XP: Firewatch

This post has been updated as of January 8th, 2017. Middle of the road for NaNoWriMo, so still on the weekly posts as I crunch out some creative writing. When I got too tired to write, I played a game that was on my radar since the beginning of the year, called Firewatch. It was short, only about 5 hours or so, and the game had a love-it-or-hate-it kind of ending, so be prepared for that if you decide to play it. For those of you who may have read the original post, I have since given it another play through, including part of the audio commentary mode which was uniquely done and very interesting.

 

What I played:

Firewatch is from the first person perspective, and I guess it could be described as an adventure game since you can explore all over the place with little restriction, even though there isn't really much in the way of side-quests. Instead, the game focuses heavily on story. You play from the perspective of Henry, a middle aged man who takes a job at a Forest Service lookout tower, who's only job is to hang out and look out for forest fires. His boss stationed at the lookout tower near him is named Delilah, who has done the job every summer for over 10 years. She is Henry's only other human interaction, and all of it is done through their radios. After a while though, Henry stumbles on a conspiracy which changes their relationship

As for the audio commentary mode, it is treated like an audio tour in a museum, where you walk up to a stand and pick up a cassette tape that plays the commentary. There are also "park signs" which include things like concept art and notes from the creators of the game, which was cool. This way, you are able to listen to it when and if you want to, or just move on with the game.

What I experienced:

You pick up on the tone of the game from the very beginning. You intermittently make not so perfect decisions regarding the events of Henry's relationship with his wife as he strolls through the path to the lookout tower. The decisions ultimately lead to Henry's wife, Julia, being taken in by her family after she suffers from early onset Alzheimer's. The imagery of walking the path to the job and reflecting on the decisions that led him to taking the job was very nice. The theme of making human, meaning flawed, decisions also sets up the theme for the game.

And listening to the audio commentary, the reason they create so this sequence is to have the player learn for themselves about what kind of person Henry is. The creators said unlike the traditional make your own choices video game character who is left as a blank slate for the player to fill; in Firewatch the player is instead experiencing someone else's story, with room to make some variations. For example, when Julia's dementia worsens, you have the choice to either place her in a facility or take care of her at home. While you may think you are doing a good and noble thing by keeping her home, Henry instead sneaks off in the middle of the night to drink because of how miserable he is in taking care of her.

The rest of the game is mostly played through the dialogue decisions between Henry and his boss Delilah. You can choose to share openly, stay guarded and silent, or flirty. There were some instances where you were forced to be a little flirty, but that was to help the story go along and make sense.

The thing you learn about both characters is how flawed they are. Henry seems overly paranoid and aggressive at certain times, and Delilah is a little too easy going (and an alcoholic). Their are no perfect decisions for the conversations either, only different responses. One time I made a choice that upset Delilah and she refused to speak for awhile until I advanced on with the objective at the time. I thought that was a nice touch, because rather than choosing any response just to get some dialogue, I actually put some thought into what I picked. I opted to be somewhat guarded about Henry's past, since Henry is still technically married even though his wife has full on dementia at this point.  

Henry discovers transcripts of their conversation, and they realize someone is listening in on them. When Henry is attacked, the two of them get defensive, since they sound somewhat incriminating after covering up they might know something about two teenage girls who went missing in the park. Also, whoever was listening in on them noted that Delilah has a boyfriend already too. In the second playthrough, I actually learned about Delilah's boyfriend through the dialogue. Since I was more open about Julia the second time around, she was open about herself and said she had an ex-boyfriend named Javier. She even mentioned once if maybe she and Henry would possibly meet up and get together after, which didn't happen when I played more guarded.

Once it was revealed that he eavesdropper was one man covering up a secret of his own, I noticed the dialogue between the two of them leaned more towards being a friend rather than potential lover. There were also choices that downright placed blame on Delilah's shoulders too, since she knew some information on what was going on. Even if you make what seems like the right choice and console, Delilah's own flaws of self-righteousness prevent anything from sinking in. I made a choice to put some blame on her, and instead of backlash she just agreed and said it was her mistake.

The rift is noticeable, which leads to the love-it-or-hate-it ending I mentioned earlier. If you were more flirtacious, Delilah even mentions that she cannot think of Henry in the same way since he was the one to discover the secret and she feels guilty.

A couple of fires broke out in the park during the summer, and they reached a point to where even the lookout towers have to evacuate. Your vision is impaired by smoke from the fire as you go towards the rendezvous near Delilah's tower to be evacuated. You can ask Delilah to wait for you or go on without you. I chose to have her leave, because it seemed clear things weren't the same between them anymore. Apparently even if you ask her to stay, you end up having to beg her all throughout your time getting there, and she still leaves anyways. The second time around I asked her to stay, and you plead once and she agrees is gone by the time you get there. She thought meeting Henry under those circumstances would only ruin the moment.

You get one last conversation over the radio in her tower as you wait for evacuation, and she asks about what the future holds. Again, the imagery of a path clouded by smoke and the uncertain future that awaits both the characters was well done. She ends up telling Henry to go see his wife, who he hasn't seen for a few years at this point, as she decides to go off on her own. Even if you are flirtatious and like each other, she still tells him to go back to his wife. The message I got was that both sides had unresolved issues to work through. Henry used the job to be alone in the forest to put a pause on what to do with the stagnant relationship with his wife, or even whether he can call it a relationship anymore. Delilah seemed to be using the summer to hit pause on her own relationship too, as escape from having to make bigger decisions regarding her career. In other words, they were just two people blindly searching for answers in a world with no clear direction. They found some comfort in their shared lack of direction, but in the end thats all it was. Just two people sharing a moment, with their real lives still earnestly awaiting their return.

Neither of them gained any answers while on their sabbatical. It doesn't matter how much time you spend thinking, when the only thing that can move your life forward is making one decision after another, and never knowing if it is the right one until afterwards. People were greatly disappointed that as players we never got to see Delilah, that the characters did not end up together, or have come to resolve their issues. I myself love ambiguous endings, and get tired of seeing "they lived happily ever after" type of endings. This one was gritty, open-ended, and so much a reflection of what actual human beings go through. The characters also seemed more relatable because of their flaws. I know many people like to use videogames or TV to escape reality, but I would rather use the stories to help me learn and make decisions regarding my own life (and be entertained at the same time, of course). Hence, the reason why I made this blog!

Anyways, what do you guys think about ambiguous endings like this one? Do you prefer a game let you pretend to be Mr./Mrs. Perfect, or are you okay if it forces you to act as flawed as your character is? Let me know in the comments below!

What I Saw: Black Mirror

Hello all! This will be my blog post for the week as I continue to cram for National Novel Writing Month. I know every form of media is talking about the election results right now, but what better way to bury your head into the sand than to watch some good TV! (But if you want to be masochistic and see what a Trump presidency will look like, watch The Simpsons episode that predicted it years ago). Shout out to my cousin who suggested we watch this week's show, which had been sitting in my Netflix queue forever.

What I Watched:

Black Mirror S3.E4&5: "San Junipero" and "Men Against Fire"

What I Saw:

If you haven't seen it, Black Mirror is an anthology series, meaning each episode tells its own self contained story. These two episodes had similar themes going on, so I will talk about the ideas within them interchangeably.

Both episodes touched on the idea of metaphysics, where reality itself is brought into question. Think of the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus is explaining to Neo what the matrix really is. In Black Mirror, "San Junipero" discussed a not too distant future where people can pay to pass on to this virtual reality (VR) world after they die. They can preview it for a few hours a week to become accustomed to it and relive their youth. The other episode "Men Against Fire" deals with the military's use of augmented reality (AR), where an implant is put into soldiers' brains and virtual information is placed in addition to their normal senses. They are still interacting with the real (in this case, physical)  world, but virtual information is added to it.

The implications with San Junipero's VR are that you can essentially live forever even after your physical body dies. Not only that, but the main character Yorkie is in a coma like state, where she cannot move or engage in the physical world but her mind is still active. In this sense, the VR world is the only world she could ever hope to experience, which makes it more real than the physical world where her body is. This goes contrary to what most people think of as reality, which is where the other main character, Kelly, initially starts off with. She only thinks of the VR world as a game, where her consequences don't matter because she will return to the "real" physical world. This is shown in the scene where she crashes her car in a fit of anger, because she cannot die in that world so the consequence of flying through the windshield is meaningless.

Since the two characters fell in love, and Yorkie can only really interact and therefore exist in the VR world, Kelly has to make a choice as to what reality she wants to exist in. Does she want to continue to treat San Junipero as a playground with no consequence? Or does she want to to accept it as another form of reality and therefore treat her relationship with Yorkie as a real relationship too? In what I've read in comments as the only happy ending of the series, Kelly chooses to accept it, and Yorkie, as a real part of her life (aww!). 

The episode  "Men Against Fire" questions our sense of reality when we are interacting and observing the physical world. It focuses on a squad of some kind of peacekeeping mission in what sounds and looks like Eastern Europe. There are these humanoid beings called roaches which seem to be plaguing a village. A rookie takes out two roaches on his own, but not without coming across a device which causes his VR chip, or "mask" as its called in the show, to start glitching.

He later learns the VR mask was not only giving him tactical data while in combat, but it actually changed what his perception of the world was. His sense of smell was being dulled, but more menacingly the roaches he saw were not humanoid monsters, but just normal humans. His VR chip simply masked their face to look like monsters, and to distort their pleas for mercy.

Our perception dictates the reality we live in. What the rookie perceived through his "mask" were monsters, and his reality was his killing was justified because he was defending humanity from some type of invading species. Without it, the reality became he was a soldier who was complicitly committing genocide on a race of people. That's some f***ed up shit right there.

Just like in the other episode, the protagonist has a choice to make with what reality he wants to live in. Only the difference is there is no good waiting at either road. Morality wise, he could opt out and not kill anymore, but he will be imprisoned where his new daily reality will be reliving the moment he killed two unarmed civilians over and over again. Or, he can choose to return to the old reality and have his memories erased so that he won't even remember they are actually human. In this case, ignorance is bliss. 

One other idea that was introduced was the concept of selective breeding in humans. The "roaches" were being targeted because genetic testing identified the group as having higher rates if cancer, disease, mental illness, lower IQ, basically everything negative that can be linked to genetics. But to their core, they are still human beings. The social construct of race and what it means to be human was presented. It was especially fitting that the protagonist was a black man, who's ancestors at one point were considered to be less than human too.

Lastly, the concept of war being an inherit trait of humanity was challenged as well. See the reason why the military needed their soldiers to use masks was because human beings don't like to kill each other. The psychiatrist character gave examples that the majority of soldiers in WWI and WWII either missed on purpose or refused to fire their weapons. And then in Vietnam where they learned to condition soldiers to kill, they suffered from PTSD afterwards. This shows that while war is definitely a human concept (although chimpanzees wage war too when resources are scarce), humans are not naturally inclined to kill or fight each other. And when they kill, there are  severe consequences.

So that's my post for this week. Lots of deep stuff in that show and look forward to watching more. Tell me guys, what do you think defines reality? And do you think war is more natural to people than the show lets on? Let me know in the comments below!

What I Saw 11.4.16: Shameless

I haven't posted all week, even though I've done a fair amount of TV watching. I've started the Novel Writing Month, but I've also been catching up on laundry and chores that have either been ignored or rushed through from all the traveling of the last 3 weeks. For November I'll probably post maybe once or twice a week one an episode that seemed to have the most impact. For this week, that show is Shameless.

What I Watched:

Shameless (U.S.) - S2.E10: "A Great Cause"

What I Saw:

The episode started off pretty standard for Shameless. Everyone is going about their lives with usually one of the characters being caught up in a ridiculously funny scenario; which in this case it was Steve/Jimmy trying to smuggle his wife's boyfriend into the country and losing his the shipping container he is in. In reality, this episode was all about Fiona's desire to grow up like a normal young woman her age.

First off, I really like how the show portrayed someone with Bipolar disorder, who in this show is their mom Monica. She starts taking on all these projects with the squirrel fund but never finishes them, and everything is a great idea. People go along with it because she just seems supportive, and the real underlying cause of being manic goes on unnoticed for awhile. For Fiona, she starts to ease up on some of the responsibilities of running the family upon their mother's insistence during this manic episode. She agrees knowing it will be temporary, but tries to make plans to further her education and career to make the most of the few months before Monica gets bored.

I like how Fiona brought up the actual hard skills that come from raising a family. Instead of taking the criticism that she has no experience in management, she counters with the realities of managing a family. She tells her would be boss that she knows how to handle a stretched budget, she knows when to be firm with people or when she should use a lighter touch, and all the other real skills that being a mother requires which often get ignored. And to top it off, none of those are her kids!

The best scene comes at the end, when Lip tells Fiona that Monica and Frank spent the squirrel fund for the winter. Here's the scene:



The good thing about this show is that it is good at having the character's flaws feed into each other and carry on the story. Lip acts all high and mighty because he is smart, but forgets the fact that he left the family because Fiona is looking out for him and wanted him to graduate high school. Fiona takes the blame because that is her biggest strength and her biggest flaw. She takes responsibility when no one wants to, whether it's taking care of the family or taking the blame. The reality is their parents are to blame for the mess. Fiona was just acting like a girl her age and planning for her future which had never seemed possible before.

The actress for Fiona, Emmy Rossum, did such an amazing job in that scene. The way she screamed at her mom to get up while crying. Fiona was trying to cling on to one last bit of hope that her mom would get up so she could continue to live her own life for a change, but cries when she knows that is not going to happen. Then when she takes it out her anger and frustration of her lost future by hitting the washing machine. Then the look of resolve immediately after, setting down her blazer as if to say "this isn't my life" and then getting to work on cleaning up, reminding her "this is my life." It is by far the most powerful scene so far in the show.

The lesson for the episode is to remind you of reality, which is a really depressing place. It's not that Fiona doesn't deserve to pursue her dreams, or is incapable of achieving them. But given how important keeping her family together is, there is no room for that in her life. Now if her sense of morality were different, if she decided that raising those kids was not her job but her parent's job, then she could make her dreams into reality. But we all have to live by own moral code, and luckily for those kids, her code places family above all else.

That's my post for this week. Hopefully I'll start getting back into the flow of things again soon. So tell me though, do you guys think Lip was right in putting the blame on Fiona? Let me know in the comments below!

What I Saw 11.4.16: Shameless

I haven't posted all week, even though I've done a fair amount of TV watching. I've started the Novel Writing Month, but I've also been catching up on laundry and chores that have either been ignored or rushed through from all the traveling of the last 3 weeks. For November I'll probably post maybe once or twice a week one an episode that seemed to have the most impact. For this week, that show is Shameless.

What I Watched:

Shameless (U.S.) - S2.E10: "A Great Cause"

What I Saw:

The episode started off pretty standard for Shameless. Everyone is going about their lives with usually one of the characters being caught up in a ridiculously funny scenario; which in this case it was Steve/Jimmy trying to smuggle his wife's boyfriend into the country and losing his the shipping container he is in. In reality, this episode was all about Fiona's desire to grow up like a normal young woman her age.

First off, I really like how the show portrayed someone with Bipolar disorder, who in this show is their mom Monica. She starts taking on all these projects with the squirrel fund but never finishes them, and everything is a great idea. People go along with it because she just seems supportive, and the real underlying cause of being manic goes on unnoticed for awhile. For Fiona, she starts to ease up on some of the responsibilities of running the family upon their mother's insistence during this manic episode. She agrees knowing it will be temporary, but tries to make plans to further her education and career to make the most of the few months before Monica gets bored.

I like how Fiona brought up the actual hard skills that come from raising a family. Instead of taking the criticism that she has no experience in management, she counters with the realities of managing a family. She tells her would be boss that she knows how to handle a stretched budget, she knows when to be firm with people or when she should use a lighter touch, and all the other real skills that being a mother requires which often get ignored. And to top it off, none of those are her kids!

The best scene comes at the end, when Lip tells Fiona that Monica and Frank spent the squirrel fund for the winter. Here's the scene:




The good thing about this show is that it is good at having the character's flaws feed into each other and carry on the story. Lip acts all high and mighty because he is smart, but forgets the fact that he left the family because Fiona is looking out for him and wanted him to graduate high school. Fiona takes the blame because that is her biggest strength and her biggest flaw. She takes responsibility when no one wants to, whether it's taking care of the family or taking the blame. The reality is their parents are to blame for the mess. Fiona was just acting like a girl her age and planning for her future which had never seemed possible before.

The actress for Fiona, Emmy Rossum, did such an amazing job in that scene. The way she screamed at her mom to get up while crying. Fiona was trying to cling on to one last bit of hope that her mom would get up so she could continue to live her own life for a change, but cries when she knows that is not going to happen. Then when she takes it out her anger and frustration of her lost future by hitting the washing machine. Then the look of resolve immediately after, setting down her blazer as if to say "this isn't my life" and then getting to work on cleaning up, reminding her "this is my life." It is by far the most powerful scene so far in the show.

The lesson for the episode is to remind you of reality, which is a really depressing place. It's not that Fiona doesn't deserve to pursue her dreams, or is incapable of achieving them. But given how important keeping her family together is, there is no room for that in her life. Now if her sense of morality were different, if she decided that raising those kids was not her job but her parent's job, then she could make her dreams into reality. But we all have to live by own moral code, and luckily for those kids, her code places family above all else.

That's my post for this week. Hopefully I'll start getting back into the flow of things again soon. So tell me though, do you guys think Lip was right in putting the blame on Fiona? Let me know in the comments below!