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I remember pre-ordering “Bioshock” as soon as I could. “System Shock II” was one of my favorite games. It was a rare and weird game adding the RPG sauce into the first person shooter dish. It also used clever ideas to overcome visual shortcomings. The result was one of the most effective survival horror games ever created. “Bioshock, its normal shaded, Unreal 3.0 powered spiritual successor could only be better” I thought, not remembering the fact that whenever I thought, it always got me in trouble.

In theory “Bioshock” is great. Instead of the sci-fi story of “System Shock 2”, it has a story which takes place in the past, in 1960. It features realistic physics simulation, allowing you to exploit the conductivity of water, or to simply throw things at enemies. Unlike “System Shock 2” it has no weapon durability stat or no character classes. The player is able to make use of every single action in the game at any time giving him a much wider palette of choices. And isn’t that the whole point of a non linear story? Hell, the game has three possible endings you can reach depending on the moral choices you make. Like “Silent Hill 2” I thought. In theory it is great.

Silly me. Being the Pisces I am, it is hard to tear myself from the land of dreams and remember the horrifying difference between theory and practice.

In practice the story of Bioshock is–shall we say–patchy.

We follow the exploits of one Jack, a passenger on a non-descript airplane, which suddenly decides to fall into the ocean. Being the sole survivor of the accident, our hero discovers a light house in the middle of the ocean and naturally swims for it. It appears there is a huge underwater city underneath that light house. This underground city was constructed by an idealist maniac called Ryan. In order to create a perfect society Ryan gathered all the most brilliant but misunderstood people in the world and made them part of his project. But as legions of B Movies taught us: “You can’t contain super science.” Things have gone horribly wrong in a horribly short time. Now Jack is trapped in this nightmare and the only way out seems to be through following the instructions of a kindred soul, one Atlas, who also wants to get out.

Of course things are never that simple. There are at least two big plot twists and several homicidal crew members approaching you with murderous intent, not to mention an abundance of fetch quests. The unnerving part for someone who remembers “System Shock 2” is that underneath all the polish very few things have changed.

The template and the general narrative flow of both games are astonishingly similar. Our hero whose body was modified by nanomachines or their 20th century equivalent genetics (frankly, I think for 1960, nuclear radiation would be more appropriate due to its well known Spiderman producing properties) finds himself in an isolated environment in which something has gone horribly wrong. He has only one ally with whom he only has radio contact. Of course it turns out in the end that this ally is the main villain. Everyone else is gone zombie. Those who have not are about to, or else they will attack our hero for no logical reason at all. On top of that, the entire security system (the incredible high tech security of the 60s) is against him and the whole location will soon be destroyed, so he’d better get out quickly.

Besides this template, the method of conveying the story is similar too. We listen to many voice recordings and/or read through endless paragraphs of diaries. It seems both in the future and past everyone loves keeping diaries. Direct interaction between characters is mostly restricted to beating the shit out of crazy inhabitants of the place. Furthermore we see reenactments of previous events in form of ghostly apparitions acting out the event. This does seem a bit too similar for two entirely stories taking place in entirely different settings.

The whole thing may be due to the fact that according to Ken Levine, game play always comes first; story presumably second, or maybe last. He says that during the development, the story of “Bioshock” changed entirely, several times. It is clear that Levine wanted to make a new “System Shock” game. Sadly “System Shock” belongs to Electronic Arts. So he did the next best thing. He made a new “System Shock” which is not really “System Shock”. The result is like trying to fit a star shaped block into a circle shaped hole. It doesn’t work. So Levine takes his hammer and pounds on the story until it fits.

The main difference between the two stories is that in “Bioshock” the already shaky suspension of disbelief goes out of the window. One of the unique elements of “System Shock 2” was that the villain was also the setting. SHODAN, the antagonist, was an AI with a God complex and she controlled every single part of the brightly lit and sterile looking environment you had to walk around. She was everywhere, watching your every move. In “Bioshock”, though, the villain is pretty much human. The environment is still against you, but there is no concrete reason for that.

We also have all the elements from System Shock’s game play, without any rational explanation: Automatic sentry turrets, security cameras, and killer robots, all of which you can hack. Remember it’s still the ‘60s. We know that Ryan hired rather clever people and brilliant scientists for his utopia project, but the audience has no idea as to how these contraptions work. We get a vague explanation about some miracle element and advanced genetics, but that’s about it. Mind you, this is not like “Fallout”, where the microchip is a lamp based circuit. “Fallout” was a story taking place in the future, seen through 1950s style goggles. Conceptually, that was a brilliant idea. But “Bioshock” is still in the ‘60s. Levine expects his audience to accept that in mere 4 or 5 years incredible advances were made in all fields of science but he still doesn’t explain how security cameras using 35mm films ended up with that incredible face recognition software so that they can instantly recognize you as foe and lock onto you. What can I say? As a PhD student in Cinema, I DO want their film development lab.

With the believability of the setting murdered, all you have is the art deco style environments and the story; of which, frankly, there isn’t much. The game assumes that the main hero will either be a power hungry psychopath or an angel clad in human skin.

Even without prior “System Shock 2” knowledge, the twists and turns of the story are rather obvious. There is next to no character development, no conflicts to resolve, nothing. All you have is recountings of previous events and a final twist. And what a twist that is.

The “Would you kindly” twist is, I must admit, a very good one. It reveals that the choices and the actions of our protagonist weren’t really his own. This not only makes sense, but also patches up many holes in the narrative and the irrationality of the protagonist’s actions. However, it could have been much more.

The main plot twist has further implications just like the plot twist in “Haze” does. The protagonist doesn’t really have a choice. He does what he’s been told, much like a character in a video game, which Bioshock happens to be. This could have been a great narrative on the nature of choice and the alternative lives we live in video games. Or it could have been something entirely different. A moderately talented author would have taken this concept and turned it into gold.

What you end up with in “Bioshock”, however, is a classic example of a story consisting only of a nice twist. Even with the twist, there are a hundred holes. How did they send Jack out? How did he live out there? How did Fontaine communicate with him? What kind of stupid plan is crashing the plane? What if Jack didn’t survive (and he almost does drown)?

And why would anyone surviving a plane crash, upon finding a huge syringe filled with a suspicious blue fluid, be instantly overwhelmed by the desire to stick it into his arm? (There is no “would you kindly” dialog there.)

It seems Levine, like most so called intellectual game designers, hates cinematic cut scenes and says the story should be conveyed through game play, without ever taking control from the player. But if this means I’ll have to listen to hours of voice recordings and read endless lines of text, I’d much rather read a proper book or listen to a radio play.

Levine may or may not be right. Game play may or may not be king. But surely the narrative in “Bioshock” doesn’t hold any noble titles, even if it does look quite enlightened compared to other games.

I spent most of last week playing “Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots”. This is because I was bedridden and a game which is accused of having extremely long cinematics by almost all reviewers seemed to be a good game to play (or watch) while I was sick.

There are many things to be said about the game, and many people have already said those things. This is mainly because Metal Gear Solid as a series is quite similar to a train wreck involving a Japanese bullet train, a vintage European steam locomotive, five cars, three helicopters, a truck full of trinitroglycerin, and a bike carrying an unspecified number of ostrich eggs in its front and rear baskets. That is to say it’s most certainly awful, but awful in a very interesting way so that the viewers are usually unable to divert their gaze from the grotesque spectacle. There are many, many things to say.

One of the worst problems with the series, however, is the illness I’d like to call “twist-mania”. Sadly this illness is not unique to Metal Gear series. It’s a horrific disease shared by many video games and by movies made by M. Night Shyamalan.

What is a twist?

A twist is a plot device which usually comes in form of previously unrevealed and unexpected information. This information changes the audience’s understanding of the narrative, the characters or both. A famous example would be Darth Vader’s announcement at the end of Empire Strikes Back. We learn that the antagonist is in fact the protagonist’s father. Therefore our understanding of the narrative changes, our theories about the possible resolution of the story need revising and many things that previously didn’t make sense suddenly do. In short, it is a surprise; something that catches the audience off guard.

When it’s done well, it’s a very nice thing. It can motivate the viewer to go through the narrative once more. It makes the audience go “Wow, I never expected that.” And because it’s usually one of the most memorable parts of a story, people will keep on talking about it. Therefore many inexperienced authors think that the most important part of a story is the twist.

It isn’t. It’s just one of the many devices the author has at his disposal to tell a story.

If we think of the narrative as a multi-layered cake, the twist would be the secret, small, cherry sauce disc hidden in the middle. You will be pleasantly surprised upon reaching it. You will enjoy its taste and tell your friends about it. However if the cake itself tastes awful, no amount of cherry sauce will save it.

The very definition of a story requires that you as a writer have something to say, something to tell. Building a story around a twist is a very risky thing. In the process you might accidentally end up with something good to tell. But more often than not you will make the story a vessel for the twist. And more often than not this results in no story at all, because without the twist, the story becomes meaningless.

A simple method to verify the presence of an interesting story would be to remove the twists from the narrative and reading it again. If the story is still worth reading, then you can rest easy knowing that you have written a good story.

There is a pretty good twist at the end of the movie “Fight Club”. It’s a twist which affects the narrative in far more ways than Luke Skywalker’s parental issues. We learn that one of the main antagonists of the story does not exist at all. But even if you remove this twist, the story remains interesting enough. I have seen people saying that “Fight Club” was like two movies in one and they would have liked both of those movies separately too.

On the other hand, “Sixth Sense” is pretty much written exclusively for the final twist. Bruce Willis is actually dead. If this information is known to you from the start of the movie, the story becomes very boring and not really worth watching, while “Fight Club” would still be an interesting movie with its main twist known.

By now everyone in the gaming community is probably aware of the “Would you kindly?” twist in Bioshock. For everyone who played “System Shock 2” I guess the whole “Bioshock” experience in terms of storytelling was like a prolonged déjà vu. Apart from all the things we expected to happen, does the “would you kindly?” twist really save the horribly patchy storyline? Does anything even remotely make sense? Wouldn’t it be better if the designers focused on the cohesion of the story itself, instead of the -oh so shocking- twist ending?

In the case of “Metal Gear Solid”, things are even worse. If you remove the twists from “Metal Gear” series, you won’t end up with a bad story. Instead you will most probably end up with nothing at all. That’s because Mr. Kojima, like many video game authors, constructed his story entirely out of twists. From the famous “I’m your father!” to the infamous “None of this was actually real!” he uses every single twist in the book. This may sound ingenious to some of you; building an entire story out of twists. But then you’re missing the point.

The point is that the twist is a surprise. Part of the definition of surprise is that you don’t even know it’s coming. When you start bombarding the audience with surprises they will soon start to expect them. And surprising someone who’s expecting a surprise is much like killing a dead person.

So probably the biggest problem of “Metal Gear Solid 4″ is Hideo Kojima, its designer, who happens not to be a writer. Most video game designers naturally don’t know the first thing about writing a story. There is no reason they should.

So the moral of the story is that people should stick to doing things they are good at. When it’s a story you want told, perhaps it would have been a good idea to let it done by a storyteller.

There is no such thing as an RPG. Really. It might be a surprise to the legions of RPG fans around the world, but what can I say? I’m sorry. I share your pain.

Of course I am not talking about that nerdy table top game, which these computer games are trying unsuccessfully to emulate. There is also the Rocket Propelled Grenade, which as we all know, is a sort of device that allows you to jump up to great heights, ignoring a significant amount of gravity, providing you are healthy enough. I am not talking about that either. At least not directly.

I am talking about RPGs as video games. The sort of game in which you kill dramatis personae, get their stuff, level up, and kill even more powerful dramatis personae or failing that exterminate the wild life until you can. Apparently I am talking about those, since I understand this is the definition of RPG if you look at things through video game style goggles.

Originally, RPG as a table top game is a pretty interesting cooperative affair which pretends to be competitive sometimes. There are two asymmetrical teams: One team is made up of several players, the other usually has only one person in it: The Game Master or shortly GM. Players try to overcome the challenges presented to them by the GM. However, rather than being the goal of the game, this is just a tool to achieve the objective, the objective being telling a story interactively.

It’s a bit akin to musical duels by folk musicians or a poetry showdown. It requires creativity from both sides. What the GM is doing is creating conflicts without being able to determine how the main characters would respond to or resolve them. The main characters, created and played by players, in return, resolve the conflict in their own way, creating for the GM a new problem about the story. This process of back and forth slowly builds a story in a very unique and organic kind of way. It’s a very peaceful, new, hippie game. No wonder it was invented at the beginning of the 70s.

When it works well, it is a fascinating process. However, most of the time it doesn’t work well. The main reason for this is that the game, due to its nature, requires creative and intelligent people on both teams. This is a prerequisite not easily fulfilled in any kind of social activity.

Computers are stupid. They may act as if they were clever, but they are not. The term Artificial Intelligence is misleading. There is no intelligence involved there. It is just a bunch of scripts trying to give the impression of being intelligent. The computer can neither play an RPG with you nor assist you in playing an RPG with other people, because to do that, you’d need a computer you can code with your thoughts alone, or failing that, a real AI. Some kind of artificial device which is capable of thinking creatively. I’m not saying this can never be done. I just think there is still some time until we invent Skynet.

As computer games, RPGs are basically trying to do the same thing: Telling a story with the help of the players. But because we aren’t dealing with an intelligent person in real time, the scope is limited to pre-programmed stuff. You end up playing a computer game and being told a story you cannot really influence much. Pretty much all computer games fall into this category.

It doesn’t matter how dumb the story is. There is no difference between Eye of the Beholder from Westwood and Project X from Team 17 in that regard. In the former you have descent into the earth to find a bad guy ruling an army of fanatics and in the latter your task is—and I am quoting from the game box—“to penetrate deep into the planet Ryxx, destroy the aliens’ base, and escape with your ship intact.” Both games let you choose from a variety of classes with different abilities for your on screen alter ego. In both games enemies killed by you drop some kind of power ups in form of blue bubbles or points. In both games you have the option to arm yourself differently depending on your play style. One game is called RPG, the other is called shoot’em up. In both games you play the role of a character.

In regards to video games, an RPG is similar to the games we used to call Movie Games in the past. That is saying that RPG is not a genre but rather an amalgam of genres, a series of different games connected to form a cohesive whole in order to tell a story. The difference between classic games like Pool of the Radiance and Pirates! is that one of them tries to or claims to be like a table top RPG game, and the other doesn’t.

Of course today many complex games are made up of a variety of game mechanics. But these game mechanics themselves are smaller games. A typical RPG makes use of the point and click adventure’s dialog system for character interaction, an experience based power up system based on table top RPGs, item based puzzles of—again—adventure games, and some sort of other system to resolve the combat.

Naturally one of the most important and relatively easy to develop parts of those games are combat. It is much harder to make a realistic dialog tree or a game which would invent random story elements based on the pacing, the characters and past player choices etc. Therefore in most RPGs, combat is the defining and dominating aspect.

Essentially most of Fallout is a tactical combat game not that much different from X-Com. The Elder Scrolls series is a variation of the first person shooter. Diablo is a beat’em up fundamentally not much different from Final Fight. Sure there are other game mechanics there to make them more complicated, more cerebral or more storytelling-friendly if you will, but at heart all these games are called RPGs just because there are experience points and some exploration are involved.

The problem here is that most western developers don’t really get that there is no such genre as RPG. They are blindly flailing around trying to do what table top RPGs are doing. In contrast, the eastern developers, who probably have seen the RPG genre for the first time as a video game, are busy perfecting the twisted vision they got from western developers.

There is no RPG. The sooner you realize that, the cleaner your design will be. It is stupid to praise Bioware for its innovative and original “action combat system” on Mass Effect. It will make you sound like a moron and will twist your vision of design. Because that “action combat system” is neither innovative nor original. The shocking reality is that Mass Effect is a third person shooter. And that’s it. Plain and simple.

In their wisdom, Bioware decided they have made enough real time strategy games now and they should switch you another mechanic for combat. Because as you can easily realize the dominant mechanic of Infinity Engine games such as Baldur’s Gate was real time strategy, as it was beat’em up with Jade Empire. Now it’s third person shooter for Mass Effect.

It is nothing revolutionary. In fact it’s probably not the best third person shooter around, if you compare it to heavy weights such as Gears of War and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. But such is the way of those amalgam games. Mass Effect is more than the sum of its parts, thanks to the storytelling parts and the character progress mechanics which complement the third person shooter parts of the game.

As previously mentioned, an RPG is a genre made up of several different games. The way to make a good RPG goes through making all these individual games good. Each little part of the RPG should ideally be good enough to be a game worth releasing by itself. If the game itself is not fun, it becomes an obstacle in the way of the story.

If there is any praise Bioware should receive for their flawed but relatively nice Mass Effect, it should be for realizing the nature of RPGs.

Let’s hope others, too, will realize this fact soon.