Crysis: Outtake
Do you believe in fate, Roger? Deja vu? Any of that shit?
I never really gave much thought to it before, but lately it’s almost as though something’s —directing me, almost. Like, as long as you steer right it’s clear to the horizon, but every time you try to go left there’s a pile of wreckage or an alien stronghold or a sheer cliff blocking you. Or, say you want to go back and get something you had to leave behind in the lobby because you were carrying too much other shit — but the stairwell just happens to collapse behind you and there’s no other way back.
That’s been happening a lot lately. Almost as if something was — directing isn’t exactly the word. Herding, maybe. As if the fires and collapsing buildings and the very fucking weather are conspiring to move you towards a single endpoint.
You think the Ceph might have that kind of influence? Think they’re powerful enough to just — nudge the game board this way or that, turn all of fucking Manhattan into a maze for us to run? Maybe all their stomping around, all that incompetent ham-fisted shooting and smashing — maybe that’s all just a distraction, to keep us from noticing all these subtle machinations masquerading as random entropy. Maybe they’re ten steps ahead, they’ve got the butterfly by the wings and they’re using it to herd all of us.
What do you think, Roger? Ever get the feeling we’re not entirely in control?
Ah.
Well, maybe it’s just me then.
[Ed.: Nope. We’ve departed from commentary and broken the 4th wall: this can’t happen, sorry man.]
Not played it yet, but I get the impression that the free-roaming element of Far Cry and Crysis 1 have been ditched. On-rails games can be fun (Singularity, for example) but invisible walls and forbidden areas and unjumpable objects identical to other objects over or onto which you actually did jump before, dammit … I know that this is a game version of reality, and isnt meant to be a note-perfect simulacrum but – hmm, gets irritating sometimes. Weird. Its as if I’m yearning for real-world physics to the max while feeding the need to indulge in fantastically outre settings, situations and strangers.
Darling, Give up control. It is only a passing delusion.
Too bad, that would’ve been fun. But at least we can rest easy; now that this has been safely edited out, players will have NO IDEA that the game is on rails.
But it’s actually the opposite. Whenever you die, the game gives you a do-over. That’s the hand of fate lofting you over obstacles, not making the end-goal unattainable.
Don’t feel too bad. They cut the exact same bit out of the Lord of the Rings movies.
Your editor just can’t handle the truth
Chris Pepper: It does that half the time. The other half, it slaps you down for trying to get over obstacles it didn’t expect or intend you to be interested in.
I think it’s a funny commentary on what games are, and the levels of recursion are high, which is counts for it, not against it. What’s the opposite of literary irony again.
You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that 4th Wall. You NEED me on that 4th Wall.
It’s an old wall, Will, it waits.
Are you saying level designers are aliens?
Knowing a few, I might be inclined to agree.
Sort of like that bit that got erased from Moby Dick:
“I say Queequeg, do you ever feel as though the whale is actually just a metaphore?”
I say Queequeg, do you …
Ftw!
Bioshock handled this brilliantly, incorporating this phenomena into the plot.
Also Far Cry 2 is brilliant, for those looking for the opposite.
Okay, “blessed” with an unusual IQ?
http://www.cracked.com/article_19174_5-unexpected-downsides-high-intelligence.html
The captioned photos are priceless.
Most games suck because they are just one path forward, can’t go back.
That’s why I like Fallout or Stalker.. more illusion of control, less linear.