My new favorite trailer.

I know I talk about Understanding Comics on this blog a lot, but that’s only because it so succinctly presents so many fundamental ideas of human communication. (I propose, yet again, that you should read it. Yes, you. Even if you hate comics.)

One of the ideas presented in Understanding Comics is how the lack of realism in art forms like comics and animation actually lends itself to greater acceptance of the ideas presented. We see things that look real enough to be recognizable but obviously aren’t; this allows us to accept things happening to and with these things that in a realistic medium would look jarring and out of place.

Simple example: Batman’s ability to effectively teleport when nobody is looking at him (this trope is known as the Stealth Hi/Bye). Commissioner Gordon looks away for a second, the camera follows his gaze – and when he looks back Batman is gone. The comics have presented Batman as being able to do this in a moving vehicle. We accept it completely in those media. But in the more realistic medium of film, our first thought would not be “Wow, that’s cool!” but “There’s no way he could have done that.” Don’t believe me? Go back and look at the Christopher Nolan films and notice how few Stealth Hi/Byes Batman pulls.

Video games have the incredibly enviable advantage of having that same acceptance as comics and animation, while adding the additional benefit of interactivity. And video games aren’t stuck in a kiddie rut like American animation is. Creators of video games are using its advantages to give us visuals and situations that we couldn’t see/hear/experience in any other medium.

I guess this is a really long-winded way of saying that I’m far more enthusiastic about the release of games than of most movies nowadays.

UPDATE: Hey, I’m not the only one who noticed!

Just watched the most recent trailer for the new Tomb Raider. Which we have to call “The New Tomb Raider” because they didn’t see fit to give it a number or subtitle.

After viewing, I kind of imagine this is how the pitch for this game went at Crystal Dynamics:

Designer 1: “Okay, we’re going to make a new Tomb Raider game.”

Designer 2: “God, really? Even when we make a good one like Tomb Raider: Legend, all we get is flack from female gaming pundits about how oversexualized Lara is and how she’s a throwback and a male fantasy object and is holding back the progress of strong women characters in video games, etc, etc, etc. Do we have to go through all that again?”

D1: “No, see, I’ve got an idea on that front. We’re going to desexualize Lara Croft.”

D2: “Seriously.”

D1: “Yeah.”

D2: “You’re going to make Lara Croft less sexy.”

D1: “Yeah.”

D2: “How do you intend to do that?

D1: “First, we give her more reasonable proportions.”

D2: “That’s not going to do it. Even if we reduce her breast size, as long as she’s fit and attractive, she’ll be considered ‘sexualized’. How are you going to get around that?”

D1: “Stay with me here. Second, we’ll make her a teenager.”

D2: “Okay. I guess that would desexualize her in the sense that not too many people would be attracted to her in that form.”

D1: “Right, so that’s a good start. Finally, we’re going to beat the living hell out of her. She’ll get shot, impaled, blown up, and beaten.”

D2: “In the death scenes? I remember that Tomb Raider used to be known for its interesting death scenes. My favorite was the Midas one from TR1…”

D1: “No, man, this’ll be during gameplay. Plus, she’ll spend the entire game filthy, with matted hair and ragged clothes, and bleeding from multiple wounds.”

D2: “O…kay. So we’re going to turn her into a completely different character, one that we deliberately construct so that it’s squicky to think of her in any sexual way.”

D1: “You got it! Isn’t it brilliant?”

Let me answer that for you, D2: no, no it’s not.

Let’s ignore the sex thing for a second. (Not just because it’s stupid; I have another point to make.)

One of Lara’s defining characteristics is that she’s always having the time of her life. She does what she does because she enjoys it. The real Lara is the one who purred “I’m such a lucky girl!” upon finding a new temple to explore in TR:L. This is the true root of her appeal – how can you not be attracted to someone who is so enthusiastic and having such a good time?

That aspect of her character will be destroyed – perhaps permanently – in the upcoming game, replaced by a shell-shocked teenager just trying to survive.

“But this is the origin story! This is WHY she -”

No. Frankly, the idea that a young Lara could go through what she’s being put through in this game and then decide to center the rest of her life around the experience is ridiculous.

Make her younger, okay. (And hey, it’s already been done once before in the series.)

Make her more realistically proportioned, I don’t care. (Although I personally think it’s a concession to snot-nosed, professionally offended people who would never have played the damn game anyway.)

But if Lara’s not having any fun in the game, how the hell am I supposed to have fun playing as her?

‘Kay! A couple weekends ago (pre-shoulder-pain), my oldest daughter entered the living room and saw me playing Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Now, I really like Conviction. I thought it was way better than Double Agent and the fact that a lot of mechanics were removed allowed the team to focus more intently on the mechanics that remained, making them much better. Yes, the bad guys scream and yell a lot, but that’s a game mechanic – they are basically telling you where they are because you don’t have a handy radar like you do in Metal Gear Solid.

So, I’d played through the single-player many times but had never touched the multiplayer.

Let’s face it – I don’t like competitive multiplayer games. Why? Well, because I suck at them, and I don’t have the time necessary to get unsucky at them. The only two competitive multiplayer games I play are Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and even that is rare.

But I was bored. I’d just finished the single-player again, so I pawed through the menu and discovered a game mode called “Deniable Ops”. And I discovered that these were new missions that didn’t feature Sam Fisher but did feature a whole bunch of new maps to explore and new ways to cleverly kill people.

So I was having fun when my daughter walked in.

“So watcha playin’?” she asked.

“Splinter Cell: Conviction.” I replied.

“Does it have co-op?” she asked.

“I think it does, I’m not sure.” I replied. I exited out to the main menu and yep, sure enough, there was a menu entry called “Multiplayer and Co-op”.

“Does it have split-screen co-op?” she asked.

“Nah,” I said, “games don’t really have that anyHOLY CRAP IT DOES!”

So, after a brief but heated discussion on who got to be the Russian agent (hint: I lost), my daughter and I sat down and played through the entire split-screen story-based co-op mode. It was stupendous – the co-op story intertwines with the single-player story and has its own challenges. Even in the simplest mode, you’ll see many more enemies than in single-player; they’ll behave more realistically, and they’re not guaranteed to eventually open themselves up for a quick neck-snap. Which is why you need to depend on your fellow agent to either distract or help with a combined assault.

I feel like such a freakin’ idiot for not checking this out earlier. Megan and I spent about ten hours over the weekend playing split-screen co-op and I cannot believe I had no idea that game was on the same disc.

Plus, this simply reinforces my belief that co-op multiplayer is the only good form of multiplayer.

And then my daughter went and played through the single-player and loved it.

While I’m on this topic, here’s my suggestions for the next Splinter Cell game.

First, keep the Conviction mechanics.

Second, Anna Grimsdottir is the natural new choice to head up Third Echelon; if she’s not the boss I will be very disappointed.

Third, the enemy should be Megiddo. While Conviction only hinted at what Megiddo was and what it is capable of, that’s actually perfect – it leaves a lot of design and story freedom.

Fourth, no Sam. Let the poor man rest. He’s actually in a pretty good place at the end of Conviction, let him stay there. Instead, let’s have a new agent – an idealistic, tiny young woman. I think such a character would a) make the “hide in the shadows” mechanic more realistic and b) make a wonderful counterpoint to Anna, who at this point has practically sold her soul to defeat threats not just to America but to the world.

Finally, MOAR SPLIT-SCREEN CO-OP.

A-thank you.