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Lucidity, the recently released game from LucasArts on XBox Live Arcade, is not a revelation. The game is somewhat akin to Lemmings, as you act in a god-like capacity to create a safe path for little Sofi as she traverses the dream world. The game is a relaxing jaunt for the first five or six levels, lulling you into a false sense of security. Then as the game's much-talked-about difficulty spike hits, you become increasingly anxious and as a gaping pit appears in front of Sofi, you scramble to put down a staircase, thinking, "Oh no! Don't let her get hurt!"
Most of us have played our fair share of video games, but when was the last time your emotional reaction to a video game didn't involve fearing for your own personal safety? The classic game Ico certainly elicited some altruistic, protective emotions toward fragile companion, Yorda, but Lucidity represents the first game wherein the primary directive is to care for the well-being of another.
Upon consideration, other games with impactful narratives contain similar sub-themes of self-sacrifice or care for another. Fallout 3 features a number of missions that involve either harming or assisting others, including one that revolves either freeing or selling out escaped slaves. Psychonauts, Half-Life 2, and various iterations of The Legend of Zelda also have elements of self-sacrifice. Even Ratchet and Clank generates some genuine compassion with the lead characters' near-symbiotic relationship.
Gaming's lack of well-told stories of selflessness is best represented by the terrible, terrible writing in the Gears of War games. Their ham-fisted approach to fiction culminates in the most laughable example of melodrama in gaming, aside from the Metal Gear Solid death screen ("Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAKE!!). Toward the end of Gears 2, thick-necked commando Dom finally finds his wife, who dies in his arms after being tortured by the Locust. For a scene like this to work, it's necessary to care about the plight of the characters and at this point in the Gears saga, you should. The problem is that Marcus and Dom are so thinly written that when we see them being vulnerable, it's just plain funny. Compassion for characters is generated through them having a weakness we can relate to. The reasons the Gears writers give the audience to care about Marcus and Dom are as unbelievable as their anatomically-impossible physiques. After all, aside from Dom's wife, what's the duo's weakness? Being unable to turn their heads? Asking gamers to feel sorry for Marcus and Dom is like telling us we should feel bad when celebrities publicly embarrass themselves. It ain't happening.
For far too long, video game narratives have relied on "rescue the ______" and "save ______ from blowing up/being invaded/getting destroyed" as their central motivations. That's not to say that there aren't good games that make use of these motivations, but this approach is getting tired. Gaming is on the cusp of a new era, where technology has developed enough to allow meaningful narratives to occur. In that context, it should no longer be a question of how realistic or HD a game is, but instead, how can the story impact the audience the most? For comparison, look at the early years of film. Most early movies were genre pieces designed to put butts in seats (or eyes to nickelodeons), and weren't at all concerned with emotional depth or answering the great questions of life. Most early films involved the wacky antics of the Keystone Cops or showed bandits robbing trains. This action-oriented approach was due in part to the absorbing technological novelty of "moving pictures". It took several years for both film makers and audiences to get over their tech-induced wonder and recognize the need for narrative depth.
With videogames as one of today's top-grossing forms of entertainment, it's time for them to grow up as an art form. Thankfully, a few games are already well on their way to breaching the next level of narrative depth. Fumito Ueda, designer of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is poised to present emotive gaming through the story of a heartrending relationship between a boy and cat/gryffin-like character in his upcoming adventure, The Last Guardian. David Cage, lead designer at Quantic Dream, has also been throwing around phrases lately like "care about the characters" in promoting the followup to Indigo Prophecy—Heavy Rain. Early gameplay footage of Heavy Rain makes the game seem to be a choose-your-own interactive adventure and while the story seems a bit melodramatic, any effort at not repeating the "Dom and his wife" scenario is much appreciated.
It may be tough to argue that games like Lucidity represent the "growing up" of gaming. True, Lucidity has problems, but the thing to note about it is how its central theme and emotionally-affecting game mechanics are fundamentally intertwined. This is more than the "hide Ashley in the trashcan" sections of Resident Evil 4. For gaming to reach a new level of innovation, developers will have to risk writing characters that aren't just exciting because they're unrealistic. They'll have to create games with strong mechanics that are inextricably tied to the narrative; games that dare to draw characters worthy of compassion. Nothing against all those broad action shooters out there, but please—haven't we had enough games about thick-necked commandoes fighting off alien hordes?
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