Mass Effect: We Are Last In Space

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll take a look at the in-universe history of Mass Effect.

Image from Mass Effect wiki

Mass Effect has an extensive in universe timeline, not only chronicling humanity's efforts in space, but many other species as well. The wiki has a nice big timeline for your viewing pleasure (with spoilers for the events in the game).  Just be aware this post will also have some spoilers, for those of you who haven't played Mass Effect yet.

There are quite a few interesting things to note about this timeline. First is the earliest date on this timeline is 37,000,000 BCE where a mass accelerator round was fired at a Reaper. So long before humanity there were living things in space and these living things in space had guns. They were also dying. The entry implies that the Reapers as a species were around well before this date. For those unaware, the Reapers are called such because they go around killing species to near-extinction/total extinction. This is part of their reproduction. Reapers are bad news.

So not only was there more than one advanced alien species in the universe long before humanity was in the picture, there were plenty of others you run into in the game when humanity was just getting into the swing of things, you also have to keep in mind this timeline only track the Milky Way galaxy. All of the events in Mass Effect are contained to the Milky Way galaxy. When you start to think about it, this makes humanity feel really small and insignificant (or maybe just me). You see this reflected in humanity's attitude toward other council races: humans have a tendency to make themselves sound pompous by trying to sound like the most important thing in the room, despite the fact that humanity is the newcomer in Council Space. There are many races in Mass Effect and now humanity has competition on every front. If you haven't felt that incredible shrinking feeling yet I am amazed.

Now here's the part where I link this to our history. I know it seems hard mostly because I've been marveling at Mass Effect's long detailed timeline and ideas that we're not alone and are far behind the curve. But that's the thing: in the Mass Effect universe, we are far behind and quickly trying to catch up. In Mass Effect, humanity has started setting up colonies on the moon in 2069 C.E. That's a mere 58 years from the date of this post. This is before we discover the mystical element zero which makes all the aspects of space travel a million times easier, so Mass Effect is presenting a plausible idea for it's audience. Unfortunately, reality comes to rain on the parade of space adventure. The last couple years have shown cuts in spending for space exploration in the United States. Mass Effect is implying we have the technology or the potential for technology for living on the moon in viable colonies. This could be instrumental in solving some of humanity's problems like overpopulation. Yet here we are limiting that potential. I don't know much about the international scenario for space funding, so I don't know how dire the space funding situation is. But wouldn't it be awesome if we could live on the moon in 58 years.

Bonus: Here's a map of the Milky Way in the Mass Effect games from the Mass Effect Wiki.

Temporary Hiatus, New Schedule, and a Small Bonus

Hello readers!
Unfortunately, Real Life is invading my digital habits so I'm putting the blog on a temporary hiatus for a couple weeks or so. This'll also help me get through a few more games so I can make better blog posts for you all.

Now I would also like to announce I'm switching the schedule. To accommodate Real Life in the future, I'm switching the blog to a bi-weekly schedule whenever I start back up. Don't worry, it'll still be the same with me switching history and literary each week, it's just that I need more time to play games/come up with a good explanation of things.

I don't want to leave you guys completely high and dry. So I'm going back to the flash games. I couldn't make this a whole blog post-since this was supposed to be a history week- but I do want to recommend High Tea. It's easily one of the more historically accurate flash games out there. You are dealing opium to China to get money to buy tea for Britain during the 1830s. It's a fun and quick economic management game. The game even explains why 1839 is the cut-off and shows your stats.

Until next time!

Flash games: Complex stories

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll be taking a look at often forgotten games that are just as important to us as console games: games on the internet. This is a different tack, but since I've been playing flash games as much as I play "normal" video games and there are many great ones. In the future we can look at other games like these and browser games as they are doing wonderful things for the industry and for what we can experience.

The games we're going to look at today are all available to play on Kongregate (which is free). 

Today's games strike me as being very rich in story and what they mean. One game with such an interesting story is Prior by krangGAMES. Prior takes the trope of you having amnesia, but from there it takes an interesting turn. You explore the game, which is a platformer, but never run into any enemies. You piece together a story by reading notes. From this you learn there was a war, you were a soldier, this is a science facility, there is a doctor in charge, and your family is somewhere in the facility. Which options you pursue are up to you. There are a total of three endings for the game, where you decide what to pursue-escape, the doctor, or your family. Each ending reveals more about the story and about who the character was. You ultimately decide who your character is now, giving the player ultimate control of their fate.

A different kind of story is in Flight by Armor Games. Flight is a game where you see how far you can throw a paper airplane. The story is separated from the gameplay, but it is an interesting story none the less. The story starts with a little girl writing a letter to Santa and folding it into a paper airplane. The paper airplane then flies to Paris where a young man finds it and writes a love letter which he folds into a paper airplane. The airplanes fly around the world and ultimately, you get a happy ending. Such a simple story, yet this motivation keeps you going. You want to see where these message will end up next and if if it will end up being a happy ending. Each person reacts to the messages differently and most of the story lines do not get an ending, but just to see how far paper airplanes can go and what impact such a simple thing can have.

Another story takes a character who already has a backstory and is telling the player about it. You control the character the whole time yet you have to wait for the character to tell you exactly what the story is as you go through levels of platforming with a time mechanic. This game is The Company of Myself by 2D Array. The man starts out by saying he prefers to be solitary and then over the course of the game you learn about what happened to the last person he cared about to explain his solitary behavior. The end reveals why he is talking to the player, with a stinger to reveal more about the character. I would discuss this in more detail, but I do not wish to spoil this game as it is so short and well worth a play. 

Here we see three different tacks at story telling. Each game has a story in its own regards and each is nothing like the other. Two of these games have serious stories, like you would expect to find in "normal" video games, just in a condensed format. Flash games provide a great opening for many game makers and stories to come out. These developers may well make the "normal" games of tomorrow.

Assassin's Creed: Nothing is True?

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. Today we'll discuss Assassin's Creed and what it has to say about the study of history.

The emblem of the Assassins. Picture from the Assassin's Creed Wiki.

The title of the game refers to an actual creed spoken by the Assassins. Part of this creed is "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." As with most things like this, there are multiple meanings. In terms of gameplay, it's a reference to the sandbox style where the player can do anything within the confines of the game. You can scale buildings, search for flags, even kill people (with various outcomes depending on who you killed). It's also a nice little reminder that what you're playing is a fictional game with a historical backdrop.Yes, there really were two groups called the Templars and the Hashishin, but liberties were taken for the sake of the game.

Yet that part of the creed also can apply to real life. Desmond at one point asks his captor why what he's saying doesn't match with what he knows. Vidic, his captor, tells mentions the creed, saying it was possible for enough powerful people to write down history different from how it actually happened. Which brings up the questions of real life, how do we really know that the history we have is what actually happened? In the game, we are forced to accept the reality of Templars and Assassins fighting until the modern day, as we experience it first hand. You discover their magic artifact of the day and are forced to say, "This is real in this game." But for reality, there are all sorts of other problems.

Well, unfortunately, we can never know 100%, even for modern history, as who has access to every little document that's relevant or can read the minds of those around them. We have discovered many forged documents over the years relating to historical eras. Now these can be relatively unimportant, such as people faking false Western photographs of outlaws for tourists, to major, such as the fake Hitler diaries (which were thankfully quickly pointed out as fakes shortly after their publication). With the ability to fake such documents, how can we ever be sure?

Tests! Yes, tests can help with documentation. Ink from certain time periods will react a certain way under certain lights (most common being ultraviolet and infrared). Paper composition varies by time and place (modern paper vs. 18th century paper vs vellum). These things are harder to fake and thus provide some authenticity in the field. 

But what about when tests fail? How do we know when everything is 100% accurate? Well, we can never know, but there are context clues. For ancient history we have to extrapolate from written records, but with any luck we can have records from other places to support them. If a letter proves authentic, it is extremely valuable as letters are more personal, especially before the Long 18th Century (when some would write with publication in mind). We don't have records of everything, but we can make good assumptions due to documents and other physical evidence.

Assassin's Creed brings up the interesting questions of what truth is and who writes truth. Which is good, as skepticism is necessary when discussing any type of truth, not just historical. But sometimes you just have to admit we have to accept some things with just cursory evidence, as we just don't have all the evidence. Unfortunately, there is no DNA memory, no Animus for us to figure it out. Happily there is no Abstergo ruling the world.

Silent Hill: Classic religion within the horrifying cult

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll talk about the religion in the Silent Hill series, specifically The Order and it's interesting hybrid religion.

The seal of The Order. From The Silent Hill Wiki

For those somewhat unfamiliar with Silent Hill, it is a series of psychological horror games that focuses around the strange going-ons in the town of Silent Hill, occasionally going to the surrounding area as in SH4 and SH:Homecoming. We'll be discussing broad things across most of the games, so I'm going to put up a nice big Spoiler Warning here and now, so read the blog post at your own risk. This will be especially spoilerific for SH:Homecoming and SH3. Long post is long, as there is a lot of stuff to talk about for this to make sense.

The strange occurrences in the games all come back to whatever The Order is doing, The Order being a cult in the area with their own sects.There are four mains sects: Sect of the Holy Woman, which wants to birth god; Sect of the Holy Mother, which involves a ritual to revive the Mother, and only comes up in SH4; Sect of Valtiel, focused on punishment and beside from a connection to Pyramid Head really doesn't do much in the games; and the Sect of Shepherd's Glen, which is what all of SH: Homecoming is about. Right now, The Order sounds like any religion if you look closely.

Now here's where it gets messy. If you pay attention to all the sects, The Order suddenly becomes this weird amalgamation of religions you can see in the real world, usually Western religions. Let's start with the Sect of the Holy Woman.

Saint Alessa. Image from The Silent Hill Wiki

The woman in the picture above is the focus of SH1 and SH3: Alessa. Alessa was born with special powers and her mother, Dahlia Gillespie, is the head of the Sect of the Holy Woman...which believes that in order to birth god a woman with special powers has to be burned alive. Yeah, this is where things start going sour for everyone. They didn't kill Alessa in the blaze and Alessa managed to split her soul into herself and a baby which Harry Mason picks up. This baby is now called Cheryl Mason. Cheryl convinces Harry to go to Silent Hill to stop her nightmares (caused by Alessa being in agony) and the first game is set into action. Harry experiences an isolated Silent Hill full of monsters, thanks to Alessa's psychic powers. The game technically has four endings, but for the sake of continuity, the "true" ending is one of the ones where Harry is given a baby by Alessa, one he will call Heather, as in the protagonist of SH3. The picture above is a painting Heather can find in the game, where it is given the caption "Saint Alessa: Mother of God, Daughter of God" and Heather will say both the woman and the baby are herself. SH3 focuses on Heather's struggle with another member of the sect who want her to birth god, but at least this time they don't try to burn Heather...they just try to make her miserable by killing her father and destroying her sanity via monsters.

The important thing for now is the picture. They call her Saint Alessa, something that only occurs in parts of the Christian religion in the real world. She even has that thin halo that can be seen in art of Saints from the Renaissance onwards. Surprisingly the baby doesn't have the halo. I think that's because they want to emphasize the saint, who will birth god, has to be of childbearing age, not a child herself (despite the plan in the first game). The Christian-esque theme naming also occurs in the cult as you do have priests and priestesses, with Dahlia and Claudia both being priestesses. Curiously, in SH3 you can hear a tape of someone going to Confession (you can also enter a Confession booth and hear someone's confession later in the game), where they address "Father Vincent" and talk about "Sister Claudia."

The God of the Order. Image from The Silent Hill Wiki

Also of note for this sect is the god they worship. The god they worship is primarily as sun deity, as evidence by the track Sun on the SH3 soundtrack. The picture above shows the god, the central figure in the red dress. You may have noticed that's a woman. Goddess worship has been around for some time, but this adds the aspect of making the Goddess (who can also be called God) a sun deity, giving the religion a more ancient religion feel. This is especially evident in "Sun" where she is not the creator of humans, but rather the creator of happiness, night, day and other things, but dies before creating paradise. The Order has successfully combined an ancient religion with a more modern one. The Order wants to birth a god to create Paradise (SH3)/cause the apocalypse (SH1). In SH3, The Order is given a more sympathetic angle, with Claudia fully admitting she'll never go to Paradise because of what she's done. However, throughout the games, you find out The Order, while centered in Silent Hill, isn't all that popular. Given the fact that it's very close to Christianity (when God is born, Paradise happens, etc.) it's hard to see why. As you go further into the story, you find out the members of The Order, while known, are not well liked, especially Dahlia's crew.

Painting of Pyramid Head and executed. Image from Silent Hill Wiki

There's where the different sects come in. The Order is an old religion for the area, that's where the Sect of Valtiel (another Christian-esque name, especially since Valtiel is the caretaker and messenger of God in SH series) comes in. They were popular back in the early days of Silent Hill, the Sect of Valtiel being those who dish out punishment, i.e. executioners. Look at the picture above, and just pretend Pyramid Head is a guy in a red hood and there's a big tree in the fog- looks like a normal execution of prisoners now. SH2 even includes a puzzle involving hanging prisoner (a personal favorite). This is the more practical aspect of The Order-judging the guilty. Here we can make the assumption the The Order created order in the town. The Order tried to continue its good way my making orphanages. Unfortunately, it got greedy and turned them into brainwashing centers which would eventually lead to the 21 Sacraments (aka 21 murders), Walter Sullivan, the Sect of the Holy Mother and the plot of SH4.

Recall that there is four sects. I have mentioned three. The last sect is the Sect of Shepherd's Glen, Shepherd's Glen being the town where SH:Homecoming takes place starring Alex Shepherd. This game takes a twist for the weird for many fans as you don't go to Silent Hill and The Order is cursory. However, it takes a new spin on the religion. Whereas SH3 brought a lot of Christian-esque aspects, Homecoming takes it to the ancient religion. The Sect of Shepherd's Glen involved the four founding families of the town, where they each had to sacrifice one family member every 50 years in order to stop the town from looking like Silent Hill in nightmare mode. You play the game when this went wrong. Alex accidentally killed his brother before the sacrifices were due, throwing the whole ritual off so when the other three children were sacrificed it didn't go well.

You encounter the children as your four bosses: Asphyxia, who looks a lot like the human centipede; Sepulcher, a tree-corpse hybrid that can smoosh you; Scarlet , a very, very very, creepy doll (oh god she's going to eat me); and Amnion, a giant spider. The names here are the important part. All of these represent some sort of element. Asphyxia is air- she is defeated when Alex lets the main head breathe, the child died by suffocation. Sepulcher is earth-the child was buried alive, the back is covered with plants. Amnion is water-reference to amnionic fluid in pregnant women, Alex's brother drowned, you can see him being "birthed" when Amnion is defeated. Scarlet is the oft-forgotten ether, the Greek fifth element that was basically everywhere and helped with life- Scarlet was killed by dismemberment for her blood, the monster has a fast beating heart. Notice the missing element here is fire. Scroll back up to the Saint Alessa picture. See the orange in the background? Remember how they tried to make Alessa birth god the first time? Alessa is fire. Shepherd's Glen can't have a fire sacrifice as that belongs to The Order in Silent Hill, for their god. The Order of Silent Hill fits neatly into monotheism and a classical religious scheme connected more to nature worship.

Now what does this mean? The Order's hybridity is a fascinating take, since it combines aspects of two types of major religion. It seems to have the best of both worlds, with split sects so people can pick and choose which aspect they like better. So why does it suck so much? Perhaps it's a subtle swipe at religion, but I think the hybridity actually defuses that. The Order is no religion in particularly, yet the basis for all religions at the same time. This ambiguity means it goes beyond religion Remember how I said earlier that The Order's philosophy was pretty sound? I think that means that no matter what the intentions, the actions are more important. SH3 and SH:Homecoming both have The Order trying to do something good: create paradise and keep the town safe. However, for their religion, they caused trauma, trauma that manifested itself in reality in the form of monsters. Perhaps it's a warning to watch your actions, as the ends don't always justify the means. Unless you're into giant monsters that want to eat you.

Metal Gear Solid: This Could've Been Your History

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week we'll be discussing the history around the Metal Gear Solid franchise.

Image taken from Gamespot. 

Now the Metal Gear Solid is a large franchise and each game is very long and in detail so we won't be getting into all the nitty-gritty. We're going to do a quick overview of some of the history the game is commenting, that is no way the end-all-be-all. I'm also going to but up the nice big Spoiler Warning here and now for the whole blog post.

We're going by game continuity chronology. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes place in 1964, invading a Soviet Jungle to rescue a scientist. There is a group making nuclear weapons. This sets up Naked Snake, Solid Snake's father, and the original Big Boss. The game also provides the beginning of the Patriots, which we'll discuss later. The important part of this is the date. Kojima choose 1964 on purpose, especially for a Soviet jungle with nuclear weapons. 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This sets the tone for the whole game, as the player can feel the people in the game are tenser because of the closeness of the two events. Of course, this is worse than the missile crisis, as this game includes two prototypes: Metal Gear and Shagohod. Both are nuclear tanks that could change warfare as it is known. Kojima is acknowledging real nuclear history, acknowledging how horrible that crisis was. He has added something to say how much worse it could have been, saying this crisis could have led to a worse history than the one we're in.

The first Metal Gear Solid was released in 1998, but the game's plot occurs in 2005. In the game universe, the START III treaty is being negotiated, thus why Solid Snake has to go stop the terrorists from using Metal Gear Rex to launch nukes via railgun. This is actually a comment on the actual historical START treaties, as the U.S. and Russia did sign START II in the early 1990s, but it was never ratified by the U.S. Negotiations for the real START III happened in 1997, but they fell apart. Kojima here may have been making a jab at the current politics by having START III occur later, but it sounded like the negotiations were going about as well as they did in real life. This is important for the rest of the franchise, as START treaties would limit the Metal Gears, as they are nuclear weapons.

The series continues looking toward the future with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, released in 2004, but takes a different approach. The game is divided into a prologue, taking place in 2007, and the main plot, in 2009. The prologue focuses on Solid Snake, who is now working for an NGO he founded called Philanthropy. Philanthropy is an anti-Metal Gear group, as Metal Gears by this point have become the main nuclear weapon. However, the operation in the prologue goes wrong and Philanthropy is framed and now Solid Snake is believed dead. The game switches to Raiden's mission, with many, many plot twists which can all boil down to one idea: the government is evil! OK, I'm overreacting, but the game ends with the idea of government lying to soldiers or controlling their whole lives. Raiden's whole life has been set up by a group called the Patriots. The Patriots are a group above the government supposedly controlling everything. Conspiracy theories are nothing new, but the Patriots take it above and beyond your usual theory about the government. The Patriots controlling everything across all governments. This is most likely a stab at government corruption across the board, as both the U.S. and Japan have been accused of various levels of corruption in the 1990s and 2000s.

Metal Gear Solid 4, released in 2008, takes place in 2014. Hooray, humanity lived past 2012! Boo, the world in now caught in an endless war with nuclear weapons and nanomachines everywhere. Nanonmachines allow all the soldiers to do perfect maneuvers, fire the guns, and be awesome in general. Here we see what happens when nuclear weapons get out of hand, on top of world government being corrupt. This is Kojima giving us the bad future, what would happen if we let weapons and government get out of hand. Unlike Fallout 3, which is a pretty crappy world, but livable, there is nothing enjoyable about the world of MGS4. The two main colors in the game are gunmetal gray and brown. Fallout 3 had splotches of color here and there, such as in the oasis or Three Dog's outfit, but not in MGS4. Some of the first images we see are our hero being old despite the short time distance (due to FOXDIE, a genetic virus killing him), all the soldiers have nanomachines in them (soldiers on both sides have these) and are quickly taken out when the villain uses a signal to affect them, and the villain is trying to hijack the nanomachine system. Highly fantastical, yes, but also highly terrible.

However, there is hope in this series and his name is Johnny Sasaki. Johnny started off as a joke character in MGS1, where his only role is to get his clothes stolen and having a bowel problem because he didn't get a medical shot due to his fear of needles. However, this fear becomes useful in MGS4, where the nanomachines are injected. He skips out of the shots again and is therefore the only one capable of functioning when the villain messes with the nanomachines. What was a moronic soldier suddenly becomes the great hope for the heroes. Johnny gets his own moment of badassery with Meryl, to show that he is no longer a joke. Kojima's message here is about technology. We can't let technology do everything for us, especially if technology is dedicated to war. Johnny can become just as much a hero as Snake.

This is only a sampling of the possible messages of Metal Gear Solid series. The series is up for many, many interpretations, so feel free to come up with your own.

Bioshock: Metaphors, Mr. Bubbles!

Welcome to Pixellated Culture. This week's topic is the literary aspect of Bioshock.

The obvious theme of Bioshock is that an objectivist run city is just silly. However, the developers themselves has stated that is was supposed to be a stab at extremism in general. They explain much of their intent on a Making of Bioshock DVD, which sadly I don't have so I have to work with word of mouth...or internet. Personally, I think they chose objectivism to lampoon because, let's face it, it was pretty easy to lampoon. The sequel helped address the broad angle.

But there's more to Bioshock than just objectivists. If you look closely you can see jabs at broad extremism around you. The most obvious in my mind is Mr. Bubbles... I mean, the Big Daddies. While not as obvious a reference as Big Sisters, Big Daddies are probably meant to evoke the Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984. Big Daddies are the toughest enemies in the game and are in every area except the end game. These are the only semblance of order left in Rapture: They do their job of protecting the Little Sister and nothing else. They do only their assigned mission and keep their Little Sister safe. Even the Splicers, who seem to have no problem attacking you or anything else, are afraid of Big Daddies. The most dangerous thing in the game, even tougher than the final boss. And Big Daddy is always watching you, he's always aware of where you are and if you get too close he'll "unzip" you. Yes, that's what the Little Sisters call it. Isn't it adorable?

Another stab at extremism is the two scientist: Dr. Suchong and Dr. Tenenbaum. One is portrayed a bit more sympathetically in game. Both of them share one motivation for all of their actions in the game's backstory: SCIENCE! Now, I know this could be taken as an example of objectivism, as Ayn Rand did include letting scientists do whatever they want, but their backstories do include them acting like this before Rapture. An argument could be made for Suchong being an objectivist, but he never seemed to care about anything except the next great discovery. Tenenbaum also is now repenting as she realized everything has a limit, so she has become more moderate as opposed to extreme. Suchong and Tenenbaum created the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, with Tenenbaum finding ADAM, the thing that supplies Rapture with Plasmids and such, and Tenenbaum the head of creating Big Daddies and their bond to Little Sisters. Suchong is portrayed as a heartless maniac, willing and able to do anything to discover and make some cash. He is dead before the game begins, having died by a Big Daddies drill as his work was successful. Tenenbaum's backstory includes her working with the Nazis, helping them with their experiments when she was a young girl in the camps. She is directly responsible for the Little Sisters and owns up to this throughout the game. Realizing the damage her finding ADAM and creating the Little Sisters has caused, as ADAM has made all the people in Rapture insane drug addicts, she is now repenting. She discovered the Plasmid/tonic given to the player to save the Little Sisters and has saved some herself, as indicated in the sequel. Tenenbaum is repenting and trying to save what she can in Rapture. So the game, through the tale of the two scientists, insists on one thing: moderation and morals or extremism and death.

Of course, this is just a couple examples. Please, if you think of anymore leave them in the comments. Also, I would be happy to discuss the literary or historical aspects of Bioshock 2 or Bioshock Infinite at some point in the future.