Why I Keep Geeking Out About A Villain's Life

Man, I already thought A Villain's Life was cool, and sort of sweet, but now I care. Doctor Cataclysm, please be okay!

Yeah, I'm still geeking out about it. It'll pass. In the mean time, a small insight:

Most media has a fairly clear division between real/non-real. Movies have a screen, books have their pages. Even if there's a framing device, in most cases it's still pretty easy to tell, just from the format, that it's fiction. Yes, that book may claim to be a journal, but its still professionally printed with the publishers name in the front.

This kind of fiction, this fictional blogging, has a little less of that. It's still obviously fictional--there are no superheroes, no superpowers, no weather machines. But that's only discernable from the content.

In form, this is just another blog. It's framing device is built into the media itself. I tend to dislike frames in books, just because they're not. You can tell, very easily, that the frame is also false, so it tends to interfere with my suspension of disbelief. Your mileage may vary.

But this is cool. I get information about Doctor Cataclysm in exactly the way I would if he was real. 'tis a trick, rather like a well done game story, that allows for stronger audience/character attachement.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Literary Pretensions: Iron Man

Iron Man is about technology. In the movie, he's also very specifically about the corporatization of technology, and the responsibility creators have over their creations. But he also represents a general conversation about the role and effects of technology.

In Iron Man, technology has a dark side. In the movie, Tony Stark creates the suit, but he also creates the villains he uses it to battle. And in the comics, Iron Man's suit has, on occasion, become a villain in its own right.

But Iron Man is a superhero. He's technology personified, and, for the most part, he's a force for good. The wrongs he has done, even inadvertently, he works to right. Technology is a powerful tool in that fight, and he has a unique control over it.

Which is at the heart of the Iron Man concept. How do we control technology? In what ways does it affect us? Tony Stark has a remarkable talent, but he simultaneously depends on technology to survive. His injury was inflicted by a man-made weapon, but another device keeps it from killing him. He uses technology to do good, but the evil he fights is often similarly empowered.

And, of course, it's not just shrapnel in his leg or his liver or something. It's his heart that has shrapnel and a magnet in it, magnifying its importance in both physical and metaphorical terms.

"Technology" isn't the only thing that Iron Man is about. And being "about" things isn't the most important thing about Iron Man--the most important thing is smashing bad guys with fancy gadgets.

But what he's about is important. Superheroes, and other culturally important stories, give us a window into our culture's collective unconscious.

Technology is very much on our minds.

Random Thoughts on Iron Man

I loved Iron Man. Awesome movie. Shame I didn't get a chance to write about it until now, but thems the breaks.

I wasn't expecting it to be so funny. It works. It would have been interesting if they'd put one of those testing videos Tony Stark took on YouTube, but it obviously wasn't necessary.

I love tech-y, shiny, robot type stuff. I knew the movie had the suit in it, but then it turns out to have even more robot awesome, and I am officially happy.

I was impressed by the psychology of the movie. I think this movie has the most coherent explanation for why its superhero became what he is, out of all of them that have come out so far.

And his relationship with Pepper Pots seemed more human than the sort of "no, I can't love you, it's too dangerous" business most superheroes satsify themselves with. I mean, it had that, but it had a lot more than that--we work together and depend on each other but I'm desperately afraid of commitment, etc. Standard pieces for relationship movies, but stretching the superhero box a bit.

And--this is a personal thing, not analysis--I liked Tony Stark. A lot more than I like, say, Peter Parker, or Bruce Wayne. I sympathize with Peter, and Spiderman, and I accept Bruce Wayne as necessary. But I don't even particularly like Batman, as a person, I just think he's cool.

I hadn't realized that, until I saw Iron Man. It made him a likable guy. A messed up guy, but in an understandable way. And, in the end, a mostly decent guy.

Goal For Running Combat

Based on comments on my last post on sequels, I've added another goal to my next campaign.

If it's heavy on the story side, tie the violence into the story. And even if it's not heavy on the story side--if it's more in the vein of those exploration campaigns I've been considering--tie the violence into that.

Not just in the "you must win to advance" sense. Have something story-related, or exploration related, happening during the fight. People switching sides, learning new and exciting things about antagonists, the characters are trying to execute some plan they've made. So there's a tactical level and a roleplaying, what would my character do level going on at the same time.

For exploration campaigns--I've never run anything like this, so my examples can't be pulled from my experience, as those are above. But the things you fight, and where you fight them, would reveal things about the location--you run into an owlbear, and that means there are owlbears in the area. Or you run into an owlbear, and you've never run into an owlbear in the area before, and you have fairly good reason to think that there are no owlbears in the area, that tells you something strange is going on.

A List Found in an Old Notebook

Adventurers explore ancient ruins in a land of giants.

The gods wage complex socio-political warfare. By blowing each other's #%&! up.

Warriors struggle to protect their village from a jungle filled with Lovecraftian horror.

Island-hopping pirates hunt for treasure and fight for glory.

Humans live in the mountain cities of the giants, searching the deep places where the giants cannot go.

The younger children of powerful nobles adventure for treasure and fame to advance their positions.

Teams of gladiators fight horrible monsters (and occasionally, each other) for Fame! and Glory!

The greatest warriors of the age have been cast out of time, and wander through the strange world of the future.

Adventurers struggle against the remnants of ancient, evil empires in a blasted land.

Humanoid noble houses serve individual giants in wars that span centuries.

Sky pirates seek adventure in the spaces between the stars.

Angels and demons wage a secret war through mortal politics.

Heroes seek pulp adventure in a mysterious and unexplored continent.

Humans/humanoids are paired with a young dragon, and together they undertake dangerous missions for the Queen.

The Order of the Couatl/Feathered Serpent battles hideous aberrations in a deep and forbidding jungle.

Troubleshooting utilities engineers must defend their city from what lurks in its sewers.

Druids and their allies must defend a sacred forest.

A powerful dragon hires humanoids to advance its interests in the world.

Young, idealist soldiers undertake missions for a surprisingly decent, but deeply ruthless dictator.

Cities spring up in a huge and ancient tower--but dangerous monsters roam the uninhabited areas.

And They All Lived Happily Ever After

I just want to go on record as actually liking the ending of the latest Harry Potter book. Not for any particular reason; just because I've read two people today who didn't like it, and while I understand their objections, I still like it.

I'm not going to talk about exactly why I liked it, because it would be too much work to phrase it in a non-spoiler way. (And bringing up specific objections would give too much credit to the people who raised them, roughly half of whom hail from the "hate hate hate" school of literary criticism.)

'Course, everyone who cares probably has already finished the book. So I guess I just don't want to do it. I will say, though, that it is not how I would have handled it. I am more a student of the hard-stop school. Show's over, everyone goes home now.

Which is part of the reason I liked it. The approach simply wouldn't have occurred to me; it's a fresh thing to my mind.

Mind you, the one time I did do a little bit of the "twenty-years later" wrap up, with that latest campaign, I was really happy with it. That's actually one of my favorite parts of that campaign, that little thumbnail sketch of the rest of their lives. I'm even holding a few things in reserve, in case we ever go back to it. Doesn't quite count, though, because it wasn't my idea. Didn't have it planned.

But, anyway. Liked the ending.

Wrestling Rambling

I've been reading a bit about wrestling in the past couple of days. I found If Destroyed, Still True, (great name) which has a lot of information about wrestling, among other things, through Fraggmented. (Have I mentioned Fraggmented? I should, sometime. It's a really great blog; talks a lot about status quo, and storytelling engines, absolutely vital concepts.) And Websnark had a post about the Chris Benoit . . thing, and there was some information about wrestling in general in that.

It's fascinating. I knew professional wrestling was "fake," and that there was some kind of good guy/bad guy thing, but I hadn't realized the complexity of it. Managers, interference, ongoing story-lines; it's not just a win/lose thing, there are all these shades of distinction, the difficulty of victory, the kind of interference. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's a wealth of detail I'd never properly intuited.

Particularly, it occupies this interesting space between reality and unreality. It's set-up, but everyone knows it's set up. That's part of the point. It carries conventions of the fictional experience--"What are they going to do next?" rather than "what's going to happen next?"

This has certain advantages over the real. You can be somewhat certain that, whatever does happen, it'll be interesting. (Or, at least, you have someone to vent at if it's not.) There's a certain sport in reading the author's mind, figuring out the intent behind actions and what's coming up. There's a level of detail, of interaction between levels, that can't be present in an un-manufactured storyline.

But then, in the case of wrestling, it's not completely manufactured. People get hurt, people die: reality controls the story. No fiction is completely manufactured; even writing carries the fingerprints of the author, reflects the forces acting on the author. But wrestling isn't just indirectly influenced by reality, it directly confronts reality, molding it into something different, sometimes stranger.

And, ultimately, "the point of the stories is to create a context in which the wrestling matches "matter." And that's all. The stories are the means, the wrestling is the end." (J

It's similar, somehow, to what I discussed a few days ago about fictional characters interacting with reality. In some ways, it's a mirror image of that phenomena. One has fictional characters acting like they're real. One has real people acting like they're fictional.

That's true of all acting, but most acting doesn't have people being hit over the head with chairs. Wrestling seems to have its own place on the continuum.

A couple of twists: Vince McMahon is both in charge of it and a character, which is it's own separate universe of weird. And, of course, Japan has a truly bizarre take on the sport.

Don't Do This!

Does anyone else read Erfworld: The Battle for Gobwin's Knob?

Is anyone else really ticked off with it right now?

Skipping time, I can deal with. Skipping a battle, I can deal with. It was obvious what was going to happen; it didn't need to be shown.

What I can't deal with is this "Charlie" nonsense.

Creating suspense by arbitrarily hiding things from the reader isn't cool. Unless you've got an in-text reason for why the reader doesn't know everything (significant) that the character does. (i.e., the unreliable narrator)

Unless, of course, it's not going to be important. We never hear about Charlie again, so why waste a page showing who he is? This, I somehow doubt, because if it wasn't going to be important it wouldn't have come up at all.

Plus, it'd edge dangerously close to telling, rather than showing. The characters talking about how unreasonable Stanley is, rather than showing how unreasonable he is.

Upshot: Irritating. I like Erfworld, but this sort of thing had better not happen on a regular basis.

Define: Dingus

I should probably explain what I mean by "dingus."

The dictionary definition gets the broad sense of it. It's an object, that you either can't name or don't want to bother naming. Comes from German. Used in the Maltese Falcon, to refer to the eponymous bird.

I tend to use it more specifically: A dingus is an object, in a story, that the characters in the story want. This, then, drives the plot.

"Object" is maybe not exactly the right word. Because I use it to describe characters. Although, technically, there's usually something else that could be described as the dingus in that sort of situation--like with Jack Sparrow, in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 it's actually his soul that matters. Calling the character the dingus still works, though, because it's a word that describes an element's function in the story.

I picked it up from The Big List of RPG Plots, by S. John Ross. Which is a wicked handy web page, for GMs and writers. And people who want to make fun of GMs and writers for use clichéd plots. (Which every plot is, if you break it down far enough. It's just one of those things they aren't making any more of.)

It's a cool word. It's a way to simplify complex plots, which makes it handy for talking about story in general, and for talking about (and designing) RPG plots in particular.

RPGs really demand simplicity from their plots--or, rather, they demand that the plots have a simple core. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the big one is that the players need to be able to figure out what to do next fairly quickly. If the GM has an understanding of the plot on a very basic level, such that dingus thinking can provide, it's easier to help players figure that out. Being able to analyze the plot simply is useful whenever you're talking about (or designing) any story, but it's particularly vital in an RPG.

Plus, it's fun to say. Which is the real reason why I use it.

Cope

If you have any interest in game design at all, you should be reading James Wallis's blog, Cope. (Loving the subtitle, by the way.)

I've been meaning to link to him for some time. He writes about storytelling in games--Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Half Life 2, as examples--as well as more basic "don't do this!" issues.

I finally got around to it today because he writes about Will Wright, talking about Spore, and storytelling in games. Read it, read what it links to. It's interesting. And important.

Arbitrary Revelations: Not Cool, Man

This suggests what might be bothering me about the Oblivion main quest ending.

The reversal comes at the end.

My intuition tells me that this is unusual. Most goal based stories--most video game stories--have a fairly reliable structure. They set the stakes, the win condition, and then they don't usual mess with it too much. They might raise the stakes, through villains or other opposition, but they usually don't make that goal totally irrelevant.

When they do, it's to make a point--it sets the other events of the story into a new light, that reveals new things. I'd list an example, but even mentioning that a movie has a reverse ending can destroy the viewing experience, because in the best one's you're not even expecting it, but it still makes perfect sense. Oedipus would be a good example, except that the audience is in on the secret from the beginning. (That's what makes it ironic, ya see.)

Oblivion's ending is not like this. It comes out of left field, is not anticipated at all, and doesn't cast any kind of new light on the existing events of the tale. It just makes the goal you thought you were working towards through the whole quest totally worthless.

The details of the reversal make it even more annoying. Basically, you find out there was a time limit on your goal, and you just blew it. Trick is, because it's a video game, you know that this "time limit" nonsense is ALL LIES. If the little number hasn't been counting down, you know it's just a cheap excuse for the game to spring it's reversal on you. No matter how fast you complete the quest, or how slowly, you're always going to show up just five minutes after you were supposed to.

It doesn't help that the NPCs act like they've known about the time limit all along. And by NPCs, I mean Martin. One of the neat things about the game is that it makes him actually useful, because he knows what's going on with all the daedra stuff. (And he's satisfyingly cryptic about just how he knows about it.) If you need to know something about the rules, how this whole "Oblivion vs. Tamriel" thing works, he tells you.

So when you suddenly learn this new rule, and he acts like it's totally obvious, but somehow never bothered to tell you about it, it's kind of irritating. Especially since, if I'd known about this rule, I probably would have picked up the pace a bit. Wouldn't have done any good, but at least I'd have known I tried.

I suppose the reason you're not informed of this secret time limit is because if you knew about it, it'd be totally obvious that it was going to come up. That's just how video games work.

However, if a plot twist is that obvious, the solution is not to withhold information from the player for no good reason. Make it some weird new thing that the bad guy's done, at the very least. Make the reason that the player doesn't have the information make sense.

Or, just don't mess with the twist ending. This is a personal quirk. I don't tend to appreciate twist endings, if they're done just for their own sake. They're usually either really obvious, or really stupid. Often, both. (Atlantis, I'm looking at you. First time I watched that movie, my brother had already seen it, so when I turned to him and said, "That guy totally goes evil and betrays them," about two minutes after the character was introduced, he got kind of weirded out.)

I'm also not sure if video games support twist endings all that well. That's another topic, though.

Bottom line: Don't totally change the rules of success for the protagonist at the last minute. Especially in a video game. It's irritating, and frustrating, and generally not a good idea. Like all "rules," in storytelling, you can break it, but only if you know what you're doing, and you have a good reason. Trying to trick the audience does not count as a good reason.

Stupid Plot Tricks

Hey, 100th post. Not bad. Naturally, it's about Oblivion.

One of my favorite little things about the Oblivion main quest is this structural switcheroo it pulls right at the beginning.

Traditionally, a story starts with some kind of setback. The protagonist starts out in some kind of minor trouble, so they can have some kind of minor achievement, which then makes you care when they experience a major setback, so then they can emerge victorious from the crushing doom. Down, up, double down, double up.

Most stories don't follow that pattern exactly, because it's a hideous oversimplification. But, generally speaking, the move out of status quo is a move downward. That lets the early part of the story be about the protagonist trying to restore the status quo, until they figure out what it is that they're actually supposed to be doing.

Following this principle, in Oblivion, things start to go bad quickly. Jauffre sends you to Kvatch to find Martin; when you arrive, Kvatch is a smoking ruin. (Which is how it will stay, nigh unto eternity. On fire. Forever.) You bring Martin safely to Jauffre; you find that Jauffre's lost the damn amulet.

Getting the amulet back drives most of the rest of the game. The funny thing is, though, is that it's not all gloom and doom. In a way, you're actually better off at that point, right after the enemy steals the amulet, than you were when you gave the amulet to Jauffre.

Because at that point, you've got Martin, and you're fairly sure that he's not going to get killed. Not without you getting killed first, anyway, and since you're a video game character (in a video game that's not Nethack) you're functionally immune to death. So you've still got one of the two dinguses you need to win the game. You have, essentially, traded the Amulet for Martin, and that means you've come out ahead.

(Assuming that the amulet is a proper artifact, in the D&D sense, and can't be destroyed. Mankar Camaron's behavior establishes this as more than idle fancy--he doesn't destroy it, even though it'd be really smart for him to do so. Thus: he can't destroy it. It does end up being destroyed, at the end, but I have a theory that it could only be destroyed in that specific way.)

For a video game, this is incredibly clever. There's an early setback to drive the rest of the action (find the dingus!) but you also have a sense of accomplishment. You've done something useful.

Information Themes

At the end of Oblivion, the Empire no longer has an Emperor, and it probably won't be getting one any time soon. There aren't even any possible heirs, so far as your character knows. They're going to have to come up with some kind of new system.

Note, however, why this is. It's not because there aren't any dragonborn. No one knows of any, but all that means is that there aren't any officially. In 433 years, no way is Martin the only illegitimate heir. There have got to be at least a handful of other people who fulfill the technical--if not the legal--requirements to be Emperor.

The significant thing is: there's no way to tell. No more Amulet of Kings, no more dragonfires, no way to be sure that someone's dragonborn. It has exactly the same effect as extinguishing the line, and it's more interesting.

It ties into the basic ideas of the Elder Scrolls world. History--reality--isn't defined by what actually happened. It's defined by what people know. It's defined by what's written down. It's defined by how you interpret it.

Light Years Behind . . . Painting

Not too be too down on BBC News, but their tech guys are idiots. Complete and utter maroons.

They've got this article about how, according to the industry "experts," we are at most two years away from photo-realistic humans. Which is total nonsense. We may be two years away from photo-realistic movement, but that is not the biggest challenge standing in the way of photo-realism in games.

That, hands down, is skin. Human skin absorbs and scatters light in a way that we don't really have the technology to do, even in pre-rendering, let alone real time. You'll notice that a lot of games, like Oblivion, with high quality graphics have characters that kind of glow. It's a way of tricking you into letting computer people be pretty, and not freakish. We may not be able to simulate subdermal refraction, but we can at least make people glow!

That's not my favorite part, though. My favorite part is down at the end. After the article has made a big deal about how, in the future, computer characters will be totally indistinguishable from humans, it quotes Ian Livingstone of Eidos: "We will be able to play with people's emotions - we can make them laugh, we can make them cry, we can make them sad."

Because, y'know, you totally can't affect people emotionally, unless your characters are totally, perfectly human. We're totally impervious to anything that doesn't look 100% real. Without the perfect visual experience, without being able to see every nuance of the characters action, no one ever feels any connection to a story.

Because no animated movie, or novel, or radio show has ever made anyone feel sad.

Honestly, I think that games would be better off if they went less realistic with their graphics. Not lower quality, mind you. Just less realistic. Characters drawn with broader strokes can actually be more effective, emotionally, because it's for people to invest in them. It's easier to imagine them as being exactly what you want them to be.

Eventually, computer games are going to figure out that there are other kinds of art out there. Naturalism isn't the only way to make pictures look good. Someday, video gaming is going to discover impressionism. And they're going to realize that suggesting an image, and capturing a feeling, and making it really pretty, are all way more important goals than "realism."

Idiocy Is Not The Answer

Pet peeve: stories that hinge on stupidity.

Romeo and Juliet is a good example of this kind of thing. All the problems, all the escalations, are based on characters doing stupid things for no good reason. People feud, get into fights, and kill themselves, because they can't just sit down and think for five minutes.

"The characters do something stupid" is a really lame way to kick it up a notch. Horror movies, sitcoms, (I can't stand Seinfield, because it's really bad about this.) all do it, and it's really, really annoying, because it's usually totally transparent. It's either out of character, or the character is built around doing stupid stuff in the first place.

Sure, if it's grounded in the character, it can work. People have flaws; that's interesting. But not if those flaws are "impulsive" or "poor judgment" or "prone to stupidity." That's just writerly laziness.

There are other ways to drive the action. Get yourself a good antagonist, give your characters interesting flaws, make fate really mean. Anything. Just don't make them prone to random stupidity at inconvenient moments.

Half-Complete Musings

It occurs to me that the dramatic/iconic distinction could be a powerful GM tool. Because when I'm GMing, everything becomes a powerful GM tool. Video games, old GURPS books, random poems -- my first thought is always, "How can I game with that?"

But, basically, treating player characters as iconic characters would be an interesting way to marry traditional storytelling principles with the wild and woolly world of tabletop gaming.

Definition time: Theme is revealed through the interaction between world and character. A dramatic character reveals theme by changing in response to the world. An iconic character reveals theme by the changes their actions cause in the world. (I really need to find a better phrase for this, because a character can have the property I'm describing without being an icon.)

Okay, so those are more like theses than definitions. Anyway, the point is that, since a GM controls the world rather than the characters, it's easier for a GM to build a story on iconic principles than on dramatic principles. (Watch me stretch the definitions past their breaking point!) If the player characters are the main characters, anyway. If an NPC is the main character, then using dramatic principles are a piece of cake, but PCs tend to get snippy if they figure out they've been relegated to supporting character status.

Just Like Batman!

So, Robin D. Laws wrote this review type thing on Casino Royale. He says that it treats Bond as a dramatic character rather than an iconic character. This is a concept that I've never formally considered; I was always sort of vaguely aware of it, but not in any specific way.

It got me to thinking. Maybe the distinction that the Oblivion main quest makes is not between main character and non-main character, as I had previously surmised, but between dramatic character and iconic character. You are an iconic character in that you embody the theme; you express it through your actions. You don't have to learn it, because you already know it.

It works in Oblivion because of the particular nature of the theme: it is not the intentions of gods but the actions of mortals that shape the world and its fate. (At least, that's the theme I picked out of it.) In a video game, that works pretty well, since as the player character you're automatically the only character with any real control over your destiny. It might not work so well if you had to embody some other principle.

Protagonistic

If you've played through the main quest of Oblivion, and were paying very close attention, you may have noticed something odd: You aren't the main character.

Oh, sure. You look like the main character. You're the hero, right? But that's not what the main character is. The main character, roughly speaking, is the character who drives the conflict, whose evolution reveals the theme. The character whose qualities define the story.

That's not you. That's Martin.

He's the character with an arc. He's the character who figures out what the theme is. He's the character you have to pay attention to, if you want to know what the theme is. Without him, there's no story; and if he were a different kind of person, the story would be different.

It's actually a really elegant technique. If a game has you controlling the main character, it either has to take some control of that character away from you, or it has to have a really basic story. Shift the thematic focus to an NPC, and you can be whatever wacky person you want, have whatever motivation suits you, and the game can still have a coherent thematic conflict.

Plot Twists and Foreshadowing

If you've played Oblivion, or are even remotely interested in the idea, and haven't finished the main quest, you need to do that now. Then you can come back so I can annoy you by obsessing over it.

Another issue that occurred to me, as I was thinking about the main quest ending in a general way, is the foreshadowing.

Because there's this big twist. Short version: Your goal on the main quest is to reforge the boundary between Tamriel, where mortals live, and Oblivion, where Daedra live. To do that, you need the Amulet of Kings, and you need a "dragonborn," in this case Martin Septim, the illegitimate son of the Emperor. So everything you do revolves around keeping Martin from getting killed, and getting the Amulet back, because Jauffre let it get stolen.

Only it turns out, at the very end of the game, that it was all useless, nothing you did mattered, because it was too late, and now the daedra have gotten enough Oblivion portals open that Mehrunes Dagon is here and there's no way to stop him. No one ever says anything that indicates that this would even be possible. There's no mention of any kind of time limit. Sure, there's urgency, because the longer you wait the more likely it is that the bad guys will figure out some way to kill Martin, and then you're all doomed.

But there's no mention of any other kind of time limit. It's logical enough--daedra have to open a number of smaller gates before than can open a big gate, so it makes sense that if they get enough gates open, their leader can get through. However, no one tells you that if Mehrunes Dagon gets through, there's no hope of getting the barrier back in place.

The game did do a pretty good job of telegraphing that something bad was going to happen. Mostly because minor NPCs kept saying that there was no way anything could possibly go wrong. And any mention of the Mehrunes Dagon thing would have made it clear that this was going to happen, so it's understandable that the designers wouldn't mention it. On the other hand, it's not like that was the only twist, because there's still the, "Wait! We're not doomed after all!" moment that comes right after that.

Game Endings

If you're playing Oblivion, or think you ever might in the future, and haven't finished the main quest, shouldn't be reading this. You should be finishing the main quest, because it's AWESOME.

As I said yesterday, once I'd gotten over the sheer, awesome brilliance of the Oblivion ending, I started really thinking about it. It was awesome, sure, but did it really work? Could it have been better?

The first question is: does it work as a game? That's the presentation, and if the presentation doesn't work, none of it's going to work. If the game itself is bad, nothing else matters, because no one's going to play it long enough to experience the story.

Oblivion itself is a really great game, but endings have some special considerations. One is participation. Games often do the cut scene thing when they're getting across vital story-related information. This is bad. No matter how awesome a ten minute cut scene may be, it's not a game, and it shouldn't be in a game. If a story can't be explained without a ten minute cut scene, it should be a movie, not a game.

Oblivion does pretty well here. There is a cut scene, but it's really awesome, really short, and it makes sense that your character can't really do anything. It wouldn't have been nearly so awesome if it had been on a scale you could interact with. Mostly, though, what makes this work is that you're too caught up in the "wow" to be frustrated.

It's not enough to just have game play in the ending. The quality matters, too. It shouldn't be just another level. It should really feel like it meant something--and generally, that means that it should be a bit harder than the rest of the game, for the right sense of achievement. However, this can be taken too far. It shouldn't be so hard to get to the ending that the players quit caring, because they're too busy taking an ax to their controllers.

On this point, Oblivion is a bit troublesome. The final mission is to keep Martin, the other main character, alive, and this is supposed to be hard because there are Daedra invading the Imperial City, which you're currently in. However, when I played it, I basically just followed him around and let him do his thing. We were never bothered. I've heard tell from people who finished the game at a higher level that, eventually, the Daedra do become a problem, but that they're mostly attacking you, not Martin.

This isn't a huge problem, because my main focus was on the plot, and Oblivion is an easy enough game that people who really care about difficulty will have modded their games to the point where it is a challenge. But it does produce some odd thoughts, especially in the aftermath of the quest, because now whenever I meet someone their first words are usually on how awesome I was in the final battle. And I'm thinking, "I did all my saving way before that. Final battle? I mostly just watched."

It doesn't bother me that everyone's really impressed, because I did a lot of stuff before that, and it was all really awesome. It just annoys me, because I shouldn't be getting credit for all the awesome that was in the final battle. I sort of wonder if they didn't quite test that sequence properly. They may have been expecting that players would actually fight, even if they didn't have to, or that they wouldn't realize they didn't have to. I literally just ran through, and ignored the bad guys completely.

In a general way, though, the ending works. Oblivion handles its ending better than many games I've played, (if the number of games I've played qualifies as "many") and the problems didn't become obvious until I'd really started thinking about them. They're nowhere near serious enough to mar the story itself. Which I'm going to talk about tomorrow, because this foolishness has gone on long enough.