Critique: Vanquish

*Spoilers ahead!* Since I am talking about how the story works, I obviously have to talk about specific things that happen.

I was a little unsure at first if I should even do a narrative criticism of Vanquish. The game bills itself (or at least its marketing team does) as a high speed action shooter. The gameplay reminds me of those super hyper arcade games that charged you a dollar per play. Yet, Platinum Games (the developer) clearly spent a lot of time making the cutscenes and cinematic sequences. Not to mention that these cutscenes were getting noticeably longer and more, ‘dramatic’, as the game went on. This leads me to believe that Vanquish’s story was supposed to be just as important as the gameplay, which may have been a mistake.

Character Rundown:

–     Sam Gideon: The player’s character. Enjoys smoking and trying to outdo Burns in a gruffest voice competition. Works for DARPA and therefore not really in the army, so he’s just tagging along to test out his fancy power suit that he developed and save Professor Candide.

–     Robert Burns: Sam’s superior officer of sorts. Old army guy who’s built like a garbage truck crossed with a tank. Seems to have gravel surgically implanted in his throat and his brain runs on one liners and whisky.

–     Elena Ivanova: Sam’s attractive female operator. She gives the player mission updates, gets worried at times and wears a short skirt.

–     Professor Candide: I sort of forgot he was in the game until I went back to write this. Ran off to stop the space station from microwaving cities. Failed. Sam has to save him.

–     Victor Zaitsev: Main antagonist, a leader of the group that has come to power in Russia. Seems to be in control of the Russian robot army and would very much like to be a James Bond villain.

–     President Winters: President of the United States, looks kind of like Hilary Clinton. Her underhanded tactics result in her being a one term president, permanently.

The story behind Vanquish is that a new order in Russia (lead by Zaitsev) has taken control of a fantastically massive USA space station. This space station was supposed to be part city, part energy collector that would transmit power down via a microwave beam. Of course, the thinkable happens; the Russians use the microwave beam to treat San Francisco like a Hot Pocket wrapped in tin foil. The city gets wrecked, lots of people die (rather horrifically I might add as the cutscene shows people with boiling skin, and one or two exploding from it) and Zaitsev demands President Winters to unconditionally surrender. She doesn’t, and sends hundreds of space battleships to go fight the hundreds of Russian space ships defending the space station. Sam is there to test out his new combat suit and find Professor Candide. Burns doesn’t know about Professor Candide but he does know that he doesn’t really like DARPA or Sam very much. In fact, Burns attacks Sam right after talking to him for the first time. Sam dodges, getting his cigarette cut in half in the process, and blocks Burns’ follow up attack. This ends the fight as Burns decides to walk away while gruffly saying “no smoking on the ship”. Anyway, the space battleship that Sam and Burns are on breaks through the Russian blockade, and heads for the space station. It quickly gets shot down and crashes into a docking bay of the space station. So starts the game starts with Sam, Burns and a pile of space marines blasting their way through dozens of Russian combat robots.

If the description of the opening cinematic sequence felt like a serious political story that suddenly transformed into a crazy 90’s action movie, then you are not alone. Starting off a story with people getting microwaved to death will typically give a serious overtone to the work in question. Yet then Vanquish gives the viewer one liners, gravelly voiced military guys, and hundreds of Russian robots to fight, as the Russian army of the future is apparently completely robotic except for Zaitsev. All of which are things that feel out of place within a serious story. The gameplay really doesn’t help make things any more serious either.

Everything about the gameplay makes it feel like an over the top action game. Let me describe a typical engagement. Start off by rocket sliding across the floor thanks to your thigh mounted thrusters. Stop yourself by boost kicking an enemy robot and then while you are flipping backwards through the air, slow down time so that you can one handedly fire a machine gun at the robot’s buddies. Oh no! A big robot grabbed you! Start smashing buttons as part of a quick time event to break free and have Sam do a flying spin kick to punt the big robot across the room. Then switch to your gun that launches exploding buzz saws to cut off the robot’s head for extra points and causing it to flail wildly about, smashing its robot comrades in a blind rage. Yeah! Time for a cutscene where Sam and Burns trade one liners with Sam saying “I liked you better when you were dead.” and Burns responding with “I liked you better when I didn’t have to deal with your shit!” Now it’s time for a boss battle with a massive four legged tank that can only be hurt by shooting its glowing weak points. Then when you weaken it enough you get a quick time event where Sam jumps up on top of the tank robot and starts spinning faster and faster thanks to his thrusters. Eventually going so fast that he literally becomes a drill that goes clean though the robot, causing it to explode! Hell yeah!

Yet, as the game goes on the story gets more and more needlessly complicated and serious. Burns goes on and on about how marines are ready to be sacrificed to get the job done and Sam doesn’t agree. Later Winters has Burns betray you and kill Candide so that they can microwave Moscow. You fight Burns for a bit, but you win and Sam is suddenly concerned about Burns’ health despite the fact that Burns just tried to seriously kill Sam. Then it turns out the whole ordeal was set up from the start by Winters to start a war that would bring the USA out of depression. But then you find out that AAAHHHH! This is absurd! In game I’m upper cutting robots into the air with my fists, but then I get subjected to a serious cutscene which I’m fairly sure is a not-so-subtle criticism of US foreign policy. I will admit that a story discussing the merits/evils of waging war for economic reasons is a totally valid storyline and could be a interesting subject to cover within a video game. But a third person high velocity shooter is not the way to convey this story!

To be honest, Vanquish’s storyline is inappropriate for its gameplay. It seems to me that when Vanquish was under development the writers went off in one room and the gameplay designers went into another and both worked on their version of the game. A few months later they reconvened, showed each other their work, and promptly exclaimed at one another “Wait! What are you doing? I thought we were doing it this way!” This seems to be a problem that crops up quite often in video games. It makes sense as video games require a lot more creative collaboration compared with say, writing a book or directing a movie. A video game story has to not only contend with production deadlines but also has to face the fact that most people look to games for gameplay, not a story. For a story to be executed correctly it absolutely must match the pacing and ‘feel’ of the gameplay.

My Creative Thoughts

Ditch the ‘serious’ storyline and go full-bore on making it an over the top parody of action games. If you ask me, right now the shooter genre could really use a light hearted, endearing romp through bulletsville. Most modern shooters just can’t seem to stop themselves from packing more and more ‘grit’, ‘drama’ and ‘realism’ into their stories. Vanquish characters should be resolving their problems though yelling and punching the other guy into the sky! Heck, Vanquish already does this in a number of its cutscenes and all of its gameplay so it wouldn’t exactly be difficult to modify the story. For example, you could have Zaitsev melt Mount Rushmore instead of San Francisco. It’s still a villainous act that would strike fear into the hearts of people in game without the messy hatred that comes with wiping out a city. It would be cartoonish and therefore humorous, but also serve as a credible threat to the safety of the protagonists. He could still threaten to microwave New York, for bonus evil points.

It is the ending, however, that I think needs to be changed the most. Currently the ending goes something like this. Sam defeats two enemy units that resemble Zaitsev’s personal power armor but discovers that neither one holds Zaitsev. They were both drones, which sort of killed any sense of accomplishment for me. Then to show off how evil he is, Zaitsev starts the countdown on a tactical nuke buried within one of the drones. Sam panics a bit and asks Elena to figure out where an escape pod is. I briefly hope that he is going to do something crazy awesome. Sam immediately disappoints me by running to the escape pod and blasting off as the station explodes. Elena thinks he’s dead, but he isn’t, and they share a tender moment discussing how they saved lots of people while watching the space station explode. Then we get a scene where Winters shoots herself in the head, for some reason and Zaitsev is revealed to have survived and flies off laughing. Cue credits.

I found this ending to be bitterly disappointing. The whole time they are showing the station blowing up I kept thinking, “wait, doesn’t this mean that everybody else is dead? Also, didn’t the game mention this space station is the main source of power for the USA? Aren’t they screwed now?” The protagonists (the USA) have lost; hundreds of thousands of civilians in San Francisco, hundreds to thousands of space marines, the president, and they no longer have their primary source of energy. How about the antagonists? Eah, they lost some robots. I would classify that as a crushing defeat for the protagonists, at best. Yet the game expects me to think this was a good ending.

Here’s what I think would have been an awesome way to end the game. As soon as Sam asked for an escape route I was expecting him to pick up the drone body containing the nuke and start making a mad dash for the escape pod. It could be a last level where you have to run, boost and kick your way past the remaining marines and Russian robots fighting each other. Sam can’t use his weapons because his hands are obviously full holding the nuke. The game could turn off the ‘limiters’ on Sam’s power suit allowing the player to boost further and faster for this portion of the game, which would add to the overall tension. While dodging rockets and the smashing crushing feet of giant robots Sam tells Elena to lure Zaitsev’s ship in front of the escape pod launcher. As soon as Sam reaches the escape pods he hurls the nuke into one and smashes the ‘launch’ button. Cue cutscene where the camera switches between showing the dogfight between Elena and Zaitsev, the countdown timer, and the escape pod rocketing down its launcher. The escape pod finally collides with Zaitsev’s ship at the last possible second. Have a reaction shot of Zaitsev’s surprise right the nuke goes off, disintegrating his ship. As the explosion subsides have the camera zoom out to show Sam watching the scene though a window in the space station. The camera then rotates around to the front of Sam and frames his upper body and face as he smokes a cigarette. Sam then makes a gun shooting gesture with his right hand at the camera (and explosion) and says, “Vanquished.” Quickly fade to black, throw up the Vanquish logo and roll the credits while playing techno rock music. That’s how you end on a high note.