The Real Monster
To The Bitter End returned this week with a look at the ending of Crackdown and how it shined a malevolent light on the game’s violent police state, which Toussaint Egan argued should’ve been obvious all along and has only gotten more concerning in our current political climate. As Wolfman Jew pointed out, this is one of many games that tried to get you to rethink your violence, but didn’t make a satisfying point:
Here’s one question I have to games like this that question their own authoritarian politics: Where do we go from here? I mean, we’ve spent years dancing around the politics of modern-day action games, to the point where the games do it as well. But it always feels like the inevitable answer they give is just “more violence, but, you know, against the real bad guys.” I get that there are technical and mechanical reasons for that, and people who put down $60 don’t want to not shoot people in their shooting game. But as someone who doesn’t really define games by their politics, I often find the way they try to deflect them to be more disconcerting. If you’re going to bring it up, shouldn’t there be something more meaty than the hero being evil the whole time?
There are exceptions—Undertale, the endings of Prince Of Persia: Two Thrones and Mother 3—but the rule is more like Crackdown‘s sequel or Haze or Dead To Rights, where you fight each new villain the exact same way. Those games and many more do have political aspirations, which makes it all the more galling that they don’t encourage different types of play. From a political perspective the fundamental problem of police violence is one of culture and methods; we’re taught that immediate and forceful solutions are right, so all we need to do is point that in the correct direction. But that’s kind of the center of the problem, as it encourages the same type of action that leads to extreme violence and the police becoming a sort of protected class.
Maybe that’s the point of this—that there isn’t actual escape. But that seems lazy and reductive when coming from a position of comfort and safety (which these games often appear to be made in and is certainly how they are presented), which just ends up creating a quasi-elitist undercurrent. Look at something like The Division where local occupation is meant to be exciting and fun. Even when they have these kinds of twists, it always feels like they’re about bad people overcoming bad systems, or making your hero the victim instead of all the collateral in his vicinity.
I’d like to propose a possible counteragent: The Wire: The Video Game. Not literally, but I really love the idea of an “open-world action mixed with puzzles” game where different methods of investigation and enforcement lead to different results down the line. Maybe “shock and awe” tactics would be (or seem) necessary at points, but have darker consequences later on, while slower pacing with an eye for detail and community involvement could pay off but be harder to accomplish. There could even be some randomization in the vein of a rogue-like, keeping players from making “perfect” runs. It’d be hard to program, but considering the amount of games where you play as some sort of “warrior cop,” it seems like a plan worth following.
RobertPostsChild searched for reasons why these twists are often limp:
There’s definitely a weird confluence of issues that make games a seemingly awful medium for trying to address heady topics, whether they’re just practical issues or the result of where the industry is at these days. A lot of times it just feels like they’re throwing something in to make it “interesting,” but for whatever reason, the game just isn’t actually equipped to explore it, so it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. (I’m looking at you, weird false equivalencies in BioShock: Infinite!)
Narrative demands worthy opponents and the escapist desire for solutions that are understandable, unlike real life. Neither of those things are particularly objectionable in and of themselves but can end up backing stories into weird corners, especially when it all has to ultimately be an excuse for the player to do the thing that the game is. Designing your game around that, rather than grafting a narrative onto a pre-determined one, is really the only way to avoid the problem.