More life is happening, more crises, more fires to put out, more more more.
And I was almost done with today’s post last night. Ugh.
Month: April 2013 (page 1 of 5)
Art By Stephan Martiniere (Sources: Here and Here).
For the Terribleminds challenge “The Titles Have Been Chosen“. Pleased as I am that mine, “Always Have An Exit Strategy”, was one of the finalists, I didn’t want to just pick my own title. Maybe that’s just me.
“Cordelia! Where is that sulfur I asked for?”
Without the proper preservative, the professor’s experiments would not last into the reanimation stage. He looked down again at the first, he hoped, of many successful human subjects. The burst heart, damaged liver, and ragged kidneys had needed to be replaced, but the brain had been intact. He was not quite at the point of programming brains or toying with memories. However, Cordelia’s efforts in that regard had been promising so far. When the door to the laboratory opened, he smiled and turned to face her, beginning to loosen his heavy rubber gloves.
“There you are. How did it go?”
“The mortuary was empty, as usual.” Cordelia didn’t make eye contact with him. Her long, dark hair slid from behind her ear and obscured her face. The professor blinked, studying her. Usually she enjoyed sneaking into laboratories and mortuaries to get what they needed. But her body language was more nervous, even trepidatious. He moved away from his tray of tools.
“Cordelia? Are you all right?”
“Professor… I think I need to leave.”
The professor blinked. “What happened? What’s going on?”
Cordelia still didn’t look up. “When I was in the mortuary I saw a victim who looked like he’d been eaten by small animals.”
“That happens all the time.”
“How many of them have bites with acid burns?”
The professor furrowed his brows. “Weren’t you going to try and catch that mouse after it ate through its cage?”
“I did find it. I broke its neck and threw it in a hearthfire.”
“What? I could have used it! I could have rebuilt it!”
She shook her head. “No, Professor. I can’t let you do this anymore.”
“I don’t understand. Are you unhappy here? Have you forgotten the dreams we had when we attended university together? The notes passed during lectures given by narrow-minded fools? The long nights by the river, whispering of a better tomorrow?”
“They were foolish dreams, Professor. And I was a foolish girl.”
One of his gloves came off with an angry snap. “No. This behavior is foolish. We are so close, Cordelia.” He gestured behind him, at the corpse on the slab. “Everything is in place! We just need the preservatives, the excitable elements, the initial electrical spark, and…”
“We’ve stolen so much already, Professor. How much damage have we done? How much more will we do?”
“All science comes from sacrifice, Cordelia. It takes strength of will and clarity of vision to see past the tedium and roadblocks right in front of us, and stay focused on the ultimate goal. Think of it: a world where death is a mere inconvenience rather than the end. We’ll build a world of immortals, where the time you always felt you should have had can be purchased and gifted.”
“The price is more than money. We’ve taken these chemicals, these organs, from people that need them. In giving life back to one, we take it away from many. Science should make life for everyone better; it should not give us the choice of who lives and who dies.”
“Medical doctors make those choices every day. Are you going to stand there and tell me that they somehow have that right when we do not?”
“That’s triage. This is different.”
“It’s absolutely different! Imagine having the great minds of our age preserved and continuing to think and produce for ages to come!”
“Please. Just… just let me go.”
He removed his other glove and set them aside. “Cordelia, listen to me…”
“No.” Cordelia finally looked up, fixing the professor with her bright blue eyes. “No, you listen. I’m tired of this dreary laboratory. I’m tired of cleaning up all of your messes. I’m tired of simply being handed a dirty dish or container and being expected to clean it, without so much as a thank you. I’m tired of being used by you, for…” She shook all over. “For everything.”
He blinked at her. He struggled to find something to say, some way to keep her from leaving him.
“How about this… we start again. I get rid of all of this, and we start over. We share in the chores. We work together. And you… you don’t bring me dead things anymore. How about that?”
To his shock, she smiled a little.
“No. No, there’s one more dead thing I will give you.”
He hadn’t seen the revolver until that moment. He raised his hands, a gesture he’d always found odd in others. What, would the gesture magically ward off his scalpel, or his knife, or in this case, Cordelia’s bullet?
“Cordelia…”
“I thought about simply leaving. Just going away with no note, no way for you to find me. But I know you would find me. And what you do… what we’ve been doing… it has to stop. There has to be an end.”
“I won’t follow this research any further, Cordelia. From this day forward. I promise.”
She smiled more. A bright smile, with teeth and dimples, the one that had captured his heart.
“Yes… I know.”
The revolver roared in the space of the laboratory.
He was cold throughout his body. That, he did not expect. His eyes dropped, and he saw the ragged hold in his lab coat, the red spreading out from it. He looked up again at Cordelia, as she stood in the doorway, strong and certain, smoking revolver in her hand.
He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to say he would stop treating her as he had, that he would not take her for granted. He wanted to ask her what he could do to make things right between them.
Bloody froth was all that came from his mouth.
His body dropped to its knees, disconnected from his brain and its command for him to remain standing. He hit the grimy lab floor a moment later. The door slammed shut, and he was left there, with the dead things.
I’m trying to think of the last time I was seriously injured. I don’t think it happened in conjunction with anything like flat tires and waiting for payday to roll around, however. It’s just been a comedy of errors here all week, and I’m still trying to roll with the punches.
I’ve managed to get a bit of writing done, and Cold Streets is moving along. I’m hopeful that we’ll have at least a working draft by the end of the summer. I’ve had a few ideas for Godslayer as well, and there’s also a non-novel project I’ve been working on that may require more than just an investment of time and words. More on that as it develops.
I’m still working from home and still recovering, I guess. So I better get back to that. Enjoy your weekend!
For years, Ken Levine has been keeping gamers on their toes. System Shock 2 built on player expectations of both shooting games and the original System Shock. BioShock reminded modern audiences that action and terror could be balanced well and coupled with good storytelling and multi-dimensional, memorable characters. And now, BioShock Infinite has delivered one of the best gaming sucker-punches since Spec Ops: The Line, though he did so at the very end of his game with what has been called a bit of an exposition dump. Given the nature of the dialog, and the method of it’s presentation, one might even go so far as to say Levine a pretentious dick for doing what he did… and you know what? That’s okay.
Spec Ops was also a bit pretentious. Braid, Journey, Bastion… all of these games use their gameplay to move the story forward and play on themes that are above and beyond the scope of many of their contemporaries. They work on higher levels, and sometimes multiple levels. The pretense upon which such games work (hence the word ‘pretentious’) is that their story is just as important as the accuracy with which the player can shoot dudes, or the level of challenge in their puzzles. There’s nothing wrong with this. In fact, I’d argue that in terms of game development and presentation, Ken Levine is an example of someone doing everything right.
BioShock Infinite may not be a perfect game, and it may be flawed, but what it does is done so well it’s likely to be towards the top of many Game of the Year lists. Like its true predecessors, it builds on player expectations before yanking the rug out from under them. BioShock parsed past the linear progression of many other shooters (even some that came after it) and showed just how artificial that sort of pacing could be by making the player’s character a literal pawn in somebody else’s game. Very few of the choices the player makes in that game are their own; outside of weapon and plasmid selection, the phrase ‘would you kindly’ rips any agency out of the player’s hands and pushes them towards the game’s conclusion. While there’s nothing wrong with linearity in games, especially ones so heavily concerned with story, I always got the impression that Levine was demonstrating how important choice and consequence truly are by exposing this sort of railroading. In a way, this has always been his crux: make the wrong choices in System Shock 2 and it becomes impossible to complete, “A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys” in BioShock, and in BioShock Infinite we see the choices made by both Booker DeWitt, and especially Elizabeth, changing the world around them.
A choice made by Booker alters things forever, and he may be the player’s surrogate in the world of Columbia, but I don’t think the game is his story. The first thirty minutes or so of BioShock Infinite involves you exploring Columbia once you arrive and its exposure for what it is beneath the bright, idealized facade. The story proper, for me, didn’t really kick in until our first conversation with Elizabeth. Not only is she a fascinating and well-rounded character, her presence draws out more development for Booker, she has a direct effect on the world both during the shooting and as part of the narrative moving forward, and the story literally would not be possible without her. As much as ‘focus testing’ showed that target audiences wanted Booker on the cover of the game, it was clear to me that Elizabeth is the true protagonist of BioShock Infinite, the one who makes the more difficult choices and truly grows as a person, coming into the full realization of her powers and potential. While Booker does face truths about himself and comes to terms with his past, his arc is simply not as interesting as Elizabeth’s, and the fact that Levine was able to get this story into the hands of those who did not expect it just tickles me.
I think there are a lot of game designers out there who really want to make a difference. They see the state of gaming and interactive storytelling, and they want to change things for the better. It’s a little fanciful to think it can be done, but Ken Levine has shown one of the ways you do that. I called Bioshock Infinite a sucker punch because the nature of its story, the degree to which we care about Elizabeth, and the final revelatory walk through the many worlds and lighthouses are all things most gamers did not expect. Like his other games, this is one that bears re-playing, and enjoying all over again, and not just for the challenges of the gameplay or the unlocking of achievements. Ken Levine’s ideas on how to tell stories in games and how that can change things may be fanciful – but it also works.
I hate posts like this.
I really do. To me, they’re an indication of failure. Not enough time carved out for writing. Insufficient thought given to ideas beforehand. A cavalcade of excuse. So on and so forth.
But I can’t go back and write posts just to fill space. So here I am saying the schedule is off again, this time due to a back injury.
Things like this are particularly galling, to me. My mind doesn’t operate any more slowly if my body’s working against me, why is it harder for me to make time to write and maintain my focus when I’m in ‘recovery mode’? I should be banging out thousands of words as I lay supine on the couch or sit with pillows propping me up. I’ll just have to try harder for the rest of this week, especially since I’ll be working from home, thanks to Vera encountering another flat tire.
Needless to say, I hope your days are a lot better than mine have been.
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