Quantum Conundrum

My initial impression of Quantum Conundrum was, it’s not Portal. I mean, it’s really Not Portal: it invites comparison with Portal at falls short. I’m mostly interested in games as a storytelling medium, and I think it’s interesting to compare QC with Portal in that area, because they’re trying to do very similar things but QC is (in my opinion) failing where Portal gloriously succeeded.

(Story and ending spoilers for both Quantum Conundrum and Portal below. If you haven’t finished Quantum Conundrum, now’s your chance. If you haven’t finished Portal, why the hell not? Go play it now!)

Quantum Conundrum shares most of its major story elements with Portal:

• A lone, voiceless, largely blank-slate player character
• A confusing, repetitive, artificial environment which they are trapped in and must navigate
• Early on, the PC acquires a device, native to the environment, that lets them manipulate physics
• Only one other real character, who features only as a voice until the very end of the game
• Some repeated puzzle elements are given anthopomorphic personalities, although they aren’t fully-fledged characters in their own right (turrets in Portal, DOLLIs in Quantum Conundrum)
• A ‘mascot’ character (the companion cube in Portal, Ike in QC)
• SCIENCE! as an excuse for puzzles
• A central mystery (what happened to Professor Quadwrangle in QC, what is going on in Portal)
• Late in the game, when the player appears to have solved the problems, a plot twist reveals a different problem to be solved, and the PC must travel ‘backstage’ into the innards of the environment
• In the final sequence, the player is led to do something which turns out to be the wrong thing to do (destroy a personality core in Portal, fix the big IDS in QC)

There may be some I’ve missed. It would be going to far to say that the stories of QC and Portal are the same, but they have a lot in common, far more than is required by their similar game design.

So, where did QC fall down? Here are some things I think it got wrong, which Portal avoided:

No antagonist

Portal managed to make GLaDOS into both guide and antagonist. In QC, however, the Professor is just a guide, and the obstacles are impersonal. A story about fixing the consequences of an accident is generally less exciting than one about defeating an enemy; that’s why films about natural disasters have to work so hard to make the audience care about the characters.

Initial plot thread left hanging

QC starts with a cutscene telling us that Professor Quadwrangle was sent to live in the mansion by his sister. The sister is mentioned a couple more times in his voiceover, but never becomes important, leaving me wondering what the point of introducing her was. If the only mentions of the sister had been throw-away references in the middle of the game, she would just have been a nice detail, like the other relatives the Professor mentions; but her prominence in the opening cutscene turns her into a plot thread that didn’t get resolved, making the game’s overall structure feel weak. (To be honest, I don’t think the opening cutscene added anything important and the easiest way to improve the game would be to remove it.)

I initially wondered if the sister would be the antagonist, but apparently not. Maybe the idea is for her to appear in a sequel, but a game story has to work on the level of a single game, not just over a series.

The mystery is spelled out…

Early on in QC, the Professor’s voiceover tells you that he’s trapped in some strange dimension, that there’s been an accident, and that he’s lost his memory of what happened. It’s effectively instructing the player, “This is the mystery: wonder about this!” Every so often the Professor drip-feeds me some new information about where he is or how his memory is returning. The result of this is that, rather than trying to work out the answer to the problem, I just filed it away, knowing that the game would drip-feed me the solution in good time. Portal, on the other hand, just put me in an environment and didn’t explain what was going on, leaving me to actively wonder.

…and so is the resolution.

In the final sequence of QC, the Professor’s memory suddenly returns and he tells you the answer to the mystery the game posed at the start. Portal gives me hints, increasing in frequency towards the end of the game, but expects me to put them together by myself, and even then doesn’t answer everything. And the end of Portal I know enough for the story to be satisfying, but there are still many things it leaves me guessing about.

The resolution is based on arbitrary made-up science

OK, if I understand it correctly, the resolution of QC is as follows. Just before you arrived, the Professor’s experiment went wrong because he got too much Science Juice in the master IDS, which caused it to become unstable. Safety features trapped him in a pocket dimension and shut down the power to the mansion, and he also lost his memory for some reason. Not knowing any better (because of the memory loss), he guides the player character to restart the power and then reactivate the master IDS.

All the cause and effect here is based on the way the made-up technology works, and the way the technology works is arbitrary. It’s like a murder mystery which doesn’t even pretend to have enough clues: there’s no satisfying “I knew it!/I should have known it!” – just a dull “Oh, right.”

But the story itself isn’t resolved

The initial mystery of QC is answered at the end, but the plot is left hanging. The problem with the master IDS is re-established; the PC ends up in the pocket dimension and the Professor is free. The story is left incomplete in an unsatisfying way. It looks like it wants a sequel, but it could have set up a sequel while also bringing the story to its own satisfying conclusion.

*

Quantum Conundrum is not a bad game. It has flaws because it’s a good game, and the puzzles are fun. This post has been about looking at the game’s story rather than passing judgement on other aspects of it.

QC is primarily a puzzle-based game rather than a story-driven one–so aren’t I missing the point by criticising its story? I don’t think so, because if it wanted to be a pure puzzle-based game it didn’t need to have as much story as it had. If story isn’t the point then “Here’s a maze, run in it” is a perfectly good premise for a game. The way to fail at game story is not to have too little, but to have more than your game needs and not do interesting things with it.

Eastercon

Tomorrow I’m heading off to Eastercon! I’ve always had a great time at Eastercons in the past so I’m looking forward to it greatly.

This year I’m going to be on my first ever convention panel, on ‘Can videogames tell a good story?’. I am somewhat nervous. If you can’t make it, my argument is basically going to be ‘Yes’. (Though I have been jotting down some ideas for things I could say besides that.)

The Lies of Locke Lamora read-along: week 4

Here are my answers to this week’s discussion questions on The Lies of Locke Lamora. Questions this week provided by @ohthatashley at SF Signal.

1.      In the chapter “A Curious Tale for Countess Amberglass” we learn of the tradition of the night tea in Camorr. I found that not so much fantastical as realistic – how about you?

I don’t think something has to be either fantastic or realistic. It’s not fantastic in the sense that it doesn’t rely on anything supernatural; it is fantastic in that it’s part of an invented culture rather than part of a real one; but it’s also realistic, in the sense that it’s a very believable part of the invented culture. With things like this, realism and good fantasy go hand in hand.

2.      When Jean meets with what will become the Wicked Sisters for the first time, the meeting is described very much like how people feel when they find their true work or home. Agree? Disagree? Some of both?

Agree. And it’s cute, but it’s also kind of disappointing how predictably some of the flashbacks set up the present-day situation.

3.      Salt devils. Bug. Jean. The description is intense. Do you find that description a help in visualizing the scene? Do you find yourself wishing the description was occasionally – well – a little less descriptive?

Not at all. I thought there was just the right level of description in this scene.  I had a clear sense of place but I never felt the action was slowing down in order for elaborate descriptions to be fitted in.

4.      This section has so much action in it, it’s hard to find a place to pause. But…but.. oh, Locke. Oh, Jean. On their return to the House of Perelandro, their world is turned upside down. Did you see it coming?

No. I wish I had! In last week’s answers I naively said that Locke’s ordeal of being left to drown in a barrel of horse urine could be the book’s lowest point. It looks like I spoke too soon! In hindsight, the urine barrel ordeal wouldn’t be an effective lowest point because it doesn’t change enough: it’s the sort of thing which Locke could survive and not be changed by. The deaths of Locke’s friends and the destruction of the group’s hideout have to change Locke, and he changes visibly. And hot on its heels is the change in the city’s overall status quo, which is an additional shock.

I also love the way that the Don Salvara game is finally tied into the Grey King plot, in a way that makes it much more urgent. Locke’s got to complete the Don Salvara game, as before, but this time with fewer resources and more urgency, as it’s his only source of money.

5.      Tavrin Callas’s service to the House of Aza Guilla is recalled at an opportune moment, and may have something to do with saving a life or three. Do you believe Chains knew what he set in motion? Why or why not?

I don’t think Chains foresaw things in that much detail. I think he was doing what he said he was doing: giving the Bastards skills that might come in useful in many different future scenarios.

6.      As Locke and Jean prepare for Capa Raza, Dona Vorchenza’s remark that the Thorn of Camorr has never been violent – only greedy and resorting to trickery – comes to mind again. Will this pattern continue?

I think so, and I think it’ll be to Locke’s eventual advantage. Notice how he takes time to help the waiter he took advantage of escape, rather than leave him to Merragio’s justice. I suspect his record of non-violence will win him someone’s trust or friendship at some point in the future.

7.      Does Locke Lamora or the Thorn of Camorr enter Meraggio’s Countinghouse that day? Is there a difference?

It was Locke, not the Thorn. The Thorn of Camorr is a dashing swordsman who can walk through walls, who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, isn’t he? He’s a persona that Locke can use to his advantage, but he doesn’t use this persona at any point during the (ridiculously entertaining) Meraggio’s sequence. Unless you’re going to argue that the recent events have meant the death of Locke Lamora and the character is now the Thorn–but that’s not how the book presents it. It looks like Locke still thinks of himself as Locke.

What I got for Christmas

Look what I got!

It’s a reproduction of a 1950s card came based on the Dan Dare comic. I’d guess the original was made in 1952 or so, because all the pictures on the cards are from the first three story arcs, from the start to the middle of Marooned on Mercury. And yes, I could tell that from glancing through the deck, and yes, I’m aware of what a massive geek that makes me.  (It’s worse than that: I immediately spotted an error on one of the cards. The elevated tube-train is labeled as a Treen telesender but it’s actually an electrosender: the telesender was a teleporter. Ha! I am a special kind of nerd.)

Anyway, the game itself is very simple. There are four suits with 11 numbered cards each, and the rules provided are for a simple trick-taking game along the lines of Whist. There’s nothing Dan Dare about the game besides the artwork. You could play that game with a normal set of playing cards. You could certainly put pictures of anything you liked on the cards and the game would be unchanged.

The game mechanics feel dated, more so than the 50s futuristic artwork. It’s interesting to compare the game with modern licensed board and card games. Games today are more complex and often make some attempt to model the story of the licensed property, with unique mechanics that reflect the property’s unique story elements. For example the Battlestar Galactica board game has the players moving their characters around the ships of the fleet and fighting off Cylon attacks, and has a special mechanic that some players are secretly Cylon agents. The Arkham Horror board game has the players running around Arkham fighting monsters, and has a sanity point mechanic to reflect the Lovecraft source material. If Dan Dare were new today, I’d expect a licensed game to have elaborate rules that modeled players cooperating to fight some evil Treen plot.

But those games reflect a modern approach to games design, influenced by cross-pollination from tabletop roleplaying games. Back in the 1950s there wasn’t that tradition of novelty in game design. Card games were things like Whist, so a licensed Dan Dare card game was a Whist variant with pictures of spaceships on the cards.

The Thing about Sequels

This afternoon I saw The Thing, the confusingly-titled prequel to the 1982 sci-fi/horror classic The Thing. It’s a prequel, but it’s also sort-of a remake, in that the credits proclaim it to be based on the same short story (John W. Campbell’s ‘Who Goes There?’) and its plot goes through the same motions with a different set of characters.  It’s not exactly a bad film, but it adds nothing to the original.

Also in the news recently, a prequel comic to Watchmen is apparently in development, and there are rumours of a Doctor Who movie. I’ve seen some fans outraged about these things on social media. A Doctor Who movie would spoil the TV series! Watchmen doesn’t need a prequel!

My thoughts: it’s true that Watchmen doesn’t need a prequel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a prequel would be bad. Alien didn’t need a sequel, but most people regard Aliens as very good. Similarly the Doctor Who TV series doesn’t need a spin-off movie, but the movie might turn out to be great.

Of course it’s possible that the Watchmen prequel and the Who movie will be awful. (Very likely in the case of the Watchmen prequel, but I’m hesitantly optimistic about the Who movie). But so what? There are lots of awful comics and movies: why should people get outraged about these ones?

Because these spin-offs spoil the original work. And that’s where I can’t get my head around the outrage: because however awful the Watchmen prequel turns out to be, my copy of Watchmen will still be there on my bookshelf. Perhaps I approach things differently as a writer, but I don’t feel obliged to read a work in the light of spin-offs made later by different writers or production teams.

The author’s intentions at the time of writing aren’t the way to evaluate a work, of course. But neither is the idea that there is a fixed canon, one true history of a fictional world, and all sequels or spin-offs of the same work are windows into that world. To go back to the Alien universe, I don’t have to watch the end of Aliens with the start of Alien3 in the back of my mind. I can watch Star Trek: The Next Generation without caring that the events of the series would somehow be ‘undone’ by the 2009 movie. I can watch the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica and pretend that it’s leading up to an ending that made some kind of sense. The writers didn’t have these later instalments in mind when they wrote the original works, so why should I think about them when watching them?

This isn’t about ignoring bits of canon that you don’t like: it’s about taking each work as a thing in itself, respecting it more rather than less because it’s not real, because it was created at a particular time by a particular person or set of people who had a partricular idea in their mind.

So, the prequel to The Thing added nothing to the original work, but it also took nothing away.

Writers of the Future

I am a finalist in this quarter of the Writers of the Future contest.

Here is the announcement!

I should know in a few weeks if I’m one of the winners. Being a finalist is a massive achievement in itself, of course.

Since I haven’t updated for a while, I thought I should say I’m not dead, and I’m still writing. I haven’t written any short stories lately because I’ve been working on my first novel, which I’m hoping to finish this year. It’s a serious, character-driven science fiction novel about cyborg space pirates and giant planet-destroying alien robots.

First post

I write science fiction stories (and sometimes other ‘genre’ stories, but mainly science fiction).  Someday, maybe, I will write a novel.  This blog exists mainly to provide links to all my stories that get published.  So far this has not been many–but watch this space.