The profound and the heart stirring

After exhaustively looking at the quality of "epic" in games, I have come to one obvious conclusion... I obviously want to create a masterpiece. I think this is the desire of many people looking to get into the game industry. Creating the ultimate escape, an amazing sprawling "living" world, an unforgettable piece of entertainment. Something equivalent in scale to, say, The Lord of The Rings movies to the film industry.

The difficulty in the current video game climate is that so many games have already come and set and reset the definition of epic that any attempt to do the same requires much more effort (and about 5 trucks full of money). Even so, I think it's possible, and I really really want to do it.

This is one of the main reasons I want to get into the games industry: to stir people's hearts to hope. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I think the gaming medium possesses the power to present a powerful uplifting message to its audience. Many games have proved their power to affect already using different contexts, such as the surging feeling of triumph at the end of Final Fantasy VII. But I'm more looking for a different emotional response. I'm looking for a reflective poise, creating excitement and awe, and perhaps a bit of old fashioned compassion and love.

I've been thinking much about how I'd actually go about this. Perhaps excitement is the easiest emotion to create in a player, and also one of the most necessary to maintain to preserve a state of flow. One way I thought of doing this outside of an enjoyable combat system (which I have mentioned in earlier posts), is by having a single or group of incredibly adept enemies who are constantly portrayed as being extremely powerful. At random points throughout the game, they would appear and cause some massive event of destruction or, by their very presence, inspire curiosity and fear. Yet, the player would not be able to attack them right away. I think this constant teasing of these powerful enemies would lead to an incredible sense of excitement when they finally appear in the last few hours of the game, ready for battle. The vision I have is of a now highly skilled player completely focused on the task of destroying these enemies that have constantly been in their mind during the game. This would be the use of narrative to reinforce this emotion.

I think a sense of awe could be conveyed in a similar way. These rival characters may be extremely powerful, in that they launch the first truly devastating attack in the game, perhaps in the scale of a nuclear warhead. Large environments in the context of a raging world war with one-to-one player combat would cause any player to feel part of something bigger. The reward system in the game would be crafted to allow players to develop an even greater skillset than the initial attacks of these rival opponents, perhaps increasing speed to blinding levels or attack radius to entire cities. A war-driven narrative on such a scale must be complemented by a brilliant soundtrack. None of this MIDI stuff. Let's get some great orchestral pieces in the making. Each piece would need to be carefully fine-tuned to perfectly blend with the gameplay, to create a piece of machinery which redefines the gob smack.

Here's the hard part. Love? Compassion? Reflection? How do I get a player to feel these emotions, or run these thoughts? Gameplay would probably not be the best tool here. "Shake the Wii Remote to propose to her". "Press A to voice the voiceless". Probably wouldn't work. As much as I'm not a fan of the game, I think GTA4 is on to something in the lead protagonist of Niko. He's certainly not the perfect guy, but he has been crafted with a wit to make him lovable, a past to create immense intrigue about him, and also the ability to receive consequences for direct player actions. This means that players instantly have a strong character which they can either relate to, or use as a digital representation of themselves.

A strong protagonist like this would be the most effective method to convey these emotions. However, where Niko has his own weird gangster story, the lead character in my game/s would need to face problems more common to those in our society. Perhaps then players would resonate in themselves with the protagonist's crises of love, or the decisions they make in the face of difficulty, or the solutions they find. Perhaps in this way a player may be affected in these "unusual" ways.

Actually, I'm quite glad I've been given an opportunity to think about affect like this. Games certainly contain a lot of power to convey strong messages, as well as much potential which probably hasn't fully been realised. It's only a matter of time, and I hope I'm there to be one to usher it in.