Nostalgia: You'll Never Feel That Way Again

Another few months later and my previous intended blog post is already out of date.  Well, screw it.  Onward!

Nostalgia.  That word that I discuss endlessly with my friends.  It's something I fight and push back against in almost every discussion about games, yet I can't help that part of me loves it.  Both the fight and the thing itself.

Nostalgia is the longing to return to an earlier time in your life.  Often it's about when we're young, and the nostalgia for the things we had when we were younger is often the strongest.  It's a pair of rose-colored goggles: making everything so much warmer and happier than anything ever could be again.  I look back on some of my favorite games and have to admit that nostalgia is the thing that made it so great.

Some new video games (or "new" as the case may be) can invoke a feeling of nostalgia, that oh so nice longing for a better past.  But no game you ever play will give you the same feeling as that older game.  Not even if you play the same game again.  It's always different; feelings of nostalgia are tinged with the fact that it's not that same first time, and new games are entirely new experiences themselves.

And the reason I fight it is that if you're looking to make a game, or discuss a game to another person, nostalgia is all but useless.  If you're making a game, you can draw upon your nostalgia to know how to appeal to others who share it, but that'll always be limited, and never surpass the original.  And nostalgia isn't something transferable to another person.  Even if they have similar tastes as you, talking about nostalgia just leaves a certain amount of distance that opens no new doors to discussion and closes others.  So "It's all about the nostalgia" is a pretty weak thing to say when you're trying to explain away design flaws or shallowness in story.

And the thing that irritates me most is that nostalgia cripples our ability, including mine, to look back on games ourselves.  The ability to objectively judge a game's flaws and merits will always be reduced, at least somewhat crippling our ability to learn how to do better.  And I'd say it reduces the quality of analysis that can be done as well.  Look at history.  Little can be learned from the terrible mistakes of our past if we pretend it was all roses and dandelions.  How we approach video games might not be losing as much as history, but the basic mistake is the same.

Reality: Trail of Tears

Nostalgia: Thanksgiving

There are games from my past I love so much they give me shivers when I hear their music or play through certain parts.  The Legend of Zelda Oracle games, Golden Sun, Wind Waker, the original Halo, and more.  I still love these games, and I occasionally return to play them.  But whether trying to figure out how to make a game myself or discussing the literary merits of games, these are the games I avoid most.  I may point out specific things from them, but even then...  Those rose-colored glasses make it really hard to know when there's real stuff to be said or it's just the nostalgia talking.

Now, this has been mostly negative, and I don't think that nostalgia is all bad.  But when so many people will happily proclaim that the best of this series or that series is a game decades old...  It just saddens me.  And what's worse is when people happily proclaim that no game could ever surpass game X!  We're on the cutting edge.  There are so many new games to explore and so many new games to be made.  It's hard to make progress when things like "best game ever" are determined by the median age of the game playing populace more than games' merits (literary or otherwise).

Nostalgia should be something we look back happily on to enjoy now and then, but always with hope that something new can be great enough that it can beat those old games.  We shouldn't look back on those games and say with disappointment, "Wow, I wonder why no games can make me feel like that anymore."  That's just a great way to end up disappointed.  Learn well from the past, as there's much to be found there.  But trying to recapture nostalgia isn't the way to learn, and holding onto it like your only life-line to a happier life is even worse.  Enjoy them, but keep them in their place: a happy moment from the past.

We should be looking ahead, trying to find new experiences that are completely different from those old nostalgia-causing games, and hope to surpass what we've done in the past.  Whether game maker or game player, it's up to you.  It's up to all of us.  We need to avoid falling into the traps of playing and making games to capture old feelings, and instead, play and create to explore the vast and awesome possibilities ahead.

The future is bright. Let's chase it. Even as we enjoy our memories of the past.

Suicide Mission: Defending Mass Effect 3's Ending

This blog started out as a school project that I expected to continue even after the class was done and over with.  Several months and zero posts later, I realize that I rather sadly let it fall by the wayside.  But this is something that should not die, and since there’s a big online discussion about something I care about, now is a perfect chance to discuss real game criticism, so it’s time to get this blog going again.

That thing is the ending of Mass Effect 3.  If you’re reading this and somehow know nothing about the internet craziness surrounding Mass Effect 3’s ending, you’re probably reading through backlogs or something.  Because if you’re reading this at all near the time it’s posted, you’d have to be living on the moon to have not heard about it.

While this discussion will necessarily lead to spoilers, several points can be made without them.  I won’t necessarily speak for the sites I reference, but the first three points spoil nothing about the content, only certain conceptual flaws, which some might not want to hear.  And yes, I’m defending the ending.  There are flaws, and I may revisit what I think are the most significant another time, but I think the ending is amazing despite those flaws.

First of all, there’s various theories out there about the ending that are very interesting and would not have happened without such an unusual ending.  In particular, the often mentioned indoctrination theory documented well on the Bioware forums is very interesting.¹  The existence of this and other theories and all the work and thought going into picking apart Mass Effect 3 (and even previous games) is absolutely incredible.  This is the kind of thought that I’ve been talking about and Bioware’s ending inspired this.  If that isn’t praiseworthy, whatever the other flaws may be, you cannot turn around and say video games are art, as this is exactly what we want see if video games are indeed art.

Secondly, Bioware has already announced an “extended cut” on their blog that is meant to address one of the main flaws: the lack of closure.  Whether or not this will fully mitigate that flaw will depend on the future, but we haven’t seen everything there is to see.  Also, if you object to the extended cut itself, note the beginning of the article on their blog mentioning it (linked below)²:

“An official press release went out today announcing how we are re-prioritizing the Mass Effect 3 post release content schedule to provide a more fleshed out experience for our fans.”

(emphasis mine)

Re-prioritizing is not the same as adding to their post release schedule.  This sounds much more as if this was already planned, was considered less important and pushed to the back of the schedule, and then that was re-evaluated.  In that case, it is not in any way reducing their artistic integrity.  Only Bioware knows what their intentions actually are and were, though, but I’d tend towards giving them the benefit of the doubt considering their previous work.

Third.  Disregarding the lack of closure and coherency (the other major flaw in the ending), it is incredibly well put together.  The music, the cinematics, the voice acting all remain just as good as the rest of the game, if not better at some points.  And if you’ve played the game, it goes without saying that the rest of the game was executed extremely well.  Flaws aside, many of the technical aspects are great examples of how the ending should work.

*****   Spoilers for all three games start here   *****

Fourth, what people normally deem “the ending” isn’t what we should be calling “the ending.”  Is the ending of Mass Effect just the stuff after the Saren boss fight (the choice between Anderson and Udina)?  Is the ending of Mass Effect 2 just the final conversation with the Illusive Man and the big rush back to the Normandy?  I’d say no.  If you disregard the latter part of Ilos, the battle around the Citadel, choosing whether or not to save the council, and fighting Saren, Mass Effect’s ending was crap as well.  Same thing if you disregard everything in the suicide mission up to the final rush.

If you’re going to talk about Mass Effect 3’s ending, you should include everything from when the fleet arrives at Earth through the rest of the game.  The entire arrival cinematic was a massive nod to your choices.  The conversations with your various squad mates and the distinct lack of certain people like Mordin, Kaiden/Ashley, and more (possibly a lot more) is the culmination of three games worth of choices.  And all of that is beautifully executed.  But for the sake of argument, let’s even set that aside and focus on the events after Shepard is knocked unconscious by the Reaper.

Fifth, the final sequence is by no means artistically bankrupt.  But since this is already rather long, I’ll leave that for the next post.  That’ll be a full post of in-depth analysis on what the game means if the events are taken at face value.  And even the fact that such can be done demonstrates that the final sequence isn’t artistically bankrupt, and if so, the end has some merit, especially during a time when video games are only just beginning to be recognized as worth the effort it takes to get some meaning out of them.

1. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/355/index/9727423

2. http://blog.bioware.com/2012/04/05/mass-effect-3-extended-cut/