There’s an old film fable where Stanley Kubrick commissions a score from the talented composer Alex North for a new film he was working on. Some film about space. Before North was finished with his work, Kubrick showed an early print of the film off to studio executives with placeholder music. Just something out of the public domain; whatever he could dig up. Old music, by guys named Strauss. The end of this story is well known; North's work was discarded, and pieces like Also Sprach Zarathustra and the Blue Danube are instantly associated with Kubrick's epic. Ebert does a fantastic job of summing up just the kind of impact this made on the film:
We are asked in the scene to contemplate the process [a space station docking], to stand in space and watch. We know the music. It proceeds as it must. And so, through a peculiar logic, the space hardware moves slowly because it's keeping the tempo of the waltz.
The undeniable certainty of machines dependent on orbital gravity was a perfect match for the certainty of the Austrian waltz. It fit because that force already has a musical undercurrent, an unwavering consistency and tempo, and pairing it with the Blue Danube only enhanced what was already there.
This isn’t a film blog, so let’s work this back around to games. The brilliant WiiWare Art Style title Orbient builds on these same foundations. As the player slowly glides through space and picks up moons, each new satellite adds its own motif to the music. The music layers together just as the moons layer together, culminating in a deep, majestic symphony. Because the music is designed to line up with the force of nature, putting you in control of the force puts you in control of the music, if only to a small degree. Even that small degree is an extremely empowering feeling, but the control is only as free as the perfect tempo of gravity allows, of course. It’s perfect for a precise, mathematical game like Orbient, but there’s certainly more potential here, and perhaps if someone were to apply the same principles to another force, we might have something cooking. That’s where Flower comes in.
Just as gravity is reliable and certain, the wind is fleeting, unpredictable, and free. Flower does a better job of letting the player ride the wind than any game I have ever played, and as we guide our petals through the landscape, the music takes after this new force, giving us the unbelievable feeling of zooming through an elaborate wind chime. If this was the main aim of the designers at thatgamecompany, they succeeded in spades. The music isn’t strict, it isn’t structured, and nor should it be. Where the majesty of space demands a Strauss waltz, the wind requires a Paganini caprice, and that’s what we get.
Almost as sublime as the music is the visual narrative, and the feeling of bringing vibrant life back to the barren, neglected, brown world. It’s an undeniably uplifting feeling, and if you think far too hard about it, you could interpret it as a very clever statement about the gray and brown “next-gen” world. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought about wanting to change my petals’ course and bringing life back to every dull, dead UE3 game I’ve been subjected to over the past few years, painting them with all the colors of the wind. The glowing night palette of the fourth stage is a simply astounding piece of art direction and clearly the high point of the game. It took away my breath more times than I can count.
In fact, the highs the game reaches are so poignant that when the game falters even a little, the smallest issues stick out to me quite starkly. The consistent string in the issues was that the developers did such a great job providing a fresh, smooth experience, that when flower tries too hard to be a “video()game” in the traditional sense, it often subtracts from the experience. Reveling in the the intoxication of running through the course at breakneck speed, picking up a colorful trail of petals, only to find that you missed one cluster and have to search out the one you missed in order to continue is a bit of a buzzkill. I’ve heard Flower compared to Sonic multiple times over the past few days, and the comparison isn’t wholly inaccurate, but TGC could have learned a thing or two from Sonic Team’s best efforts. Sonic and I didn’t really click until I learned to let go, and never look back, just keep on, keep on moving. Forcing Sonic to go back and grab a specific run of rings would have discouraged playing Sonic as it’s meant to be played. The wind doesn’t turn back because it missed something. It just blows (and sometimes cries Mary).
In the same way, when the game tries to mix in a more challenging system later on, giving the player Operation-style penalties for not picking the perfect route to pick up a cluster, the game’s momentum temporarily grinds to a halt. I respect the designers’ wishes to build on the mechanic as the game proceeds, but a punitive system has no place in this game. All this system did was remind me of stupid obstacles like the inaccuracy of the sixaxis motion controls, things I’m easily able to tune out when the game is at its best, since they don’t get in the way.
I’m not advocating a “press A to win” design; I fully endorse rewarding the player who does pick up every flower cluster, and encouraging the player to pick up as many petals as he can, but imposing a strict solution structure to the game forces the player to calculate his trajectory just as he would calculate an orbit in Orbient. You won’t find many bigger old-school honks than me, but I’ll be the first person to say in this case the designers need to shake the shackles of “traditional game design” they’ve inherited from the history of the medium and alllow the player fully realize the amazing experience they’ve built on the inherent freedom they’ve inherited from the wind. These criticisms are meant with the most constructive sentiment possible, so don’t get me wrong. This is easily one of the best games of the year. I know it's only February, but that's fitting, as I’m completely smitten. Play it and I'm guessing you will be too.
