Back in 2011, I wrote on my own blog about storytelling in video games, and whether or not they are a narrative art form, a post that led me to wonder:
[D]o video games really want to be known as a narrative art form?
I find this question far more interesting than Ebert’s question about whether they’re art or not. (Simple answer: some are, some aren’t!)
Right now, video games are in a sweet spot. Games like Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2 can come out and gain a certain amount of cachet and sales because of their sophisticated deployment of game mechanics to complexly explore genre. At the same time, when people question the racial politics of Resident Evil 5 or look at the truly execrable pro-torture narrative of Black Ops, gamers (and game critics) can retreat behind “Hey, it’s only a game!”
Sure enough, over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed more talk about the quality of stories that games tell and the phenomena of ludonarrative dissonance, or the disconnect between the gameplay experience and the narrative experience of a title. Most of these conversations tend to coalesce around fretting about violence. In the Uncharted games, rakish hero Nathan Drake kills something like six to eight hundred people whilst treasure hunting around the globe. The emotional resonance of Bioshock: Infinite’s clever universe-hopping maze of a plot is undermined by the constant need to mow down everyone who gets in your way. In fact, the term ludonarrative dissonance apparently originates with this blog post from Clint Hocking about the first Bioshock game, in which he writes that the contrast between the selfishness of the game play (it’s a first person shooter) and the anti-selfishness polemics of the plot (it’s a takedown of objectivism) contrast to such a degree that it wrecks the game.
I personally find the concept of ludonarrative dissonance interesting for thinking and discussing video games but do not find it to be quite the magic bullet that game critics seem to think it is. Basically, I believe that, in part due to the history of how games have aesthetically developed, game players are quite used to compartmentalizing gameplay from story, tending to either view the former as the task one must accomplish to get the latter, or viewing the latter as the increasingly cumbersome speed bumps that interrupt the former.
While the violent gameplay is the least interesting part of Bioshock:Infinite, I’m not sure that most video game players think that they’re killing people as they play it from a narrative perspective any more than watchers of Looney Tunes feel Elmer Fudd’s physical pain in any kind of serious way. Aesthetics matter, after all, and Bioshock:Infinite is a candy colored cartoon wonderland filled with nonrealistic character portraits. Most of the human extras you encounter throughout the world are more like animatronic dolls than people. It’s also worth noting that violence is in many ways woven into the DNA of videogames, much as snark and assumptions of bad faith are woven into the DNA of online discourse.
That said, ludonarrative dissonance will prove a worthwhile concept if it leads to better games and better narrative mechanics within them, and over the past year, at least, this appears to be happening. Two recent works, Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us have done a remarkable job of integrating gameplay mechanics, story, and theme, pointing the way to a possible new maturity in the field. Yet at the same time, both are built out of sturdy video game genres. The Walking Dead is a classic puzzle-adventure game, while The Last of Us focuses on the kind of stealth-action familiar to players of Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex or the Tenchu franchise. They never lose their game-ness[1], yet remain satisfying, emotionally engaging, thought provoking narrative experiences[2].
The Walking Dead even manages to upstage both the preexisting source material (the comics by Robert Kirkman) and the blockbuster TV adaptation on AMC. In it, you play Lee Everett, a recently convicted murderer (and former college professor) being transported to prison when the cop car carrying you hits a zombie. Shortly thereafter, you take on a young girl named Clementine, whose parents are in another city and whose babysitter has gone all let-me-eat-your-brains on you[3]. As you and Clementine struggle to survive, you eventually come upon other survivors and have a series of difficult trials that brings you both across the state of Georgia.
On a gameplay level, much of The Walking Dead revolves around the normal puzzle-adventure michegas, where you have to figure out what action and items will get you from point A to point B in the plot. Occasionally, you also have to kill zombies or hostile humans. Neither of these functions are particularly remarkable. And at least one puzzle, which involves figuring out the right things to say to get someone to move out of your way so that you can press a button, is seriously infuriating. What makes the game work, however, is the way that character, emotion and choice function within the narrative. Like many games today, The Walking Dead presents the player with multiple narrative choices via either forcing you to take one of a series of mutually exclusive actions or choosing dialogue options in conversations.
Telltale’s stroke of genius was to insert a timer into these decisions. Normally when you reach a major choice in a game, it will wait for you. You can think about it for a while, perhaps peruse a walkthrough online that will tell you the outcome of the choices, and then make it. You can perform a cost-benefit analysis in other words, thinking about it purely in game terms. In The Walking Dead, you have a very limited time to make each decision, and as a result, the decisions become a reflection of your personality, or the personality of Lee as you’ve chosen to play him[4]. Perhaps you think Lee should tell people he’s a convicted murderer, because honesty is the best policy. Or perhaps you think you should hide it from people because you’re a good guy and you don’t want people pre-judging you. Perhaps you should tell people you’re Clementine’s father. Or her babysitter. Perhaps you raid that abandoned station wagon filled with food. Or perhaps you sit back, willing to go hungry in case the car belongs to fellow survivors.
Many of your choices involving brokering disagreements between two survivors named Kenny and Lily, who are both, to put it politely, assholes. Kenny, a redneck father, will do anything for the survival of his family (including betray you), and will forget any nice thing you do for him (including saving his life) the second you disagree with him. Lily, the defacto leader of the group, is belligerent, domineering, and frequently sticks up for her racist shitbag dad. Being a good middle child, I kept opting for choices that recognized the validity of their points of view and tried to form consensus. Due to their aforementioned assholitry, they both hated me by halfway through the game. One of them even told me I had to man up and start making decisions or what was the point of having me along.
The decisions tend to function like this in the game. Unlike in most games with choice mechanics, there aren’t morally good and bad choices coded blue and red. And unlike old school adventure games, the choices you make in the plot won’t lead to fail states. They simply are things that you’ve done, and they ripple out throughout the game, shifting (in ways both subtle and non) how the story progresses, how people treat you, and what choices you have remaining to you.
None of this exactly explains what a remarkable achievement The Walking Dead game turned out to be. So let me try some other ways: It’s the only game I’ve played that has reduced every person I know who has played it to tears at least twice. It’s the only game I’ve ever played where the characters are so clearly and humanly written that I finished one chapter of it and flew into a rage over what one of the characters did to me[5].
Part of this is because there are limits to what your choices can achieve. Due to the realities of game making and the limitations of the engine that’s running underneath TWD’s hood, the number of paths you can take in the game is finite. There are truncation points in the branching narrative to keep things under control. As a result, certain things will happen no matter what you do and certain characters will die. There are things you cannot stop from occurring in the game, fates that, like the protagonist in a play by Euripides, are inexorable and horrible all at once.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. Robert Kirkland’s two great innovations in the zombie apocalypse genre—telling a story with no finite ending and making zombieism inevitable[6]—are what gave early issues of the comic book their thematic sizzle, turning the saga into a story about how we confront our mortality and an ongoing essay into whether death made life more meaningful or a sick joke. Sadly, after a difficult and necessary foray into the issue of survivor’s guilt, the comics are largely now about how difficult and noble it is to be the White Man in Charge who makes the tough decisions and often feature Rick Grimes walking around having other people tell him how awesome he is while he gets ever more self-pitying.
The video game, meanwhile, does a superior job of exploring the themes of its source material, because the choice mechanics literalize those themes. By removing fail states from the game (like most contemporary video games, it is literally impossible to lose The Walking Dead) and eschewing simple morality in designing the choices, TWD constantly forces you to think about why you are making the choices you make. As you decide whether or not to save the female reporter and firearms expert or a male hacker dweeb you may find yourself suddenly thinking Oh crap, I have to choose between one of these people. And they both seem so nice. But, well, this is the apocalypse, so electronics aren’t going to be as necessary. And that reporter is a markswoman. And at some point the world is going to need to be repopulated, so I suppose I need to save as many potential sexual partners as possible. So I guess I’m going to save the reporter. [CLICK] Wait. Am I terrible person?
It’s rare that games provoke that kind of calculus. And it’s very rare that they are constructed in a way that forces you to think about not just the decisions you make but why you make them. By the end of the game, as a mysterious stranger interrogates you about every major decision you’ve made over the last ten or so hours of gameplay, it’s hard not to notice that what you’ve just been playing is a length examination not just of what it means to survive, but of yourself.
(This is part one of a two-part essay on recent advances in video game storytelling. Part two will run soon)
CORRECTION: I’ve been a little remiss in apportioning credit in the above. The idea of infectionless zombies dates back to Romero and, of course, The Walking Dead was co-created by artist Terry Moore and, after its first few issues, has been co-created by artist Charlie Adlard. Apologies to the relevant parties.
[1] Oddly, both games have been criticized for still being too “game-like.” This strikes me as wrongheaded, akin to arguing that a graphic novel, by including panels and images, wasn’t enough like a prose book. Or that book, by being made out of words, wasn’t enough like a television show. If we want the medium of games to improve, it shouldn’t be via them becoming very long movies.
[2] Please take the fact that I used as clunky a phrase as “narrative experiences” in this sentence as a sign of the newness of taking narrative in video games seriously and the difficulty in discussing same.
[3] You put a hammer through her head. But at least it’s justified by the world.
[4] This was even more true when the game was initially released in a serialized 5 episode format. A choice you make in Episode 2 might not pay off until Episode 5, thus making a walkthrough of your choices totally useless.
[5] Or should I say Lee? This gets me to a side point that I don’t have much time to get into here: The relationship between choice mechanics and attachment to games. There is something about having a say in the way a game progresses that creates in most gamers I know a greater sense of emotional attachment to the events as they unfold. I think on some level we come to care for our characters (and the characters around them) as if they were our charges. We don’t want bad things to happen to them, and have at least some ability to keep them out of trouble. When we fail, it’s heartbreaking. And I feel silly about owning up to the fact that it’s heartbreaking, because, after all, this is a fucking video game we are talking about here people. It’s probably—outside of hardcore pornography—the medium with the most uneven ratio of profit to respectability there is.
[6] In the world of The Walking Dead, all dead people become zombies. Zombie bites spread a poison that helps speed the process of death along. The only way to stop this process is to have whoever is with you—likely a loved one or friend—kill you by shooting you in the head or otherwise destroying your brain.
[6] isn’t Kirkman’s innovation – George Romero’s movies feature infectionless zombism.
Ah shit, I knew I had probably gotten that one wrong. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve seen those Romero films. I’ll correct in a bit.
I really enjoyed this post, Isaac. I had never heard the term “ludonarrative dissonance” before, but definitely had the experience with my attempts at playing Bioshock. I’m going to seek out TWD now, very intrigued by the idea of these choice mechanics, as you put it, and how the field is developing. (Is this the same company that makes the iPad game app?)
Qiana,
I believe that the Ipad version is the exact same game ported to that device. I hope you enjoy it.
Like most of your posts here, Isaac, I liked this one and look forward to part 2. One quibble — Walking Dead didn’t spring forth fully formed from Robert Kirkman’s brow; credit, please, to Charlie Adlard and Tony Moore
I’m trying to avoid reading most of this post until I finish the game but from the way the writers/producers are handling Clementine – she’s just about the most adorable girl created for a video game – I bet they’re going to kill her off. No spoilers please! If I don’t cry at some point during this game, I’m going to blame Isaac.
She feels “real” and not cloyingly cute. It helps that the voice actress (a grown woman) they chose for Clementine does such a superb job. And hats off to the designers/animators as well.
Suat,
Where are you in the game? No spoilers here, I promise. But I’d love to talk about it with you when you’re done.
(Also you point out that part of why the game works so well is old fashioned craft issues like it’s really well written and acted)
#forclementine
I pretty much don’t play any video games (except tetris on occasion) but I’m curious; you say that there are games where you can’t lose. Are there games where you can’t win?
. This is actually something I’ll discuss a bit in talking about THE LAST OF US hopefully.
It depends what you mean by winning. If winning, for example. means not that you reach a story’s conclusion (in a narrative based game) but rather you get the conclusion you wanted, there are a handful of major games where you can’t win. If winning simply means “you get to AN ending” than very very few games qualify.
There ARE some indie and minor studio games where you can’t win, I’m pretty sure. And there are games (like SKYRIM) that are essentially endless. You can finish their story and still wander around the world doing things.
Harlan Ellison tried to design a game where you lost no matter what when a studio did an adaptation of I HAVE NO MOUTH BUT I MUST SCREAM. But I believe he was outvoted on that.
PS: The reason why I mentioned this at all is that games used to be much, much harder on that front. There were all sorts of games that had “fail states” which is to say you lost and had to start over (or start from an old save game) rather than very quickly restarting from a “checkpoint” that’s only a few minutes old.
Isaac: I’m only at episode 2 so some time to go. Not checking out that hashtag until I’m done!
Is there really a game where you can’t lose? I think it depends on what you mean by “lose”. If you define “lose” as not finishing at least 50% of gameplay, I don’t think such a game exists. Someone educate me…
They could have done that with the Walking Dead game by preventing your character from dying but that would have diffused all the tension in the game. Heavy Rain comes close to this but also allows the characters you’re playing to die at critical points.
Maybe some of the old, non-violent point and click adventures qualify. The only time you lose is when you get stuck.
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/ihavenomouth/imustscream.htm
You cant really “win” in Tetris or loads of similar games.
Several Wario games didnt let you die and it made the game arguably more difficult (maybe some would beg to differ) because you got caught in awkward situations you couldnt just get out of immediately.
Anyone interested in Heavy Rain has to see the glitch on Youtube where a character keeps shouting “Sean”.
Re: impossible games: I recently got addicted to a game called Puzzle Boy for the tg16/PC-Engine. You play as a potato who has to push blocks and turnstiles around to clear a path to the exits of 80 levels (there was a gameboy sequel called Kwirk in the US – haven’t played it) and got stuck on 4 of the “Pro” levels. 1 I suspect of being impossible (I was wrong, there’s a video on youtube of someone beating it), 1 I am sure is impossible (you are forced to block an essential path in the first move), and 2 have glitches that make them unbeatable (blocks don’t disappear when they definitely should, though on one of those levels I see how *you* should be able to beat it). Frustrating! And better than Tetris.
I mean, technically I’m sure one could hack the game and fix the broken levels, which is kind of an interesting way to “beat” a game.
Well, I managed to finish the game and it’s quite interesting on a number of levels. Probably the two best African American characters in video games for a long long time. The choice is particularly interesting since the adventure is set in the South and it adds a different layer of fear and suspicion in the early episodes – even if race is almost never overtly made an issue (except at one point). You don’t get that when you play white or even Asian characters.
Another thing is that while the game is structured like your standard adventure game, the goal of the game isn’t really about unlocking different narratives but about moral/ethical choices. It actually might be that rare game where you don’t “win” because of your dexterity or morality since you always land up at the same point by the end. It’s more like an interactive inquisition into the player’s ethics in which there is no *stated* right or wrong answer.
Isaac: “It’s the only game I’ve ever played where the characters are so clearly and humanly written that I finished one chapter of it and flew into a rage over what one of the characters did to me.”
What did the character do to you?
At the end of chapter four, Kenny refused to help me. I won’t say more for risk of spoiling, but you’ll know what I’m talking about. Of my three dialogue options, one was FUCK YOU!!! and man I was actually thinking that at the time.
Suat… really good point about how the gameplay serves narrative rather than the other way around.
A bunch of threads:
1. Press X to Shaun!
2. Back when he was still publishing in the Comics Journal;, Ellison wrote an essay about the soul-killing degeneracy of video games, “Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Stone” (October 83). Focusing mostly on arcade games, his main gripe was that almost ALL such games were unwinnable: they only end when you lose. His central theme: video games were analogous, in this respect, to the Myth of Sisyphus.
3. As I understand it, Minecraft is endless, not just in gameplay (no winning/losing), but in gamespace: you can walk in any direction endlessly and algorithms in the program will keep creating new landscapes to cover.
4. HEAVY RAIN because — with a couple exceptions — any of the multiple characters you play as can die, and the other characters and game go on without that character, towards a different ending (out of, of course, a limited set of such ramifying narratives).
5. BRAID is one game that has an interesting take on failing and succeeding in video games. This is a puzzle game that allows you — indeed, compels you — to “reverse” the time of the game world and “rewind” mistaken actions, pulling your character up out of whatever pit, trap, or untimely end he has just fallen into. Here’s the trailer.
6. Press X to Jason!
Since he stays with you for such a long time, it’s clear that Kenny is one of those characters designed to show the player that (in the game world) there is frequently no connection between morality and destiny/requital; perhaps a wry comment on enlightened self-interest.
My son corrects me on Number 3, above.
You can “beat” MINECRAFT. Apparently — almost as sort of a joke — they have added an “END” dimension to which you can travel, with an ENDerdragon boss, guarded by ENDermen creatures. If you defeat the boss, you go to some kind of parody of a credit sequence.
Footnote to Number 4, above.
David Cage, creator of HEAVY RAIN and the upcoming BEYOND: TWO SOULS, has said that he would like to play his games once, through to the ending, and then never replay them. Make your choices, try your best, and then live with the (narrative) consequences.
The emphasis on spoilers is kind of interesting. It’s especially a thing with video games isn’t it? Caro, I think, made a point some while back that serious academic criticism doesn’t worry about spoilers — and that that’s maybe what separates it most definitively from fan criticism. The assumption is that your audience knows the work, or is interested in the work as a whole, so you can’t spoil it.
Is there video game crit that doesn’t worry about spoilers? Or has that not quite happened at this point?
That happens in some places. Suat specifically asked me not to spoil anything, so I was trying to keep things vague. I don’t actually really care about spoilers all THAT much and, in fact, it’s impossible to discuss THE LAST OF US in any kind of serious way without talking about the second half of the game.
I bought S T Joshi’s trilogy on weird fiction (The Weird Tale, The Modern Weird Tale and Evolution Of The Weird Tale) and they are all full of spoilers. I read parts of them, of stories I have already read and of books I dont think I’ll bother with, but I suspect I wont be able to read the full books for many years to come.
I think academic books are probably different from blog criticism, buying a book about criticism of something has more of an assumption you have already experienced that “something”. Bloggers have more reason to be more cautious and considerate, at least offering warnings.
I’ve accidentally read spoilers for Berserk and been upset that I did so. I think when people talk about it, they are mindful of spoilers because the developments really matter to the enjoyment.
People have been cautious with tv dramas recently.
I really hate it when film lists show the endings to everything. One tv countdown of horror films showed endings to Ringu, Spoorloos, Wicker Man and probably more. People tend to assume everyone knows the ending to Se7en and Sixth Sense, talking about it freely.
In most cases I generally dont care, but spoiling the ending for Spooloos is just cruelty. Some people think it is wrong to spoil that there is an special ending to spoil, so I’m a bit guilty.
Actually Isaac’s article is full of spoilers – it describes at lot of the critical scenes from the Walking Dead game, especially the ending. I’m glad I didn’t read it before I finished the game but since I do my best to read as little about the art objects I intend to consume, that wasn’t going to be a problem in the first place. In any case, the game is already over half a year old – only stragglers like myself are going to care about such things.
Most video game criticism is the same as popular comics site criticism – spoiler free. That’s pretty much the case for most of the films reviews tracked by Rotten Tomatoes as well.
Also, in reference to Isaac’s comment about replaying games, I almost never play narrative games more than once through.
sheee-it, this must be one hell of a game if Suat has nice things to say about it. I don’t think you’ve much nice to say about the comic or TV show, right?
on losing/unwinnable games: there are, as others have already observed, games with no end-state other than losing, like Tetris — or, I believe, the Sims and SimCity-type games. All you can do is keep going, as the game becomes harder and harder, until eventually you “die”. Rather like The Walking Dead’s structure, I gather. Is there a way to “win” those Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing type games — I don’t think there’s a way to lose them, either?
And many sandbox/open-world games do let you play indefinitely (like Skyrim, as Isaac says, or the GTA games), but (at least in the ones I have played) they still have a main plotline that can be fully resolved. Likewise with MMOs, I think, although there the potential exists for developers to keep adding challenges for the player to overcome.
And then there were those old Sierra games. Fucking Sierra…
Well, sheee-it, it’s a bit like being back in the 80s and reading Moonshadow #12 (yes, not Watchmen, not Maus, not RAW etc.) for the first time. It’s not a colossal achievement on the level of Watchmen (for superheroes) but there are very few games where emotions (and ethics) are so central. As the creators of the game indicate, if you don’t like Clementine (and want her dead), the entire game basically fails.
I seriously doubt that the game will signal a new era for games though. It’s one of those happy confluence of able craftsmen and artists. Oh, I also enjoyed playing the latest reboot of Tomb Raider (the one that got all the flak for allowing Lara to be sexually threatened; they must have mellowed it following criticism) – so I actually have pretty low standards when it comes to games.
I actually haven’t read the Walking Dead comic but Isaac has. The game is miles better than the TV show. But it’s not because of the actual story, it’s everything else which makes it a game (but mainly your level of involvement, the pacing, and interaction). Just like Transformers the 3D Ride is way more exciting than any of the Transformers movies. I will say that the creators of the Walking Dead game made a big point of making the main characters NOT irritating. That’s a pretty big flaw in the TV series where viewers create dead pools for hated characters. When people want Rick’s wife and son to die (in the TV show), you know there’s something wrong with the writing.
There’s also another funny thing the designers did with the race of the characters. The character you’re playing, Lee, always looks like a black man but Clementine (who is clearly a black girl) sometimes looks like she’s multiracial (Caucasian, Asian ancestry mixed in etc.). I’m sure someone out there must have commented on this before but I’m too lazy to check. Could be an accident or an artistic tic since her designer sounds like he has Japanese ancestry. If it was intentional, I don’t think it’s been done quite in this way before (almost avant garde for video games).
when you look at Clem’s family photo, I thought she was bi-racial, with on African American parent and one whose (nonwhite) race was left somewhat unclear. But clearly she is a young girl of color, the game reinforces this every time they ask you whether or not she’s your daughter.
The Walking Dead comic is really good at first. It just eventually falls apart. The one thing that could save it– killing off the protagonist they have nothing more to say about and following one of the other characters– is something they appear to be unwilling to do. It’s better than the TV show. Amongst other things, you don’t find everyone irritating when you read it. But it’s not as good as the game.
As to whether the game signals a new era or not… I doubt it. But I do think it’s a step forward and it’s enormous success will have positive ripple effects. It’s worth saying that, in terms of their respective histories, comics is a much older form that video games. So it doesn’t surprise me that we haven’t seen the Watchmen of games yet, whatever that would look like.
Except at one point, Christa (who happens to be the only other major black character) remarks that Lee isn’t Clementine’s father almost as soon as she meets him and he asks if it’s that obvious. Presumably it has to do with the way Lee is treating Clementine but it’s possible that the creators are more sneaky that we think. It’s more likely that it’s down to the way Derek Sakai designed her (the Wiki says he based her on his own daughter as far as fashion sense is concerned).
Also, have we seen the Little Nemos and Krazy Kats of video games yet?
I’m sure there is a Little Nemo videogame from around the time of the animated film? Ah! Here we go…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7A3eeTshUg
I think it has been misguided for so much of the games industry to focus on story and character elements that they clearly don’t have a sincere interest in taking very far. They are usually token efforts at emotional epicness that is cringeworthy and you wish they hadn’t bothered at all.
I think story/character games should be more of a niche.
For me the first two Silent Hill games are the pinnacle, despite awkwardness in the mechanics of playing and the conversations had a “one speaker at a time” thing that was a bit unnatural sounding. But in terms of visuals, sounds and the cryptic plot, I think they are stunning.
I have mixed feelings about The Walking Dead tv show, but I don’t think negative reactions of a large part of a huge audience is a good measure of quality. A lot of the online responses are like “I hate that bitch, she has a stupid face, I hope she dies”.
There was a lot of talk about negative audience reactions towards female characters in big tv shows. Some claimed this was the fault of poor writing but I think it was more the fault of a hateful audience who are fickle about daft things and need all the characters to be likable. Not really that different from the Big Brother, soap opera and wrestling audience.
The son is annoying, but I don’t think that is a flaw in the show.
“Also, have we seen the Little Nemos and Krazy Kats of video games yet?”
We haven’t even seen the Doonesburys of video games yet.
Balderdash. I’d say Earthbound (an SNES game) is at least the Doonebury of games maybe even the bloom county and it came out in the 90s!
I dunno, I also feel like Yoshi’s Island (also an SNES game) could be a contender for the Little Nemo of games.
Ha, I just wanted to take a cheap shot at Doonesbury.
Of course it depends on what you would expect of the Little Nemo or Krazy Kat of games. But if you suppose, as a first pass, that they respectively represent the acmes of technique and oddball personal expression, then there would be several games that qualify or come close, right?
I’m glad someone else wants to take shots at Doonesbury. The enthusiasm for that strip never ceases to befuddle me.
Isaac: I just wanted to say that I had the same reaction to Kenny. It’s one of the few times playing games when an NPC’s actions brought a visceral anger out of me.
Richard,
I believe the only thing that stopped me from shouting YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! at the top of my lungs was that my roommate at the time was sleeping in the next room!
Not that Lily is any better. Actually, she’s far worse.
Now that I’m replaying the game, I’ve noticed that a lot of what Lee has to do is deal with people who one by one start losing their will to remain human.
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