Gold Machine

From nowhen to somewhen: narrative vignettes, cumulative storytelling, and a bad day at the beach.

Further discussion of Narrative and Geographical Modularity In Trinity

In a previous post, I discussed the wide, middle part of Trinity‘s structure. This so-called “Wabe” is a highly effective design, unifying both storytelling and mechanics. Narratively, it establishes Trinity as a richly intertextual work, alluding to literature, art, science, and history. The game world delineated by the Wabe is surreal and, in terms of its contrasting blend of whimsy and lethality, absurdist.

In terms of Trinity‘s story, the Wabe is home to a central, multi-part challenge that requires the player to visit significantly varied times and places to retrieve ingredients for a magic spell. In contemporary game criticism, this kind of geography is often referred to as a “hub” or “overworld” design: a central area connects isolated geographies that often have unique goals, aesthetics, or even mechanics. In this sense, Trinity seems an evolution from Infocom’s previous experiments in modular narrative design: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (also referred to as HHGG) and Spellbreaker.

Similarities between the world designs of HHGG and Trinity ought to be acknowledged. In both cases, the player must travel to different temporal and geographic locations to retrieve items required to resolve. These narrative modules hide treasures needed to solve central, overarching problems in their respective hub worlds. Mechanically, there is little to distinguish them in terms of gameplay and structure. By finding the treasures and overcoming their primary obstacles, the player can move on to a so-called “master game” or endgame.

Similarities between the world designs of “HHGG” and “Trinity” ought to be acknowledged.

Narratively, though, the modular or hub designs of both works have vastly different impacts. This is largely a matter of what might be termed Trinity‘s overt or signifying unities. The hub or overworld design of the Wabe is visually and mechanically apparent. That is, when viewed as a classic parser IF map of square rooms connected by lines, it assumes a square shape with entrances to “modules” at all but one of its cardinal and ordinal extremities. Its central, defining topographical feature, a giant sundial “mountain,” determines which of these modules (represented as doors in giant mushrooms) can be accessed.

This hub is a sundial, then, its gnomon casting shadows on different doorways, and each door leads to a different temporal location. The Wabe is a physical representation of Trinity‘s concern with time and history, and, perhaps, a fantastic–or deluded–hope of changing either. Beyond these doors lie locations and problems that tie back to the central themes of the game: nuclear devastation, human folly and hubris, and the inexorability of time. I hope there isn’t a need to belabor how and why HHGG is different.

That’s not a critique of HHGG. It isn’t trying to do what Trinity does, and a Trinity-style narrative hub would not improve it.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Bombs

Excepting the endgame set in the New Mexico desert, the vignettes beyond the mushroom doors “tell the truth, but tell it slant.” They are largely concerned with significant parts rather than they are with any grand, dramatic whole. This approach, ideally scaled for modular storytelling, allows for powerful thematic sucker punches like the one in which the protagonist visits Elugelab moments before American military scientists detonate an atomic bomb (Ivy Mike, presumably) there. Exiting a thicket of horrible machinery, the Wabewalker finds themselves in a lovely place marred by American–not merely human–techo-military power:

South Beach

The waters of a peaceful lagoon reflect the tropical dawn like a fiery mirror. A few stars are still visible in the rosy sky.

The glorified tool shed dominates this little island, leaving room only for a narrow strip of sand that curves to the northeast and northwest. A red button is mounted on the wall beside the open sliding doors of the shed.

Phrases and tems like “dominates” and “leaving room only” are well-chosen, stopping just short of editorialization. Again and again, Moriarty proves himself an agile writer, seasoning lovely descriptions what often feels like profound disappointment in humanity. Since players have only narrowly escaped the destruction of London, they may well know where things are headed when they encounter this memorable character:

>z
Time passes.

The distant islet is shrinking in the rising tide.

With a sudden splash, the gray fin shoots upward! You shriek and cover your face with your hands as a mouthful of sharp teeth leaps from the lagoon...

A friendly chatter encourages you to open your eyes. It's a bottle-nosed dolphin, standing on its tail just offshore.

>wave at dolphin
The dolphin responds with a happy squeal.

Again and again, Moriarty proves himself an agile writer, seasoning lovely descriptions with what often feels like profound disappointment in humanity.

If I may lower my critical mask for a moment: this sequence is one of the most effectively unpleasant–narratively speaking–in-game sequences I have ever experienced. This is the truth, slanted, as this scene’s emotional impact is the product of events inferred rather than witnessed. Some sensitive readers may be bothered by a necessary imposition: we have come to ask a favor of the soon-to-be-vaporized dolphin.

>z
Time passes.

The coconut floats away from the distant islet on the rising tide.

The dolphin gives you a playful splash.

>point at coconut
The dolphin sees the floating coconut, snatches it out of the lagoon and tosses it into the sand at your feet.

>get coconut
Taken.

[Your score just went up by 3 points. The total is now 35 out of 100.]

No other scene in the Infocom canon does so much. The puzzle–pointing at the coconut–affords a simple, intuitive satisfaction. The dolphin’s playful charisma is conveyed through actions printed every turn. Moriarty’s emphasis on action yields short sentences that charm rather than cloy. Mercifully, the dolphin’s fate is never dramatized, though that won’t stop many players from imagining the destruction wrought by 67 atomic tests over 12 years by the American military in the Marshall Islands. That’s a lot of dolphins!

The Human Animal

To return to my personal response to the dolphin scene: I stopped playing for a while. I can’t say how long, now, but I was bothered enough to put the game down. I wanted different things from adventure games in those days: escapism, fantasies of power and mastery, and, increasingly, a way to feel like a “good guy.” This is a new sort of video game fantasy that we have not yet discussed: the moral fantasy, in which a protagonist can exalt in a sort of ethical sandbox, where they can enjoy virtuous or evil behaviors that might be impossible or unpleasantly consequential in their own lives. Despite the many advancements made in narrative storytelling, morality in video games can sometimes feel clumsy or shallow. In its least compelling formulation, morality is merely a bifurcation into polite and sarcastic conversation paths.

No other scene in the Infocom canon does so much.

One reason Infidel remains bracing today is that its un-hero is a jerk. He is not a laughing, hand-rubbing villain, but a cut-rate narcissist and con man. This is a subversion of the moral fantasy. Trinity is no less subversive, but players and critics have had far less to say regarding its moral ambivalence. Perhaps the shortcomings of its protagonist are too vividly unremarkable. If Trinity were a tragedy–I insist that it is not–the Wabewalker’s fatal flaw would be their self-involvement. At the game’s outset, the looming threat of nuclear war is an unwelcome distraction that might disrupt their package vacation.

Sharp words between the superpowers. Tanks in East Berlin. And now, reports the BBC, rumors of a satellite blackout. It's enough to spoil your continental breakfast.

But the world will have to wait. This is the last day of your $599 London Getaway Package, and you're determined to soak up as much of that authentic English ambience as you can. So you've left the tour bus behind, ditched the camera and escaped to Hyde Park for a contemplative stroll through the Kensington Gardens.

Just as the dolphin is one of an uncountable many, so, too, is the Wabewalker. They are not a developed character, and that isn’t so that the player can enjoy a self-inserted fantasy of their heroic deeds. Rather, the Wabewalker is a stand-in representation of the generalized American character: too self-involved to be malevolent, too distracted to demand change, and too acquiescent to question the depravities that, by 1986, had granted their leaders the godlike power to annihilate not only humanity but most species of flora and fauna occupying the planet’s surface.

Some fantasy!

As I have already said: there is nothing in Infocom like this. Thanks to Moriarty’s careful work balancing tone and action, we players are invited to reflection rather than called to atonement. This is not a lecturing work, for all its seriousness. In terms of narrative craft, the dolphin scene may well be Infocom’s greatest: short, evocative, thematically rich. Interactive, but not intrusively so. The dolphin is, in all its tersely characterized whimsey, as memorable as Planetfall‘s Floyd or Zork‘s thief.

The dolphin is, in all its tersely characterized whimsey, as memorable as Planetfall‘s Floyd or Zork‘s thief.

“Now, now,” you might say. “This is a game about human history. We see Oppenheimer for a second, even! What’s all this animal talk?” Sure, it’s about history. Elugelab was a real place, after all. A lot has been written about that. Infocom themselves made a lot of marketing hay about Moriarty’s historical research.

Still, one ought to pay attention to the contents of the text itself: behind every door and in every location, there are always animals or their representations, and most of them are doomed. Trinity is concerned with humanity’s place in creation, and the ways in which technological superiority has granted humans power without wisdom. Humanity’s relationship with the world is unnatural and distorted, and, rather heartbreakingly, the Wabewalker cannot change that.

In fact, the Wabewalker never tries to change humanity’s place in the natural world. That never even comes up. The Wabewalker–and perhaps we players, too–vainly hope to right cultural and moral wrongs by solving technical problems.

The dolphin, as a crucial bit of tone-setting for the game entire, deserves a post all their own. Next time, I’ll look at the other vignettes, all of them textually and thematically rich.

Elsewhere…

I was recently interviewed by the kind people at the What’s New in IF ‘zine. Therein, I talk about Gold Machine, Inform 7 content at my other blog Top Expert, and my own parser game Repeat the Ending.