Casting Pearls

Whether you’re a Naratologist or a Ludologist, you have to know that almost all main-stream console games are being sold as a story.  You are Kratos, a pissed off bastard on an odyssey seeking revenge against the gods; you are Batman, and you’re stuck in here with a bunch of psychopaths that want to destroy everything you’ve accomplished in the name of your dead parents; you are Solid Snake, an aging clone of one of the greatest heros ever, and you’re trying to stop another crisis in a foreign country; You are Faith, a free running messenger trying to escape with her own life; You are Chel, a test subject trying to do the best she can so she can get some yummy cake.

But you’re only one person.  Over and over again we see the same structure: you play one role in a game, and you are expected to play it well.  The world is in danger and it’s up to you to save it. No one else can because you’re the only one who has been grinding this whole time.  But you’re only one person.

I believe that a trend is ending soon; the single character story game. I’m not sure we’ll ever see the end of a leading man or woman, but I do think we are culturally moving to an age of a cast.

When I say cast, I’m not talking about a supporting cast as such.  We’ve had strong examples of that not only recently, but even a generation ago. Thinking back nearly two months ago we had Mass Effect 2; before that we had Brütal Legend and Uncharted 2, we’ve had Farcry 2 [On which Iroquois Pliskin gave a fantastic talk during Art Game Sessions at GDC], Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time [2003 was a great year for me even if I didn’t play these games when they came out], Planescape Torment… There are plenty of games with great casts of characters.

But now we have Left 4 Dead and Heavy Rain.  Who’s the lead?  You play all of these characters. I’m sure that if you play the Heavy Rain you’ll come away thinking that Ethan is the lead, which is fine.  But the story doesn’t occur unless you experience everyone. Left 4 Dead colors your experience on the necessity of your friends, and unlike other co-op games, no one plays Master Chief or Marcus Phoenix or anyone else who’s on the center of the cover; everyone is equal.  You could say that this rightly follows an era of MMO’s, and I couldn’t argue against you, but I think that there’s going to be a growing trend of writers and designers who want to experiment with the relationship between a player and their avatar(s).  It’s an exciting time to be a writer.  The only question is whether you can to stick with one horse or get on the 4-horse stagecoach.

Thanks to Michael Ahearn of Neversleep for being a sounding board for these ideas.