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.

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

I am, at the time of writing, 13% of the way through Assassin's Creed, Black Flag - Ubisoft's 2013 game where you run around being a pirate and doing pirate stuff. I know I'm 13% through, because the game tells me, on the loading screen. 13%.  I like that. I'm the kind of person who always wants to know the running time of a film, or how many pages there are until the next chapter of the book I'm reading. I don't know why, but I find it comforting to have a sense of where I am in relation to the end.

13% isn't very much, though, is it? I feel like I've been playing for ages. I'd like to be a bit further of the way through by now. Which kind of suggests that I'm not enjoying myself all that much, doesn't it? When I was playing Dishonoured 2, I was sad at the thought that the game would ever end, because I was having such a good time. With Black Flag, I'll be kind of relieved to have finished. It's the kind of game I want to have played, rather than one I want to actually be playing.

It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. 

Actually, that's not fair. I am having fun. It's a sunny, colourful game with lots of nice little features and a satisfying level of bloodlust. I've just played for a good three hours and I was happily engaged all the way through. It's just that there's something missing and I'm not sure what it is.

It's possible that there's just too much going on. So, for example, I'm really enjoying the ship to ship combat. I get to be in charge of a pirate ship, sailing through excitingly real-feeling waves, blasting away at other ships. It's very well put together, in terms of gameplay. The waves swell up and plunge down, spray smashing over my ship as I try to haul it around so we can fire more cannons at the other ships. There's a satisfying weight to the controls as I wrestle against the ocean, and there's immense satisfaction in seeing my cannonballs smash into an enemy vessel.

But that's just part of the game. I've also got to do missions on foot, where I creep about trying to murder people. That's the "assassin" bit, from the title, I guess. Though what my "creed" is, I'm not sure. I seem to assassinate people pretty indiscriminately. Plenty of guards who are, presumably, just doing their jobs, die horribly as I pounce out of a haystack and murder them to death. I'm not sure that's a 'creed'.

This guy probably has a family. Now he'll have to explain to them where his knees went.

So, there's two very distinct modes of gameplay. Which is OK, I guess - they seem to be part of the same world and there's a visual continuity between them. But it does feel a bit like two different games. And then there's all the other millions of things you need to do. Following guys sneakily. Chasing after guys, noisily. Climbing things. Searching for treasure. None of these things are terrible, but they do sort of dilute the gameplay and make me wonder what I'm actually doing. There's one bit of gameplay where you have to hunt animals and use their skin to craft new items. Am I an animal assassin, as well, then? What's your focus? Although, it must be said, I do take some pleasure from the achievement you can get, with the truly amazing name "air assassinate an ocelot". It's fun to say out loud. Try it.

The very worst thing - which thankfully has only happened once so far - is the bit where the game suddenly flips away from the pirate scenario and dumps you in an office. That's right - an office. Suddenly it turns out that I'm not a pirate. I'm a guy in an office, doing a simulation of being a pirate. A woman comes up to me and takes me on a tour of the office, explaining how I'm excellent at doing pirate simulation stuff. I mean... what?

At one point we get to a lift and she says, I kid you not, "Why don't you call for the lift yourself?" Well whoopy doo! A moment ago I was a Pirate Assassin, controlling a big beautiful ship through tropical waters. Now I'm being given the chance to press a button so a lift comes? Are you out of your minds?

"No, no, you're right - this is just as much fun as sailing a pirate ship in the sunshine."

I'm aware that most, if not all, of the Assassin's Creed games have this central conceit where you are just a guy in the future, interacting with a machine that lets you pretend to be in the past. Who on earth thought this was a good idea? I'm already a guy in the future, using a machine to pretend I'm in the past. That's my actual life. I don't need you to remind me! It strikes me as weirdly timid, as if the game is ashamed to admit that really we're just all being very silly and playing games like children.

So. My initial experience of this game is that there's lots of fun things to do, but not enough commitment to the idea of a pure game experience. It seems to have trouble settling in one place. Having just played through Dishonoured 2 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, both of which I loved, I feel let down by a game that should be so much more. When it's good, it's great. A moment sailing at night, with the moon reflected in the gently undulating waves beneath me, was truly beautiful. There's brilliance here, let down by a lack of courage.

But hey. Maybe it all kicks in after 22%, or something.