An evil company had built a giant robot. A friend and I were chosen to investigate this, so we were going over the packaging for the robot (which was that white foam used to package pretty much every electronic). We couldn’t find any evidence of evil. Then, we were being chased by the company’s agents. The agents are actually humanoid robots, trained to write a specific series of computer training books. If you saw these books lying around, you knew the agents were close. We eventually escaped by hiding in tall grass overnight (which almost didn’t work — they were out with flashlights, and actually shone one right in my face, but we ran away and hid again). Then, there was a muddy ravine of some sort, and there was an old house. We had gone back in time. There was a sign in front of the house saying that this belonged to so-and-so. I realized that the person who owned this house in the future wasn’t the person who should have rightfully inherited the house. The person who took the house had just claimed it was his, while the person who should have gotten it lived in extreme poverty, not knowing that the house should have been his. I took out a digital camera and took as many pictures as possible to prove that he was the rightful inheritor. In the morning, we went back to the robot packaging. I held the foam up to the light, and could see that there were three letters sealed inside. We ripped open the foam and discovered that they were letters written by a nurse, Gloria, at a local hospital. It detailed how this evil company had mixed up a little girl’s medication and she had almost died as a result. To save her life, they used her body to construct the giant robot. So the giant robot was really a lonely little girl, but it didn’t know it was a lonely little girl — it just knew it was a robot. And somehow this meant that the KKK was going to have a massive resurgence. So I went to where the KKK were meeting — there were thousands of them, standing in rows, all with blank expressions. Then James Blunt showed up, and together we stopped the KKK once and for all.
I can’t explain the feeling of utter confusion I had upon waking.
Moving on.
David Cage (Quantic Dream), on game storytelling:
It gives you a bit of story, then action, then a bit of story, then action — like porn movies, when you think about it. Porn movies are structured in exactly the same way, except that the action is not the same (laughter), but it’s the same structure. Most video games are done like that. It’s one thing to do a great cutscene, even if it’s real time. It’s another thing to try to tell the story as you play, so the story’s not told through cutscenes — it’s told through gameplay. So you don’t need acting performance in cutscenes. You need interactive performance.
Not much to add, other than I think his sentiment is spot-on. Just like porn, games are designed this way on purpose — loose plots as a vessel to deliver what you actually want. But what if what you want is a story? It’s nice to see people finally starting to rethink this (nods to Half-Life, one of the first games that truly integrated gameplay and storytelling).
In other news: Joss Whedon announced that we definitely haven’t seen the last of Dr. Horrible. When I first watched Dr. Horrible, I said that it ended so perfectly that I really hoped it wouldn’t continue. Forget that. The thought of more Dr. Horrible just fills me with glee.
Also: Tr2n. That’s right, a sequel to Tron, with Jeff Bridges reprising his role as Flynn.
I’m thinking of starting a political movement. It’s going to be called “The Society for the Separation of Art and State”. Essentially, we stand against any government-sponsored attempt to regulate creative expression. In the same way that a religion-controlled government destroys the freedom of religion, so does government-controlled art destroy the freedom of expression. Obviously, our first order of business is to ensure that Bill C-61 is killed, burnt, and stomped on, and see everyone responsible for the Bill sacked. Then we can move on to dismantling the current copyright laws, or educating people as to why it’s in humanity’s best interest to release everything into the Creative Commons.
(Hmm, a quick Google search for “separation of art and state” produces 16k results. I’m not sure if I should be happy that I’m not alone, or sad that I’m late to the bandwagon.)
