Video Games Are Not Movies. And That's OK.
I've given brief mention to video games in the past here at MustReid, but it's about time I give them a proper piece.
After all, has there been a better time to play and talk about games than the summer of 2020? Just about all any of us can do (or should be doing, at least) is stay inside and catch up on all the content we've been meaning to watch, read, and play over the years. My COVID-19 quarantine has granted me the long-awaited opportunity to play all the great PlayStation 4 exclusives I've wanted to check out, including Journey, Infamous: Second Son, and Horizon: Zero Dawn.
And yet, it's another PS4 exclusive that prompted me to write this article. Released just last week, Sucker Punch Productions' Ghost of Tsushima gives players control over a samurai in 13th-century Japan, free to explore a detailed and historically rich world. The setting and story sound intriguing, and yet I can't help but harbor a certain resentment towards the game.
My bitterness is oriented specifically towards the game's "Kurosawa mode," which places a grainy, black-and-white filter over the game so as to capture the aesthetic of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.
I don't dislike the game mode in and of itself. The studio did receive permission from the director's estate, and from what I have seen online, the game looks gorgeous both normally and in Kurosawa mode.
What troubles me is how Ghost of Tsushima marks yet another example of video games desperately trying to outrun their own status as video games, and move themselves closer to cinema. The gaming industry has been in search of greater respect for as long as it has been around. "Video games are art too," we've all heard, I'm sure. And while I am in full agreement with this claim, I want to push back on the idea that, in order to achieve this "art" status, video games must make themselves more like movies, and less like video games.
In my last post, I mentioned video games as a point of inspiration for cinema, as a space in which progressive narrative can thrive due to the medium's capacity for open-world exploration, side quests, etc. But in reflecting on that point a bit further, I wonder how many games have actually delivered on that potential. For as much as I encourage us all to put cinema and video games into conversation with one another, it is important that it actually is a conversation. Something like "Kurosawa mode" reduces the relationship between cinema and video games to an aesthetic, failing to recognize the various threads that, if properly teased, could revolutionize storytelling as we know it.
Another recent PS4 exclusive put cinema in the spotlight: Death Stranding. While I have my issues with the game (the gameplay is essentially an onslaught of deliveries, a mission-type that is surely dreaded amongst gamers) I remain fascinated by the ways in which creator Hideo Kojima connects the game to film. Several real-life filmmakers appear in Death Stranding as in-game characters, including Guillermo Del Toro and Nicholas Winding Refn. Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead fame plays protagonist Sam, and ads for his AMC series Ride with Norman Reedus appear sporadically throughout the game world.
If it wasn't obvious already, Death Stranding is a very strange video game, occasionally forcing players to gently rock their controllers so as to calm a baby that you carry around at all times as a means of survival.
Like I said, strange.
But these moments help illustrate what Death Stranding is all about, and why the innovative Kojima was interested in bridging the gap between cinema and video games with his latest work. Death Stranding is a game about relationships. There's the relationship between Sam and the baby. There's the relationship between the player and their controller. There's the relationship between the player and the countless other players who, in their respective playthroughs, made additions to the environment that aid both themselves and others in traversing the game's unforgiving landscape. Narratively, the game is all about forging connections between various cities and waystations. It may not be the most fun game to play, but it is an important one in that it celebrates and encourages relationships in a way film could never do. And that is what Death Stranding gets precisely right. The game puts itself in conversation with film because it is part of its larger attempt to establish connections and relationships. Bridging gaps between mediums is vital to Death Stranding's broader argument. Cinema is not an aesthetic for Death Stranding; it is a partner.
Even the game's relatively boring gameplay begins to make sense in these terms. In a way, Death Stranding may be as close as a mainstream video game can get to operating like a "slow" film, providing players the space to think and reflect along their interconnected journies. For the most part, video games cannot afford to be slow the same way cinema can, if for no other reason than the fact that they must be played. Whereas cinema can perform any number of actions (entertain, challenge, confront, ruminate, etc.) video games must be played, and therefore cannot lull players into a sense of complacency or question a player's actions. Here lies the problem with games like the recently released The Last of Us: Part II. It's great that games want you to question the impact and the morality of your actions, but not if they have created an environment in which your participation in it is mandatory.
Of course, simply labeling play as active and spectatorship as passive likely does both a disservice. Horror films provide a perfect example of active spectatorship, of films that must be "played" if you will. A late frame in Ari Aster's Hereditary remains one of the most terrifying onscreen images I have ever seen, yet it is one that another viewer could have missed entirely. As Peter Graham lies in bed one night, his mother lurks in the top left corner of the screen. She lingers, motionless, until scurrying across the ceiling. The scene is interactive in that it provides the viewer the opportunity for fear, but does not force them into it the way a traditional jump-scare might.
I would even argue that our very ability to opt for "passivity" in viewing a film says something about the immersive nature of film. Terrence Malick is one of my favorite directors, and yet, I have fallen asleep watching every one of his films at one point or another. The dreamlike quality of his filmography can cause one to wander rather far from the story at hand, but this kind of drifting is all part of the experience, not unlike the seeming boredom of Death Stranding. I had a similar experience recently in watching Richard Linklater's Slacker. I absolutely adored the film, but was particularly struck by my own behavior in watching it. The film features over a hundred different characters, and essentially follows each of them in very brief sequences before moving onto the next. It's a movie about nothing, but it's also a movie about everything. Some vignettes intrigued me more than others, and I found my attention drifting to and fro as I watched the movie. It occurred to me, however, that this sort of drifting was in line with Linklater's intentions in crafting Slacker. Linklater invites viewers to slack off just as his many characters do, engaging with the various moments as we deem fit.
I draw these comparisons between cinema and video games to illustrate the significance of forging meaningful connections between the two mediums, not just dressing one up as the other and hoping it somehow leads to critical acclaim.
And speaking of critics, what perhaps concerns me even more about the superficial function of something like "Kurosawa mode" is how it perpetuates a culture of criticism in which we ask very little of our video games. Obviously, just being a film is not enough for many films to be considered great, and yet, video games seem to succeed solely on their associations with cinema. I worry, however, that we are accepting mediocrity in our video games. We are so protective of video games as a medium ("they're art dammit!") that we stop short of challenging or expecting more from them.
One of the greatest games I have ever played is Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. It is certainly the most visually stunning game I have ever played, and its innovative conventions render it a terrifying yet poignant study of mental health. The threat of permadeath looms over the player throughout their playtime, and a complex sound design creates a tense and immersive atmosphere. It's a game that one would certainly describe as "cinematic" with its detailed graphics, use of live-action footage, and lack of heads-up-display. Still, Hellblade is a video game through and through. Its conventions could only exist in a video game, and its immersiveness is a direct result of its gamic nature.
The Portal franchise marks another high point in my gaming life. Portal's fusion of the first-person-shooter and the puzzle genres is remarkable. On the level of both narrative and gameplay, Portal operates as a dissection of the very medium it occupies. In a sense, Portal is about making video games, about the trials and errors of level design and testing, testing, testing. It's also about playing video games, encouraging trial and error by deemphasizing the role death plays in passing each Aperture test.
These games succeed by appropriately marrying function and form. More importantly, they embrace their status as games first and foremost. And in doing so, these games tell complex, illuminating stories. In truth, I have been entertained but not necessarily moved by the vast majority of video game narratives I have encountered. Too many games imitate genre referents rather than creative anything new. You see this with Red Dead Redemption, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Far Cry, and so many critically acclaimed games. Each of these games received nearly universal acclaim, but why? They are fun, no doubt, but do they really deliver on the potential of the medium? Their stories are like those we have seen in movies, but does that automatically make them good? These games were all praised for their "cinematicness" but that leaves very little to be said of their "video-gaminess."
I ask us to consider our games, and to reckon with what we are looking to get out of them. Irrational Games' Bioshock Infinite was one of my all-time favorite games for a very long time. I only recently began to reflect on the game a bit more, coming to terms with its racist equivocation of the oppressors and the oppressed. It tries to divert our attention away from its problematic social commentary with an admittedly mind-blowing twist that shifts the narrative away from the political and towards the metaphysical. Like so many other white, male, middle-class high school freshmen in 2013, I admired Infinite's dance in the grey area, where it suggested that evil can corrupt us all and that every perspective is a valid one. Having learned just a thing or two since then, I can now say Bioshock Infinite is a bad game, and that took me a long time to admit.
I share this example only to help others reconsider their relationship to gaming. We deserve better video games, ones that are proud of their status as such and tell dynamic, powerful stories accordingly. We can reject the grossly imperialistic, exoticizing perspective of the Far Cry franchise. We can reject the tone-deaf portrayal of cops in Marvel's Spider-Man. And we can demand games that speak to our current moment and empower our push for a better world.
I write this just as I prepare to play both The Last Guardian and The Last of Us for the very first time, two games I have consistently heard "get it right." The criticisms I levy here towards Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us: Part II, among others, may seem nitpicky and unfair, but I only make them because I love and cherish video games. I believe in video games as a force for social change, just as I do television and film. I sometimes wonder, however, whether or not video games believe in themselves the same way.