New World Notes

For Dishonored 2, Former Kidnap Victim Emily Kaldwin Becomes Playable Damsel Causing Distress

Right on the heels of E3 2015, here's the spectacular teaser trailer to Dishonored 2, sequel to the immersive, open world RPG that's a favorite of this blog, featuring a great reveal at the end:

Rare to big budget games, one of the two playable characters is female, and a significant one at that: Emily Kaldwin, the daughter of royalty whose kidnapping and rescue drove the entire plot of the first game. In the sequel, however, she becomes an active participant in a larger story, whose choices the player can shape. (Players can also be Corvo, the silent assassin/bodyguard from the first game.) As such, Dishonored 2 comes across as a direct response to Anita Sarkeesian's famous complaint against the "Damsels in Distress" trope used in so many games, from early 2013. I even wonder if lead Dishonored designers Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio made Emily playable partly in response to that very video.

Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs Women in Video Games Is Back With More On That Oh-So-Irritating Damsel Trope

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Stop the presses -- I've put my second topic for today on hold, because Anita Sarkeesian has just released the next episode in her Tropes vs Women in Video Games series. The latest episode is part two in a three-part exploration of the damsel in distress (Hamlet wrote about part one back in March) and it's an absolute must-watch for just about every gamer out there, male or female. See for yourself:

Bioshock Infinite's Damsel Dilemma: Hey Girl, If You're So Omnipotent Why Can't You Find Your Own Damn Airship?

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

When I last wrote about Bioshock Infinite, I was practically gushing about how interesting and dynamic companion character Elizabeth is. All her context-sensitive interactions and visual cues make her one of the best companions I've ever had in a videogame. That said, she's definitely not one of the best female characters. As I mentioned in my previous post, she's... Problematic. Today I want to talk about why, and get a few things off my chest in the process.

Spoiler alert: I can't write about this topic without mentioning the ending. Sorry folks. Avert your eyes. 

Four Games That Broke My Heart in 2012 (and Changed My Perspective on Gaming in 2013)

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

I've already wrapped up some of my favorite virtual fashion memories of 2012, but I can't let New Year's Day pass without tipping my hat to some of the games that really captured my attention and imagination. 2012 was a surprisingly good year for storytelling in games, and it feels there were a lot of titles that either plucked at your heartstrings or tweaked your mind. More than talking about my favorite games or characters of the year, I wanted to talk about the stories that totally blew me away and changed my expectations of what a game's narrative can really do. Suffice it to say there may be a few very mild spoilers ahead, so tread lightly:

Dishonored's End: Harvey Smith & Raphael Colantonio on Designing a Game That Changes Based on Player Behavior

SPOILER WARNING: Dishonored endings discussed and shown in detail below

Depending on your point of view, the least or most interesting aspect of Dishonored, the award-winning immersive action game, is how it ends. That's because the ending is meant to reflect the moral choices you make through the tens of hours you play it: Accomplish goals and defeat enemies through maximum violence, and get one ending. Play with limited brutally, get a very different culmination.

"Our intention was to give players choices," lead designers Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio explain. "Not just a binary 'push the button at the end' choice, but an ongoing aggregate through the game. A more or less background system that allows players to ignore it if they so choose, and play how they want. Further, we didn't want one ending to feel like a failure; in fact, both are shades of gray without an iconic identity."

As I wrote last week, players on Steam equally split on finishing the story with a violent "High Chaos" ending and a more peaceful "Low Chaos" ending. But from my experience, at least, the different endings don't have the same emotional satisfaction:

Dishonored Players Evenly Choose High Chaos "Evil" & Low Chaos "Good" Endings; Creators Harvey Smith & Raphael Colantonio Have a Theory Why

After finishing Dishonored, Arkane Studio's masterpiece new game, I noticed an interesting thing about it on Steam's player stats -- of the 53% who completed the full story arc, the percent who chose the High Chaos or "evil" path (and get the "Dunwall in Chaos" achievement) is almost exactly equal to those who chose the Low Chaos or "good" path (and get the "Just Dark Enough" achievement) -- 26.6% to 26.7%.

If you've played the game, you know this is pretty surprising for many reasons. To complete Dishonored on Low Chaos, you must cause little or no violence, especially to civilians, and choosing that route requires a lot of patience, stealth, and re-starting (because you often get killed trying to be the nice guy who puts guards in a sleeper hold, rather than simply cutting their throats). But as it turns out, half the players who finished the game took the time and effort to be as non-violent as possible. Rather than play Dishonored like a traditional first-person action game, killing anything that moves, half the players steadfastly killed just about nothing. (Except maybe rats, and in my case, an un-redeemable torturer or two.)

Why such an even split? I put the question to Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, the game's lead creators, and they had a fascinating theory:

The Story of Dishonored: How the Hit Game's Immersive Narrative Was Crafted and Told

Dishonored, the new immersive stealth game lead created by Arkane's Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio, is great in a lot of ways, chief among them this: Dishonored is at heart an immersive story, plunging you into a vividly realized, alternate universe that looks very much like ours, but operating under its own internal logic, myths, cultures, which you learn about through interactive osmosis, as you explore, accomplish tasks, and (yes) fight and die a lot of times. The story itself, in terms of written and spoken dialog, is massive, Smith and Colantonio tell me, the size of a substantial novel:

"Roughly 90,000 words in AI-driven one-liners (or 'barks') and spoken dialogue, and another 40,000 written words in the form of notes, books, graffiti, etc." Were that put into a book, it'd be over 500 pages. The cast of characters in Dishnored is also voluminous: "[A]round 50 named characters, major or minor, and another 50 alluded to in works of fiction."

To bring the narrative world of Dishonored to life, Arkane's team drew on lots of influences, from novels and films, and even pop music. Smith and Colantonio discuss those below -- and how they emerge, within the game (mild SPOILERS ahead):

How Dishonored Honors Thief: Arkane's Harvey Smith and Raphael Colantonio on Dishonored's Debt to the Immersive Stealth Classic

Stealthy (relatively) non-violent gameplay in Dishonored

I'm loving Dishonored, the new game from Arkane Studios in which you play an outcast hero who must restore balance to a steampunk-themed alternate world where stealth, cunning, and careful moral choices are more important than wreaking wanton violence on your opponents. It's a great game in itself, made even moreso (to me) because it has a direct lineage to another first-person game set in a steampunk city, in which an outcast hero must also use stealth and cunning to bring balance to the world: The Thief games of Looking Glass Studios, from a decade ago. I started writing about games with those titles, and Harvey Smith, as he told me during a 2004 interview in Second Life, was a lead tester for Looking Glass' System Shock. And as he and Raphael Colantonio, his co-creative director on Dishonored, tell me, the Thief games were an essential inspiration for their game:

"Thief is a huge influence over our team," the two acknowledged over e-mail. "All these years on, we love that fascinating sketch of a world, with all its murky history and esoteric factions. The way the game is only partially scripted and instead relies on simulation means that the moment to moment experience creates a unique narrative driven by the player's actions. Thief stands as one of the greatest games ever made."

In case you haven't played Thief, Dishonored shares a number of gameplay and design elements which effect the player's sense of immersion, and the choices you make in the game. And the creators shared some of those with me too: