Fragments of Him

I recently played a couple of hours of the 2016 game Fragments of Him. Well, I say 'played'. I'm not sure that's the right word. I sat at my PC and prodded my mouse every now and then, and things happened on the screen in response. If that's playing, then that's what I did. But that could also describe updating my accounts in Microsoft Excel, so I'm not so sure.

Fragments of Him is one of those arty, story kind of games that I theoretically love. I like the idea that games are growing beyond simple definitions and opening up new worlds of experience for those playing. I like that these games are challenging the very notions of 'play' and 'game' and forging new paths. It's interesting and it's clever. One day we'll probably look back and see these games as the first stumbling steps along vital new paths.

So. I theoretically love it. But it's also true to say that I theoretically hate it and think it's stupid and was bored out of my mind.

Here's how the game works. You are in a 3D environment. A kitchen, maybe. A college dorm. The street. You can move around this place, like a slow moving ghost. Sometimes you can see your character, who stands, frozen in time. If you click on your character, they fade out of existence and reappear a little further along their path. You can sometimes click on objects too. Each click pushes the story on a little further, but it's not a story you can in any way control. You are not there. You are merely observing things that happened.

Do you want to click on the chair? Or the sofa? Thrill to the interactive power.

The voices of the characters come out of nowhere, narrating this story, as if remembering it. I think the idea is that a bunch of people are remembering the life of the main guy - the 'Him' of the title. And you are seeing these memories. It's basically a story that you can wander around in. Occasionally you can click on a thing - like a cup - and it will disappear. This is extent of the thrills the game has to offer.

It's a good story, though. It's about grief, and loss, and about the way we remember people once they die. That's a noble aspiration for a game and I can see why they didn't try to make it a first person shooter. Fun as shooting games are, they don't really lend themselves to an examination of the complexities of  the grieving process. Anyone remember this, from Call of Duty?

Yeah... thanks, Call of Duty. Incredibly moving.

I found the stories in Fragments of Him believable and sad. They explore emotions and situations that don't often find expression in games. And there is something quite hypnotic and beautiful about the stillness of the scenes. The aesthetic works with the theme and creates a definite mood, which I'm guessing is the intention.

But as a game, it is boring. There is literally nothing to do. Clicking on things triggers the next bit of the story, and that's it. That's not good enough, in my eyes. I admire the ambition to take games beyond basic themes of conflict and conquest. But I wonder - where is the ambition to find game play to match these concepts?

Why does a move away from basic emotions also mean a move away from game mechanics? Are the two so inextricably linked? If the Devil has all the best tunes, does it also hold that FPS games have all the best mechanics?

I don't think so. I think there must be mechanics that would articulate a more subtle, nuanced side of the human experience. Things that address complexity without sacrificing 'play'. Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest is an interesting example of how to express depressive behaviour through a simple mechanic. Check it out - it's free, here. But there's a long way to go. 

Speaking of depression...

One little side note, before I go. As I was playing Fragments... I was also dipping in and out of Assassins's Creed: Black Flag. Readers of my last blog may remember that I wasn't getting on with the game very well, and was calling it all manner of names. 

Well. I have only become more angry. Having played Fragments of Him one afternoon, I moved onto the console to cheer myself up. "This will be better," I thought, "I'll blow some ships out of the water." For all its faults, Black Flag does offer some very gratifying ship-to-ship combat. A perfect, kinetic antidote to all the stillness and grief.

But it was not to be. I hit one of those points in the game where you are suddenly not a pirate any more. You are a regular guy, in an office, in the future. And so I had to endure a long period of gameplay where I shuffled around office carpets, heading for little glowing beacons as the game dictated. I don't know why. There was a voice burbling away in my ear, explaining some kind of plot. But I was angry that I wasn't being a pirate, so I ignored it. Stupid voice.

It didn't matter, as it turned out. All I had to do was shuffle from point to point. Once I reached the glowy marker, some tedious dialogue happened. I didn't listen to it, and it didn't matter.  When the dialogue finished, another marker appeared, somewhere else, for me to get to. 

I realised that this was no different from what I'd been doing in Fragments of Him. OK, the graphics were loads better, and I was actually moving my character about. But the essential 'play' was identical. I was following a series of prompts,with no freedom to deviate, so that their story could play out. And it wasn't even a good story this time.

I'm not sure what the moral of this is. There probably isn't one. But games need to sort their act out with this sort of thing. I'm here to play. I'm all for you trying to tell a story. But you better start working out how to make that story something I can do, rather than something I have to endure.