakingphotolife
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Janet C makeshiftwings
Artwork Index
2-3 Just Friends? by ~SimLuna on deviantART 6-7 We find a way? by darkmoming on Flickr 8-9 Tifa by ~jmont on deviantART 9 Tifa in Dissidia by !KenshinGumi559 on deviantART 11 Dragon Age: Dalish Warrior by ~Viktormon on deviantART 12-13 The Unbeatable Duo by ~Hime-no-Toki on deviantART 14-15 I had breakfast in bed. by =Ronaaa on deviantART 16-17 The butterfly room. by wakingphotolife on Flickr 18-19 Aigis PERSONA3 by ~Kyokimaru on deviantART 22 Catherine fan art by David Terhune 24-33 Videogame photography by Iain Andrews 34-43 Cosplay by makeshiftwings & Janet C/Photography by BethMartinez Carrol & Ken AD
Contact dilyan@ctrlaltdefeat.me vanya@ctrlaltdefeat.me http://ctrlaltdefeat.me/ @ctrlaltdefeatme
In weakness and in help
Dilyan Damyanov wonders why videogame friends grant boons quite so often but rarely debuffs, on pp 6-7
The girl next door
Amanda Lange talks about her love for JRPGs’ undesignated romantic interest, on pp 8-9
Hawke’s doves
Alex Raymond explains how Dragon Age II avoids commodifying sex by turning relationships into real stories, on pp 10-11
Of horse and man
Daniel Weissenberger believes Shadow of the Colossus’s emotional bond between Wander and Agro is unique in videogames, on pp 12-13
A bedtime fable
Kate Cox discovers unexpected realism in Fable III’s sex options, on pp 14-17
S-link to eleven
Alex Maunder recounts his infatuation with Persona 3’s Aigis, on pp 18-19
Systems of love
Scott Juster deconstructs the mechanics of affection in three very different games, on pp 20-21
All about Vince
Brad Gallaway finds a very mature third option in Catherine, on pp 22-23
Support us If you like ctrl+alt+defeat, there are several ways to help make it. You can buy stuff from our Amazon store at bit.ly/cadstore, donate via the appropriate button on our homepage ctrlaltdefeat.me, or contribute to future issues by submitting to the editor’s email above. Thank you! You make this so worthwhile!
Iain Andrews’s game photographs tell surprisingly intimate stories, on pp 24-33
Disclaimer
Gaming’s greatest tale of friendship, Ico, brought to life in a stunning cosplay session, on pp 34-43
Every effort has been made to ensure that all artwork and texts used in this issue are either licenced under a Creative Commons license or permission has been obtained from the copyright holder. We’re sorry for any mistakes we might have made. Unless it is somebody else’s artwork or text, all content in this issue is licenced under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Non-commercial license.
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Once upon a love
You are not alone
ctrl+alt+contributors
Scott Juster
is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. He has an academic background in history and is interested in video game design and the medium’s cultural significance. He writes and creates podcasts about video games at experiencepoints.net and is a multimedia columnist at popmatters.com.
Kate Cox
Alex Maunder
writes about games, gaming, and gamer culture at your-critic.com. Her background is in film studies and in being a geek-at-large. A gamer since 1986 and a blogger since 2010, she now lives in the DC area with her husband and their cat, Guybrush.
is the chief editor of playdar.co.uk. He splits his time between writing nonsense, writing nonsense about games, looking at pictures of baby sloths and weeping uncontrollably into his tea. But mainly those last two.
Brad Gallaway
has been the senior editor at GameCritics.com for over ten years and is a regular on the eponymous podcast. He blogs at DrinkingCoffeecola.blogspot.com and tweets habitually via @BradGallaway. He also writes fiction once in a while, and spends all his free time with his wife and kids.
Daniel Weissenberger writes
Popular internet wag
regularly for GameCritics. com -- mostly about Deadly Premonition, but there are some other reviews in there as well. He’s also the anonymous author of a Criminal Minds-themed blog, but he can’t name it here. Because of anonymity.
Amanda Lange is a
games teacher and 3D artist, currently located in Reading, PA. She has worked on educational titles with Michigan State University, and taught game design and art in Detroit, MI. She writes about games of all stripes at tap-repeatedly.com and at her personal blog secondtruth. com.
Alex Raymond is a
programmer and a feminist and has been writing about video games since 2008. She’s an editor at borderhouseblog. com. Her other writing haunt is whilenotfinished.theirisnetwork. org.
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We find a way? by darkmoming on Flickr
In
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n weakness and in help T
hink of any party-based RPG. Think specifically of those that have one central character, around whom the party is built. Think of the ones that allow you the freedom to build a small army or go it alone. Which path do you normally choose? I usually opt for having companions. They have useful perks and make fighting less of a hassle. Often, they give quests that bring rewards. In Mass Effect 2, for instance, every crew member has a personal quest. If you help them do it, you not only get XP and credits, but they become loyal to you, which unlocks a new ass-kicking ability in their skill tree. Followers are also a great way to explore all available skills in a class-based game without replaying it multiple times. For that reason, you’ll never see me in a party of five warriors. I want to see what the other classes bring to the table. Yet in real life I do not choose my friends based on what skills they have and what bonuses to my everyday life they can yield. Of course, I depend on them for help in many situations; but that is not the reason for being friends with them. They do make me stronger: and they make me that much weaker. Who are the people who can hurt you the most? How close are they to you? For me, they’re the closest people in my life. Friendship (love!) means vulnerability. My wife is my best friend, the person I trust most in the world, and she’s always helped me out when there’s been no-one else to do it. But she could destroy me. And this goes beyond her turning vengeful for whatever reason. If she did, she’d knew exactly how to screw me. It is a frightening prospect, but I implicitly trust it will never happen. However, there is more to it. Through the intimate bond that we share, her weaknesses become mine. I hurt when she does, even if it’s something I could easily shrug off if it happened to me. I accept this gladly and I never feel like she’s dragging me down for it. It’s not like that in games. See, I have a short temper when it comes to RPG
companions who I think are not up to standard. I know I’m not alone in this: show me the person who likes escort missions! Or, look at how often gamers complain about stupid party AI. There are games in which my supposed allies account for a large chunk of my deaths. It feels like I’d be much better off without them. I’m no hiker, but hiking seems like a realistic example to illustrate my point. Say, I’m hiking with friends and one of us missteps and injures their leg. Are we going to complain about this person’s lack of walking ability? Will we get angry that this purported “friend” is frustrating our plans? Videogames expect me to be perfect in order to beat a challenge, and I can’t help but demand the same from every character who’s in with me for the ride. In these worlds winning is almost exclusively the only reason for being. If somebody isn’t helping, they might as well not even be there. Actually... They’d better not be there than fuck up. Fumito Ueda’s Ico is one of the very few titles that manage to make an in-game relationship feel like real friendship (hence its appearance in three of this issue’s features -- Ed).Yorda, the less active half of the duo of protagonists, is weak and she’s slowing her newly found friend Ico down. She has to be led by hand on every step and there are constant attacks by shadow creatures who want to abduct her. If they succeed, it’s game over. And for all this, there wasn’t a single moment in the game when I. playing as Ico, felt any sort of animosity towards her. Quite the opposite: I was constantly worried about her in the most genuine way. She was a friend, not a tool. Of course, not all narrative-based games have to be like that in order to be good. I have enjoyed almost every RPG I’ve ever played and I count many of them amongst my favourite games of all time.Yet I can’t think of one of them that wouldn’t have been much better if it featured the sort of lifelike relationships that make Ico so special. In fact, any game would be improved by adding some love to it. DD 7
The girl next door I
grew up with a girl who was skinny and awkward. She was kind of a tomboy, developed too soon, and it was easy to tease her about her orthopedic underwear. I think she had a crush on me, and some of the other boys in our home town definitely had a crush on her. When she grew up into a woman she still seemed interested in me. She had gotten pretty, and she was still holding out for me to come back years later. She liked me for me, and not the person that I was pretending to be on the outside. But as it turned out, I was too interested in a flower girl. Actually, that’s just what Cloud wanted. When I, as a RPG lover, played Final Fantasy VII for the first time, I wanted to date Tifa. But I didn’t realise that just being nice to her, with gestures like spontaneous bouquets and unprompted compliments, was not enough. Japanese RPGs have some particular ideas about how to initiate a romance. In order to choose Tifa, I not only had to be kind to her, but also had to be actively mean to her romantic rival, Aeris. If I didn’t mess with Aeris’s plans, make rude comments, and drop barrels on her head, the game would default to a date with Aeris, no matter what. It felt like that’s how the real story was supposed to go. I, personally, had no attachment to Aeris like some gamers, so I was consistently nice to Tifa after Aeris died. For doing this, I got a scene some time later in the game, reconciling with Tifa. I thought it was implied by the dialog that she and Cloud spent the night together afterwards. None of my other friends playing the game claimed to have seen this scene, and to this day I’m not sure why. Did I do something different to interact with her,
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or was it just my imagination? Was the scene of reconciliation simply something I wished would have happened? After I finished FFVII, JRPG romance logic started to develop a predictable pattern for me. In Chrono Cross, I decided to blow off Kidd, the sassy, cockney tomboy, the first time I met her. Then, I got to play the game with Leena, the girl next door that the hero Serge grew up with. She casts blue magic, wears an amazing long skirt, and hits enemies with a frying pan. I imagine she’s a good cook. Naturally, she’s not the love interest in the game. I have nothing against Marle so much, the princess in the prequel Chrono Trigger. But on my second playthrough, I tried to be as rude to her as possible just to see what would happen. I gleefully yanked her about, like the kidnapper I was accused of being. Crono gets arrested for kidnapping her no matter how well I treat her. And if I wait in jail long enough without breaking myself out, I am rescued by Lucca, the outgoing inventor. Lucca is the girl Crono grew up with. She’s not the love interest, of course. Later on, Crono dies, and so I just let him stay dead instead of reviving him. Maybe the entire game is really about Lucca: a video game where the protagonist is a skinny female nerd, with glasses. After all, why shouldn’t a time travel story be about the woman who invented the time machine?
Though Lucca’s story is compelling, she can’t be a target for the protagonist’s romantic interest. But I like girls like Tifa and Leena and Lucca the best: the girl the hero grew up with, the girl he never considered, the girl who waited. These young women aren’t even the same archetype most of the time. Leena is more feminine than Kidd; Lucca more boyish than Marle. What they have in common is that they are the underdog, and they don’t fit in with “the plan”. I didn’t want what I was supposed to want. I wanted to be different. This began a long tradition of me “negging” on the designated love interest in JRPGs, like some kind of modern-day pickup artist. If she’s the love interest, she’ll come crawling back no matter what. I couldn’t be rid of her, and I
couldn’t date the girl I liked better. If there’s no obvious “girl next door” in a JRPG, I try being rude to every single girl. This usually works out in my favor. I didn’t grow up with any of the girls in Persona 4, so by the end of the game, I was rolling in them, a new date for every night of the week. Why not be cynical? It’s not about love, because the girl I really want is always unavailable. Sometimes she seems interested, even jealous of the girl the game designer forces me to choose, but choosing her goes against the master plan. In Advent Children, the animated sequel to Final Fantasy VII, it seems like Tifa is still unattached. Cloud is brooding instead about Aeris, lost in his own regrets. There’s no option to change the script of the movie, screaming at the camera that Tifa is still there, she’s still there, you idiot: still brave and pretty and hard-asmetal and soft-as-light and patiently waiting to be acknowledged. She gets all the good scenes in the film, but she doesn’t seem to get the love she needed. The Megaman Star Force series is the spiritual successor to the Battle Network series: portable JRPGs with a younger target audience (somewhere around the age I was when I was playing Chrono Trigger for the first time, and wondered why the star couldn’t be the girl with glasses). In Megaman Star Force there is a designated love interest, a Mysterious Girl with a pink outfit and super powers, named Sonia. There is also the girl that the hero grew up with, Luna, a tsundere class-rep type, a little wound-up ball of well-tread JRPG personality traits who shows jealousy and vulnerability at the most inconvenient times. I can choose to date her, and even end up with her, as far as these things go for child characters. I can stand overlooking the water, holding her hand, telling her I was always on her side. It took ten years to get even that far, for the Girl Next Door in the JRPG. It’s not canon, though. It’s never canon, just like everyone who denies they experienced my little tryst with Tifa, under the shadow of an airship near the end of the world. So here’s my message for Luna, Tifa, and all the other Girls Next Door who are patiently waiting for a hero to look your way, to notice your smile. You can do better than him. AL
I can choose to date her. It’s not canon, though. It’s never canon.
Tifa in Dissidia by !KenshinGumi559 on deviantART
Tifa by ~jmont on deviantART
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I
n most games, nearly everything is commodified. Completing a game’s goals -- from delivering ten knicknacks to assassinating noblemen to saving the world -- nets the player rewards of loot or in-game currency. While it’s an interesting trend to question -- would we bother to help this NPC if all we got were a word of thanks? -- it becomes far more troublesome when the thing being commodified is sex and romance due to the model society uses to view sex and relationships. In this commodity model, sex is viewed as a good that men take from women. Instead of looking at sex as a performance where two people collaborate to give each other pleasure, sex is seen as a game where men seek to trick women into having sex before they’ve gotten what they’ve wanted, usually money or attention or both. The commodity model is pervasive in our society and infiltrates our language around sex, dating, and relationships. A girl “loses” her virginity. Women are encouraged to not “give it up” right away, even if she wants to have sex. Men “score”. In the common baseball metaphor, men are always up at bat and women are always playing defense. When it comes to straight married couples, it’s assumed that the woman trades access to her vagina for love and monetary support. The commodity model is a toxic way of looking at sex that pits men against women (while completely erasing queer relationships), when sex should be seen as a collaborative act that brings pleasure to both parties. When video games commodify sex and romance, they both reflect and reinforce the societal view of sex as a good to be traded. The four main romance storylines of Dragon Age 2 completely avoid falling into the trap of commodifying sex. It accomplishes this, most importantly, by taking the usual game elements out of the relationships and making the romances into interactive stories rather than minigames. The relationship meter underwent an overhaul between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2: instead of having a scale of approval that was necessary to fill up for both a character to like the player and to obtain stat bonuses for that character -- or, conversely, that caused a character to attack the player and/or leave the party if it got low enough -- the meter was replaced with a scale of friendship or rivalry that reflected two opposite but equally strong feelings the character had for Hawke. Friend and Rival acted as two parallel tracks -- at one end, the character considers Hawke a close and trusted friend; at the other, someone with whom
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the character vehemently disagrees with but respects nonetheless -- that are equally valid. This changed the way the player relates to the character because the player was no longer encouraged to kiss a character’s ass or figure out what the character wanted to hear just to avoid having them leave the party. In fact, in Dragon Age 2 it is more useful to actively piss off party members than to avoid offending them. In this way, Dragon Age 2 decommodifies companion relationships, a change that extends to the romance stories, since the romances are playable on either the friendship or rivalry paths and play out slightly differently on each. Dragon Age 2 also modified the gift function a great deal from Origins. There are no longer generic gifts the player can use to easily gain approval, just two for each character that are very specific to the character and trigger a short conversation. Most interestingly, characters will react differently depending on whether Hawke is developing a friendship or rivalry with that character, boosting the friendship or rivalry further in the
appropriate direction. For example, one of Isabela’s gifts is a ship in a bottle; if Hawke is friends with Isabela, she’ll find it cute, but if Hawke is Isabela’s rival, she will think Hawke is taunting her for not having her own ship any more. This adds some nuance to the relationships and avoids allowing the player to simply buy a character’s affections. By taking the game-like elements out of the relationships entirely, Dragon Age 2 avoids commodifying relationships with characters, both romantic and otherwise. But the commodification of relationships doesn’t have to be literal in order to fall into the commodity model; just making the romance storylines into actual stories doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, as evidenced by the prevalence of the commodity model in movies and television even when there isn’t a game present. Dragon Age 2 goes a step further and avoids the commodity model in the types of stories it tells. One of the hallmarks of the commodity model is the positioning of sex as the ultimate goal and the end point of a
Hawke’s doves In the commodity model, sex is viewed as a good that men take from women. Dragon Age 2 completely avoids falling into that trap.
relationship: the game ends when the man “scores” against the woman. In all of the romance stories in Dragon Age 2, sex is merely one facet of the relationship, with varying degrees of importance. In Anders’s romance story, for example, Hawke and Anders’s sleeping together actually marks the beginning of the relationship. Isabela, on the other hand, will sleep with Hawke right away, but will resist a romantic relationship until Act 3. Contrast this with the Mass Effect games, which follow an action movie structure where the hero and their love interest have sex just before the climactic battle, and the relationship doesn’t develop any further. (This is the case even with female Shepard; although the commodity model dictates specific roles for men and women, just changing the genders around doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of treating relationships as a transaction where sex is the goal or end-point.) The variety in approaches is key here. In the commodity model, there’s only one formula: the man tries to win over the woman with gifts and kindness and dates until she “gives
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Dragon Age: Dalish Warrior by ~Viktormon on deviantART
in”. A storyline completely different from that -- not just one where the genders are swapped -- not only sidesteps the commodity model, but is more interesting and realistic, providing extra character development that romance storylines in other games lack. That is ultimately what makes the Dragon Age 2 romance storylines so successful: while there are no gameplay benefits to romancing a character versus developing a strong Platonic relationship, the romances provide not only more insight into the character in question, but subtle changes to their arc. Hawke’s love gives Anders stability and something to live for other than the cause of mage freedom. Thedasology writes that the characters miss out on something when their romance storylines aren’t played: “Merrill loses the guiding light who gives her a reason to keep going after her dreams are destroyed. Fenris loses his only stated chance to have a family again... and his reprieve from his loneliness. Isabela is pretty okay, because she’s Isabela and she has it together, but she still loses the strongest force in her life challenging her to take a chance and try to be a better person instead of hiding from the possibility because she’s afraid she can’t do it”. The romance storylines in Dragon Age 2 aren’t merely sidestories, they’re rewarding and even crucial parts of the narrative of each character -- and they’re even romantic, to boot. AR
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Of horse and man
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n addition to being one of the best games of its generation, Shadow of the Colossus is, at its core, a love story -but not the one a player might expect at first glance. As the game opens, Wander, the story’s hero, is bringing the corpse of Mono, a young woman, to a forbidden land, where a cursed temple contains Dormin, the evil god that holds the secret to her resurrection. The game offers little backstory to their relationship, and Wander has barely any dialogue, so the player is left to infer the profound bond they share based entirely on the extreme lengths he’s willing to go in order to see her returned to life. There’s another relationship in the game -- one which doesn’t require the player to assume things based on genre conventions: the profound devotion that Agro, the horse, displays to her master Wander. From the time humans began yoking carts to them and strapping saddles to their backs, there has been a special relationship between horses and people. From the magical horses of Greek mythology to the named steed that seemingly every western hero rode, this relationship has turned up time and again as a theme in storytelling, but until Shadow of the Colossus, it was entirely absent from the world of video games. When horses appeared at all, they were only ever treated as vehicles designed to speed travel between locations. Even relatively complex story-based titles such as Red Dead Redemption and
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which seem to require horses to explore their expansive maps, eventually render them obsolete through ample fast-travel options. One particularly sour note was the game Gun, which treated horses as literally disposable, allowing the player to ride them until they died of exhaustion. In order to build a relationship between the player and Agro, Shadow of the Colossus cuts right to the heart of the man/horse relationship. Unlike so many other videogame horses, Agro is not optional - - right from the beginning it’s clear that the areas of land that Wander must traverse are so incredibly vast that only a fool would attempt to cross them alone. So the relationship begins as one of utility, as the player needs Agro to take them to the Colossi. She immediately establishes herself as something more than a vehicle, however. Responding with unparalleled authenticity, the player can’t simply point Agro in a direction and assume she’ll obey -- they’re
A reckless player can dive off a cliff if they want to, but they’ll be doing so without their loyal steed.
forced to learn how to travel on her terms. Agro is a willful steed, always aware of the dangers around her, wary about trotting too quickly across narrow paths, and flat-out unwilling to commit suicide. A reckless player can dive off a cliff if they want to, but they’ll be doing so without their loyal steed. These restrictions on Agro’s behaviour put the player in the position of relating to her as a character to be worked with, rather than a vehicle to be used -- an illusion that is heightened by her behaviour when she’s not being ridden. From the little details like the way she’s unnerved by the voice of Dormin and won’t enter the temple until Wander’s next mission briefing is complete, to the way she spooks and flees when left alone near a Colossus, Agro demonstrates a wide breadth of reactions to stimuli, which only reinforces her personality in the mind of the player. Whether rushing at full speed across a verdant field, or galloping desperately away from a Colossus as the player fires arrows at the beast’s eyes, Agro is more of a partner in the adventure than anything else. I didn’t realise how much I’d come to rely upon her until I paused to save the
The Unbeatable Duo by ~Hime-no-Toki on deviantART
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game and hunt a white-tailed lizard, hoping to increase Wander’s stamina wheel. After scarfing down its tail I hopped off the temple, excited to resume the journey, when I realised that I had no idea where Agro was. For a moment I was genuinely panicked -- luckily, Agro’s devotion to Wander is so complete that whether she’s just ambled away in search of water, or has run five dunes over as he’s fallen off a dragon and crashed to the sand, she’s never more than a whistle away. This devotion takes on a far deeper resonance towards the end of the game (spoilers from here on out). As the events of the plot take their toll on Wander, he’s gradually reduced to a shadow of his former self. Agro, for her part, remains as lithe and powerful as ever. Even though Wander seems like he’s barely able to stand when he reaches the last few Colossi, whenever he climbs into the saddle things seem just as they were six hours earlier. While Agro may have seemed like nothing more than a convenience as the game began, by the time she’s carrying Wander to fight the final Colossus, it’s impossible to imagine accomplishing anything
without her. Which brings me, of course, to a moment seared into the mind of anyone who’s ever played the game. Agro’s death scene. While the player can intellectually grasp the idea that Mono’s death was a tragedy, there exists no emotional connection between her and them. We know that princesses must be saved -- even after their deaths, it seems -- but we don’t know her, specifically. Agro, on the other hand, carries the player’s heart with her as she plummets off that cliff into the river far below. Who, in that moment, didn’t feel Wander’s anguish and scream right along with him? Her death gives that final fight a depth few videogame bosses could ever match -- when Wander goes to face the towering Colossus, he’s already lost everything. Even if he wins, there can’t be a happy ending -- the game has convinced the player to care deeply about a digital horse, and then took it away from them. Absurd as it may seem, this loss is as profound as anything games have to offer. Without the absolute devastation of that moment the game’s ending could never be as utterly satisfying and uplifting as it is. After Wander and Dormin’s ultimate defeat, Mono finally awakes, and the player isn’t surprised. Of course she’s back from the dead -- the genre demands it. What the player isn’t expecting -- and
can’t possibly be prepared for, is the shot of Agro limping back into frame. That’s the reveal that melts the player’s heart and brings tears to their eyes. We have no connection to Mono, so her return, while happy, can’t be satisfying. Likewise, the reveal of the resurrected Wander, now with horns protruding from his temples, could be interpreted any number of ways, if Agro weren’t there to act as the audience’s comforting guide. It’s she that leads Mono to the child, and then brings the two of them up to the bucolic garden above. However one wants to read the specific events, the fact that the utterly trustworthy and devoted Agro has signed off on it lets players know that everything’s going to be alright. While the plot may be fuzzy and indistinct, and the relationships never entirely clear, in the world of Shadow of the Colossus one thing is absolutely certain: no matter how much it may pain her to do so -- and it’s so heartbreaking to watch her awkwardly shuffling on three good legs -- Agro will always be there for Wander, whatever form he takes. DW
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I had breakfast in bed. by =Ronaaa on deviantART
D
uring the summer of 2011, I was casting about for a game to try to fill some time between waiting for other titles’ release dates. I needed a distraction, and thanks to a mid-summer Steam sale, I unexpectedly found myself in a marathon binge of Lionhead’s Fable III. Fable III isn’t known for being challenging as far as any of the standard elements -- plot, story, combat mechanics, and so on -- are concerned. And yet, playing it, I found myself challenged in a most unexpected and positive way. I knew, offhandedly, before I ever loaded the game, that it was considered a “mature” RPG. And yet I was surprised (pleasantly so, but still taken aback for a moment) to find that among the character attributes for nearly every adult NPC in the game, there was a sexual preference qualifier. The game was telling me, bluntly, in no euphemistic or uncertain terms, which of the characters I was interacting with were straight, gay, or bisexual (the game’s three options) and therefore, by extension, letting me know upfront which men and women were considered to be in the dating pool for my Hero. Despite knowing all of this, and knowing how the Fable franchise prides itself on a choices-and-consequences design philosophy, I was further surprised to discover that the bed in a player’s house can be interacted with -- and that on interacting, the options are “sleep” and “sex”. Sleep works like the “rest” or “wait” functions in many a game, basically a blackout with an alarm clock option, and sex can be chosen in the protected or unprotected varieties.
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The game was telling me in no uncertain terms which characters were in the dating pool for my Hero.
I am in my thirties and have been playing video games since the middle of the 1980s, and yet this is the first time I can ever remember seeing the existence of sex, as an event unto itself, so explicitly and practically addressed in my pixels. To be sure, I have played my fair share of games that contain romantic interludes or the plain ol’ bumpin’ of uglies. Divine Divinity contains an unmarked quest for finding the main city’s brothel (with both male and female staff to choose from), and rewards a rather large amount of XP for employing the services therein. Fallout: New Vegas features a wide array of sex workers (both voluntary and involuntary) prominently in quests and on the Strip,
and a player can choose some questionable fade-to-black moments if so inclined. And then of course there are the modern BioWare franchises, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, with their wide array of party member romance options, begun in conversation and with friendship, and consummated in a carefully choreographed and narratively timed fade-to-black. Indeed, the fade-to-black is what I’m used to seeing and now generally expect from games (with “suggestive offscreen noise” its crass and less-often-seen cousin). We all know how this goes: provided you’ve said the right things throughout Mass Effect 2, a certain someone comes to Shepard’s quarters during the last quiet moment on the Normandy, they exchange a few more words, press F to continue, and it’s the next morning. The romance option with Liara in the first game was much more explicit, but even so, probably less tawdry than many R-rated movies I’ve seen. So, the real surprise for me with sex in Fable III was not that it exists: sex is implied in plenty of games. The surprise was that its existence is announced independently. By adding “sex” to the
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A bedtime fable
bed interaction options, and by indicating NPC sexual orientation and flirtatiousness levels in basic info boxes, the game is putting right out there the idea that sex is an action your player character might choose for any combination of fun, profit, and love, depending on any number of whims, emotions, or circumstances. Almost like the real world, there! How novel! Sex in games (and most other media) has a way of falling into a certain trap, though. Alex Raymond described the issue in a piece called Women Aren’t Vending Machines, looking at the commodity model of sex. In essence, Raymond’s argument is that game mechanics and game writing boil the commodity model (“I buy you things, you sleep with me”) down to its pure essence. The exchange of items, as in Dragon Age: Origins gifts, and the “correct” dialogue options, will trigger a consummated romance with the target NPC. She concludes that too often in
games, “The NPC’s thoughts and desires aren’t relevant; what matters it the tactics that you use to get what you want. This is a boring mechanic in games and dangerously dehumanising behavior in real life”. Fable III is most certainly and emphatically guilty of what Alex describes; the mechanic of all relationships in the game is purely an item exchange, level-up sort of thing, more akin to The Sims than to Dragon Age. And yet in a strange way, it actually feels more like a free choice than in most other games I’ve seen. In every other narrative game I can remember playing, sex for a player character exists in one of two contexts. One, within a romance partnership arc (often, though not always, leading to marriage) or two, as a literal commodity, intentionally traded for money or for information. The avatars I’ve controlled have encountered a number of sex workers in their lives, had many a “happily ever after”, or have even used seduction as a tool to advance their own agendas. But sex as an unburdened choice, with a willing partner, just because both were there at the time and it seemed like fun? Not so much. This, then, is the paradox I find. While sex in Fable III is to every pixel a tradeable, levelable commodity, it’s also a free and open choice, presented without judgement. If there is yet a “doing it right” to be found in games, I’m more than certain this title isn’t it -- but it’s also, in a strange way, closer. In a year that saw the release of Catherine, among other titles, the question of how game design approaches actual sex and actual relationships spent much time flying around game criticism circles. In nearly all cases, the answer is still
“badly”, with a chaser of “inadequately”. Ultimately, all our games still rely on sets of numerical mechanics and rules. They’re a series of unbreakable coded “if, then” statements and our heroes (and villains) can’t suddenly decide to take a left turn from the established rules of reality the way a flesh and blood human can. In this one small way, though, in this one tiny instance, my Princess can break the rules, or even set her own. Maybe the next time I see “sex” as an in-game option, it will be in a title where the NPCs are actual characters, rather than collections of a half-dozen fixed sound bites and gestures. Society’s still mixed on the idea of sexual agency, but games can show us the best of our values and the best of our options, when their designers so choose. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before a “mature” game can let us make truly mature choices. >>>
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I
knew going into Fable III that a wide array of player choices existed in the game, but “vague understanding they exist” and “actually having a choice in front of you to make” are two different things. I waited until very late in the game before I had my Princess shack up with anyone. Mainly I was holding out hope that one or more of the plot-relevant NPCs, with an actual personality, would become an option; I found the general pool of interactable NPCs to be neither attractive nor interesting, so becoming “friends” was already enough work there. I certainly had no general moral objection to my character having (safe, consenting) sex. And yet, as so often happens, I was surprised by the baggage that I, the player, bring with me into the fictional world. Although its wardrobe cues are all over the temporal map, Fable III takes place in a version of roughly the 1820s that never existed, whereas most fantasy RPGs take place in a version of the 14th-15th centuries that never existed. Its “Albion” is yet another false Britain (a common setting),
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and so I found myself instinctively guarding against the roles reserved for women in the Georgian and Victorian eras. In that environment, I felt that marriage was not actually an option for my female character. In order for her to remain a successful, independent, respected agent, I felt deeply that she needed to stay single. These are totally assumptions that I the player bring to the game world with me. I’ve had no such issues in many other games. I gleefully paired off my Shepard, despite feeling that she felt the burden not only of representing humanity to the galaxy, but also of representing women specifically. On forcing myself to think through my rationalizations, I find that in a science fiction, future-based environment, I feel that a woman can be partnered and yet also become or remain successful and respected. The Commander was a renowned, accomplished hero in her own right before a partnership option entered
her life; she has a strong identity and can keep being herself, and the world in which she lives will unquestioningly support that. Intellectually, I was keenly aware that the Albion of Fable III is not actually England at the dawn of the Industrial Age. I knew that it was “just” a game, in which I could make any choice or set of choices that the mathematical mechanics allow, and still reach at least one metric of success as a player. I could complete the story regardless of the side choices my Princess made. But down in my gut, I still felt the pressure of centuries’ worth of feminist issues. The actual mechanics of the game never did enforce any kind of social penalties for marriage (or for any array of sexual encounters). The biggest impact on the story arc was a slight change in the proximity-generated NPC gossip around me in towns. Near the end of the game, I finally had her settle down with a wealthy, middle-class, dark-skinned woman and they adopted three kids. But for most of the game, that unnamed Princess was just trying to forge her place in the world. She spent so much time trying, so hard, to become a leader and earn the loyalty of an entire kingdom through hard work and hard fighting. She was striving to place herself at the very head of a nationwide rebellion intended to oust her lousy brother, who was a terrible king. That’s no small task! And I, not the game, knew her society would need her to face it alone. KC
The butterfly room. by wakingphotolife on Flickr
I found myself instinctively guarding against the roles reserved for women in the Georgian and Victorian eras.
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S-link to eleven A
bout a year ago I went a little bit... funny. Some might say I was on the edge of infatuation, borderline obsessive. Others might say I was -- and am -- a lost cause; but you shouldn’t listen to them. I don’t care if they are family. I felt something strange and strong -- a connection with a fictional character beyond mere appreciation. Beyond empathy or engagement and into something I’m not really comfortable calling love, but no other word seems to fit there quite as well. Oh, it was a familiar story. Boy goes on holiday with his friends, boy meets robot on the beach, robot imprints onto boy like an awkward newly hatched duckling, boy and robot slowly become the best of friends. Boy and robot save the world together. Boy and robot slide hopelessly towards a tragedy which will tear them apart. Tale as old as time, true as it can be. This was Persona 3 and the relationship between Aigis and the main character, who is called Sam Tunoku, no matter what anyone else may suggest. Or rather... my own relationship with Aigis. Sam is largely irrelevant in this whole picture to be perfectly honest, as was intended. It’s easy to be wary about feelings that emerge from a game such as Persona 3. A game which is -- in a large part of its social-section heart -- a dating sim, and as such has been designed explicitly to draw out these kinds of emotions. Or perhaps indulge them. Such things always put me off immediately -- I don’t like getting the impression that I’m being manipulated or pandered to. Of course, everything is created to illicit some kind of response, but some things definitely cross that internal line where a defensive cynicism takes the place of any empathy. It is the difference between knowing that a film’s score is there to reinforce or clarify the tone of a scene and that occasional realisation you get when the music is overstepping its boundaries. This usually happens in a scene that is supposed to be emotional, and you know it’s supposed to be emotional, but the music is swelling so melodramatically over the top of everything it feels forced and false and ruins the whole experience. There’s a sudden
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disconnect, the curtain pulled back. That’s how I felt about a lot of Persona 3’s characters. With the girls, anyway: those obviously written as love interests from the outset. There’s Yukari -- the ‘default’ female. Mitsuru -- rich and serious. Fuuka -- the ‘adorable’ clutz.Yuko -- sporty and optimistic. Chihiro -- shy and awkward, the worst one of all. Which flavour of Japanese schoolchild would you like to mack on today? All creepy bases covered. Others fare a lot better, as they were naturally created as being classmates and friends and actual people first and foremost, rather than a checked box on a list of archetypes onto which some dude might like to project his romantic desires. Aigis doesn’t fit with the other girls, though, nor does she quite fit with anyone else. In the first release of the game there wasn’t even the option to hang out with her. It certainly wasn’t love at first sight, mind you, and oddly enough not because of any off-putting Japanese sexual stereotypes. We’ve all seen that hentai, right? With the female robot unquestionably devoted to her master -- trapped in selfless servitude forever? Right. Then the space whales turn up and everything takes a turn. But somehow Persona 3 manages to avoid these allusions -- the real reason I was slightly cold towards her was exactly because she didn’t quite fit anywhere. My group of fighters and friends was already established and then this oddly-dressed, strangely-spoken girl jumps right into the middle of it with no warning. Messing up our groove. It’s hard to say exactly when my feelings for her changed. Maybe that strangeness was also what finally drew me closer to her. If I had to pick out one thing that the game does best, it would be just giving everything time to grow -- people and relationships, both. Not just big things either, but the average and the everyday moments that do make up a life. Just talking at lunch or after school, grabbing a meal together or going for a walk with the dog. In these small moments, friendships are really formed. Over the course of the school year all those clichés that made me uneasy to begin with were softened
and rounded into real characters, with histories and personalities, troubles and desires, until almost all of them had found a place in my heart. None quite like Aigis though, who never left my side through all our battles, whose melancholy story intrigued me the most, whose determination got to me even in the real world when things were tough. Whose understanding that we could never really be together -- and desire for me to be happy even with someone else -- broke my heart into a million pieces. What else can compete with a game in terms of giving raw time to spend with a character? An intimate novel, I suppose, but it’s not quite the same. Not to get into the benefits of interactivity here -- and Persona 3 is hardly a bastion of player agency -- but a little really does go a long way. The simple act of choosing who to chill out with after school, how to respond to their questions and comfort their insecurities. It might not have a dramatic impact on the game itself, but it did mean something to this player -- in feeling involved in the building of a relationship. As I write this I am sat on the cheapest and slowest train to ever crawl its miserable way out of London and into the unbound terrors of the English Midlands. Visiting an old friend for a few days -- a very good friend, someone I haven’t seen for far too long. Why exactly are we such close friends? I have no idea. We’ve only got as much in common as any other two twenty-something idiot men you could choose at random. We have pretty opposing personalities. And yet... here we are. We lived together for three years, so that could be it. The usual deal -- nights in and nights out, highs and lows, consoling and celebrating. But I shared the same situation with others too. Other friends, yes, but those with whom I have slowly lost contact over the years. Friendships I did value, but not quite strongly enough to stop them gradually slipping away like the hopeless apathetic dullard that I am. There have been -- and may still be -- reunions, but it’s never quite the same. Except with this one guy, who has never faded into less of a friend no matter
Aigis PERSONA3 by ~Kyokimaru on deviantART
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how long we have spent apart. Maybe it’s the same thing as with Persona 3 -- that when the opportunity was there, we chose to spend some time together rather than with other people. But it seems just as difficult to dissect a real-world connection as a virtual, one-way one. I just want to rub my toe through the dirt and shrug my shoulders. I don’t know what it is... because they’re cool. Because we get along. Because we’ve gone through some stuff together, because there’s various things about their character that I hooked into or admired and wanted to see more of, know more intimately. All I know is that I’ve got the same small smile on my face thinking of the weekend ahead and when I think back to my time with Persona 3. Not because of the battle system or the setting or even most of the story, but because of the time I spent with my robot buddy. Love, friendship, obsession. Call it what you will, judge it how you want -- it’ll always be special to me. AM 19
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Systems of love
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love video games. Many of my waking hours (as well as a fair number of my non-waking hours) are dedicated to playing, analysing, and simply thinking about them. But love is a strange word: I love my favorite sweatshirt. I love grilled cheese sandwiches. I love my wife. And I love video games. Obviously, love is a multifaceted thing. Part of my affection towards video games stems from their capacity to simulate the kind of love associated with deep affection and fidelity, the sorts of emotions present between close family and friends. While “love” is a hyperbolic verb we all use to describe things we like, it is also a system of behaviors we use to interact with those with whom we share a bond. Love can include declarations of affection, but it is also about interaction, one of video games’ defining traits. Plenty of games have stories with romantic subplots or characters that fall in love. What is rarer, and more personally rewarding, are games that express love through action. The strongest examples do more than simply tell or even show you about characters’ relationships; they let you feel them. So, aside from the ribald quicktime events in the God of War series, how do games communicate love through systems? Fumito Ueda’s critically-acclaimed Ico uses a minimalistic approach to dialogue and exposition regarding its story, but it manages to transmit themes of love through other means. The player is never explicitly given more than a basic sketch of the plot: Ico (a young social pariah) and Yorda (the daughter of a power-hungry tyrant) find themselves trapped in the same castle. They work together to navigate the castle’s beautiful, yet treacherous surroundings. They come to rely on one another, never straying too far apart and often holding hands as they face their enemies.
Ico never explicitly says much about about love, but the game’s rules convey the presence of a close relationship. Simply by playing the game, you develop a link between Ico and Yorda that begins to feel like love. Ico continually helps Yorda scramble up walls and fights off her shadowy pursuers. Yorda points out clues to environmental puzzles and uses her magic to open sealed areas of the castle. In order for both characters to stay safe, they must remain together and help one another. The player feels their mutual dependency: clutching the R1 button on the controller to hold hands ads a physical dimension to the relationship. Feeling the controller subtly shake as Ico and Yorda run together is comforting and a physical demonstration of their intimacy. Whether it is Platonic or romantic, Ico and Yorda’s love is felt as much as it is spoken or illustrated. 2008’s Prince of Persia gives players similarly unique insight into the systemic nature of love. Unlike Ico and Yorda, the Prince and Elika are quite vocal. They bicker, tease one another and sometimes open up in moments of sincerity. However, by playing the game, the player learns the real story: these are two people who not only need each other, but are perfectly suited to one another. The Prince and Elika must combine their skills to traverse the environment or defeat their enemies. The boundaries where one person’s skills end and the other’s start are blurred: is successful platforming enabled by the Prince’s acrobatic leaps or Elika’s spells of agility? Are demons felled by her magical attacks or his swordplay? Because the player is the one experiencing these dynamics, the answer is clear: there is no solid boundary. Regardless of what the dialogue says, the Prince and Elika are intimately connected. On a practical level, the Prince soon finds himself caught up in Elika’s struggle against her father, who has been corrupted by a dark god. When it becomes clear that Elika plans to sacrifice her own life in order to defeat their enemy, the Prince’s brash facade and carefree attitude dissolve. At the critical moment, he makes the tragically selfish decision to revive her, thereby undoing her sacrifice and potentially sealing the
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world’s fate. It’s not a heroic decision, but it is an understandable one. Without Elika, the Prince is not really himself; even the way he moves and interacts with the world is blunted without his companion. Anyone who has ever been separated from a loved one will find this experience achingly familiar. Of course, interactive models for love are affected by the experiences players bring to the game. Jason Rohrer’s contemplative game Passage offers an experience that is part thought experiment and part emotional Rorschach test. The game’s simple art and music allows for enough space to project one’s own experiences into the pixelated vessel. Passage’s top-down maze-like structure offers a series of choices, all of which explore the nature of relationships: just as traversing the maze solo lets you explore tight places, navigating life’s avenues alone allows you to be more nimble and impulsive. In life, choosing a partner and making joint decisions can limit each person’s individual opportunities, but a healthy union benefits both partners and lets you share your accomplishments. Without a partner, players miss out on Passage’s bonus points, as well as the satisfying experience of seeing the two characters grow old together. Passage offers a way to test the ramifications of statements like “I’ll never leave you” or “I’m happy alone”. Games like Passage recognise that love is often about action and unspoken consequences. Choosing a hard path in life is difficult when it will also affect a loved one. Even if they bear the trials as stoically as Passage’s pixelated characters, the strain exists and the weight remains. Saying that you’ll be able to carry on after a partner’s death is a much easier choice when it is abstracted. Even after playing the game dozens of times, I can rarely bring myself
Love is driving someone to the airport at 5 AM without complaining.
to venture away from the wife’s grave after she dies. I find myself trying to invoke the laws of 2D platformers by moving to the left side of the screen in hopes of “rewinding” the level and the passage of time, only to be faced with an age-old paradox: the only constant in life
is change. Games like Ico, Prince of Persia and Passage attempt to organise some of this chaos and frame intangible concepts like love within systems. The love we see in games is shaped by their rules and the personal experiences we bring to them. Ultimately, the authenticity of the these systems relies on how much we relate to them. For me, love is driving someone to the airport at 5 AM without complaining. Love is packing a lunch for someone before they leave the house for work. Love is making big life decisions based on how they affect those for whom you care. It’s no surprise that I am more deeply affected by Ico helping Yorda scramble up a wall for the hundredth time than any of the overwrought soliloquies in the Final Fantasy games. The former scenario is a tangible manifestation of love, while the latter is the video game equivalent of ending a phone call with the rote incantation: “okloveyoubye”. The word “love” can be tossed around frivolously, but video games help us get past its more casual definitions. By utilising the medium’s unique capacity to convey meaning through interaction, the most thought-provoking games abandon the ambiguity and clumsiness of proclamations in favour of actions. In a video game, we don’t just see or hear about love: we feel it. SJ
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22 David Terhune
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All about Vince O
n the surface, Atlus’s Catherine is many things: a game that seems to promise an aboveaverage amount of T&A, an updated take on the arcade classic Q*Bert, or perhaps it can be classified simply as another one of “those” crazy Japanese games that come out of left field and are appreciated by a small segment of fringe gamers. If you asked me what Catherine was about, I’d say that it was really about love... however, probably not the kind the kind of love that you might expect by looking at the cover or reading reviews. As the story begins, the game introduces Vincent as a young thirtysomething who’s got the usual issues men have when the thought occurs that they might have to start making tough decisions about the rest of their life, especially in how it relates to other people. This in itself is relatively unique -- as someone who went through a similar period, many of his thoughts and feelings rang quite true to me, and were quite easy to sympathise with. Before long,Vincent gets caught in a triangle between his current, somewhat stable relationship with Katherine, and riskier, more exciting possibilities with a new girl, Catherine. His steady broaches the topic of settling down, and ultimately of marriage. Newcomer Catherine promises fun and excitement, no strings attached. Of course, it’s ultimately up to the player to decide which route to take, and the developers do a fair job of not painting either girl as an entirely “correct” choice. However, regardless of what the player determines is right for their own personality and taste, the game cannot come to a conclusion without Vincent discovering the foundation for true love -- and what might come as a surprise to
some, it has nothing to do with either Katherine or Catherine. Instead, it’s Vincent’s love of himself. As someone who is no stranger to navigating the difficult waters of love and romance, it was something of a revelation to see a character on-screen have the same sorts of thoughts and feelings that I think many people do. At least, I hope they do. Self-doubt, self-examination, and being ultimately honest about what you want or need... it’s hard, sometimes painful work, but truly mature relationships are built on the information gained from such insights. While it’s quite easy to fall head-overheels for someone that catches your eye, it’s another trick entirely to turn that infatuation into something more substantial. On the other hand, it’s a challenge to be aware of personal boundaries and respectful of others in the event that the goal is not a relationship, but merely a physical tryst or a temporary distraction. I’m a firm believer that no matter what the intent is, it’s impossible to have a successful, mutually positive connection with someone if you don’t know and accept yourself. In other words, in order to find love or to deal with love, you must love yourself first. Before the game’s credits roll, Vincent will have several conversations with his closest friends, with sheep he meets in the nightmare world and -most importantly, -- with himself. He’s quite introspective and observant, and while he may not know which way to go at the outset, by the time the course is chosen, he’s defined who he is as a person, and what it will take to make the right decision. In this context, the “right” decision is the one that he will be happiest with, and by following that
sentiment, the one that both women will ultimately be happiest with, too. He learns respect for himself, and the natural result of that respect is that it extends to both Catherine and Katherine, even if the outcome may not appear positive. It is important to note, however, that the developers were quite wise to include a third option which plays right into the concept of loving oneself. By making the correct choices and being careful about which answers are given, it’s entirely possible for the player to choose whether they’re a better fit with Katherine or Catherine, but instead to decide that Vincent’s course is following his own dream and not going with either woman into a relationship that he can’t fulfill. Such a choice is a difficult and selfactualised decision for people in real life, which means that it’s triply so in a videogame. Players and designers are so trained to see things in binary terms that to find a game which breaks the mould and acknowledges that matters of life and of the heart are never that simple is utterly refreshing. Having only three choices may not be entirely realistic, but it’s a great step forward as videogames inch slowly towards a firmer grasp on the human condition. For players interested in learning about certain aspects of love while pressing buttons and manipulating a d-pad, I can hardly think of a better subject of study than Catherine. It might require a little more spatial awareness than one might need when spending time with a real-life partner (and it certainly doesn’t have all the answers, nor does it ask all the questions), but the value of some lessons contained on the disc can’t be denied. BG
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Once upon a love Game photography by Iain Andrews enwandrews.tumblr.com
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You are not alone Models:
makeshiftwings ravenhedgehog.deviantart.com Janet C hime-no-toki.deviantart.com
Photography:
Beth Martinez-Carrol (pp 34-41) Gapple-Photos.com Ken AD (pp 42-43) stillreflection.deviantart.com
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