January 13, 2015

Thomas Was Alone

So, this semester I'm taking a new class to the U, Videogames and Storytelling, which promises to be an interesting class, insofar as I not only have three books to read by the end of the class, but several movies to watch, and a half-dozen games I'll need to buy and play (in addition to a variety of free browser-based games).

Needless to say, I will tackle all assignments with extreme prejudice.

One of the first games on our list (which we won't be playing for a few weeks) was Thomas Was Alone. Being the over-achiever that I am (and because I wanted a break from Metroid Prime) I decided to buy it before my student loans dried up in groceries and bills, and play it.

These are my impressions.

First of all that needs to be mentioned is the controls. They're incredibly simple. Arrow keys, space bar and two other buttons to toggle the player character. The platforming is pretty tight, but can get a little slippery at times. I ran into some input lag every once in a while which made for some frustrating times having to tackle a jump several times. I kept alternating between the keyboard and my Xbox 360 controller. The keyboard was not as intuitive as you'd think. You can play with both the arrow keys, or the WASD keys. Which means either split the game between the two hands or play with your left hand completely. This normally wouldn't be an issue (I've done that set up dozens of times on emulators, arrows in the right hand, left hand dealing with the twitch-timing button presses) but as far as I could tell, I couldn't change the controls at all. The keys to cycle the characters are preset to the Q and E keys; handy if you're playing left-handed, but a little frustrating to keep my hand spread out on the left side of the keyboard for two buttons. Another thing that was even more frustrating was that while the Xbox controller allowed me to cycle to the right with the right bumper and to the left with the left bumper, the keyboard reversed these keys, with Q (the one on the left) cycling right and E doing vice-versa. It's not a game-breaker, but it did make for some frustration trying to select the right character for the right situation. The keyboard also allows you to use the number row to jump straight to the character you want, but the lack of any numbers on the screen to indicate which character is linked to which key makes this more of a hassle than anything.

Second was the music. Apparently, my music hit a glitch where the previous level's track wouldn't end properly at the end of the level before starting the next track. This caused some issues with an overly-loud background music and some serious audio issues. But, to be fair, I didn't realize that it was something that wasn't supposed to happen until I had almost finished the game. (I actually reset the game to see if that was the issue on what would happen to be the last level of the game.) The reason was because I was getting more and more engrossed in the story and the characters and the music was taking a seriously ominous overtone with the multiple tracks playing over each other, so I thought it was on purpose. At the last level, I remembered how peaceful and nice the music was for the first few levels and thought it strange that it rose to such a cacophony that I figured something must be up. So, I can't really say much about the music other than at times it can be a little grating (even before the glitch) but on the whole is a pleasant backdrop to the otherwise sparse atmosphere.

The real draw here is the characterization. The gameplay is fine and the platforming is fun enough, but you're not going to be engrossed entirely in the game by that. In fact, it would be a rather humdrum game, more akin to a flash game to play when bored, instead of a full release if it weren't for the story and characterization. The game is narrated by a nice, decidedly british voice, which for some reason makes everything more entertaining. The story is about a group of AIs that are slowly gaining sentience. But, they're not robots or anything. They're rectangles of a single color each. (Or, rather, quadrilaterals, since two of them are actually squares) Each one has, as described by their thoughts explained by the narrator, a unique personality. At first, it seems really silly. Thomas is a red rectangle with an average ability to jump (and fall). You think that this is going to be a really dumb kind of gimmick, a narrator ostensibly telling you what a rectangle is feeling... until Thomas meets Chris, a surly orange block who detests Thomas, and who Thomas is oblivious to the growing resentment. Chris' personality comes off in gameplay mechanics, as he's a short little shit who cannot jump very high. He seems like the epitome of the Danny DeVito archetype of grumpy character. They continue finding new friends all the time, including a very tall yellow rectangle who can jump very high, a large blue block (Claire) who cannot jump very well but can float in water, and several others, each with their own unique way of controlling that compliments the characterization provided to them. Claire was easily my favorite, as she learns early on that she can float and decides that she must be a superhero. In fact, she reminds me of Rebel Wilson, in the sense that she's rather oblivious to the fact that she tends to get in the way a lot and isn't necessarily any more "powerful" than any of the other AIs. It's pretty funny, actually, when she gets the lime-light, since she has a tendency to constantly be looking for some sort of nemesis to validate her superhero-ness. (She briefly decides that Chris should be her nemesis, since he's constantly surly.)

The mechanics require each of the AIs to be in a "portal" to end the stage and move on. This also requires them to work together. So you have AIs that have issues with each other having to work together for the sake of necessity. By the end of the game, even Chris' angry and resentful attitude to the other AIs changes.

But then the story and characterization takes a strange turn. The last "World" of the game loses the AIs that we've come to love and replace them with a handful of gray ones, which are still characterized, but make the story harder to coincide with mechanics. You play as Grey, The Old One, Jo and John, and Team Jump. During this segment, they introduce a new mechanic: power fields. When any one of these AIs pass through a colored power field, they gain the special ability that the previous group of AIs had. If you pass through a purple field, they gain the power of Sarah, which is the ability to double-jump. This makes the gameplay different enough to be interesting, but the characterization starts getting this dissonance. At this point in the narrative, all of these AIs are sprinting towards a light at the end of the program. Grey is determined to get to the light first, and he becomes the closest thing this game has to an honest villain. The Old One is trying to stop him. Grey enlists the help of Jo and John to get to the end, by tricking them and exploiting them. The Old One teams up with Team Jump, a group of five very small but high-jumping squares. The last level that the Old One and Grey are on have their portals right next to each other, but the narrative has painted a climactic confrontation is in store between these two, which doesn't ever happen. The issue isn't that they don't have this confrontation, but rather, on that level, I got them to their portals first and they sat their, inches from each other, peacefully, until I got the other AIs to their respective portals. This is pretty much the only time that there's a gameplay dissonance from the story. Most levels have been cleverly designed so as to necessitate placing certain AIs last for the narrative to work properly. The reason why they didn't do it in that instance is my only complaint I have on that front.

All in all, I felt that the step away from the original group of AIs that you spent 90% of the game building and learning how to use was a poor choice. The game is centered around the titular character for the most part, and for him not to even be there at the end seemed strange. It actually reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2 in some respects. How you start with Snake, then move to Raiden for most of the game. Only imagine that you played most of the game with Solid Snake and then only the climax is carried out by Raiden. It leads to diminished satisfaction with the outcome of the story.

All in all, I was surprised at how strong the overall narrative was painted with only the narration of the feelings or thoughts of each AI to tell the story, and a small blurb at the beginning of each World explaining a little bit about what was happening in the real world. It shows that character-driven gameplay can be applied to anything. Even a handful of colorful shapes moving in a sparsely decorated world.