Thursday 7 April 2016
Hotline Miami
Unpack the first level of your chosen game (including cut scenes)
– how does it tell its story, and how is the player involved in the
telling (consider all of the narrative elements discussed so far in
the course)?
Hotline Miami tells the first part through a series of chapters and cut scenes. There is a prelude to chapter one, which introduces the player to the meeting room of animal masked men. The player is told unsettling information about the protagonist as not being very mentally stable, not even remembering his own name, and hint at some sort of self imposed memory suppression due to his actions being 'terrible things.'
The 'missions' are introduced by anonymous voice message, disguising 'hits' as innocent tasks.
The game is told through a series of story nodes, in which each storytelling element is spaced out by a mission with a mission objective (kill everyone). The player is involved in that all the violence plaguing the main protagonist causing his initial psychosis, is inflicted by the player in order to progress the unfolding of the story by completing the mass murder of a Russian Mafia.
The game is disorientating, in that familiar faces show up in missions, such as the tutorial man being killed in the first mission, and the animal masks being slowly accumulated through the game, while also being representative of the condescending persons in the protagonists' head. We also learn that our character's girlfriend has been murdered, further supporting the unbalanced nature of the protagonist, The game actively encourages violence, as the only way to progress through a level is to execute every person on the level, and each death is accompanied by copious amounts of blood, making murder seem satisfying and rewarding with a high score point ranking system. However, death remains narratively unglorified, as characters such as a black man near the end of the level crying out 'Please don't" before being murdered, are intended to make the player feel guilt. Ergo game play encourages murder, yet narrative disapproves of it. The game narrative is non linear, while game play is very linear, as each section of the game is divided up into game play and cut scene sections, one leading to another in a classic Jesse Schell string of pearls fashion, while the plot itself is told non-linearly, since the active game play is portrayed as a retelling of past events.
The game narrative is not dependent on the character in the first part, as it is a re telling of past events. The main protagonist has already suffering the mental repercussions of the player's actions, the player is only required for the main protagonist to relive his past horrors, to remind him of "who he was." and "what he did".
The final chapter of part one closes with the player seriously questioning the psyche of the main protagonist, as now recognizable masks, notably the chicken mask, ask the player almost directly 4 important questions. Do you like hurting people, who is leaving messages on your answering machine, where are you right now, and why are we having this conversation? Throughout, a myriad of bugs are scuttling across the top down perspective of the game, and a sickly yellow light representing decay and rot permeates the setting. The questions addresses both the protagonist and the player, since murder is made to be 'fun' and a way to accumulate points, and it was never yet revealed who, or even why the protagonist follows vague instructions as missions, and if the room, or even the conversation is being held in is real at all. It brings forth the question of the reliability of the protagonist as a narrator, and creates a sense of mistrust over narrative validity of the events unfolded in the past and in the present as a result.
Hotline Miami tells the first part through a series of chapters and cut scenes. There is a prelude to chapter one, which introduces the player to the meeting room of animal masked men. The player is told unsettling information about the protagonist as not being very mentally stable, not even remembering his own name, and hint at some sort of self imposed memory suppression due to his actions being 'terrible things.'
The 'missions' are introduced by anonymous voice message, disguising 'hits' as innocent tasks.
The game is told through a series of story nodes, in which each storytelling element is spaced out by a mission with a mission objective (kill everyone). The player is involved in that all the violence plaguing the main protagonist causing his initial psychosis, is inflicted by the player in order to progress the unfolding of the story by completing the mass murder of a Russian Mafia.
The game is disorientating, in that familiar faces show up in missions, such as the tutorial man being killed in the first mission, and the animal masks being slowly accumulated through the game, while also being representative of the condescending persons in the protagonists' head. We also learn that our character's girlfriend has been murdered, further supporting the unbalanced nature of the protagonist, The game actively encourages violence, as the only way to progress through a level is to execute every person on the level, and each death is accompanied by copious amounts of blood, making murder seem satisfying and rewarding with a high score point ranking system. However, death remains narratively unglorified, as characters such as a black man near the end of the level crying out 'Please don't" before being murdered, are intended to make the player feel guilt. Ergo game play encourages murder, yet narrative disapproves of it. The game narrative is non linear, while game play is very linear, as each section of the game is divided up into game play and cut scene sections, one leading to another in a classic Jesse Schell string of pearls fashion, while the plot itself is told non-linearly, since the active game play is portrayed as a retelling of past events.
The game narrative is not dependent on the character in the first part, as it is a re telling of past events. The main protagonist has already suffering the mental repercussions of the player's actions, the player is only required for the main protagonist to relive his past horrors, to remind him of "who he was." and "what he did".
The final chapter of part one closes with the player seriously questioning the psyche of the main protagonist, as now recognizable masks, notably the chicken mask, ask the player almost directly 4 important questions. Do you like hurting people, who is leaving messages on your answering machine, where are you right now, and why are we having this conversation? Throughout, a myriad of bugs are scuttling across the top down perspective of the game, and a sickly yellow light representing decay and rot permeates the setting. The questions addresses both the protagonist and the player, since murder is made to be 'fun' and a way to accumulate points, and it was never yet revealed who, or even why the protagonist follows vague instructions as missions, and if the room, or even the conversation is being held in is real at all. It brings forth the question of the reliability of the protagonist as a narrator, and creates a sense of mistrust over narrative validity of the events unfolded in the past and in the present as a result.
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