McMillan’s Codex #58 by C.T. McMillan

The RPG Protagonist

In addition to a microcosm of cultural stagnation and mental illness, Twitter is also a great way to interact with artists and individuals we admire.  Even as the site bleeds users and revenue, people continue to use the platform as intended.  One YouTube personality I follow, Razorfist, is best known for his highly-developed vocabulary, quick and wrathful wit, and love of all things metal.  Back in August, after the release of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, he shared an review of the game and I was awestruck by what I discovered upon following the link.

That review was written by Alec Meer for Rock, Paper, Shotgun and focused on the game’s protagonist, Adam Jensen.  Meer asserted that Adam was not an active character.  He went through the motions, unfazed by the events of the game’s story.  He was not connected to the world, whereas in the previous game he had relationships with other characters.  At the conclusion, Meer cited Geralt from Witcher 3 as a good example of a better character.

Meer is wrong.

I assume he has played other role-playing games, yet he misunderstands the genre’s fundamental principle: the role-playing.

Characters like Adam Jensen are designed to be above their games’ worlds because they are you.  When you talk to other characters, your choices for dialog each correspond with a set of morals matching your chosen path.  If you want to be a bastard, pick the angry option.  If you want to be a pacifist, pick the nicer option.  The same principle applies to gameplay where you can avoid killing people: take the stealthy approach, or clear out whole levels with extreme prejudice.

The point of role-playing games is to give you a problem to solve in your own way.  There is always one right answer, but you have the means to find that answer with whatever method you prefer.  This entails character building where you pick skills and talents for a play-style that fits your preference.  You become who you want to be, above all others, because the game was made to make you the best there is.  That is the quintessential role-playing experience that has remained unchanged since Dungeons and Dragons.

In place of Adam Jensen’s emotions we substitute our own and speak through him as a witness.  Adam is the vessel through which we change the game and find the solution to the problem.

Furthermore, Meer gets many details about the game wrong.  Adam Jensen is still very much a part of the world through the people he knew in the previous game and the most recent.  David Sarif comes back for a quest, his ex-girlfriend Meghan is vital to the story’s events, and Adam has a handful of coworkers and acquaintances he interacts with throughout Mankind Divided.

And his example of Witcher 3 at the end does not make sense.  Geralt is a bad example to contrast Adam because he is the same exact character.  In the story, he was made into an unfeeling sociopath through training to be a more efficient monster hunter.  Like Mankind Divided and every role-playing game ever, you have the option to be a fleshed out, active participant in the world or remain an unfeeling killer.  The only way the events of the story matter is if you decide they do like with Adam.

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

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McMillan’s Codex 57 By C.T. McMillan

Berserk Musou (Trailer Analysis)

 One of the great things about this blog is getting to talk about whatever I want. My pieces on Dawn of War were excuses to talk about Warhammer 40k. When I wanted to write about cyber punk, I reviewed cyber punk games. Now I am analyzing a trailer to talk about one of my favorite manga and anime series: Berserk Musou.

Berserk is the story of Guts, a mercenary driven by bloodlust in the war-torn kingdom of Midland. After one battle, he joins the Band of the Hawk led by the charismatic Griffith on his own journey to greatness. That is about as much as I can say without spoilers.

One unique aspect of Berserk is the historical fantasy setting. The time period is roughly grounded in the latter years of the 100 Years War with crossbows, cannons, intricate plate mail armor, and castles. There are also supernatural beings with elements of Lovecraft and body horror just behind the curtain of this seemingly medieval world. On top of these visually stunning elements are the usual manga tropes of big impractical weapons and characters that border on superhuman.

What makes Berserk a great story is its themes. One theme is Man versus God. The later parts of the series focus heavily on characters working towards a goal that stands in the face of their fate.

Another theme is the dueling ambitions of two characters that are bound together and how their desires affect each other. Encompassing the whole is a very dark tone that sets the series apart from normal manga and anime fare. There are atrocities, rape, and grotesque imagery that could only come from nightmares.

Berserk Musou’s trailer has a lot to say in terms of gameplay. As per the signature of developer Koei Tecmo, the genre is large scale hack ‘n’ slash. You fight hundreds of enemies at once on a closed map. There are combos, special moves, and you can play as multiple characters. There are also mild RPG elements and item usage. A lot of Koei Tecmo games follow this formula within the context of another property like Zelda, Gundam, and their Dynasty series.

Musou is the same, but in the Berserk universe. The playable characters include Guts, Griffith, Casca, and a small host of other familiar faces. The enemies you fight are not unlike the same soldiers and monsters the characters encounter. I cannot tell how close the game’s story follows the manga/anime story, but based on the available characters and Guts’ look, Musou may cover everything up until the infamous boat arc. Because Berserk is also unfinished, I doubt Koei Tecmo will make up their own ending, lest they incur the wrath of us fans.

According to the trailer, some of the cinematics will consist of clips taken from the Berserk: Golden Age anime movie trilogy that was released not long ago. This was a reboot of the first anime that came out in the 90s, but with a lot of added content from the manga. The trilogy was a jumping off point for the new anime that follows the Black Swordsman arc, 20 years after the original anime. As a fan, the new anime is a big deal despite the poor animation. 

Berserk as a manga/anime was almost made to be a videogame. While you may lose a lot of the nuance and themes that make the series great, the ability to slaughter soldiers and monsters in droves as Guts is just awesome. We fans have been pining for a proper videogame adaptation, a continuation of the anime, and an end to the manga hiatus before author Kentaro Miura dies. Hopefully Berserk Musou will satisfy our epic enjoyment of this story in dynamic game form.

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

McMillan’s Codex #53 by C.T. McMillan

Metal Gear Survive (Trailer Analysis)

There is no denying my Hideo Kojima bias.  I like his awkward but compelling writing, how he separates story from gameplay, and the pseudo-realistic aesthetic.  Even as I grow cynical I still like what Kojima has done.  While I cannot abide by Konami’s treatment of him, I try my best to remember that there are always two sides to a conflict.  Perhaps the company had a good reason for sacking Kojima and destroying his legacy.  We will never know the whole truth, but what I know for a fact is Metal Gear Survive looks like trash.

I am sure there are worse trailers, but I cannot recall any that come close to the mediocrity of Survive.  I have no idea if these qualities will translate to the final game because no one, including hardcore fans of Metal Gear, will buy a copy.  If first impressions are critical, and Metal Gear Survive has committed suicide.

The trailer starts with footage from Ground Zeroes, a demo and prologue to Phantom Pain in which Big Boss travels to a black site in Cuba before his army of mercenaries is wiped out.  The footage shows the every end where Boss escapes the sinking wreckage of Mother Base.  Then there is a change of perspective to Random Soldier that is left behind before he is sucked into a portal in the sky.

He reappears in a desert environment where zombie-like creatures with unicorn heads attack him.  He fends them off with a pipe before other living people come to his aid with bows and spears.  When the zombies are dead the group takes Random Soldier to a cliff overlooking the ruins of Mother Base.  Then there is a cut to the group fending off unicorn zombies gathered at a fence surrounding the ruins.  They show off a specific and nonsensical rocket powered arrowhead that spins and drills into zombies.

Why would you put rockets on an arrow that will not work unless you score a hit first?  You know how difficult archery can be in tense situations like a zombie attack?  You could miss your shot and waste this totally impractical armament.  At least with explosive arrowheads there would be splash damage in the event you miss.  The trailer ends with the group looking up to the camera rising above them before something roars off screen, possibly a metal gear.

What makes the Survive trailer bad is the lack of theatrical finesse.  From watching so many trailers, specifically announcement trailers, each one is structured like a short film.  There is usually a story and the protagonist’s actions show off gameplay.  Take for example the announcement trailer for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.  While the actual story is not the same as the final game, the trailer establishes the theme of cyborgs becoming an oppressed minority, and new augmentations that influence gameplay.

The Survive trailer does not show anything about the story past the setup.  I could accept that if the rest of the footage was not so clinical about showing off gameplay.  Right after Random Soldier gets to the ruins, there is a montage of what weapons you will use, including that impractical arrowhead.  The whole scene takes place in the same location with no other environments shown.  There was no reason for taking such a matter of fact approach unless the editor was too lazy to apply some form of theatrics or the available footage was already terrible.

I can only talk about the Metal Gear Survive trailer for so long because there is nothing to analyze.  The footage reeks of low effort and even less faith in the project.  I imagine Konami wanted to shove this out to let everyone know they are still making games.  They have so little hope in their own game they did not even try at proper promotion.  If a company does not care about one of their products, why should you?

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

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McMillan’s Codex 52 by C.T. McMillan

On The Real Silent Hill Experience

Only a few videos on YouTube can claim to be documentaries.  Hundreds of thousands of videos reviewing entertainment media could be classified as insightful if the focus were not on theatrics and a notion that audiences have short attention spans.  Not often enough do you find a critique so meticulously thorough in information that it transcends the humble confides of the Internet.  The Twin Perfect channel knew better than anyone how to make such a video with their series, The Real Silent Hill Experience (TRSHE).

Started in 2010, the series covers the Silent Hill videogames, the spin-offs, movies, and comic books.  The videos, 43 in total, discuss a different title and subject in as much detail as possible.  To back up their statements, there are quotes and materials taken from the games and related behind-the-scenes footage.  While there is an obvious bias, the fact that Twin Perfect took the time to provide evidence makes what they have to say compelling.  They also use citations with the title, date, and publisher on display at the bottom-right corner.

Each episode details the rise and fall of Silent Hill, from the first to last, and everything in between.  As Twin Perfect covered the games, the scale of the videos increased with the degrading quality.  Another factor that played into the length was YouTube’s time restrictions.  When they were lifted the titles Twin Perfect covered were contentious enough to warrant hours of discussion.

The longer videos are the best beginning in 2012.  At the time the publisher Konami began excising their videogame department.  Before the departure of Hideo Kojima, the company’s worst decision was the Silent Hill HD Collection.  Featuring the second and third game, Collection was a treasure trove of glitches, re-recorded voice work, and graphical mistakes that ruined already perfect games.  Twin Perfect covered all of these issues with the voice acting saved for a separate episode, comparing the HD re-masters to the originals in mind-numbing detail.

The limits put upon their abilities and scale likely contributed to the staggered release of videos.  Following Collection came Silent Hill: Downpour days later and Twin Perfect’s review of the game did not come out until 2013.  Two years later came an episode on the inspirations of Silent Hill before a review of Silent Hill: Book of Memories this year.  For fans the wait was excruciating, but I think the long-term schedule made them more compelling.

Typical reviewers put out as much content as possible.  To maintain an audience one must release new videos on a consistent basis.  If episodes of TRSHE were released all at once in a row, I doubt some information would have come to light.  The level of detail and research in each video is so meticulous, I cannot imagine what would have been lost if Twin Perfect had not taken their time.

The tragedy of TRSHE is that Silent Hill is more or less over.  Book of Memories was the last series-related piece of media to come out.  Silent Hills almost happened before the Konami/Kojima drama killed the project in the crib.  Twin Perfect’s consistency in covering Silent Hill was so thorough there is nothing left to talk about.  One solution could be to re-analyze Silent Hill: Homecoming and Origins, the start of the series’ decay, with as much depth as Downpour.  Only time will tell.

I never thought about Silent Hill before The Real Silent Hill Experience.  Thanks to Twin Perfect, I learned enough about the series to I feel as though I know games like the back of my hand.  Above all, the effort of Twin Perfect is transcendent of the subject matter and platform.  Even if you do not play videogames, The Real Silent Hill Experience is well worth a watch for fans of documentaries.

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

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McMillan’s Codex #51 by C.T. McMillan

Hearts of Iron IV

Trying new things can be daunting. Traveling, shooting a gun, and performing a stunt can be exhilarating and stressful if you have never done so before.

Videogames outside your preferred genre can be like that: you must consider the time and money required. You may play a game many people praise, but find your interest dissolving. That was my experience leading up to the purchase of Hearts of Iron IV (HoI).

I first heard about the game upon revisiting a YouTube channel I long since abandoned called DevilDogGamer. The titular DevilDog is a fan of all things military and HoI’s WWII setting appealed to him. Sometimes he delves into strategy, the game’s chosen genre, but unlike typical strategy games, HoI does something totally different.

The grand strategy genre takes elements of strategy and makes them bigger, complex, and depth-full. As you control units and their production, you must research technology, manage a country’s ideology, industry, and infrastructure. This scale of control is the heart (no pun intended) of HoI’s gameplay.

Imagine you are America in 1936 and you want to recruit an army. In an ordinary game, all you need is a building that produces combat units. In HoI, first you have to consider your level of manpower. In my case, my manpower was low because as America I was isolationist and disarmed. I could still mobilize an army, but the process took a while.

To change these factors, I could wait until WWII officially began or change America’s political ideology by appointing communist or fascist officials into government. After making my choice the political spectrum would shift from Democracy to whatever I chose. From there I could make changes to the economy and military systems to allow for better army production.

Then I had to make arms and equipment for my forces. Production requires factories, so I needed to build military factories in my available territory. Each state has a factory limit and I also had to consider importing resources, which requires civilian factories. You get to a point where you must choose between having a well-equipped small army or a massive horde armed with muskets. There are also the essential materiel like tanks, airplanes and ships if your ambitions are global.

The stat values or strength of the arms and equipment is determined by what technologies you research. From weapons to science there are several upgrades and modifiers that become available, but you have a limited number of research slots, and each takes months of game time to complete. Luckily, time can be sped up and extra slots can be unlocked later. Once the technologies are unlocked they can be applied to production. If an army has outdated equipment, they will be replaced with the new.

The most important part of gameplay is combat. Before marching on a rival you want to conquer, you must justify a war goal with your government. Then you can move your army to the border, establish a front line your army will hold, and declare war. Along the frontline your army will spread out into individual units, making movement easy as you guide the army. Alternatively, you can set up an offensive line that your army will march to automatically. Here the micromanagement of equipment comes into play as your army’s stats are pitted against your enemy.

When playing HoI, you must consider all of that. Every move you make does not occur without considering all the variables. You cannot march into enemy territory without figuring in the infrastructure required to keep your army reinforced. You cannot build up forces without taking into account the required manpower. The complexity of gameplay is so immense I had to rely on second-hand materials to learn what the game’s mediocre tutorial could not teach.

What drew me to the game was the fact that you can change history. HoI takes place in the earlier years of WWII, but the events that followed can play out at random. If you turn off the game’s historical accuracy modifier, other factions will do whatever they want. Germany may defeat the Soviet Union, Japan may conquer Siberia, or the United Kingdom may take the whole of Africa. With the country you pick, you can change the course of history. What if America remained isolationist and let Hitler run rampant or became a fascist empire that took over South America? The possibilities are endless.

For all the faults in learning how to play and the massive complexity, Hearts of Iron IV could not be more worth consideration. Once you understand the mechanics the game becomes engrossing and a great challenge. Moreover, the alternate history angle makes the experience an absolute blast.

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

McMillan’s Codex 50 By C.T. McMillan

Death Stranding (Trailer Analysis)

Metal Gear Solid (MGS) would not have made such an impression on me without director/writer Hideo Kojima.  For all their faults I admire the games for the story and how they strike a balance between gameplay and narrative by keeping the two separate.  Between spats of fun action are long cinematics that epitomize Kojima’s various inspirations in the form of military fiction that borders on realism.  After studying the games I feel I understand the man, but I am perplexed by his latest endeavor, Death Stranding (DS).

Following his storied departure from Konami, the videogame division of Sony was quick to hire Kojima and his team, leading to the formation of Kojima Productions.  After months of speculation DS was revealed at E3 2016 in a trailer.  Of the many reveals during the event, Kojima’s latest stands out the most.  There is a lot to unpack with many possibilities and interpretations based on three minutes of footage.

The opening frame is a quote from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour”

What this excerpt and much of the poem seems to imply is that everything is connected.  Nature, mankind, and the divine play a part in each other, their destinies and actions perpetually linked.  The idea of existence being connected comes through in the following footage.  The camera pans forward above black sand and turns to a pile of crabs on their backsides, each with a black cord in their mouths.

The camera follows one cord before a handprint appears in the sand, which fills with oil.  More handprints trail towards a naked man on his side, wearing a pair of handcuff on one wrist.  The man wakes up and finds a naked baby with a cord in the navel crying next to him.  The man takes the baby, and a cut reveals the man to be modeled after actor Norman Reedus.  The man holds the baby and appears to cry judging by his expression.

Then there is a close up and the baby disappears, the man’s hands covered in oil.  Smaller hands appear in black on his thigh as they trail to his knee.  Then he looks to the horizon and stands, the camera remaining stationary as his scarred, tubeless stomach comes into view.  Then there is a cut to a rear shot of the man on a beach with piled whales and fish and icebergs in the distance.  In the cloudy sky floats five figures with legs together and arms folded across their chests.  The figures disappear before the title appears.

From what I can glean from the symbolism is that everything is connected.  As Auguries of Innocence describes nature, mankind, and heaven are linked by their actions and I am getting a strong Matrix feel from DS.  I suspect that energy is gathered by draining living things via the black cords.  Perhaps this was the result of desperation, the oil soaked beach implying a resource disaster may have occurred, or that Earth has been taken over by a force subsisting on humans and animals.  Another indication that people are being used for energy is that the baby turns into oil after disappearing.

This consumption of energy is forced because the man has severed his cord based on the abdominal scars.  The handcuffs on his wrist show he is opposed to an authority that has most likely implanted the cords.  His reaction to holding the baby shows he feels genuine sadness that people are being controlled and has made freeing them his mission.  On his neck he wears “dog tags” that are probably trophies from people he killed or reminders of those he has lost.

As for the five figures at the end, they could be boss characters.  Kojima he has an affinity for bosses in small groups throughout his games.  Dead Cell, Cobra Unit, and Beauty and the Beast Corps from MGS number in less than seven members.  Maybe the five figures are bosses that the man is trying to defeat.  Also, their pose is similar to the posture of villains like Anubis from Zone of the Enders 2 and Screaming Mantis from MGS4.

This detail is rather unimportant to what I found, but I thought I would share my thoughts.  The song playing in the trailer is “I’ll Keep Coming” by Low Roar, an indie group from Iceland.  The lyrics describe being dead or being silence, but coming back to life or resisting depending on your interpretation.  The setting on the beach is similar to Vik i Myrdal, a village in southern Iceland with black sand and similar rock formations like those seen in the ocean at the end.

Kojima is the kind of man that will include things he likes into his games no matter their significance.  From anime to movie references, MGS is filled to the brim with a lot things that are irrelevant.  He also loves good music and on social media he praised Low Roar and the song “I’ll Keep Coming.”  Furthermore, the song title was used in the promotional material for Kojima Productions’ mascot Ludens.

As a fan I am well aware of the possibility that Death Stranding is an elaborate ruse hiding the real game underneath.  Phantom Pain and PT are still fresh in my mind and I am anticipating the reveal that the game was Zone of the Enders 3 or Silent Hills all along.  Based on usual trends, in a year or so we will see more of the game, including actual gameplay.  The trailer leaves much to be desired, but I feel there is still so much to discover that I cannot see.

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C.T. McMillan (Episode 169) is a film critic and devout gamer.  He has a Bachelors for Creative Writing in Entertainment from Full Sail University.

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