Believe it or not, I've spent a fair amount of time in recent years, not playing games, but rather thinking about whether or not I should bother playing games anymore. Even with the ones I've really liked the last few years, like Civ4, Bioshock or The Witcher, I end up putting my time in and then asking myself, "was it worth it?" And it's not that the answer is always no, but I think the fact that I feel the need to ask myself the question is telling. Sure, I can get lost in playing Civ4 for days on end if my job and role as a parent didn't prevent that from happening, but when I finally turn away from the screen I don't necessarily feel like I've really gained anything.Every so often, however, I'll play something that reminds me why I play games. You see, I'm all about the story. I think the one constant in my development from young'n to kinda sorta being an adult is my love of a good yarn told well. I think when you're exposed to a story and characters that, for whatever reason, are able to communicate to you and allow you to get lost in them, well, they become a part of you forever. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. One person's Citizen Kane might be another's Batman and Robin. (I'd say and vice-versa, but come on. Nobody liked Batman and Robin.) The love/hate relationship the masses have had with the latest Indiana Jones flick is proof enough of that.
Getting caught up in a story, I think, happens more easily with non-gaming media (books, movies, TV, even music) where you're just along for the ride. But a good game can accomplish just as much as any of these other mediums. When it can, it's even better than those mediums because, in its own way, it's happening to you. You're not just along for the ride anymore. After more than 20 years playing games, it's the ones with stories that ensnared my sense of wonder that I remember. X-Wing may have been a better space dogfighting sim than Wing Commander, but decades later, I remember the Wing Commander storyline (and the game) more fondly than I remember X-Wing (which was a great game too).
If a game can call me back to it because I simply have to know what happens next, just as I might stay up far too late to digest just one more chapter of a good book, then it's hitting my narrative g-spot. Baldur's Gate II remains my all time favorite game, in part, because it is the most epic title I've ever played. It's characters weren't just portraits off to the side of the UI,
they were people with histories and their survival mattered to me. Likewise the quests let you feel like you made an impact on the game world and that you weren't just doing them to gather better arms and more experience. Ultima V, despite the archaic graphics of the time, still allowed a willing mind to run wild. Lord British is missing? The eight virtues of the Avatar perverted? Your heroic companions of Ultima IV in hiding? Just what has happened to my Britannia?It's been awhile, though, since a game really was able to grab me on that kind of level. Bioshock came close, but in the words of Ken Levine, at the end of the day it was really, "just a shooter." Ultimately, I still think its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2, was a more memorable game. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion never really gave me a game world that I could feel a part of, even if the world itself was a breathtaking place to explore.
I was beginning to think that perhaps I'd changed, that my ability to sink into these places and become a part of them had been lost to a mind that had to worry more about making sure the kids were eating their dinners and that the mortgage got paid. Despite having a computer and three game consoles that do get used regularly, more than once I've wondered if I shouldn't just close it all down.
Then, along comes a game like Mass Effect and the feelings brought on from playing games like Wasteland and Planescape: Torment are suddenly rekindled. I hear the voice of James Earl Jones at the end of Field of Dreams, saying, "It reminds us all of what once as good and can could be again." Okay, yeah, he was talking about baseball, but the axiom still holds.
Yesterday, I finally got in a good, long marathon session of Mass Effect and the short version of my impressions can only be summed up as this: I love this game. I play it and I remember why, at 34 years old, I'm still playing games and why I'm not going to stop anytime soon. It's a fully realized world with three-dimensional characters that are almost instantly compelling. And it makes me feel like I'm a part of it, that I'm not just grinding out experience so I can improve my character skill set. Since this post is already pretty long, I'll just leave it at that for now. I'll do a real impressions writeup between now and Tuesday morning.
Oh, and I'm embedding the following video again because there should never be a reference to James Earl Jones without it coming up:
