I love brink to death, but the massive hits the population of players has taken could and may sink the IP into obscurity if no steps are taken to solidify the brink universe. Brink has improved vastly since launch and is now at the point it should’ve been at release AND I suspect it would have been, had the publishing half been given less control over the game’s production.
Still, even with polished game-play and flawless execution, Brink’s story falls short of itself in a very strange way. Which is to say, it’s kind of not there. What is there is implied story, in the background and little cutscenes. Now, I get it, Bioshock right? Let the world speak for itself, right?
This is a great idea for a game and really does enrich the experience, but remember how Bioshock was a singleplayer game? The implied information was not the backbone of the story it was a great supporting force for the story. The game still had events and characters that you could witness. Of course, so did Brink, but Bioshock had MUCH MORE.
That kind of thing is incredibly important to the survival of a game as an icon or emotional experience because it gives ALL of the weapons, people, and powers you’re using story, ethics, history, etc. Brink is a multiplayer game and not a single player game however, so of course one could ask, why bother?
Well. Call of Duty, for all of it’s massive shortcomings has a singleplayer storyline. Yes, its essentially a rail shooter, but its long and it has one. Most shooters go this route. Team Fortress, another insanely popular game has nothing much in game but it does have free and easily accessible videos, comics and quotes that reveal the nature of the game universe and are awesome to sit through. It also probably helps that it was released when it was done. Star Wars battlefront and everything else Lucas Arts did had…oh yes, SIX CULTURALLY ICONIC FILMS, A LEGION OF TOYS, ENOUGH GRAPHIC NOVELS TO DROWN A SARLACC and some kid shows. Remember clone wars? It was essentially samurai jack: the space opera and little to no Jar-Jar Binks.
Brink did have audio diaries.Right. How weak would Bioshock had been if the audio diaries was their sticking point? Brink also had cutscenes, which I’m going to get into the flaws of later. There were a total of four characters with faces, and some more disembodied voices with opinions. Two of the characters with faces never even talked or frowned (Nechayev, Council guy)
Having the player create most of this for themselves in their imagination is just a bad idea, especially if you’re trying to reach and keep a wider audience. Some people actually play games to use their imagination in such a way, but most don’t.
It should also be noted, that when people started playing starwars battlefront, or team fortress, that the media they’d watched had been the basis of the gameplay for the prior, or based upon the gameplay for the latter. So newbs coming in were muuch more likely to act less like drunk, blind, deaf and dumb soldiers. In addition to being practical, being the heavy felt cool after you saw what a basic, apathetic, single minded creature he was. When you found out the scout was some cock-sure reckless idiot you fell in love with him. When you realized the Medic was a wild organ-grafting “doctor” or that the soldier was…I’m not even really sure who he was but he was obviously a *****ing lunatic! Star was meanwhile, let you play as Jedi or bounty hunters or storm troopers, and I won’t explain why they’re cool because you all know.
Which is my point, You all know and ****ing love jedi cause they’re jedi and they’re jedi. Who is the Jesse? What’s the Sad Punk about? Where are his parents? We all know what first drew all of the non enemy territory addicts to this game(which includes me) it was the trailer. We saw the sweat walking around very casually through hell and horror with nothing but a shot gun, an smg and a tank top and he seemed to be feelin’ alright. That was really cool. We saw the bug troll the entire battlefield silently and then parkour away without so much as a second thought. Cool. We saw the anger watch tank-based injustice take his comrade and then gazelle jump across containers until he could literally stick it to the man with two machetes and make an expression like he had just swatted a particularly messy mosquito.
All of this was great but WHY DID IT STOP. Its like pouring blood into a patient only long enough for his family to foot the bill. Of course, not as sinister and not intentional, but it left the game with just as much opportunity as our patient. Why not have, instead of audio diaries the more adult members of your audience could enjoy on any level, cutscenes after certain accomplishments. Did I unlock the anger? Great, why don’t you have a little bit where a bunch of guys in hoodies track my character down and tell them what they’re about and give him one? Why not have the gestapo like fraternity of freaks offer a ski mask and jacket to my guy? Why not have a bunch of giddy buddy cops gladly give my ambitious security officer some F.I.S.T. gear?
When I say “my guy” by the way, it’s because i think in-game style cutscenes featuring your character would also have been a great way to satiate the vanity boner everyone gets after using such a robust customization system. Or don’t show my character, do the entire thing in first person, or just show them to me from a third person in pre-rendered cutscene but DO SOMETHING.
And this goes for more then clothing. Why not tie in the gameplay aspects? Who the hell are these operatives, medics, engineers, and soldiers anywho? What are the behavioral differences between the security ones and the resistance ones? Which of these weapons are your “lightsaber” is it the sticky bomb? How do they feel about sticky bombs? How do they feel about UAV’s? Do they name them? They obviously bothered to paint them on the resistance. Maybe a cutscene for going up a rank, or being an engineer for awhile, or becoming a light, medium or heavy. Did they take hormones? Is it a training regimen? Gene splicing? COME ON.
I know this is long so I have one final critique. This is the choice of story impact. By which I mean, the events that happen before every brawl. I think the story is great to be honest, all rife with metaphor and what have you but…It doesn’t loan itself to the gameplay. Having everything you’re about to do be prefaced by a specific historical event invalidates everything you do as “what could have happened when the security raided container city” Which totally waters down the user-created strategy experience of a complex objective based game like Brink.
I think most would prefer being able to say, “and this happened, this was my window to the world of brink as an ark refugee.” To do that, it would make much more sense to have the matches based around repeatable events or hotspots of resistance-security encounters. The big story pieces could be given as reward cutscenes for completing this more trivial episodes. Why not show us the resistance raiding the clinics for medicine? Why not show us escort missions about nameless political dissidents or wanted men? Why not have us blow up a warehouse of illegal resistance weapons? Or hacking the location of wanted resistance crimelords? Maybe trying to capture security helicopters or boats, or have security trying to steal them back? There is no shortage of ideas, especially in a post apocalyptic world for such missions. Thats like, the point of post apocalyptic settings. You can recreate an entire world and still get to attach it to the emotional relevence of the real world.
The big missions could be filled with perhaps iconic characters who would kind of show case the expected gamplay modes in over the top, enjoyable pre rendered cutscenes. Or, if you’re feeling lazy, maybe just the end of the cutscene where they talk about the **** that just went down, or reap the rewards or consequences. Yet another great way to tie in to the building up of iconic ideas and characters. The Old Republic is doing JUST this and I have already explained what a powerful IP star wars was to begin with.
Founders tower can only be blown up once. How interesting would the Mako Reactors have been in final fantasy 7 if the one you blew up in the opening mission been the only actually Mako Reactor?
This would also lay to rest the “What if” issue, which has made the IP fanboy-debate proof. This is something a young IP would never, ever, want to do.
So I strongly would encourage, for this or future splash damage games, heavy cutscenes OR episodic game trailers OR an expansive, indepedent single player campaign. Or blow the world out of the water with some combination of these. Remember, I really do love brink and I do love the story. But one bite of t-bone steak is never a good dinner.
