Pixel
Obscura:
Sudden Histories
|
Vol.
2, Issue 9
January 24, 2000
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What is
very clear is that in Unreal Tournament the instructive
back-story is first and foremost meant to be evocative, a laying
on of atmosphere. To make this work is no easy task; such a technique
could easily become melodramatic to the point of being silly or
flashy, insubstantial, pseudo dark poetry crap geared to get points
on the “hip” scale. The bit works in UT because
it’s kept simple and direct, the rapid yet steady delivery
matched to an equally brisk, controlled visual pace. The unfolding
narration even manages to maintain an ever so slightly creepy
edge, like listening to a distant radio broadcast in a dream where
every little thing seems to be a clue to some unfathomable mystery.
“...what
was, what will be and what is may yet fall under the shadow”
The
Wheel of Time takes a necessarily different approach. Having
been adapted from a series of books and being a game based around
an epic storyline as opposed to Unreal Tournament’s
local color, Wheel of Time’s history lesson covers
far more narrative ground. The piece opens with a working out
of the equation of history, myth and legend, a kind of cosmic
“let’s get this straight” before proceeding. It
seems that long ago the world experienced an age of legend, a
time when humanity attained a dazzling level of harmony and metaphysical
control. Certain people developed the ability to channel a kind
of primal energy and before long one woman misused her powers,
unleashing a great evil on the world. Although in time subdued,
this fiendish presence left a parting gift in the form of a curse
that drove the male channelers insane and nearly destroyed everything.
We open sometime later during a period of general unrest. Now,
I’m leaving out a lot of details because it would be silly
to dawdle but also because my point is that there are indeed so
many details.
The opening
is bogged down by the weight of the game’s own history, giving
the whole thing an almost comic air of self-importance. Fantasy-esque
games are always in danger of this sin, caught between wanting
to take their own convoluted plots seriously and having to because
if they didn’t everyone would be rolling in the aisles. I
don’t mean that as a cheap shot as much as a recognition
of just how difficult juggling sword and sorcery stuff can be
(all that Magmus, son of Flogmarr, keeper of the keys of Pentoozler
jazz has a dangerously high scoff factor). The problem is that
WoT seems to be struggling with the material, combining
weak animation and standard fantasy images with a hard to follow
recap that even the gorgeously measured tones of Discovery Channel
regular Ed Green can’t bring to life. Considering the fact
that they’re compacting an entire series of books into a
few minutes, they do an admirable job of streamlining, but that
doesn’t keep WoT from suffocating under its own ponderous
narrational shadow.
These
sudden histories, while pretty popular in video game cinematics,
are no easy tool to master. An instant back-story, inflated with
all the time it takes to moistly grow one of those shrunken sponge
dinosaurs, can give a piece a self-assured ratta-tat-tat that
sweeps the viewer along in its narrative folds, never letting
go before depositing you, breathless, in front of the game. It
can also, however, prove be a crippling mistake, burying an opening
beneath a retarding layer of informative blubber.
Actually,
the funny thing is that even when done well sudden back-stories
feel rushed and a little empty. Perhaps it’s time we had
that three-hour epic, that unselfconscious (and unashamed) challenging
and embracing of the medium on its own terms, a video game vision
of art cinema. We can only hope.
-
Joshua Vasquez is the resident film critic here at loonygames.
He also writes for the Internet film site Matinee
Magazine.
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