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larksinging · 6 years

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same one i asked meeks, who do your characters see as their family?

alright lets do it

for ivypool, there’s her sister dovewing, who she had a... complicated relationship with, but nevertheless was really important to her. and then her parents, whitewing and birchfall (who she had a closer relationship to). her literal kin was pretty important, but there was... a lot of those. but!a few on denny. except most of them are pretty distant, and she only thinks of them as related because of a prophecy, so... hollyleaf she considers her kin, though practically theyre more just like friends. there’s also firepaw, who in the future is her... great grand uncle, i think? but really, in a way all of thunderclan, or lionclan on denny, is her family, because that’s how fight cats do

mothpaw is similar - the clan is her family. back home she also had her adopted family, who she was fond of but wasn’t super close to. her biological family all died before she was born/when she was very young, though she thinks fondly of what she’s heard. in some ways, she came to view foxtail as a sort of father/uncle figure, because he was already a role model as the deputy, and then became her primary starclan guide after he died. on denny... i don’t know, she’s close to tigerstar but that’s not really familial, that’s because of their roles and history... she might come to view badgerstripe as a bit of a big sister figure.

veronica’s relationship with her parents is um, kind of weird? her parents were loving enough, but they were a little bit... out of touch. emotionally distant, even? which was fine for a while, but when stuff got intense they were pretty blind to it, which was... kind of hard for veronica. so it’s Complicated. on denny, though she might not consciously think so, she and heather and max have become a weird little family unit of their own. maybe madeline too, since madeline lowkey looks out for her.

nyssa................. where to start. while she doesnt disown her family, she’d be fucking right to do so. her dad was an absolute monster. her sister ditched her when nyssa was young and left her to deal with her father alone. she’s not fond of either of them, to say the least. technically she’s still married to oliver in her canonpoint, though she really only reminds him out of spite, but i think she does lowkey see thea like a little sister(-in-law). thea went through some similar stuff with her dad, and nyssa’s dad was pretty awful to thea too, and theyre... both haunted by their father’s legacies, so. its no surprise that she goes off on a road trip with thea in the future. and to segway, the lances are also lowkey her family, even if she won’t really say as much. shes always gonna love sara (on and off denny), and was close with e-1 laurel, so. okay ON denny, besides the obvious lances, there’s damian, who is... literally her nephew, but from another dimmension? she considers him her nephew and kind of her ward to look after. and also arthur, since she feels responsible for him because oliver was taking care of him before. and all of the legends, by extension

maria ??? maria... she has foggy memories of mary’s family, but she wouldn’t really consider them her family. the closest she has to blood family is.... silent hill monsters, which. uh! the closest thing she has to family is lucille on denny, though in the way close friends become family. and maybe by extension, edith?

winter is another complicated one, because i just love characters with complicated families! there’s his parents, tundra and narwhal, his sister icicle and older brother hailstorm, and then extended family like his aunt, queen diamond. things are complicated because his parents basically slated him for death to raise up hailstorm (who is a whole other can of worms, winter and hailstorm’s relationship), and winter basically faked his death and left the kingdom. so while he considers them his family, he can never really see any of them again. from there... i think he’d consider the jade winglet family, especially the ones on denny (especially moon). and all the other dragons on denny he’s grudgingly started to accept, especially glory as like... his aunt or big sister figure

maive’s family back home is enormous and terrible and she hates 90% of them. notable exceptions are her sister tigress, who she did get along with, and her aunt indigo, who... trained her only to become her successor, but that was still more faith than anyone else had in her. but on denny! on denny, sara is her mother. she might not admit as much, but yeah. most of the other adults associated with the legends - so amaya, laurel, nyssa, gideon - are secondary mothers or aunts. honestly, all the legends are her new family

oh good, i ended up saving laurel for last. hey, laurel. you always make it to the ends of these posts. always too complicated, huh. anyway, uh. based on headcanon, the rest of her family on e-2 is dead or so estranged she’s dead to them, so. she might’ve considered the e-2 queens almost family at some point, but then ollie died, and... well. despite how complicated it is, she does consider the e-1 lances her family - especially quentin. related, on denny, she considers sara her sister. especially after everything they’ve been through. the rest of the legends are slowly sort of becoming family, and she’s grudgingly roped into being the weird aunt to sara’s kids. other than that... she has a few people she’s really close to, but i’m not sure i’d call any of them quite family yet. even dating trish, she draws a line (which is part of the problem)

#denny is a cursed place #thanks!!#writes 500 long paragraphs because all my characters have weird complicated families #fizzlep0p

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everygame · 6 years

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Heavy Rain (PS3)

Developed/Published by: Quantic Dream / Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 23rd February 2010 Completed: 14th January 2018 Completion: Finished it once. Trophies / Achievements: 41%

David Cage, eh? Let’s be honest, he sucks. I thought so well before his recent recently pillorying in the press for not just being a ego-centric fool but also a genuinely toxic one; I don’t need to go into the accusations here, you can read all about them at your leisure. He’s always been something of an anomaly in game development; someone who has literally never managed to make anything good (let’s not forget Peter Molyneux put in his time) yet has managed to get Sony to bankroll genuinely massive productions, not least the upcoming Detroit: Becoming Human. There’s an odd emperor’s new clothes to him.

Since the accusations, things get muddled of course. I don’t think Cage should lead a game again; before, I’d have said purely because he makes shitty things. But now it’s one of those things where the “shitty things” in question have all the hallmarks that make us ask—why weren’t the questions being asked before? One only has to look at his recent wrong-headed defense of triggering sequences from Detroit: Being Human to see there’s something wrong there, as soon as he’s actually challenged.

Perhaps you’d view this all as an aside, but I there’s been a lot of chat recently that the reason gaming hasn’t had its “me too” moment is simply that women and marginalized people in game development simply don’t have the power. It’s very different being a known actress from being a programmer, or an artist in a team of hundreds; Quantic Dream isn’t just a production house that will just put someone else in Cage’s place; he’s the founder, he owns it, he’s not going anywhere.

It sucks.

[Keza MacDonald would write an article about this lack of a “me too moment” for The Guardian that’s worth reading—pointing out that things like #1reasonwhy shouldn’t be forgotten.]

So with that all said, it’s with rather a different light that I consider my decision with a few friends to play Cage’s post-Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy games “as a lark” as a bit… less… funny. I think it’s worthwhile to dig into it, anyway, as an experience, so yeah, let’s genuinely try and make sense of it and him.

For background, let’s discuss Fahrenheit, because sure as shit no one bothers to remember anything about Omikron: The Nomad Soul other than David Bowie was in it (tragically.) It’s a game that opens with a polygon model of Cage himself explaining how to play the game, and I remember cringing myself fully inside-out at that point. After that comes literally Cage’s one (1) memorable interesting bit of game design, the one (1) that literally everyone references. He places you as a man who has to hide a body in the bathroom of a diner and there are lots of different decisions to make as to how you do it; and then you play the police investigating it.

It’s interesting! Genuinely! Because of course, you know where the police should look and what they should do; but there’s that thought where… maybe you don’t want them to? There are lots of interesting things to do with “player omnipotence” in narrative games, but of course, this is basically the only time Cage does anything with it. Indeed, he spirals into what I consider his true trademarks: a complete inability to write a narrative that makes any sense, and leering sexism.

But of course, we’re not here to go into Farenheit’s plot (anyway, you all know it devolves into your zombie protagonist fighting the embodification of the internet, etc.) we’re here to with an open heart explore Heavy Rain as a serious work of an artis… I’m sorry I’ll start laughing like a drain again if I keep this up.

Heavy Rain has trophies, right? The first one you get is, literally, “Thank You For Supporting Interactive Drama.”

The hubris.

I mean, this is why you want to play this, right? Because you desperately want to try and understand how you could have so much ego, so much self-belief, that you literally do something like that.

I’m really not sure what Cage thinks interactive drama is, though. His games crib relentlessly from the language of cinema, but they’re just “interactive” right? So they’re interactive movies, right? But no, they aren’t. Because for some reason Cage is obsessed with the minutia of living. In literally any film, character doing things as mundane as, say, starting their car are cut out, filmed dynamically so they’re expressive and over quickly, or—if they are included—included for a particular narrative or thematic reason. But not in Heavy Rain. In Heavy Rain, if you want to do anything, you have to do it in the most insane detail using the absurd control system. Everything you do takes forever; just opening a door has to be done perfectly.

It adds nothing; it gums up the pacing and seems to be interactivity for interactivity’s sake, because (turns out) when it comes to the crunch your interactivity otherwise is going to be nothing more than quick-time events.

There’s another thing here, too, which I think speaks to Cage’s ego. In Heavy Rain, you can “fail” at basically anything by not doing it just right. So, for example, reaching to open a door. You can mess it up and your hand drops back to your side. You can do it slowly, you can do it fast and then stop. You can basically make your character look like a jerky moron who can’t open a door because you think it’s funny, and I genuinely refuse to believe that Quantic Dream didn’t get testers in who did this. I’ve talked before on this tumblr about how players should “meet the designer in the middle” and play along with what is expected, but a big part of that is (as the designer) not leaving your game open to abuse by offering the player things they don’t need and can basically only use to mess with the game. This is a perfect example of that, and I believe that in every situation Cage said “Real players won’t play it like that. Ignore it.”

Ego.

When you really get down to it, your interactions are little more than tedious housekeeping; only once does it make sense, as the beginning of the game you experience one character’s perfect family life and then (later) experience the shattered mirror of it, except they’re not actually direct analogues so I’m being fairly charitable in assuming that’s the point.

So let’s just pretend the game doesn’t include a lot of interactions that serve no purpose. I mean, if the story is good, usually we can excuse that, right?

Even if Heavy Rain had a plot that generally worked (it doesn’t) it does something so inexcusable that I’m shocked—shocked!—that anyone gives it a pass. I’ll give the (not so vague) spoiler that in this game (about the search for the mysterious “Origami Killer”) one of the characters you play *is* the Origami Killer! Except, for every character you play you can see their thoughts by pushing a button. And all the characters are investigating the Origami Killer, meaning one keeps investigating themselves. “Ah ha,” you might say, “obviously all of his thoughts are cleverly written to not implicate himself, but also are believably what the killer would think.”

No, they literally act like someone who doesn’t know who the killer is, thinking full thoughts that the killer could never think, and it’s not like he’s paranoid about his thoughts, or in a fugue state. It’s just… I mean, is this lazy writing? Or is it just the work of an actual moron? I mean the section of the game where he “cheats” by obscuring the actions of one of the main character is lazy writing. But this is breath-taking, the work of someone who either doesn’t know how stories work, or doesn’t care.

Let’s move on to Cage’s other hallmark; the leering. Heavy Rain is a game that has a lengthy nude shower-scene for the female protagonist that happens… in a dream. Also just to note we… don’t need a shower scene with her anyway? Or for her to like, have to fight off men in her pants for ages and ages, also in a dream? It’s ok though, she’s mostly there to tend the wounds of the male protagonist and shag him.

[“Actually, systems-wise, she’s actually necessary to help the player keep good endings available if they fuck up a lot with the other male protagonists. But yeah, she is mostly a nurse... I mean apart from that bit where she has to rip her dress and act slutty to go on to almost get sexually assaulted”—charitable ed.]

Look, I can’t bang on about Heavy Rain forever, it feels like I have already. After playing through the whole thing, I struggle if anything worse to understand how Cage not just got more work but managed to get Ellen Page to star in his next game? How this game won a BAFTA (well, a video game BAFTA) for STORY!

Heavy Rain is fucking shit and it’s not why David Cage should never work again, though at one point I’ve had said it would be. He should never work again because he’s a toxic garbage person. I hope Sony sticks him in the bin after their obligations relating to Detroit are over.

(Oh and all the staff that have suffered under him and his culture get lovely jobs making things that are good.)

Will I ever play it again? I wondered if it would be more interesting with the Move controls, but I’ll be fucked if I’m ever touching this again.

Final Thought: Above I talked about how this game drowns in the mundane; and I’d like to restate that I do think it’s a mistake to argue this is some kind of a directorial choice, to imbue that mundane with meaning. Like… I don’t know. Anyone from Ozu to Jarmusch can show how that can be used thoughtfully. Hell, just watch David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Compare and contrast to failing to open a door because you didn’t hold the trigger down just right.

#heavy rain #video games #david cage #quantic dream #text #txt #games #gaming #playstation 3 #ps3 #ps4 #playstation 4 #sony computer entertainment #2010

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