What videogames could (but won't) learn from No Country For Old Men

Seen No Country for Old Men? Of course you have, what a stupid rhetorical question (of course the word 'stupid' is kind of redundant, as it was followed by 'rhetorical question'.)
Now, I don't think it's controversial to say that No Country doesn't have the strongest characters. They were without doubt both memorable and enjoyable, but they where a placeholder; a necessity of achieving an end.



That's not some kind of belligerent knock against the film, because Shigur and compant weren't what drove the story. No Country wasn't even really about the characters so much as it was about the inevitability of a changing world, something so eloquently expressed in the title.


Granted, they were presented in a brilliantly evocative and beautiful manner, and the perceived lack of depth in characters is about the only fault I can find in the Coen brothers nostalgic and beautiful journey through Americana (or being Australian, what I assume Americana is).

However,their weaknesses did get me thinking about videogames, and they do have plenty of faults.
More specifically, how videogames, an industry plagued by bad characters could learn a thing or two from No Country.


The game most relevant to this discussion, at least from a positive standpoint would be Bioshock. Last years best journey through a steamy, dystopian bluelit world wasn't in a car through LA- it was through the crazy world of Rapture. Now, the world needs another glowing report on Bioshock like Katherine Heigl's teeth need another cigarette*/ the world needs another 'shocking expose' on Scientology/ I need reasons to cry myself to sleep at night, but I'm going to do it anyway, because it feels inexplicably linked to No Country, at least for the duration of this conversation.


But first, let me get an admission out of the way: I didn't like Bioshock that much. It was one of those games where I understood why people liked it, but I didn't get as much out of it.
I didn't really get the gameplay, and parts of the game where cut so closely to the game design cloth that you could have gotten the seam caught on something (clumsy analogy away!). I did eventually finish it, and ut turns out that final cutscene of the game was one of my favourite moments ever in a videogame. Sure, it was more Bioshtick than Bioshock, but it was unusually moving (and admittedly kind of character based, throwing an enormous spanner in my argument).


What was more interesting was the story, and what the story represented to game making (and storytelling in general). I'm no Ayn Rand fan, and I don't know too much philosophy, but I have a pretty good idea of what the story in Bioshock was trying to communicate, and it was interesting. Hell, it's as philosophical as a game gets, and it deserves points just for trying something so batshit insane.

Much like No Country, Bioshock, the premise of Bioshock lies on a conceit, and this conceit makes the entire story exponentially more interesting than it was predicated on the sum of the characters involved. Which then got me to thinking, why don't more games try this? Why is Ken Levine the only person that you justifiably liken to the Coen Brothers?



After all, videogames already have the weak characters down pat. In fact, weak protagonists are almost an institution in videogames, which is kind of ironic, since they've become so reliant on character recognotion. It's also kind of odd, considering that character strength should be a foregone conclusion in a industry so dominated by character driven games.
Even Bioshock, my golden calve for this ramble, had kind of archetypal videogame characters, but they were made endearing through the games strengths.


Maybe because we're so used to having shitty story lines that nobody really cares anymore. Nobody's really going to argue that this is because videogames aren't meant (or expected) to be based of a brilliant story, so why spend extra time on something that nobody really cares about?**


For a industry that has (generally) ordinary stories, basing a videogame around a theme and not a character would have to make the whole story development easier to some degree. Instead of building it around a character, build it around a theme, if anything resounding sticks then at least it'll look like it's clever, and it'll impress pseudo intellectual wankers like me.


One game that I feel did this tremendously well as Assassin's Creed (the theme bit, not the making me look a wanker bit) .
It's funny that I'm talking about last years most maligned with last years most loved game, but I'm a funny kind of guy. That and Assassin's feels like the kind of game that felt like it was built from the ground up with a specific theme in mind.
Granted, it's wasn't that brilliant and it's in danger of becoming convoluted to a Metal Gear esque degree, but Ubisoft deserves some light applause for



a) at least trying something different.



b) proving that basing it on something other than character doesn't immediately and irrecoverably destroy a franchise's strength. Ubisoft's greed and stupidity may eventually, but the idea doesn't.


I've said it before, but I thought that Assassin's constant pondering on killing was kind of interesting. What's more, it did it in a way that wasn't overexposed or over gratuitous (the thinking, not the killing). Call it a more subtle take on what Bioshock tried to do. Whilst Bioshock hit you over the head with Ayn Rand (something that does usually kill the intended target) Assassin's um...jiggled the coin purse (as John Davison might say) of our thinking nodes.
Maybe (although almost definitely not) this could signal Ubisoft trying something different


I'm not expecting the next Splinter Cell to be a discussion on the inevitability of one man trying to change the world (although that would be cool), because that would be like the next Eddie Murphy movie being a complex metaphor for race relations in the United States. Not every game has to be like this, every genre need their brainless action to their deep and meaningful.
What I'm saying it that the industry is either too set in it's ways to change, or that it doesn't need to change

I'm not sure which one is sadder.









*She still is kind of endearing, in a nicotine tainted kind of way

**How apt...