That's Not For You To Decide.

[rionaleonhart]

If you've played The Last of Us and you haven't yet watched this video of the motion capture for an alternative ending, you absolutely must. I found it very moving.


It's very strange to go back to the Uncharted games after playing The Last of Us. The games share many elements, but they're utterly different in tone. In The Last of Us, killing people makes sense given the context and the character you're playing, and it's treated as brutal and horrific but unavoidable to survive. In the Uncharted games, you're loveable, good-hearted treasure hunter Nathan Drake and the fact that you kill thousands of mercenaries is cheerfully ignored.

(It's also bizarre that picking up twenty bullets at a time is a common occurrence in Uncharted. In The Last of Us, it's Christmas if you manage to find three.)

I suppose 'ha ha, Nate is such a charming dork, TIME TO KILL ANOTHER HUNDRED MERCENARIES' is the problem with trying to tell stories in a videogame. I'm a fierce believer in the narrative potential of games, but games do typically require some sort of gameplay, and sometimes that gameplay is at odds with the story being told. In lighthearted games like the Uncharted series, I suppose you sort of have to ignore the ridiculous amounts of murder you end up committing; it'll completely undermine the way the characters are presented if you think about it for too long. ALL THIS SHOOTING IS A METAPHOR FOR TRAVERSING TRICKY TERRAIN.

This is something that occasionally bothers me in Final Fantasy games, too; most of the games involve human enemies, usually soldiers of some sort, and it rarely seems appropriate for the characters to cut them down without a qualm. It's always a bit odd to think, Hang on, Snow Villiers seems like a really nice guy, but I just made him punch someone to death.

I'm sure there's a term for this clash between gameplay and tone/story/characterisation. Hang on while I look it up. Ludonarrative dissonance! That's it. Uncharted is ludonarratively dissonancing all over the place.

It's a tricky problem to solve. Not every game in which you fight people can be The Last of Us; The Last of Us is a wonderful game, but I wouldn't be able to cope with that level of bleakness in everything. So I suppose for the moment I'll just accept the fact that loveable treasure hunter Nathan Drake can punch some guys on a train to death and then quip, 'All right, boys, just needed to punch your tickets,' and I'll laugh and say 'Nate, you dork' rather than 'Oh, my God, what's wrong with you?'


After writing the above, I went off and finished my replay of Uncharted 2. I had forgotten how much I love the ending of that game! Nate/Elena continues to be one of my favourite pairings of all time, and their interactions continue to make me make absurd chirping noises. I also really like the friendship that develops between Elena and Chloe; I remember I worried when they first met that their dynamic would be rooted solely in romantic jealousy, so I was surprised and delighted that they ended up getting along extremely well as co-founders of the 'Nathan Drake Ruined Our Lives' club.

LET'S IGNORE ALL THE MERCENARIES THESE GUYS HAVE KILLED AND FOCUS ON HOW MUCH THEY DELIGHT ME.

(I had also forgotten how hot it is when Nate is stumbling around in the Himalayas, slowly bleeding to death. I'm an awful, awful person.)

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Aw! I play almost no video games, but I know what you mean. It's like "If they're such sweet people, shouldn't they be more hesitant about killing, or at least killing people?" (It's a bit difference when the enemy is a zombie or non-sentient alien or demon or something.)

...are the games definitive on the "punched a guy to death" thing, or could it be interpreted as punching them into unconsciousness?

[pete_thomas]

The same question could arise with any medium, really. Look at just about every action movie that involves lots of guns and explosions (arguably, the style that Uncharted was modeled off of). Not a single character in those movies questions it either, and yet no one bats an eye at the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or in a more modern approach, Vin Diesel or Paul Walker kill lots of people and don't really question it. I think for that "style" of movie or game, it is more a suspension of disbelief for us in moments like that. Yes, if we are critical, it does seem weird that he doesn't have an ounce of reserve when he's murdering hundreds of humans. Or in Final Fantasy when some of the enemies are in fact, soldiers.

We also never are told (at least that I remember) how long he's been doing that. We know that people slowly become desensitized to things that they have to do. Maybe he's already had his breakdown of "OH GOD WHY AM I DOING THIS WHAT PURPOSE" and now he's all "Meh, part of the job." We accept that in games like Call of Duty, we are soldiers and therefore killing the opponents is justified in that manner, yet for Drake who has no military background (that I know of) it is looked at as if he was just placed into this scenario by happenstance. Moreso, Nathan could also be looking at it from how I approach the situation (which is really how I approach all of these style of games): these people are shooting at me and trying to kill me for the thing that I am after; it belongs to neither of us, but they would kill me to get it so I can either a) fight back, or b) run away. Frankly, a story about Nathan who throws his arms into the air when he gets shot at and says "FUCK THIS" and runs doesn't seem quite as entertaining. :)

This topic was actually brought up on Sunday, and it's a really good one, no doubt. But it's hard to push real life scenarios on a game that is created to be over the top. Now, if you want a game that really brings these types of feelings into the mix, I HIGHLY recommend Heavy Rain/Beyond: Two Souls. Quantic Dream has always had a knack for making a game and characters where real personalities and thought processes are involved. For those of you who have played, there are a lot of instances where your morals are questioned, but the one I am specifically referring to is The Shark trial in Heavy Rain.

[thebaconfat]

I kind of love the dissonance in the Uncharted games, actually! Because I am a horrible person and like characters who are very nice in some respects and completely awful in others, and feel like Nate and Sully are the sort who, depending on their mood and potential for profit, will totally pat you on the back and then throw you over a cliff to further their own ends. Like, I sort of imagine that they write off the killing of eight million mercenaries as self-defense, especially considering that (if I'm remembering correctly) in the museum heist at the beginning of Uncharted 2, Nate doesn't want to kill any unarmed guards? Although it's possible he's more concerned with ending up in a Turkish prison than with hurting anyone.

I pretty much interpret Nate and Sully as having pretty faulty moral compasses, and I do feel like the games comment on that. I don't think they'd, you know, kill somebody in cold blood, but certainly when someone else tries to kill them they're not much for mercy.

I am super, super bothered though by stories where a character makes a really big fuss about not killing people and then rampages through a town recklessly destroying stuff in a way that realistically could cause a lot of casualties. It drove me crazy in The Dark Knight because Batman is supposed to be totally not okay with killing people but there's a bit where he causes like eighty car accidents while driving around in his giant bat tank.

And FFVIII always gets me with this, too! The field exam is supposed to be Zell and Squall's first real mission, but nobody freaks out about killing a bunch of soldiers with there bare hands. At the very least I would expect Squall to brood about it at length.

[milliebee.livejournal.com]

I haven't played Uncharted, but your explanation of sudonarrative dissonance is brilliant. I've encountered the same thing across other games, and it's always a mixture of incredibly funny and deeply unnerving when it happens.

[littlemoose.livejournal.com]

This is so weird, I've literally just finished the first Uncharted game (and am now going to jump on the sequels like they're gold dust) and loved it, but did think that the sheer number of people you gunned down with no acknowledgement was pretty crazy. Clearly I need to play these other games too (I just got a PS3 at Christmas, so I'm on the lookout for recs, so far I have played Uncharted, Flower and Journey, which I loved, and Little Big Planet 2, which I didn't... XD

(Long time no natter! *smish*)

[aestivalis]

I haven't commented here in about ten thousand billion years, the perils of switching to Dreamwidths and plurks and tumblrs and such, but I do still look in fairly regularly because darn it if you don't always have such entertaining posts. The one you made recently concerning interpretations (and what does or does not qualify as a misrepresentation) was really great, and I almost commented but thought 'it's been a long time, that might be awkward!', and then you mentioned that you're playing Radiant Historia and THAT'S exciting because I personally think it's a really charming game with a lot of great features, and now THIS post and fine, darn it, I will leave a comment.

My comment is this! I completely agree with regards to that dissonance between gameplay and narrative (ludonarrative dissonance is a term I will have to remember!), and it's something I've looked at when replaying Final Fantasy games. Back in Final Fantasy VII, when you defeat a human enemy they just fade out in that red polygon haze the same way that any monster enemy would. But I think it's specifically from VIII onwards that it starts to get more ambiguous, with both human and monster units having animations consistent with falling down, collapsing, or. you know. otherwise dying.

It's not always clear exactly what that means for the humans, though! But it's definitely worth noting that in Final Fantasy X, when you defeat Guado while fleeing the Macalania Temple and such, your enemies are depicted as falling down and then fading from the field. No pyreflies are shown, which I absolutely take to mean that you are defeating these humanoids rather than outright killing them. It's not particularly hard to imagine the cast of Final Fantasy VIII killing Galbadian soldiers and such, being mercenaries and so forth, but I'd be inclined to believe leniency of the Final Fantasy IX cast as well, particularly when it comes to fighting Alexandrian soldiers and the like. But who knows! I do not remember the particulars of XIII to try and make a guess there, alas...

ANYWAY, I HOPE YOU ARE WELL, THAT IS MY COMMENT.