Pete Donaldson on love and Mass Effect…
So Mass Effect: Andromeda hit shelves last month with varying degrees of acoustic clunkery, depending on how many different versions of the thing EA have seen fit to release this time round (I haven’t bothered checking).
Maybe you went for the Steelbook edition with limited edition poster? Or perhaps you spent your hard-earned shekels on the deluxe edition with that adorable remote control car, or even the platinum ‘super-collector’s edition’ with that tasteful brass plinth engraved with Bioware head Matthew Bromberg’s almost faultless 4.95 Uber rating?
Once the almighty hoo-ha died down over the characters experiencing apparent complete facial-muscle idiopathy, and those sordid few who saw fit to ruin a poor animator’s life crawled back into their sewage pipes, journalists filed the usual thinkpieces about how great it is that love and relationships are back at the core of our gaming.
Some of the more progressive writers went to town (went down?) on precisely how emancipating it was to have a choice as to what we look like in our games, and which character’s moon-boots we were allowed to take a crack at knocking, as once again we were permitted to choose which species we made love to, which sex, and which part of our wipe-clean spaceship to do it on.
Myself and those in my little leftie internet bubble read said pieces, gave a dutiful Pavlovian nod and muttered ‘yes, this is good and games are definitely learning from their considerable mistakes’ just as the 4channers ground their teeth and posted their grubby little communiqués about how disgusting the liberal space-elite are for ramming their galactic-homo-agenda down their throats. Fleshy highways trictly reserved for the transportation of mulched-up Cheetos and the restorative wash of Mountain Dew, you understand.
But are games actually any good at sex and romance? And is this so-called choice just a little bit of a cop-out?
Growing up a bit of a teenage romantic, the one thing that would draw me forward towards the fizzing denouement of any given tale would be some kind of love interest, either real or implied. I simply don’t give that much of a shit about the death of the universe or the quest for some dusty old chalice.
In 1990’s Monkey Island, I spent hours doing my darnedest to get Guybrush and Elaine together and loved every second of it. One of the best forgotten games of the last generation was Enslaved: Odyssey to the West – Alex Garland’s superb adaptation of one of the four Chinese greats. Lead characters Monkey (maybe I just really like monkeys) and Trip were made for one another, but life (and giant mechanical robots) got in the way at every last turn. I still didn’t give up hope that they’d end up together and I finished what was, in many ways a bit of a cynical cash-grab for some Uncharted 2 till-dollars.
In short, from my perspective, gaming needs love more than it needs guns. But is it grown up enough to deserve it, I wonder?
Triple-a gaming seems to have pre-wedding jitters when it comes to triple-a intimacy. Storylines which show much promise settle into tired old damsel-in-distress fraff at the drop of a hat, and while the Sarkeesians of this world have expressed boredom with this trope in a way more intelligent and nuanced manner than I could ever hope to, it’s still exhausting to see game after game do the same thing over and over again. In 2017, women still have their woman in the fridge, and men have their Indiana Joneses in one too. Still not sure what to make of that second one, to be fair.
My main issues lie not with indie, which is naturally telling some fantastic stories with its lot – but with the sort of games I see advertised on the walls of the London Underground. The big titles, with the big money behind them. The ones people really hear about. The ones with the roided-up grimace of the Gears of Warriors on the box. The facially-scarred gruffalos that are Solid Snake and Geralt.
Much of the emotional emptiness I feel when playing the modern sprawling RPG has to come down to too much choice in my lap, and too little bravery in the creator’s.
Nowadays, nothing is out of bounds when it comes to customisation – from things that dangle (though no penis slider for you, Xbox Conan fans) to the selection of particularly loathsome hoodies, armour and hats. Extending that same choice to include who we’re destined to get with romantically in games such as Mass Effect isn’t empowering – it’s alienating, if you’ll excuse the pun. Developers seem reluctant to push two particular characters together for fear of pushing an agenda, forgetting that this decision in itself is an agenda.
Some of the most affecting depictions of relationships in gaming are frequently written by the guys who script the wee scribbled notes between NPCs, found in dusty open-world filing cabinets in Fallout 4 and in bottles chucked in the sea. Low-risk stuff, both computationally and politically.
It would almost be understandable if they didn’t saddle the few love stories we do get with the same dull tropes we’ve been playing out for years – Elena, a once great gaming character saw out the final Uncharted storyline playing the naggy anchor dragging our hero down. “Her indoors won’t let me go looking for treasure no more, soz.”
Gay relationships, as you might imagine don’t fare any better – take Bill and Frank’s relationship in The Last of Us, for example. A genuinely heartbreaking moment, consigned to a scrunched-up note in a coat pocket. Ellie and Riley’s kiss positively shooed into DLC at the end of a console’s life cycle that barely anyone played. In an art form dominated by men who look like Tom of Finland wank-fantasies in power armour, it would almost be an easier transition to bulk out the story with a bit of gay romance, for crying out loud.
We know gaming can do the explosions and the joyless pew-pew laser guns – I’m yet to see a concerted effort to enrich our gaming experiences with a believable love story that’s utterly essential to how the tale plays out. We can do Michael Bay’s Bad Boys, we can’t do 2005’s gay porn film, Bad Boys (considered to be seminal, possibly in every sense of the word)
Developers, give us more romance on both sides of the sexual spectrum. Give us non-hetero storylines that you’ve written, not just allowed. Don’t apologise, don’t democratise, just grow the fuck up.
Pete Donaldson – Follow me on Twitter
