The Call of Duty school of writing

Call of Duty: Black Ops was released last week. Many streets here in Frankfurt are filled with ads showing a guy with two guns, one of them called Sally. I'm not going to play it yet because I don't have too much money right now and the UK release is a bit overpriced, so I'll have to wait until it's cheaper. But I realized that I never played Treyarch's 2006 game Call of Duty III because then I was only a PC gamer and this was a console exclusive. So now it's a good time for me to catch up...



A few days ago, Jeffrey Yohalem (an Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood writer) said in a Spanish interview that "the game mechanics are always more important than the script". Then, amazingly, he mentioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time as the main influence for his work. But as Ben Croshaw cleverly observed, PoP: TSoT is one of the best games ever made and is miles beyond its sequels even when the second and the third game have substantially better combat and overall gameplay. Why is that? Because TSoT has an amazing script.

So I've been playing for a couple of days the infamous Call of Duty III, who earned Treyarch the unfair reputation for doing the "bad" Call of Duty games. It has -*sigh*- decent mechanics, but no script whatsoever. Just "go there and shoot the bad guys" all the time, with the odd vehicle section here and there for a change of pace.

I guess after making this game somebody realized that they needed scripts for the Call of Duty games to make them less boring. So, starting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, it looks like they decided that they had to blow our minds. I mean, literally. So then it was like this (total SPOILERS follow):


CALL OF DUTY 4: MODERN WARFARE:


"At the beginning of the game, you go in a car with the bad guys, they take you to a main villain and he shoots you in the head."


"So, how can we top that?"


"Then you go in a helicopter with the good guys, you run away from the same main villain, and then he... er, he throws an atomic bomb on you."


"That's so f***ing cool! After this, nobody will want to play a Medal of Honor game ever again..."



WORLD AT WAR:

"So, you've seen Call of Duty 4... Any ideas?"

"Nazi zombies?"





MODERN WARFARE 2:

"They really loved the atomic bomb bit. Now, give me something really shocking."

"You go and... shoot civilians with the bad guys, but then they shoot you in the head."


"That's so clever. And so original! So, how can we top that?"


"Er... Well, the good guy is... a main villain... and he shoots you... and then he pours gasoline on you..."


"You are a f***ing genius! We have GOTY material in our hands!"



BLACK OPS:


"So we have to top Modern Warfare or we are dead... Ideas?"


"Well, you go and shoot Fidel Castro in the head."


(Silence.)


"Only that... it wasn't him."


"That's... genius! Amazing! Modern Warfare, you are so screwed after this! So, how can we top that?"


"Well, after that, you... shoot... Kennedy."


(Silence.)


"Only that... well, you don't really shoot him. But they make you think that you shot him."


"Polish those Oscars! I mean, maybe there are no video game Oscars, but we're all going to be rich!"





So, here's the Call of Duty school of writing. Here's a good lesson for game designers all around the globe.

Alpha Protocol's rift - A mystery

A few days after Alpha Protocol's release, a lot of us are still shocked about all the bad reviews it got in the good old USA, which forced people like me or these other Spanish guys to hastily defend the game even before we were done with it. The game has been received warmly elsewhere and players all over the world love it, as I showed at the end of my full review, so why all that hate?


Vlad Andrici tries to study this phenomenon in this article, trying to check all the facts and find an explanation, but it still doesn't make any sense. What is going on? Now, I hate to turn too paranoid, but I've come to think that there are some reasons that don't have anything to do with the quality of the game. First, as Andrice points out,


I've noticed for a long time that many magazines/review sites tend to overlook some pretty noticeable problems that certain games coming from big-ass publishers and developers have, while the "not so hyped" games tend to be hammered for the same issues.


That is so true! If a GTA or a Metal Gear Solid game is released, it automatically gets top marks. Yes, it's a completely populist attitude but it's not going to go away soon (most players actually go crazy if they don't get those unrealistic reviews, anyway). But some game must be seen in a negative light so it doesn't look like reviewers love just everything. And it looks like it's Alpha Protocol's turn.


Also, I hate to turn to ideological explanations, which always look crazy no matter how you present them, but I'm really starting to think that American reviewers are not OK with having a company called "Halbach" (a dead ringer for Halliburton) as the bad guys in Alpha Protocol's story, while the head of the effing islamic terrorists is depicted as a man of his word. Blasphemy!

But I don't know what to think. Thankfully, this game was released a bit earlier in Europe, so when bad reviews started to drip from the US, a lot of people already knew that the game was much better than what they were being told. And you can influence someone to not buy a game, as in this case, but it's different if you are already playing the game... and enjoying it.

I hope this whole thing is not disastrous for Obsidian. As far as I'm concerned, they have delivered the goods with their latest game. If my review didn't convince you yet, I'm telling you again: Alpha Protocol has great writing, and decent gameplay, so if you love RPGs, you should definitely try it.

And speaking of good writing, I really enjoyed this in-depth article by Chris Breault about how important writing is, and about the way careless scripting can ruin the whole experience, using Splinter Cell: Conviction as an example of how bad a game can be because of that. You should read it!

BONUS: Someone sent me this article which says that core gamers are male and casual gamers are female. Well, SuperViv, JR and I are both things at once, and we are not hermaphrodites! Or, at least, I wasn't the last time I checked. Let me have a look again...