Serialization Visualization

I talk about serialized stories and mythologies quite a bit, and occasionally link to my previous blog post on the collapse of Battlestar Galactica's narrative as an example of what I think about the subject. But it's not enough. Not that I disagree with it anymore, I still stand behind it, but it's a little bit too specific, talking about the very specific failures of one particular show. As a general theory, however, I think that my conception of serialization, mythology, and world-building makes much more sense visually than it does in simple text.

It still requires some text for explanation, so here goes. I imagine a well-balanced show to be circular. Everything fits best in a circle; they're the most efficient use of space. Most shows have an efficient premise, but as they add characters, cliffhangers, history, and continuity, they start getting ungainly. The mythology takes over from the storytelling. It looks like this:

It's a mess. There's no plan, things get lost, forgotten, ignored, or worst of all, lose their impact because they get cut out of the story, by retcons or resurrections or whatever. This could be a chart for The X-Files or Battlestar Galactica, or it could be Angel or Buffy. The difference between the former and the Whedon shows is that the Whedon shows remembered character came before plot. Angel, especially, shifted into emotional resolution more than plot resolution after its excess of serialization in its 4^th season caused problems.

On the other hand, The Wire is far more elegant:

The Wire is ruthless in focusing on the important parts of the story for each season, occasionally bypassing formerly important characters and bringing in entirely new ones. The tonal whiplash as it makes these changes can make seasonal transitions difficult, especially at the start of the 2^nd and 4^th seasons. However, this is necessary both to keep things fresh and to keep the show's overall world and mythology – which is huge, using Baltimore as a stand-in for the American city – working and symmetrical.

Babylon 5, for all its other flaws, also had serialization that worked, in a different fashion. Famously, it was built on a five-year plan, and the creator exercised rigid control over the story – so rigid that he wrote all but one episode over the last three and a half seasons of the show's run.

The premise and overall story for Babylon 5 – the “arc” - was universe-wide, expanding into all aspects of the setting. However, as the series started, the focus was much narrower, on the station itself. The groundwork for the later seasons was built (too) slowly through the 1^st season and much of the 2^nd, but it was done almost entirely on the station itself. There were hints that the story was bigger, done primarily through foreshadowing, prophecy, dramatic irony, and occasionally ominous whispers about a great evil stirring and the like. As the ambitions of the storytelling increased, it grew to fill in the gaps created by the foreshadowing.

Thus the increased complexity of the Babylon 5 story didn't feel like it was a bunch of added mythology tacked on later once the initial premise was getting tired, but instead built on solid foundations in order to increase the stakes in a satisfying fashion.

This piece is merely meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Both Babylon 5 and The Wire required a specific kind of wild ambition from their creators, which is always going to be unlikely to be duplicated. Likewise, just because a show is a mess in terms of continuity and mythology doesn't mean it can't be great. Battlestar Galactica may be structurally weaker than Babylon 5, but I'm not sure I'd actually say that, as a whole, it's worse. And Angel demonstrates that a series can go absolutely apeshit crazy with the serialization and still somehow bring it together.

However, I do think that using the visual metaphors for how mythology springs from serialization is helpful, and how I generally conceive of these things. I hope it helps to explain my point of view on the subject.

A Unified Theory of Game of Thrones

Yes, the title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but having seen several reviews, both positive and negative, as well as the first episode itself, I'm starting to feel like there's an elephant in the room. My Twitter friend Noel Kirkpatrick hits upon it to some degree with his generally negative review, in describing Game of Thrones' issues with the big three of race, class, and gender, but it also touches upon the discussion of the series as a representative on the fantasy genre, and even bigger than that, what makes for successful, classic television and storytelling.

It can be summed up as this: what is the point of the story?

In fantasy literature, in general, the point is the plot. It is meant to describe an interesting, entertaining, set of events. There are very few popular fantasy novels where nothing happens. It's not necessarily earth-shattering (although it often is), but the main characters are important participants in some kind of important event.

In more well-respected storytelling, or high-brow, or snotty artsy-fartsy crap, depending on how you want to describe it, plot is much less important than theme. Great stories are supposed to reveal something about the nature of the world or humanity or America or suburbia or men or women or what-have-you. While major events could happen, having the characters as the main participants in them is a sign of genre fiction, and frowned upon to some degree. Fantasy, where that's the entire point, thus exists at arguably the lowest level of that hierarchy, as that goddamn New York Times review demonstrated.

Which brings us to television. Interestingly, television, despite almost all of its series being "genre" stories (with the possible exceptions of Mad Men and Treme), television, or "quality television," is quite strong thematically. When you look at the shows which are considered part of the canon, such as it is, they almost all have tremendous thematic relevance. The critical king of television, The Wire, is all about theme, most notably, the crushing weight of institutions. But it doesn't stop there. The Sopranos is about the corruption of humanity. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about growing up and dealing with responsibility. Even the great comedies have strong thematic elements. Arrested Development is about living with family. Seinfeld and later Curb Your Enthusiasm are about societal norms. Even The Simpsons has strong thematic elements, like its tendency to make fun of mob mentality in small towns.

On the other hand, you have shows that are considered trashy fun, like Glee or True Blood currently, where they're best described, as The Simpsons once famously said, as "just a bunch of stuff that happens." Glee of course tries to tack on morality, but it's so inconsistent that it undercuts its own ideals from scene to scene, let alone episode to episode. There are also the CBS-style procedurals, which occasionally have insulting theme descriptions (fascistic, hegemonic, etc) attached to them, but don't try to do much more than blandly entertain.

Here is Game of Thrones' problem: it is a story that is all plot. It's a great plot, to be sure, and some of the events can and will shatter your expectations of how plots are supposed to work (in a sense, it's somewhat similar to Joss Whedon's stuff, but we'll get there when we get there). But it's being treated as if it's a prestige series, to be placed in the HBO pantheon alongside Deadwood and Rome if not quite The Wire. But it doesn't have a strong theme. The theme might be emergent, that is, it slowly develops over the course of the show, and it will likely be subjective, changing from person to person. But that's not what makes for "quality television." And this may be Game of Thrones' biggest problem moving forward.

Note: my essential breakdown of story components is as such: all stories need good characters. Setting is where the characters live. Plot is what happens to the characters. Theme is what the characters learn/are supposed to teach the audience. Game of Thrones the book certainly has strong characters, which doesn't necessarily show up in the pilot, so there's plenty of hope yet.

Second note: I am not covering Game of Thrones in any official, paid, or week-to-week capacity. I would like to. If you know of anyplace that would be interested in taking me on to do it, let me know!

Fantasy, Gender, and Game of Thrones

While I should not have been surprised about the new HBO series Game of Thrones turning into a referendum on fantasy, it has somehow turned into a huge discussion on gender in geek culture, which is somewhat more surprising.

The initial reason for this is that the highest-profile negative review, from the New York Times, specifically genders enjoyment of fantasy, calling it "boy fiction." This review's foolishness is well-documented (I took a few shots at it in my last post myself) and has led to a thriving mini-genre of female geek blog posts - see here.

However, as usual with gender, this is a multi-layered affair. Many of the writers who have treated Game of Thrones with the most disdain, and whose links are being passed around and mocked, and presumably have had their comments sections taken over by irate fans of the novels, have been female themselves. Myles McNutt, my co-AV Club writer, has documented and discussed this here, while my editor Todd Vanderwerff went into the subject a little bit deeper in the comments, citing both the male numerical dominance of online TV criticism, and even more interestingly, a masculine definition of what makes for a quality TV show.

This is without even getting into the text itself, where a gender analysis of the books, show, and the show compared to the books could all be fruitful. One consistent criticism of the show from people who haven't outright dismissed it for its genre has been an excessive amount of distracting boobage, which is also an issue I and others had with HBO's Boardwalk Empire. More subtly, I've heard suggestions that some of the impressive female characters from the novel are hard-done-by early on the show, since they don't have the internal, point-of-view monologue on-screen.

To sum up the different gender arguments, in case you're looking for a senior project, thesis, or dissertation topic:

• Treatment of gender in the A Game of Thrones novel
• Treatment of gender in the Game of Thrones series
• Comparing and contrasting gender in the book and the series
• Gender of reviewers responding to the show
• Gender of TV reviewers overall
• Gendered discussion of "quality television"
• Stereotypes about gender of Game of Thrones fans
• Stereotypes about gender of fantasy fans in general
• And, finally, the one that I haven't seen mentioned often: the gendered discussion of fantasy literature as a whole

You see, I've long had the impression that fantasy was gendered female, especially compared to its fraternal twin, science fiction. Science fiction is largely written by men, and the subgenre of "hard" science fiction focuses on rational concerns, extrapoliting current science out into time and space (and note the gendered terminology, hard=rational=masculine, soft=imaginative=feminine). Fantasy, on the other hand, is written by women as or more often than men, and is reliant on magic, an irrational flight of imagination. I even had a creative writing textbook once which said that science fiction was a good genre because it could say something about the world we lived in today, whereas fantasy was pure escapism and totally unserious.

My personal experience bears this out as well. In the 90s, I spent a lot of time on CompuServe's Science Fiction & Fantasy forums, and found that yes, the fantasy forum seemed to have a much better balance of male and female contributors, whereas the science fiction forum skewed much more male. Interestingly, I also talked about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in another subforum, and recall that being a primarily male forum.

To be fair: it is possible that, despite my possibly-accurate impression of the fantasy genre and its fans skewing female, A Game of Thrones is actually a more masculine-oriented novel, much as I found The Wheel of Time to be male. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the neverending fantasy series preferred by Jordan and Martin which fits in with masculine concepts, in the same way that Todd described "quality television" (usually serialized, dense, and overly serious) as seeming to have a masculine orientation. It could also be that by keeping magic largely on the sidelines, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, A Game of Thrones possesses a more historical, rational, and masculine appeal. On the other hand, one of the fantasy authors I would describe as the most "feminine" (despite his apparent male gender), Guy Gavriel Kay, also tends to write "fantistoricals." Or I'm theorizing excessively and this is all total nonsense.

Regardless, if I have a point here, it's that much like yesterday, it's hardly fair to attach qualities of gender to the Game of Thrones series in such a generalized, conclusive fashion. There are layers upon layers here, and as ever, I say it's more complicated than it may seem at first glance.

Fantasy!

The HBO series Game of Thrones is still two days away from actually airing, but early reviews have touched off an apparently internet-wide discussion about the fantasy genre as a whole. Some early reviews have taken the form of pure snobbery - witness this witless line from the New York Times:

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

Others have taken a more engaged approach, if only out of curiosity, like reviewer Heather Havrilesky in the New York Times Magazine (motto: like our daily, but not as idiotic!):

All of which is very somber — and a little odd, when you think about it. Even with countless horrors on the way, wouldn’t there be at least one unshakable optimist in the bunch? Isn’t that how we, in the real world, get through life? Irrational optimism in the face of looming bleakness? Yet in this brand of fantasy (ed note: medieval fantasy, as opposed to superheroes or speculative fiction), grim-faced nihilism isn’t just a default philosophy; it’s a foundational religion.

Somehow this television series has become a referendum on literary fantasy as a whole, and what it means. I'll grant that this is understandable. I've even helped create this impression, having, in the past, described my excitement for Game of Thrones as being excited for the first-ever major television series in the fantasy genre - only Hercules and Xena have even vaguely attempted in recent years, and, well, I'm sure you'll agree that the comparison is slightly different. Yet the fact is that Game of Thrones and the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, is not the entirety of the fantasy genre. It would probably be unfair to declare that any single book or series of books counts as that representative, but it's especially bad for Game of Thrones:

• It's darker than most fantasy. Characters die. Life in pseudo-medieval Westeros is, as Hobbes declared, nasty, brutish, and short.
• It's not magical. I first discovered the term "fantistorical" on the jacket of A Game of Thrones, actually. There is some magic, but it's mostly on the outskirts - ghoulish "Others" beyond a giant wall, or maybe dragons across the sea. The main story is all people.
• It's political. The conflicts in the series are largely people in power trying to gain more, maneuvering in back rooms with occasional assassinations or coups. This is not Aragorn making a heroic speech as everyone charges with him into a mass of purely evil orcs and trolls.
  
• It's a human conflict, both in the figurative sense of politics and grey areas (as opposed to ultimate evil or corrupt magic), and in literal terms. The characters are humans, not namby-pamby elves or conniving kobolds. It's not Dungeons & Dragons. Some reviews have mentioned that there are "dwarves" but this is misleading. The character in question is a little person, a human, not Gimli or Thorin.
  
• Finally, it's really good. They're pulp novels, yes, and shouldn't be mistaken for high art, whatever that means. But they're remarkable at creating momentum, memorable characters and stunning plot developments.

Saying A Game of Thrones and the rest of the books of the series are representative of all fantasy literature is roughly akin to saying The Wire is representative of all television. There are differences, of course, GOT is popular within the medium where The Wire is a niche show, but both have such strong defenders in part because they do things differently than normal, and they do things better than normal. So judge Game of Thrones on its own merits. Judge fantasy in general based on a decent sample. But don't judge Game of Thrones, positively or negatively, because of fantasy as a whole. That's reductive, unfair, and almost certainly wrong.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll talk about the gender-based reaction to Game of Thrones and its reviews, since it keeps coming up, and you know, GENDER!!!

Why Babylon 5?

As television criticism and analysis expands, it necessarily builds a canon. It's impossible to avoid canonization, for good or for ill. A few shows comprise the Mt. Rushmore of television discussion: The Sopranos, The Wire, golden age The Simpsons, and maybe surprisingly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Several more exist on a tier just below that: The X-Files, Mad Men, Deadwood, Lost, Star Trek & TNG, Angel, The Twilight Zone, Twin Peaks, The Office, and more - just check the A.V. Club's TV Club Classic sidebar for a decent representation.

One show that's missing from virtually any canon discussion (not including me) is Babylon 5. And, you know, I'm not going to argue that it deserves to be on that television Rushmore - I'm not 15 anymore. But given the typical leanings of critical discussions, being biased towards speculative fiction, serialization, and structural experimentation, I would say that it deserves to be mentioned in the conversation. So here's my attempt at explaining, to all and sundry, Why Babylon 5?

There are three major reasons: it's serialization done right; it's historically important; and it's actually really quite good once it gets going. But first, the Why not Babylon 5?, ably answered by Tasha Robinson, one of my editors at The A.V. Club a few years ago:

Going in a completely different direction, virtually every science-fiction fan I know has taken time to sing the praises of Babylon 5 at me. I spent half the '90s listening to people say it was the best thing on television and that I was really missing out. In this case, I didn't get started at the right time, and now I look at the completed series—all 110 episodes—and see a mountain I just don't have time to climb. Especially since even the biggest fans admit that the first year or two is some rough trekking. As my boyfriend says whenever fans wistfully bring it up, "We'll watch it when we retire, at which point it'll probably be available in pill form."

She's not wrong here, and it's not like I'd recommend watching it instead of the collected works of Wong Kar-Wai or The Wire, if there is some kind of competition for your viewing time. But there's still some element of misconception here. The unspoken but logical idea is that Babylon 5 was built on a five-year plan, that this means that you have to start from the beginning or else you'll miss something, but the beginning kind of sucks. So why start? As a syllogism, this works, but syllogisms can be fallacious, even if their premises appear to be true.

Exactly why that conclusion is incorrect comes from the show's structure and its effective form of serialization. Shows like The X-Files and Lost have given the impression that tightly-serialized shows with plans (or shows that should have plans) begin with a central set of questions, and answer those questions in the finale. This is not the case with Babylon 5. Instead, B5 uses a series of interconnected, shorter-term storylines. The central question of the first season is the mystery of the conclusion of a recent war, with a slow realization that something may bepolitically rotten on Earth. The first question is largely resolved by the start of the second season, while halfway through that season, while the Earth politics move into a different phase of direct subversion when prove arrives that things are, indeed, seriously wrong.

Storylines are introduced and resolved in time spans of roughly half a season to a season and a third. Those resolutions usually lead directly to the next major problem, but, and this is the important bit, this resolution and introduction of problems mean that there are multiple different jumping-in points for the show. The structure is less rigid than Buffy's season long "Big Bad", and it's also more sustainable than the constantly-expanding mythology of other serialized shows like Battlestar Galactica. The show's setting and premise changes regularly, a fact illustrated a seasonally-changing intro, which alters the music, background, and premise narration each year. The first season begins with "The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace", for example, a narration which, by the third season, has become "The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. It failed."

Moreover, B5 is lucky in that it's biggest and most important episodes are also generally its best episodes. If you want to skip the dross of the first season - and yes, there is plenty of dross there, sadly - and just watch the five or six most important eps, chances are, you'll also be watching the five or six best episodes of the season. Therefore it's easy to create a list of episodes to watch as well as to skip. You might miss a couple details, but it's written to work around that even without the crutch of the "previously on..." that dominate modern serialized TV.

The final way that Babylon 5's serialization works in its favor is that it manages to avoid the pitfalls of excessive mythology. The "procedural world-building" of its first season establishes the essential boundaries of the "mythology", and over the course of the show, the characters and plot have their influence expand to reach those boundaries. It's anchored in place by an effective use of foreshadowing and prophecy, so that what does happen in the show feels like it was the point, instead of as if the showrunners are making it up as it goes along. The constrast between Babylon 5's use of Londo dreaming his own death and Battlestar Galactica's disastrous attempt to make something out of its Opera House in its finale.

The reason Babylon 5 was so successful at serialized storytelling is part of the reason that it is historically important in television history. It is largely the brainchild of a single man, J. Michael Straczynski (normally called JMS, because, well, you try spelling that), who developed a five-year plan for the story to follow. It wasn't simply a series novelization, but rather a plan that had the flexibility to deal with the apparent cancellation of the show a year early, or contract and other disputes with actors (which happened multiple times over the course of the show). It serves as a pointed rejoinder to all the showrunners who say that it's impossible to plan that far ahead. Granted, JMS ended up writing 3/4s of the show's episode, the bulk of them in a row starting late in the second season, and he perhaps drove himself bald, grey, and insane, in the process. But it is possible.

Second, Babylon 5 was the first space opera not named Star Trek to succeed in any long-term fashion on American TV. The Stargates and Farscapes and Andromedas and perhaps even Battlestar Galacticas of the world owe it for demonstrating that it was possible. Alongside The X-Files and the Star Trek spinoffs, it helped create fertile soil for the speculative fiction and serialized storytelling boom of the 1990s and 2000s.

Finally, its technology was exceedingly important. In a world before Toy Story, it was the first series to utilize computer graphics technology for its special effects. These early stabs at it are occasionally laughable, but the improvement over time helps to show how CGI took over the science fiction industry.

The argument against that, of course, is that "watching it improve" implies that it started badly. And, unfortunately, that is true, in more areas than merely the SFX. Over the course of the series the CGI improves yes, but so does the writing, so do the actors, so does the makeup - really, everything gets dramatically better, which is most notable about halfway through the second season, much like its fellow SF travelers Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I will grant that it can be difficult to wait that long for shows on DVD to actually grow the beard, but honestly? It's worth it. Babylon 5's initially slow plot development gains huge amounts of momentum as the different seeds it plants start to bloom, and by its third season, it can get about as compulsively watchable as dramatic television gets.

I don't just say this as a former fan. Indeed, I specifically avoided watching Babylon 5 pretty much since its ending for two reasons: first, that I was pushing away most of my high school interests (didn't listen to They Might Be Giants for several years either), and second, that I was scared that it would be bad and I was a dumbass teenager. When I eventually did rewatch it, I was surprised and pleased to discover that it was much as I remember - good when it was good, bad when it was bad, and extremely well plotted. But you don't have to take my word for it - the Renaissance Poet watched it with me, unencumbered by nostalgia-covered glasses, and she thoroughly enjoyed it as well.

Perhaps its greatest qualitative achievement was its creation of two powerful, dynamic, scenery-chewing characters in the rival ambassadors Londo and G'Kar. Over the course of the show, both change goals and demeanor multiple times, and, like Wesley Wyndham-Price, king of dynamic television characters, both do it in a manner that seems natural to their characters. Foreshadowing helps as well - it's clear that this is intentional and part of their character history and future.

I mean, it may not be for everybody. The authorial voice is much stronger than in most TV shows since there was really only one writer for the bulk of the series, and if you don't happen to like that voice, it's hard to get into the show. Yet JMS does improve over the course of the series, particularly in terms of comedy. The whooshy electronic new age-style music can be a little bit dissonant, but I think it becomes one of the show's greatest strengths over time, much like Battlestar Galactica's Middle Eastern flairs in its soundtrack.

Babylon 5 is worth being in the conversation as television studies and criticism expand, not merely an afterthought like it has become. And I will happily continue to make that argument on the Internet as often and effectively as I can. Dammit.

New Computer

I used my last computer from 2006 until last week. It was serviceable, given that it was a slapdash affair when I put it together - a barebones system with cannibalized parts from my previous computer, which suddenly stopped working (in retrospect, it was likely the power supply, the one thing I didn't check at the time). Anyway, the last computer got me through Bioshock, Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead 2, and more, surprisingly given that it was probably something like 2004's finest. But it wouldn't run Dragon Age: Origins, or Fallout: New Vegas, and in the straw that broke the camel's back when I was offered a review copy, Shogun 2: Total War. My hard drive was also filled to the brim, and my wireless flaky as hell. With my tax return showing a decent amount of numbers, it was time to treat myself.

I had a few things to consider, and they didn't all work together well. At all. First, I wanted something energy efficient, in order to soothe my bleeding heart, and hopefully not destroy my electricity bill either. I'd also have preferred to have parts not made from blood cadmium or whichever, but that's unfortunately far too difficult to research. On the other hand, I wanted power - enough to play new games for three years or so. Happily, the rate of technology has slowed down over the last decade, so this is actually pretty possible to do. More good news - newer technology in chips and in video cards indicates that they're actually better than previous models at lower power usage, even when they're more powerful overall, because they do a better job of lowering energy using when not being used at full force.

Of course, the bigger issue is money. I didn't get that big of a tax return. Unfortunately, since the newest of those more-efficient pieces of hardware had the best efficiency, I'd have to figure out how much money to spend on bleeding-edge stuff now, which is "not very much." I also wanted to avoid doing too much computer-building, since that can be a pain in the ass, but I left it as an option.

I'm happy that I did keep that option open, because I cut probably 20% of the cost out, and was able to research my parts directly. Here are my specs:

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Motherboard: MSI MS-7642
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5670
Video Card Display Memory: 2295 MB
Video Card Dedicated Memory: 503 MB
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS*
Total Space: 476.8 GB
Hard Drive Model: WDC WD5002AALX-00J37A0 ATA Device
CD-ROM Model: _NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A ATA Device*

*cannibalized from older computer

All this was roughly $600. (though I also picked up Windows 7 and some accessories). No new monitor, though, and my current one maxes out at 1240x1040, so I'm not getting the very best resolution. But everything seems to be running well, Shogun 2 is a blast (my AV Club review is coming soon). I hope that this allows me to get more directly into reviews and discussions of current-generation PC games - and lets me play the best mods for the ones which have been out for a while.

In Which I Actively Invite A Decade-Long Flamewar To My Blog

At some point soon I hope to be getting one of the two "core" game systems: PS3 or Xbox 360. I had been leaning towards the 360, just as I have been pretty much since release. However, given that I don't actually care that much about the specific specs of each, unless a game is REALLY bad on one system, my primary criteria are the exclusive games available on each (including PC games). Since many of the games I'm behind on are available for both, like Red Dead Redemption or Soul Calibur IV or even, if I dare, Final Fantasy XIII, or on PC, my preferred system, the simplest way to judge is to make a list of games on each that I should play. And surprisingly, the list as I think of it is tilted towards PS3.

PlayStation 3:
LittleBigPlanet 2
Flower
Demon's Souls
Valkyria Chronicles
Uncharted 1/2
Infamous*

Xbox 360:
Halo 3/Reach
Limbo
Gears of War
Fable

Looks pretty even right now, but in most of the cases I'm more interested in the PS3 games than the 360 games. I will admit to a certain level of ignorance towards indie games, but the biggest of them - Braid - is on PC now, removing a major 360 strength. On the other have, given that I have a Wii, Kinect seems vaguely more appealing than Move, but neither really excite me.

What am I missing here, fellow gamers? Bearing in mind that, as a general rule, I like most genres but only the very best games of most genres, though I'll tolerate more mediocre RPGs or quirky games.

Video Game History - The Elder Scrolls: Arena

I've decided to start excerpting bits and pieces of my book on the history of video gaming in the 1990s on this blog. Today, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, surprisingly the only game of its era to make a game series which has lasted through today.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena was, eventually, a far more successful open-ended game than Darklands, though it was likewise somewhat more buggy than it should have been upon its release. However, it ended up spawning one of the longest-running RPG series to survive past the early 2000's, with four games in The Elder Scrolls main series as well as a several expansions and spinoffs.

Part of the reason for Arena's success was its effective use of modern game technology. It is built off of the Ultima Underworld model, but in many ways surpasses even that classic. For example, melee combat in previous 3D games was accomplished by clicking and holding down the right mouse button, with different attacks corresponding to different clicking locations, like a slash if you clicked from the right or left side of the screen. In Arena, on the other hand, melee attacks are accomplished by clicking the right mouse button and moving the mouse in the direction of the attack, which your weapon follows. The whole process is much more visceral and immersive, and makes the action in the game feel much more like action should. Likewise, the superb sound in the game adds to its appeal - hits land with satisfying thumps.

Arena's huge game world is also a major draw. Unlike its predecessors, travel around town is not accomplished via text menu, but rather, each town exists in its own space, and you can wander and explore throughout, from small villages to major metropolises. You can also wander in the outdoors between towns, but it is not an effective mode of travel. The game world is also filled with books which fill in the history and geography. Some days are holidays, with effects like cheaper magical items or free blessings in temples. There is something magical in Arena and it shows up best when you wander into a new town, discover that it's a major holiday as the snow falls and the game's evocative music plays.

These moments of beauty only really occur in games with huge worlds that put the player in small but important positions, as opposed to building the entire game world around the player's quest. Later Massively Multiplayer RPGs like World of Warcraft could achieve similar effects. The Elder Scrolls series is, in some ways, a predecessor to those MMRPGs, and later games in the series would often be described as “single-player MMRPGs.”

Arena is also creative in ways that many RPGs were not. It offered a spell creation system, which a magic-using character could use by combining the effects of different spells. For example, you could build a spell which caused both paralysis and poison. Its sheer amount of randomized dungeons and semi-randomized quests could keep you busy for weeks without ever having to worry about the main plot, although the simple fetch and escort quests could lose their charm.

Of all the great RPGs of the early 1990's it's something of a surprise that The Elder Scrolls: Arena ended up being the one with the most longevity. Its embrace of new technology and creative ambition certainly made it stand out, and subsequent games have demonstrated its creators' ability to adapt to different technological and business environments. Its first sequel, Daggerfall, surpassed it in most respects, but it's still an eminently playable game on its own.

Rowan Riting Roundup

If, for some inexplicable reason, you really want to read the things I write on the internet, here are a few links to where I've been published lately:

At Gamasutra, I did a feature about how grinding works well in Dragon Quest IX, thanks to a gestalt effect of a bunch of smaller design decisions.

At 1up.com, I made two lists of five genre-benders that changed gaming, and five that should have.

I've started doing book reviews at The A.V. Club, including American Uprising, Triumph of the City, The History of History, and Journal of a UFO Investigator.

I also reviewed Magicka for the A.V. Club.

And finally, my TV Club coverage of the Fox animation bloc, No Ordinary Family, and The Cape continue, in addition to The Middle, which I just started.

Who's Your Reader?

A piece in Slate about the influence of Alan Sepinwall, generally considered the father of modern TV criticism, has triggered something of a discussion about the role of the television critic-as-fan. My AV Club comrade Myles McNutt posted a typically in-depth response, which brought up a point that I always think about when I engage with (or write) a review: the audience matters.

It's arguably the biggest issue with reviews. Anything that you write about, you have to pick a target audience. Usually, that target audience is you, or people like you, since obviously that's your position of expertise, but it's not always that way. The essential question, on a continuum, is: "The Audience Knows Nothing About The Subject -> The Audience Knows As Much As They Can About The Subject."

As with most continuums, the far reaches of either side can generally be ignored. Reviewing a video game for people who have never played a game in their life would be an exercise in frustration, and writing a review just for people who know everything possible about something, up to and including possibly making it, is too narrow to be useful. In general, the critic acts as a guide: they know about the subject in some rank between competent and expert, and they use that knowledge to help the reader learn more about the subject, or contextualize it better. A new Wong Kar-Wai film would likely get a review that explains how Wong uses image more than dialogue to create his films, and how they're generally light on plot while heavy on emotion.

Yet there is also a set of people, which includes me, who already know about that, and are interested more in how the new film would fit into Wong Kar-Wai's existing context. Describing his past style is mostly irrelevant to them. They want to know how it compares. At its narrowest point, the question then becomes "Is it better than In the Mood for Love?" If the critic's answer is "Yes," then they're telling everyone who already knows about Wong's film that this is fantastic and worth seeing immediately - but everyone else is out in the cold.

This push-pull with the audience happens across media. Games, based on sequels and existing engines, may have it hardest. Books less so, but nonfiction does often rely on a certain level of knowledge and interest in the subject.

Which brings us to television (and, to a lesser extent, comics). Games, books, and films can still be seen as discrete entities. Regardless about whether you've seen Chungking Express or not, you can still talk about In the Mood for Love. However, television, as a serialized story, is many discrete entities (episodes) coming together to make larger discrete entities (seasons) which in the end comprise the entirety of the show itself. So a critic can write about TV at any of those three levels, or even combinations thereof.

But that combines with the audience question to make it essentially impossible for television to be reviewed in a fashion that will be generally satisfying. Someone may be dropping in on the show for the first time. Someone else has been watching and talking about the show from the beginning. They're going to have wildly diverging expectations from anything written about the show.

Any critic who engages in an episode-by-episode writeup of a show is, by nature, going to appeal to the people who also engage with the show on an episode-by-episode basis. And generally speaking, that's good business - better to have the same few hundred folks click once per week than a thousand who click once per year on a season-long review. But that doesn't help the people who are interested in trying it out, or even those who have just started sampling.

My solution to this issue with games and other similar tends to be to have multiple reviews, with each reviewer's perspective made fairly clear. If a new Dynasty Warriors comes out, I don't need someone to tell me that they find the formula tired - I like the formula! Tell me how it differs in minute detail from other games in the series! However, even that doesn't work so well with television. Yes, if a season (or character, or storyline, or anything that can be separated out from individual episodes) deserves examination, it could be examined, perhaps by multiple people.

Still, the upshot of this is that critical examination of media, which is difficult in any other medium, is virtually impossible to do with television in a fashion that will satisfy the bulk of readership. All that critics can do, then, is all they can do.

Video Game History - Total Annihilation

I've decided to start excerpting bits and pieces of my book on the history of video gaming in the 1990s on this blog. Today, Total Annihilation, one of the biggest sleeper hits of the Real-Time Strategy explosion of the 90s.

Microsoft's success at breaking into the top tier of the RTS world may have been unsurprising, but Cavedog Software's wild success with Total Annihilation (1997) was much less predictable. In this case, the game's success has as much to do with its excellent gameplay as with marketing and corporate clout. Yet Total Annihilation is fairly similar to Age of Empires in one key respect: it's epic. Both games bring many more units to bear than previous RTS games, and both have a scope well beyond even the alternate history and fantasy world wars of C&C and Warcraft. Where Age of Empires was an epic covering the scope of early human history, Total Annihilation was a science fiction epic spanning the galaxy. It's clearly inspired by Star Wars, as just a few notes of the bombastic soundtrack make clear.

The premise of Total Annihilation is thin for supporting a story, but wonderful for supporting a setting: a group of supercomputer AI's called “The Core” have mostly taken over the galaxy, whereas some human rebels known as “The Arm” decide to fight them using armies of clones. In practice, this means massive armies of mechanized/robotic units, battling over a wide variety of planets, from beaches and lava to lush forests and cities which span entire planets. Nothing in the premise suggests anything small-scale or light-hearted, and nothing in the game threatens the perception of epic scale.

The key to making that work as a game is having enough units available, both in choices for building and varieties to create. Total Annihilation's claim to fame is its selection of hundreds of different units. The Arm and Core units are generally mirrors of one another in effect, but have significant visual difference. Each has dozens of different units, from light infantry to huge capital ships to speedy aircraft. Some are cannon fodder, others are elite units, built to last. The mass of different kinds of units replaces unit upgrades as well.

Even more impressive than the amount of units available is the fact that you can built them, in the hundreds. Many other RTS games limit population growth as best they can via artificial caps, such as the farms and houses that need to be build in Warcraft and Age of Empires. Total Annihilation, on the other hand, allows you to build as many units as you can, so long as you have the resources to cover it. Interestingly, its resource system is not based as much on what you have at the moment, but rather, what your overall flow of resources in and out is. You can build as many units and buildings as you want at a time, but if you aren't also getting enough energy and metal, your building will stall as they are collected. Most RTS games refuse to let you even start building troops or buildings unless you already have the necessary resources.

Moreover, it's easy and fast to build multiple things at once. Shift-clicking, which sets waypoints for movement in many games, can also be used for collection and building purposes in Total Annihilation. You can tell one of your builders to recycle metal from a handful of destroyed units, build several laser turrets for protection, harvest a few trees for energy, and then build a factory. Worker units can also be automated to collect metal from destroyed units and repair your damaged units and buildings automatically while patrolling from one point to the next. The buildings which gather resources do so on a consistent basis – it is impossible to exhaust Total Annihilation's resources, and therefore matches are theoretically infinite.

Unit-building is likewise sped-up. Total Annihilation helped to popularize another one of the RTS genre's necessary interface improvements: the build queue. Instead of consistently clicking on each new unit when the last was completed, now you can select as many of each that you want to have built in one go. If you want multiple units at once, shift-clicking lets you queue five at a time. In this way, you can set up a near-constant stream of new units.

The net effect of these gameplay choices – huge numbers of units, infinite resources, unit-building queues, and automated harvesting and repairs – is such that Total Annihilation feels built around the tactical and strategic aspect of the gameplay, instead of the economic aspects. In another RTS, sending massive armies of mechanical troops to fight and die for tiny amounts of progress would be a waste of resources, and you'd have to develop your economy better on the next try. In Total Annihilation, that's the point. It is in no way a subtle game – just look at its name – but its intense focus on using Real-Time Strategy methods to play out an galactic war worthy of George Lucas is both remarkable, and remarkably successful.

Rowan's Heirarchy of Narrative Needs

How do people talk about their entertainment? Inspired by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, here's Rowan's Hierarchy of Narrative Needs. Note that I make no case for any kind of authenticity here, there has been no experiment of any kind - I'm doing this mostly to trigger a discussion of, well, discussion. One important thing to note is that in keeping with Maslow as a source of inspiration, the "hierarchy" part is important - theoretically, one has to be comfortable with lower-order things in order to progress to discussing the higher-order concerns.

8. Language
7. Plot
6. Politics
5. Characters
4. Writing
3. Form
2. Historical Context
1. Subtext & Theme

8. Language - I don't mean language as in writing style here, I mean whether it can be understood. Some people can't deal with foreign-language films with subtitles. Others hate dubbing. It's not just foreign language, it's also dialect - many people cite The Wire's dense urban Baltimore language as one of the biggest things stopping them from getting into the series at first.

7. Plot - Plot is the first thing that most people discuss when it comes to storytelling. Does the movie have an exciting story? Is the book confusing? Does this fit my conception of how the story should go? It also includes some degree of discussing quality in terms of plot, like saying that the best television episodes and plots are the ones where the most happens. This is fairly straightforward, although it also includes some less-obvious extensions like "shipping," in my opinion. "Will they or won't they?" is a pure expression of "Do I like this plot?"

6. Politics - This one is almost always negative, in that if people don't like the politics, they'll won't be able to talk about much more. Most commonly, this has to do with the normal Democrat vs Republican, liberal vs. conservative nonsense, although it can take other forms in other subcultures: "THIS BOOK IS FUCKING RACIST!" for example, or the websites that grade video games based on whether they offer Christianity as a viable religious option.

5. Characters -Is he likable? Is she behaving in a consistent fashion? Are you interesting in finding out how they react after their world gets shattered? Do you want to continue hanging out with them even after it's been six seasons and it's kind of a drag now but you just have to know if they stay friends and allies?

4. Writing - Things get a little bit subtler here. If the plot and characters are convincing, then what about the creators' depiction of those things makes them convincing? And, if they're not convincing, was it a structural issue or simply dialogue?

3. Form - Does this book do anything interesting stylistically? Is the TV show putting together its serialized narrative in a fashion likely to collapse, or succeed? This one is probably my personal favorite, for whatever that's worth.

2. Historical Context - Where does this movie fit in with the rest of the director's oeuvre? Was this book representative of a movement? Does it represent its times, or even say more about its times than nonfiction would suggest?

1. Subtext & Theme - But what does it mean? Who does it come from? Are they saying something intentional with it? What are they unintentionally saying? What do we read into it now? Is there patriarchy? Maybe hegemony? Why is this worth talking about?

The Twelve Best Angel Episodes

Having now completed Angel, I have put together a list of my favorite twelve episodes. Making a complete list, as I did with Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn't going to happen, for two reasons. First, Angel is built around 3-6 episode-long chapters, instead of specific episodes. I liked the Pylea episodes, but they all blend together to a certain degree. Separating them based on quality would be difficult. Second, I skipped half of the first season, so it would be impossible for me to rate episodes I haven't seen.

The net effect of this is that fifth-season episodes dominate the list, since that season reverted to an episode-by-episode method of storytelling, and it was also really, really good. I don't think it was as good as every other season combined, as the numbers on this list might indicate, but it was probably the best sustained run of the two shows since Buffy's third season.

Obviously, the list contains spoilers. Now, without any further ado, the twelve best Angel episodes:


12) #413 "Salvage" - Even though she had appeared in just a handful of prior episodes, Faith was always a critical character in Angel's mythology. Faith was to Buffy what Angelus was to Angel. So it makes a poetic kind of sense that, with Angel's dark side on the loose, Wesley would be reminded that Faith could make a valuable ally. "Salvage" may be the fastest-paced of the breakneck fourth season, with Lilah dead and dismembered, Faith busted out, Faith kicking Connor's ass (and wowing him in the process), the confrontation between Faith and the Beast followed by Faith and Angelus, and Cordelia revealing that she's pregnant. It's breathless and exciting, and did I mention that Faith shows Connor who's boss? Yeah.

11) #119 "Sanctuary" - Speaking of Faith, it was her arrival in Los Angeles that started to make Angel look like its own series, capable of standing alongside Buffy as more than a sidenote. This is true in a critical fashion, but it's also true emotionally, as the big B makes her second (and final) appearance on the show, with a classic Buffy/Angel argument delineating their geographic - and televised - territories. Wesley's response to Faith in the first part of the 2-parter, and this one as well, is also a turning point for his character.

10) #317 "Forgiving" - The fallout from Connor's kidnapping drives essentially every character, most notably Angel himself, batshit crazy. The sucker-punch of an ending, with Angel yelling "I'll kill you!" at Wesley, is most notable. The kidnapping plot never made logical sense, but the emotions it engendered made for some of the best stuff on Angel.

9) #516 "Shells" - I love Illyria. I think she's a fantastic creation, and marvelously portrayed by her actress. I may hate how she appeared, and I wish it wasn't an either/or proposition. But the shattered ancient evil goddess? Brilliant. Likewise Angel's speech about humanity and Wesley's response.

8) #508 "Destiny" - Spike's addition to Angel was leading to this. The occasionally pathetic Spike of later Buffy seasons is gone, replaced with the sarcastic badass that made him so likable in the first place. And with him on the show, there had to be a confrontation between him and Angel about Buffy. It was absolutely, 100% necessary. It hadn't happened with Cordelia in the third season, much to my dismay, so I wasn't expecting it here. But here it was, and it happened perfectly. Props also to the later episode, "The Girl In Question," which dealt with much of the same themes comedically compared with the drama and violence of "Destiny."

7) #410 "Awakening" - The whole premise of Angel required that, at some point, we see Angel's evil side re-emerge. We've been teased by it before, with the Ecstasy-like drug from the first season and the "beige Angel" storyline of Season Two. Eventually, the big deal had to happen, but it had to be meaningful. On Buffy, it was emotionally shattering and shocking. On Angel, it couldn't be either of those things, so it had to have its own meaning. And it did, thanks to the twist that Angelus was brought back by his friends.

Better yet, it wasn't a simple spell, but it was a spell that involved an entire episode-length fantasy. Great stuff, and to top it off, Angel doesn't say "Cordelia" when he loses it. He gasps "Buffy," just like in "Innocence."

6) #218 "Dead End" - If "Sanctuary" is the point where Angel came into its own as a show, "Dead End" is the point where it becomes a potentially great show. After almost two seasons of Lindsey as an antagonist, "Dead End" makes it clear just how much he's added to the show. It's also a perfect vehicle for Christian Kane's talents, as he gets to sing, play guitar, and in a brilliant comic setpiece, blames his evil hand for sabotaging a theoretically tense Wolfram & Hart board meeting.

5) #510 "Soul Purpose" - Speaking of Lindsey, his triumphant return turns out to be excellent stuff in "Soul Purpose," as he recruits Spike just like Doyle did Angel at the start of the series. Not only does Lindsey recognize the parallels by calling himself "Doyle," but so does first-time director David Boreanaz, who, along with the script, turns several parts of the episode into deliberate recreations of the pilot episode's most iconic (and kind of silly) moments.

It also starts bringing a wider plot into the so-far great, but disjointed fifth season, while doing something about the ever-present, ever-creepy Eve. "Soul Purpose" was an absolutely perfect episode at its point of the series.

4) #522 "Not Fade Away" - Emotionally speaking, "Not Fade Away" is as good as a finale gets. Each character gets resolution, finds something about themselves, and/or does something hilarious, like Spike at the poetry slam. The only reason it's not #1 on the list is that the larger plot involving the Circle of the Black Thorn wasn't set up terribly effectively.

3) #406 "Spin the Bottle" - "Spin the Bottle" is the most Whedony episode of Angel, in that there is a specific brand of Buffy episode, often written by Joss Whedon or Jane Espenson, involving magical altered reality, comedy, and overall excellence. This fits in with "Band Candy," "Hush," and especially "Tabula Rasa" from the Buffy canon. But in some ways, it's better, because the specific premise of the characters reverting to their 17-year-old selves works much better on Angel, where Cordelia and Wesley went through some of the most dynamic character changes possible. Seeing bitch-queen Cordelia and Head Boy Wesley is a joy, and it makes for, by far, the funniest Angel episode of the series.

2) #309 "Lullaby" - Funny is great, but comedy combined with drama is the heart of the Buffy/Angel aesthetic. "Lullaby" is arguably the most dramatic episode of the entire series, thanks to Darla killing herself to birth Connor and Holtz and Saejahn starting to directly confront Angel Investigations. But that drama is interspersed with fantastically funny moments, like Angel popping up behind the gang asking what they're staring at. Darla's final speech tilts slightly towards melodrama, but that's a tiny criticism for a wildly ambitious episode that manage to hit most everything that it aims at.

1) #512 "You're Welcome" - Wesley's journey for buffoon to badass is well-documented and beloved, but Cordelia's journey through the first three seasons was equally impressive and important for the show. Her character bore the brunt of the insanity of Season Four, which made it fairly easy to forget just how important she had been to the series. Easy to forget until her re-appearance in "You're Welcome," that is. Her easy charm and piercing humor slice right through much of the angst of the season, and it cuts right to the heart of the character dynamics of Angel at its best. It also serves as a stellar conclusion to the introduction-to-Wolfram & Hart theme of the first half of Season Five, and subtly sets up the conclusion of the season (and series) as well. It's the strongest episode from the ridiculously strong stretch of episodes in the middle of Season Five, and well worthy of being called the best episode of Angel.

Video Game History - Chrono Cross

I've decided to start excerpting bits and pieces of my book on the history of video gaming in the 1990s on this blog. Today, Chrono Cross, the divisive sequel to the cult hit Chrono Trigger.

At first glance, Chrono Cross, the 2000 sequel to the classic Chrono Trigger, does not seem to fit the pattern of Square moving away from its strengths as a game like Final Fantasy VIII does. It is brightly colored, with magnificent music -arguably the best soundtrack in video game history – and certainly one of the greatest opening movies in video game history. Its combat system is a bit of a throwback in that it is purely turn-based, but it includes stringing moves together in a manner akin to Xenogears. On the surface level, it is a worthy successor to Chrono Trigger.

Chrono Cross also tries to make one of the biggest changes to the Town-Dungeon-Boss formula of any game since Final Fantasy IV. Instead of gaining experience points from random battles, the party only increases in level when it fights bosses. The random battles are good for practice, and they can allow some character statistics to increase to their potential, but the potential is only improved by boss fights. Results of this innovation are somewhat varied: it does prevent you from grinding and streamlines the game more, but by making random battles even less useful, it makes them more annoying.

The biggest problem with the game, however, is that wants to be deep. Its predecessor Chrono Trigger seemed to understand that it was simple and charming and that's that. Chrono Cross aspires to be more, and ends up being less. In the original game, the time travel mechanism was simply a mechanism to allow the characters and, by extension, the player, to travel to a wide range of different places for maximum entertainment. Chrono Cross, on the other hand, is far more attached to its traveling mechanism. It is interdimensional instead of temporal. In one dimension, the main character, Serge, is alive, in the other, he is dead. He finds a way to travel between the two dimensions, and in the process, discovers an increasingly complex story of scientists trying to harness interdimensional travel as an experiment, and evil beings attempting to take advantage of that. The complexity of the story and its constant references to the letter of the previous game stand it stark contrast to Chrono Trigger's spirit of fun. In essence, like many of the Square games of the PlayStation generation, Chrono Cross takes itself far too seriously.

Best Season/Episode combination

I got in a discussion on Twitter about what the best "number" for an episode of a TV series to have might be. My initial feeling was that the middle of the third season was probably best: shows have settled into a pretty good groove, they know what they're good at, by sticking with the middle, that allows 13-episode seasons to work with 22-episode seasons.

So, using that logic, I poked at Wikipedia, and found several classics huddled around the 9th-12th episodes of the 3rd season of some of my favorite shows:

The X-Files might be at its best at this point. Its 3x09 and 3x10 are my two favorite mythology episodes, "Nisei" and "731." 3x12 is the excellent "War of the Corprophages," which might be my favorite overall.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has a pretty good set of episodes here, highlighted by 3x10 "The Defector," one of my favorites so far. On the other hand, 3x12, "The High Ground" is a completely ridiculous terrorist episode.

Buffy's season 3 is rightfully heralded as its best, and this is around when it started moving from good to great. 3x09 "The Wish" is a great episode, as is 3x12's "Helpless." 3x11 "Gingerbread" is very good, and 3x10 "Amends" is 2/3s of a classic, 1/3 horrible deus ex machina.

Angel's ninth episode of its third season is my favorite of the whole run, "Lullaby." Its next three episodes are good but not quite classic.

Babylon 5 has one of its strongest runs ending here, with the strong "Point of No Return" and the all-time classic "Severed Dreams" at 3x09 and 3x10. Its next two episodes are weaker, though.

I haven't gotten to this point in The Sopranos, but 3x11 "Pine Barrens" is usually considered among its best.

The Wire is finishing up one of its strongest seasons at this point. 3x09 and 3x10 build the tension to a breaking point, and 3x11 features the shocking death of one of its most important characters. All are great choices.

The Simpsons is also coming into its own, with two classics: 3x10 "Flaming Moe's" and 3x12 "I married Marge."

Arrested Development was, sadly, winding down, but included some great episodes. I really dislike the potential finale "S.O.Bs" at 3x09, but each of the next three are fantastic, especially 3x12 "Exit Strategy."

The Boondocks was very good throughout most of its third season, but has two transcendent episodes, 3x09 "A Date With The Booty Warrior" and 3x12 "Mr. Medicinal" which probably made me laugh harder than anything else that aired this year.

Finally, Battlestar Galactica may have been at its weakest here, oddly. 3x09 ("Unfinished Business") is excellent, but 3x10 "The Passage" could be my least favorite Jane Espenson script ever, and yes that includes "Doublemeat Palace." 3x11 and 3x12 have the confrontation on the algae planet, which wasn't bad, but turned the Final Five into a big thing. I didn't like that thing.


Based on all that, I lean towards 3x10 as my favorite, but I could easily be swayed to 3x09 and 3x12. Other people have suggested that 3x10 is good for Breaking Bad, Dr. Who, Lost, Futurama, and more, but I'm not expert on those, so cannot judge.

As a wildcard, I checked out 4x10, which could also contend: Buffy's "Hush," Angel's "Awakening," Battlestar Galactica's "Revelations," The X-Files' "Paper Hearts," and The Wire with a very good episode towards the end of its fourth season.

Only one other person suggested another collection of episodes, S2 E05. I don't watch most of the shows mentioned, so I can't really judge, but hey! I didn't do this alone!

Terriers

When I read previews of the Fall TV season, Terriers was one of the shows I thought had the most potential. I think Donal Logue has an easy charm to him, Shawn Ryan has showrunning pedigree, and I think Tim Minear has done great stuff on a wide variety of cancelled shows. But when I watched the pilot, I wasn't terribly impressed. It was interesting enough, to be sure, and it made me laugh, but it seemed like such a trifle.

I've continued watching, though at a fairly slow pace (just finished the tenth episode) and I don't believe that Terriers has gotten much better than that initial pilot. On the other hand, I have a much higher opinion of it. Yes, I know that seems counter-intuitive.

The thing that makes Terriers work is that it totally buys into its premise. In most TV shows, the characters have baggage, but it doesn't come into play often. So-and-so might be a recovering alcoholic, but it only comes into play in specific episodes when they're tempted into it. On Terriers, being a former alcoholic informs virtually everything that Donal Logue's character does. Same thing with his partner's dark past.

Because these characters are trying so hard, and because they're so well-defined and acted, this has the subtle but impressive effect of changing the overarching narrative of the show to one about characters instead of plot. While I think novelists have realized this for generations, TV shows (and most visual media, to be honest) have tended to rely on plot to drive their narratives. The Wire, for example, is such a success because while it is a plot-based show, it's the characters who drive the plot - everything stems from them and their understandable motivations. (Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, collapsed in large part because it started letting the plot drive the characters, most notably the Final Five fiasco.)

What makes this interesting is that, in the aftermath of Terriers' cancellation, some of the statements by the FX network president indicate that audiences didn't find the show "edgy" enough, that it didn't fit the brand. The bitterly ironic part of that is that Terriers was edgy, in that I'm constantly emotionally on the edge of my seat (or the edge of a cliff) while watching it, because that's where the characters are. Its tranny hookers and cuckold-fetish husbands aren't particularly light fare either. You just have to do a couple episodes of digging to get to that point, and it seems that most people weren't willing.

This also seems especially non-revolutionary when you consider that it's generally how the best sitcoms work - they make you feel comfortable hanging out with the characters, and the characters' personalities, quirks and fears drive the storylines. Perhaps Terriers' foray into genre-bending helped lead to its demise. Still, I hope that its character-based long-term storytelling helps to influence television in the future - it's the best we can hope for after its cancellation.

Dreams can come true! And then....

After I graduated from college in 2005, I spent some (but perhaps not enough) time trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. One of the goals that I came up with was writing game reviews for The A.V. Club. I was a long-time reader, liked their voice, and they covered all kinds of media except games. A few months or perhaps just weeks later, I was delighted and unhappy that they introduced a game review section. Delighted because, well, that's what I wanted, and unhappy because it wasn't me.

I should note at this point that I had no connection to the AV Club at that point other than being a reader, and I had no particular reason to expect that I should have been involved. I had no clip collection, I wasn't emailing anyone, making connections, or anything. I was entirely aware of this, but still somewhat disappointed.

A few years later, I was in Chicago with a part-time job when they posted the need for a part-time intern. I jumped on that, and suddenly had the connections that I'd been missing . I didn't utilize them all at once, as I got distracted by my college closing, but a few years later I started doing a bit more writing, had a decent portfolio, called in those connections, and I got my staff box with a few TV reviews. I asked into a few new things, got invited to join, and today, my dream came true: my review of the new Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is live on the site.

Now, as cool as this is, and I do smile when I think about it, it kind of shows the limits of realistic dreaming. I'm still a freelancer. This will help my finances, of course, and will certainly help my portfolio, but (and I hope this isn't a trade secret), the AV Club freelancers would have to work pretty damn hard and do a lot of writing to make a living. It's one down, and God knows how many to go.

I'm sure my slightly younger self would have realized this and wanted to follow this dream anyway. It's just that my current self recognizes this far more as a starting point for bigger and better things, and much less as the realization of a life goal. Onwards and upwards, I suppose.

Methodology

I'm pondering changing my research-and-writing methods for my book on game history. So far, I've been going chapter-by-chapter. I decide to write on a genre (and time, if I break it in half), put together an outline, and try to play (if necessary - most of them are pretty firmly ensconced in my memory) and write on the games in order. However, my current chapter on real-time strategy game has exposed some flaws in this process, namely, that if I don't really like the games to begin with, it takes a lot longer. I'm pretty ambivalent about RTS games, so this chapter is in around its fourth month of work. At that rate, I might finish my first draft in three or four years, which seems a little much for me.

So I'm pondering switching writing about each game individually, and putting the segues in later. I've already kind of done this, having played and written about Half-Life while in the midst of my RTS binge. I see two major problems with this: first, it'll be harder to feel a sense of accomplishment like finishing a chapter. Second, it may just be an attempt to satiate my gaming ADD, and may make it harder for me to force myself to write instead of just play. I suppose I'll find out.


After I posted my excerpt on FF6, I had someone ask me on Twitter if I was also going to include Chrono Trigger. Ideally, the book will be mostly comprehensive, at least mentioning if not analyzing most of the influential games, massive hits, games representative of trends, cult classics, and major disasters. Here's an example of the preliminary games list for the first-person shooter chapter:


Catacomb 3-D
Ultima Underworld
Wolfenstein 3-D
Doom
System Shock
Arena
Doom 2
Heretic
Rise of the Triad
Marathon
Dark Forces
Strife
Duke Nukem 3D
Quake
Team Fortress
Outlaws
Turok
GoldenEye
Jedi Knight
Quake II
Rainbow Six
Unreal
Half-Life
TFC/Counterstrike
Thief
Trespasser
System Shock 2
Unreal Tournament/Quake III
Perfect Dark
Daikatana
Serious Sam
Deus Ex
NOLF
Elite Force
Red Faction
Halo

Some of these games may just get a mention (Dark Forces) or a reference to a different chapter they fit in better (the RPGs, Thief), some a paragraph (Serious Sam). Many of the bigger will get a page (Wolfenstein, NOLF) while others may get multiple pages of analysis on different levels (Doom, Halo). One of them will get a particular in-depth analysis using lots of screenshots. In this case, that's Half-Life and its storytelling-without-conventional-plot.

In other words, there's no way Chrono Trigger wouldn't make the book - and I hope I manage to get all the important games even when I get into genres I'm not really an expert on.

Video Game History - Final Fantasy VI

I've decided to start excerpting bits and pieces of my book on the history of video gaming in the 1990's on this blog. Today, I pander with Final Fantasy VI, or Final Fantasy III for those of you who only played on the SNES.

In a technical sense, Final Fantasy VI offers very few major innovations over its predecessors. The most obvious is a significant improvements in character graphics, primarily accomplished by using the same intricate two-dimensional sprites for the characters in both combat and in the outside world. This allowed for plot and character developments to take place during combat - when one character uses thought-to-be-extinct magic for the first time, another character reacts with shock, bouncing around the battle screen. But this is primarily an improvement based on the creativity of the designers - more time working with the harder limits of the SNES cartridges allowed more creativity within the form.

Final Fantasy VI also added customization within the game system. Just like FF4, FF6 has several characters in rigidly defined classes. Locke is a Thief, and the only character with the Steal command, whereas Strago is a Blue Mage who learns and uses monster's skills. However, each character can also be equipped with "Espers," summonable creatures who also teach magic skills and improve certain stats when the characters level up. This would provide the model for most future Final Fantasy games, as well as games from other companies: the characters each have their own personalities and are rigid when acquired, but can be developed in many different directions.

Perhaps more importantly, Final Fantasy VI offers massive improvements in thematic elements of the game. The rough edges of the setting are smoothed into a consistent whole. The coexistence of Tolkein-esque dwarves with science fiction Moon-dwellers has become a thematically consistent steampunk setting. This mixture of science fiction and fantasy was common in early RPGs, as we've seen. The early games in Final Fantasy have D&D settings with random airships, just like Wizardry and Ultima. But in Ultima, those previous embarrassments were ignored in future installments. In Wizardry, that artificial weirdness was maintained, but it was never a major focus. Final Fantasy reveled in its setting, and built its own style of science fantasy world, where airships and magic coexist.

In FF6, that setting drives the storyline, instead of the other way around. The evil empire in this game is using corrupting pure forms of magic in order to power their war machines to take over the world. The plot of the game derives naturally from the setting, and by and large, the major characters fit into both effectively.

I say "major characters" instead of "hero" or "protagonist" because Final Fantasy VI may well be unique in gaming history in that there isn't a character who fits that description. The first character we meet, Terra, is half-human, half magical Esper, and initially seems to be the protagonist, but is soon matched and eventually overshadowed by others. Locke the Thief is perhaps the most cliched, as the lovable rogue in the Han Solo mode. On the other hand, Celes, a general of the evil empire who turns against them, demonstrates much more depth, both tragically and comically, than her rough equivalent Cecil from FF4. Edgar is the king of a small nation which is trying to resist the encroaching empire, while Cyan was a knight of a kingdom which resisted and were all slaughtered, except for him. There are a few characters who don't entirely fit in the plot consistently, particularly some of the more gimmicky later characters like Umaru or Gogo, but one of the game's greatest achievements is how its most important characters are intertwined with the world and the plot. The Town-Dungeon-Boss conceit still exists, but it works organically with the rest of the game, instead of acting as an arbitrary challenge towards continuing the game.