Ka-Boom
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #185. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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What does digital grass feel like?
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There’s a bit right near the end of Avowed where you’re moving through a dungeon but the path ahead is blocked. “There must be another way nearby,” says one companion. Turning very slightly to the left, you see a big cracked wall with two conspicuously placed red barrels in front of them. You explode the barrels. The way is no longer blocked.
I truly, genuinely, do not think I have ever been as frustrated with a videogame in my life.
Admittedly, I had already lost all my patience with the game’s resource system – and look, not everyone seems to be having this problem, and a lot of people like the game and I’m happy for them. I considered not writing this, because I feel like I’m slowly becoming the guy who didn’t like any of the big releases.
But, God, I feel like I’m slowly becoming the guy who didn’t like any of the big releases. And it’s because they’ve all got fucking blocked paths with conspicuously placed red barrels in front of them. What is this doing for me? Why am I spending any fraction of my one wild and precious life on earth making a slight turn and clicking a button before being allowed to progress?
Don’t get me wrong: I like friction. I think about this piece by Austin Walker conservatively three times a week. But come on, man! Is a collapsed tunnel with an openable one directly next to it an interesting speed bump? Is it even a speed bump at all, or is it a pothole?
There’s that infamous Tumblr post: The text says the curtains were blue, your English teacher says this reflects the character’s immense depression, but what the author meant is “the curtains were fucking blue.” Of course we reject this concept: the author mentioned the curtain colour for a reason, and if they didn’t, you can still take symbolism from it.
But I’ve mentioned this post in this column before, to ask if the climbable points in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth are just fucking yellow. And I’m asking the same question again of Avowed, but with more desperation: what is this adding to your story? What is this saying, thematically? How is it enriching my experience?
I can tell you what I take from it: this world was made for you. Any small inconvenience also has a built-in solution placed right next to it. You’re so special! Don’t you feel powerful?
This is the exact same shit that ruined Starfield, but was I wrong for wanting more from Obsidian? Fallout: New Vegas was many people’s introduction to actually interesting player choices, myself included. Pentiment is a game about how the weight of history is inescapable. And Avowed tries to play in a similar space; you exist under empire, and that context haunts you for all the game’s most interesting parts.
I keep seeing people share bits of the game that are genuinely good. It’s gorgeous! You have no idea what impact your actions are going to have on the world because you are a cog in a fascist machine! You can straight up let a guy kill you to resurrect god!
But at the end of the day, whenever you have an obstacle in your way, you can always glance around and find a way out of it. And not only am I sick of it, it blows up everything else like a couple of well-placed red barrels. It’s ugly. It makes the world seem made for you. And it undermines the unique story by being just like every other videogame in existence.
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Jay Castello is a freelance writer covering games and internet culture. If they’re not down a research rabbit hole you’ll probably find them taking bad photographs in the woods.
