Cloud's Strife: A Rejected Pitch

[When Kill Screen announced their call for submissions to their Intimacy Issue towards the end of 2010, they explicitly stated that an article about Aeris's death was probably not what they were after. That gave me an idea: a story about Aeris's death. Fortunately, they rejected this story--not least of all because Brian Taylor wrote a far superior story about the subject. Also, I had pitched another story, too, which they did accept, and which I am much happier with.


So I stumbled across the old draft of my Aeris's death piece in my "Old Writing" folder just recently. It was better than I remembered. Certainly not Kill Screen quality, but not bad for something I frantically threw together. So rather than gathering cyberdust on my computer, I might as well post it here. Enjoy.]

Cloud's Strife

 The safety harness clicks open. Cloud pushes it up, leans over the side of the rollercoaster, and spews chunks onto the platform. He coughs, splutters, spits, and looks up at the scoreboard: 3200 points—enough for another prize.

He steadies himself with a trembling arm against the railing and tries to climb out of the cart without landing in his lunch. His knees buckle the moment he puts weight on them, but he manages to keep his footing. As he stumbles towards the Prize Collection Booth an oversized moogle glares at him, mop in one hand, bucket in the other.

“Sorry,” Cloud gags.

The moogle man just shakes his Styrofoam head and walks towards the mess.

Cloud’s world still spins. The loops and the corkscrews have knocked, twisted, and tumbled the Golden Saucer theme music into a discordant, demonic taunt that echoes through his mushed brain.

 Lights and shapes still flash across his vision; ghosts of targets, stars, and aliens are burnt onto his retina. He has not left Speed Square for, well, he isn’t sure, a day at the least. Over and over and over he rides the rollercoaster, shooting the laser gun at the targets that jump from the same spots every time. At first he would fail to reach the 2000 points required to win the prize, but now he had memorised the whole course and is pushing 4000 each go. The first time he pushed to the front of the queue security tried to throw him out, but one look at his oversized sword kept them at bay. Now Speed Square was shut off to all other customers as Cloud continued to ride the rollercoaster.

To her credit, the lady at the Prize Collection Booth still smiles and still bows as low as she did the first time. She knows the prize Cloud craves, but she is tied to the Golden Saucer’s Prize Randomisation Policy. It isn’t her fault, Cloud keeps reminding himself, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“Congratulations! You win a prize!” She repeats the line with only the faintest quiver to her voice.
Cloud leans on the counter with bone-white knuckles, and she jumps back, momentarily losing her composure. With obvious reluctance, she places the X-Potion on the counter.

“God damn it no!” Cloud roars and sweeps the X-Potion aside, the glass vial smashing against the ground. “You know what I want!”

The Prize Collection Booth Lady bows profusely. “I’m sorry, sir, but the Golden Saucer Prize Randomisation Policy states that—“

“I don’t fucking care. I need—“

“Cloud!”

A hand on his shoulder. Cloud turns quickly—too quickly, almost spiralling into the ground. For a painful, delirious thousandth of a second he thinks it has worked, that she has returned, that Aeris is alive again. But he blinks again and this time he recognises Tifa. Her eyes are wide with horror.

“My God, Cloud. What are you doing?”

Cloud pushes her away and stumbles away from the Prize Collection Booth. He needs to buy another ticket.

“Cloud!” Tifa follows him. “This isn’t going to bring her back!”

Cloud rounds on her. “What the fuck else can I do, Tifa? Aeris is dead, you get it? Dead. The rest of you might not care but I can save her. I just need to take thirty-five 1/35 Soldiers to an old man in a cave near Junon, and this is the only way to get them.”

Tifa stands her ground. “Just like the 400 tornberries, Cloud? Just like the 99 megalixirs? I know you miss her, Cloud, but listen to yourself. These rumours you are following are clearly false.”

Cloud shakes his head. “No. This will work. I will bring her back.”

He turns and slams 10GP onto the ticket counter. “One please.”

“Cloud! Listen to me! You have sold our best materia, our best items. Meteor is going to destroy the world in a matter of days. We need to go stop Sephiroth. Now.”

“I need to save Aeris.”

“Cloud. She is dead.”

The rollercoaster slides up to the starting line. Cloud’s own vomit is still stained down the cart’s side. He steps over it and slides in behind the laser gun.

“Is this how you think she wants to be remembered? By you wasting your final days on a rollercoaster?
Cloud, we need you. She needs you.”

Cloud hesitates. He remembers Aeris’s eyes, her hair, the way she offered him that first flower.

The way she died in his arms.

“No.”

He pulls the safety harness down and locks it shut.

“I’m sorry, Tifa.”

“Cloud!”

She keeps shouting, but the wheels are already clicking as the chain drags the cart up the first slope. Cloud shuts his eyes and swallows the lump in his throat. When he opens them again, the hill is cresting and fireworks are exploding and lights are flashing. He grips the trigger.

“I’m coming, Aeris.”

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Keeping Pace

Game stories, like all stories, follow the structure of beginning-middle-end. The beginning introduces the characters, status quo, and the conflict the characters face that disrupts the status quo; the middle places challenges along the characters’ path as they try to resolve the conflict; and the end is where the conflict is ultimately resolved (one way or another) and the status quo is reinstated (or a new status quo is reached). This is the narrative arc and is the thread that stitches the stories various scenes together. The story starts at an arbitrary point, rises in intensity towards the climax of conflict, and then drops again as the conflict is resolved. It may have small bumps along the way as minor conflicts present themselves and are resolved along the way, but it all contributes to the underlying arc. Very broadly, all narrative arcs look something like this:

The speed at which a story moves along its narrative arc is its pace. Pace to a story is as beat to a song. Without it, the story trips over its own feet and unravels into a random heap of disconnected events. A well-paced narrative arc does not peak too early, does not drop too late, and most importantly, does not flat-line.

Film has found a pace for their medium that works and has been accepted as the convention to which nearly all films comply: a two-hour narrative (give or take) with a slow build of conflict that reaches its climax around three-quarters of the way in. This pace works and, as long as it is maintained and does not flat-line, holds the audience’s attention well enough to allow the entire narrative to be consumed in one sitting.

Shorter videogames have adopted the filmic pace appropriately. Metal Gear Solid, for instance, is a brief, concise, single conflict in a single environment that paces itself along the traditional beginning-middle-end narrative arc well enough. The intensity of the conflict slowly builds throughout the game, and the climax never feels too far away. It is not entirely unheard of for people to complete Metal Gear Solid in one sitting.

However, the vast majority of game narratives are many times longer than those of film, taking anywhere up to and over a hundred hours to complete. Stretching the narrative structure of a two-hour film over even a twenty-hour game produces a diluted experience that takes too long to get started, grinds perpetually in the middle, and eventually reaches a conclusion that does not seem to warrant the time taken to get to it. The audience can tolerate waiting ninety minutes for the climax of a film, but waiting twenty-five hours for the climax of a videogame is unbearable. So what is a pacing model that could work for game narratives?

There is another narrative form that stretches a narrative across tens of hours: the TV series. If a single episode of a series is an hour long and a series consists of four ten-episode seasons, then that is a forty-hour narrative arc. Just like most videogames, a TV series is not intended to be consumed in one sitting. A TV series is not merely a forty hour narrative chopped into forty, consumable chunks. Rather, each episode works as a self-contained micro-narrative that also contributes to the broader, meta-narrative arc of the whole series. The status quo is not reinstated at the end of each micro-narrative episode, but a new status quo is reached from which the following episode can begin. Each episode is its own micro-narrative arc of beginning-middle-end threaded along the arc of the meta-narrative. Something like:

Just like TV series, games too split their narratives into smaller chunks: levels. In the same fashion as an episode of a TV series, each level of a game is a section of a broader narrative, but also requires its own micro-narrative arc in order to keep the game properly paced.

Uncharted 2 does this beautifully. Every level is a fully self-contained narrative with a well-paced beginning-middle-end that also contributes to the game’s overall meta-narrative. Every level follows a similar structure: the slow, stealthy introduction to the environment and goals as Drake sneaks in; the climactic conflict as something goes wrong; and the desperate rush to get out alive. Instead of beginning each subsequent level at the intensity of conflict reached in the previous level (i.e. starting with a shoot-out because the previous level ended with a shoot-out), Uncharted 2 beings each new level at a new status quo more intense than the previous level’s beginning but less intense than the previous level’s end. This allows Uncharted 2 to climb the meta-narrative arc at a consistent pace as each level begins with an actual beginning and each level rewards the player with its own climax and resolution. This keeps the pace consistent and steady, and prevents the player’s interest from waning.

Left 4 Dead is another excellent example with tangible micro-narrative arcs built into the very architecture of the levels. Each safe-house acts as the status quo at which one micro-narrative is resolved and the next one begins. Between each is a mad dash, each more difficult and intense than the last with increased types of special infected, scripted events, and a depleting supply of medkits and pain pills. The micro-narrative dash from safe-house to safe-house culminates in the finale event that acts as the climax for the meta-narrative of the entire game.

Assassin’s Creed, conversely, is just one of many otherwise-good games marred by its flawed pacing. I often consider returning to the game for a second playthrough, but I am unable to tolerate the long, boring introduction before the world opens up to me. Then, once the game finally ‘starts’, it is essentially just a grind until the assassinations are complete. There are no climaxes to keep me interested, no important character developments, just one constant slug through a list of hits. Arguably, each assassination is its own micro-narrative; however, there is no sense that the status quo is readjusting or that the conflict is escalating towards a crescendo. Assassin’s Creed is paced like this:

I enjoyed the gameplay of Assassin’s Creed; I really enjoyed the style and characters and writing, but because it failed at pacing its narrative, I have been unable to return to the game. It must be noted, though, that Assassin’s Creed is an open-world game while Uncharted 2 and Left 4 Dead are linear and more easily controlled by the designer. While pacing certainly becomes exponentially more difficult to manage when the player is free to spend countless hours just exploring, I feel open-world games such as Assassin’s Creed could still harness the micro-narrative within missions. The Grand Theft Auto series attempts this to varying degrees of success. While the player is free to take as long as they want to complete the narrative, the missions themselves work as increasingly intense micro-narratives along the meta-narrative arc. Assassin’s Creed, by comparison, deadlines throughout the middle.

Many games have great stories to tell and interesting mechanics to tell them with, but due to poor pacing, fail to keep the player’s attention for the duration required for the narrative to. While some have overly long introduction/tutorials that attempt to cram in an explanation of every single play mechanic, others stagnate in the middle due to drawing out the action with no climactic reward until the very end. Instead of grinding for hours across a taut, filmic narrative arc stretched too thin towards the one, eventual climax, the micro-narrative structure of TV series gives a longer game the faster pace required to keep the player interested by chopping the narrative into smaller, consumable chunks that each contains its own narrative satisfaction.

Notes: 1. The idea for this post first started in a rambling, musing comment to Ian Cheong's "First Impressions and Second Chances" over at Hellmode. 2. I am fully aware of the gratuitous amounts of innuendo present in this post.

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