How the Mindless Pastime Becomes Meaningful
A video game can be a work of art. Papers, Please trapped players in the mundanity of an immigration officer’s life while working under a corrupt government. The Stanley Parable and Thomas Was Alone both tackled existential quandaries, with the former delving into absurdity while the latter experimented with minimalism. Journey provided a powerful emotional experience packaged in a pleasing aesthetic, and Spec Ops: the Line forced players to plunge into the horrors found in Heart of Darkness. These video games, alone, should be proof enough that the medium can stand next to fine art, literature, drama, and film.
Certain people will still claim video games cannot be art, but these people also wear their liberal arts degrees on their sweater vests and savor their farts like a fine perfume. Normal humans, however, are more likely to argue which video games deserve the art label. Super Mario Bros., Fallout 3, Doom, and Final Fantasy VII have been heralded as art based on their contributions to gaming and their strong presentations. These games may have historical significance, yet I argue they don’t function as art.
To define what art “is” will take more words and creativity than I am capable of imagining. Instead, we will have to work with general parameters. For this article, I’ll claim art stirs emotion, alters our perception of nature/life, and displays superior technique on the part of the artist. Anything can have one or two of the components, but all three are needed to create art. In other words, art has a lasting impact on our emotions and lives because the creator was flipping good.
From there, art can either appeal universally or to a select niche. This is where we find the divide between critics and the general audience. Most people can appreciate Beethoven’s ninth symphony or Romeo & Juliet (or you’re forced to in high school). Can the same be said of the maddeningly-modern Finnegan’s Wake or the drunken fractal paintings of Jackson Pollack? All of them are heralded as works of genius yet some attract larger crowds.
For video games, the art element has similarly ostracized gamers and courted them. In this article, I will review Firewatch, Gone Home, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Each has garnered praise from critics to some extent, but gamers have taken issue with them as well. I have specifically chosen this bunch because they all could be labeled as “walking simulators.” The guided narrative allows the developers to flirt with fine art, drawing a story which impacts the audience on a deeper level. In doing so, however, they have sacrificed gameplay. Whether that sacrifice can appease the masses, that’s our focus.
We wander into the land of spoilers next, so be careful of secrets.
The Art in the Narrative
Although music and visuals can constitute art in video games, for the three games in this article, their plots separate them from mindless entertainment. To appreciate these narratives, you have to be willing to shove a stick up your butt and channel your inner critic. These stories can certainly be enjoyed at face value, but the art lies in the themes and metaphors kept just beneath the surface. Dissecting these elements shows us complexity and depth, even if it causes flashbacks of English class.
In terms of a core story, Hellblade probably has the weakest in regards to originality, but its use of Norse mythology and psychosis offer an unnerving perspective. You play as Senua, a Pict warrior, who ventures into Helheim to save the soul of her beloved who was murdered by the Vikings. “The Darkness” haunts her, plaguing her with auditory and visual hallucinations along with the trauma she suffered as a child. She must overcome spectral warriors and giants, and each death causes an infection to overtake you.
Ultimately, Hellblade captures the stages of grief, a concept portrayed several times previously, even in video games like Majora’s Mask. Senua denies the illusions of a tricksy spirit, grapples with an angry fire giant, bargains with her memories to attain a god-killing sword, falls into a depression when she loses her lover’s head (the vessel for his soul), and finally accepts that she cannot bring him back. The Norse mythology makes a monster of the grief process, demonstrating just how painful and crippling it can be to lose someone close. Some may think God of War’s (2018) and Hellblade’s lore skim too closely to each other, but Hellblade came first, so nyeah.
The psychosis element allows this game to transcend to the level of art. Voices constantly chatter inside Senua’s head, ridiculing her and questioning her actions. These, in turn, make you question your own, heightening your level of paranoia. Almost every environment plays like a labyrinth, disrupting your sense of direction. Combine these aspects with terrifying imagery of gore and grotesque creatures, and you experience the overwhelming, frightening world which only Senua sees. Reality and hallucination are indistinguishable, and Hellblade forces us to see how we have made death part of a collective psychosis. We create afterlives and cling to the concept of souls so that we can avoid accepting death. We fail to see death for what it is: death. This revelation is only soured partly when Senua appears to be miraculously cured from psychosis toward the end of the story.
Gone Home has gained notoriety for its story, largely because it was billed as being a thriller of sorts in which you have to discover what happened to your family. The main plot focuses on your younger sister, Samantha, as she comes out to her family and leaves home to escape the intolerance around her. The opening begins with a dark, empty home, unfamiliar to your character (Katie) who has just returned from abroad. With a storm crackling outside, you are made to feel a level of suspense and mystery. For players expecting horror or twists, the game’s reveal of your sister’s sexuality comes as a huge disappointment, a cheap stunt to deliver a supposedly-progressive message.
Ironically, gamers would likely enjoy Gone Home more if they read a synopsis before playing, like I did. Knowing this information, I could focus on how the game unraveled the story. Your sister’s process of coming out depicts the prejudice and hardship the LGBTQ+ community faces, in which a vital component of one’s identity and way of life is considered a “fad,” “inappropriate,” or a “damnable sin.” Samantha isn’t simply a token character for the community; you experience her interests, her internal thought processes, and her hopes and opportunities. The process is depicted tenderly enough while maintaining the youthful spirit of a young woman finding herself.
This core story may have had more of an impact back in 2013, and since then, other movies, books, and video games have arguably done it better. However, Gone Home has not grown irrelevant because Samantha’s story is but one side to a complex, murky plot. The parents, Janice and Terry, are away “on vacation,” which is later revealed to be the equivalent of a camp for marriage counseling. Unfortunately, Janice gets relatively little attention in the game apart from a few notes which explore her romantic feelings for a coworker. The truly horrifying story comes from Terry in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it section in the game, one which I had to read online to even discover. As a child, Terry was molested by his uncle (suggested to have occurred over several years) in the same house which Terry inherited and in which the family now lives. Through his books and notes, we see how this trauma has affected Terry’s ability to write, his drinking habits, and his happiness.
I could easily spend pages upon pages dissecting Gone Home’s intricate story, how vignettes hide inside household trinkets and letters. Overall, all of the storylines converge into a theme of secrecy and the pain it causes. Each family member (except your character) has maintained a shaky façade of stability, but the process of doing so has fatigued them, causing their lifestyles to crumble. Each character copes in their own way—be it healthily or not—and Gone Home does not indicate how they should have acted. Rather, it merely documents it for us to experience it for ourselves.
Theme-wise, Firewatch was the most intriguing to me. You control Henry who has recently accepted the position of a fire lookout in Wyoming. His coworker, Delilah, keeps him company by radio while guiding him in his responsibilities. Although the job supposedly offers a laidback experience, Henry encounters situations which lead him to believe something is afoot. Two girls are believed to have gone missing; he is attacked by a mysterious figure; and he discovers recording equipment and notes which indicate he and Delilah are being monitored. All the while, a forest fire starts nearing his site and grows more dangerous.
This suspense culminates to a disappointing conclusion when it is discovered another watcher, Ned, has been messing with them. Ned went into hiding after his son died in a nearby cave in a supposed “climbing accident.” Fearing that police would assume he had killed his son, he abandoned society and lives in the wilderness, stealing food and materials from camp/research sites to sustain himself.
Unlike Gone Home, which was advertised as a thriller but did not play like one, Firewatch pretends it is a thriller based on its tone and sequencing of events. I couldn’t help but feel deceived when the ending was little more than, “Oh, hey, this guy was messing with us, and most of mystery was in our heads.” It mirrors the “it was all a dream” trope, leaving the audience to wonder what the point of the story was if most of the spooks were misunderstandings.
Although I may dislike how the story was delivered, I admire its exploration of how its characters do everything to avoid accepting the pain in their lives. Henry takes the job to flee his wife who struggles with early-onset dementia. Delilah sabotaged her relationship with a loving partner, and now she flirts casually with coworkers but shies from meaningful interpersonal interactions. Ned drank heavily to escape his trauma from the Vietnam War, and after his son dies, he removes himself even further from society. Delilah doesn’t accurately report the disappearance of two girls because she does not wish to deal with the police, and she and Henry create a fantastical narrative of government observation to explain Ned’s actions.
Their reaction to the ever-growing forest fire captures this avoidance. They do nothing to stop the fire or their problems; they simply watch. When the fire has grown too dangerous, they again flee. Firewatch shows us human beings who are as despicable as they are relatable, and we are left to ponder how we avoid things—just like they do—while we play a form of entertainment which acts as an escape.
The Art with Gameplay
For each of these games, we could call their stories, “art.” However, for the video game as a whole to be considered art, it must merge its plot with player interaction. Put in another way, it has to have gameplay, and it should be good. Each game has received criticism for this crucial aspect, each struggling to give control to the player when the plot requires a fixed pace and direction. Players will question why a grand message matters if the game is barely a video game in the first place. Some argue that these games are better off as movies or short stories.
Firewatch should have been a book. Its gameplay devolves into moving from Point A to Point B, waiting for dialogue or a cutscene to occur. You can theoretically explore your environment, but it has little impact on the gameplay, apart from discovering a few morsels of information regarding side characters or locations. You have to know your cardinal directions and how to read a map, but that is about as much skill as you need.
The bigger problem relates to Firewatch’s illusion of control. At the beginning, Henry’s past is determined through a bunch of either-or options. You can choose your dog, where you live, what fetish appeals most to you, and all of them amount of bupkis. None of your choices change the overall plot. Neither do your dialogue options. The alternate ending hinges upon a single decision at the end of the game, and it amounts to a few seconds of a different cutscene. That’s it. The developers claimed each player’s experience would be individualized by their choices, and this would be true only if we were all carbon copies of each other.
Without player autonomy, Firewatch is a glorified light novel. Some could say the same for Gone Home, and I agree with this to an extent. In my opinion, the game acts more like an interactive art exhibit. Your character will wander between rooms, fiddling with objects and notes while searching for a key, device, or door to move onto the next section of the house. You can look and touch, but you cannot really change the environment like you would in a typical video game.
I can appreciate Gone Home’s gameplay more than Firewatch’s, however, because how you venture throughout the home determines how much you learn. Think of it like an I, Spy book. Your main goal is to find the listed objects, but part of the fun is seeing what secrets Walter Wicks has hidden in his gorgeous photographs. As I mentioned in the last section, you will only learn about the younger sister if you purely focus on moving between beginning and end. The family’s dynamics come alive to you if you wander along and enjoy your surroundings.
It still isn’t much. I could tell you an art museum is more fun if you really look at all of the exhibits. If you expected the zoo, no painting is going to make the experience enjoyable.
Hellblade is the closest any of these titles actually get to a zoo/typical video game, largely due to its combat system. Senua will see herself fighting waves of enemies, most often found in pairs or trios. She can execute combinations of fast and heavy attacks, dodge, and activate a slowed-down Focus Mode. Hellblade throws in a few bosses to vary the pace, and these characters have more attack patterns to get the adrenaline pumping. Outside of battles, you have some light puzzle elements to impede your progress, and most involve exploring the area.
You still have to walk a lot, although Senua can fortunately run throughout most of the game. After plugging a few hours into Hellblade, you’ll also discover that combat serves as intermissions between the walking and story elements. Hellblade is very much a linear game, and apart from those few battles which introduce new enemy types, fighting makes sure Senua’s adventure lasts more than two hours.
Neither the combat nor the puzzles have the depth or complexity to justify their own games but this does not necessarily constitute a fault in game design. The developers intended for a short experience, around six hours. The story carries gamers through that run time, and the combat and puzzles help keep us engaged. We also need to recognize that no game emphasizes each of its components. Super Mario Odyssey has a subpar story, but the plot was designed only as an excuse to have Mario travel the world. Similarly, Undertale lacks the side missions and content that define traditional RPGs, but it eschews them in favor of a streamlined quest. As such, we can give Hellblade some leeway for simplifying its combat and puzzles.
The Art Hindered by Errors in the Medium
With all three of the games thus far, I have been able to criticize their story and gameplay. This does not preclude them from being art. Even the most famous works of art have their detractors and grumpy critics. Opinions inevitably shift; it is only a matter of whether the creative work can endure.
Video games seem to struggle with “enduring appeal” more than other mediums, be it film, writing, or otherwise. This is largely due to the fact that video game technology is still evolving. Developers are often working with limitations set by the current system, and consequently, they must compromise their overall vision in order to get the final product to work on the console/computer. The other mediums continue to advance with technology as well, but their quality does not seem as disrupted by limitations as it is the case for video games.
Additionally, mistakes in video games love to broadcast themselves. You may need a degree in film criticism to notice if the directing in a movie is poor. You may not even know what to look for when evaluating sound editing. Video games have elements which only programmers may appreciate, but when there is poor programming or design, we can typically see it. Slowdown, shoddy camera, buggy controls, framerate, repetitive gameplay, and unfair difficulty can destroy any sense of immersion. When you wear your problems on your sleeve, it’s hard for people to take you seriously.
Nowhere is this more evident than with Firewatch. In their effort to create a seamless experience, developer Campo Santo attempted to load upcoming environments as you walk through certain hidden checkpoints throughout the forest. With this, you’ll never hit a real loading screen. However, the framerate dives in these sections, causing your character to stutter along until the game catches up with you. Later in the adventure, you will pass through multiple of these checkpoints, and the intermittent picture shows will make you wish they had just implemented loading sequences. With loading screens, you’ll be forced to recognize you’re playing a game, but it’s better than pretending you have periodic seizures.
I experienced one crash while playing Firewatch as well. This means little in the age of day-one patches and early access, but for an “engrossing” narrative journey, a single crash murders the flow, especially when you have to replay upwards of 15 minutes of a section. Crashes, in general, are a unique illness in the video game world. A painting never fails to load. You don’t have to reread a chapter of a book if you lose your place. Only a video game would mess up and make you pay for its mistake.
Gone Home, conversely, runs smoothly but is an old lady at the ripe age of six. The graphics have grown lackluster, looking on par with some shovelware titles these days rather than What Remains of Edith Finch. The house’s layout deserves accolades (creating a labyrinthine atmosphere which is equal parts unsettling and metaphorical), yet the developers lost some of that creativity filling the rooms. Certain textures and objects repeat, doing little more than occupying empty space rather than adding character.
These issues then carry over to the gameplay. Earlier, I explained how Gone Home succeeds by allowing you to discover as much story as you would like based on what you observe. However, looking over each item is discouraged because so much of it means nothing. The sheer number of worthless objects needlessly pads out the game, resulting in you wanting to rush to the important pieces. This, in turn, reduces the immersion.
Hellblade also falls into the bog of repetition. Senua will only encounter a handful of different enemy types, and these foes will randomly pop up, often in conveniently-large clearings. Their difficulty only comes from how many are thrown at you, which will be a lot, especially by the end. Puzzles segments also reappear—albeit within different environments—and this particularly drags out the section when Senua gather parts of her god-slaying sword. You’ll ultimately appreciate that Hellblade doesn’t stay longer than its six hours.
Conclusion
Due to their issues, Firewatch, Gone Home, and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice have not fully ascended to the level of video game art. Their compelling narratives certainly deserve recognition and analysis, yet their struggles as video games prevent them from overcoming their medium. This is not unusual, at least coming from my perspective. Of the games on the Switch, Gorogoa is the only game I consider as truly art, with Limbo and What Remains of Edith Finch being other possibilities.
Instead, I see the three games we have discussed as containing pieces of art. They show promise of what we can expect of video games in the future. Will these games appeal to the mainstream audience? Absolutely not, and that is to be expected. The general populace leans more toward to straightforward entertainment, which is certainly not a criticism. Only a select few creative works ever manage to pierce both the mainstream and the critical audiences, and video games face a monstrous challenge in achieving this. Pleasing the gamer who wants 100 hours of content while also satisfying the critics is no easy task. I can’t think of a single game which has done this, but then again, this article had taken way too long to write, and it has deep-fried my brain.
For my readers who skipped to the end of this article, see below links for summaries on each game, along with their arbitrary statistics. For all the others, I welcome you to continue this conversation in the comments.
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Firewatch
Firewatch strives to craft an engrossing narrative contrasted by a gorgeous setting. As a commentary on avoidance, the game succeeds, but otherwise, its lofty ambitions amount to little more than a climbing accident. Performance issues prove more destructive to the Wyoming wilderness than a forest fire, and the finale disappoints, much like the state of Wyoming. Clocking in at four to five hours, this brief camping trip will please only those accustomed to walking simulators.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 6.5
- Time Played: Over 3 hours
- Number of Players: 1
- Games Like It on Switch: Detention, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Gone Home
Gone Home will appeal to an audience who enjoys an art gallery as much as a video game. For those willing to take the time to explore the Greenbriar home, a poignant story emerges of one family’s struggle to relate to each other. For anyone else, Gone Home is a short, boring non-game. Although it can be recognized as innovation in video gaming, it is not a champion in gameplay. Gamers interested in Gone Home’s general scheme may enjoy What Remains of Edith Finch, which offers better graphics, a more suspenseful plot, and situations more fantastical than those in Gone Home. If you’re still craving a similar atmosphere after Edith, Gone Home can offer an hour or two of intrigue.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 7
- Time Played: Over 1 hour
- Number of Players: 1
- Games Like It on Switch: What Remains of Edith Finch, Night in the Woods
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Developer Ninja Theory undersold itself when it labeled Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice as an “independent AAA game.” With its stunning visuals, haunting soundtrack, hard-hitting acting, and rich story, Hellblade could pass off as a high-profile movie, a feat that even big-name video game companies have struggled to accomplish. Its combat and puzzle elements do not reach the same heights as its presentation, yet both are still polished enough to appeal to the traditional gamer. Although it cannot fully escape its walking simulator trappings, Hellblade has shown that video games need not abandon tried-and-true gameplay mechanics to make room for an engrossing cinematic experience.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 8.5
- Time Played: Over 5 hours
- Number of Players: 1
- Games Like It on Switch: Inside, Little Nightmares: Complete Edition