Transition
If there’s one problem with today’s games, it’s that the number of large-scale treks greatly outweigh the simpler start-to-finish titles. It seems as if all but the most casual of titles are now packaged with “adventure” or “storyline” modes, sending players on journeys that deliver an overload of information as a balance to the time spent actually playing the game. And woe unto you if you get a game that was designed from the ground up as an adventure: every dungeon (palace, temple, abandoned nuclear missile complex…) has a story, a secret, and a four-minute cutscene detailing its connection to the NPC who oh-so-gently goaded you into visiting it with a series of yes/no questions where the answer was always yes.
It puts me on the usual nostalgia trip: whatever happened to the good old days, when rescuing the princess or killing all the zombies was its own reward, and all you had to do was learn every single move by rote so that you could get there on your meager complement of lives? Now, that’s all too easy as comparison material. Yes, yes, we all wanted to be the guy who could clear the airfleet in world 8 without using a P-Wing (I was that guy in the second grade, and my fourth-grade friends were very impressed.) But there were strategy guides and hint books to help us out — not with the actual maneuvers, of course, you had to learn those yourself, but at least with what few describable phenomenons we could use to our advantage.
Then the games started evolving, and this is where the story gets personal. As games moved from a majority of skill-based hop-and-bops into the first few salvos of the greater adventure mold, I held fast to my old principles of immersing myself in the game’s information: first, by reading any cheaply-made guides I could get my hands on with my allowance (or more likely, reading them a few chapters at a time during bookstore visits) and then hoping it would appear in the local video store, or waiting for a holiday to afford the opportunity to ask for a particularly desired title. One year on my birthday, I received a player’s choice edition of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I’d already gained some passing familiarity through text-based reference guides, but it came with a full-colour map of the first half of the game and a collection of “Sahasrahla’s Hints” in a little sealed booklet, which I broke open immediately. Three days later, I drove the final Silver Arrow through Ganon’s heart. As I watched the credits roll, I felt slightly unnerved. This was my birthday gift; how had it slipped past me so quickly? I still hadn’t recovered all of the pieces of heart, but the essential challenge of the game was completed. My eyes fell on the hint booklet. Something in my head began to stir. Maybe games weren’t just about challenging my hand-eye coordination any more. Maybe there was something there for my mind to chew on.
Days turned to months, or perhaps a little over a year, I don’t really recall. But I remember discovering that a new Mario game was being made… and Squaresoft was involved. Good gods, a Super Mario Role-Playing Game. “Brilliant idea,” was my first thought. “How am I going to enjoy it if I learn too much about it?” was my second. After my experience with LttP, I was terrified of ruining what could potentially be a defining moment in my gaming history. I went into a total media blackout mode. Any magazine offering a preview of SMRPG was shunned; any unexpected feature in what was supposed to be a movie theatre handbill was quickly closed shut. I was determined not to let my expectation be destroyed by the merest possibility of foreknowledge. Finally, the game arrived on the video store shelf. I rented it first thing in the morning, played it all weekend, and defeated Smithy on Sunday night. Again, the unnerved sense chased me during the credits. Even deceptively armed with what I thought was no knowledge at all, I’d beaten the game in two days.
As I reflected on this, my eyes came to rest on my copy of LttP. I recalled the separate adventure I’d had in Hyrule, how I’d gone back to find the things I’d missed, and even replayed it for the sheer experience of doing so. My mind sprang like a rusty trap, much as Siddhartha’s must have when he came to possess the insight of the middle way. I was awakened to the fact that the new breed of games were simply what they were, that no amount of exposure or hiding from their universes before I played them would alter their actual properties — indeed, I should be no more or less aware of them than of any of life’s stories. From then on, I no longer continued to actively avoid information before playing games, but nor did I seek it out as devoutly, simply letting the flow reach me with a serene knowledge that I would eventually play any game that was particularly important to me. Sometimes I know the endings before I play the games, but I knew the endings to many classic movies before I watched them, and it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of them either.
And now, as I look back on 2008’s mixed crop of every type of game, of remakes and re-releases and virtual arcades, I wonder if my story will ever repeat, if the next generation will feel the transition the way I (and, I suspect, many of my contemporaries) did. And the unnerved sense is back with me again: if they don’t embark on that change, if they carry on devouring all the information and knowledge they can before they even set hand to their controllers… what’s going to become of those stories?