One of my favorite game experiences this year was the surprise of Hi-Fi Rush, a rhythm stylish action combat game that was as unexpectedly funny and charming as it was fun to play.
I say unexpectedly because, when I saw the first trailer for the game I did blurt, out loud to no one ‘Fuck off!’. The first line spoken in the trailer, right after the requisite pause and record scratch is “Yep, that’s me.” A trailer moment so cliche that it is constantly parodied. I was almost certain that this moment was a portent of awful things. Even if the game played well, the writing was sure to drive me away. I am glad to say that I was very wrong. There is a sort of winking self awareness in some writing that rings completely false. A style of writing that lets you know that the writer considers the content and characters worthy of ridicule. The writer wants the audience to know that they are smarter than the material. Above it. Almost no one likes this style of writing. Recently, this has led to a lot of internet chatter about Marvel and Star Wars movies and Whedonesque dialog. Now you can say what you want about Joss Whedon as a person, and his output as a writer, but a solid majority of the detractors are simply wrong. Quippy, snarky, irreverent dialog is not always bad dialog. If it’s true to the character and true to the moment, it’s not bad dialog. You might not like it, but hey there are lots of things you might not like, but nothing about that makes them objectively bad. Being snarky at the expense of the character or the reality of the moment might be. Here’s the problem. There have been a lot of shows, movies, plays, games, comic books, and novels written that try to play with that light, irreverent style, but they do that at the expense of the truth of the characters. Hi-Fi Rush loves its characters and wants you to love them too. The game’s main character, Chai, is an idiot, and the writers are very aware of this, but he never says or does anything just for the joke. Other characters comment on him being an idiot, but not for the joke. The spirit of the joke isn’t mean or opportunistic. It’s just true. And funny. The dialog in Hi-Fi Rush is quippy, snarky, and irreverent, but never at the expense of the characters or the truth of the moment. The world of Hi-Fi Rush is goofy and light and fun, but when it needs to be honest or heartfelt there really is no tonal shift that takes place. Honesty is where the game always is. It’s goofy, but there is no indication that the writers think that the game is dumb or bad or lesser than. The writing is always fully honest and fully earnest. Because of that, it is also very funny. Maybe someone thought it would be fun to start the trailer in that cliched way. Maybe they were so fully invested in the story that they didn’t realize that the trailer could be interpreted as punching down at the characters or story. Maybe different people wrote and created the trailer. Not an uncommon practice. Hi-Fi Rush is very funny. But it’s also very earnest. It’s silly, but it’s heartfelt. The internet at large might want claim to be over snarky, self aware writing, but I think what they are actually done with is dishonest writing. Writing that doesn’t take the world or characters seriously. Writing that doesn’t love its subject. After all, if the writers don’t love their characters, why should we. I’ve been working on a 2D game project for a little while now. You might say I have been working on this project since the early 90s.
I have always been fascinated by video games. Since the time I was probably three and played a Space Wars arcade machine with my mom in the alcove between a bar and a restaurant, I have been amazed by them. That I can press a button or move a stick or wiggle a mouse or move my hands around in space with a screen strapped to my face, and something deep inside a computer will respond to that input, is pure magic. It’s only been very recently that I have been able to make any video games of my own. Nothing about making games has made them any less magical to me. Difficult work, but not less magical. I have modelled, rigged, and animated a character. I chose and painted the colors of that character. I wrote the code that makes that character move around based on inputs that I specified, and it still seems magical. I do program a little, and I know enough of the internals and technicalities of how games work that I can muddle through, but, as you may have guessed, my main area of interest is graphics. I’m a 3D artist, with a helping of traditional 2D and illustration on the side, then season all that with some animation. I like to analyze art, partly for the aesthetic, but mostly for the technical processes that it takes to create that art. I find the how more interesting than the why. And I’m especially interested in when the how influences the why. I’m talking about constraints. The 2D game I am working on has the benefits of a ridiculous amount of graphics and cpu processing power. I am using a 3D engine that is capable of real time lighting and shadowing. One that can change every pixel on a 4K display in a few milliseconds. One that can process millions of polygons into finished images faster than the human eye can follow. And I am trying to make all of that look like an arcade machine several decades old. It’s working. I think understanding the constraints, the how, of why older arcade art looked the way it looked, is informing how I aim the vast armada of graphics processing I have available at the problem of achieving that aesthetic. It’s not just a matter of using those same tools or techniques, it’s a matter of emulating how pixels in those games got drawn to the screen. The hows can determine the whys. There are a lot of pixel art games out there that choose pixel art as an aesthetic, and that’s fine. I enjoy looking at an awful lot of them. But they are using that aesthetic in a very loose way. In a way that is determined more by choice than by constraint. I’m attempting to work in the other direction. I am using new tools and then placing a constraint on how I use them and letting the constraint determine how the final art will look. That might be a semantic difference, but it’s my semantic difference. I’m making a new game that looks like an old game, but sort of plays like a new game. And every time I press a button or push a stick, it feels like magic. I haven’t written about writing for a while. I tend to not want to, since, well, if I’m writing about writing I figure I should just be writing.
The last time I did a writing update, I had a story out for submission and another one almost ready to go out. Both of those stories ended up getting rejected, but one of them was on hold for its third time (fourth maybe, but two of those times were at the same place). I haven’t sent that story back out, and I’m not sure why. I think I want to have several ready to go at once. It’s tough to hang all your hopes on one story, even if you know it’s good and you have had several outlets tell you it’s good (just not good enough for them right now for whatever reason). I have three stories almost ready to go, but I probably won’t have them done until the new year at the rate I write. So I guess that’s it. Not much to add for this update. I’m still writing… slowly. I have about eight other stories started, but I have put them all on hold until I finish this first batch. |
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