Shooter Deconstruction Idea

This is probably a stupid topic, but I just wanted to share my own idea.

I am thinking about creating a story that is essentially a deconstruction of the shooter genre of video games, with the first part deconstructing the military style, the second part deconstruction the horror style, and the third part deconstructing the sci-fi style.

Do you guys have any ideas as to how this could work?

I kinda do elements of that already, specifically in relation to Space Marine type stuff. And I do it through Reality Ensues. Chiefly, the "space marines" seen in my books have to use real tactics and not rely upon invincible armor or impossible guns. Mistakes don't create a saving throw situation, they can get people killed, things destroyed, objectives failed. Also, those same "space marines" happen to be a lot more personable than the cardboard cutouts traditional depictions make them out to be.

Of course, that philosophy gets kicked right out the door if I find a scene I like better or is more awesome or makes for better storytelling. (Though on many of those I sometimes try to blend in the increased realism with what I'd rather have over a purely realistic scene. A compromise scenario you could say.)

I'll just say this, the easiest way to pull a deconstruction of the shooter genre is simply make people characters and show the cliches for what they are. Don't make a Sergeant Rock character do something typical of the trope and then have him get killed for it to show the situation is the wrong way to go about a shooter, have him be his own person and have it interact in a way that makes the reader/viewer/player go "This is how it should have been done!".

I see.

So for example, the main character (who is also a Rei Ayanami Expy ) is meant to be a deconstruction of the typical stoic and silent protagonist that follows orders willingly in these sorts of games. How could that be done?

Strictly speaking, that's more of a reconstruction.

(Which I also prefer, but isn't what the OP is writing).

I think this sounds interesting. There's a lot of morally-suspect self-aggrandizing macho bullshit bound up in shooters that I'd quite like to see someone take a hammer to. I agree that Major Tom's sounds more like a reconstruction.

Doing a proper deconstruction takes effort and an understanding of the subject on a sociopolitical level, but to get started, I reckon this formula works well for 'instant deconstruction':

1. List the stupidest, most egregious trope abuses.

2. Take those ideas to the most horrific possible logical extreme, in terms of both causes and consequences.

So for your example, the But Thou Must! Heroic Mime, spell out the negative implications as far as possible. She could be literally mute as a result of emotional trauma or physical disfigurement, perhaps inflicted in order to make her a 'better' obedient soldier. She has no choice about her actions, which involve killing, so to make things worse, let's say she doesn't want to kill people, but for whatever reason (a Restraining Bolt seems like a good choice), she has to. She's not even able to express her own desires, and may have forced herself to believe she doesn't have them. She might also have some kind of psychological compulsion to obey, which potentially gets into all kinds of messed up masochistic dominance stuff, so that's nice too.

Of course a more moderate deconstruction could involve taking the ideas to a logical extreme but NOT the most horrific one possible. But why settle for half-measures? A deconstruction is a form of 'criticism', so you might as well make the strongest possible (i.e. most negative) 'case'.

edited 28th Nov '12 9:46:26 AM by Kesteven

Those all sound like very good ideas. Considering that in my story, the hero (who is actually male; think a Gender Flip of Rei) was artificially created, so that could lead to some more implications.

Also, the secondary hero is a Child Soldier of 14 years old, and the villain desperately wants to to good and be a hero, when all he is doing is making things far worse. Any tips on deconstruction there?

edited 28th Nov '12 1:59:50 PM by LDragon2

I strongly disagree with this perspective, although I don't have time right now to elaborate on why.

Dragon, those characters seem pretty different from typical shooter protagonists, so it would be pretty hard to use them in a straight deconstruction.

I made the main hero a gender flip of the aforementioned character, because when you boil it down, that is essentially what most faceless FPS protagonists are; silent, complicit in orders, and with little emotion.

As for the Child Soldier, that is sort of a dig on the way games are headed now, in that we are desperate to not look kiddy, so we make most of our franchises Darker and Edgier. In this case, the secondary hero is basically a dig at all of those people who keep saying that franchises like Pokemon and Mario need to step it up and appeal to an older generation.

As for the villain, think of him as like the developer. He is the one who is giving the orders to the heroes, most of which involve killing stuff, because that is what he believes will give him the most praise and end the conflict quickly. As it goes on however, he suddenly realizes that his actions aren't helping in the slightest.

Using Save Scumming as a story element could make for an intriguing story. What's the point of self-preservation when you can just skip back to your last good decision?

Consider how the character would feel:

• Resurrection Sickness, in most shooters you see your character's death. Imagine living and re-living the same death. Coupled with mission control being snarky "Okay hero, when the pin is pulled Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend."

• Cloning Blues

Consider the look of the 'Verse:

• the "Hero" trained on Nerf-looking guns and maybe a Nonuniform Uniform, perhaps with bright colors? He now wears something in the black and grey pallet and carries the ISO standard metal BFG.

• From light and soft kidde to dark and edgy "modern warfare" style? Consider the look of Star Trek TNG vs. Babylon 5. Have the Crystal Spires and Togas style landscape give way a to blasted used future. As the war drags on, it gets cheaper to replace those fancy buildings with blocky Brutalist architecture style buildings. (Brutalist architecture's most famous figure was Ernő Goldfinger, the namesake of the James Bond villan).

Consider a subversion of the standard speech to the hero that began most 80's and 90's games. Most of the time they said how wonderful the federation is supposed to be and how the hero is defending against the empire. That whole "we're defending freedom, peace and love" bit. The villain points out that the hero is a child soldier clone, armed with weapons made by the lowest bidder (said low baller might have even made the hero). In order to defend peace and love the hero will wear a bland uniform, a restraining bolt and be treated with all the respect someone would give a toaster.

edited 1st Dec '12 2:55:53 AM by TairaMai

That respawn idea actually sounds quite interesting.

I was thinking that maybe, in the third part, since regular soldiers have things like PTSD and the like, in addition to their own morality, the military resorts to using clones, as they feel that they wouldn't suffer any of that......except as they discover, they do.

And yes, Darker and Edgier is one of the tropes I plan to deconstruct, as it frustrates me that the industry thinks that more realistic is the way we need to go. Here, at first, the world is not unlike, say Pokemon, complete with cute critters, trainers, the like. But as the war goes on, all the color begins to be stripped away, until there is nothing but brown everywhere, and the creatures are now treated as nothing but target practice for their "far superior" weaponry.

edited 1st Dec '12 2:55:01 AM by LDragon2

And have the critters try to make peace. The villain claims that they couldn't be understood, but General Ripper did understand, he just didn't give a frack.

I even plan to have the military attempt to turn them into bio-weapons in the second part, as they are only looking at their combat skills.

Needless to say, it doesn't go well. However, while they suddenly look terrifying, they still don't want to cause any harm. It is just that the military has designated them as enemies.

One possibility that occurs to me is to portray the potential vulnerability of relying on "friend-or-foe" targetting systems - the sorts of systems that we might see identifying "enemies" and "allies" in a game. Who says that all of the people marked in red really are "bad guys", and not just attempting to defend themselves from the guy tearing through their friends and families?

I could also see someone hacking into the targetting system, using it to manipulate soldiers used to relying on its information. If said soldiers have become very complacent in its infallibility, they might even be induced to kill their own superiors or each other.

Wow, that is quite a disturbing idea.....I like it.

Also, a HUD that the characters actually wear would also allow the higher ups to see their every move. Maybe this is how they force the soldiers to do these acts.

^^ Wasn't that already done albeit badly in Haze?

Kind of, though it was mainly a drug, and not the HUD that affected them.

I would want to make it the controller who is doing that.

I don't know, I don't think that I've played it (or even know much about it beyond its existence). A quick look at the page linked-to does seem to support something to that effect, as L Dragon 2 says, but I suspect that there's yet room for further exploration of the concept - perhaps even more so without the "drugs made them do it" explanation: here it's more a matter of trained obedience and over-reliance, as I imagine it.

The child soldier thing seems like it could work as a dig against the player demographic somehow, given that even though shooters are popular across the board they do have a reputation for being the domain of obnoxious early teens. And college douchebros.

Also yeah, thinking about it I was probably just talking bullshit about the criticism thing. I think what I was probably getting at is that if there's a choice between equally logical 'consequences' where one is horrible and one isn't, the horrible one has more impact and is in that regard a better way of highlighting the point. But overdoing it leads to obfuscating the point and falling into Darker and Edgier instead of deconstruction.

I'd have mission control start to sound like the typical shooter/80's game voice then "devolve" into a mix of obnoxious teen and college douchebro. Especially when the "hero" loses or tries to take a third option

^ That would be beyond unbelievably unprofessional if the setting calls for mission control to actually be part of an organized military.

Put it this way, if you behaved like that in the Army while overseeing a combat patrol, you'd instantly get an Article 15 among other charges once found out by your superiors. Regardless if the mission was successful or had zero casualties. Unprofessional behavior like that from command and control facilities is unacceptable.

Yeah, but it's at least conceivably possible with the right situation. Perhaps it's just easier to clone bros and set them loose than train them? Like the whole military system is just so completely fucked that all they can do is keep firing bro-clones into whatever positions need filling and hope the edifice somehow holds together. Or it's run by some kind of demented AI or general that either doesn't care about qualifications or actively enjoys the chaos.

edited 2nd Dec '12 8:16:16 AM by Kesteven

Yeah they're called college fratboys acting like war is a game. Every military on Earth (and maybe even those not of) beats that shit out of you.

Even mercenary orgs trend towards professionalism. Why would anybody pay you to do Soldier-something-X if you act like a bunch of 13 year olds? Actual 13 year old soldiers would behave better than you!

edited 2nd Dec '12 8:58:15 AM by MajorTom

Yeah, I am not going to do that. If anything, the head of the military here is going to be genuinely trying to do good and save lives. Unfortunately, the only way he knows how to is by killing.

This comes to a head at the end, where the enemies have taken their last stand in a small city. The commander orders an immediate assault, as he believes that this will end it. It is only after they have wiped nearly every single person in the city out that they come across a lost transmission from them. Turns out, they were trying to work out a diplomatic solution. The military just overreacted.

Kind of like how in most shooters, the solutions to any conflict is more death and destruction without giving a second thought.