Fiction late arrivals

So I kind of got distracted this week.  Being home with my video games again for the first time in month...yeah, 'nuff said.

Anyway, the challenge for this past week was to use a random title generator and write a story from that.  The generator gave five titles and I went with the first one that gave a strong mental image.  Ended up being not too bad, I think it worked better in the present tense.

That's about all I have to say on his one, hope you enjoy.

At the Gunfighter with a Gambit

            I push through the doors to the Gunfighter, letting them swing closed as I make my way through the saloon.  I already know where McKenzie is.

            Everything stops when I kick open the door to his private dining room.  Waitresses with drinks, men paying cards or darts, even the music grinds to a halt.

            I step into the room.  When one of McKenzie’s men tries to stop me I slow only long enough to clock him with my pistol.  He falls to the floor clutching at his mouth and trying to hold in the blood and teeth.

            I slam my gun onto the table, scattering money and sending cards flying.

            McKenzie looks up at me past the brim of his hat.

            “Boys,” he says to the two men at the table.  “Take a walk.”

            They look at me then back at McKenzie.  No one moves.

            He picks up my gun.

            “Take,” he says and cocks the hammer. “A walk.”

            The room empties.

            One of them was smart enough to shut the door on his way out.  I could hear the music pick back up and knew we’d be left alone.

            McKenzie still held my gun.

“Pretty stupid move, giving up your gun.  I’d heard better of you.”

“Those bounties were business,” I say.  “I don’t usually care what my mark has to say.”

“So this is personal then?  I’m honored.”

“You killed my father.  You’re damn right it’s personal.”

He threw back his head laughing and I could see the grey streaking his red hair.

“Kid I’ve killed a lot of people, and I’m too damn old for shootouts in the square.  Why do you think I settled down?  These days I’m usually napping at the stroke of noon.”

“I don’t care how old you are, you’re still going to duel me.”

“Tell you what, let’s compromise.”

He released the hammer and flicked open the chamber, emptying all but one bullet with a smooth efficiency that belies his age.  I didn’t doubt for a second that he could still duel.

He just didn’t want to.

“You know roulette?”  He asks.

I decided to humor him.

I sat down at the table.  “Who goes first?”

He gestured at the table.

“Why not let the cards decide?”

“One spin of the barrel?”

“High card wins, low card shoots?”

“Agreed.”

I sit down.

McKenzie clears the table and shuffled the cards.  I cut the deck and motion for him to draw first.  He shrugs and we both take a card.

Ten versus four.

I spin the chamber of my gun and put the barrel to my head.  The hammer cocks back and lands with a hollow click.

As we draw again McKenzie speaks.

“I recognize this gun.”

Five versus jack.

“You should,” I say as the gun clicks harmlessly in his hand.  “It was my father’s gun.”

Six versus eight.

“Your father was a sheriff, tried to stop me from robbing a bank.”  The gun clicks in his hand again.

Nine versus four.

“He was,” I said after the gun hit another empty chamber in my hands.

King versus ace.

“Did you know that he was a made man?”  The gun hits a fifth empty slot and he set it back down.

I don’t say anything as we draw our last cards.  I look at the queen in my hand and watch McKenzie show me what he had drawn.

A two lands on the table.

I watch him pick up the gun and cock it for the sixth and final time.

Before putting it to his head he says.

“Your father was supposed to chase us out of town, you know.  We were going to give him his cut after he made the chase look real.  But when we were out there he got greedy and stupid, tried to take it all for himself.  He tried to kill me with this gun.”

McKenzie points the gun at me and fires.

I don’t flinch as the smoke clears.

McKenzie looks at me dumbfounded for a moment before going for his own gun at his hip.

I drop the derringer out of my sleeve and shoot him before he can draw.

The force of the bullet knocks him back and he falls to the floor.

I kneel down beside him, taking my gun from his limp hand.

His mouth moves, but the bullet had torn into his throat and no sound came out.  I can tell what he was trying to ask.

“I knew all that about my father, I followed him and saw the whole thing.  I saw you try to shortchange him, and I saw your men get ready to shoot him in the back.  My father may not have been a good man, but at least he was better than you.”

McKenzie coughs blood and reaches for my gun.

“I loaded my gun with blanks.  Guess I’m not as stupid as you thought I was.”

Choices: Moral and Otherwise

I recently finished the Walking Dead game.  The short version of the plot would be that you play Lee Everett, a survivor who has taken an orphan girl named Clementine under his care.  The game is essentially a choose your own adventure novel, presenting you with various choices during conversations that will impact how the other characters treat you later on, as well as being given choices like which of two people to save from death or who to feed when supplies are running low.

Some choices were easy, in one chapter the cast is threatened by other survivors and you're presented with the choice of killing them or showing mercy after you've beaten them.  I chose to let them live, at least until the Walkers in the background closed in and finished the job for me.  An easy choice honestly.

But more than once I had to set the controller down and think about what I would do, what I could justify doing.  One that still stands out in my mind was when the group finds an abandoned vehicle, lights on and engine running so clearly not abandoned for long, full of supplies.  The group debates what to do but shortly, cold and hungry, decide to take everything.  You're given the choice of joining the looting or staying off to the side.  Initially I didn't join in, finishing the chapter without taking anything that didn't belong to me.  But after thinking about what I would do, the choices that I would make, I went back and replayed that scene and changed the choice I had made.

Because that's what this game is really about.  You're not playing a character named Lee Everett.  Lee is a voice for you to act through.  The choices and actions you make are not scripted by the game, they're determined by you, the player.  And it's done so in a more immersive way than any other game I have ever played.

I've played games with moral choice systems, Fallout 3 and the Infamous series.  But those use the moral choice less to impact plot and more to effect the gameplay.  Even with Infamous having alternate endings depending on your moral alignment still feels like the game is the one making the key choices and you're just telling it if you'd like to hear the good or evil story.

I've mentioned more than once how much I love the Mass Effect games, and while it often presented difficult decisions to make, those choices were either too broad and universal to effect me personally, or I could boil it down to see the impact on the characters I did have a connection with.  Either the choice was too big to relate to me, or so personal that I wasn't viewing it at the scale the game presented.

Again, in The Walking Dead you are the one making the choices, and you are the one they're effecting.  Without giving anything away, the game does not, under any circumstances, have a happy ending.  No choice you make will result in rainbows and sunshine.  This is a game about a zombie apocalypse, it's not about winning, it's about surviving.

In the last chapter the game confronts you about the choices you made at various points, and you can either apologize or justify your actions.  Each time I felt the knife twist a little deeper and realized just how guilty some of my choices had made me feel.  Could I really live with myself if I robbed that car and deprived the owner of what they needed?

SPOILERS AHEAD NOW YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

After that scene Lee and Clementine reach the end of the game.  Lee, having been bitten is dying.  He talks Clementine through what she needs to know to survive.  But again, Lee is only saying what you choose to say.  I told that sweet little girl to stay safe, to learn how to hide, to always keep moving, and to never trust anyone again.

I told her to go on without me.

I did not ask her to shoot me to stop me from turning.  I refused to take that last light of hope from her.

I told her to leave and not to look back.

And then I died.

Five things about the Mass Effect DLC

Ok, so Bioware confirmed that they're working on additional content for the ending of Mass Effect 3.  As a nice bonus, this content will be a free download.  Seriously Bioware, I doubt that you read this, but that is a really stand-up thing to do and I know that I (and hopefully other gamers) appreciate it.  That said here are some of my concerns and/or what I, personally, hope to see from the updated ending.


First:  Do not change the ending!

Bioware reps have already made it clear that they are not going to change the ending.  Aside from anything else, they have stated that there will be additional cinematics to 'clarify' the ending.  I don't think clarity of the ending was the problem, it was pretty clear.  Shepard dies, Mass Relays blow up, Normandy crashes.  The end.

But I am very, VERY glad that they are not going to retcon the ending to something else.  For one thing, there is no way any other ending will satisfy 100% of the fans.  No matter what people will be unhappy and they will complain, that's what people on the internet do.  I am glad, however, that the company is continuing to support their development team.  They could have easily undercut their work and the fact that Bioware supports the ending is a clear sign of supporting the team's artistic vision.


Second:  Give us additional missions.

Don't change the ending, and don't give us cinematics to 'clarify' things.  Cinematics are exposition, plain and simple, and in an interactive medium like video games exposition is deadly.  Instead let us play the game with extra missions using our squad members.  Maybe even have things change depending on your actions the way the Quarian/Geth war changed based on Mass Effect 2's choices.

An example could be that, depending on who you romanced, their mission varies.  Tali may be working on rebuilding Rannoch, but if you romanced her maybe she leaves to go help on Earth.  Garrus could go back to being a bounty hunter, or decide to take a more active role in the Turian military/government.

Also Bioware, releasing this photo,


it's a pretty clear sign you're up to something.


Third:  Can we please see how the War Assets matter?

So I spend all game gathering these war assets, and playing the multiplayer to make use of them...and it only serves to unlock a third ending option?  Since you're adding more cinematics anyway, that would be a good place to put them.  What we saw of the final confrontation was awesome!...So why not show us more?

If we help the Hanar and Elcor, let's see them in combat.  At one point in the game an Elcor mentions a racial slur of "living tanks" based on how the Elcor fight.  Do you know how much I wanted to see that?  I love the Elcor!  And I realize that on Earth it would be mostly humans, but if the Krogan, Turian and other races are there in force, why not Salarians, Drell and Elcor?

Hopeful Pleading:  Please?
 

Fourth:  Only fix what's broken.

This is a huge one guys, but if you do change anything, only change the stuff that doesn't work.  There are plenty of examples, no more Mass Relays means no interstellar travel (never mind the explosions).  And the Reapers themselves being sent to kill us so that our own synthetics don't kill us?  Logic = Fail.

This really boils down to "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  And there are plenty of things in Mass Effect 3 that do work.


Finally:  Shepard needs to stay dead.

I love Shepard, I really do.  I think she (yes I play fem!Shep) is an amazing character.  And the level of personalization in terms of gameplay and story is just mind boggling.  But really, did anyone, any fan of this series expect Shepard to survive?  This was clearly stated to be the final conflict.  I love the Mass Effect world, but Shepard's role in it is over.

Rest in peace Commander.