There’s a line in Gabrielle Zevin’s brilliant novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a multilayered love story about game designers, that shows remarkable understanding of video games and what they do for us. “What, after all, is a video game’s subtextual preoccupation if not the erasure of mortality?”
It’s a connection that Zevin draws several times in her fabulous book, the contrast between the endlessly replayable, replaceable lives of video games and our own real, distressingly fragile mortal lives.
Almost all video games involve death, yet few of them are about mortality. I doubt many eight-year-olds playing Mario are comforted, on a conscious level, by his essential invincibility; the idea that no matter how many times you fling him accidentally down a chasm with a mistimed jump, he revives cheerfully at the most recent checkpoint. But even when I was a child I found something soothing in video games’ assertion that if you tried hard enough and did everything correctly, you could always evade death. It’s a kind of magic trick that the best-designed games play: death can’t be entirely meaningless or a game feels inconsequential, but if the results of failure are too bruising then you’ll put your players off.
Games that break this gentlemen’s agreement about mortality – that death is never too consequential – are often especially impactful. The first time I played thatgamecompany’s Journey (spoilers for a 10-plus-year-old game incoming), I got the feeling about halfway through that death might be waiting for me at the end no matter what I did. It had an interesting effect on my play: free from the necessity of avoiding death, I lingered more. I played more, spent more time running around with the other players who would briefly appear in the desert. When my avatar eventually collapsed on the side of the mountain, I was moved, but I also felt weirdly accepting. Journey (pictured above) is a beautiful take on the old maxim that life is about, well, the journey – because the destination, for all of us, is always the same.
Then there are the games that use death as education, where each failure brings you closer to overcoming something, either in the game or in yourself. Dark Souls and its stablemates are famous for this approach now – their infamous difficulty belies that dying in these games isn’t a punishment but a learning experience, and once you know what you’re doing, you can rely significantly more on your knowledge than on your reflexes. This was also the approach of many games in the 1980s and 90s, which weren’t afraid of killing off players repeatedly, trusting their tenacity and curiosity. But over the 00s, the prevailing game design wisdom became that one should avoid frustrating a player at all costs – so much so that when Demon’s Souls arrived in 2009, and thought nothing of dispatching players 10 times an hour, it felt like a revelation.
The decisions game designers make on how to utilise, embrace and subvert death fascinate me. In earlier games, the only thing you’d feel when your character died was irritation, but now developers have found many ways to attach meaning to it. In Rogue Legacy, your descendants inherit both your loot and your traits, making death a step forward (the odd random genetic mutation notwithstanding). In the Xcom series (pictured above), you grow more attached to the soldiers you command over time – so while losing some Norwegian rookie in their first mission barely stings, losing the veteran Egyptian colonel who’s dragged your squad through most of the alien invasion makes you want to howl.
If most games at their core are about the erasure of mortality, a way to forget about death for a while, it’s a real act of subversion to make a game that actively tries to get you to think about it. Old Man’s Journey is one of these, a short tale about an old guy with regrets; another is Before Your Eyes, a game whose message is that you might not know how much time you have. Journey probably made me think about death more than anything I’d played up to that point; what stays with me now is its ludic expression of the idea that other people can come in and out of your life, and that even moments of fleeting connection are beautiful.
What to play
I admit that this is a second-hand recommendation, but a friend who recently played the short narrative title What Comes After (pictured above) told me that it made him want to fling open the doors of his house and run at the wonders of the world anew. It’s about a depressed girl called Vivi who finds herself on a subway train full of ghosts on their way to the afterlife, and it gently prompts players to reflect on their feelings, be kind to themselves, and appreciate what’s in front of them.
Available on: PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch
Approximate playtime: 1 hour
What to read
A few more entries in our summer games preview series have gone up, profiling some of the most interesting forthcoming games: Malindy Hetfeld introduces us to swashbuckling simulator En Garde; Julian Benson asks Creative Assembly how they’re bending history to give us an up-close look at ancient Egypt’s downfall in Total War: Pharaoh; and Lewis Packwood investigates the return of Prince of Persia (pictured above). Check out the whole preview series here.
If you have kids who play Roblox, it’s worth being aware of the Roblox casino sites that journalist Cody Luongo has recently reported on, some of which are offering Roblox influencers a bunch of cash to promote them to the game’s predominantly under-18 audience. Ew.
Xbox has created a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand tie-in abomination: a controller that smells like pizza. I am struggling to think of anything less appealing.
A nostalgia trip here from NoClip, the video game documentary makers who are working on an archive of historical video game material: a high-quality video of Sony’s infamous 2006 E3 press conference, where the PlayStation 3 was announced at a then-inconceivable price of $599 US. Also worth watching for the infamously awkward “RIIIIIIDGE RACER!” moment.
What to click
EA Sports FC 24: the Fifa follow-up brings women’s football and slick play styles to the fore
Pikmin 4 review – a gardener’s fever dream
‘We’ve created this beautiful community’: how Covid changed video game streaming for ever
Question Block
Plenty of you responded to last week’s question about about RPGs that aren’t fantasy or sci-fi. First up is reader Tom:
“I couldn’t help but notice that in answering Dale’s question you seem to literally describe Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines [above] as your ideal RPG! I’ve not actually played it myself (awks) but it is one of the most well-regarded RPGs of the 3D era, and now quite playable.” You are right, Tom! I’ve also never played it, because I was holding out for the sequel, but that’s been in development hell for so long that I’m not sure it will ever see the light of day.
Tom adds: “I’ve always considered a role-playing game to revolve around narrative quality and how involved I felt with the characters (‘Did I mentally play a role while playing this game?’), rather than the game mechanics … For present-ish day amusement I suggest Beyond Good & Evil, games Eliza and Catherine – and I squeeze some contemporary roleplaying out of games like Transport Tycoon.”
Sarah has some more great recommendations: “How can you answer the question about non-traditional RPGs and not mention the OG, EarthBound? (Or its spiritual heirs, Undertale and Deltarune?) Also have to make a plug for the much less well-known but equally deserving indie RPG Get in the Car, Loser!, about an alternate universe road trip. I’m more of a JRPG player myself, but I do think Vampire: The Masquerade at least touches on your RPG wishlist.”
If you’ve got a question for Question Block, just hit reply to this newsletter. Even if it’s a stupid one. Especially if it’s a stupid one.
