The Artful Gamer

I’ve been keeping my eye on this project for a while now, and I’m excited to pass along the news that a team of dedicated Wing Commander fans and Origin Museum curator Joe Garrity, recently completed their 7-day archiving grind of almost 1 Terabyte of data at Mythic Studios. If you’re not familiar with Origin Systems, it’s the studio that produced the Ultima and Wing Commander games of the 80′s and 90′s, which was purchased by EA and went defunct in the early 2000′s.

Thankfully, EA did not toss out decades worth of artifacts, source code, artwork, design documents, and other archivists treasures that the folks at Origin produced. Months ago, the people over at the Wing Commander News site discovered that several boxes of Origin artifacts were shipped to EA Mythic, and quickly got to work on getting permission to archive all of the materials. All of that work paid off, when the team of dedicated archivists spent a week at Mythic photographing, digitizing, and copying, the tons of materials left from the Origin days.

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Ico cover art by bigdogsleeping.

Michael’s “Narrative Manifesto” post at the Brainy Gamer gave me an opportunity to think about what’s at stake when we talk about interactive narratives. Although I can only sketch out some of the issues involved, I’d like to take a stab at understanding a few ways we tend to think about interactivity and narratives, and the kinds of assumptions they come with. I hope that I don’t come off too strongly here, but I think we’ve continued to repeat a grave mistake in our understanding of interactivity, and because of that are headed down a blind alley in terms of story development.

The basic premise I have is that the word “interactive” can be understood on at least two levels in video games. We tend to forget that one level of interactivity is more important than the other, often end up in situations where a player fights with the game instead of enjoying it for what it is. Instead of beating our collective heads against the wall as we try to design games that let players live out their wildest desires, we should be developing worlds that encourage players to explore them as living, breathing, places.

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After years and years of development, beginning its life as Project ‘Van Buren’ under the skillful hands of the illustrious designers at the Black Isle Studios (later to be cancelled by Interplay), Fallout 3 found new life again when it was licensed to Bethesda Softworks.

In the intervening years, Fallout fans (I among them) have jostled and argued over the fate of their sacred cow. Most fans are deeply concerned that the developer of The Elder Scrolls series (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion) will misuse the license and produce a bastard Fallout-Oblivion hybrid unfaithful to the original series.

On the other end, the folks over at Bethesda face the pressure of developing a game that simultaneously satisfies the whims of rabid doomsayers, doubting thomases, FPS fans, hardcore role-players, post-apocalyptos, apathetics, ambivalentés, and Bethsoft believers. After the early fanatical hype and later discord of TES: Oblivion, Bethsoft has a lot to get right this time around the may-pole.

Rather than a simple, Carmackish, “It’s done when it’s done”, the folks over at Bethsoft have been surprisingly candid with their experiences of developing the game, have tried to maintain a positive relationship with the ardent Fallout fan communities, and have pushed hard in the last few months to hit every major online and offline publication with the latest preview of their game.

The hype has been all over the place. People who’ve played it for a few minutes seem to love the graphics and atmosphere. The developers are fanatical about the “VATS” pseudo-turn-based targeting system. FPS lovers are intrigued by the freeform exploration and stunning apocalyptic vistas. Other gamers are up in arms over the same issues: the world looks like Oblivion dipped in mushroom gravy, the gore is gratuitous, VATS is a shoe-horned hack, epic vistas and scenery aren’t the focus of the Fallout universe. Every celebrated feature for one person is a potential disaster for another. The hubbub reminds me of debates that raged when David Fincher’s Alien3 made its debut and forever transformed the face of the Alien series.

Although all aspects of the game seem to be staked out, there are a couple of details that have remained ominously silent in most publications. In this article I take a quick peek at the Writing and Music of the Fallout series, and what it might mean for Fallout 3.

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