A Lagomorph's Auritorium

Four Dreads in Games

Wherein I yap about:

I have been thinking recently about the unique ability of games that use their interactivity to let emotions and feelings be felt through actions. There is potential in what medium can do for processing the feelings of anxiety and fear.

I recently went through a few game experiences that managed to evoke a feeling of dread within me, where I was able to play around with and have fun with rather than let me feel awful. I would like to talk about them and the ways they evoke that feeling.

Tie Up Loose Ends

My time in an Impossible Landscapes campaign ran by a local acquaintance was a delightful and exciting one, if not a bit of a marathon we all hoped to finish within the year. I think this is where I realized that I kind of enjoyed the feeling of anxiety over oncoming events. A story full of secrets and twists and turns that cause the events of the campaign to create it's own cyclical nature. There would be only one way my character, Patricia Connor, could end it. After meeting the King In Yellow in his court, I found my own way out of Carcosa by way of a fortune teller's tarot cards leading each step of the way.

A death in Patricia's life had been haunting her by this point, one that drove her to obsession over stopping the King and discovering what truly happened to her love. Her girlfriend had been exposed to the vile play by performance, and a Delta Green agent took her out, as was protocol.

What was a surprise to Patricia, and a slow creeping delight to me as a player, is that when I left Carcosa, I emerged in an empty attic, save for a briefcase with the DG logo on it. When she opened the case, there were orders to kill her girlfriend, and a gun. It was clued to her that this is now the time and date that her love had died.

She spotted her love as soon as she left the building, pulling her into an alley. Patricia was almost unrecognizable to her, age and the King's trials having scarred her beyond recognition. Patricia held her close and I tensed my hands together as tight as I have ever held them. The adrenaline felt amazing.

I knew what was going to happen, I, as a player, or I, as Patricia, could have at least tried to defy the King in Yellow for one last time, could have acted to do differently, to break the events that would unfold, that have unfolded, in her own past. But since they have already unfolded, there was nothing either of them could really do to save each other, the King's influence does not just let anyone go free once they are in his hands. Thus the prophecy speaks.

Killing my own girlfriend, in the past, was the last action I made that game.

This is a dread of seeing the complete arc of a tragedy far, before it is too late for anyone to have an act to change it. A bit of a shock factor here, but the event stood out more to me than any of the adventure's horrifying and surreal acts. It was a horror of my own making and my own consequence. Nothing Changed.

Flower Girls Doomed By The Narrative

Upon insistence by a friend that playing FF7 was actually not too grating of an experience, and that I would be earning "RPG literacy points" by doing so. I streamed an emulated copy and discussed the narrative and gameplay as I played. I was very delighted and humbled by the themes of identity and climate change that manage to run throughout the entire game, and highly recommend that most people try their hand at the original if they can. It is that much of a classic for a reason.

The game had two surprises for me, it's themes on identity and it's feeling of dread. Cloud Strife is such a fascinating puzzle of a character to piece together, consequence by consequence.

The dreaded surprise is well... it's final fantasy 7, everybody knows that Aerith dies by Sephiroth's own sword right? It's an iconic moment in gaming history that has reached a sort of wide reach. Most of the marketing that involves Sephiroth specifically shows the part where he is in the process of killing Aerith.

What was surprising was, by this point in the game, Cloud Strife had been shown to be, not under his own control. He was a puppet, for something higher than himself. So the exact details of what happened while Aerith knelt in communion before Cloud was a surprise.

Cloud, approached her, and actively fought against the puppeting by my own button presses, only letting the scene advance if I put him in front of Aerith, have him raise his sword, raise it behind his head, raise it more...

This was, horrifying, I knew that the Aerith was not long for this world, the last ancient of this fantasy world, a true tragedy to lose, and above all else just, a ray of sunshine for the party. There was an extra dimension to this tragedy that I wasn't aware of, and it made the events so much more tragic to me. I remember letting out a tiny scream of uncertainty with each of Cloud's movements, and the dread built and built, for a moment I believed that it would be Cloud, who lost control, who would kill.

She looks up from her prayer, and speaks to Cloud, which shakes him out of it. Telling him everything will be alright, and then Sephiroth does what he is known to do with her.

This is a dread of the known that reveals an extra dimension to it. You know that the arc will land where it will, but there's an extra twist, an extra detail, that makes one think that it can only be worse. It almost turns into a relief that the prophecy unfolds as known, because Cloud killing Aerith would be so, so much worse. Nothing Changed.

Someone Set Us Up The PuppyBomb

I was invited to participate in the Text LARP Baseline Drift ran by Kaylee and Evangeline by a bestie HellaBigClaws earlier this month. It was an enlightening time for me to be taking a peek into this online Text Roleplaying community sprung off of Over/Under and the strategy wargame servers that make up a large part of it's actual mechanical gameplay.

Despite the wargame side being very relevant to the way the game proceeded, the main event that ended up strongly impacting me and the character I played, Cora Dalrost, fell into. Happening within the first week of the game as well.

The SHIPMIND organization had started to collapse, after a reveal that the goals of the faction were falsified, and that most of other faction goals revolve around an old, dying man, that we keep eternal because he got us this close to a new planet. Dalrost was studying the neural implants of a different faction, the Covenant of Mekhos and their neural SYGN implants. When she got the news, she and I thought, what a better time to leave the speculative research behind and join a faction that was more kept together.

That moment, of being on the run from one faction and into another, was like I was playing my own little game of turncoat, collecting all of my research as an intelligent scientist and taking it with me as I go out the door.

The Covenant was kind, welcoming, and they let me continue my work. Refocusing it towards their own goals, to create a modification to the implant that would override the consent protocols for more control over the old dying man. Cora did it all, to help land the ship on it's new home.

(All research i did was purely happening through roleplay, with no mechanics involved. I and a few others on the research team took the details people make up about the advanced neural implant and worked backwards to figure out the logistics of the technology, which was it's own fun experience especially when done collaboratively)

On the first night of my research, a covenant leader stopped into my virtual lab to see my progress.

The, leader of the Mekhos, Agonist Metradora, talked over my research notes with on me how it can affect the senses to create an immersion in a virtual network called the SYGNET. The Agonist asked me if she could demonstrate one of SYGN chip's capabilities, affecting the sense of introception, by consenting to a demonstration, a hallucination, of it's effects. Of course she said yes.

Cora suddenly realized that she stopped breathing, that she stopped feeling her body move blood around, that there was nothing biological happening inside her. Almost falling over herself in panic, instincts screaming and yelling at her to do something, to run, that there is danger to be avoided. The sense she hardly paid attention to, but was vital to her sense of being alive, was shut off.

This is when I, and Cora realized, that the ramifications of this chip being modified for our own faction goal purposes would lead to, a horrible, dangerous weapon being created. Turning what was a diagnostic and disability tool into a torture device, to affect the mind so that it would be bent to a certain will.

What would this mean for The Covenant, for everyone implanted with the chip already, for Cora who put the pieces together that let this be possible, for such a thing to be created....

... I would never really know, the Agonists quickly told me to abandon that project the day after. Thus the Prophecy was avoided. Nothing Changed

This is a dread made in anticipation, of knowing that there is an arc planned for my character, and I can only imagine where it could end. I wished afterwards that I stuck with the unethical research in secret, but the turn around was probably for the best. There was a point of no return, I just steered away from it before it got to that point.

NORTHERNLIGHT

I have had the unique and delightful experience of following the release and development of Toby Fox's Deltarune chapter by chapter. The gameplay and story themselves were quite engaging to me, but there's something specific in waiting for the next piece of the story, like the staggered releases of a webcomic.

There's a dread that comes with the truly unknown that will be revealed in time, in the years-long wait between chapters. Where plot details and revelations will surprise us when we can no longer theorize on them. While we can take our own peeks behind the curtain and write our own stuff as fans, the voice of the author will drown out all others.

A specific point that has fascinated me and many other fans is the existence of two main story routes in the game. The fandom knows them as the normal route, where you go on adventures through strange worlds as a trio of stranger teens, and the weird route, which is just, weird. It starts by evoking similar evil routes in other games, Toby's first release, Undertale is the easy example, but I can draw comparisons to other morality systems in games, Dishonored, Infamous, and Fallout: New Vegas.

The strangest part of this route, is that it is hinted at in a completely diagetic fashion within the game, for what I hope is meant to be a way for players to discover this on their own without needing a wiki. In the third chapter through Deltarune is a way to experience a "game within the game". A much more simpler presentation where you play a simple zelda-esque series of levels. In this smaller game, you go around, find a sword, and destroy every enemy. Every, monster carefully chosen to evoke more questions and draw comparisons to those in the game level above them. It is a, strikingly worrying representational hint of the other route.
There's a dread that comes in seeing where a tragic arc can lead.

The route actually starts simple and focused on one character, Noelle Holiday, deer girl-next-door type. By bossing her around as the party lead while she's in the party in the Chapter 2, you can grind for experience and let her to grow stronger, until she is lead to cause serious harm to her study partner. Freezing him into a bad condition, the player can see him in the hospital recovering afterwards.

This first part of the route evoked such a feeling of, excitement, of being able to see the rules and paths of the game willingly bent to support a "what-if" like this. New areas are created, dungeons are edited, a boss fight altered, and cut-scene after cut-scene are just different than the original to fit to the consequences. Events unfold that are not even implied to be possible anywhere else in the normal sequence
There's a dread of the known suddenly revealing it's extra dimension.

The latest chapter of Deltarune, at time of writing, is the most evocative and the most horrifying. Noelle has been changed by what we did to her, she's gotten a hint that she is just in another game level, like how there was the game-in-a-game earlier. Knowing that the protagonist is just a tool for the player, and that incredible things can happen if we just guide the other characters certain way. She takes us to a lake, and says she wants to leave this town. She takes our hands, not our hands, just the player we are controlling. We are waltzed forward, into the lake, and we don't stop.

What happens at the end of the sequence is still up for interpretation, but one thing is clear, that we are asked to insert Chapter 7 Side B. A chapter that is not out yet, a chapter that won't be worked on until the end of this year.
There's a dread in anticipation, and that there will be a point of no return.

Dread

Games, as a medium, are a fantastic way to explore and express certain feelings, and dread is just one of them. The horror genre of video games and roleplaying games are proof of this enough, and have also proven to me at least, that this feeling of fear can be extremely fun to explore, and games are a way to explore it safely.

I have, been living with an amount of high-distressing, almost debilitating anxiety due to a recent traumatic event, and being able to test the bounds of my fear through games has helped me so much in emotionally processing my issues.

It's a lot more fun to explore the feelings of anxiety this way by getting them through the fiction, and feeling like I'm in the seat of control, where I'm allowed to experience the worst of the consequence, even if I may just brush against it fictionally as well.

Thank you for reading if you got this far, I'll probably write more when i have bigger ideas. This has been Lexi/Jani/Pizzie.