I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together

Monique

Posted on Sun 8 Jun 2008 by Monique under Design , Other .
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Chris and JillThey’re partners. At first glance, they’re nothing more. But by the second half of the disc you realize there’s something deeper. I’m talking about Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine; Alyx Vance and Gordon Freeman; Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan.

They’re all epic pairings on their own right, and not just for the romantics—they’re pairings of friendship, loyalty, and camaraderie. Live and die together relationships, with fights until the bloody end. And the best part? They’re all told differently and they all go different places with different endings.

Chris and Jill’s story began together in Raccoon City. An average mid-west town, it had a special force team known as S.T.A.R.S. There the two presumably met, working together on the team in their specific roles for years prior. Resident Evil purposefully uses the uncertainty of this back-story to allow the player to inject their own assumptions into the mix, giving depth to them and their future interactions. The first time a gamer sees Chris and Jill, they’ve landed in the Arkalay Mountains just outside of Raccoon City in the dead of night. They find a fellow chopper down. Quickly, they discover the team members inside are dead.

Then what killed their team members comes for them. Suddenly undead dogs with blood dripping from the teeth appear, barreling towards the duo, and the hunt is on. Chris and Jill escape with barely their lives and find themselves barricaded in a giant mansion whose secrets hold horrors worse than the dogs gnawing at the door. Used to house monsters beyond imagine, the Umbrella mansion is teeming with hordes of the undead and a mutated creature called a Tyrant. While the two split up and proceed to fight for their life—and the life of their team—for the duration of the game, their relationship is transforms physical boundaries. Somewhere in the house is Jill and she needs his help. They won’t be leaving without each other, and if one of them is dead, the other is too. They need each other.

Perhaps their relationship is best showcased at the end of the game when the two escape together, resting against each other; comfortable and finally at home. Until the next mission, anyway.

There’s other partners, however. And maybe it’s not zombies they’re fighting, but space aliens. And maybe they’re not Chris and Jill, but Jim and Sarah; two members of the Terran army, fighting a push of angry insurgents on a distant planet on the colony of Mar Sara. Jim is an officer in the army, Sarah’s a Ghost—a special psychic spy, deadly to the core and powerful. She’s almost invincible.

Until she gets betrayed and turns into a monster. Not by Jim, whom she works with—and flirts with constantly—but by Mengsk, another member of the party. By the time Jim arrives to rescue her, it’s too late. She’s become the enemy, a Zerg Queen, and there’s no going back to their witty banter and close moments. Coldly, when Jim says he’s come to save her, she says, “You shouldn’t have.”

Because she’s not Sarah Kerrigan anymore.

And, well, she’ll never be again.

As far as this relationship goes, it’s anyone’s bet. Starcraft 2 will feature both parties, and their interaction has limitless potential with their old best friends, newfound enemies routine. Will she find her humanity again? Will Jim, crushed with bitterness and disgust, continue his fall from glory? Perhaps, as Raynor says in the trailer for the upcoming game, “It’s about damn time.” Yeah, it’s about damn time for us to find out.

Let’s not forget Gordon and Alyx, either. Theirs might be the only overt relationship of all, and it’s not even that opaque. Though the initial story of Half-life 2 gives little expansion to their partnership aside from Alyx saving his life, the episodic features after expand on it. In episode two, Alyx’s father tells them they should do their part to repopulate the planet and Alyx’s sole response is to blush. Alyx hugs Gordon when she finds him, showing their close comfortability with each other. Finally, in the third episode, the Vortigaunts wave the Freeman’s life with hers to save her life, giving them a deeper and more spiritual connection.

Yeah, those two are memorable partners as well.

At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that games can be deep. Really deep, even. Character interaction helps enhanse their depth. These partners aren’t necessarily romantic—though they sure could be, in a different place and time, without the blood and the depth—but they’re human interaction. They’re familiar faces. They’re relationships.

Because when we’re shooting zombies and we’re dodging the bullets and we’re searching for more Vespan Gas, it doesn’t hurt to have a familiar face in such a strange place. It helps orient the gamer, and bring their feelings into the picture.

So if you’re a character designer or a writer, you might want to take note. These three pairs of people are imitations of real life done well–fan favorite characters in fan favorite relationships of fan favorite games. Use them for a base to bounce your conceptions off, and you might just create a successful game.

You might just make its players feel.

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5 Responses to “I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together

June ‘08 Round Table–Updated 06/09 : Man Bytes Blog Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 5:52 am

[...] June 9th — Monique at Write the Game has focuses on romantic partnerships and how they draw the player into the game in I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together [...]

Aaron Says:
June 9th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

Trackback. My site usually doesn’t, for some reason.

June ‘08 Round Table–Updated 06/10 : Man Bytes Blog Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 6:24 am

[...] June 9th — Monique at Write the Game has focuses on romantic partnerships and how they draw the player into the game in I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together [...]

Holding Hands and Kicking Ass « Narrative Design Portfolio of Courtney Keene Says:
June 12th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

[...] I Wanna Kill Zombies and Aliens Together, by Girls Don’t Game author Monique. [...]

n00bie51 Says:
June 16th, 2008 at 6:49 am

I’m sorry to nit-pick, but Jim Raynor isn’t the one who says “Hell, it’s about time” in the announcement trailer. It’s a different character named Tychus Findlay, ex-convict Marine. :D

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