“Ori and the Blind Forest” and Originality

“Even the highest of Ori‘s high notes—the enchanting beauty of its scenery, score, and story—all feel as if they’re trying to play it safe, lest the game edge too far out of the ‘looks sort of like a Miyazaki movie’ rulebook. And while the platforming is certainly solid, it doesn’t bring the same level of wonky creativity to the table as, say, Rayman Legends did back in 2013.” –Kotaku

The idea for this piece was planted in my head by this review. Well, not only this one, but also the reviews and hype that were built for games such as Evolve and Destiny. I feel there’s this notion in the gaming industry that innovation is inherently superior to rehashing treaded ground. That a novel idea alone has value, even when the execution is… shall we say… less than stellar.

But then we had a 2D platformer release and become easily the best reviewed game of 2015 at the time of its release (it’s since been surpassed by GTA V, but come on… GTA V guys!). Then, a short month and a half later, we have a Kickstarter for a 3D platformer (a genre pronounced long dead by the mainstream games industry) hit all of its stretch goals within 36 hours. Why is it these old ideas can thrive in this marketplace that preaches only “forward?”

Let’s start by taking care of a little baggage: I love Ori and the Blind Forest. More than any one person should love a 2D platformer I think, especially someone who has never had an affinity with the genre. I’ve been raving about it to anyone who will listen. I think my friends are starting to get tired of it…

To put things in perspective, between this and Yooka-Laylee’s Kickstarter bid, I haven’t been this excited as a gamer, this into gaming, since Pokemon Soul Silver and Dragon Age: Origins. That was the winter of 2009-2010 for those keeping track.

Now I know that some people don’t like 2D platformers, and even the best of the genre (Castlevania, Metroid, etc.) won’t change their minds. That’s perfectly reasonable. I myself have an aversion to first person shooters for some reason. Halo is alright I guess, but military shooters? You lose me.

Keep doing what you do and don’t let anyone try and tell you what you should or shouldn’t like. Don’t feel like I’m trying to impose my love of a game on you, because I’m not. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

So with civility out of the way, let’s talk about originality. Feels like a bit of a violent change of course for this piece doesn’t it? Ori may be a fine example of a 2D platformer, but it’s anything but original. Or is it? Pardon that cliffhanger for just a bit, and I’ll explain.

In conversations with those same friends who are sick of me bringing up Ori, we began to talk about “innovation” in the last year of gaming, and potential innovation to come. Not in terms of consoles (is the Oculus ready for release yet?), but in terms of games and game design. Three came to mind from the past year: Titanfall, Destiny, and Evolve. Please pardon that list if it feels brief or incomplete to you, it was based off games branded (by marketing campaigns) as “innovative” or “revolutionary.” And since those three stuck in our heads, I guess the marketing worked. Please note marketing advisors that we either didn’t buy those games or disliked the ones we did buy. Take that extremely limited data as you will.

The games industry feels like a beast constantly pushing itself forward. Innovating, recreating, and improving. Because that’s what the spokespeople of the industry tell us. As much as gamers love the indie game love letters to the classics and as much as some of us feel like a AAA crash is coming, that crash isn’t here yet. There are still the GTAs that inspire publishers to push for bigger, shinier, blockbuster-ier games.

So let’s take stock of innovation in this games marketplace of 2015. Titanfall, Destiny, and Evolve were all first person shooters that tried to fuse with other genres in ways that hadn’t been done before… or had they? Titanfall borrowed elements from DOTA-style games and mixed in a bit of the kill-streak, escalation style of COD. Destiny took the gunplay of Halo and grafted it to an MMO-RPG. And Evolve took the survivors from Left 4 Dead and pitted them against a singular monster that spikes in power throughout a match.

All of these games received solid-to-good review scores from the major outlets. All of them sold pretty well on launch. And all of them have lost vast swathes of their Day One player bases. While not everyone has branded these games as such, many have thrown around words like ‘disappointment.’ And that might not be entirely fair, but that’s what happens when AAA games get a marketing campaign to match.

Metacritic scores for the games above are as follows: Titanfall currently has a 86, Destiny sits at 76, and Evolve is at 74.

Now Metacritic should not be the end-all-be-all for evaluating whether a game is good or not. And by no means are any of those scores bad. As I tried to express in the intro, everyone has their own tastes in games and a single number can’t cover all the nuances and intricacies of why individuals like certain games. But just for comparison, let’s take a look at some of the games currently atop the Metacritic charts.

GTA V: 96, Bloodborne: 92, Shovel Knight: 92, Dark Souls II and Mario Kart 8 DLCs sit at 91, Pillars of Eternity: 90, Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D: 89, Bastion: 89, Ori and the Blind Forest: 88.

A bunch of sequels, tweaks to successful models, revisions of old-school RPGs and platformers. Refined ideas.

The games industry walks a fine line between innovating and perfecting. Innovation (at this point) has become taking elements from different existing genres or games and fusing them together in ways that aren’t seen very often. Even Star Citizen, the most hyped ‘revolutionary’ game currently on the horizon sounds as if it will borrow elements from flight simulators and MMOs, particularly EVE. Elements we have seen before.

At the end of the day, the gaming community seems to have spoken: they’re fine with innovation but not at the expense of everything that has come before. We want the same tight mechanics and amazing stories we’ve experienced before with a bit of innovation mixed in. At least if you’re going to charge $60+ for it.

And this is where I find Ori surprisingly refreshing. While the individual elements themselves may not be unique, the combination of those elements is something I’ve never quite experienced before. The gorgeous and layered visuals, the tight controls, the smoothness of the difficulty curve, the amazing soundtrack, and a solid, touching story to tie the whole experience together.

Amazing art and visuals: we’ve seen that in gaming before. It feels like we see it every other day. But regarding the style of Ori, the first game that came to mind for me was actually The Prince of Persia (2008) or (for film) Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.

For tight controls in a platformer: look no further than the current Beard Bros play-through of Super Meat Boy (check it out here). Same example flies for the smoothness of the difficulty curve.

“The progression from powerless sprite-child to nimble engine of destruction is elegantly smooth, with so many opportunities to use each skill that, by the time you’ve discovered the next one, using the previous ability will have become second nature.” –IGN

But as for Metroidvanias, I’m not sure of an example that equals Ori’s progression system (this could just be my inexperience in the genre). Sure Metroid and Castlevania offer new tools and weapons, but they are much more combat focused, and therefore aren’t as consistently used. Ori constantly forces the player to use their entire arsenal. The bigger your bag of tricks becomes, the more complex the challenges. Off the top of my head, Shovel Knight comes closest as a comparison for a progression/arsenal model as the items in that game weren’t just for combat, but also to improve the protagonist’s platforming ability.

“Other genres have borrowed Metroid‘s name and smashed it into other games to try to make something new, but I’ve never played a game so determined to take and develop those ideas and augment them with incredibly refined, responsive mechanics the way Ori does.” –Polygon

As a composer, Gareth Coker was a complete unknown to me going in, but his score was invocative of Inon Zur’s work for The Prince of Persia (2008) and James Newton Howard’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

In terms of story, I dare say that if one were to take the first half of The Lion King and add in the typical ‘cleansing-the-land/coming-of-age’ archetypal fairytale you’d be in the ballpark.

So we’ve seen all of these elements before. And the same goes for most modern games. What happens when you take Left 4 Dead and throw in a monster from Citizen Kabuto? Evolve. Fuse Halo, World of Warcraft, and Peter Dinklage? Destiny. Add DOTA-style minions to COD where your kill-streak reward is a mech fighter? Titanfall.

Borrow the look and sound of Prince of Persia (2008), mix it with a little Miyazaki, give it the tightness of Super Meat Boy controls, the progression and curve of Shovel Knight, and a dash of The Lion King for good measure? Ori and the Blind Forest.

So novelty is a vastly overrated quality in games, because nothing comes from a vacuum. Everything stands on the shoulders of what came before. In terms of game design, innovation comes from tweaking and borrowing from what already exists. When you combine enough elements in just the right way and provide a complete experience sans-DLC, in today’s game industry, then you have created something singularly unique.

On Suicide in Works of Fiction

Before we begin, let me remind you that this blog is about storytelling with a particular interest in fiction. Any statements made in this essay in regards to suicide are in regards to suicide’s presentation in works of FICTION and should not be taken as my personal thoughts on the reality of the subject. I have no background or personal experience that would make me qualified to discuss it. I’ll be reiterating this statement again in a couple of sentences, but after that, I’m trusting you to remember this opening paragraph.

A while back, when I first started taking fiction writing seriously, I stumbled upon a list of rules for storytelling. One in particular stuck with me regarding your main characters and suicide. Don’t do it.

Now I’m only going to say this once more, lest this piece become bogged down with repeated clarifiers: This is NOT to discount the realities of suicide and is by no means out of any sort of moral opposition to it. This comes 100% from a place of storytelling. I’m just not a fan of suicides in books, film, etc. This isn’t to say if you enjoy stories that involve suicide you’re wrong. As always, we’re talking about subjective art forms.

Disclaimer #10,000,000: As with any general rules of writing, there are exceptions. There are stories where I think suicide is done ‘well.’ I still don’t really like those stories, but again, that relates back to personal taste.

Now, let me elaborate on this personal distaste of mine.

As a storytelling element, suicide represents the inability of a character to reach their potential. And it represents the resignation of the writer in regards to attempting to develop that character. It is the act of a character who has outlived their usefulness to the writer. It is then a cheap attempt to stir some sense of shock in the audience as the writer attempts to cover up this failing. And finally, it is predictable. An experienced reader, film goer, or theatre patron, will know a character is going to commit suicide well before the actual act is carried out.

Let’s break some of these down.

In regards to character development, every character, even a minor one, has an arc. An arc is something that begins its trajectory before the story starts and will continue on after the story’s over. The obvious exception is in a character’s death. So what does it matter how that character dies? For the most part, it doesn’t. Be it terminal illness, killed by the antagonist, or just a freak accident all of these represent the tragedy of someone’s journey being halted against their will. Any character that dies who has something to live for is tragic.

Things change a little bit when characters die by their own hand. Rather than the tragic conclusion of someone who failed to reach their objective, the tragedy has already happened in the character’s arc and we’re left with the aftermath. The decision for the character to commit suicide is where the emotional core of the act lies. The act itself isn’t what resonates, the emotions behind it do.

This is what I meant when I said suicide was the result of a character who has outlasted their usefulness to the author. Their arc concluded with failure so they take their life into their own hands a do away with it. Suicide is neither a victory nor defeat for the character. In one sense, it is victory because they took some control of their lives. But they’re dead. Suicide is a surprisingly neutral act in storytelling given how it’s received in reality.

Historically, in western Christian culture, suicide was an abhorrent act. It represented the apex of selfishness by someone denying their contributions to the rest of the world by removing themselves from it. In the Catholic tradition it was complete with a direct ticket to Hell. With modernity came the acknowledgement that suicide could be the result of deep-seeded mental health issues. However, mental health is still an issue regarded around much of the world as a private affair not fit for public discourse.

As a result, any suicide is considered a shocking, tragic thing. And in reality, it is. It is often the result of an individual not being understood and failing to connect with others around them. Naturally a writer may think if suicide is tragic and shocking in reality then it must have the same effect to an audience in a work of fiction.

But this is an impossible scenario to recreate in fiction. The tragedy in a suicide is from the shock, the surprise, the inability of others to understand the depths of someone’s mental state. However, in fiction, most of the time when a character does commit suicide, the audience has a fairly strong grasp of the character’s mental state. In fiction, the tragedy is not in the suicide, but in the feelings of the character that leads them to the act. This leaves the act itself irrelevant.

And because the audience understands the characters in a story, it makes suicide a very predictable affair. Gay character comes back from an evangelical straight camp. I wonder where this is going to go? A character’s true love dies or marries another, and there are only 5 pages left. Guess what comes next? The shock almost comes when these types of stories don’t end in a suicide.

A more intriguing question (for me at least), is what happens when this person MUST carry on with their life? Maybe they’re driven to attempt suicide and fail. It forces other characters to acknowledge the struggles of a character. It opens up so many doors that are closed forever when a character succeeds in a suicide attempt. It leaves the audience intrigued. It opens up the possibility for reconciliation and understanding which we as people long for, especially in fiction. And perhaps, for those of you who want to explore the depths of human suffering and tragedy, what greater tragedy is there than for someone who wants nothing but death, and they can’t even achieve that?

On Limited Power

 

 

 

See what I did there?

Today we’re going to take a few hundred words and talk about limiting powers. No, this is not a history lesson about checks and balances, or branches of government. We’re talking about limiting the power of characters in stories.

I’m sure everyone can think of at least one story where someone has their antagonizing counterpart right where they want them, only to let them go and set off an hour and a half, two hundred page chain of events that leads to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. It’s frustrating in stories that take place within our world. But an entirely new set of challenges is opened up in fantasy and science fiction stories, especially ones that have magical elements.

It can be exciting to stretch the limits of your imagination and conjure up scenarios and ways the elemental properties of your invented worlds can be twisted. It’s especially fun to imbue characters (namely villains) with powers that make your audience wonder how your hero could possibly defeat them. And therein lies the danger.

There is a delicate balance between creating an antagonist who is sufficiently intimidating and making the audience ponder “why hasn’t he killed the protagonist yet?” And as someone who is tired of having heroes left alive because the villain just wants to toy with them, I’ve tinkered long and hard to create the most psychopathic, unfeeling, powerful antagonists I can. Have I succeeded? Well that will be for audiences to decide in the future.

A few questions to raise for you creators of monsters:

What’s to stop your villain from simply wiping out all who oppose him? Is there a specified limitation on his/her power? Maybe s/he’s not the most powerful person in the world and s/he must rely on manipulation of unreliable characters to achieve her/his ends. If they are one of the most powerful beings in their world, then they need a strong, strategic motive for giving your hero time to grow up and gain power. Simply lounging around, waiting for a worthy opponent is not acceptable. Perhaps they want to convert your hero to their side, don’t know about the hero yet, or legitimately believe someone or something else is a greater threat. But this logic must be clearly laid out if you want your villain taken seriously.

Example 1: Why doesn’t Darth Vader kill Luke despite repeatedly getting chances to? He wants to convert him and use him to overthrow the Emperor.

Example 2: Why doesn’t Organization XIII do away with Sora when he starts interfering with their plans? They need him and his unique possession of a keyblade to achieve their ultimate goals.

What are the exact limitations on your villain’s power? It’s fun to create your worst nightmare, a force so powerful you wonder if you can even conjure up someone who can defeat it. But there must be specific limitations to this nightmare. The more powerful they seem, the more specific the limitations must be. Otherwise, we run into the same questions of how the protagonist can survive in the same world as this villain.

Example 1: Despite Voldemort being one of the most powerful wizards the world has ever known, how can Harry survive for 3+ years once the Dark Lord returns? Voldemort isn’t omnipotent, and for most of the time when he knows where Harry is (during the Hogwarts school year), he is incapable of reaching Harry thanks to the protections of Dumbledore (a wizard who equals, if not surpasses Voldemort in power).

Example 2: Why doesn’t the Dark One kill Rand despite having vast amounts of power? He’s incapable of taking physical form and has to act through others, many of whom possess free will and have their own grand designs.

And finally (for this piece), what flaws does your powerful antagonist have? The greater your villain’s power, the more ruthless they are, the greater their mortal flaw must be. If your hero is incapable of surpassing them in power, then they need another angle to defeat their foe. This angle must be well established and explored throughout the course of your story. No one is ever truly satisfied with a deus ex machina resolution. It can even be a twist, but it ought to make sense.

Example 1: How does Luke defeat the Emperor after refusing to kill Vader? Trick question! When Vader sees the Emperor about to kill his son (spoilers by the way), he turns on his master and does away with him.

Example 2: How does Frodo overcome the power of Sauron’s will and destroy the ring? Again, trick question, he doesn’t. But in a wrestling match with Gollum, the ring is cast into the fires of Mount Doom, destroying it.

So make your characters powerful, willful, seemingly untouchable if you can. Just make sure you explain how they tick. For every detail explaining how strong they are, imply a limitation. For every example of how ruthless they can be, offer a crack in their mental fortress. And for every epic final battle, clearly explain how so great a force could be laid low. And remember, even in a world of science fiction and magic, logic must still apply.