{"id":49380,"date":"2020-03-05T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=49380"},"modified":"2020-03-05T13:05:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T18:05:45","slug":"rage-2-part-7-mutant-bash-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=49380","title":{"rendered":"Rage 2 Part 7: Mutant Bash TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

We need to become champions in two different “sports” so we can gain access to the Winner’s Club so we can get in to see Klegg Clayton so we can bug his computer so we can recover the tank we need for Project Dagger so we can you get the idea<\/em>. In the last entry we covered the car race. This time we need to get through the arena fight game show, which is called…<\/p>\n

Mutant Bash TV<\/h3>\n

Yes, they built this massive TV studio \/ arena, but what do they eat? I'm kidding. I really don't want to know.<\/div>
Yes, they built this massive TV studio \/ arena, but what do they eat? I'm kidding. I really don't want to know.<\/div><\/p>\n

The total non-bandit population of the wasteland is less than 200 people, and as far as we can see roughly zero percent of them own televisions. Who watches television in this world? Why does anyone bother? How can anyone sell televised advertising in a world with no companies, no brands, and no audience? Mutant Bash TV is a massive complex set with moving walls, traps, and elevators. How does anyone pay for such extravagance in a world where people wear rags and eat vermin? Given that mutants are a serious problem that threatens this tiny population, it must require a ridiculous portion of their GDP just to keep the lights on and the set stocked with live mutants.<\/p>\n

I’m not bringing this up because I want the writer to fill in all of these supposed plot holes. It’s fine. This world is silly, and that’s okay. My problem is that all of the above questions are a natural setup for jokes<\/b>, but the game never tries to tell any. This looks like another instance of The Missing Joke I talked about in the previous entry. It’s not wrong<\/em>, it’s just a missed opportunity to have some fun. Again, all we need is some lampshading.<\/p>\n

Promoter: Good show, kid. Makes me wish people owned televisions. <\/p>\n

Old janitor that greets you in passing as you exit the arena: Don’t get too cocky kid. Killin’ those mutants isn’t half as hard as catching them and getting them dressed up for the show.<\/p>\n

Guy who sells you stuff for the tokens you win in the arena: I wonder what people in the Old World killed on their TV shows. They didn’t have mutants. Musta been boring.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t need to be laugh-out-loud funny. You just need to have the characters in on the joke so the world feels playful and intentionally silly rather than lazy and nonsensical. <\/p>\n

Desdemonya Cold<\/h3>\n

Yes, she's talking about BLOOD. Click if you have a high cringe tolerance and you want to see the intro.<\/div><\/a>
Yes, she's talking about BLOOD. Click if you have a high cringe tolerance and you want to see the intro.<\/div><\/p>\n

Mutant Bash TV is hosted by Desdemonya Cold. Like Chaz, she gets a very long cutscene introduction that is just the same quasi-joke told over and over for 2 minutes. She’s an old woman with a quasi-French accent, who dresses like an old-timey prostitute and who gets off on murder. She’s got a languid delivery that doesn’t do her jokeless dialog any favors. Even if this was funny, this is the wrong style of comedy for this game.<\/p>\n

The marketing sold this game as an irreverent and frantic adventure comedy like you’d find in a Saints Row<\/i> title. Chaz feels like he’s going for slapstick screwball comedy like a Mel Brooks movie. This stuff with Desdemonya is basically camp<\/a>, and veers very close to being abject art<\/a>. These are actually three very different forms of comedy and they do not mix. You can’t take a scene from Ant Man<\/a>, a scene from Spaceballs<\/a>, and a scene from Pink Flamingos<\/a>, and expect them to fit together into a coherent work. You need to pick a style of comedy and stick with it.<\/p>\n

Anime has a certain degree of flexibility and gets away with quite a bit of tonal whiplash<\/a>, but if you’re making a big-budget shooter aimed at western audiences then you need a firm grip on your intended tone and genre. More importantly, camp is a bad fit for Rage for the same reason it was a bad fit for Batman<\/a> in 1997. Your average Rage<\/i> fan probably doesn’t want to see their blood-soaked shooter turn campy any more than the core audience for My Big Fat Greek Wedding<\/i><\/a> wants to see a poe-faced sequel where a Greek cop has to go rogue to kill the mobsters that murdered his wife. Genre boundaries exist for a reason.<\/p>\n

Okay, I won’t claim that you can’t<\/b> make camp work in the context of a AAA shooter. I’ll bet there’s someone out there who could pull it off. But I have to ask:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Do you feel like a Master Ninja Level 100 Writer, ready to take on comedy HARD MODE by embracing a style of comedy that doesn’t suit the material or the audience?<\/li>\n
  2. Is this really the proper tone for a game where the player embodies a military hardass working to protect their home and avenge their slain ?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Before you come up with a protagonist, before you build the world, before you design a single character concept, you need to figure out the tone of the work you’re trying to create<\/b>. That decision impacts everything else, so it needs to be first.<\/p>\n

    Champion!<\/h3>\n

    I get that we're supposed to hate the guy for being a rich jerk, but the game does so much telling and so little showing that I never really cared.<\/div>
    I get that we're supposed to hate the guy for being a rich jerk, but the game does so much telling and so little showing that I never really cared.<\/div><\/p>\n

    Once you’re a famous racer \/ mutant-basher, you can get in to see Klegg Clayton. And here we run into another situation that might be a reference or a coincidence:<\/p>\n

    In Fallout<\/i>, the mayor \/ sheriff of the post-apocalyptic town wants to remove a criminal rival, but they don’t want to use direct violence without evidence. So the sheriff has the player go to the casino and speak to Gizmo to get the evidence.<\/p>\n

    In Rage 2<\/i>, the mayor \/ sheriff of the post-apocalyptic town wants to remove a criminal rival, but they don’t want to use direct violence without evidence. So the sheriff has the player go to the casino and use a gizmoThe object is actually called this in dialog.<\/span> on Clayton’s computer to get the evidence.<\/p>\n

    Is this deliberate? The trope is broad enough that it could be an accident, but if that’s the case then this is a weird coincidence. So maybe the writer did this reference on purpose? But if that’s the case, then the writer is being really subtle.<\/p>\n

    I don’t know. I thought it was odd. Tell me what you think in the comments.<\/p>\n

    In any case, Walker gets in to see Clayton and then puts a gizmo on his computer while Clayton is distracted with a phone callReally? The wasteland has a working mobile phone network? Okay.<\/span>.<\/p>\n

    It turns out Clayton tried to kill us by dropping us into his secret garage sewer where he keeps the tank we need. Convenient!<\/div>
    It turns out Clayton tried to kill us by dropping us into his secret garage sewer where he keeps the tank we need. Convenient!<\/div><\/p>\n

    As you leave, Clayton discovers you’re a spy and tries to kill you with (brace yourself here) waves of goons<\/em>. In the resulting carnage you find the captured Authority tank required to make Project Dagger work.<\/p>\n

    We also learn that Clayton is working for our techno-Satan villain General Cross. Clayton gets away in the confusion.<\/p>\n

    We have one leader left to talk to, and then we’re headed for the finale. We’ll meet the final leader next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We need to become champions in two different “sports” so we can gain access to the Winner’s Club so we can get in to see Klegg Clayton so we can bug his computer so we can recover the tank we need for Project Dagger so we can you get the idea. In the last entry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49380"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49448,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49380\/revisions\/49448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}