GTAIV's BAD END
Note: I haven't been able to write a newsletter for this month, so I repurposed one that remains quite actual, in my opinion, and that was originally posted to my Destructoid blog.
The worst part is that I had been clamoring for years for a truly mature title, with characters that are actually well thought out and a story that actually amounts to something, and when it actually came out I had to say that I hated it and that I liked a game about spraying shit on buildings better.
I've realized that, if GTAIV had been the first game on a new franchise, I'd have been much more lenient to it; and might have actually become a grudging fan despite its slow-as-molasses combat, stupid checkpoint placement (or lack thereof), tendency to stop the bits of its story that are actually, honestly good to make sure Niko went through a checklist of pointless drab questgivers until every stereotypical New York criminal was ticked off, and completely insane controls (Tap A to run, Rockstar? We have something called analog sticks nowadays. They have been around for a while - you might want to look into them.)
The first time I finished the game, I chose the revenge ending and was treated to some disappointment. If at least the game had had the decency to end after Niko kills Dimitri, it wouldn't be so bad - unfulfilling revenge is one of the game's main themes, after all, and having it end on the same boat that brought Niko to America in the first place would make for beautiful symmetry. But no, the game dragged on, deciding that a character that had been previously shown as a bumbling fool was now the all-powerful Big Bad, and filled those pants about as well as you'd expect. Nico is spurred into action by the murder of another character - a character that, due to a tragic Faggio accident, I had had almost no interaction with in my gameplay, and wasn't important to me or Nico at all. Then I had to sit through another of those amazing chase sequences in which my target car is equipped with special magnets that make it always remain at a certain distance from my own car, and then the game that had stripped away all my fun throughout the entire gameplay in the name of a realistic gritty story told me to jump a boat to a helicopter. And then I killed a guy I had no real beef with and I was informed that I'd won. And so I'd never have to play that damned game again.
At least I wouldn't if I could find a YouTube video to saciety my curiosity about how the other ending was like - at least one that didn't think I would be more interested in some preteen twat's innermost thoughts than in the dialogue of the game that titled the video I was watching. Or even one that didn't skip the cutscenes on the assumption that I was really interested in hot pointless driving action. So I grit my teeth; there's no way to watch the other ending without loading up my second latest save, which means I have to once again go through To Live and Die in Alderney, one of the most annoying missions in an annoying game. I listen to stupid characters say stupid things again. I follow a car through scripted traffic. I charge a bunch of cops with a shotgun because the only place to take cover is a low wall behind a column and if I try to take cover there Niko will merrily fire round after round at the wall and the two hardcore mafiosi I'm babysitting have hugged the unglitched spots. I die and do all that again, because the concept of checkpoints is as alien to Rockstar as analog sticks.
Eventually, I do it. I get to the ending, again. I make the other choice. I start to watch, and - there's suddenly something different. This isn't just the same scene with different characters. Niko's reaction is much greater this time, and yet it feels much more fitting. Everybody hates Roman, but he's been there from the beginning. You couldn't lose him in a stupid Faggio accident. Like him or not, you had saved him from danger, and he had tried to save you from damnation, in a meaningless choice that was clearly meaningful for him, even if he couldn't express it. And he had been killed by the guy who had been a thorn in your side since you set foot in town.
I suddenly understood everything.
The concept of a 'good ending' and a 'bad ending' has existed in videogames for decades. Simply getting to the end is not enough; you need to do everything right, or your characters will be fucked up. The problem, of course, is that, conversely, (this sentence sure has a lot of commas,) if you do everything right, it follows that everything will end up nicely for the characters, even if that's at odds with the game's themes up to that point - Silent Hill is guilty of this, with some of the 'best' endings being as out of tune with the grim hopelessness of the game as the wacky ones with the aliens.
That's not the case with GTAIV, though. It has a good ending and a bad one - not for the characters, though, for the player. The Revenge ending is unsatisfying, haphazard and unstructured - the bad ending. The Deal ending brings up the stakes to the maximum, always hits the emotions it was gunning for and gives Niko's actions the weight that they should have - a good ending. Both of them are bad for the characters, because that's the kind of story GTAIV is trying to tell, but only in one of them that story actually ends in a satisfying way.
There are many people, myself included, who want their games to tell better stories, but there are also many people, myself included, who thinks those stories will be pointless if they are just cutscenes shoehorned between pieces of gameplay. They need to be woven into the mechanics; they need to work alongside each other, not against. There are plenty of people who are thinking of ways the story can be the gameplay by itself; perhaps this is such a way.
You still have to jump to a helicopter, only with a dirtbike instead of a boat. Can't win them all I guess.
September's Link Roundup
I love art. I love weird art. I love meta-art. So this 2013 short story about an artist that uploads herself to a digital space as part of a modern art performance on bodies and self - well, let's say that I really like it.
This Artist Is Hacking Google to Create Surreal Street View Art
Speaking of weird art - this artist has sneaked some peculiar photo collages in Google Streetview, which is a perfect fit for the slightly warped view you get for the 360º views that trap you in the center of a bizarre sphere. The title is, of course, quite a bit exaggerated - the artist's 'hacking' consisted only of uploading the images to Google, and they've all been removed as of this time, like graffiti that's been painted over.
I Sexually Identify as the “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” Controversy
These are just articles I liked during this month, I swear I wasn't trying to create a 'weird meta-art' issue. But if I had been, I think I'd've been great at it.