‘Then I agree.’
The shopkeeper made to shake his hand again, but he drew back and instead offered, ‘How about a gentle pat on the shoulder?’
Next time he would define “gentle”, as the shopkeeper whacked him on the shoulder. He clutched the spot like it was bleeding, masked his pain with a smile. Had to keep up appearances, after all.
‘Where you going?’ the shopkeeper asked, as Tavin stumbled out of the back room. ‘Need to show you how corpse oil is made.’
‘Uh, I really don’t—‘
‘Come, this will be good practice.’
The shopkeeper grabbed his arm, pulled him back into the back room.
‘Ah, ah, ah. Not so hard.’
For all of the shopkeeper’s smiling and chuckling, that intense right eye of his made Tavin uneasy, as it focused unwaveringly on his face... or was it his chin?[GdM]
Siobhan Gallagher Siobhan Gallagher is a wannabe zombie slayer, currently residing in South Texas. Her fiction has appeared in several publications, including AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review, COSMOS Online, Abyss & Apex, Unidentified Funny Objects anthology. Occasionally, she does this weird thing called ‘blogging’ at: defconcanwrite.blogspot.com
Grimdark in Gaming
LAYLA CUMMINS & JEREMY SZAL
Video games are nothing short of a controversial topic within the entertainment industry. From fuming politicians on the morning news to bloggers with an axe to grind, they always have been and always will be a point of contention. You may not be an avid enthusiast, but their contribution to social issues and their aesthetically expressive visuals, storytelling, characters, and worlds are undeniable. To consider them anything less than works of art would be ignorant. And a fair share of these games have a horse of their own running in the world of grimdark. Far more than you might think.
Grimdark’s essential ingredients are morally ambiguous characters telling grim stories in dark worlds. In our favourite grimdark novels the main characters make morally ambiguous decisions that affect the outcome of their stories, for better or worse. For example, Abercrombie’s Inquisitor Glokta attempts to save Dagoska in Before They Are Hanged by getting into bed with the banking house Valint and Balk. Glokta knows Valint and Balk will expect favours of him that will corrupt his role as an inquisitor, but does it anyway to save the city. It is this same sense of moral ambiguity and self-determination that is becoming central to so many popular video games. Acclaimed books and series like The Witcher (Andrzej Sapkowski), Metro 2033 and 2034 (Dmitry Glukhovsky), A Song of Ice and Fire (George RR Martin), The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman), and even Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) have shown how grimdark novels and gaming can blend seamlessly into one. Perhaps the smooth transition from paperback to controller says a lot about what video game audiences are eager to digest.
In video games it is usually some kind of built-in morality system that allows players to perform actions and make decisions that ultimately determine their character’s future in the game world. Many of these choices are difficult, influencing the world around the player and the way NPCs (non-playable characters) react to the protagonist. In the cases of RPGs like Mass Effect 2 (2010) certain choices can even change the game’s ending. These choices are clearly defined, even highlighted in red or blue, corresponding to the key morality of the decision. The choices are grey at times, and both have an impact in different areas, but it’s clear which path a certain action will take you.
But what if those moral guideposts are stripped away all together?
In The Witcher 2 (2011) you are Geralt of Rivia, a hunter of monsters and wild beasts. But more often than not real monsters come in the form of human beings. Of ordinary people and raw violence. The opening scenes set the stage for the morally grey world that you live in. Do you accept a bribe from a corrupt warden and use that money to better your chances of survival? Do you accuse a powerful archer of murder on the eve of battle, or do you betray the lusty succubus who accuses him? There is no pre-defined good or bad, no blue and red bar indicating your morality. There are only choices and consequences, for better and for worse. Like in other RPGs these choices impact the game’s world, diverging your paths and showing your point of view from opposing sides. Different playthroughs could even have you fighting for the other team. Geralt himself is a rogue in the greatest sense. He’ll do his duty and search for his kidnapped partner, yet sleep with every prostitute that comes his way. And he’s not above getting blood on his hands when he needs to, innocent or otherwise.
Metro: Last Light (2013) has a similar feature. The game does not let you know that a morality system exists. Your actions alone dictate how the overarching story ends. Likewise, in Dishonored (2012) the entire game world will shift depending on your actions. Should you choose to perform lethal assassinations on your targets, sprinting through the alarm system at full blast and slaughtering the guards who get in your way, your teammates will soon turn on you. Leading them to political ruin and even staying your hand affects the physical state of the city of Dunwall. The more bodies you pile up, the faster the plague spreads. Your own discernment is needed to decide if a certain character truly deserves to die.
Fallout 3 (2008) is yet another title that perfectly encapsulates the grimdark genre. Set in post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C., it combines dark humour with a quantifiable Karma scale. Every decision, from stealing items to killing another character, affects the player’s Karma. Choices that can alter gameplay come from main and side quests and include deciding whether to obliterate an entire town or participate in an assisted suicide. Before jumping into the Fallout series’ revival, lead writer and designer Emil Pagliarulo had previously worked on the ‘Dark Brotherhood’ sequence in Bethesda Game Studio’s multi-award-winning The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006). In an interview with Gamasutra, Pagliarulo claimed the Dark Brotherhood story was “for those players who have jumped over [the] moral fence and never want to look back [...] [Fallout 3] is all about giving players a choice and giving the player the voice they want to use.”
A trope in many video games is the battle against some form of inhuman enemy, be it monsters, demons, ghosts, zombies, or any other form of cannon fodder that’s churned out for the player. There are some games that subvert that, forgoing supernatural evil for a more human villain. In Heavy Rain (2010), an oppressive, intense thriller with a distinctly nihilistic art style, you are pitted against a serial killer with a genuine motive—a villain who is real, life-like, and human. Any of the mentally unstable four main protagonists could be the serial killer, leading us to conclude that they are all unreliable narrators and what we are being told may not be the truth. Morally grey characters are the quintessential core of grimdark. Constructed with flaws found in people like ourselves, they establish a genuine link to characters who would otherwise be cardboard cut-outs having a punch-up on screen. And the entire cast of Heavy Rain are as real as they are flawed.
Often in games where choice is a factor, even the morality of the hero is called into question. In The Wolf Among Us (2013), you are Bigby, the same big bad wolf from the fairy tale, moved to the city along with almost every character to ever grace mainstream folklore. It’s the very definition of a gritty revamp, taking all the traditional archetypes of characters handed down for hundreds of years and painting them with a distinct noir flavour, done up with blood, mud, swears, booze and cigarettes. The slightest decision, even if your intentions are good, could cost you dearly and create dozens of additional enemies. Soon the entirety of Fabletown is at risk and the waters of morality become so muddled that you start to question if the ultimate villain is really you. At the end of the day, everyone from Bluebeard to Snow White is human at heart, and several characters will die horribly. No matter the outcome, there’s always that little niggle in the back of your mind: Did I really do the right thing? Was he actually telling the truth? Should I have listened to her? Nothing is ever certain, least of all the moral standing of the characters. Similarl
y, the conclusion of The Last of Us (2013) forces you to question who exactly the villain is—something that is left up to the player’s interpretation. We cannot negate the character’s actions, but their impact is left lingering in our minds.
It’s this morally ambiguous aspect of RPGs that keeps gamers coming back for more. Bioware’s surprise hit Dragon Age: Origins (2009) avoided the familiar paragon/renegade system from the Mass Effect series, opting instead for companion approval ratings. “It’s about difficult choices,” said lead writer David Gaider in an interview with Newsarama. “I don’t like easy, happy endings […] what I like is presenting decisions where the player has to stop and maybe isn’t quite sure as to what is the right thing to do [...] In a game you have a unique aspect with the element of interaction and personal investment that you can’t really get in some other passive entertainment.”
With game designers like Pagliarulo and Gaider pushing for more immersive gaming experiences, it’s no surprise that technology is quickly filling in the gaps. The creation of Oculus Rift, a ground-breaking virtual reality headset, is beginning to change the way we play videogames, and the potential for grimdark gamers is huge. Ever wondered what it would be like to step into the Game of Thrones universe and create havoc in King’s Landing? Or ride across the Broken Empire world as Jorg’s road brother? The opportunity may be closer than you think.
But how far is too far? In the 2014 documentary DRONE by Norwegian filmmaker Tonje Hessen Scheiand, she focuses on the recruitment of young pilots at gaming conventions. “I came across a story of a gamer who dropped out of high school, joined the military, and very quickly became a drone pilot through the kind of skills he'd acquired gaming,” she said in an interview with VICE. “The US Army has used virtual reality and video games as a recruiting tool for a long time. They've been testing out different games and strategies, and they actually created their own video game, America’s Army, which is very much a recruiting tool.”
Video games were once looked down on as nothing more than time wasters for prepubescent boys squatting in dark rooms, and in some ways they still have a long way to go. But they’ve ensnared and captivated millions of people who once would never have dreamed about picking up a controller. They often provide social commentary, metaphysical scenarios, morally grey worlds filled with complexity and engaging decisions and, more importantly, show us characters just as flawed as ourselves. Characters we can connect with, regardless of if they’re the big bad wolf from fairy tales, monster hunters, assassins, or even a bitter teenage girl trying to scrape her way through a dark world. These characters feel human. They take us on journeys of dark beauty and horror, of grim realities and harrowing adventures that portray the harsh grey morals of our own world and the glimmers of hope we find in it. And thanks to the medium of interactive video games, it’s we the players who will be making the decisions. We’ve read and watched the characters from A Song of Ice and Fire make fiendishly hard decisions and face overwhelming brutality. Now we can directly engage with the world of Westoros (and countless others), make these tough choices and watch the results unfold, for better or worse. Each death will be another stain on our hands on a journey where corpses serve as steps to victory. And we must live with the decision we make.
You might not survive the journey, but that’s half the fun.[GdM]
An Interview with
R. Scott Bakker
GDM & BAKKER FANS
Reader warning – This interview may contain spoilers.
Thank you for taking the time to speak to us, Scott. We love the world of The Second Apocalypse and were very lucky to be approached by your dedicated fan group who helped put this interview together.
[GdM] What do you think defines grimdark as a genre and how do you think your writing has fit into its evolution thus far? While The Second Apocalypse has informed what constitutes the sub-genre, do you think you’re purposefully contributing?
[RSB] And thank you! The gang over at the forum could very well be the only reason I’m still in the biz, given how much of a knob I am, marketing and otherwise. My obsession with the ugly bits of the soul makes me far more prone to repel than to attract new readers.
Speaking of ugly, ‘grimdark’ entered parlance because it usefully distinguished works that cut against the nostalgia, idealization, and sentimentalism that once characterized fantasy more generally. I used to refer to my own work as ‘grognard,’ a term which once meant ‘hard core’ in gaming communities (but now seems to mean ‘old man’!). The idea was to show readers the ‘wages of wonder,’ to provide the epic buzz that makes fantasy such a distinct genre without flinching from the grit and horror of premodern life. The ‘New Weird’ was all the rage back when The Darkness that Comes Before came out, and the web was crawling with attacks on epic fantasy, which was viewed as artistically facile, politically compromised, and—the greatest sin of all—far too ‘common.’ For me, the ‘common’ was simply what made epic fantasy socially significant, while the nostalgia and sentimentalism simply represented one among many ways the genre could go. Grimdark is a different way, and a better way, I think, given the way it denies comfort and consolation. There’s always more than enough baby-food.
But to be honest to my preposterous ambition, I wasn’t so much interested in exploring the grimmer, darker narrative possibilities of the genre—Moorcock and Donaldson had already done as much, I thought—as I was in exploring what the genre had to say about modernity, about the deepening ‘crisis of meaning’ that characterizes our age. Since our inherited conceptions of meaning are rife with nostalgia, idealization, and sentimentality, ‘grimmer and darker’ became unavoidable.
[GdM] You’ve been working on a number of short stories set in The Second Apocalypse world dubbed ‘Atrocity Tales,’ among them The Knife of Many Hands. How important are short stories as supplements to author worlds? What about to you, as the author, to diversify your work? When will we see more?
[RSB] Important enough to keep doing until the end of my days!
Tolkien’s great literary lesson, I think, lies in demonstrating the power of layers, the way telling stories against the back drop of more ancient stories conjures the illusion of authenticity, convinces the reader, at some unconscious level, to believe in the setting, and to see the action as an organic expression of that setting. Without belief, it becomes very difficult to convey the tickle of awe, to write something truly epic. This is what makes Tolkien a revolutionary literary figure, in my view. Borges, for all his ingenuity, can only tickle your intellectual fancies. He can’t make you believe the way Tolkien can. He can’t write fiction that reads, even if only for brief moments, as scripture.
[GdM] It’s nearly four years since your last book in The Second Apocalypse with The White-Luck Warrior in 2011. Has crafting your process changed significantly in the interim? Will the concluding volume(s) of The Aspect-Emperor series add to or push the boundaries of grimdark today?
[RSB] Years ago now, I had dinner with Peter Halasz and Guy Kay in Toronto and Guy pressed me quite hard on the kinds of problems that afflict large, multi-volume fantasy series. How they tend to be so uneven, quality-wise. How they tend to bloat with the paycheques. And most importantly, how the final bang can only sound like a whimper given all the verbiage that has come before. After that conversation, I made it my mission to avoid those pitfalls. I think I’ve succeeded—to the best of my abilities, anyway. At least the bloating paycheques were never an issue!
Will it ‘push the boundaries’ of grimdark? Not self-consciously. I’m simply following through on the original vision from way back when. That said, it is grimmer than anything I’ve ever read!
Crazy dark, actually.
[GdM] Some fantasy novels are like Sunday afternoon TV movies where you can stop watching for 15 minutes and not really miss anything important. Such is the scope and character interaction of your books that it takes serious concentration to ensure details aren’t missed that will matter later on. What goes into
building such scope and detail? How do you keep track?
[RSB] You have to remember I’ve been living in Earwa for more than thirty bloody years now. And I work on the books every day, almost without exception. I live and breathe the Three Seas. My wife thinks it’s directly tied to my inability to keep track of day to day social details, that my hard drive has been filled by my fantastic and philosophical obsessions.
To which I generally reply, “Who are you again?”
[GdM] What is the relationship between your Blind Brain Theory and your fantasy fiction?
[RSB] More than two thousand years ago, Aristotle argued that stars could not be ‘fiery stones’ as Anaxagoras had claimed because stars behaved in fundamentally different ways. The argument makes entire sense, given the information Aristotle had available. Given a terrestrial vantage, the principles governing the heavens are obviously different from those governing the earth. Thus, the famous dichotomy of heaven and earth.
Aristotle was wrong, of course. The ‘fundamental difference’ between the heavens and the earth turned out to be a trick of perspective: we’re simply too close to the earth and too far from the stars to readily see how the same set of natural laws govern both of them.
The Blind Brain Theory makes the same argument regarding the mind and the brain, the ancient dichotomy between how we understand nature and how we understand ourselves. We’re simply too close to ourselves to comprehend ourselves the way we comprehend the natural world. We lack the proper perspective—and even more importantly, we lack the perspective required to see the parochial limits of this perspective. We’re not simply blind, we’re blind to this blindness as well, so whenever we introspect, ‘contemplate consciousness,’ we think we’re apprehending a fundamentally different order of reality, one possessing freedom, reason, meaning, purpose, and morality.
Grimdark Magazine Issue #3 MOBI Page 2
