Review - Enslaved: Odyssey to the West

The apocalypse is all the rage these days. Blown up, devastated, ruined, and post-nuclear worlds are as inescapable as the inevitable doom these glorious nightmare scenarios envision. It seems there’s something about imagining humanity’s demise that has captured our collective attention of late.

We’ve squeezed the apocalyptic fruit of so much juice that it seems to have nothing left to give. The apocalypse has become boring. How’s that for strange?

Enslaved manages to infuse this overdone concept with new life by abandoning the bland brown grit traditionally favored as the end of the world’s color of choice. Instead, it opts for a greener palette, one that sees nature as regaining its rightful control over the land after humanity has made itself scarce. 

While Enslaved dazzles with its unique setting, it decidedly lacks a historical focus. Those hoping to learn the details of this world’s downfall will be disappointed. Enslaved plants its foot firmly in its fictional present and you learn little more than vague hints of backstory throughout the course of the adventure.

The game finds its true strength in its characters. The world sometimes seems a confusing jumble of disparate elements, full of lush greenery and sentient robots alike, but the characters you encounter along the journey, while few in number, will quickly endear themselves to you. By the end of the game, you’re sure to care far more about the people than the land. 

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Mass Effect 2: Achievements and the RPG Experience

I can honestly and proudly say that I am not addicted to achievement points. I am not one of those poor souls who dedicates his entire playing experience to squeezing out every last point possible and doesn’t give up until every tedious, impossible task is done.

That simply doesn’t appeal to me in the least.

I’m not immune to the allure of the points, however. I know how satisfying it can be. I am aware of the double edged sword they can present. At their best, they give you incentive to play the game in fun ways you might never have thought or bothered to otherwise. At their worst, they lure you into wasting your time doing boring, unnecessary crap just for the increased achievement score.

Basically, my interest in points extends exactly as far as that line of boredom and insanity. I will happily chase a few points for fun, as long as it actually remains fun.

But I have recently realized that even my merely casual affection for the points can have a greater influence on my game playing than I thought.

The original Mass Effect contained a good number of fairly interesting cast members. This should have been a good thing, but the game’s structure combined with those blasted achievement points actually turned it into a negative for me.

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Mass Effect 2: Friends or Foes?

My gigantic assembly of party members in Mass Effect 2 has me a little perplexed.

See, I like them all. They’re a fascinating bunch. Even the evil bastards that I don’t agree with are interesting (I’m looking at you, Jack).

But I can’t help but think that there’s something missing.

This is not a comment on the quality of the characters themselves. I have previously said that I think Mass Effect 2 has a high quality cast and I stand by that statement, but something feels off about the assembly.

It took me a little while to put my finger on it. My moment of revelation came when I finally got my old friend Tali back in my party again. It was nice to see a familiar face.

And that’s when it struck me. I don’t feel any camaraderie here. We may be a bunch of capable individuals working toward the same goal in a broad sense, but I wouldn’t dare call us a team yet. Hell, the only people I even trust so far are the two that were with me in the last game. I guess newcomer Jacob seems like a decent guy. Cerberus goon though he may be, his head seems to be in the right place at least. Miranda, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. And she’s not the only one.

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Mass Effect 2: The Beginning of a Journey

I have previously confessed to having an unusually strong attachment to fictional characters that is both troublesome yet wonderful, depending on the situation.

Despite my overly sympathetic nature, few games manage to go beyond this superficial attachment and produce genuine affinity for the character.

Dragon Age, with its supremely personalized nature and ability to role play to a surprising-yet-still-limited degree, is one example. This helps explain my roller coaster of emotions toward the end of the game: I actually cared about the character I was guiding there.

It may not come as much of a surprise, then, to hear that the other example that springs readily to mind is another Bioware game: Mass Effect.

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Unreasonable Attachment

[Note: I don’t like to allow myself to get personal or introspective in my blog posts. It’s not what I’m comfortable writing about or what I think others find interesting. I’m allowing myself this particular indulgence because it’s something that’s important to me and at least somewhat ties in with my normal post topics of gaming and stories somewhat. I’ll try not to make this type of post a habit.]

I am increasingly becoming more and more aware of the fact that it seems to be strangely easy for me to attach myself rather strongly to the characters in the stories I consume.

I believe that a part of me has known this about myself for quite a while, but it is only recently that I am really beginning to understand this phenomenon and what it means.

My clue to this little quirk first appeared when I was younger. Whilst watching movies, I slowly learned that anything sad or touching would seem to affect me far more than other people. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have been able to state it quite so clearly at the time. I just knew that these endings stuck with me and bounced around in my head for far longer than I thought they should.

One slightly embarrassing example I remember was the ending to The Parent Trap. Yes, the cheesy children’s movie starring a young, pre-career flameout Lindsay Lohan.

 
Shut up. I was young and didn’t know any better.

Anyway, and consider yourself spoiler warned if this particular cinematic masterpiece is on the top of your Netflix queue, the film involves two twins who were separated at birth and find out about each other, then they switch places to... fuck with their parents or something. I don’t really remember.

What I do remember was the inevitable happy ending where the two girls were reunited and together again and their parents were back together and everything was happy and magical and awesome.
For some reason it really struck a chord with me and I just couldn’t stop thinking about the ending to that damn movie. I didn’t even think it was a particularly terrific movie at the time, but I couldn’t get the ending out of my head.

This is the earliest example of this phenomenon that I can currently recall (though more than likely not the first time it has occurred) and the pattern has repeated itself plenty of times since.

It’s to the point where my current relationship with stories that carry any sort of emotional weight is tenuous at best. I even go so far as to consciously avoid anything that I know ahead of time might be sad or hard to watch or touching.

Not because I won’t enjoy it, but because I know I won’t be able to get it out of my head. I won’t be able to stop thinking about it. I’ll obsess over it and possibly even become slightly depressed over it for no apparent reason.

This phenomenon extends to games and other forms of media as well, and as The Parent Trap proves, the story doesn’t have to be a particularly good one.

This weird quirk’s reach even goes so far as to force me to become overly attached to characters that I create in the frameworks of in-game creation systems. I have been playing with the same character in Rock Band since the original game came out (around a year and a half ago) and even had an overly expensive figurine made of her via Rock Band’s web site.

I worry about what my increasing fondness for The Sims 3 might do to me. I’ve already had to turn aging off, because the idea of one of my virtual creations getting older and actually dying terrifies me. I’m having to slowly wean myself off of micromanaging every aspect of their lives because I don’t want anything to go wrong.

It even spills over and affects my actual play style in some cases. Only recently have I made the connection, but I now believe that my aversion to being “evil” in games with a morality system isn’t due necessarily to my inherent goodie-goodie nature, but rather to the fact that I latch onto the characters in the game and become overly empathetic to them to the point where the idea of doing harm to them actually bothers me.

Hell, even when reading web comics (a mini-marathon of Questionable Content caused me to write this post in the first place) or experiencing other seemingly silly things that other people wouldn’t even take seriously, I find myself strongly latching onto characters and not wanting to let go.

I don’t want to make this sound like a bad thing, as honestly I’m not sure what kind of thing it is. I have only recently figured out exactly what was going with myself in this regard and am still working through all of its implications and meanings.

Even with all of the apparent downsides this personality trait brings, it also means I can empathize with characters strongly and enjoy some stories on levels that a lot of people may not be able to, which I think is a plus.

Of course, it also means I get attached to crappy stories, mediocre characters, and RPGs I don’t intend to finish, not to mention that I have trouble letting story points go, getting past sad events, and getting myself to even experience certain things because of my foreknowledge of what they may contain and how it might affect me.

What I still don’t know about all of this is why.

Why am I so much more fond of nonexistent characters than other people seem to be? Where did this come from? Is it bad? What does it say about me?

Perhaps that’s a can of worms I don’t really want to open.

What I do know is that it makes watching, reading, or playing more emotionally poignant material difficult for me. I’m beginning to tire of avoiding good stories simply because they stand a strong chance of embedding themselves in my brain for a few days and bringing down my mood, but I also don’t think this is something I can be blamed for doing.

After all, avoiding self-induced depression sounds like a good thing by any other name, doesn’t it?

Ultimately I don’t know if this is normal, I don’t know what it says about me, and I don’t know whether it’s good or bad, but it is certainly a big part of who I am and I’m at least glad to have finally figured this out about myself.

Maybe if I’m lucky I can eventually figure what I can do about it. That is, if anything needs to be done.