(mashedmarket)

I was listening to a podcast recently (can’t remember which) when the hosts started discussing this Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare sequence wherein ***SPOILER ALERT!!!*** one of the six playable characters dies. Thinking back on this moment — one that the gaming community has almost universally heralded as unique — it suddenly occured to me I’d seen virtually the same thing before…only in another medium. Not that the death of a game’s protagonist isn’t original or shocking; it absolutely felt that way to me. But, from a purely narrative standpoint, the killing off of someone your audience has come to identify with happens in, perhaps most notably, ***SPOILER ALERT???*** Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Which got me thinking about other unusual storytelling revelations that might adapt well to video gaming.

One of these is my favorite moment in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, during which ***SPOILER ALERT!!!*** Yossarian is injured by the blast from a flak cannon. It’s striking in that neither reader nor character have any initial notion of how serious the wound is:

Yossarian flipped his eyes open in alarm and saw the totally unexpected bulging black puffs of flak crashing down in toward them from high up and Aarfy’s complacent melon-round tiny-eyed face gazing out at the approaching cannon bursts with affable bemusement. Yossarian was flabbergasted. His leg went abruptly to sleep. McWatt had started to climb and was yelping over the intercom for instructions. Yossarian sprang forward to see where they were and remained in the same place. He was unable to move. Then he realized he was sopping wet. He looked down at his crotch with a sinking, sick sensation. A wild crimson blot was crawling upward rapidly along his shirt front like an enormous sea monster rising to devour him. He was hit! Separate trickles of blood spilled to a puddle on the floor through one saturated trouser leg like countless unstoppable swarms of wriggling red worms. His heart stopped. A second solid jolt struck the plane. Yossarian shuddered with revulsion at the queer sight of his wound and screamed at Aarfy for help.

“I lost my balls! Aarfy, I lost my balls!” Aarfy didn’t hear, and Yossarian bent forward and tugged at his arm. “Aarfy, help me,” he pleaded, almost weeping, “I’m hit! I’m hit!”

Aarfy turned slowly with a bland, quizzical grin. “What?”

This phenomenon of an apparently insignificant (but in fact critically serious) trauma has probably appeared in a number of cut sequences, though I’m not aware of a similar incarnation during which it’s rendered interactive. Such a scene would have to be largely scripted, but I think there exists potential for it to be wildly effective in conveying chaos, surprise, and helplessness.

Heavily orchestrated moments of this sort are particularly interesting to me because of the dramatic content they’re able to reveal. Players and designers are brought closest together during such segments because each retains his or her own degree of control over what happens. I definitely don’t consider these co-authored, choreographed experiences perfect, but, by wresting some agency from the audience, they more vividly mirror many real-life events. After all, who could ever feel master of a situation in which they’re potentially bleeding to death? It’s one means games can use to portray thematic elements that have more to do with horror than heroism.

Are there any similarly arresting filmic or literary surprises you’d like to see adapted to an interactive medium?