* An analysis of the ending of Red Dead Redemption, strong spoiler warning *

Finally, Rockstar have come up with a game that wants us to be good. Playing as a reformed outlaw in a graphically gorgeous title combining almost every aspect of the Wild West we’ve come to recognise through films, TV shows and folklore, the most surprising quality of Red Dead Redemption – even more impressive than the amazing attention to detail –  is the enforced morality and, in line with the game’s title and its central theme, redeeming qualities of the main character. John Marston, contrary to those previous incarnations of Grand Theft Auto and other Rockstar Games’ antiheroes, is not seeking success and wealth through crime; he is aspiring to be good for the betterment of himself and his family.

As in previous open-world games the players themselves are free to do as they wish, inevitably leading to a sandbox environment of carnage and chaos as the he/she sees fit. In Red Dead, the option to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is presented – do you capture criminals alive to collect bounty rewards and shoot the weapons out of people’s hands instead of killing them, or decide to go renegade by robbing the innocent and, as an homage to the classic Western cliche of moustached villainy, tie a woman up and place her on railroad tracks? Despite your decisions in these situations and regardless of your own personal play-style, the most striking thing about the main story missions is how Marston always, from the start of the game to the finish, chooses the honourable route.

Blackmailed into hunting down his former brothers-in-arms by a pair of lawmen who have his wife and son held captive, Marston is sent out on a quest to essentially rid the land of the last surviving remnants of his own criminal past as the violent era of the American Old West comes to an abrupt end. Marston chooses to deal with hostile situations by speaking with restraint and politeness instead of pulling out his gun, and his actions throughout the story are often heroic, albeit through unavoidably violent means. So outside of the story missions when players may utilise their freedom to go out and commit evil deeds should they wish, it all seems a little inconsistent – hypocritical even – when compared with the predetermined intentions of the character during the game’s cutscenes that drive the plot forward.

* Spoilers from this point on *

By the end when the violent and bloody missions are seemingly over and the police allow Marston to be reunited with his family, the game gets you to play through mundane chores tending to his farm, herding cattle, and spending quality time with the wife, Abigail, and estranged teenage son, Jack, who is more interested in reading than holding a weapon. It is quite the contrast to the majority of the game and, accompanied with a chillingly ominous score that haunts these segments, there is a feeling of impending doom: that this peacefulness is too good to be true.

It is no real surprise then when the lawmen return to betray and murder Marston and his family; on the contrary there is a sense that this is a true calling. A life as a simple rancher is not something John can adapt to, regardless of his intentions, and there is an acknowledgment at this stage of Red Dead that not only can this videogame character never escape his outlaw past, nor can the player escape from the violent dynamics of the game by which they are now well-accustomed to. John is deadly, remarkably efficient in killing those coming for his family – his prior sins have ensured that he is in his element when with a gun in his hand.

Marston manages to send his wife and son away on a horse with tears in his eyes and, having said his goodbyes and surrounded by the army and the police with no chance of survival, realises the price of true redemption – not for himself, but for his family – before taking a deep breath and accepting his fate. But the real tragedy of this finale is that, when his death should have marked the end of the Marston family’s affiliation with its dark past, it is actually through his passing that the once-innocent Jack seeks his own revenge, now controlled by the player 3 years later in the game. Violence begets violence and the son follows in the father’s footsteps; exactly the sort of future John Marston had tried to protect Jack from.

The feeling of surprise and shock when playing as Jack deliberately merges the player’s experience with this new character: Who am I? What do I do now? Not only has the player lost all their invested emotional connection with John, but so has Jack. And it surely says something of the impact and tragedy of the story’s conclusion that, when assuming the role of the son, I immediately travelled across town to hunt down the policeman who ordered the execution – a bonus mission in the game – and going on a random rampage against the law looking for revenge instead of redemption, a pointless, empty lust for blood so commonly found in the genre which conflicted with and was completely contrary to the values John Marston had strived for and realised through his sacrifice. The Wild West was dying, and so too was that young Jack’s apparent incorruptibility.

For all its technical qualities in creating a believable world outside of the player’s influence and overlooking the flaws – namely the many unnecessary, superfluous supporting characters and, especially, the disappointing and drawn out missions towards the end involving Marston’s former gang leader - Red Dead impresses most in its subtle morality tale behind the familiar GTA-template, told through an excellently-realised and ultimately sad journey that lives up to the game’s tagline, ”Outlaws to the end”.

~

Red Dead Revolver (PS2/Xbox) review

~

With modern eyes we now see them as ugly, primitive-looking things affiliated with old plastic cassette tapes and perhaps somewhat related to those equally-redundant computer floppy discs. How quickly technology has progressed from the days when having variable fast-forward and rewind speeds (fast, double fast, Triple Fast!) on VCRs warranted praise and worship, and how stubborn I was when DVDs first came out, adamantly insisting that I would never (ever) convert, clinging desperately onto my collection of VHS movies with their inconsistently-sized and ripped cardboard covers and maintaining passionately that being able to record from TV was basic a human right. And indeed, by not making recording a standard feature on DVD players haven’t we all turned into JB Hi-Fi bargain pile-raiding uber-consumers, needing to own entire series of shows and collector’s editions of movies when we could have easily taped them for free?

Well anyway, before I allow the nostalgia to forever be replaced by the progress of DVD and Blu-Ray user-friendliness, here are several of my fondest childhood and adolescent memories of VHS.

- Frequently getting the tape – the actual black/brown physical tape – caught inside the VCR and needing to manually wind it back in with a kitchen utensil that would fit (usually the handle end of an egg beater) after pressing that little square button to open up the latch to straighten out the crumples.

- Memorising the times of certain favourite scenes of movies, e.g. 1:10:05, and playing a game where I’d rewind or fast-forward to as close as possible to that exact timepoint, taking into account the slow-down speed of my fast-running VCR and trying to estimate how long before or after that point I would have to press Stop.

- Pressing Pause and seeing the image stretch and struggle on old CRT TVs, hoping the tape wouldn’t burn or melt on the hot metal VCR heads after leaving it for too long.

- Getting fined at the video store for not rewinding movies upon their return and watching the staff at Video Ezy and Civic Video utilise those sports car VHS rewinder machines, objects made specifically for rewinding purposes. Oh, how those rewinder manufacturing companies would have shaken their fists in anger during the DVD takeover.

- VCR head cleaner solution and the awful smell of alcohol, needing to wait an hour for it to dry in order for your video to be watchable. Hiring ‘The Specialist’, starring Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas and Sharon Stone (which constituted an all-star-cast back in the 90s) and having the tape snap inside the player when I was too eager to watch it after cleaning, and then making up a story at the Video Ezy saying that the tape itself had screwed up my player and getting a Free Hire voucher in return. I still feel guilty about that (but hey, free movie), and apologise for the bad taste in films.

- Those useless, generic stickers that came on a strip with every blank tape, with the little letters of the alphabet, the ones displaying the length of the tape, 90, 180, 240, 300 minutes, whether the mode was LP or SP, and various label stickers of different sizes and shapes for placement all over every edge of the tape. These stickers were all so very pointless, but I enjoyed making patterns out of them before realising that some of them peeled off inside the VCR upon pressing Eject, no doubt further contributing to the potential fire hazard of the device.

- SP vs LP recording. Taping football matches, including the football World Cups of 1998 and 2002 in their entirety on LP 300-minute videos (which meant a massive 10+ hours of terrible quality), with a gigantic stack of videos. All labeled and covered garishly with those aforementioned useless stickers.

- Taping over previous recordings and seeing their long-forgotten remnants lingering around either behind the image of the  most current recording – etched into the tape like an image burnt into one’s retinas, my favourite being old Disney cartoons hanging about as the background to a Schwarzenegger movie – or watching them reappear after a short period of static at the very end of the tape, usually consisting of old TV shows and ads with antiquated channel logos and bad hairstyles and fashion.

- Having tapes get stuck in an old, malfunctioning VCR, and needing to ‘trick it’ into allowing the ejection to take place by unplugging the power cable, plugging it back in, turning the VCR on and quickly pushing against the stuck tape to force the annoying thing out. Luckily no electrocutions ever occurred during this process.

- Eventually upgrading to a good quality VCR with a dial that allowed you to watch scenes frame-by-frame, especially useful for bone-crunching football tackle analysis in slow-mo and reviewing in awe the shattering of the T-1000 in Terminator 2. There really was something special about watching those paused, overworked images covered in tape static on the TV screen and hearing the groans of the VCR motors with each and every frame advancement and reversal.

- Before the advent of subtitles in DVDs, incorrectly guessing movie quotes due to bad accents/acting commonly found in Jean Claude Van-Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sylvester Stallone movies. Having never had the desire to repurchase Universal Soldier on DVD, I still to this day do not know what JCVD was saying at the end after the fight with Dolph Lundgren – “Ironed?” “I wronged?” “I ronned [sic]?” “Eire rammed?” None of my guesses ever made any sense in the context of that scene, but then again, what was I thinking watching that rubbish in the first place anyway?

~

Got any other stories? I’d love to hear about your own personal favourite VHS memories =)

~

If it is indeed so good then shouldn’t we be more inclined to it

Rather than sensing the certainty of internal doubt?

~

If it was so good then why hasn’t everyone subscribed to it

Why then are there people still hounded and unsure?

~

Those who have turned away without a shred of regret

Sure of themselves beyond the measure of the majority

~

Those who can stare tempting popularity in the face

And honestly say they’re not impressed

Andrew, my friend, co-writer and neighbour, isn’t really a gamer. A web developer by trade with a gamer boyfriend, he has seen gaming from an outside perspective and recently become a fan of Battlefield Bad Company 2, establishing himself as a skilled sniper with a ridiculously good kills/headshots ratio. In this interview, we find out more about Andrew and what his thoughts on the medium are as an “outsider”.

Will Ooi: Andrew, tell us about yourself.

Andrew James: I’m a graphic designer who wants to be a writer. I spent most of my time working on design projects and websites and not enough time on writing, mainly because I’m afraid of what will happen if I open the dormant Pandora’s box in my mind. I love good movies where suspension of disbelief is not a chore. Actors are either brilliant or crap in my opinion and writing is the same. There is no in-between and I’m very black or white when it comes to what is good and what is bad. When I’m not watching movies, designing websites & logos or spending time eating out with friends, I’m trying to find a PS3 demo or game that can help me go blank for long enough to forget who I am.

WO: What/who are your artistic inspirations, from movies, designers, websites, etc.?

AJ: Hmm. Tough one. Anthony Hopkins (even though he’s been choosing bad films lately) is one of my favourites. Emma Thompson, Angelica Houston and Sigourney Weaver are all women who deserve more attention. With designers, I have no nameable inspiration. Same with websites. I see things I like in bits and pieces and I don’t identify with anyone in particular. I’m kinda tickled by the notion that I’m not in the ’scene’ and don’t really know who is who. It helps me be completely original, and if I copy someone it will be a fluke and by accident, because I had never seen their work.

WO: What was your original impression of games, prior to owning a PS3?

AJ: The only experience I’d had with games was trying to get them to run on my old PC out of curiosity. I had terrible luck, and you weren’t able to return PC games if they didn’t work, so I was a bit scared of games. I didn’t have any friends who were gamers and If I wanted advice about games I’d have to ask someone working at EB or the game shop about how to get things to run etc. I was curious, but not convinced they were worth my time or money.

WO: What convinced you in the end to go through with the decision of purchasing it?

AJ: My boyfriend wanted a console and I wanted to buy him something nice for Christmas that I knew he would like. So I got him a PS3 and watched him play Call of Duty 4.

WO: What was that experience like, from a non-gamer perspective?

AJ: I was quite amazed at how far graphics had come since I’d seen people playing a Playstation 2 and I thought that I might like to give it a go, as it seemed like skill was a large factor in finishing the game and I wanted to see if I was skilled.

WO: How did you fare?

AJ: I was better than Kyle. It was also good to come across a game where practice made you a better player. It wasn’t just luck.

WO: Is it that pursuit and mastering of skill that has gotten you so into Battlefield Bad Company 2? You are becoming very good at it indeed.

AJ: I think it’s a combination of becoming more skilled, and being part of a team. I really enjoy the feeling you get when you are surrounded by other players who want to win as much as you, and the ones on your team become your friends even though you don’t know who or where they are. You get sad when you see them die, and you feel proud to revive them, or protect them. And you also get a sense that they might be grateful for your help, and they might say things out loud like “oh thanks dude!” even though you can’t hear them.

WO: What’s the origin of your PSN ID, ’sirakos’?

AJ: “Sokaris” spelt backwards was an Egyptian god and I like to annoy the Greek man in the USA whose last name is Sirakos and is too slow to register it for emails and twitters and usernames

WO: On Xbox Live, Microsoft have recently done a U-turn on their controversial decision to ban players who displayed their sexual orientation in their Gamertags. Someone by the name of “RichardGaywood” was even banned under these old rules.

Given this, do you think such a move will help conquer the stereotypes of gay gamers, even if only in the world of online gaming?

AJ: I didn’t even know about Microsofts ban and subsequent reversal. I guess that shows you how informed the gay community is about these kinds of things. It doesn’t make interesting news on big papers, and it certainly doesn’t help sell them. I think issues like this arise all the time, and go largely unnoticed due to two factors; 1. Lack of interest from general public in what happens in games. 2. Apathy from the GLBT community when it comes to discrimination. I’m glad Microsoft has decided to reverse their ban. I’m shocked it was ever allowed in the first place.

WO: Do you think there is solace to be found in the anonymity and ‘escape’ of gaming, particularly for younger gay kids?

AJ: I bet there are a lot of gay gamers, especially kids around 15 or 16 who aren’t out playing sport and they aren’t at home sewing or knitting. What else is there to do ? Stereotyping here, but they are probably big into the RPGs to escape their personal hells, not being judged, being respected for their skill.

WO: What do you think of the stereotypes of game characters?

AJ: It’s a shame that the first gay character in successful and big game was that camp queen that you had to save in GTA. I’d much rather the gay guy be a capable villain over a pink camp stereotype, for it to be a non-issue like it is in real life when it’s treated with respect. Mind you, we can’t even get black characters in games unless it’s to be the token black character. What’s strange is there is no need.  History and movies and books and art have proven that connecting with people on an emotional level is the best way to capture them. The emotional connection is what keeps you entertained. Games seem to do that very badly for no reason, other than bad writing, and bad voice acting. In a world where people would write games for free, and unknown and talented acting students would work for tuppence, there is no reason.

WO: Do you think that there will eventually be a ‘real’ gay character in games, where sexuality isn’t an issue?

AJ: I don’t think there will be for quite some time. Not unless I become the director at a large game production agency. I think if there are gay characters that aren’t your average stereotype bit-part, it will be in small games that get no press and have limited budgets.

WO: In this respect do you think that the game industry is lagging behind in terms of social acceptance of homosexuality?

AJ: I think the game industry is an accurate litmus test of current attitudes towards sexuality in greater society. People forget too easily that there are gay people all around them, living and working amongst them. Not all gay men are flamers wearing pink hot pants and plucking their eyebrows (not that there is anything wrong with that). The sad irony is that games are targeted largely to teenage boys. The kind of boys who aren’t out being outwardly social and out playing sport with their friends, who might be gay.  I know if I had a PS3 when I was growing up, I’d much prefer to sit at home and play games, especially online games, where I can interact with people who don’t judge me, or hurt me.

WO: Do you think gaming could assist in breaking down this discrimination in some way? For instance, a major character in a game being gay (lets say a Call of Duty character) and for this fact to be addressed tastefully in-game

AJ: I think if it was a ‘non-issue’ but just something that was a matter of fact. Gamers would not be able to be outwardly appalled, because the introduction of a gay character would be somewhat of a non-event. Just like it is in real life, when you find out your friend or colleague is gay.

I think the other thing that gaming has to offer in terms of diversity is team work. I could find myself on a team with people from all over the world, people from cultures that I’d previously had no respect or understanding for. If we were able to tap into that and make people aware of who is around them it might help bridge a cultural or ideological divide, through teamwork. Sadly, such a realisation would also lead to open bigotry and discrimination, which is probably why the gaming companies avoid this kind of open and connected dialogue altogether.

WO: Do you think games can be taken as seriously as other mediums one day, or if they deserve to be?

AJ: I think there is a lot of untapped potential in games. 3D screens will be an industry standard in the next 5 years. I just wish that the gaming companies took the writing more seriously. It’s not hard to get a good script written in advance, and pay some decent actors to do the voice acting. It’s my opinion that there is no valid reason (unless you count cutting corners) that games can’t be just as entertaining or as emotionally encapsulating as movies or TV.

WO: From what you’ve seen in games, what do you think of the standards of acting?

AJ: TERRIBLE, and with no excuse. Game budgets are gigantic, often bigger than those of movies. If the goal of a game is to increase the connection between the player and the coveted suspension of disbelief, then game producers need to learn from the movies, and they need to learn fast. The best voice acting in a game I’ve ever seen was Uncharted 2. It was a largely uninteresting game, apart from the voice acting. And guess what, it got game of the year. If you’re going to do only one thing right in the production of a game, it’s my opinion that voice acting should be the top of the list.

WO: What have been a few games that have stood out for you? What has drawn you to them?

AJ: I really liked Call of Duty 4, for it’s graphics and simplicity. Online COD4 was awesome. It was humbling at first, and then rewarding later. When you watch your name slowly get to the top of the end of game leaderboard, it’s really quite exciting.

I liked Fallout 3. I’ve never had so much fun on my own before. Bethesda created a world that I was not only happy to spend lots of time in, but one that frightened me and gave me a sense of awe.

Dead Space was an amazing out of nowhere game. It didn’t seem to get anywhere near as much hype as other games released at the same time, but it was by far one of the best space horror games I’ve played. Compared to Aliens vs Predator which is out now, Dead Space 1 was far superior, and they managed to do this without falling into the trap of copying Aliens, like so many other space shoot’em games tend to do.

Assasins Creed 2 is quite amazing. And I eagerly anticipate Battlefield Bad Company 2 as the demo seems to be taking up more of my time than most other games I’ve played. [UPDATE: game has since been released and Andrew's stats are here].

WO: Do you see the appeal of an ‘escape’ in videogames? Like, for instance, being a ninja in a game. Do you think games have the ability to empower the ‘user/self’ over other mediums?

AJ: I think we must tread carefully when we talk about how games change our daily lives when we are not playing them. The conservative politicians would love to hear a gamer say “Being a ninja in a game made me want to be a Ninja in real life!” Translation: Killing in games makes me want to kill in real life. I think games offer an escape and a significant suspension of disbelief. Life is boring. We were promised magic and rocket ships as children. PS3 and Xbox are as close as we can get to those dreams in the present day. Is it any wonder games are so popular? We are finally starting to live those dreams, even if it is through a TV screen.

WO: Given that you are, apart from the odd dabbling in certain titles, essentially a non-gamer, how do you feel about Michael Atkinson and the ‘no R18+ rating for games’ issue making headlines at the moment? And, now that he is resigning, how do you think this will impact Australia?

AJ: I was so impressed by the political startup Gamers 4 Croydon. I think Atkinsons’ resignation is long overdue. Anyone who thinks that bikers are less scary than gamers clearly has issues and should not be in the public arena making decisions that affect the daily lives of the population.

To be blunt, Michael Atkinson is a princess, not a solider. I imagine if he did play games, his desire would be to play as the female damsel in distress, waiting for a knight in shining armour to come along and rescue him. At the risk of a possible libel suit, I’d like to go on record and make the suggestion that he was probably a spoilt rotten brat who was given anything he wanted as a child (except a Commodore 64, because games are evil, and so are gamers). He was probably sent to a Christian school and told that he could make the world a better place by spreading his ridiculous ideologies across Australia. Still holding a grudge against the children who DID get an Commodore 64 (or a VIC20), he decided to make it his personal vendetta to make all gamers pay.

He took his goal of spreading his ideologies one step further by making those ideologies public policy. His mistake? Assuming no one would try to stop him.

WO: Thanks very much for your time, Andrew.

~

A trigger takes me back

to a precious moment I’ve kept dear

The mere thought of which elicits a tearful sadness

alongside a warm sense of comfort and safety

~

Revisiting a golden time and place from long ago

with a fresh wonder and joy for a world so new

That innocence and purity of my exposure to life has since been lost and replaced

by knowledge and language too descriptive, and needlessly complicated

~

I feel the pangs of mourning for a homesickness of my youth

accepting that it is impossible to appreciate the richness of existence again through such a cherished, simple perspective

-

What is that very first moment when you know you’re alive?

Is it the vision of your mother, seen through your

fresh and never before used eyes?

Perhaps your existence begins when your mind comprehends the soothing sounds of kind voices heralding your arrival into the world?

What is your very first memory?

And how early into infancy can you travel when a single object or mood

triggers a special childhood sensation, locked away from long ago but still

influential and ever-present in your life – governing who you are to

this very day?

RPGs tend to always intimidate me before I start one: upon estimating the hours I’m going to need to commit towards understanding the equipment system, not to mention navigating all those menus and grasping the fictional history as well as figuring out the combat tactics, it worries me ever so greatly and yet, strangely, I am never sufficiently put off enough to avoid the genre altogether. The worry stems from a selfishness: a concern borne out of a fear of what will happen to me if I actually like the game. Or rather more specifically, what will happen to me if I actually, sincerely, love the game.

Despite all the great reviews DA:O has received, that wariness still existed in the back corners of my mind, particularly after my last attempt at an RPG – the ever-frustrating Lost Odyssey -  ended with me angrily cursing, switching off and trading the game in after having to put up with one too many twenty-minute-long ‘random encounters’ despite my best efforts to excuse them. The short story ‘Dream’ segments unlocked in the game were amazing and beautifully written, but they were way too few and far between amidst such an archaic turn-based RPG gameplay system filled with uninteresting, lacklustre characters and a completely forgettable plot seemingly incongruent to those bonuses.

Dragon Age Origins, on the other hand, was developed by Bioware, responsible for completely captivating me with Mass Effect and many others prior with the Baldur’s Gate series and that ever-mentioned beloved acronym, KOTOR, and I really should have seen the impact of DA:O coming from a mile away given the developer’s reputation as I picked the game up more out of curiosity than anticipation: an epic story, well-written and realised characters, and most impressively, an entire backstory of Tolkien proportions. So amazing in fact that it’s produced yet another variation of that RPG fear of mine: a simple question of whether I will have the time to play through as all the different races to fully experience all the variation in the titular ‘origin stories’ this game has to offer, not to mention going through all the DLC… and then there’s still that Mass Effect 2 second playthrough I’ve been meaning to get through continuing to tease and tempt me in the background.

I adore a great story and the experience of a quality game. I love being transported into that fictional world, becoming as one with my on-screen character. I get disappointed when game stories are terrible, akin to awful Hollywood movies all about explosions and visuals without even a hint of a soul in sight. A soul, you ask? In a game? Perhaps I do have unrealistically high expectations of video games and am often left pondering their true power as a medium, but then something like DA:O shows up with not only a soul, but also a heart in the form of its characters and an entire in-game history to be studied.

And I mean studied, too. Given the number of codex entries in the game, even dwarfing that of Mass Effect, I couldn’t help but realise that this was the digital equivalent of Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Indeed, the main story and Darkspawn enemies are reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, but it’s how all those individual story elements and themes are brought together for Dragon Age – the races, the mythology, the history; the way it all collides and the conflict caused as a result – which has really touched me. Every single aspect of the game comes with its own explanation and backstory where discussions on racism and discrimination (both across as well as within races), religion, and class are all presented from both sides of the coin and presented in the form of difficult decisions accompanied with much moral conflict, with it being up left solely up to the player which path they wish to choose. As a result not only has my faith in quality RPGs been restored, so too has my belief that the medium can continue to achieve an unmatched form of emotional power.

The relationships you form with your recruited allies is incredible thanks to excellent voice acting, with the conversations and interaction between all the 3-plus-yourself combinations of party members a particular standout. Taking a break in-between quests at your party camp not only offers a reprieve from the often-difficult but rewarding combat itself but also serves as the perfect opportunity to get to know the characters in the game. Even non-playable characters possess charm and presence, my particular favourites being Wade the armourer and his impatient shop-assistant in Denerim. There is a deep sense of attachment in DA:O which improves on what was offered in Mass Effect 1, but is sadly missing in Mass Effect 2 as the latter game favoured action setpieces ahead of the original’s purer RPG character development elements. Not to say that ME2 is lacking story and character-wise, but playing it after DA:O I do feel as if ME2’s characters and their motivations weren’t as well-defined or expanded upon as they could have been.

Dragon Age Origins is the kind of game where pictures, or in this case screenshots, cannot do justice to the content on offer. The impact it’s had on me is really something I didn’t expect, and never have I felt so touched in a video game as during the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest when the Guardian revealed the very essences of my character and those of my party, in particular, Leliana. An Orlesian bard who had placed her complete faith in the Chantry – i.e. a female songstress who had given up a shadowy past to become a devout believer of the Maker, the game’s representation of the Judaeo-Christian God and its delivery through Catholicism – and being told that her faith was misguided, deluded and selfish, was an incredibly powerful and almost soul-destroying moment. It was also the instant when I understood how deep this game really was.

Similarly with the game’s choices, never before have I come across a title which has really nailed the idea of consequence and regret. Fallout 3 almost did it to me when Dogmeat died and I felt compelled to load up my last save game and lose several hours of play just so he could live again, and also when Jericho was finished off after we were ambushed in the Wasteland by multiple albino radscorpions, but ultimately it was too personal and individual a game in that everything I did essentially only affected myself and my own feelings and style of play. Mass Effect 2’s imported files from the first game offered little more than brief cameos of the outcomes of my actions in the first game as the sequel focused mainly on the new story. In both cases there was no tangible sense of dwelling on and acknowledging that a mistake had been made if or when the repercussions came back to haunt me.

By the end of my first playthrough as a ‘good’ character I had become so attached to my party members that all of my choices were based entirely on a sense of responsibility which had slowly evolved over the course of the game, whereas the second time round in being a ‘bad’ character my poor and inconsiderate decisions led to Leliana and Alistair leaving in disgust, several others rebelling, and me greatly regretting the course of my actions. To compare it to Mass Effect, these harsh consequences were no doubt inspired by the confrontation with Wrex in ME1, but even considering the finale of ME2 where the lives of your crew were at stake, there was never that fear throughout the game that you could hurt or offend someone so irreversibly that they would hold a grudge against you for good. In other words, being responsible for lives being lost is one thing. Being responsible for betraying someone you had become attached to while they still lived is quite another.

For a game to make me believe in the fantasy and to then make me feel something from it is a rarity. My choices were hardly ever beneficial for everyone concerned, and there were many occasions where I wish I had said or done things differently because of the consequences that followed. That fear of playing an intimidatingly large RPG has translated into a fear of hurting a character’s feelings, and it is a credit to the game that multiple playthroughs as different races produces a different experience as, for instance, background characters encountered in previously end up being your close friends the next time you encounter them, completely changing the context of your actions. To be drawn to the story and the characters so much that choice becomes an emotional effort rather than a curious novelty of the game is Dragon Age Origins’ greatest strength, leaving me with yet another important decision: determining when next to dedicate the time to play through it again, just to see what other outcomes and ramifications are on offer.

George Clooney regularly plays that guy many of us secretly wish we were: suave, well-groomed, handsome, charismatic, confident – in other words, the Oceans Eleven Clooney – or for that matter, simply that general image we have of George Clooney with those aforementioned qualities, devoid of any discernible weaknesses or personality flaws. Certainly he has also played roles where he is paranoid,  troubled, even ‘kooky’, but regardless of the odd exception which has seen him gaining weight or growing a beard for certain parts, there’s that marked disconnection between the audience and him and his characters – where its particularly difficult to even picture him wearing anything other than a suit or even just with a different hairstyle. In fact I’ve often wondered whether he’s been ‘doing a Hugh Grant’ this whole time by simply playing himself in most of his parts – where the on-screen Clooney is almost inseparable from his celebrity persona.

In Up in the Air it comes as no surprise when he initially appears to fit the bill again – a sharply dressed, handsome, confident, silver-tongued devil. But as we delve deeper into this character of Ryan Bingham – a ‘corporate downsizing expert’ who has prioritised professionalism and self preservation above all else and has micromanaged to a clockwork efficiency every little last detail of his working life spent mainly at airports and within planes and hotel rooms and who is, as a result, completely detached from remorse and emotional reality – we see something we haven’t seen before; the polar opposite of what George Clooney stands for and what that overall image of George Clooney is. A vulnerable human being.

Bingham comes across as very similar to the character of Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking, also directed by Jason Reitman, the former a professional firer of people with zero empathy and the latter a pro-tobacco spokesperson, the both of them unscrupulous champions of capitalism who we ought to really hate but somehow, through those innate snake-like charms of theirs, manage to win us over with a surprising likeability. The main difference between them is that in Up in the Air we catch a glimpse of the life Bingham has left behind and the pain caused by the ramifications of his choices, concealed behind that all-too-familiar smiling Clooney exterior.

This is a film many of us can relate to. It deals with the pursuit of a career and the security of a salary versus the dreams that may not pay off and which we may well never achieve. It explores the trade-off between excelling in what you need to do and not doing the best you can in what you want to do, and vice-versa. We are confronted with that awful fear in the back our minds that there is an extremely high probability that our lives will probably not turn out the way we wished, and how powerless we are to truly prevent ourselves from harm. We see human fragility in the face of love and pride, where a compromise needs to be made and where something usually needs to be sacrificed.

All of these worries are present in the characters in Up in the Air: dreamers and cynics, sometimes a bit of both. Bingham’s love interest in the film, Alex, shares the almost exact same lifestyle but ends up affecting him profoundly. The young hotshot Natalie Keener believes in true love and the importance of seeking it, refusing to even imagine life without it and disagreeing with Bingham’s outlook and the emotionless prerequisites of the horrible nature of their work. These characters impart their beliefs on one another, but the one who ‘learns’ the most from it is Ryan Bingham who, as a downsizer whose life philosophy all along has been to reduce the load of his own emotional baggage while reaching his life target of 50 million frequent flyer miles, eventually comes to terms with the harsh reality that he has, consequently, made redundant his own opportunities of truly living. The scene where he is required to give a potential future brother-in-law advice on the importance of marriage – a decision he has up until then personally staunchly opposed – exposes a hypocrisy he can’t help but self-deprecatingly acknowledge and yet, through this, we feel a strange empathy for him, a character who is seemingly heartless, and see how even the most rock-hard stubbornness can still be swayed. Bingham is heartbroken in the end, but the fact that his heart was able to be broken at all really solidifies his character.

And that’s what really got me in this movie. Far from being depressing, there is a hope that’s revealed through Ryan Bingham: the moment he accepts the flaws of his own beliefs and comes to terms with the pure fact that life cannot be lived alone coincides with the audience’s discovery that, instead of constantly being that guy we wanted to be, this time round George Clooney is playing the guy who kind of reminds us of ourselves. We might not have that exact same external charm or the trademark grey hair or display such confidence in public speaking but inside, we all feel the same things, and that’s what makes Up in the Air hit home so convincingly and accessibly on a human level.

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Clint Eastwood directed films, for me, come in two categories: his best films such as Unforgiven, Gran Turino, and Letters from Iwo Jima are amazingly sentimental, whilst his worst ones suffer from, and this might be a little harsh, extreme emotional manipulation – take the ending of Million Dollar Baby, the overacting in Mystic River, and pretty much the entirety of Changeling for instance, the latter category of which I consider to feature several of the most overrated movies of recent times. So then along comes Invictus, a drama about the 1995 South African Rugby Union World Cup winning team and Nelson Mandela’s input in using the sport to unite a divided nation, which not only throws my two category theory out the window, it also convinces me that Eastwood is capable of achieving something in-between: Mediocrity.

The problem with Invictus is that, unlike many sports films that have come before it, it doesn’t focus just on the sport or the sporting-related drama. It tries to bring together Mandela’s election victory, the man himself and the inspiration he found in prison through the poem the film is named after, the state of apartheid and class in South Africa at the time, as well as the events of the rugby tournament without really concentrating enough on any of the individual elements. It is, in other words, the film equivalent of gathering too many eggs into the one basket or, if you will, a film which tries to tackle much more than it can really handle.

Invictus does have its moments. Morgan Freeman is excellent and the character of Mandela is portrayed affectionately and sensibly with hints of his humanity, humour, and his own family problems amidst the enormity of the task he faced. There is a nice scene where the Springboks spend a day with soccer-loving children in a poor community and the only black player on the team is mobbed. But sadly the story suffers mainly through the lack of any strong leading characters apart from Mandela: Matt Damon’s Francois Pienaar who, as the team captain and the main focus on the sporting aspect of the film, is at the end of the day just a rugby player after all, and whilst there are supporting characters in the form of Mandela’s bodyguards and personal assistants while New Zealand’s Jonah Lomu is represented as the closest “bad guy” character to be found in the movie, none of them are explored enough to make the event feel as significant as it ought to have been. The rest of the cast act only as a means of connecting the few major characters together – the Springboks team in particular have very little to offer apart from uttering filler-speak and nodding their heads in agreement or shaking them in disapproval - and Pienaar’s and Mandela’s families contribute only in speaking minor lines of exposition and shouting in excitement at the final whistle.

The fairytale simply works better as a moment in history documented through word and memory than as a film, which is surprising given that, even without any liberties taken with the actual facts of the tournament as demonstrated in many of the other movies in the genre where last minute goals or touchdowns or home runs or three pointers are scored, the Springbok’s did really win the World Cup as underdogs and they did actually score a last minute drop goal in extra time in the Final and yet none of this hits home as anything remotely exciting. Unfortunately Eastwood has a deliberately slow style which is simply not suited to a story of Mandela as well as a story about a sporting miracle at the same time, when clearly he does not know how to capture the excitement of sport never mind a code of football alien and peculiar to many Americans and the mainstream audience granted how scrum shots are over-elaborated on and drop goals are excruciatingly slow-mo’d. As to the bigger question of whether South Africa’s problems improved as a result of the team’s victory, the film teases you by alluding to it through a close-up of black and white hands on the trophy and spliced-together footage of a celebrating nation but does not expand on what happened next, and what we are left with is an attempt at capturing the state of a country during a single sporting moment when the moment is better felt and experienced and almost impossible to truly capture on screen.

It is by no means a terrible film. Certainly nowhere near as awful or as ridiculous as my favourite bad sports movie Victory/Escape to Victory – starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, members of the England 1966 World Cup (soccer) winning squad, where English and American prisoners of war  in WWII (plus Pele) play the Nazis and win not only the final match but also their freedom. There is however a perplexing and inappropriate scene in Invictus near the end where a South African Airlines plane flies over the stadium to insinuate an act of terror which has no place whatsoever in this movie. Ultimately though we are merely left with a Mandela film which would have been better had it just focused on Nelson Mandela and where the rugby didn’t get in the way, or otherwise a rugby story better left as perhaps a feature article or a story told in a pub or in a school PE class. Fans of the sport and those interested in the former South African president will likely be left disappointed with a final product akin to that of Ang Lee directing Hulk; a talented director better suited to emotional pieces taking on a project that aims for an ambitious goal but skews the kick wide of the mark. And regardless of what the critics say, I still think Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Changeling were much worse than this.

The winner will receive a Will Ooi-autographed copy of a picture of Jack Nicholson holding a picture of Heath Ledger, being asked for an autograph