Geekly Speaking About…“The Resonance of Commander Shepard”

Meet my Commanders Shepard! (c) Bioware

Thanks to a confluence of events, I finally finished playing the original Mass Effect as both a male and female Commander Shepard in July… which means it’s podcast time! After a bit of juggling and some technical difficulties, I sat down to check in with co-editor Jill Pullara, and writers Jonathan Cherlin and Lowell Greenblatt on how their summer has been going, to do a review of an indie game called Resonance, and to answer a very important question which we asked previously: Does the gender of your Commander Shepard really have an influence on how you play the game? Show notes after the jump.

• My modus operandi regarding gigantic geek blockbuster movies is to maybe see a trailer or two and then completely attempt to avoid any sneak peeks, exclusives, or interviews. This is a technique that has mostly served me well ever since I was pleasantly overjoyed by the awesome that was the 2000 X-Men movie. So, it came as a complete surprise to me that indeed, a lot of the scenes in both Iron Man and Iron Man 2 were improvised. As for Don Cheadle being uncomfortable with it, you couldn’t tell from the interview he gave to MTV News (third video down). Then again, he’s an actor; he could have just been polite for the cameras.
• Just in case you missed it, Lowell’s review of The Amazing Spider-Man can be found here.
• For those of you who might not remember, Sliding Doors was a movie which came out in 1998 starring Gwyneth Paltrow where a single event in her life (whether or not she catches a train in London) has two different effects on the rest of her life. Both of these universes are shown on the screen happening at the same time. In contrast, the Buffy episode in question is called “Normal Again.”
• As for “Awake,” you can indeed catch all 13 episodes on Hulu. Originally broadcast on NBC, the star of the show is Jason Isaacs (aka Lucius Malfoy of the Harry Potter films and the voice of Admiral Zhao from “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”) Sadly, the show was doomed with declining ratings after a promising start, despite its being nominated for a “Best Writing in a Drama Series” for the pilot episode.
• With regards to Heavy Rain and its fatherhood theme, I leave it to Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade who wrote two years ago:
  

  If you’re a parent, (especially a Dad) this game can be pretty difficult to play at times. In fact I’m curious if people who don’t have kids will end up getting as much out of it. I don’t know if it’s an 89.85%, or a 9.7 out of 10. What I do know is that after a late night playing it, I sneak into my son’s room and hug him before I go to bed.

  Of course, your own mileage—especially your own relationship with your father and/or your kids—may vary.

• As the rest of this segment referencing “The Commander Shepard Challenge” contains some spoilers for the entire Mass Effect video game series, I humbly leave this video as a reminder of common spoiler etiquette:
  
  
  Note: This means that under these terms of etiquette, it’s okay to spoil the story behind the first two installments but not the third. However, since I’m still playing ME2, I humbly ask that you not spoil that one for me.
• Shortly after we recorded this podcast, the idea of allowing a female character choice in modern first-person shooter games was discussed on The Escapist in a brilliant video called “Let’s End the FPS Sausage-fest” by Jim Sterling. I am so very, very glad that more people are continuing to have this discussion; here’s hoping we can come to a good and sane consensus.
• Here’s Kotaku on the footage in question from next year’s Tomb Raider, which was largely seen in the “Crossroads” trailer which was shown at E3 this year. First, the commentary from executive producer Ron Rosenberg regarding the trope of character growth for female characters coming about as a result of sexual assault, and later studio head Darrell Gallagher’s retraction of that statement two days later. Personally speaking, when the bad guy pulls a bound Croft towards him and the camera angle moves overhead to reveal his head turning towards her neck? Looks like attempted sexual assault to me. (Unless it’s revealed later in the game that the dude’s a vampire and is hungry.)
• Incidentally speaking, I wanted to link to the TV Tropes page regarding said trope and found out that because the site uses Google Adsense and Google doesn’t allow discussions about rape on sites using that service, the site’s admin Fast Eddie has decided that all rape tropes don’t exist on his site. Luckily, the good people at the Geek Feminism Wiki were able to copy over all the entries; sadly, they need lots of fixing up. Won’t you lend a hand?
• Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency is the intrepid lady whose Kickstarter campaign to raise money to do a video series deconstructing tropes about women in the video game culture resulted in her being unfairly attacked by some of the same gamers she wished to reach with her series. I remember being very disgusted when I first read about this—and sad because I was too poor to contribute to her campaign—and just skimming through the comments on the news posts on other sites about the story makes me livid all over again.
• Possibly a humble-brag, but in the Facebook comments to the Jimquisition video linked above, I did continue to have this discussion; I will also say that it’s not an easy conversation for me to have because of how strongly I feel about it. But I must forge on.
• We try not to spoil any of the puzzles in Resonance, but just to warn you, there is definitely a spoiler for one or two things.
• I mostly agree with everything that’s said in this Cracked.com article on what video games get “right” about gaming in general, and most definitely #5 which relates to musical cues.

Resonance
(Actually, a 4.5)
Created by Vince Twelve
Designed by Vince Twelve
Published by Wadjet Eye Games
Starring Edward Bauer, Sarah Elmaleh, Logan Cunningham and Daryl Lathon
Rating: Appropriate for teens and older

From l to r: Ray, Anna, Ed, and Detective Bennet must race against time to save the world... and you can help!

Official Blurb: When a brilliant particle physicist dies unexpectedly, the race is on to secure his terrible new technology before it falls into the wrong hands. The lives of four playable characters become entangled as they fight against the clock to find the dead scientist’s secret vault. The suspicions they harbor, the memories they guard, the connections they share—all will converge as these four ordinary people work together to prevent a potentially cataclysmic disaster.

Pros: Great storytelling and narrative, plot twists, characterization, musical score, level of challenge to player, art design
Cons: Puzzles can be unintuitive, differences in opinion on voice acting

Jonathan: Resonance has wonderful art design, music, and mostly solid game design. The game design is spotty in some places, in the sense that either you’re right on the dot of what you’re supposed to be doing, or you have no clue at all. It would have helped if there was something in place that told you that you were close. My favorite parts of the game, the survival-horror geek I am, were playing through Anna’s dreams. Truly disturbing game design, imagery, and sound design. Absolute brilliance, especially considering this is a low-budget game. Overall Resonance does what the title suggests…it resonates with you.

Jill: Resonance is a fantastic throwback to the great adventure games of gaming’s past, with beautiful art deign and retro graphics that are executed so perfectly you’d think it was made in the early ‘90s—which, in this case, is a good thing! Of course, with that comes the aches and pains that every good adventure game: the puzzles can be hard to solve, and hard to find, the solution often being the one thing you didn’t try, or the one person you didn’t think to click on. Some may call it unintuitive, but I call it old school. But the hard (and admittedly sometimes oblique) puzzles are worth it for the narrative presented, with compelling characters you come to care about, and a twist that you may not see coming. The most interesting aspect of the game, for me, is being able to switch between four different player characters, each with their own distinct voice. It would be remiss of me to not mention the music and sound design—beyond just adequate, the sound design and music do exactly what they’re supposed to do: draw you in, understand tone, and heighten the emotion of a scene. I hadn’t been as terrified of my character dying since Clock Tower’s Scissor Man was chasing me through a mansion as I desperately looked for a place to hide. Any fan of old school adventure games will enjoy this game, though gamers unfamiliar with the genre will have some issues with the interface and puzzle-solving. While it’s no King’s Quest VI or Day of the Tentacle, Resonance certainly belongs alongside I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.