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Friday 7 March, 2008
Gameplay
After trying my hardest to play the game the "real" way, i.e., react as I would if I were actually in the situation, and finding myself either ignored or punished by the characters, I opted for the "fun" way on subsequent plays. I've tested out nearly every curse word, every innuendo, and every ludicrous thing I could think of. Interestingly, not only does Trip and Grace's apartment lack a bathroom, they don't even seem to know what one is. I only succeeded once in convincing them to say something about food, but the AI cut the line short due to conflicting reactions, so I may never know if you can get them to feed you. I spent one run through standing in the hallway, insisting that THEY come to ME, instead of the other way around. Trip came out of the apartment, picked me up, and carried me to the front door, just so he could slam it on me. Oh also, if you botch up the first line, as I mentioned in the previous post, and get the door slammed on you, if you're fast you can rush into the apartment before the terrible collision detection catches up to you, and, if you so wish, the evening can proceed normally from there. But who would wish that?
The reason why playing this way is more fun than playing the real way, the bizarre reactions of the characters aside, is because the real way involves a completely linear progression that the night HAS to follow. There is some variation in what the characters say, independent of the player's choices, and when exactly each stage happens, but the distinction between each phase is so distinct the game might as well be broken up into levels. But I suppose that would break the Facade.
Any attempts to make real small talk, talk about yourself, or shift the subject at all from the vapid, predictable drama the characters engage in is met with confusion, frustration, or ignoring, on the part of the characters. The fact that the story progresses so quickly (an entire run through takes about 5-10 minutes, which means by minute 2, you're already knee deep in their emotional garbage), makes it feel even more unnatural. I tried my best on my first run through to claim myself neutral, stated clearly that the conversation was making me uncomfortable, and that we should talk about something else. Trip's response was "What? Come on, we're talking about Grace right now. Let's stay focused on the issue at hand."
Design
This game, on the surface, seems like something groundbreaking. "The computer actually listens to you, and exerts social reasoning!?" The sad truth is that, yes, that WOULD be groundbreaking, but that's not what's happening here. When the designer of this game gave us a lecture on narrative, he insisted that the right way of going about telling a story was not with "pixel collision" triggering off pregenerated elements of story, and that his game was the first move away from that paradigm. Yet all he's done is replace "pixel collision" with keyword collision. Instead of "If player kills X, reveal story element Y," or "If player enters room Y, reveal story element Z," it's "If player types 'sex,' play offended reaction." Granted, this is a more complex if-then statement, because the computer has to decide first if the character is offended, then which line of dialogue they've progressed to, and then how the overall story is effected by this. But the fact remains that each of these elements is pregenerated, and simply awaiting the correct collision to play them on the screen.
Not to mention the fact that this isn't even a new idea. Text based games, or interactive fiction, is one of the oldest kinds of video games. If this game were not graphical (and to be honest the characters are so ugly and the movement of your avatar so clumsy I almost wish it weren't) then it would bring nothing new to the table. Indeed, it would probably be blasted, because the quality of the fiction is so terrible. It doesn't even feel interactive. It's more like an "observed fiction" with occasional, optional interjections by the observer.
The influence you have on the story is so limited that the characters actually verbally sum it up for you at the end of the night. "You said I suck, you said Grace is stupid, you said 'Yes' (this is one is actually in there--a response to a question you're asked that is constantly and awkwardly referred to in this exact way: "Remember when you said 'Yes'?" "So anyway, about the fact that you said 'Yes.'") This completely transparent narrative "influence," means this game essentially boils down to a "choose your own adventure," where the "adventure" is the mundane at best, annoying and self-involved most of the time, marriage of some rich, spoiled, American nobodies.
I'm going to echo what I said about Shenmue here--we have a game that wants to be story-centric, and character driven, with a boring, broken story, about boring, stock characters. However, while I could say of Shenmue that at least the new elements that game introduced helped develop the state of video games as a whole, I certainly hope that future games will only use the somewhat unique thing Facade has to offer (its conversation engine) as an example of how NOT to execute social or dramatic interaction.
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