Metal Gear Solid: The fusion of camp and drama

Gamers can be pretty self-deprecating when it comes to the stories told by their chosen medium. Conscious of the fact that video game stories have struggled (or perhaps more accurately, failed outright) to acquire critical renown from the reigning artistic authorities, most gamers acknowledge that the writing is just second-rate - even when it's writing that they admit to enjoying a great deal. Occasionally a few are held up as legitimately good - Shadow of the Colossus and Planescape: Torment appear frequently - but even then, the praise is all too often appended with "for a video game." Part of the problem, of course, is that a lot of video game stories are really bad. Insofar as the story of a game will tend to be in service of its gameplay and not the other way round, games are prone to story settings that involve copious gunplay rather than nuanced character development. The medium may simply be predisposed towards being juvenile. But I also suspect that many video game buffs have uneasy and ill-defined relationships with the stories of their games. On what level, if any, do they appreciate them?

Shadow of the Colossus

I recall spending countless hours on a Final Fantasy fansite as a teenager. One got the sense that a lot of the members were interfacing more meaningfully with RPG stories than they were with the classics from their English classes. Broken, unevenly-translated Engrish was deconstructed and interpreted as subtly-crafted prose; Cloud Strife and Fei Fong Wong were unironically lauded as the greatest characters in the history of fiction. The medium was treated with a starry-eyed reverence which, considering the frequently infantile sense of writing and comic book settings, seemed wildly out of place. And as we grew older, it was expected that this reverence be disowned, acknowledged as a symptom of aesthetic deficiency, progressed from, as a young adult might find their idea of high cuisine progressing from grilled cheese to foie gras. The few that remain stalwartly attached to the sprawling, fumbling, awkward epics of JRPGs past were cast under suspicion of wearing rose-tinted glasses (and if the baffling tale told by the recent Final Fantasy XIII is any evidence, this may well be true).

As much as I love him, Cloud falls somewhere
short of establishing himself as the Holden
Caulfield of our generation.

It's certainly true that no character from Final Fantasy VII or Xenogears holds a candle to the thematic depth of literature's heavyweights. On the other hand, I think there's something fascinating going on with the gaming community's persistent fixation with character-centric dramas set against the backdrop of giant robots or cyborg assassins or a mission to kill God, something that merits a little more than a snort or a groan. The subject matter is certainly pure camp. We're not accustomed to having to take giant robots seriously; we associate them more with cheap cartoons and merchandising than stories of personal revelation or Freudian psychology. But it may well be that the campy premises which video game narratives are so frequently drawn to constitute particularly fertile soil for dramatic storytelling.

There are some pretty interesting parallels with the comic book movie renaissance of the last decade, when the success of X-Men and Spider-Man filled summer movie screens with big-budget comic book adaptations. Spider-Man in particular is a good case study, because director Sam Raimi, a modern master of camp filmmaking, appeared to have somewhat schizophrenic intentions when he approached the franchise. Clearly, everyone knew the corniness and cliches were present - it was Raimi, the inclusion was willful and done with relish - but at the same time, the audience was expected to take Peter Parker's personal struggles seriously, even as he donned a spider costume and battled Willem Dafoe clad in a green Power Ranger suit. The fusion of the comic book's camp sensibilities with big-screen drama was a little uneven, but it found popular resonance where it had previously been niche. And by the end of the decade, murmurs of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight for Best Picture were circulating; Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker.

Campy? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

We can still sense some discomfort with the improbable fusion. The Dark Knight called upon both Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine to buoy the film with a sense of venerability from their supporting roles, as though Nolan suspected the premise was just a little too ridiculous to independently sustain itself as serious subject material. But whatever the case may be, camp and drama are increasingly cementing themselves as partners in modern filmmaking, to wild popular reception and more-than-occasional critical acclaim. How, then, should this affect our interpretation of the obvious analog in video games?

Camp we all took seriously.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm a big Metal Gear Solid fan, and it might strike some as odd to follow an entry ripping into StarCraft II's story with praise for Hideo Kojima's notorious mindfuck epic. But the series is probably the medium's foremost exemplar with respect to high drama in a camp setting. The title itself, after all, refers to giant robots - walking, nuclear-equipped battle tanks that bear no small resemblance to Godzilla (which, incidentally, may well be where the entire marriage between camp and drama was blessed) - but the bizarre premises don't stop there. Floating psychics and flamethrower-wielding astronauts deliver insane soliloquies about their tortured lives; enemy commandos deflect bullets ("She really is Lady Luck!") and survive shots to the head with no real explanation; a nerdy companion named after an anime convention strikes up a conversation with the protagonist about whether love can bloom on the battlefield. Metal Gear Solid is a gritty war story at heart, but it's not itself without healthy servings of the paranormal, perplexing, and preposterous.

One could be forgiven for assuming this
game wouldn't tug many heartstrings.

But - and this is where many gamers are understandably confused - Metal Gear Solid doesn't invite you to laugh at its sheer ridiculousness (at least, not always). Underneath all the jargon, technobabble, and downright cheese, it's got a serious thematic story to tell, and something about its B-movie sensibilities - from the lengthy, stilted exposition and broad, exaggerated caricatures right down to the pitch-perfect, gravelly corniness of David Hayter's delivery as Solid Snake - just clicks. The player becomes increasingly confused about where the dividing line is between the pretense of serious, traditional spy drama and the lunatic fringe. Eventually, we let our guards down, and the full dramatic force of the game's camp side - which would under normal circumstances be simply too silly to be moving - comes crashing down upon us. Snake's introspection, Naomi's betrayal, Otacon's sense of loss: all of these things are the better for their unabashed willingness to situate themselves within the aesthetic of camp science fiction.

Kojima refuses to let the medium compromise
his flair for the dramatic

The narrative strategy is perhaps best exemplified by the death of The Boss at the end of Metal Gear Solid 3. As she perishes, the scars on her chest turn into a pair of (heavy-handedly metaphorical) snakes, which slither from her body onto the ground as the white flowers surrounding her bloom red. At face value, it's an utterly ridiculous piece of visual eyeglitter to underscore the departure of an important character, a scene with no obvious consistency with the game's portrayal of the supernatural, and a catastrophically failed attempt of a director with juvenile sensibilities to execute something abstract or new-wave. But Kojima is nothing if not in constant implicit dialogue with his audience's confused reactions. The scene, which is punctuated by requiring the player to execute The Boss themselves by pressing the fire button (a move which cleverly recontextualizes the hitherto-unreflective manner with which they have killed every other enemy in the game), deliberately blurs the boundaries between the emotionally moving and the aesthetically indulgent. The storytelling technique of Metal Gear Solid therefore functions very much as a curiously effective embracing of kitsch.

The Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3

Metal Gear Solid exemplifies a narrative style which has transcended the realm of authorial immaturity and become genre. As it willfully insists that it be critically defined by its own terms rather than condemned by the criterion of traditional drama, it also insists that the player, at least for the duration of the game, suspend their own understanding of the dramatic, fray its boundaries, and allow the game's potent camp sensibilities to become interwoven. I should note that, while I think this is a genre that shows a lot of promise, I don't want all game stories to be like Metal Gear Solid, as surely as I don't want all film stories to be like Spider-Man. Moreover, I certainly don't want to see the "genre" label applied as a catch-all defense against bad writing in video games. This can be particularly dangerous when the bad writing is also writing we enjoy - witness Castlevania: Symphony of the Night's "Die, monster!" introduction, which ought not ever be construed as anything other than a humorous relic to be appreciated with a giggle and a smirk.

What I hope is that gamers, while still holding the medium's storytelling to high standards, can acquire some context for their appreciation of a series like Metal Gear Solid or Xenosaga or Final Fantasy. One might survey the prevalence of camp in video game storytelling and conclude that it is frozen in permanent infancy. But whether the writing is infantile or not, it is missing the point entirely to judge it by the same criteria one would a Kubrick film or Shakespearian classic - or even the latest generic drama that Ebert reviews favorably. The giant robot-centered camp drama just might have established itself as its own breed, rather than high art's kid brother.

StarCraft II: The anti-narrative (Spoilers within)

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has the worst story ever told in a video game.

That's not to say I'm down on the game in general. I've had more fun playing through StarCraft II's campaign than I have with any other game in recent memory. It's an immaculately constructed experience, with varied, briskly-paced missions and painstaking attention to detail at every level. In fact, the gameplay is so good that criticizing the writing - which many players, jumping straight to online play, will never even experience - feels somewhat besides the point. But lead writer Chris Metzen's effort for StarCraft II isn't just bad. It's fascinatingly bad. It's bad in a way that few games ever even get the opportunity to be - it takes the cast of beloved franchise and misuses it in every way possible.

Much more fun than the cutscenes.

Let's start with the narrative structure. StarCraft II begins with the premise of a political rebellion against Arcturus Mengsk's Dominion, then shelves that idea about an hour in to introduce the premise of a Zerg invasion. The game then proceeds to ignore both of these plot points for the better part of the campaign's duration, instead focusing on the fascinating goals of raising money and collecting mysterious artifacts for no very good reason. The missions proceed nonlinearly, so there's no semblance of logical progression towards a coherent endpoint; the story simply meanders for ten hours as protagonist Jim Raynor diligently ignores everything that might interest the player in favor of running off on his latest random errand. With the exception of a sidestory involving the Protoss, none of the story's five prongs ultimately amount to anything significant to the endgame. They simply exist as a buffer to stall the player over until the game's concluding twist comes out of left field - but more on that later.

Mengsk is ultimately irrelevant.

To Metzen's credit, writing a plot for a real-time strategy game is difficult. It's essential, for the sake of mission variety, that every faction wind up fighting every other faction in the game at some point, and coming up with a plausible reason to pit the Terrans against the alien Protoss - with whom they allied themselves to save the universe four years prior - would be difficult, to say the least. The effort made, however, is beyond pathetic. For instance: in his quest to acquire resources and Xel'Naga artifacts, Raynor spends several missions butting heads with a Protoss faction known as the Tal'darim, who are cutely described as "fanatics" but commit no obvious crime aside from refusing to roll over and die when Raynor comes to scour their worlds (by force!) of their rightly-owned valuables. The Tal'darim are dressed up in scary religious language - "You shall not defile the Breath of Creation! Execute all those who would desecrate our altars!" - but it's hard not to see Raynor as the villain here, especially considering that he's knowingly making a grab at a resource the Tal'darim consider religiously significant.

Imperialism: the Game

The cultural insensitivity and abject stupidity reach their heights in the mission "Supernova" - an implausibly-constructed scenario in which Raynor must plunder a valuable artifact from the Tal'darim before the planet is engulfed by a slowly-moving wall of flame - where the following dialogue is uttered:

Tal'darim Executor: "Now you will pay for desecrating our holy relics!"
Raynor: "Aw, hell. Not these Tal'darim guys again. They seriously need to learn when to quit!"

A rough translation would be as follows:

Tal'darim Executor: "Stop robbing us of the objects of our faith at gunpoint!"
Raynor: "Gee whiz, these Tal'darim are just so unreasonable!"

Jim Raynor, real American hero

So Raynor has some trouble setting himself up as the most scrupulous of protagonists, the game's halfhearted attempts to other-ize the Tal'darim notwithstanding. Meanwhile, his partner in crime, a rough-and-tumble ex-convict with a Southern drawl named Tychus Findlay, manages to inject stupidity into the story in completely different ways. Tychus bought his freedom from Dominion emperor Arcturus Mengsk in exchange for agreeing to work for him in secret - a plot point which is revealed hamfistedly in the game's very first scene. Since Raynor is leading a rebellion against Mengsk, it's an ostensible source of tension that he has a traitor in his midst. It's somewhat confusing, then, when Findlay thinks nothing of committing violent acts of sedition against the Dominion alongside Raynor, even going so far as to personally steal their new secret weapon and rampage across town with it. Mengsk - who has taken a curious turn from dangerous megalomaniac to cartoon villain in the interim between the two games - is surprised and befuddled by Raynor's tactics at every turn, but he ought to know about all of them in advance, seeing as Raynor literally has a plant as his number two.

An extremely ineffective double agent.

Another problem with the game's story is that there is no clear singular antagonist. I think the antagonist was supposed to be Kerrigan, but she exists more as ambient noise than as an actual character. She shows up for a couple of missions to dispense some occasional generically threatening banter ("You were fools to come here!"), and then, in a truly impressive squandering of an entire game's worth of buildup, turns in her villain card in the ending sequence through a deus ex machina. The chemistry between her and Raynor which was built up in Brood War is nonexistent here, as is any of her former charisma or presence. (On that note, someone might need to remind Tricia Helfer that she's not still voicing the Normandy's artificial intelligence from Mass Effect 2 anymore. Glynnis Talken's original performance is sorely missed.)

Sadly, her pet hydralisk never becomes

a miniboss.

I'm not even going to touch upon Zeratul's excruciatingly-written encounter with the hitherto-dead Tassadar. The scene deconstructs itself.

All of this pales in comparison, however, to what can only be described as the dumbest moment in the history of video games. There comes a point at which a Ghost operative named Nova contacts Raynor and tries to convince him that his ally Tosh is conspiring to free a band of violent prisoners and drug them to create psychotic killing machines. The problem here is that Nova just so happens to be employed by the Dominion - the very same Dominion that Raynor is in open revolt against. The scene literally amounts to Raynor's sworn enemy calling him up and telling him to betray someone who has been helping him the whole game, just because she says so. Tosh has not at this point wronged Raynor in any way or even committed a single violent act. Ostensibly, he's a pirate, but that should make him and Raynor good pals, seeing as Jim's the one looting and pillaging alien worlds. So why would the player trust Nova? There are only two reasons I can think of as to why Blizzard would think there was any choice to be made here:

1) Tosh's portrait is on a scary red background instead of Nova's friendly blue one.
2) Tosh is a black guy with dreadlocks instead of a hot white chick.

Make your choice.

The scene transcends mere stupidity and treads precariously on the grounds of racist imagery. Could they have possibly even attempted to construct this scenario without the manipulative way Tosh's race and physical appearance are used? The worst part of it is that the player can literally do no wrong in their decision. If they choose to side with Nova, her testimony is vindicated; if they side with Tosh, her claims turn out to be false. The weight of choice fails to materialize on almost too many grounds to count.

There are a few bright spots hidden within the horrible effluvium of fan-fiction that is StarCraft II's story. The propaganda-laden Dominion newscasts that can be viewed between each mission are occasionally funny, even if they make it difficult to take Mengsk seriously. And Tychus, though his character arc is nonsensical, is amicable enough, and his chemistry with Raynor is genuinely believable. If there's one lingering trace of the original StarCraft's space Western aesthetic to be found in the sequel, it's there. But on the whole, the story is such an inexplicably impressive disaster. The flimsiness of its pretenses and compounded failures of logic are so myriad that they seem almost willful, as though Metzen was afraid of someone taking the story too seriously. Considering the duration of the game's development (seven years) and Blizzard's important role in the game industry, I'd venture to say they have a responsibility to do better. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has a plot so foul that it may well sabotage the credibility of gaming as a storytelling medium.