It doesn’t take much for me to point out the biggest fault in The MISSING: that at the end of the day, it’s let down by the quality of its gameplay.
That isn’t to say it’s an all-out failure. Everything works as intended in this puzzle-platformer -- spearheaded by Hidetaka Suehiro (Swery65) of Deadly Premonition and D4 fame -- so you can expect some challenges that demand you make full use of the mechanics. Minor technical hiccups aside, it’s smooth sailing from start to finish. Relatively speaking. The problem is that, while the gameplay isn’t bad or even mediocre, it’s still fairly plain and straightforward. Workmanlike, even.
There aren’t really any puzzles that force you to wrack your brain, and there’s not much of a difficulty curve forcing you to sharpen your wits or skills as you go. At most, you’ll only get platforming challenges along the way -- which, at their worst, are only challenging because you’re put into scenarios where one-hit KOs are a legitimate, prevalent issue. Basically, don’t get this game if you’re the type that needs technical acuity or execution barriers in your games. Dark Souls, this is not.
Instead, get it for everything else.
ALL THE SPOILERS INCOMING…which kind of makes this post impossible to read for those who want to go in raw, but whatever. If you’re worried, just…I dunno, go eat some donuts instead. I bet Swery would be fine with that.
For those unaware -- and for those who I imagine didn’t read the last post I did on the game, which is likely many -- The Missing puts you in JJ’s shoes on a seemingly-abandoned island, and tasks you with finding her main squeeze Emily after getting rushed by a psychotic monster. Within ten minutes (maybe five), the quest goes horribly awry. JJ gets struck by lightning and left a charred husk in the Maine wilderness -- only to discover she has miraculous regenerative powers, and can thus continuously heal and rebuild herself as long as her head stays intact.
What follows is a long night and longer trek across the so-called island of memories. JJ’s got nothing and no one to keep her company as she braves hazardous locales (like the dreaded bowling alley) and deadly denizens. At most, she -- and you -- have no choice but to survive on the text messages received along the way, remnants of the past made anew on the road to Emily. It’s a helpful chaser for all the intentional self-mutilation JJ has to go through just to clear the next roadblock or puzzle. Still, it’s all for a good cause. All for Emily. All for love.
That’s the assumption, at least. In practice? Not so much.
Let me say this to start: I got got. I’ve never been gotten harder by any other game, at least not in recent memory. The BioShock games qualify, I suppose, but those are practically relics in this, the eighth generation of gaming. It’s been a hot minute since I got sucker-punched so hard by a plot twist -- which in hindsight had plenty of hints along the way, but I let it slide thanks to my acute, debilitating tunnel vision. That, and the text messages. Even while chased by a psychotic zombie demon brandishing a giant box cutter, I paused the encounter just so I could see what Abby, Philip, and the rest were up to.
There’s a simple way to explain the overlaying plot of The Missing, even with all of its unique flourishes and eye-popping oddities. No matter what happens, it basically boils down to you needing to save the princess. Jump through dangerous, monster-infested environments on your way to save the damsel in distress, even when the goal posts keep getting moved farther and farther back until the game says “Okay, you can stop now. We’re out of money, so we need to wrap things up.”
It’s not that simple, though. Not to make the work here seem overblown, but the game actually takes advantage of the medium and preconceived notions on your objective (gotta save the princess), dumps them all over you, and lights you on fire. This isn’t a game about saving someone else.
It’s a game about saving yourself -- about saving JJ from herself. Or…himself.
You would think that, given the opening, The Missing is just a different take on a coming out story -- i.e. JJ (and/or Emily) has to come to terms with her sexuality, even in the face of a controlling, conservative mother, colleagues she thinks she has to keep secrets from, and a society that’s still grappling with the reality that, hey, not everybody likes the same things. That was the assumption I made, at least. Or part of it. I had a feeling that I didn’t know the whole story, and the text messages would eventually fill in the blanks. I got that much right, at least. But my theory was that JJ hurt Emily in borderline-unforgivable ways -- perhaps inflicted some kind of sexual violence on her, as implied by the content warning at the beginning -- and the journey across the island would unearth the memories our heroine had repressed.
Guess I got that second part right, too. In essence, JJ did try to repress “her” inconvenient memories and feelings, and was willing to delude herself to the extreme. So the girl you play as for the entirety of the game is nothing but a fabrication -- an idealized form that, in theory, would have made sure the two of them could stay together forever. Truth be damned; the lies make life so much easier.
For sure, JJ had to live a hard life. She’s Jackie Jameson on the island, and Jackie Jameson in the real world. One decisively female, the other decisively male. Only in the real world, JJ’s problems can’t be dodged via a dream vacation with a sweetheart. His mother has her talons deep in his life, which you’d expect from someone who puts pressure on him to excel and succeed as the heir to the Macfield name. (It’s briefly mentioned that JJ’s father passed, so that gives at least a partial explanation as to why the missus is so obsessive on the matter.)
JJ going off to college gave him the chance to truly express himself, and be who he wanted to be -- if not for Emily’s sake, then certainly his own. It turns out that he’s transgender, to the point where his mother found clothes for women in his closet…and read his diary for good measure. (Rookie mistake, JJ; NEVER keep a diary unless you’re sure you can burn the evidence beforehand, Death Note-style.) Still, JJ managed to keep it a secret as best he could while at school. Until he couldn’t. The secret got out, up to and including defamatory pictures of him uploaded online -- as “Princess Packing Extra” -- and he couldn’t handle the strain and ridicule that followed. So he did what he had to do.
The game puts up a content warning about sexual violence and suicide. The game wasn’t joking.
Essentially, The Missing is built on a lie. It’s a safe bet that neither JJ nor Emily ever made it to that island; JJ tried to kill himself, and the game that players go through is a mixture of both his dying dream and his inherent, human instinct to survive. The Emily you’re chasing? A phantom at best; the embodiment of JJ’s desires and insecurities masquerading as a would-be damsel at worst. The monsters that chase you? Representations of JJ’s real-world lust for death, with a healthy veneer of self-loathing that necessitates torture by any means available.
While it won’t entirely become clear until the last hour or two of the game -- complete with an out-of-nowhere role reversal akin to Shadow of the Colossus -- the links between the story, world, and gameplay are ostensibly there if you think it over for a bit. I’d bet you could probably suss out the truth faster than I did. Some late-game reveals got me thinking, but by then I was en route to getting got with no hope of escape. So don’t ever let anyone convince you that I’m a genius. I just know how to sound smart. On occasion.
JJ wouldn’t have put himself in the situation that he did if he didn’t have problems. More than likely, he wanted that situation. He went in thinking, if not hoping, that there would be no way out. But the island of memories and his feelings for Emily (such as they are, given the implied complexities) had different plans. Deep down, there was -- and still is -- a part of JJ that wanted to live. To survive. To get back up and keep moving forward. So the reason for his power in-game isn’t just for an eyebrow-raising gimmick reviewers and bloggers can gab about. It’s a symbolic gesture. JJ can regenerate because it’s a story about regeneration -- enduring pain, however horrific, however frequent, for the sake of moving forward.
I’d say that’s conjecture, but a text message from JJ’s stuffed animal more or less spells it out in almost those exact words. It makes sense in context, mostly.
JJ’s trek eventually forces her to face rock bottom, up to and including a harrowing moment where the player is expected to put the heroine in a noose. But because of it, she ultimately ends up finding some tiny shred of hope and revives her will to live. It links up with the gameplay as well; whereas earlier chapters have you manually reviving after a few seconds of charging up, the final encounter has you instantly, automatically undoing the damage you take -- and exploiting it mid-run to give yourself big air. The end result? JJ snaps out of it in the real world. Despite the major hemorrhage spoken of by the dream world’s moose-doctor (the real-world doctor who just happens to be standing next to a moose head), the EMTs’ efforts resuscitate him from his suicide attempt. Moreover, that lets him reunite with the real-world Emily, complete with a new lease on life. Happy ending acquired.
Here’s a question, though: what’s it all in service of?
Swery and crew could have stopped at “it’s about lesbians”, and that would have been fine. They didn’t. So now that topic, which given the context of the game is heavy and worthy of exploration in its own right, has to share a spotlight with gender identity and suicide. Those are some weighty topics, which technically splinter off into other weighty topics (anxiety, social mores, independence, and privacy, just to name a few that come to mind). Is a puzzle-platformer really the best place to explore them? Is a video game really the best way to explore them?
My answer is yes. You should’ve seen that one coming, because I’ve got a horse in this race vis a vis arguing routinely that video games are art. But art should ideally be, well, good. If it isn’t, that’s sub-optimal. If it isn’t, and you’re dealing with talking points that raise massive debates to this day, then, well, that’s a bit of a problem. Plus, there’s always going to be the argument that this sort of content doesn’t belong in something as consistently breezy as a video game. It’s a medium about fun and entertainment, not…this.
Not to play an unholy cross between a devil’s advocate and a straw man, but I can see why others might turn up their noses at The Missing. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter? What sort of lasting impact will this game have? Nothing in it is real. It’s still bound to the constraints and expectations of the medium (and apparently not the only game that’s driven into uncomfortable territory, given Limbo and Inside). If the game sucked -- or arguably, even if it was a shoo-in for GOTY 2018 -- then I can imagine detractors who’d point at it and say it’s just using complex subject matter to get attention. A ploy that misappropriates real-world issues for its own gain.
Others might feel that way. I don’t. See, I think that one of the marks of a good story is that it manages to feel -- however briefly -- like the most important thing in the world. Gotta read one more chapter. Gotta play one more level. Gotta watch one more episode. And so on and so forth. But the real clincher is that what happens in it stops feeling like a distant fantasy and more like something real. Something tangible, within arm’s reach. Something that affects you, draws you in, sucks you into its rhythm. And, as I’m sure you can attest to, something that draws out that emotion -- be it excitement, laughter, or tears. We all know the feeling.
The Missing is one of those games that feels important, both because of and independent of its subject matter. Even though it taps the LGBT world, you don’t have to be a part of it for its story (and the gameplay tied to it) to be mentally or emotionally resonant. I’m certainly not. And to be clear, I’m not (entirely) praising this game just because of its investigation of such heady topics. It’s in addition to the character work, however subdued, and gives flavor to an already satisfying meal.
Here’s the thing, though. The Missing has weight and importance because of its subject matter, inevitably, and it uses it to the best of its ability for a good cause. JJ, Emily, and all the rest aren’t real. That much is obvious. But when stripped of the fantastic elements, the game is still trying to tell a story here about what happens when marginalized people are pushed to their breaking point. When it seems like the only way out is with a blade, rope, or bullet. I thankfully haven’t had to experience any of that in my life, but thanks to The Missing, now I can’t help but wonder.
Now I think of the possibility -- and likelihood -- that people who are different, or have different tastes, or put stock in different identities, have suffered just as much as JJ has, if not more. He/she got to come back from death. Others might not. Through its efforts and execution, the game puts forth a scenario that shines a light on the situation -- the plight that people you’ve never met may have faced. It puts things in perspective. Taps your empathy. Enlightens, as well as educates.
Is that The Missing’s core objective? Opening gamers’ eyes to the trials of others across the globe? Not entirely, no. If it was, then it might strain the credibility and make it come off as a gimmick. With that said, it is a merry consequence. Waking people up to the struggles of the marginalized; emboldening them to have empathy and understanding; telling them to struggle on, even with adversity running wild. And, above all else, learning to accept others -- and yourself -- for who you are. And that there’s nothing wrong with being who you are.
The Missing tells you not to forget that. Ever. And for that reason, it’s a game that will always find a way to touch others’ hears.
Maybe even yours, if you give it the chance.
I mean, it does have moose-men. Best $30 you could ever spend, yeah?
No comments:
Post a Comment