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Written by Tyler Miller
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Tuesday, 09 February 2010 05:24 |
As we transition from our old site to this new one, we've decided to bring along some of our favorite posts as well. Enjoy our trip down memory lane.
For a very short time I worked in a white tablecloth restaurant that could be called "fine dining". It was known for its high quality dry-aged beef and took special pride in the wine pairings. For anyone who's not familiar with it, the goal of pairing is to find the right wine for the right steak. E.g.-- Cabernet Sauvignon ages well in oak and often has a sweet, smokey taste. This flavor goes perfectly with red meat but not so much with poultry of fish (which are usually paired with a white wine).
Why is this important? The idea of pairing is that by combining two ingredients the attributes of each will compliment the other and turn a plate of food in to a one of a king meal. Let's see how this applies to video games.
A few months back I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. At about that same time I also dove back in to the Capital Wastes with the new DLC for Fallout 3. I was halfway through this bleak, depressing book when I loaded up my old save and-- The Pitt never looked so full of despair. It was like I'd been playing the game with blinders on up until that point. As much as I love playing Fallout, my mind can drift when I play it (specially during the long treks to those un-quicktravelable locations). At the same time, whenever I let my mind wander - in traffic, at work - it was always The Road that I thought about.
We've all read a sad story, or a tense chapter and felt affected after we put the book down-- it's the same as playing too much Tetris and seeing falling blocks everywhere. Perfect example; pull an all-nighter with Left 4 Dead, then read some of World War Z and tell me if the next day you don't absent-mindedly examine your workplace for prospective safe houses. A good book will refuse to let you keep your mind off the story after you close the cover, and a good game will refuse to let you take your eyes off the screen while you play it. The Road had put me in the headspace of characters in a post-apocalyptic world. By doing that it gave more of an impact to playing Fallout. I guess I started taking the game a little more seriously.
After that I turned the difficulty up a little to make it feel like there was more risk to my actions. I started playing it smarter, like the Father character in the Road. I checked 360 degrees every few paces conserving as much ammunition as I could and bypassing every enemy that didn't detect me. Instead of seeing Fallout from the perspective of "I can do anything to anyone and just reload the game", I saw it closer to "anything can happen to me, I should be careful".
The point of the story is to say that I had been engaged with the world of Fallout in a more thoughtful way. I felt a little more informed while playing. By reading a book with tones, themes and settings similar to Bethesda's game, I could let my imagination fill in the gaps. It was one of the most comprehensive gaming experiences I've ever had. I'm sure Levar Burton would roll over in his grave if he knew, in this case, a book made my video game better*.
Companies have been trying to get involved in creating believable worlds that extend the mythology of their products for years. Remember Shadows of the Empire? I'm sure it was fun for people who just played the game, but those who read the book were in for the real treat. They got to play as the characters they had been imagining since page 1. Being that Shadows the book was one of the best in the series, Shadows the game had a rich backstory to pull from in order to create a great Nintendo64 title that Star Wars fans still hold in high regard.
Any time the topics of video games and literature are brought up it's guaranteed that Atlas Shrugged and Bioshock will get mentioned. Since Ken Levine based his game on many of the ideas in Ayn Rand's Objectivist opus, we can use the book more to bolster the game than the other way around. Bioshock still gets major points for being a great game with some thoughtful themes inspired by Atlas Shrugged: stifled genius, man's duty to the world and the sin of wasted ability.
It's the opposite of Dante's Inferno. Where EA attempts to shoehorn a few stripped-down keywords from Milton's epic poem into a feeble God of War clone, 2K plucked the most interesting concepts from Atlas Shrugged and crafted an exceptional game around them. I don't think we need to guess which one has a more important relationship to its source material.
It seems like every game is released with some form of expanded universe: prequel novelizations, multi-issue comics or ARG; from the obvious, established franchises like Halo and Call of Duty to newcomers such as Dead Space (the latter launching with a feature length animated prequel and 6-part graphic novel in both physical and webisode format). Sometimes these additions can be well done and are embraced by the fanbase; e.g. ilovebees and the pre-game Mass Effect novel. More often than not, though, these "Extras" are just bland marketing.
My advice? Look for something (book, movie, comic, interpretive dance) that approximates the feel of what you're playing. Like Assassin's Creed? Pick up Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and experience the two in tandem. Silent Hill and H.P. Lovecraft go together pretty well, and If you never checked out Medal of Honor: Airborne you should give it a shot while reading Stephan Ambrose's Band of Brothers. Then follow up with the 6-hour HBO miniseries (Warning: I'm pretty sure this combination is why I enlisted in the Army. Results may vary.)
There are a lot of ways to get more immersion out of your gaming experience. Whether that means reading a 1,600 page elitist manifesto to better enjoy Bioshock or just turning down the lights and sitting closer to the TV is up to you. Hopefully you can find that magic combination that will turn your plate of Hot Pockets and Mountain Dew into a meal of filet mignon and merlot.
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*Levar Burton: He's dead, right?
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