Much of storytelling is based off of cycles. The villain arrives, changes up the world, the hero rises, defeats the villain, and the status quo is returned. Super Man beats Lex Luther, Lex gets away, he comes back with a new scheme, and Super Man beats him again. Catalyst, change, response, return, this kind of methodology is a natural part of any story, but Apex, from Unleash the Archers takes this idea and puts a new spin on it. We're going to see how the nature of the album as a piece of consumable media fulfills the cycle that the album's narrative sets forward.
To understand the grand concept, we first need to understand the story that Apex tells. Through the album we follow "The Immortal" a being of unfathomable strength who lives eternally, beholden to the call of whomever summons her, cursed to sleep until then. As the album begins, the Immortal is awakened from slumber and begins her new undertaking, one of many as mentioned in "Shadow Guide." The summoner is a powerful witch known as the Matriarch. The task is to collect her sons for sacrifice so she can live for a thousand years. Now with a goal, the Immortal seeks out the four sons, subdues them, and returns them to the matriarch. Now, task completed, the Immortal returns to the warm embrace of her mountain home to sleep. And thus the album ends with the Immortal entering into a lucid dream until summoned again.
So now we understand the structure: awakening, task, challenge, victory, sleep. And even before we dig into the grand cycle of the album, we can see smaller examples of cycles in the lyrics of the album. In "Awakening" one of the lyrics is "Fear not the task ahead there's no escaping it, There's no good nor evil here". The Immortal recognizes the unbreaking cycle she are a part of. Whether summoned for good or for ill, the Immortal has to complete the task ahead of her. Similarly, in "The Matriarch" we find that the people under the Matriarch's rule are similarly trapped, their lives making no difference against the situation they find themselves in, under her oppression. The Matriarch herself knows the power of these unending situations, threatening "eternal servitude" against the Immortal in should she disobey in "Cleanse the Bloodlines".
The sons are also condemnations of real world cycles. The first son is the power of politicians, keeping themselves in power with meaningless words and promises. "The Coward's Way" shows the Immortal beyond the power of petty words and in subduing the eldest son, frees the masses that he was exploiting. The second son is the power of mindless devotion. He controls the lost peoples through his illusions of power and strict doctrine of beliefs. When the Immortal defeats him, she is letting the people free to think for themselves, no longer enclosed by his "False Walls". The third son is the power of leadership.. This son is a general, throwing his men in front of the unstoppable Immortal to protect himself. As it says, "Ten Thousand Against One" is just life thrown away to protect the worthless. The Immortal in this case saves the dishonored soldiers from their foolish leader. Maybe the most interesting is "Earth and Ashes" focusing on the final son, a good man. His story illustrates that everyone has a time to die and more so, shows that the Immortal can be just as oppressive. Unlike the other songs, there is no one that she can save here, in fact, she is the evil here, ending an innocent man.
In the end, despite any promises, the Matriarch sends the Immortal away, having gotten what she wanted, and the Immortal is consigned to the mountain again. The Matriarch will live for another thousand years, ruling over the people and ironically, the people that the Immortal saved. They fall into the cycle of one corrupt ruler into another. Before the Immortal is sent away, during "Call me Immortal" the point is made that the Matriarch could call her again at anytime. Keep this point in mind.
Finally we reach "Apex" the song detailing the Immortal's final moments of consciousness. This is where things get interesting and the album Apex takes a turn into an almost meta narrative. In the lyrics the Immortal mentions entering into a lucid dream where the laws of relativity do not apply. But more so than that, the Immortal herself calls it "Lucid freedom" as if her life in the dream is more meaningful than her life in the waking world. This specific term makes it interesting and here is where things start getting crazy. It wouldn't be too far of a conclusion to think that the Immortal's dream is her true reality. For all we know, when she is awoken, say by the Matriarch, she is pulled from her world into another. The album is set up to make this a possibility. We begin by both the Immortal and us as the audience waking up in the world and end it by consciousness of that world fading away into a different, better world. The lyrics specify, "Through a meadow running, feel the sun upon my face and the air it intoxicates." Sounds like a pretty good place. And the Immortal says right at the end that she will sleep for a thousand years.
So what does this have to do with cycles and how does me as the listener deciding to play this album affect that cycle. In a way, it's simple. The Immortal does not exist in the world at the end of the album. She sleeps or returns to the world she came from. And it is only through us as listeners deciding to play the album again that the story begins again. When we hit play, a thousand years have passed, the Matriarch summons the Immortal again, she fulfills her duty, and sleeps again as the album ends. We are the force that acts on that world. We are the change that begins the cycle again and it's nature as a preset album, with lyrics and music already set, means that it can only continue on in it's cycle. There's nothing that can change that, barring direct intervention from Unleash the Archer's themselves. What we end up with in Apex is not just an epic story, but an epic story attached to an existential reality that we the listener influence. We are just as much a part of that cycle as the story actors, beginning events and seeing them through with no choice in how they play out. The cycle of Apex affects us all and there is nothing any of us can do but not listen at all.
Which we won't do since the album is fantastic.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Warframe and Failed Moral Choice
Warframe is a pretty awesome game. Being a space ninja flying all over and destroying thousands of enemies feels good. And then they did something weird. They added a moral choice system. Certain story quests offered choices the player could pick from and it would align then toward the Sun (good), the Moon (evil) or stay neutral. And while the stories themselves are still pretty good, the moral choices present are a complete failure.
I think this is best represented in the Glast Gambit quest. Through the quest, you learn that a society lives among the Infection due to the protection of a child born with the infection but staying human, a hybrid. This allows them to harvest special material and continue their way of life. At the end of the quest, after you rescue the special child, a girl in this case, you care given three choices of what to do. The Sun choice is to cure the girl of the infection so she can live a full life on her own. The Moon choice is to send her home to her people. And the Neutral choice is to let her decide. Maybe you can already see a problem with this.
The game is saying that the "good" choice, the more moral choice is to cure the girl. The "evil" choice is to let her society run as it has been. So the game is telling you that it is better to send the girl away from her family and friends so that she can be cured without necessarily her consent and let the whole way of her people die away. How is that the good option? It is a totalitarian option. It says that you the Tenno know better than the girl, her parents, and her people. That it is better to let a whole way of life die out than let the girl stay infected, which by the way, she considers an honor. It asserts you as the arbiter of what is right and wrong.
And the "evil" choice has such a better ending. The child sends you a letter explicitly telling you that she knows you don't understand their ways, but they value their traditions. The evil choice validates you as respecting that other people can have conceptions about life different than your own and that maybe it's better not to force people to do things your way. The good ending is a letter from the girl only talking about her treatment, it makes no mention of her hone, most likely because she has no idea what happened there. They probably got infected and turned into monsters since their shield was taken from them.
And the worst part? The best ending is probably the Neutral ending. In it, the girl chooses to go home, but her father, as the community leader, decides she will be the last of these special infected and they will change with the times. So by making no choice, you have created the most influence on a society. And you know what you're reward is for this quest line? A warframe with the powers of the infected. It basically tells you that it's okay for you to use the infected for your gain, but not for others to.
These are usually how the moral choices come up, one is obviously what they want you to chose, but the other two often make more sense. Either you take an "aggressive" action and it seems to be to protect someone, or you find the middle road and try to minimize loss. Both of those options typically have a more realistic outcome as far as the story is concerned, while the "good" options always come across as weak or self-righteous. According to the developer's own data, more people chose the evil options than the good. If I would hazard a guess, it was because those options were often more proactive or belayed more power in the answer, not even in-game power (as of yet the moral system has no real consequence) but in the Role-Playing sense.
It seems that the moral choices paint a picture of the players that isn't fair to how a person might reasonably respond. It takes a hard line on right and wrong in such a way that you would only meet those requirements if you thought exactly as the developer. Instead of using it for nuance or for really tough choices, the questions pigeonhole the players into playing the archetype they want. I wanted to be Moon so I chose mostly Moon answers. If I really wanted to go with my gut, I would mostly choose neutral as they seemed the most sensible. The system currently in place has really no choice at all. Once you've chosen what side you want to be on, that's the only way to stick. And that is the failing, it doesn't challenge the players to think or reason, it takes a "my way or the highway" approach that many players have rebelled against.
I think this is best represented in the Glast Gambit quest. Through the quest, you learn that a society lives among the Infection due to the protection of a child born with the infection but staying human, a hybrid. This allows them to harvest special material and continue their way of life. At the end of the quest, after you rescue the special child, a girl in this case, you care given three choices of what to do. The Sun choice is to cure the girl of the infection so she can live a full life on her own. The Moon choice is to send her home to her people. And the Neutral choice is to let her decide. Maybe you can already see a problem with this.
The game is saying that the "good" choice, the more moral choice is to cure the girl. The "evil" choice is to let her society run as it has been. So the game is telling you that it is better to send the girl away from her family and friends so that she can be cured without necessarily her consent and let the whole way of her people die away. How is that the good option? It is a totalitarian option. It says that you the Tenno know better than the girl, her parents, and her people. That it is better to let a whole way of life die out than let the girl stay infected, which by the way, she considers an honor. It asserts you as the arbiter of what is right and wrong.
And the "evil" choice has such a better ending. The child sends you a letter explicitly telling you that she knows you don't understand their ways, but they value their traditions. The evil choice validates you as respecting that other people can have conceptions about life different than your own and that maybe it's better not to force people to do things your way. The good ending is a letter from the girl only talking about her treatment, it makes no mention of her hone, most likely because she has no idea what happened there. They probably got infected and turned into monsters since their shield was taken from them.
And the worst part? The best ending is probably the Neutral ending. In it, the girl chooses to go home, but her father, as the community leader, decides she will be the last of these special infected and they will change with the times. So by making no choice, you have created the most influence on a society. And you know what you're reward is for this quest line? A warframe with the powers of the infected. It basically tells you that it's okay for you to use the infected for your gain, but not for others to.
These are usually how the moral choices come up, one is obviously what they want you to chose, but the other two often make more sense. Either you take an "aggressive" action and it seems to be to protect someone, or you find the middle road and try to minimize loss. Both of those options typically have a more realistic outcome as far as the story is concerned, while the "good" options always come across as weak or self-righteous. According to the developer's own data, more people chose the evil options than the good. If I would hazard a guess, it was because those options were often more proactive or belayed more power in the answer, not even in-game power (as of yet the moral system has no real consequence) but in the Role-Playing sense.
It seems that the moral choices paint a picture of the players that isn't fair to how a person might reasonably respond. It takes a hard line on right and wrong in such a way that you would only meet those requirements if you thought exactly as the developer. Instead of using it for nuance or for really tough choices, the questions pigeonhole the players into playing the archetype they want. I wanted to be Moon so I chose mostly Moon answers. If I really wanted to go with my gut, I would mostly choose neutral as they seemed the most sensible. The system currently in place has really no choice at all. Once you've chosen what side you want to be on, that's the only way to stick. And that is the failing, it doesn't challenge the players to think or reason, it takes a "my way or the highway" approach that many players have rebelled against.
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