Writing On The Wall

Another gaming night round at Tom’s place and a variety of titles passed through the drive in order for us to get a taste of them. I usually drive the eight or so miles back from Tom’s house at about midnight. I started to think, somewhere just past the 24-hour Shell filling station, about script writing in games. That evening, I think we’d played three different examples of the craft. Just to explain, I have a thing for script writing and I’ve been trying to do it as a profession for about the last ten years now. Therefore I appreciate some well tuned lines being strung together and it’s not often you get an example of this in gaming.

We racked up the newly released Assassin’s Creed 2 for a blast and possible future review. From the game’s opening I shrug my shoulder slightly as we witness Desmond (again) in a grey science lab (once again). I played the first Assassin’s Creed for a little while and got bored very quickly, the sequel looked like being pretty much the same. The pace quickened, an escape plan is quickly put together and Lucy and Desmond are soon running through the building in a rush for the exit. The highlight of this journey occurs when the pair run through a room full of the same machines that Desmond spent the first game sitting in to activate his memories. It was at this moment that Tom and I wondered what the plural of Animus. We turned to each other, toying with ‘Animi’ or possibly ‘Animuses’. Then the game threw us a hint as Desmond asks Lucy the exact same question before she responds with a quick “Desmond, shut the fuck up”. We got the idea and quickly shut up afterwards.

We played up to the start of the historical levels and were also amused when our protagonist Ezio is trying to climb up to his girlfriend’s window for a night of passion. She says she is tired and our hero proclaims “But my darling, I shall only be a minute”. It was probably my base sense of humour but I couldn’t help turning to Tom and saying something like “Well she’s in for a brilliant night ain’t she”. Ezio is then heard to say “No wait, maybe that came out wrong”.

So in the opening thirty minutes of Assassin’s Creed 2 the game has been on our level and we’ve laughed as a result. I don’t think AC2′s script is designed to provide belly laughs but it was an example of the writing not being weighed down by constant exposition about using somebody’s DNA to act out the lives of their ancestors. Put simply, these small touches drew is in that little bit more.

The next game was a wild card I admit but, as I explained to Tom, it’s impossible for me to ignore a game entitled ‘Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper’ so that went in next. As far as the writing goes it was pretty much everything you would expect from watching thousands of recreations of Victorian London in films and on TV. There’s the usual Dick van Dyke style cockney accents all around and I did half expect certain characters in the story to break into song any moment as a result. The thing that really got me though was the fact that Sherlock himself was so terribly overwritten as to be almost a parody.

The opening scene show Watson and Holmes together of a particular evening of not much going on. Watson put the idea forward that playing the violin might be a good idea for Holmes to pass the time. Holmes then goes into the first of many long diatribes about the causes of crime in London. “What dark hearted souls wander through these streets Watson?” he entails “How many cold blooded crimes shall be committed in London tonight?”. Watson has the look of a person who has suffered this before, the poor sod wouldn’t even be getting any achievement points out of this.

It carries on this way through the first hour of the game we sat and played. Whilst other characters will have one or two lines to utter, Holmes takes no prisoners in his recitals as he is willing to bore the pants of anybody who happens to ask him the time of day. The introduction sees The Ripper’s first murder followed by Holmes trying to get his hands on the case notes so that he can start the hunt. For some reason this involves attempting to convince a woman to let her drunken father move back in so that he doesn’t disturb the landlord down the lane which in turn means he hands over the police file that he has found on the street whilst sweeping. Sherlock Holmes, the greatest detective mind in literature, here reduced to errand boy. We switched off not long after.

As the clock approached midnight we slammed in Modern Warfare 2. Up until this point, being the on the pulse amateur games journos we are, neither of us had played what is labelled 2009′s biggest release. From the first opening cut scene it’s obvious that MD2 likes to portray realism with its weapons and vehicles but then throws any of that out of the window when plot comes calling. In the opening couple of missions we found ourselves trawling through the streets of Afghanistan awaiting snipers to come out on every rooftop. It all gets a bit stereotypical America for a while as they blast anything that might be considered a bit different to them and ask questions much later.

We just had enough time to get through the ice level with Soap as well which had its moments of drama mainly with the leap across the gap right near the start but mostly simply served as an excuse to shoot anything that walked, much like the level before only with more ice. There’s not much banter between Soap and yourself apart from him congratulating you for shooting another enemy between the eyes. The script doesn’t make the characters around you seem anything more than one dimensional mannequins with guns in their hands. As such, I found it a little bit hard going.

It was time to go so the gaming was called off for the night. We’d played three distinct examples of different writing styles in video games but each one was probably trying to draw the player into a story. Games developers often seem to compare their creations with movies as far as identification of their characters goes. When you’re in a writing class the first thing you’ll be told is to give your characters faults because nobody identifies with somebody who is perfect in every way. Modern Warfare 2 probably fails on this count judging from what we played through. The second lesson would be not to overload on dialogue which, due to him rattling off entire texts when prompted, Sherlock Holmes falls down on.

So the best example of the evening was Assassin’s Creed 2 as the script seemed sharp, to the point and above all else entertaining which regardless of anything else gamers say must surely be the number one reason for making a game in the first place. The characters of AC2 just seem to be more alive and based in some kind of reality than the examples of the other games we played that evening. It doesn’t seem to be a major rocket science to get a player interested in continuing in a particular world or as a particular character, just give them at least one thing we can relate to.