Journey
Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2012 11:58 am
Soon after I arrived in Tokyo I befriended a waitress named Yuki. I'd been to her cafe a few times before, so Yuki had had the chance to scope me out from a distance - in telling this story later she mimed a pair of binoculars - and she deduced that I was probably not a threat. I was working on my laptop and she was going round the shop polishing tables and straightening cutlery, looking a bit bored, when she came cover to me and said: "Do... you... speak Japanese... language?" I didn't then, and my situation now is not much improved. But she wanted to practice what little English she knew, and so we became friends.
The thing is, I have no idea what Yuki is really like as a person. I know she likes Harry Potter and hats and bad Ghibli soundtrack remix albums, and collects ET merchandise, but beyond that she is a mystery to me. She might be a vegetarian. She might be afraid of televisions. She might be a super-genius, or pitifully dim. She might be adopted. She might mock the disabled. She might donate to charity. She might have a criminal record. She might be gay. She might be a kawaii neo-Nazi. She might talk with a funny accent or lisp or speech impediment that earns her the mockery of her colleagues. I have no way of discerning these possibilities. Once I asked her what her favourite animal was and she said "Sailor Moon." Our relationship functioned on the basis that we had no way to talk to each other and therefore had a lot to talk about. We were unified by our impassable language barrier. We spent hours teaching other words or cracking up over unsalvageable communication breakdowns. ("Communication breakdown" is a phrase she continues to say at the earliest hint of misunderstanding.) We had an uncomplicated friendship based on gestures and context. I miss her a lot.
OK, so there's this game called Journey...
I don't care much about spoilers. I don't get why people are so precious about them when without context they are mostly meaningless. I will go out of my way to avoid big twists - things the creators would ideally prefer me not to know - but read up on basic stuff like mechanics and premises and characters without caring. If something major is spoiled for me, I rarely find it significantly impacts my interpretation or enjoyment of the work. But if you haven't played Journey yet, don't read anything below this paragraph. The whole game is built so much on the idea of discovery it really is best to know as little as possible. I knew very little more than that it looked really pretty, it came out yesterday on PSN and that several people who know my obstinate asshole tastes went out of their way to tell me to play it. This is one case where I think if I'd known anything more - even something as basic as the gameplay premise - it would have significantly damaged my experience. In my opinion, there are only three things worth knowing to the new player: 1) It's best to play it as soon as possible so you have a greater chance of playing it with people who haven't played it before; 2) You can control the camera with the R-stick as normal, which the tutorial doesn't teach you for some reason; and 3) It's the best thing I've played in years, and it reminded me why I shouldn't hate video games, as much as the industry conspires to incite me to do so.
If you must know at least the basics: Journey is the new game from thatgamecompany, who made Flow which I didn't play and Flower which I found boring and fiddly. Journey's like those games in that it's beautiful and minimalist and 'arty', but different in that it's third-person with avatars and an implied narrative and therefore more my cup of tea. (It's possible, I think, to trace this breed of minimalist arty platform things back to Ico, maybe the first game to make 'design by subtraction' a conscious aesthetic choice rather than a response to tech limitation.) Despite what the open desert environments suggest, it's very linear; I was worried it was going to be one of those 'playground' games where you have to make your own fun - I have never been convinced by this sort of thing - but you're guided by a subtle hand throughout. There are no puzzles, only very simple find-the-thing-and-go-somewhere-else tasks. The platforming element is basic to say the least. You can't die and there's nothing to fight or kill. But it isn't a totally relaxed experience, and there are times of high tension and drama. In fact, I don't know if I've played a game that's wrung me through such emotional highs and lows.
Obviously it's beautiful. I love the spindly-legged grace of the player characters, the sense of scale, the way sand sweeps and shimmers, and the gradual shifts between colour palettes. The graphical tech is simple compared to the pyrotechnics of Uncharted's photorealistic setpieces, or the tears of David Cage's latest weeping tech demo whore, but Journey looks infinitely better than both of those games for the strength of its art direction that emphasises abstracted style over realism. You can't animate these robed figures 'wrong'. Their sense of movement is extraordinary. Your first experience is to trudge slowly up sand dunes, but with their speed and fluidity and rapturous sensation of flight, later sequences reminded me, of all things, of classic Sonic Team, or Panzer Dragoon.
So, OK, the really big deal is that you don't make this journey alone. This is an absolutely fascinating and unusual take on multiplayer gaming, and the bit that moved me the most. On your journey you just bump into other little robed figures controlled by other people whom aren't identified until after you finish the game. Never more than one person at a time, so as to better enforce that essential feeling of mutual dependency and kinship. You can't chat on keyboard or microphone, and there are no taunt or gesture animations; in fact, you can't communicate in any way other than to press the 'sing' button, which has the dual purpose of, well, singing, and recharging each others' jump bars (represented, of course, by your scarves). You never have to do anything complicated, so this inability to communicate is never frustrating. Instead, it's liberating. Journey has undone two decades of ugly online multiplayer culture. No names or tags, no emoticons, no scores, no ranks, no competition, no clans, no trading, no show-offs, no griefers, no spammers, no racism, no misogyny, no Xbox Live trash talk, no n00bs - the very concept makes no sense in a game like Journey. Instead it's a game that seems to bring out the best in people. I know that sounds nuts but it's true and real. This is the most powerful online multiplayer experience I've had since the day PSO's servers opened.
It's amazing how many meanings that 'sing' button encompasses. Just as the early stages emphasise discovery and excitement, your every button press comes to mean "cool!", or "hey, look at this!" by virtue of the context. As the mood slowly darkens, they come to mean "shit! run!", "stay with me!" or just tiny, comforting sounds. When I became separated from my partner about halfway through, I experienced genuine distress and waited around for ages looking for them. If you accept that the coming and going of companions is part of the design of the game - rather than interface inconveniences, like trying to get enough people together for some Halo - then moments like this emerge organically as 'real' game content. It is impossible not to feel elation whenever you spot a stranger in the distance after a lonely patch, or distress when you are separated. In the penultimate chapter, my companion was knocked back by a dragon; I immediately leapt after them, losing some progress as a result. There is little mechanical incentive to stay with others and this grand act of self-sacrifice was driven by my need to stay with them and my empathy with their virtual suffering. When, a little while later, we became separated in the race to the mountaintop, I found my companion waiting for me. If I were a lesser man I would have shed a tear.
The game's good, OK! Any of you other cats played it yet?
The thing is, I have no idea what Yuki is really like as a person. I know she likes Harry Potter and hats and bad Ghibli soundtrack remix albums, and collects ET merchandise, but beyond that she is a mystery to me. She might be a vegetarian. She might be afraid of televisions. She might be a super-genius, or pitifully dim. She might be adopted. She might mock the disabled. She might donate to charity. She might have a criminal record. She might be gay. She might be a kawaii neo-Nazi. She might talk with a funny accent or lisp or speech impediment that earns her the mockery of her colleagues. I have no way of discerning these possibilities. Once I asked her what her favourite animal was and she said "Sailor Moon." Our relationship functioned on the basis that we had no way to talk to each other and therefore had a lot to talk about. We were unified by our impassable language barrier. We spent hours teaching other words or cracking up over unsalvageable communication breakdowns. ("Communication breakdown" is a phrase she continues to say at the earliest hint of misunderstanding.) We had an uncomplicated friendship based on gestures and context. I miss her a lot.
OK, so there's this game called Journey...
I don't care much about spoilers. I don't get why people are so precious about them when without context they are mostly meaningless. I will go out of my way to avoid big twists - things the creators would ideally prefer me not to know - but read up on basic stuff like mechanics and premises and characters without caring. If something major is spoiled for me, I rarely find it significantly impacts my interpretation or enjoyment of the work. But if you haven't played Journey yet, don't read anything below this paragraph. The whole game is built so much on the idea of discovery it really is best to know as little as possible. I knew very little more than that it looked really pretty, it came out yesterday on PSN and that several people who know my obstinate asshole tastes went out of their way to tell me to play it. This is one case where I think if I'd known anything more - even something as basic as the gameplay premise - it would have significantly damaged my experience. In my opinion, there are only three things worth knowing to the new player: 1) It's best to play it as soon as possible so you have a greater chance of playing it with people who haven't played it before; 2) You can control the camera with the R-stick as normal, which the tutorial doesn't teach you for some reason; and 3) It's the best thing I've played in years, and it reminded me why I shouldn't hate video games, as much as the industry conspires to incite me to do so.
If you must know at least the basics: Journey is the new game from thatgamecompany, who made Flow which I didn't play and Flower which I found boring and fiddly. Journey's like those games in that it's beautiful and minimalist and 'arty', but different in that it's third-person with avatars and an implied narrative and therefore more my cup of tea. (It's possible, I think, to trace this breed of minimalist arty platform things back to Ico, maybe the first game to make 'design by subtraction' a conscious aesthetic choice rather than a response to tech limitation.) Despite what the open desert environments suggest, it's very linear; I was worried it was going to be one of those 'playground' games where you have to make your own fun - I have never been convinced by this sort of thing - but you're guided by a subtle hand throughout. There are no puzzles, only very simple find-the-thing-and-go-somewhere-else tasks. The platforming element is basic to say the least. You can't die and there's nothing to fight or kill. But it isn't a totally relaxed experience, and there are times of high tension and drama. In fact, I don't know if I've played a game that's wrung me through such emotional highs and lows.
Obviously it's beautiful. I love the spindly-legged grace of the player characters, the sense of scale, the way sand sweeps and shimmers, and the gradual shifts between colour palettes. The graphical tech is simple compared to the pyrotechnics of Uncharted's photorealistic setpieces, or the tears of David Cage's latest weeping tech demo whore, but Journey looks infinitely better than both of those games for the strength of its art direction that emphasises abstracted style over realism. You can't animate these robed figures 'wrong'. Their sense of movement is extraordinary. Your first experience is to trudge slowly up sand dunes, but with their speed and fluidity and rapturous sensation of flight, later sequences reminded me, of all things, of classic Sonic Team, or Panzer Dragoon.
So, OK, the really big deal is that you don't make this journey alone. This is an absolutely fascinating and unusual take on multiplayer gaming, and the bit that moved me the most. On your journey you just bump into other little robed figures controlled by other people whom aren't identified until after you finish the game. Never more than one person at a time, so as to better enforce that essential feeling of mutual dependency and kinship. You can't chat on keyboard or microphone, and there are no taunt or gesture animations; in fact, you can't communicate in any way other than to press the 'sing' button, which has the dual purpose of, well, singing, and recharging each others' jump bars (represented, of course, by your scarves). You never have to do anything complicated, so this inability to communicate is never frustrating. Instead, it's liberating. Journey has undone two decades of ugly online multiplayer culture. No names or tags, no emoticons, no scores, no ranks, no competition, no clans, no trading, no show-offs, no griefers, no spammers, no racism, no misogyny, no Xbox Live trash talk, no n00bs - the very concept makes no sense in a game like Journey. Instead it's a game that seems to bring out the best in people. I know that sounds nuts but it's true and real. This is the most powerful online multiplayer experience I've had since the day PSO's servers opened.
It's amazing how many meanings that 'sing' button encompasses. Just as the early stages emphasise discovery and excitement, your every button press comes to mean "cool!", or "hey, look at this!" by virtue of the context. As the mood slowly darkens, they come to mean "shit! run!", "stay with me!" or just tiny, comforting sounds. When I became separated from my partner about halfway through, I experienced genuine distress and waited around for ages looking for them. If you accept that the coming and going of companions is part of the design of the game - rather than interface inconveniences, like trying to get enough people together for some Halo - then moments like this emerge organically as 'real' game content. It is impossible not to feel elation whenever you spot a stranger in the distance after a lonely patch, or distress when you are separated. In the penultimate chapter, my companion was knocked back by a dragon; I immediately leapt after them, losing some progress as a result. There is little mechanical incentive to stay with others and this grand act of self-sacrifice was driven by my need to stay with them and my empathy with their virtual suffering. When, a little while later, we became separated in the race to the mountaintop, I found my companion waiting for me. If I were a lesser man I would have shed a tear.
The game's good, OK! Any of you other cats played it yet?