So, the ash first – I mean, I know the Icelanders got stitched up over the money their banks went out and lost, but calling up Norse divine wrath seems a bit OTT as a response. Or maybe it was the trolls, sick of all the bad press they get in World of Warcraft. Anyway, it’s ensured that Yours Truly is stuck here in Frankfurt for at least the next few days, until either the planes start flying again or the massive overload on surface travel ebbs enough for me to get a seat on a train heading home. And they say last time this particular volcano got its erupt on, it lasted, on and off, for well over a year. Oops.
Oh well, look on the bright side, maybe it’ll lead to a bit of global cooling, and some intelligent political decision-making on investment in rail transport. (Hey, ya gotta dream, right?)
Truth is, I really shouldn’t bitch and moan too much – I have a lovely room in a great hotel, overlooking the river from the 11th floor, and Spring has hit the city of Frankfurt with flawless blue skies, brilliant sunshine and temperatures somewhere in the mid twenties. Plus, if I’m still stuck here on Monday, I can always go into Crytek and talk to the level designers some more (it’s been one of my favourite things about the Crysis 2 project, watching how something I’ve written gets crafted into beautiful CryEngine-rendered life). These are, as they say, Uptown troubles.
Also volcanic this past week or so has been the reaction of various video game fanboys to my dissing some of their beloved game franchises in interviews during the Crysis 2 preview event in New York on April 6th. I have received actual hate-mail for the first time ever, my favourite exemplar of which came from Iran and signed off with Screw You Damn – something which made the old EFL instructor in me twitch with the desire to tutor for better scatological effect. Ah well, nice effort anyway, and in fact somewhat more polite and coherent than some others purporting to be from native speakers of English. Hell hath no fury like a fanboy of a video game franchise scorned, it seems.
What’s slightly less amusing, though, is the way in which the gaming press has taken a series of freely expressed opinions from me, borrowed selectively for negative content, created misleading titles around said comments and so bolted together an image of me as some arrogant interloper who thinks my writing is superior to anybody else’s working in games. This process reached a head yesterday when Koku Gamer started openly misrepresenting my views on the game Uncharted 2 by substituting the views of another, entirely different person working at Crytek and claiming his opinions were mine. The good news is that the view they’ve claimed I expressed is so diametrically opposed to other well-reported comments I made about Uncharted 2 (in short, that it was superb), that Koku are just going to end up looking like the fuck-wit lying assholes they clearly are. In the meantime, just so there’s no confusion, here’s a quick rundown on what I really did say that day (and a half – interviews spilling over as they did into the morning of April 7th):
1) Yes, I was immensely disappointed with Modern Warfare 2 – my feelings on playing the game did indeed run to Jesus, guys, what have you been doing for two years. The story-telling was dreadful – incoherent, implausible and lacking in resolution – and the game was essentially just a bunch of unrelated mission levels. Yes, it was a massive step down from its predecessor, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in pretty much every way. (Corollary to this, and going pretty much unreported, was that I was immensely impressed with Call of Duty 4. You know, guys, hence the disappointment.)
2) I loved Uncharted 2, building as it did on an already very impressive first game. Unqualified admiration for the story-telling in both cases: I Am A fan. Believe nothing to the contrary.
3) I didn’t like Halo. I didn’t think it was bad, I just thought it was average. But what I did think was that it was a game filled with bullshit archetypes and bullshit gung-ho dialogue. (Going unreported here was the fact that I said the controls (in Halo 3 at least) were beautifully balanced and intuitive, and the game was pretty to look at; but then the same can be said of Tetris, and in fact that’s about the level of emotional affect the Halo games delivered for me (full disclosure – I only played 2 and 3))
4) I loved Bioshock. (unreported so far is my opinion of Bioshock 2, so brace yourselves; doubtless the negative will be accentuated there as well, so let’s sort that one out ahead of time – I thought the gameplay in Bioshock 2 was much improved from the original, there was some excellent development and re-design of the dynamics in the first game, some really smart thinking had obviously gone into it; the story-telling, sadly, was crap, and I also got the distinct impression that there’d been a decision made somewhere to pull a lot of the genuinely disturbing elements of the first game – which is a shame because disturbing was pretty much the whole point of the original.)
5) Killzone 2 - it seems I’m down as slagging this one off too. Odd, because so near as I recall, the only thing I said on the subject was that I’d seen some alpha stage graphics of Crysis 2 and to my eye they looked better than the graphics for K2. And I picked K2 for this comparison because, on the list that the journalist in question offered me, it was the only game I had actually played. But by then we were on this Morgan slags off games roll, so that counts as dissing, apparently. Go figure.
6) Batman Arkham Asylum – I thought the game play dynamics were superb, it’s about the only title that has ever made me enjoy melee combat as the mainstay of a game, and there was a whole bunch of innovative other stuff in there as well. The artwork was pretty cool too, most of the time. But the story-telling was, as they say, for shit, and the characters were the very worst of infantile cardboard comic-book caricature. And in the case of the females, we’re talking cheap and sleazy sexist beyond belief, an effect which lent the whole game the unfortunate whiff of some sad adolescent male’s wank fantasy. Needless to say the only part of this that got reported was the bit about slagging off the cardboard characters. Well, what can I say – you’re going to tell me they weren’t?
Okay, that, I think, is about it. Pretty much all the other games I mentioned – Max Payne, Doom 3, Half Life 2, The Suffering, Mini-Ninjas, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, The Darkness, Dead Space, Portal, F.E.A.R. – I was pretty uniformly complimentary about. Which may of course be why my opinions on them haven’t been reported very widely. Hate, as yellow press writers have long known, shifts way more copies (and these days scores way more hits) than love. I should have been smart enough to know these guys wouldn’t be any different.
Dear Morgan mister,
I replying to commentzs made from Iranian friends and to tell you we not do all speak English so bad. Also, COD4 I agreed was also best game in this gamerworld excepting for fact that this gameplay is only for killing Iranians. I am disappointed by this but also is good practice for enemy inversions. I just pretend they are killing other crusader enemies. You can guess.
Another. HALO is shittest. I again say – OVERRATED CRAP ITS EVER.
If you not did know this, Batman gay is. There no is problem I think for you.
When you come to Iran for speaking tour? If not, then all can I say is you screw damn.
I live in Kew on the LHR flightpath and I’ve woken up to birdsong for the last few days. If that means you have to stay in Frankfurt for a few days more, consider it a sacrifice worth making.
best
ravs
I knew you’d set the record straight.
Still, any post-internet institution that focuses on adolescent boys as their primary demographic is not gonna embody the height of journalistic integrity. Just not gonna happen – ’bout as likely as the Pope marrying that young bishop he’s been eyeing since his first days in the Vatican.
I will say that your involvement with Crysis 2 may actually move me to try it out. Didn’t feel the pull until I saw your name attached. And I’m glad that an author I respect is actually exploring the future of storytelling and not just commenting on it. Keep it up, man.
Hope you make it home safe from Germany.
Screw the press, we all know they are muck raking liars anyways. I can’t want for Crysis 2, It can’t help but be better by your influence.
Most of what you said there I can’t argue with. Halo on the other hand has been the only online multiplayer FPS’ on a console besides Modern Warfare 1/2 that were even worth playing. It doesn’t seem like you get into/have time to play the multiplayers too much either so its pretty much a moot point. Resistance Fall of Man for PS3 was a decent shooter with an above average storyline for the video game genere as well. The second one…not so much.
You ever get around to playing Mass Effect 1 and 2? You are a pretty harsh critic because what’s in your head is pretty damned good so not sure if you would enjoy them both but they are worth checking out. PC or Xbox.
I never thought I’ll be bying Crysis 2 but I’m considering it now. Let’s hope they improved the gameplay because the first one was horrible, in fact it was the gameplay that made me throw it away (and it was so early in the game I don’t know how good was the story).
It is sad but nobody cares about game storytelling, especially the game producers. You have to be one mean bastard to make them spend resources on something that does not sell the game in the end.
Hey Ravs – that’s cool, I feel a whole lot better now.
Birdsong over Heathrow – sounds like something out of a Wyndham novel, doesn’t it. The rattle of triffid pods next…….
In all seriousness, though, it does give you some sense of how completely even minor natural hiccups can shut down human civilisation. Makes you wonder how we’d all cope in the event of a genuinely large volcanic event…..
@ Jordan – yeah, it’s more than I dare risk to get hooked on multi-player; I already burn through way too much of my time on single player games as it is. Multi-player would eat my life.
Haven’t played ME 1, and I stalled out in ME2 – my problem is, I hate dialogue trees; I find them clumsy and unsatisfying. I think until we develop the technology for you to speak direct to NPCs in your own voice, it’s really better to shoot for either fixed RPG style character interaction (albeit with flexible options built in) or try for protagonist-silent FPS elegance along the lines of things like Half Life 2.
So, what you’re telling me is you only went and missed BRMC at the Barras?! THEY were volcanic!
In a couple of weeks I’m flying off on my first sunny hol in 5 years and you say it could keep spewing ash for a year? Oh oh…
I would probably agree with most of your opinions. I’ve really fallen out of gaming the last several years because I’m getting tired of feeling like I’m playing the same game over and over. The graphics and scenery can often be beautiful, but so little effort seems to go into actually creating a story or characters.
My favorite game of all time is “Max Payne,” and I wish developers would have learned more from that game. It was innovative, creative, and kept me drawn in on many levels. I get excited every time I hear a “Max Payne 3” rumor, but all I’ve received is one hell of a crappy movie. Oh well.
“Modern Warfare” and “Halo” are pretty entertaining from a multi-player standpoint, but when I have to play single-player I tend to get bored fast. I haven’t had the chance to play “Uncharted.” And I thought “Batman: Arkham Asylum” was a cheap rip-off of Grant Morrison’s amazing graphic novel. If I had never read the novel, I might have enjoyed the game more. Who knows.
Does the commercial sponsor cheerleading that passes for the game press even count as yellow journalism? If I was a libalious muck raking second string scandel chaser I’d be offended by the comparision.
Actually I feel you let the gaming industry off too easily. Over the last ten years the gaming industry (with a few notable exceptions) dropped intellectually to the lowest common denominator. Complex challenging storylines and gaming concepts have all but died in favour of childish pub level games and graphics engine driven franchises.
So good give them a good kick. Bring out Crysis 2 and show them how it should be done.
I second Ravs’ comment- I’m sitting under the flight-path for Robin Hood airport (Yeah, it’s in Yorkshire- go figure) and it’s been nice to have a few days of peace and quiet.
Great to hear that you’re at the narrative wheel of Crysis 2, I couldn’t help but feel vaguely disappointed after finishing the first one. It was an amazing technical achievement with some fantastic set pieces, but as a whole it seemed a little SF cliche happy. The same tech. built up around a Richard Morgan plot sounds pretty damn good to me.
Enjoy your impromptu holiday- Spring did hit here too at the weekend, but it was only a swift jab to the face, and now it’s raining again.
Ooh… I missed that Crysis 2 would be one of the games you were doing. I probably wouldn’t have looked at that previously but am interested now.
“… my writing is superior to anybody else’s working in games…”
Haha… of course, that probably isn’t too far from the truth – you’re being far too even-handed about this! And as an aside my quote further demonstrates how easy it would be for you to get stitched up if that were quoted out of the context of this page!
But seriously; how on earth can anyone who has ever played a video game *not* realise that most of the storytelling is dreadful? (Of course it may be that players of games and readers of good fiction quite often aren’t the same people…certainly not the vocal ones anyway.)
Looking forward to this, though, I can dig most of what you say about the games above (the ones that I’ve played anyway) so I’m very hopeful about this!
The other reason that you don’t really want to play online games is: see all the weird trolls that have been flaming you? They’re all on XBox live. A female colleague of mine who is hooked on online games regularly gets absolute fucking dogs abuse from greasy ‘erberts who are scared of women. Some due to their youth…some, well, it’s unforgivable. To her credit, she finds it quite funny. But still. Er, not that you’d get abuse for being a woman (hmmm this has gotten away from me, somewhat) but that’s the level of many (not, I repeat, not all) of thems that you find in a lot of online games.
I agree with most everything you mentioned above excluding the ‘cardboard cut-out’ comments concerning Arkham Asylum, the ‘wank fantasy’ style of the female characters and the cliche villains and story line, I believe are an attempt to recreate the classic, over-the-top, poppy, comic book style of Batman.
Being an avid fan of the comics I had many “oh man this is just like the comic” moments during the game play.
Remember of course that this is the comic batman and not the movie batman who has only recently seen his redemption with the introduction of Christian Bale.
I’ve always found your video game opinions entirely valid. I would even venture, you’re in the minority of people who think of video games as art and that they can tell incredible stories.
I’ve no love for “video game journalist.” The vast majority of which simply copy and paste from other sites then say something snarky. Truth be told, hearing that you were writing for Crysis 2 made it a must buy on my list, not simply because I’m a fan of your work, but because the setting seems like something you’d run wild with and create an incredibly compelling campaign.
@ Richard Palmer
Hey dude, long time. How’s life after Nationwide treating you?
Thanks for the heads-up re MP – I shall continue to avoid…….
@ Aaron
Hmm – you’re not the only person to suggest that “classic comic-book homage” thing as a justification, but I’m not really buying it. First of all, Arkham Asylum is late stage Batman, couple of years after Miller’s Dark Knight Returns triggered the whole revisionist vibe, and penned by one of the darkest-accented writers currently working in comics – so there was really no reason to associate this game with the period you’re talking about. And anyway, if what the makers were after was classic homage, then why not roll all the way back to the original Bob Kane days when Batman used to kill people; it certainly would have made the fiction creak a lot less – all those conveniently stunned henchmen, not one fatality despite all that incredibly brutal melee work.
But more to the point, I think all this begs a massive question – why go back at all? I mean, if you were going to make a game based on The Wolfman, you wouldn’t make it in grainy black and white with really poor special effects just because that’s the way the original movie was. Times change, we all move on, things develop. We have colour graphics these days, and we also have a more grown up attitude to gender roles and representation. Why are we shooting for state-of-the-art in the former, but not the latter? Surely the trick with good art is to move forward, take the old material and do something fresh and contemporarily relevant with it.
The truth is, I think, that the treatment B:AA got was carefully (and, I think, fairly cynically) calibrated for maximum sales to the same market as every other superhero adaptation in recent times – teenage (or teenage-tender grown-up) comic-book fanboys nursing a brittle masculinity that would shatter apart if it ever had to cope with the real world. Thus we get:
1) The good ol’ wholesome violence vibe – savage combat, no blood or visible damage, just neatly unconscious bad guys. You can almost see the little tweeting birds.
2) The really rather unpleasant sexual politics – woman as out-of-control temptress or dim, giggly slut, both needing to be slapped down by a strong masculine hand and put back in their cages; the only woman close to our hero is crippled, in essence surgically removed from any possible physicality.
3) The imagery oozing with suppressed sexuality that dare not speak its name – Harley Quinn’s pneumatic breasts wrapped around a thick penile cable she rides upward, whooping; Poison Ivy’s anorexically accentuated crotch gap as she turns away from the camera and sashays away; Batman grasps a phallic vine end, and Ivy moans and writhes as he squeezes it. And so on. I mean, come on, talk about a lack of class……
To this, I would only add that the game did contain a couple of weak gestures in the direction of the ambiguity at the heart of Morrison’s original AA, but they were rapidly stamped down as soon as they emerged, presumably lest they actually trigger the thought processes the original was channeling and in any way undermine the superhero vibe. Can’t have that, not least because, let’s face it, any Batman game that really shadowed Grant Morrison’s writing would pull a nailed-down dead cert. 18 certificate right from the start. And clearly we couldn’t have that!
I love Tetris!!
Ahem. Well, I do.
If you are the proud owner of an XBox 360 (yes, I can own it and be proud, I’m French, we have no shame), there is a little gem called Lucidity on the Live Arcade, that has superb graphics (a sort of watercolour feel, simply stunning) and a very simple gameplay (add objects to a little girl’s stroll in the woods so she doesn’t fall). Compelling as heck.
And more constructively, there is a game that I keep coming back to, for the visual, gameplay and story parts – Mirror’s Edge. Come on! A whole game you can finish without firing a single shot? Big round of applause from me. Plus the guys you knock out don’t stay out for sixteen hours straight as in BAA (feels like we just sheeped Batman). You just hit them and run away as fast as you can. I think it deserved far more success than it gathered.
As for gender… Funny enough, when I started playing World of Warcraft, I rolled a female character. To quote PvP : “If you’re going to stare at [buttocks] all day, at least make it pretty ones.” So people started talking to me like I was a female IRL. And I didn’t deny. So everyone was very helpful. Again, maybe the French thing. And WoW, as most MMORPGs I tried, has a totally bias-free gender content. Male or female characters get treated exactly the same. Well, maybe except by Trolls, but everybody knows their type…
So maybe gamers are ready for more adult, “enlightened” characterization. In some parts. Japan still churns out “Bayonetta”-like anatomical impossibilities, and peeking-panties fighting games. So maybe characterization has to do with a gap between american- and european-produced games. I really don’t know.
To react on Batman, though: anything remotely resembling Arkham – the comics – would simply have been too psychadelic to play as an actioner. A point and click, maybe, could have made it justice. But honnestly, would any of us have tried it?
‘Peeking-panties fighting games?’ They have a sub-genre for everything these days! I love the description (especially when I say it in a Japanese accent!).
@Richard
Hey, yeah, very well, thanks. It’s good to be away from financial services. Plus I get to wear corduroy *every* day!
And @Richard + reference to @Cedric P
Something occurred to me after I made my post. I stand by my original comment about multi-player. I think that it’s rather like some big online forums (have a look at CiF on the Graun’s pages; actually don’t – it’s horrible) where, naturally, not all the readers/contributers are awful, but the unpleasant ones are vocal and loud with it making the atmosphere toxic for everyone.
However, I think I should have qualified my comment better (it’s mostly based on my experience of online shooters). Some areas of online gaming, I’m given to understand, are generally less awful – Cedric makes a good point about MMORPGs – I’m not familiar enough with them to speak with authority, but they are social, so I can believe that teenage-style dickery is less well-tolerated. For me the issue is more the level of time one has to invest in them to really get the most out of them.
I *have* played Left 4 Dead, though. It is on a smaller, mission-based scale, collaborative too. I can’t think that I’ve ever seen anyone act like a real asshole on that (and if it happens, it’s certainly the exception and not intrusive in the way that I’ve seen it in other places.) But not all MP is collaborative and the collaborative stuff tends to demand a little more of your time, so it perhaps becomes a trade off?
Hi Richard,
just a short off-topic question. Do you have any news about the Altered Carbon movie?
Are you planing to write another Takeshi Kovacs novel?
The steel remains rocked hell, I cant wait reading the dark commands.
Greatings from Germany
Well, MMORPGs (I have played Conan, LOTRO, WoW, Tabula Rasa, D&D, Wharhammer, to mention only the ones that remained on my hard drive after the trial period) have more than their share of toxic players, but I never felt it was gender-related. I don’t think the gender issue ever embitters human-human interaction. I always found RPG stores are like sex-shops in that aspect: let a woman come in, and the whole ambiance changes.
Er, or so I’m told, obviously.
But the way women characters are portrayed is something else altogether. I’ve realized after posting how insulting my post could seem about American/European game development. So let me clarify before jumping on a plane to kill me – too much of a hassle these days.
Europe – what parts I’ve seen of it anyway – has a special approach to the gender issue. We claim to be all for equality, but… but deep down, we know it’s not there, and we’re actually happy about it. Not in terms of superior/inferior, just different/different. So people have a gender, and mostly it’s not a factor.
So since we’re not all the time making an issue of not mentionning the fact that this or that person is a woman, we have less to exteriorize when we think up fictional worlds and people. So we make up characters, and some are women and some are men, but we don’t necessarily make them into stereotypes.
Here, that’s what I meant. I hope that spares my life for a while.
I was beginning to think I was the only person who had played “The Darkness”.
It has to be one of the most under-appreciated games I’ve come across. The thing that makes it for me, trying not to spoilerise too much, is completing the game and thinking: “Well, I’ve beaten it but, I don’t know if I’d call it victory”
OK, I’ll never post a YouTube link here again, I swear, but this is soooo right on the nosey. Richard, maybe you’ll like Master Chief better now…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lImmAYeXx4&feature=player_embedded
For me, a great video game is made with a great story. If there is no story to the game, then the game is mindless button pushing and nothing more. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were not the worst I had ever seen, but I can definitely agree that the campaign story lacked any serious resolution. It is fortunate for the game developers of COD that the games appears to be more loved for its multiplayer aspect than the campaign. Even I like the multiplayer aspect.
I have also played most of the more popular MMORPG games on the market. The stories aren’t fantastic, but they have the ability to evolve. However, the population of MMO players seems to mostly be jerks. I think this is largely because if anyone talked to me that way face-to-face, in reality, I would break their nose. It must make them feel better about themselves… It brings me back to thinking about the “Lose It” article.
It was Alan Watts that had said, “Although we build things of substance, it is the emptiness we use.” In my mind, we always focus on anything negative said. Maybe that is only cultural to the US of A, I really couldn’t say for sure.
I am sorry that I am not an english major.
Finally started Bioshock 2 this weekend, and I think you’ve nailed it. It’s also made me realize how much “narrative” there was in the first game’s progression of environments and eyeball kicks — the art in BS2 is still very good, but the levels so far don’t have near the individuality or atmosphere. Interesting to think about from a writerly perspective — you hear a certain amount of talk about setting in SF it’s usually treated as static.
Agree with you about Halo’s characters, too — I think the writing peaked with the Arbiter / gas giant level early in Halo 2, and even that was pretty archetypal. 3 was just a clusterfuck in plot, pacing and especially characterization. Not that I wouldn’t like to read J.G. Ballard’s take on what fucks up the Master Chief so badly, psychosexually speaking, that the love of his life is an untouchable hologram, but much as I like the Bungie guys I don’t think we’re going to get that from them.
Nice worldbuilding, though.
(Did you play ODST? Still a long way from brilliant, but they were trying a little harder. And personally I found the sneak/snipe resistance fighter gameplay fit my style better than taking on waves and waves as an overpowered badass.)
Glad Crysis 2 is going to be on the 360 — wasn’t even on my radar till they announced you were involved (well-timed announcement, too, I’d just finished re-reading Black Man), and now I’m really looking forward to it. Wouldn’t be looking forward to having to buy a new PC to play it.
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
First, sorry for my english im not a native-speaker at all.
I wanted to thank you for keeping alive the science-fiction genre in the literature, in my country is regards the same at fairytales and child storys wich is quite sad. Im a writer myself. You have some excellent and imaginative material out there, and other not so good but hey i assume you are the kind of intelligent man who accept critics.
I wish you had do a good work keeping the spirit of the original Crysis (like Nomad straighforward military personality that is a great part of the character , the suspense and the raw action) and enhancing it with your great talent. Is for certain we need a more emotional story and better villains. Is my favorite game in the world, and im absolutely love games. So is a very important thing to me you know.
By the way what do you think of the story of the metal gear saga (it have some themes in common with crysis, the use of techonolgy in the future of military and the stealthy gameplay i think)?
Take good care of yourself, you have my best regards from spain.
Im not convinced TBH but interesting comments. Just my opinion, but a few more pics would have been nice.
viola… appreciate you for blogging about this. You make me the lucky person today…
So they bailed on finishing the original island storyline so you could write for the game and create simplistic aliens that look like carbon copies of creations from Metal Gear Solid, Battletech, AREA 51, Quake etc? That’s really poor. Crysis 2 is only possible because of the sales of Crysis and Crysis: Warhead which were on the PC. PC gamers are going to judge your storytelling capabilities very hard. If you fail, they will let you know. Steam will a buzz with reviews for starters. When you call other people’s writings crap you better be able to back it up with superior writing of you own.
You are warned.
-tremble-
Max Payne is my favorite game and i also like the movie.’,”
Any WoW gamers here?
You make some good points in your blog. I know how you feel. I have added you to my favorites
I like Batman Arkham Asylum especially because of the game play dynamics.
Thank you for the reviews!
I agree, the dynamics are absolutely fabulous for Batman Arkam Asylum! I also like the soundtrack!
Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to assert that I acquire in fact loved account your weblog posts. Any way I will be subscribing in your feeds and even I success you access consistently quickly.
I was very happy to search out this internet-site.I needed to thanks in your time for this wonderful read!! I positively enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to take a look at new stuff you blog post.