I was just editing the letters section for the issue of OXM that we’re currently working on and one of the questions from a reader reminded me of something. The reader talks about BioShock and how he felt it was a good game, but he’s been habitually turned off by the gaming conventions that are forcibly placed on games. Stuff like boss battles and (though he doesn’t mention it) the ubiquitous crate smashing that goes hand in hand with games actually turns him off and makes him feel that the medium still continues to cater to juvenile tastes.

Oh, the postmodern implications of searching a corpse! It works on so many levels! Open to so many interpretations!

Hey, we can all agree that clichés like these have a certain place in games. Maybe I’d go so far to say that they’re the language of games. They place interactive objectives in the place of static lessons. After all, I highly doubt that developers could translate something like Finnegans Wake or Citizen Kane into games. Well, at least not successfully. But if you were to look at movies — they have their own language. I mean how many times are we going to have to sit through another “look at me, I’m getting drenched in a torrential downpour which signifies REBIRTH (in big, fat capital letters, no less!)?” Heck, Citizen Kane basically watches/reads like a handbook in modern filmmaking with its visual symbolism, edits and camera angles. Practically most modern movies that followed continue to crib from it. So, what makes gaming any different in finding its own grammar on how to construct an experience for you, sitting on your couch?

And don’t even get me started on books…Suffice it to say — even if the medium is much more flexible, authors will be the first to admit that there are rules on how to assemble a written story. Sure, they have different ways of doing it, but in the end, there will always be something resembling an introduction, a climax and a denouement. Movies, books and music will always fudge with the parameters, but even the best ones still select a few choice pieces from the Storywriting/Songwriting/Filmmaking 101 closet.

But let’s get back to games, right? Look, I had same reaction when I played through BioShock. Here was this somewhat sophisticated example of storytelling (for gaming, at the very least), but it had to be told through objectives. Shoot here. Kill this dude. Collect those five samples of whatever. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed on my first run-through that BioShock’s literate tale had to play out through a series of fetch quests. It actually kinda pulled me out of the story. Oh, and that ending? Bleaurgh. I’ve talked to friends who’ve played through it who’ve liked the ending (“It carries on the whole family thing!” I don’t buy it, myself) and who’ve hated it, as well.

Hey, sometimes pulling a giant sea slug out of a possessed Little Sister is really just that – pulling a giant sea slug out of a possessed Little Sister.

But I like to champion the ambition — and the fact that BioShock actually succeeded in merging the medium with solid storytelling in any form at all is an admirable feat.  It’s a great first step, especially on console — a category that’s been traditionally relegated to simplistic, if any at all, stories and cartoon characters.

I’m not crapping on console games. I’m a sucker for the medium, obviously. I love my simple, one-dimensional hero tales as much as the next Chocobo-hugging, Legendary helment–wearing gamer. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t tell a good or great story from a bad one or a non-existent one. And it also doesn’t mean that I’m not just as anxious for a game to challenge me on a literary, multi-layered level. I’m just not entirely sure that it’ll arrive without the occasional crate to bust or weakspot-blinking-red-light boss fight to blast through.

[As an aside, I did have a friend who proposed a funny BioShock scenario to me: “If that boss fight and ending followed the rest of the story, what would you expect? It would’ve ended with you confronting Frank Fontaine in a room where he tells you ‘And now…WE END THIS! With pointed discussion OVER TEA! Some milk, son?’” Even funnier is, he’s probably right.]