Tag: episodic

Broken Age – Cuddle Dungeons of Doom:

Posted on by in Gaming

In storytelling, there is rarely such a thing as a coincidence. Every background detail and line of dialogue has been put there for a reason. My tabletop roleplaying group have caught onto this concept quickly. If I mention a seemingly insignificant character or detail about the weather, for example, my players will aggressively theorise until the cows come home. It does make it quite hard to hook them in for a storyline, I must admit. This detail-oriented approach can really lend itself to powerful storytelling in video games, especially of more story driven games like the topic of this week’s article – Broken Age.

Broken Age has two main characters – a young woman named Vella and a young man named Shay. As the sun and moon motifs from the game’s opening indicate, the worlds that Shay and Vella occupy are complete opposites. Although, as we find out at the end of Broken Age’s first act, they are in fact, related, much like the floating space rock and ball of gas that we see in the sky each day. However, what these two have in common is a desire to break free from their lives, from the traditions and ideals that they are expected to maintain. Which is something I think a lot of us can relate to in an ever-changing world.

Dammit, now I want cake.

Shay is an outer space explorer, living a mind-numbing routine, accompanied by his “parents” – a pair of Artificial Intelligence programs that are tasked with keeping him safe. This “safe” lifestyle has become restrictive and suffocating to Shay, leading to him searching for a change. Shay wants to break free. Meanwhile Vella, has been chosen to represent her village in a ceremony called “The Maiden’s Feast”. The feast in question is for a horrific creature called Mog Chothra, who chooses some of the women to be his sacrifices. This feast is treated as a celebration by the villages, rather than you know, a barbaric waste of human life. Vella wants to fight back.

As a point and click game, Broken Age focuses more on dialogue and puzzle solving, rather than any intense combat features or stealth mechanics. Want to avoid being eaten by Mog Chothra? Convince a nearby bird to give you a lift by using a corset as a makeshift saddle (obviously). Need to rescue some helpless yarn creatures from an avalanche? Eat the avalanche with your spoon because it is made of ice cream (why?). Some of the puzzles can be a bit complex to wrap your head around, especially when people in Meriloft KEEP TALKING ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING LIGHT INSTEAD OF HELPING YOU OUT.

I wish my missions in life were this easy.

Taking a page out of the theatre approach to storytelling, Broken Age is broken (cue evil laugh) into two acts. The first act introduces you to Shay and Vella in their own worlds and you get to see them react to surroundings they are comfortable in, as well as newer situations. You get a glimpse of how they react in times of trouble, their morals, and their ingenuity. You’d think there wouldn’t be many places that Broken Age could go to when it comes to storytelling, considering one of it’s two protagonists is in outer space but it throws you a curveball at the end of Act One.

Spoiler Alert:

It is revealed that Shay was never in space at all. He was inside Mog Chothra, a mechanical monster that is a part of something called “Project Dandelion”. In her attempts to take down the beast, Vella awakens Alex, a previous pilot of an ancient spaceship called the Malrouna, who helps her rig a laser trap for the beast. The trap works, bringing Mog Chothra down and allowing Shay to crawl out. Vella and Shay briefly see one another, before Vella falls into Mog Chothra and Shay becomes trapped on the outside. The two switch worlds and the player realise that these two stories are more deeply connected than they first appeared. Shay, for example, had a series of “secret rescue missions” that had him saving various critters using his ship’s mechanical arm. This little minigame directly mirrors the Maiden’s Feasts in Vella’s story, where the maidens are plucked from their podiums by a large arm. Suspicious.

You’ve heard of the big bad wolf right?

It is during Act Two that Broken Age takes a step from the mildly sinister undertones of it is opening act, to a much darker tale. You do not expect point and click adventure games to undertake such drastic tonal changes, but Broken Age achieves this, dragging you along for the ride. Marek, a stowaway on Shay’s ship from Act One, reveals the true purpose of Operation Dandelion. It is not to find a new home planet for Shay, who is supposedly the last of his species.

The Thrush, a species that Marek (whose true name is Marekai) is a member of, believe that the rest of the planet is infected with a horrible disease. So, they trapped a subsection of humans and governed over them, using the Maiden’s Feasts as a method of removing inferior genes from the population. Vella escaping Mog Chothra on two separate occasions, was not a coincidence. Her genetic makeup is deemed “superior” and the Thrush are planning on killing her and merging their DNA with hers, to “perfect” their bloodline and assume total dominion over the planet.

This guy looks far too like Cthulhu for my comfort.

Naturally, the game has a standard happy ending with Shay and Vella finally meeting face to face and peaceful alliances being drawn between the citizens behind the Plague Dam and those beyond it. However, what really intrigued me about this game was the connections between Vella and Shay. At first glance, they seem like utter strangers to one another. Different worlds, different situations, different people surrounding them. You do not expect to find those common threads between them, yet they are there. A bit like real life.

Something that I have discovered over my years of battling my mental health issues, is that although nobody’s journey is the same, there are some defining events and attitudes that tie us all together. Whether it is coping with sensory overload or struggling to discern hallucination from reality, mental health conditions are something that we each must live with, every second of every day. That constant battle, that constant war within yourself is a part of what makes us who we are. Why we fight for justice, why we speak up when we see wrong in the world. We stand up because if we do not, nobody will.

See you soon,

CaitlinRC

Stories Untold – We All Must Face What We Have Done:

Posted on by in Gaming

As we have covered many times over the last year, I am not a fan of horror games. Any enjoyment that could be derived from being scared, is ruined by the paralysing anxiety that accompanies it. I tend to avoid any and all horror like the plague – better than safe than sorry. However, when it comes to psychological horror, I’m a bit more open minded. Psychology has always fascinated me. People often like to joke that those who like to study the inner workings of the human psyche, are either wanting to understand the “unstable” or are “unstable” themselves. Obviously, it’s a whole load of rubbish but there is a grain of truth in there.

Humanity, as a species, strives to understand what we often deem impossible to comprehend. We quantify and label, document and test everything and anything we can get our grubby little hands on. There’s so much we know about the world around us yet so little we understand about how our own minds work. With words alone, we can change a crowd into a mob, start a rebellion, incite cruelty and bring joy to those who seek it. I’ve never been good at understanding emotions, particularly my own. Anger, hatred and cruelty are all foreign concepts to me.

So, when a game claims to be a psychological horror, I am curious as to what hidden truths it will strive to extract from the gold mine that is the human mind.

Stories Untold, is one such game. Presented as a four-part episodic experience in the style of old school text adventure games, it weaves such an intricate web that when the finale arrives, it knocks you flat on your back and holds you there – controlling every rise and fall of your chest. Even when you know what is coming, repeat playthroughs allow you to notice every subtle link and minute detail that builds such a vivid picture in your mind, it’s as if you are standing there, watching it all unfold in front of your eyes but are powerless to do anything to stop it. I love it.

Now, if you haven’t played it and want to do so without any spoilers – stop reading now, go play it and then come back with the experience fresh in my mind. Do come back though, I’ll be lonely otherwise. For those of you who are still reading, lets talk spoilers. The first three chapters each seem to have their own standalone story, meanwhile the final chapter links all of them together. I’m going to talk about each chapter in turn. The four chapters are titled – The House Abandon, The Lab Conduct, The Station Process and The Last Session.

Don’t pick up the phone. You never know who is on the other end.

The first episode, The House Abandon, follows the more traditional style of text adventures. You, the player, drive up to your family’s holiday home. After starting up the generator and unlocking the front door, you’re given the chance to explore the building – reminiscing about your childhood and the fond memories that the old walls hold. Eventually, you find your way to your bedroom and find your old computer – that your father dug out of the attic, along with a copy of a very familiar game, the House Abandon. Upon booting up the game, the power goes out. When everything flickers back to life, it’s all changed. The welcoming house becomes filled with stains, broken windows, dead carcasses and ominous writing on the walls. Instead of a kind note from your father, the note in your hand spits cruel, terrifying and hateful messages – to the point where it seems to burn into the palm of your hand.

A phone rings, breaking the uneasy silence that you have fallen into. You hear breathing down the phone and soon you realise that you are not alone anymore. Creaking floorboards, flickering lights and blaring alarms all echo around you, as if the house you are sat in, playing the game, is the same one as in the game itself… You struggle to distinguish between the actions of your player exploring the house and those of the individual sat controlling those movements. Negative emotions and memories pour out of the protagonist like a tidal wave, culminating in the door behind you creaking open. The computer accuses you of an unknown crime, demanding that you admit that it was all your fault. It barrages you with insults, hurling abuse until you at last type the words “It was all my fault”. It’s response? “Finally.”

Not an ominous setup at all.

In The Lab Conduct, you play as Mr Aition – a volunteer who has agreed to take part in a series of experiments conducted by Dr Daniel Alexander. These experiments are performed upon an object called “artefact 23”, which was recovered from a crash site for further study. Locked in the isolated laboratory, you use various machines such as an X-Ray, sound wave generators and high-powered lasers on the object. At first glance, the artefact appears to be an animal heart of some kind, whose heartbeat we restart. However, upon exposure to extreme frequency sound waves, it explodes and reveals a metallic sphere.

As a child, you’re always told not to stare at the sun, or it’ll hurt your eyes. Well, in Stories Untold, don’t stare at the hovering metallic sphere or it’ll knock you over, draw some blood and “connect” you to its inner core. You know, just normal things. Once connected, you walk through the spheres memories – reliving the crash, reaching out to a silhouette for help and waking up in a hospital bed, covered in wires and recovering from a torture session. When you pull out the wires, an alarm goes off. You, Mr Aition, hear that alarm as well. Yet again, the events seem to be occurring at the same time. Once you instruct the creature to leave their room, Dr Alexander recognises that you are causing this and begs for you to stop. Yet, you do not stop. You release all the spheres. They converge on you and as the world fades from around you, the last words of Dr Alexander ring in your ears – “Someday Mr Aition, this will haunt you.”

Don’t go out in the snow alone. People don’t come back.

The Station Process is a chapter that leans into the love of puzzle-solving that echoes in the hearts of most gamers. Using a microfilm reader with a guide on it, you, only known as “James”, must decrypt a series of signals and submit the correct code in order to pass on the relevant messages. The puzzles involve decrypting Morse Code, observing patterns and adjusting frequencies. Nerd that I am, I adore them. After all, what’s the point of studying Computer Science if you can’t show off your understanding everything occasionally? As you complete the puzzles, your fellow communication tower operators talk about something coming, attacking supply teams and ripping entire cabins out of the earth.

One of the signals you intercept is a distress signal that details how the rest of the world has been collapsed by the creatures that now stalk the mountain range that your cabins are situated on. They beg you to lock your doors and stay inside, but fate has other plans for you. When the main transmitter is knocked out of place, it’s your job to go fix it. When you’ve done so, you hear the voice of Station 2, a kind female voice, seemingly going into shock – unable to feel her legs and just wanting to rest. You can’t help her; you can’t help anyone. When you finally get back to the cabin, it’s not the one you left. It’s the bedroom from The House Abandon.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong.

Clearly, there’s an overarching plot between these episodes. These lingering threads are all pulled together in The Last Session. As the opening credits play, they pause and pull back to reveal that you’ve been watching a TV show. Your character, James Aition, is wheeled by Dr Alexander into an empty room with a cassette recorder and prompted to try and recover the memories of what happened before he arrived in hospital. It is revealed that you were involved in a nasty car accident and had been in a coma for two weeks prior to the events of the game. Your last three attempts at recalling the accident had ended in panic, with the truth being mixed in with fantasy such that you couldn’t tell which was which.

The game proceeds to take you through the previous chapters. You return to the communication tower and examine the microfilm – which now displays a police report about the traffic accident you were in. Your sister, Jennifer, was trapped and critically injured and the other driver was found dead, with an empty bottle of whisky in his hand and stinking of alcohol. However, upon solving a puzzle, you hear a testimony of a friend of said driver, claiming that the guy had never spoken about alcohol before and would never imbibe like that – especially considering he was a former police officer. He accuses James of foul play.

Never been a fan of hospitals. Don’t think I ever will be.

We burst into the emergency room, to James’s heart stopping on the gurney and a haemorrhage threatening to destroy any chances of resuscitating him. Upon the doctor’s orders, you restart your own heart and drill into your skull – saving your life. As the drill approaches, you startle awake in the computer desk from The House Abandon. It details a leaving party being hosted by your family, to celebrate James going travelling with his friends abroad for several months in the new year. After having a few drinks and being gifted a nice bottle of whisky from his dad, Jennifer asks James whether he can give her a lift home. Unfortunately, you can’t say no to this choice (trust me, I tried).

As you stagger to the car, forget to take the handbrake off the car and drive faster than is safe, even when sober – Jennifer slowly realises that James is drunk. She begs him to slow down, to pull over, to just stop, but he does not listen. He goes faster, eventually crashing directly into oncoming traffic. When he awakens, he drags himself out of the car – leaving his sister in the burning wreckage. Terrified of going to jail and wrecking his reputation, James decides to frame the other driver by pouring alcohol on him, removing his fingerprints from the bottle and planting it in the dead driver’s car. When the police arrive, James collapses from his injuries and wakes up in the hospital room with Dr Alexander. The doctor takes James back to the TV room, stating that he will report what James said to the police.

Sometimes telling the truth, is the hardest thing to do.

More than anything, Stories Untold is about consequences. You must live with the consequences of your actions. Your choices affect more than just your life. They ripple, like pebbles on a lake’s surface, spreading further and further out until they form tidal waves that threaten to consume the lives of so many. In this case, James’s actions caused the death of his sister, the grief of his family, as well as the death and attempted framing of an innocent man. His panic at reliving what he had done, his refusal to accept the horrifying reality of his memories – all these lead us on this journey through the shattered remains of a young man’s mind.

Anyways, I hope you’ll all think a little about the stories that you tell and whether they are stories that you’d want people to hear about or not. If not, make positive changes. I believe in you. Like, comment and follow the site – both here and on Twitter @OurMindGames for future articles.

Much love,

CaitlinRC