The Military Shooter - An Evolution Revised

[zerosum]

We're all familiar with the large scale heavy weights in the world of Military shooters (C.O.D. / Battlefield). Both these game franchises have set the benchmark for commercial success, yet for some, there's been something missing from these games. Call it a lack of heart or an anemic means of developing a real connection between character, plot and gamer. Or maybe it's just a lack of effort to promote a completely engrossing storyline versus bombastic set-pieces and calamity.

The prime argument here is easily posed with the question: How many NPC's have you ever killed in your gaming history and actually stopped to think of what these kills mean to the playable character or the player themselves?

For some it's a null point if you measure that up against the fun elements of simply laying waste without the real-life concequence. And honestly, I think there's room for both experiences. Sometimes you just wanna mow through enemies in a game without having a full psychological struggle about it.

But, there's always room for more thought provoking experiences.

There are a couple of games (Far Cry 3 and Spec-Ops: The Line) on the radar that seem to be wanting, or at least claim to be going deeper than the typical 'shoot-blow-sh*t-up' motifs.

The following is a series of quotes from a couple of interesting articles from [Kotaku] and [KillScreenDaily] (both seem to be focusing on how games, Military Shooters in particular are attempting their own 'Apocalypse Now' / 'Heart of Darkness' moments):

[KillScreenDaily]


Yager's military shooter, Spec Ops: The Line, cites Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness as its influences. Can a videogame about shooting make its player feel not just the physical conflict of war, but the moral conflict as well?

A game writer once explained to me how his development team did its best to “otherize” the enemy in the story it was trying to tell. Military shooters direct a terrific level of violence at more obviously human subjects than other genres of games. If people have any natural aversion to shooting one anotherâ€"and many theorize that we indeed doâ€" then a game has to convince you that killing these people isn’t just acceptable, but desirable, even enjoyable. So the animators did the best to conceal the faces of your enemies even as they charged at the player...



I wouldn’t say we’re an exact rendition of Heart of Darkness in a modern setting. I think what the heart of darkness is is an exploration of self. Part of this is the battle that man goes through as he explores his inner workings, and the things he does to survive as a human being.

Soldiers on the modern battlefield find themselves in really difficult scenarios, where they’re forced to make decisions that they’re going to have to live with the rest of their lives. But they’re not directly involved with the political nature of the conflict. And think of the collateral damage that surrounds these conflictsâ€"those people just happened to live there.

Think of Apocalypse Now, films like Full Metal Jacket, The Deer Hunter, Jacob’s Ladder. These are not realistic movies that try to be a perfectly accurate rendition of what happened on the battlefield. But they are authentic to the emotions that soldiers felt on the battlefield. The most traumatic moments in wartime are often very surreal for the people who actually experience them.

An important aspect of the war films I mentioned (Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness) is how they depict the savagery of humanity in these depraved situations. We wanted you to hesitate to pull the trigger. We wanted you to think about who these people are, how much like you they are, how they’re just trying to survive the same way you are.

In order to have an emotional experience you have to have these subtleties, these slower moments; you need to have moments where you can really get close to the characters and get to know them. A lot of our competitors’ games switch the player’s perspective constantly. That makes it really exciting, but it doesn’t get as close to an individual character.

We think that there are a lot of different types of fun. Fun isn’t necessarily blowing things up and laughing. It’s fun to be emotionally engaged, especially when you actually have a controller in your hand and you have to think about the things that you do.

I think gamers today are going through a lot of the same evolutions that occurred in film. You remember the old John Wayne war movies? There’s always going to be a place for those. But when people are shocked and horrified and angry about what we do, that’s also an interesting response. We want you to think about the bloodlust that you might have naturally, as you approach this game after playing so many other games. We wanted to put it right in your face.

So we didn’t want to just give you violence for violence’s sakeâ€"the incredible violence here is a theme in the story, as it is in a lot of war cinema...I’d like gamers to reflect on themselves and, well … being a citizen of this global community that’s in some way affected by the things that we as Americans are going through. Whether or not we’re paying attention to it, it is happening, and these conflicts are something we’re involved with because we live here, we take advantage of the circumstances that are here, and the things that keep our nation in the state that it’s in.




[Kotaku]


...the Apocalypse Now thing smells like an easy way to slap an air of legitimacy onto an experience that is primarily about gunning down human beings. There's a dubious distinction between "killing for killing's sake" and "killing because it's art," and video games have, by and large stayed firmly on the former side.

2008's Far Cry 2 may be the closest thing we've got to the Apocalypse Now of video games. It cast players as one of an interchangeable group of mercenaries and set them about working both sides of an African civil war for profit. It was a splendidly hostile, misanthropic game, and effectively channeled the dread and eventual dark epiphanies of both Apocalypse Now and of its inspiration, Joseph Conrad's turn of the century novel Heart of Darkness.

But if Far Cry 2 already did the Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness thing, what of its sequel, this year's Far Cry 3? That game looks nothing like its bleak, hostile predecessor. The protagonist is a single character named Jason Brody, with a penchant for muttering to himself like Uncharted's Nathan Drake. In every demo I've seen, he's using a vast arsenal to clear out huge set-piece-like arenas of enemies, blasting and exploding to his heart's content.

In other words, it looks a lot like a polished but fairly typical video game. A couple weeks ago at E3, I spoke with Far Cry 3 lead designer Jamie Keen and lead writer Jeffery Yohalem about the game and found myself intrigued by their responses to my questions. It would seem that on top of their desire to make a fun, hooky mainstream action game, they too are interested in using violence to tell a specific, sophisticated story.

"The whole game is about subverting video game cliches," Yohalem told me. "It's a psychological adventure. We're definitely trying to question what a game is, and I think that's what Far Cry 2 did as well, where they tried to explore the limits of video games. And our game is about video games to a huge degree, and about what you expect from video games, and how we change things up."

Well hey, that sounds pretty interesting! I voiced my skepticism: Based on what I'd seen of the game, I was having a hard time believing that it will truly have something new to say. Every demonstration I've seen involves the player blasting through enemy compounds with huge, powerful weapons and taking down dozens of soldiers, just like any other shooter. How is this a commentary on video games?

Keen, the lead designer, was quick to sing that now-familiar E3 tune: What they showed doesn't really demonstrate the heart of the game. For example, the E3 demo takes place halfway to two-thirds of the way into the story, and Brody has become quite powerful. But that's not always the case.

"When you start off," Keen said, "when you get dropped into the beginning of it, you're fucked." He laughed. "I mean, you really are. You don't know what's going on, there's guys that are coming to get you, animals are jumping in your face all the time…"

"But at the same time," Yohalem picked up, "for me, it's about how Jason is a character, and the player is a character, and they're different."

I asked him to elaborate on that. "If the player's good a headshots, Jason's good at headshots," he said. "The player pulls Jason in certain directions, and that dialogue [between player and character], I find it really interesting. You have this everyman who's lost on an island, who's never shot a gun before, and you have a player who has played first-person shooters before. And the player shows Jason what's what about first-person shooters, but that will come back to haunt the player later. That's the kind of stuff that you saw in Far Cry 2."

If Far Cry 2 approached the ideas behind Apocalypse Now directly, Far Cry 3 seems to be going about it in a more roundabout, psychological fashion. I'm intrigued. Few games play with the relationship between the player and his or her avatar without overtly breaking the fourth wall. Metal Gear's Psycho Mantis battles are the most famous example, wherein the villain forces you to relocate your Playstation controller and taunts you about which games you've played in the past. Deadly Premonition also did something along these lines, with the player occupying the role of the protagonist's imaginary friend and advisor.



But will Far Cry 3 take this idea into the dark and surprising places it deserves to be taken, or is all this talk of genre subversion just another arty excuse to give players a gun and set them loose in a vast and violent playground? I'm not sure. Far Cry 2 always felt like an art-game dressed up as a AAA shooter, and given that it was a financial disappointment for Ubisoft, I doubt that the publisher is going to take a risk like that again. But after speaking with Keen and Yohalem, I did come away with the impression that Far Cry 3 will be a darn sight more interesting than your average shooter.

Games are more violent than ever, and so game designers are looking into that violence for ways to tell interesting stories. And why not? Game-makers have spent decades developing and perfecting the technology required to accurately render bullet trajectories, locational damage and realistically recreated explosions. Artists work with what they've got, and as E3 so effectively demonstrated, what most artists making AAA games today have got are guns, bullets, and death. That could still result in some provocative, stimulating workâ€"plenty of great art has been created by makers working with a limited toolset.

All the same, I have my doubts. Far Cry 2 dared to be different and was branded a failure, and four years later, most AAA game developers seem to be playing it safer than ever. I have to wonder whether either Far Cry 3 and Spec Ops: The Line will truly explore the heart of darkness, or if they'll take the easier route, content to simply exploit the darkness in our hearts. We'll find out soon enough.


Far Cry 3 Trailer-

Spec Ops: The Line Trailer-

Thoughts? Reactions?

[Windedprism]

I brought this up somewhere else a while back anyway it was something like this: The consequence of war, the aftermath, the darkened human conscience does not sell. Imagine if COD suddenly started exploring the mindset of it's protagonists and moved the focus away from set pieces etc. it wouldn't sell.
Another reason is that emotionally video games are still in their infancy, games such as Heavy Rain and the masterful Silent Hill 1-3 do a better job than most games at getting to the human mind but most still follow formula or just go over the top or out of the box (Suda51 games for example).

Although we kill countless npcs/players over and over with no consequence, it's important to remember that games are a fun entertainment source. To forget that is to not understand what games are. The portrayal of not just killing and the consequences in shooters but other content across all games is the reason we have ratings systems and the reason they should be enforced. It's there to protect the choice of gamers and to ensure that there is a responsibility on the industry.
But that's somewhat off topic.

In terms of game mechanics, how do you put consequence into a mulitplayer? buggered if I know. Singleplayer/co-op experiences have more of a chance in this respect but the fact is most gamers just want action, they want to be Chuck Norris and Rambo one man army's and just blow crap up.
It's very hard to see fps/military shooters change much in this respect as it would require top drawer writing and have to be married to the game design/mechanics. But that's not going to happen because it's easier to follow the formula so in this regard rpgs are the top dog so to speak. The formula sells and that's the bottom line.

Here's a thing though, I have always felt uncomfortable with the idea that so many younger players play COD. Is this how they view war? that's actually a very scary prospect. Halo is fine to a degree because it's sci-fi, the weapons are non existent and the enemies fictional. But it's not just fps games that are guilty of violence, FF has it even though it's pure fantasy but it's still violence.
It comes down to how these games are marketed and to be fair, they are only marketed as what they are. With military shooters it's young boys and their toys, instead of playing action man many now play FPS games, it's the natural progression.

At the end of the day formula outsells consequence at least as far as fps games are concerned. Now let's move on to GTA,  now there is a whole new kettle of fish