third-person | Mohammad Moshtaghi

Fable: Anniversary

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

When the original Fable was released in 2004, it made waves. As Guildford Games wrote in their eulogy for Lionhead Studios:

The touchstones for Fable were folklore, humour and a desire to offer the player an experience that didn’t demand too much from them, free of complexities… Microsoft’s involvement ensured focused marketing in America, but hardly any in the UK, leading it to gaining a substantial fanbase in America. The US audience were beguiled by the fairy tale nature of the game, they applauded the progressive ‘love is love’ message and welcomed Fable into their hearts.

Ten years and two celebrated sequels later, Fable: Anniversary was released in 2014, updating the Xbox-era graphics with the power of the Xbox 360 and bringing the content of Fable: The Lost Chapters into the fold. Nearly another decade after that (well, seven years later, at Xbox’s 2021 not-E3), Playground Games announced a new Fable, which is forever fated to be disambiguated as Fable (202x) by game writers everywhere. So here I am in 2022, having never touched a Fable game, thinking: “What an exciting time to cherish an old classic!”

Well folks, mistakes were made.

In all fairness, when I decided to play Fable: Anniversary, I was braindead-tired from a long day of research and stuck in a hotel room with very poor Wi-Fi and a modest TV screen that was inexplicably tilted slightly upwards towards the ceiling. This was not the vibe for continuing on in the masterwork that is Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, nor for running duos with my wife in Fortnite only to lag out once every five minutes. No, this slumpy, tired-tech vibe was for an eight year-old remaster of an eighteen year-old classic with a single-player narrative and last-last-generation graphics. And that’s exactly what Fable: Anniversary shaped up to be.

I could go on for too long about what didn’t age well: clumsy combat mechanics, early difficulty spikes followed by an obscenely long difficulty plateau, poor inventory management, romance with NPCs lacking any personality, “powerful” female characters with no agency whatsoever… there’s a lot to suffer through, especially from a modern perspective.

That being said, I think Fable is delightfully nostalgic in two ways: not taking itself too seriously, and applying that same explorative approach to role-playing moral dichotomies. While the occasional joke is Fable is almost too dumb, the vast majority are good-natured and enjoyable. Just as I was getting annoyed with Fable’s excruciatingly long tutorial, the first side quest outside the Hero’s Guild was a triple fetch quest to get a series of haircuts that made me look increasingly stupid—as the mockery of all passerby NPCs confirmed—in order to impress a girl. Turns out the girl didn’t exist, but her “father” greatly enjoyed making me look like an idiot. And that’s exactly what I was in that instance: fresh out of guild training, ready to take on all of Albion, and already spending all the money I had on haircuts to meet a girl. Good joke!

Unlike 2007’s Mass Effect which treats choices between good and evil with the narrative and relational seriousness that earned that series its glowing reputation, Fable takes a much more whimsical route. Flirt with another person in front of your adoring spouse? That’s not even a morally consequential issue. Eat a crunchy chick or sacrifice a human being to Skorm? Those are roughly equally bad. Go on an indiscriminate murdering spree of innocent traders and bloodthirsty bandits? It’ll all balance out. Donate a crappy old axe to charity to outweigh all your sins? Sure, why not! As with everything else in Fable, morality is inconsequential—which is not to say it isn’t meaningful, but rather that it’s a buffet of experiences to be enjoyed.

Hidden in that treatment of morality is a much appreciated bit of gaming wisdom, one that has fallen out of vogue with modern RPGs (thanks, Bethesda) and one that made playing through this aging classic well worth it: Good games can be silly. Good games can be simple. Good games can be fun.

Control

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 19:08:32 -0700

Control exerts full mastery over videogames as a unique narrative form, blending motion-capture acting performances, live-action filmed skits and monologues, puppet shows, radio programs, rock albums, short stories, technical documentation, a whole slew of homages to other videogame genres, and — of course — shooting weird shit that needs to be shot. While not a must, Control and its Oldest House are best experienced in the progressive revelations and immersive weirdness so carefully crafted by its developers. The remainder of this review may contain atmospheric and thematic spoilers.

Control should be remembered, if not for any of its other solid qualities, as a milestone in storytelling with the gaming medium. It’s one thing to have high quality voice acting and motion capture — especially for facial expressions — so that your game characters can converse more naturally than, say, Siri. It’s another thing entirely to film talented actors and put that footage in the game, a technique Remedy continues here from their past work in Quantum Break and, to a lesser extent, Alan Wake and Bright Falls. The narrative tricks needed to pull this off (namely, the Hotline and littering the Oldest House with instructional films and research updates) are clever. Weaving tie-ins between those short films and the mass of mixed-medium work throughout the rest of the game is impressive. But slowly coming to grips with the collective efforts of directors, writers, actors, visual artists, programmers, managers, and the many, many others involved in developing a game of this caliber is staggering. To experience artistry that feels genuinely new is a deep joy.

Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope), our protagonist, is solid ground in the physically and metaphorically shifting strangeness of the Oldest House. We get to watch the depth of her inner worries and assessments balance with her do-what-we-came-to-do attitude to round out a reasonably believable human being. She’s relational, witty, and exceptionally brave: unlike me, she does not freak out when ambushed by shrieking resonance zombies. The player may be holding the controller, but this is Jesse’s story and she is in control.

Control, aside from being the literal name of the game, is a central theme under exploration. What does it mean to have control? Who had it before and who has it now? What do you do with control when it’s yours?

Power, the story posits, is not the same as control. Control is more elusive. It requires understanding, trust, and genuine leadership — qualities that Jesse’s predecessors Northmoor and Trench traded away in their pursuit of, ironically, control. But instead of probing this theme more deeply (for example, asking whether control itself is just an illusory sense of security), the game’s conclusion is satisfied with replacing entrenched, toxic leaders with Jesse and other critically thinking young people and calling it a day. The Foundation and AWE DLCs do a little more work in this direction, but fall short of staking out a thoughtful value claim to complement the robust narrative creativity. I’d hoped for more.

Amidst all this focus on artistry, narrative, and hopes for philosophy, it’s still worth mentioning that the gunplay and paranatural combat abilities feel great. Returning to other games after being Jesse Faden is markedly disappointing. Said another way, you know how exhilarating the combat in Control is going to be from the first moment you accidentally bump into a table and the physics engine sends it flying into a wall, papers thrust into the air.

I’m excited to know the talented folks at Remedy are already working on new stories in the Control universe, and for what other developers and artists this quality of videogame storytelling might inspire.

Bugs

It’s minor, but there was an occasional issue where the floor would just… disappear. At first I thought this was a thing the Oldest House did; then after an extended period of confusion I realized some textures just weren’t loading.

Also, while not a bug, I’m highly skeptical of an office building with lids on their public toilets. Like. Who does this? The Federal Bureau of Control, I guess.

Jedi: Fallen Order

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 22:09:15 -0700

I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent much of my childhood wanting to be a Jedi. My sister and I would duel for hours in the backyard with our plastic lightsabers, having to pause between whacks and parries to negotiate whose limbs were still attached or how far back we were supposed to move when the other pushed with the Force. As a teenager, The Force Unleashed on the Wii was magic: my remote was my lightsaber, my nunchuk was my connection to the Force, and the galaxy was filled with Stormtroopers to send flying. (Too bad it kind of sort of isn’t canon.) Now, as an adult and a whole sequel trilogy and two seasons of The Mandalorian later — not to mention the nine seasons of The Clone Wars that I’m still catching up on — I’m all in on Star Wars growing up with me, learning how to tell new and more mature stories. Jedi: Fallen Order is exactly that, putting the player at the center of a decent Jedi story with slick Jedi combat.

Jedi: Fallen Order takes place during The Purge, which for the uninitiated is a period of Star Wars history just after the majority of Jedi are executed by their clone allies in Revenge of the Sith (Order 66). The fledgling Empire casts the few Jedi who survive as traitors to the Republic, hunting them down to either kill them or turn them to the Dark Side as Inquisitors (ex-Jedi who hunt Jedi). You play as Cal Kestis, a padawan who experienced deep personal loss and trauma during Order 66 and has been concealing his powers to survive The Purge. Other major characters include Cere Junda, an ex-Jedi Master who severed her connection with the Force after an especially traumatic event during The Purge, and a Nightsister whose people were killed in genocide during the Clone Wars. This is a Star Wars story where nobody’s okay and the heroes are the ones who are brave enough to believe in one another as they heal.

The gameplay absolutely does what it needs to do to make you feel like a Jedi, from customizing your lightsaber to dueling against powerful adversaries to bonding with a droid companion. I think all of those things were non-negotiables for a modern Star Wars game, and as such, it suffices to say that Jedi: Fallen Order does them well. What’s really special about this game is how cool it makes you feel despite Cal not being the greatest of Jedi. He’s hidden his abilities for years, presumably. At best, he’s just rusty and has forgotten a lot of his training; at worst, his trauma and guilt pushes his connection with the Force towards fear and unpolished lack of control. In the early stages of the game, Cal can’t even move stuff around with the Force; he can wall-run, however (Respawn just couldn’t resist sprinkling in a little Titanfall, could they?). His best ability, psychometry, makes him a better anthropologist than Stormtrooper-slayer: he can sense an object’s history by touching it, filling out the backstory of the different planets and societies he interacts with.

The five playable planets in this galaxy far, far away are largely linear, keeping you moving towards your next plot point. There’s not a side quest to be seen, and the only exploration Cal can do is to veer off the main path for a slightly less obvious path where he might find a secret or unlockable cosmetic. (As an aside, I love that Cal wears ponchos — as opposed to, I don’t know, Jedi robes? — but I can’t get over how over half of them are badly-fitting, hoodless, plastic raincoats.) 100%-ing Jedi: Fallen Order is a fine and relatively quick experience (except for the very Star Wars and very bad holomaps), revisiting planets when equipped with new Force abilities to get into previously inaccessible nooks and crannies. This feels less like a chore and more like virtual space-tourism, giving players a second chance to appreciate the beautifully crafted set design and try out the very nicely implemented photo mode.

All in all, Jedi: Fallen Order does what it came to do: put players in the shoes of a Jedi powered by the best of what 2019 tech could offer. The experience certainly feels more self-contained and linear than what we may have hoped, but it’s good for what it is. With EA’s Star Wars exclusivity now expired, maybe Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment will give us the beautiful, open-world Star Wars playground of little-Josh’s dreams.

Bugs

I know this isn’t a bug but it’s so bad that I’m calling it one: every sad excuse for a Wookiee in this game (except Tarfull) looks like a stick with clumpy fur. To the developers at Respawn, Chewbacca would be disappointed in you.

Batman: Arkham City

Sat, 17 Aug 2019 12:00:00 -0700

I played Arkham Asylum back in summer of 2015, so it somehow seems fitting for this much busier stage of my life that it took me four years to play the sequel. That being said, the gap I’ve taken from the Batman: Arkham series may ultimately have been to my benefit, given just how similar Arkham City feels to Arkham Asylum. We’re still beating the crap out of every other living character in the game (who all seem inexplicably hostile towards us on sight), we’re still uncovering a diabolical plot that features an all-star cast of Batman villains, and we’re still tracking down every Riddler secret using every piece of WayneTech we can get our hands on.

The thing is, all of it is great. Very few superhero games, especially those being made back in the early 2010s, can hold a candle to the experience that Arkham City provides. From gliding and grappling through the city to using detective mode to solve crimes, every moment feels like an authentic, exhilarating experience of donning the cape and cowl of the Dark Knight. Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing are also playable characters for smaller segments, each with their own exciting gadgets and play styles. A huge amount of the game’s success can be credited to the immersive open-world of Arkham City, greatly improving over the labyrinth Metroidvania-like level design of Arkham Asylum. Adding a mix of outdoor and indoor locations to the game adds further opportunities for the mechanics and side missions to enrich the overall experience.

But this brings me to a point of Arkham City I was surprised by, and one that I would have only picked up on now, in 2019. Thanks to the open-world design, we get a lot of radio chatter from various inmates and characters to make the solo experience feel more alive. Most of what they say is fine but forgettable, like “I wonder what’s on TV right now,” or self-dating to an era where Facebook was still a novelty: “How am I supposed to update my status? …Oh yeah, I’m still stuck here in this stinking prison.” But a lot of it hints at something much more sinister, not originating from the inmates themselves, but from their experience.

You see, the plot of the game is that Prof. Hugo Strange gets Gotham City to agree to a pretty bonkers plan wherein they wall off a huge part of the city, throw all the inmates and supervillains from Arkham Asylum inside, and seal it shut. Strange likes this because he gets to “study” the criminally insane (for the good of science, I’m sure), and because the prison is a perfect way of making sure anyone who knows the truth of his nefarious purposes (like Bruce Wayne) are never heard from again. But in an age where we’re talking a lot more about racial discrimination, police brutality, and other failures of our criminal justice system, you start to wonder why in the world Batman feels the need to be inside this prison, beating the pulp out of everyone he sees. A decent number of inmates will yell “What’s Batman doing here?” when you start a fight. Others get picked up by your police scanner: “Why’s Batman in here anyway, aren’t we already locked up?”

I get that a lot of these inmates are bad people, especially the more ruthless ones who work closely with the big bads (Penguin, Two-Face, Joker, etc.). But my guess is that a lot of the inmates joined up with some villain’s faction just so they had food to eat, or so they wouldn’t get killed in the streets. And while I know Batman will never be compassionate, I wonder if he couldn’t be just a bit more conscientious. Otherwise, I worry that Joker’s right when he says Batman belongs inside with the rest of them.

Bugs

The game would occasionally crash with some pretty unreadable error messages, but was otherwise flawless.

A Way Out

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 12:00:00 -0700

After Josef Fares’s emotionally stunning success with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, I honestly wasn’t sure how his new team at Hazelight Studios could follow it up with their first game. Certainly there would have to be a solid story at its heart, but what else? As another story about two male co-lead characters, could A Way Out invent new and fresh co-op mechanics? Could it evoke emotional responses on par with those in Brothers without recycling too much material? Most importantly, could it — like Brothers — ask thematic questions that pierce beyond the screen and into reality?

The answer to all three of these questions is a resounding yes. In A Way Out, two players (either locally or online) each control one of Vincent and Leo, the story’s protagonists. At the story’s start, Vincent is going to jail while Leo has already been in for several months. As they slowly begin to trust one another, they learn that they both have it out for a crime boss named Harvey, the man who got them both canned. United by a desire to find their own justice, the pair hatch a plan to escape.

The story unfolds as our protagonists interact with one another and others in their environment, tasking players with surviving harrowing combat, pulling off pieces of an escape plan, and solving puzzles using their surroundings. But these elements can be found in many games; the differentiating factor for A Way Out is the way in which it demands cooperation from the players, even in the most mundane tasks. Especially in the first half of the game, every situation is an opportunity to synergize in new ways. As Vincent and Leo learn to trust one another and work together, so do the players controlling them.

It is worth mentioning, though not in any spoiler-revealing detail, that the gameplay is both surprisingly clever and spans many different game genres. Though most of the game takes place in a split-screen, third-person perspective, particular sequences play out like moments from Grand Theft Auto, Battlefield, Uncharted, Assassins' Creed, and even Street Fighter. Beyond the main game itself, many refreshing and somewhat odd mini-game experiences are scattered throughout the story: Leo and Vincent can challenge one another in brawn (in an arm-wrestling match), brains (in a game of Connect Four), and everything in between.

WARNING: This part of the review contains game-ruining spoilers.

But the glory of this game lies in its story’s false resolution. After brutally murdering Harvey in his safe house in Mexico and reclaiming the Orlov diamond whose sale Harvey sabotaged, Leo and Vincent land stateside. Perhaps we should have expected otherwise, but it felt like the game was coming to a close and both characters would go back to their wives and children happy, scores settled. Instead, a band of police storm the runway, and our protagonists have nowhere left to go. Instead of emerging victorious, the pointed guns and blue and red lights spell a return to where this adventure started.

If only, though, that were the only twist. In one painful blow, the writers destroy everything the players have learned to trust: the characters they control, and one another. When the supposed chief of police approaches to arrest the pair, a simple “Good work, Vincent” turns the entire game on its head. Everything following that point drives the pain of betraying a friend and being betrayed deeper and deeper until the players are forced to control Vincent and Leo in a 1v1 gunfight: the antithesis of every cooperative wall climb, every narrow escape, every emotional vulnerability.

Even with spoilers disclaimed, it feels wrong to give away the game’s final emotional gut-punch. Suffice it to say that it hits just as hard as the infamous sequence in Brothers where the little brother has to swim on his own. Even the way we’ve learned to control our characters and interact in this game’s world is questioned and systematically torn down.

Spoiler section over!

This game is everything you could want from an interactive story, and the masterful way that everything is built up around cooperation makes it even better. While it doesn’t fully achieve complete emotional synchronization between players and their characters (I found myself protesting loudly and angrily throughout the end sequence), the storytelling is among the finest I’ve had the pleasure to experience in a video game.

Bugs

Many of the character’s voice lines were not accurately timed, and would often trigger at irrelevant moments. This may not be a bug so much as a way the experience could be polished further.