The Music of Video Games #39 – American McGee’s Alice – Time to Die (Chris Vrenna)

Unique title, that seems to be always referenced with the creator name before it – “American McGee’s Alice”. It’s just a game about Alice, you know the girl from L. Carroll books. But this strange choice of putting the name into the title persisted and become one with the game. American James McGee is an american (you guessed it!) game designer, known mostly for his work in id Software. He helped coding both Doom’s and Quake I and Quake II. Actually, best Quake I deathmatch maps were made by him (dm2, dm4 anyone?). After leaving id software, American created his first adventure game, based on Quake III engine – and that game is Alice.

Now, when you think Alice, you probably remember the silly rabbit, hatter, red queen, cards, bizarre adventures involving shrinking and growing. Great material for a kid’s game, maybe with some twisted graphics, etc. This, more or less, was the expectation of an average game reviewer back then in 2000. Boy, were they wrong…

American McGee’s Alice story happens years after Alice book adventures. There’s no silliness and candy. At the very beginning you see Alice, being a poor, wretched creature in some kind of asylum, where she is clearly mad and thus being under constant observation. We learn that her parents died in a fire accident and their house burnt in it also. Alice is the only survivor and obviously the great trauma she suffered inflicted heavily on her mind. And here’s where “Wonderland” comes into play. Wonderland is no longer a dreamy bizarre land of a innocent bored girl. It’s now a nightmare, constructed in a tormented mind, trying to cope with the loss. All the characters look very grotesque, twisted. You will not recognize the rabbit, caterpillar or hatter. The game’s characters are roughly based on the inhabitants of original Wonderland, but they are “warped incarnations” of their conventional selves. It’s a place where “off with her head” order is being taken very seriously.

She’s not alone in this voyage. Her mysterious companion would be obviously the Cheshire Cat. He’s not that cuddle type you might think. Cheshire Cat looks more like a lampart, skinny, with an earring and tempting voice. And yes, he still grins as hell :). He will appear suddenly, to comment on what’s going on, give Alice some hints or just talk with Alice a bit:

- There may be more than one way to skin a cat, if you’ll pardon the expression.
- Most unpleasant metaphor, please avoid it in the future.

So, Alice, being sucked into this macabre reality, must find her way out. By completing several stages in different sceneries, she will strive to come back to her senses and to put back the shattered reality, regaining sanity and accepting what’s happened. As we further learn, some characters in Wonderland are projections of Alice’s fears, while some resemble positive, friendly forces. The game itself is pretty straightforward FPS game, where you steer Alice, jump a lot, shoot and hack/slash a lot, killing enemies and solving puzzles. You will gain few weapons, such as vorpal blade or deck of cards. It was quite an achievement back then, visually and atmospherically – and the game was praised for what it tried to be. I’m not sure if it led to a commercial success – not many people I’ve talked to actually knew the game.

The plot itself, however, is the strongest point of Alice. I don’t remeber the gameplay itself that much, but I remember the struggle Alice was undergoing, trying to not loose her marbles completely. Before each “boss” fight, there will be an interesting dialog, in which characters attempt to give Alice some hints about her past. There are also great dialogue lines. I definitely think this is not a game targeted for younger audience. You must not be teenager to appreciate all the dark tones and subtleties of the game. To give you an example of what you can expect:

- If ignorance is bliss, I must be ecstatic. (Alice)     
- If it’s my keen invention you’d like to destroy, I’ll withstand your best shot; I’ve got the right toy. (Alice)    
- Every adventure requires a first step. Trite, but true, even here. (Cheshire Cat)
- When the remarkable becomes bizarre, reason turns rancid. (Chesire Cat)       
- Even blurred vision is valued by the blind. If I were clever, would I cower in this slag heap? I’m not wise, girl. I’ve just … grown old. (Gnome)

What is most important about Alice, when it comes to contribution to the game genre, is that the game is a great proof that gaming industry can be a very creative business. Games don’t have to base on movies, comics, take their lore and characters. Games also don’t have to be blind followers of what’s already on the market. American McGee has shown here, that game creators also have balls to take a very popular story and provide a fresh, new, creative look, own radical vision. It’s no just for mere fun, but it also aims to be some kind of an artistic attempt. Game developers were very long ostracized and games were treated as “silly stuff”. Here you can see, that game can convey a very powerful and interesting story, that might never see the light without the help of the game it was part of.

The music of the game fits very well in the overall gloomy, bizarre world portrayed in the game. You will hear a lot of tick-tocking, tingling or toy instruments (triangle, xylophone), music boxes, door squeaking, cog rumble, machinery sounds. It reminds me the music of old horror movies, you know, where the music is quite steady, calm, but unnerving and eerie – and this drives you crazy, the anticipation. It’s like being into insane’s man mind – easy, easy, and all of sudden a weird outburst. It’s not exactly soundtrack you will listen to outside of the game (unless you’re looking for a theme for your rpg session), it’s too creepy and tied to the game atmosphere to stand on its own. But within the game, it’s exactly the music you want to hear.

Interesting bits – Chris Vrenna was a drummer for Nine Inch Nails. Also Marylin Manson was involved in creating of the music and the game itself. While I don’t know which music pieces would be influenced by him, articles reference him as a man who gave the Mad Hatter the look he has in the game (he was even considered as his voice).

More about American McGee’s Alice -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_McGee’s_Alice

The Music of Video Games #38 – Braid – Maenam (Jami Sieber)

And, after another pause, back again, with new material. From now on, these will happen here, on this blog, with only references visible on Facebook. Happy reading!

I remember mentioning Braid in some of my previous writings. When putting Bastion next to Braid, you will for sure find some similarities – both games are very stylized and very colorful, almost like a child’s tale. And indeed both are disguised as such, but below that innocent cover, great, deep stories are waiting for you to be discovered.

Braid is, essentially, a puzzle platformer. The game is, as I understand, a work of one guy, Jonathan Blow, with the help of an artist David Hellman. 2011 was a great year for great indie games, and Braid is a proof for that. So, a platformer, eh? But this game is oh so different. At the beginning you have even the impression that your task will be to wander through a house and solve several jigsaw puzzles on the wall. Shortly after, you’re entering a different location with books to read. The text is a bit cryptic, so you march further to enter first level. What’s this, Mario Bros clone? Some wandering creatures, your character also not very convincing, what’s so good about it?

It’s about time.

By all means, it’s about time! It’s how the time affects us as people, how time affects how we perceive our world, our lives, relationships. How time screws up things and heals things, how time influences what we do, and what we avoid. And, above all, time is a key factor to solve almost every puzzle thrown at you by the game. How? You simple hold on key, and all (ALL!) your movements are rewind back to the place you wish, even to the very beginning. I’m a developer and a sheer insanity of programming solution drives me nuts – must be a really really smart trick.

So there you go, various puzzles, mostly asking you to get to the door, sometimes grabbing some bonuses or jigsaw puzzle pieces with you. And it all evolves time. Later on, some things are introduced to make levels even more complicated like things or areas that do not “rewind back” in time, or only work “one way” etc. etc. It’s really bizarre. After a while, you’re kinda loosing track of what’s going on. Our brains were not developed with that kind of perception in mind.

But even with that, Braid would be another game with time-based puzzles. The concept was exploited in many ways before. Movies, books, games (Prince of Persia: Sands of Time anyone?). What makes Braid unique – and I’m really repeating myself here in all these reviews – is the story. You could get through the game, without paying attention what’s going on, but I strongly recommend you read all the books. Braid indeed smartly plays on Mario Bros inheritage – there are flags, there are castles, you’re also looking for your Princess and you’re constantly finding out, that she’s *again* in a different castle. And, though you may think it’s just a cute pursuit for eternal love, it’s far from it. Below, there’s a story told by the books. It’s so good I took time to combine it together and translate for my friend. It describes a journey of a man, but it’s filled with symbolism, metaphorical sentences and double, triple even meanings. The way the story is told is also wrapped in time, so you’re not sure, where’s the beginning and where’s the end and whether things have order, or they exist as parallel “choices”. To give you correct impression, that the game is not a festival of cliches and actually is trying to make a very important message, here are some parts from books:

“Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a horrible and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake.”

“Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with  forgiveness. By forgiving them too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and became better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for  the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?”

“What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: ‘I didn’t  mean what I just said,’ and she would say: ‘It’s okay, I understand,’ and she  would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said  that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience.”

People are still dredging through all the pieces, finding different interpretations, although two are dominant: the obvious one – Tim (our hero) is trying to regain trust of his wife, and the second one: Tim is a …. working secretly on a big project. Not going to spoil it for you here, but the key part to discover it for me was: “she radiated fury”. The final level where it’s so obvious what you’re finally have to do… and the look on your face, when everything suddenly flips over and you bash your head saying: “Of course! It makes perfect sense now! I couldn’t see that earlier.”. And the interesting thing is that while reading the story, without actually playing the game, you’re loosing the unstable sense of coherence, meaning, it all fits very well in game, where you’re constantly faced with time problems and you’re struggling with them, as opposed to just reading the whole story from the screen, where these issues are not with you.

This game really touched me and I applaud the author for a great effort of creating a game, being (or it seems) just a cover for carrying over a catalyst for our minds and emotions. How yours is going to get through it, I cannot say. But it will be something, promise.

This music plays during the title, it’s very sad, deep and pompatic. It comes from Hidden Sky album of Jami Sieber – this track was licensed for the needs of the game.

More about Braid -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game)