Radiator Vol 1-2: Handle With Care is out, and it's a big step up in atmosphere and storytelling from the first volume, Polaris. I have to say the experience is pretty right on - just going into it cold I felt like I went through all the realizations and emotions that the designer intended, and it was the right length.
Like other games I've been looking at recently, this is more an experience than a game. The game element isn't fantastic actually, but the emotional experience element is amazing, and huge leap from the previous volume. The question a piece like this raises for me is how these sorts of thought-provoking experiential games can be adapted into mainstream game design. The Half-Life series (whose engine this mod of course uses) does a very good job in terms of atmosphere, but there's something about character development and emotional response that this volume of Radiator does so well that intrigues me. I guess though it is sort of like looking at a beautiful painting and asking why music videos can't use something like that - it's a different medium seeking to achieve a different goal. Still, I can't help but imagine a big sprawling game that learns from the experiments being done in the Radiator series.
Maybe though the lesson is more about what games can be than about concrete methods. I think you have to draw a line between games that are created to be fun and diverting and games as a medium for making an impact on the audience and thought-provoking. Not to say that one can't have elements of the other, but Handle With Care is most definitely thought-provoking first and foremost, and (for instance) Portal is most definitely on the fun side of the equation.
One of my favorite games, Planescape:Torment, was both fun and thought-provoking. But even there the emotional response is more abstract and easily glossed over.
What it comes down to, I think, is how the designer approaches character. Handle With Care is really all about the main character, and does a phenomenal job of putting the player into that character's shoes in a novel and engaging way. Even so-called roleplaying games like a Planescape: Torment or Mass Effect distance the player from the character by quite a ways. The effect of Handle With Care is to brazenly confront the player with the heart of roleplaying - becoming that character and really exploring them. In Mass Effect I don't really think about Shephard's character other than to say "I'm going to have him act like a badass" or I'm going to have him be a merciful guy here." But when presented with choosing whether, as James, to repress or dredge up memories of your relationship - and then to witness the consequences - that gives you a connection to the character that is very hard to achieve.
I guess the point that I take away from that also has to do with how your control of a character affects the outcome of the game. I didn't really know what the result of my choices would be in Handle With Care, and so the ending that my choices resulted in really served to illuminate my understanding of the character. In Mass Effect your choices are about action more than emotion - Do I act ruthlessly and kill this person, or mercifully and free them? But Handle With Care presents you with a choice about self - do I lock away my bad memories, or do I set them loose and dwell on them? - and the different endings tell you that that character had all these possibilities inside them all along, and the direction their life takes is about self-reflection, not action. The internal struggle that conventional RPGs gloss over in the "Do I kill them or set them free" roleplaying choice is the heart of gameplay in HWC. Perhaps that is what we can learn from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment