Murder in the Last

As previously noted, I've been playing through games that are increasingly-tangentially related to Life Is Strange, my favorite game of last year. One of the last items on that list is "Murdered: Soul Suspect." This is a very unusual and intriguing game: it's a mystery-adventure game, with quite a few mechanics that I've never seen done before. More relevantly to my interests, it also features the debut voice-acting appearance of Hannah Telle, who played Max Caulfield in Life Is Strange and a supporting character in this game.

M:SS is one of the most noir-y video games I've played. I found myself oddly reminded of Discworld Noir, another mystery-adventure hybrid; the earlier game was heavier on the adventure side, and more focused on comedy, but both combine supernatural elements with noir conventions in a surprisingly effective stew.

Between the two, I think M:SS does a better job at actually playing like a mystery game, rather than using the mystery as flavor for a different type of game. The other recent example I thought of was Telltale Games' The Wolf Among Us, which has a super-noir-y storyline, but the same interface that Telltale uses for horror games, focused on dialog (interrogation) and exploration (investigation).

In contrast, M:SS not only has you searching for clues, but also drawing inferences and deducing outcomes. The clues you assemble form a constellation of possibilities, and after acquiring as much knowledge as you can, you'll then need to filter them down and find what's actually significant.

This felt really fresh, although it often made me think that the protagonist Ronan was a bit thick. You, the player, will often figure out what's happening early on, and will see multiple flashbacks describing what has happened, and only after it's crystal clear will Ronan finally go, "Oh, now I understand!" and re-play everything again, just to make it as obvious as possible. Conversely, you'll occasionally encounter a puzzle that's just obtuse and requires guesswork to solve.

For better or worse, M:SS isn't a hard game. There really isn't any penalty for failure: you can just keep guessing and trying until you come to the right solution. In an ordinary game, this would bother me, but this isn't an ordinary game. The story and mechanics are so different from what we're used to, and I really appreciate the novelty; best of all, the gameplay is nicely aligned with the plot. It doesn't feel artificially easy, it feels like it's easy because of the capabilities Ronan has.

MINI SPOILERS

The big hook, which reveals itself near the start of the game, is that Ronan is dead, the titular "Murdered" of the title. You're a ghost, with all the abilities that entails. You can walk through walls! Teleport to distant locations! Read the minds of people around you! Make televisions turn all staticky!

The one threat you face is demons, who are creepy and can "kill" you. I mean, you're already dead, but they can suck out your soul and devour you, so, uh, keep your distance. This is yet another aspect where this game feels unique, since the "combat" against demons is unlike anything I've encountered in other games. You "possess" "ghost residue" to camouflage your location, activate spectral ravens to distract them, sneak up in their blind spots and destroy them with a semi-unique three-keypress combination. I can't say it's a particularly challenging or deep form of combat; but, again, the fact that it's unlike anything else I've played makes me inclined to enjoy it. And, again, it really isn't hard. Despite the unfamiliarity, you can pick it up quickly and get through those challenges with minimal fuss.

Other than those demons and the bubbling pits of torment from whence they come, though, there really aren't any obstacles in the game. It was really fun to re-program my brain and get used to doing all the things you can't ordinarily do in video games. At the top of that list is walking through walls. This feels profoundly liberating the first few times you do it. However, I was noticing that I would get a bit disoriented and nauseous (in real life) after spending time in-game recklessly pouring through apartments. I eventually conquered that by restricting myself to only going through (closed) doors: I knew I had the freedom to pass through any wall, but my mind apparently had trouble coping with those transitions.

Let's talk characters! I kind of groaned during the opening flashback where we learn about Ronan's dead wife Julia; I am massively over with video games about middle-aged male protagonists who are Dark and Gritty and Tormented because of their dead wives. That said, over the course of the story I found myself softening on it quite a bit. I actually like that Julia's death was so random and pointless; Ronan isn't driven by revenge, just by sadness. And Julia gains some depth too, not being some pure angel who saved the troubled Ronan, but having issues of her own that Ronan had helped her through.

The most important character, though, even more than Ronan, is Joy. I really liked her portrayal in this game, fierce and independent and talented without seeming annoying. I've been struck lately by how much better video games seem to be at depicting child allies than movies are: in examples like Elle in The Last of Us and Joy in this one, they seem brave and helpful and immensely likeable; in contrast, children like Anakin in The Phantom Menace and John Connor in Terminator 2 drive me absolutely nuts. Anyways, I really appreciated Joy's arc: she doesn't immediately buddy up with Ronan, and seems to have a lot more agency than sidekicks typically do, but that never felt frustrating, just a believable element of her character.

Hannah's characters show up closer to the end of the game. She actually voices twins, Iris and Rose Campbell. Her performance is great, quite possibly the most challenging of the game: she has to sound simultaneously insane and sympathetic as Iris, and as an eternally-burning-and-vengeful ghost as Rose. The flashback scene where she's murdered has the most heartbreaking, agonizing voice acting in the game. I was a little surprised that we didn't get to see more of those characters since they were so compelling; Rose in particular didn't get to do a whole lot. Still, I was really grateful for the scenes they do get in the game.

END SPOILERS

Those performances might have been the reason I picked up the game in the first place, but fortunately they weren't the only good thing about it! In addition to the great acting and unique gameplay, M:SS does a fantastic job at depicting a slightly sinister yet immensely likeable vision of Salem, Massachusetts. There's an immense amount of detail in the environment, immersing you in the modern setting that feels like it could be happening right now.

The stuff you can interact with is great, but I almost prefer all the things you can't affect. After a while, you realize that the vast majority of the people in the world have nothing to do with your story. And yet, they're all there, each existing, with their own concerns and lives. You can eavesdrop on them, hear what funny or tragic things are occurring to them: they don't affect your own problems, but reinforce the idea that this is a big, complex world, and you're just seeing a small part of it.

That's even more strongly reinforced by one of the most disconcerting visual elements of the game: ghostly figures, often standing stiffly with a 19th-century pose, staring at you from the middle-distance. As you approach, they shudder and fade, vanishing from sight. You'll never get to know them or their stories. There are so many of them! You gradually come to feel that Salem is filled with ghosts, with uneasy departed spirits. You hope to solve one mystery by the end of the game, but countless others are waiting, staring, filling up the world.

Sadly, those mysteries will almost certainly never get answered. Airtight Games, who developed this game, went out of business just a few weeks after it was released. Which is a shame... they were doing some really unusual, innovative stuff in this title, and I wish we lived in a world where such innovation was rewarded rather than punished. Still, they left behind a lovely little artifact in this game, and I've greatly enjoyed my time exploring it.

Hey, here are some albums! Spoilers within each section, although I try to avoid referencing future events.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

BOO! (That, uh, was an interjection, not a review.)

Hacking Games, Ranked

My previous post got me thinking about the long and mostly miserable track record of hacking depictions within video games. Here are all the ones I can remember, sorted from best to worst.

Criteria: It has to actually be a "game" with some mechanics, distinct from the meatspace portion of the game.

1. Dex
2. Shadowun Returns / Dragonfall
3. Shadowrun Hong Kong
4. Fallout 3 / New Vegas
5. Shadowrun (Genesis)
6. Deus Ex Human Revolution
7. Shadowrun (SNES)
8. BioShock 1 
9. System Shock 2
10. GTA V
11. Mass Effect 1
12. Mass Effect 2

CHA 18

I’m surprised that the game Dex managed to fly under my radar. It checks so many boxes for me: Female protagonist! (With blue hair!) Cyberpunk! Choice-and-consequences story! Strong stealth mechanics! Viable non-violent solutions! Kickstarted!

It’s a low-budget indie game, with a simplistic side-scrolling 2D design. That said, it looks TERRIFIC, and I was surprised at just how good the game felt. Mash-ups of action games and RPGs often end up disappointing me, but Dex genuinely worked, with each element feeling natural.

THE GOOD

Aesthetic. It’s a traditional cyberpunk setting, so you have your typical neon, but it also has a gently retro feel to it. It uses strong sprites instead of the blocky pixels you see in 8-bit games; at the same time, it is a fully modern engine, and has terrific-looking effects (smoke, flame, camera distortion) that help it feel great without distracting from the simple core.

2D design. Actual navigation is pretty straightforward: mostly left and right, and occasionally up and down. However, it doesn’t FEEL flat, thanks to the use of multiple planes in the Z-axis. There’s intuitive navigation between different elements, such as transitioning from a floor to a stair, or jumping up to a ledge. Design-wise, there’s a strong feeling of depth, particularly in the bustling city scenes: you might be walking along the sidewalk, but there’s also traffic rumbling past in front of you, and crowds bustling behind you.

Hacking mechanics. I think this might have the best hacking game-within-a-game that I’ve ever played! I’ll throw together a list for another blog post to see how it stacks up, but the bottom line is that it’s really strong. It isn’t just a mini-game, but a fully-designed and thought-through alternate game mode, with its own mechanics and strategies. It looks great, and the hacking nodes are nicely varied: you don’t just repeat the same moves over and over, but get a very different feel depending on the type of infiltration, and will adjust accordingly. Some feel like mazes, others like puzzles, others like Galaga, but they’re all built on the same mechanics and skill sets.

Hacking impact. Most games either use hacking as a different type of lock to optionally pick (Mass Effect), or as a mandatory gate to pass (Shadowrun). Hacking is omnipresent in Dex in the same way that it is in System Shock, but also with the same degree of depth that you get in Shadowrun. One big reason for this is “AR”: besides the pre-built computer levels to hack, you can also drop into the AR view at any time, freezing time and bringing up a display of all nearby hackable elements. This can be used just for surveillance, but also to hack cameras and turrets, or even to temporarily disable nearby foes. This mode is simpler than full hacking, but still uses the exact same items and enemies, so the skills you develop in one will apply to the other. And the full hacking levels feel even more useful: they’ll sometimes provide non-lethal solutions to quests, or allow you to secure a better outcome. I should mention that, unlike some games, hacking is REQUIRED to beat Dex; I personally enjoyed it, but that might be a turn-off for some people.

Skill tree. It’s simple but good, with eight tracks to choose from and either 2 or 6 ranks in each track. Every upgrade gives a distinct and significant improvement, not a smooth curve. My favorite aspect might be the shortened trees for the soft skills of Charisma and Bargaining. It’s really smart to allow players to max out useful-but-rarely-used skills like this with fewer points than are required to max out commonly-used skills like Melee, and I’m kind of surprised that more games haven’t done this. The skill point economy is good, too: you’ll get a fair number of points by the end of the game, but not enough to max out everything, so it’s important to think through and prioritize your build.

Story. I was a little underwhelmed at first, since it starts off seeming like a very typical cyberpunk tale, but it got more impressive towards the end and I ended up enjoying it quite a lot.

Decisions. There aren’t as many as in, say, the HBS Shadowrun games, but they are there and do have impacts. Different choices may have different mechanical outcomes (granting more or less XP or money or different items), and also can affect the resolution of individual plot lines. There are some places where choices chain together nicely, with the outcome of one plot carrying forward and optionally affecting a future plot, which is always cool to see.

 

Stealth. I was surprised by just how good it ended up feeling. It’s a simple system, driven entirely by distance and line-of-sight. If an enemy can see you from far off, they’ll get curious and walk closer to investigate. Once they get close enough, they’ll detect you, turn hostile, and start shooting. However, you can run away, or take cover in a convenient hiding space, and they’ll eventually determine that everything is fine and return to their previous position or route. If you walk up behind them, you can perform a one-button takedown that instantly eliminates them. This is really fun! A few enemies are immune, and occasionally you won’t be able to sneak up on someone, but for the most part I had a blast figuring out how to clear levels by choking out bad guys. Refreshingly, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy to this. Sometimes you need to be patient and wait; but other times you need to sprint forward at the start of a level to snatch someone. You might be able to jump up into an air duct and drop down in someone’s blind spot. Or distract one foe, then circle around and take out their partner while the first one is investigating. I was also impressed by how well the different systems interact here. In a fairly common example, you might have a human guard, a camera, and a turret. You could hack the camera and the turret, and then take out the guard. Or you could hack the camera and take out the guard: the turret will still be hostile, but without anyone to sound the alarm it’s harmless. Or just take out the guard and the turret: the camera will sound the alarm, but it won’t matter since nobody’s around to respond.

THE MEDIOCRE

Music. It definitely isn’t bad, but isn’t as memorable as other games in this genre.

City navigation. The city is big, which is good, and has quick travel, which is also good. But, there are a LOT of shops, and it took me most of the game to memorize which district each was in. So I ended up spending a lot of time sprinting the length and breadth of the city trying to find, say, the drugstore or the “other” weapon shop. It would have been really nice to have map markers or something to show where stuff was located.

Economy. It’s fine, and better than a lot of other games, but still exhibits the same plague that affects most RPGs: there’s too little money early on in the game, and way too much near the end.

Voice acting. The individual voices are usually quite nice, but I found myself often skipping past them after quickly reading their lines instead. As with Wasteland 2, I’m increasingly skeptical of combining text with full voicing:  it’s occupying an awkward middle ground between the lightly-voiced Baldur’s Gate games with fully-voiced Dragon Age, and the verbose literariness of the former clashes with the cinematic thrust of the latter. Dex herself was particularly strange: she’s a voiceless protagonist for virtually the entire game, similar to the Warden in DA:O, where everyone else’s dialogue was fully voiced but you only read her lines. BUT, she does voice the intro and ending cinematics, which felt a bit jarring: I had gone for over a dozen hours without hearing her voice, and had kind of created a new voice for her inside my head, which didn’t at all match her actual voice near the end. All that said, some of the particular characters like AJ have fantastic voices, and I wouldn’t necessarily want to get rid of that.

Roleplaying. I was a little surprised at how rarely Dex has multiple response options available, especially considering that her lines aren’t voiced and the NPCs usually have the same reply anyways. There are a couple of points where you can select between a sympathetic and an aggressive response, but the roleplaying is pretty lightweight and there isn’t very much of it.

Romance. Dex in many ways echoes back to retro 90s game art and design, and to some degree that is reflected in an unfortunate echo of a juvenile view of relationships. To put it bluntly: you can pay for sex, but not develop meaningful romantic relationships. There are several appealing NPCs with whom you can flirt, but nothing ever really develops there. (On the plus side, though, both men and women are available for physical and emotional connections, so it’s nice to have that level of agency available.)

Difficulty curve. The flip-side of having non-scaling enemies: the hardest parts of the game come early on, while you're underdeveloped. Near the end, you'll have ridiculous amounts of consumables and extremely high skills; the mechanics are still fun, but it's much less of a challenge.

THE BAD

In-game explanation of mechanics. I think they cover most stuff in-game, but it kind of flies by and is easy to overlook and forget. I had to search outside the game to figure out things like how to equip and draw a gun, or how Energy is different from Focus, or what the second rank of Charisma actually does. Most comically, it wasn’t until after I finished the game that I belatedly discovered how to fire my secondary hacking attack and single-shot consumables. For future reference: the best way to find this stuff out is probably through the in-game Options / Controls, which shows the keybindings for everything. The Help menu is fine for some other stuff, although it isn’t comprehensive.

The name itself. I mean, “Dex” is an awesome name, but makes it almost impossible to Google information about the game. Searching for “Dex builds” will bring up pages of results about other RPGs that use dexterity as a stat.

THAT’S IT!

Like I noted above, I’m really impressed by the character customization available, and how the different game systems interact with one another. In my game, I almost never used firearms; but there are a bunch available, with their own unique mechanics and strategies available, so it would be interesting to re-play sometime with that flavor of build. In my own game, here was my general approach to leveling:

• Took the first rank in Charisma early to open <Convince> dialog options.
• Grabbed both ranks of Lockpicking to unlock every lockpickable door.
• Took a few early ranks in Endurance to get more augmentation slots.
• Leveled AR up to 2. The increase in hack speed might not sound like much, but in practice makes a huge difference in practice.
• Leveled Hacking up to 4. I thought this was plenty for almost every computer, and if I had understood how to use my secondary attack, even those would probably have been fine.
• Took a couple of Melee ranks.
• Maxed out Endurance.
• Maxed out Melee.
• I had enough points left over by the end of the game to buy a couple of ranks in Ranged, though not enough to reach level 4 and the better weapon unlocks.

I was pretty happy with this progression. After the intro, most of the game is pretty wide-open, and you can get a lot of levels just from focusing on exploration and persuasion quests within the city, so you don’t feel handicapped by postponing combat-related skills. But, again, that’s all optional - if you wanted to, you could start building out your fighting skills early by taking those quests, and buy the soft skills later after you’re happy with your fighting build.

The overall length of the game felt pretty perfect to me. The pacing is a little… fuzzy in the middle, and it felt a tad like an Elder Scrolls game in the way that side-quests significantly outnumbered the main quest. But, each individual quest was relatively short and memorable, with its own small emotional story and something interesting to do. At this point in my life, I have exhausted my tolerance for grinding, and it’s a relief to not churn through tasks like “kill 5 sewer rats”.

On a related note: there’s a limited amount of experience in the game. You can earn a fair amount from defeating enemies, and enemies do not respawn, making for a soft cap. Quests can have a very variable amount of experience that honestly felt a little random. One cool touch is that you can also find or buy a variety of items that will grant more XP or full skill points; I think it makes sense to invest in these early on, since a few points can make a more significant difference early in the game. As far as I can tell, enemies do not scale based on your level. I ended up around level 15 by the end of the game; it looks like levels 1-5 grant 1 skill point on level-up, 6-10 (or maybe 12?) grant 2, and beyond that you get 3. Which is nice, since you’ll always be able to upgrade at least one skill on each level-up.

Hm… I was going to chat about the plot, but I’ve already covered that in my album captions, so I don’t have much to retread here. No spoilers for once, wowzer!

Album sections:
Intro (mini spoilers)
Quests (mini spoilers)
Climax (mega spoilers)
Endgame and Credits (mega spoilers)
Alternate Endings (mega spoilers)

On the whole, I really liked Dex. It uses a genre and theme that I’m predisposed to enjoy, and I had a blast, despite having very little recent experience with this sort of side-scrolling action-oriented game. It’s surprisingly deep for how simple it looks, and surprisingly accessible considering the wide variety of mechanics. Especially considering how cheap it is, I’d highly recommend it to anyone who digs cyberpunk or action/RPGs. (And a quick gentle note: if you buy from Steam, be sure to "buy" and install the free Extra Outfits DLC. It's best if you install this before you start the game, so you can acquire the outfits over the course of playing the game.)

Bonhoeffer

I've been thinking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer a lot lately. I've admired him ever since I first heard his story, probably back when I was in junior high school, and he's been on my mind a lot over the last couple of months as I've thought about what kind of risks and sacrifices we might need to take in the coming years. However, I realized that while I was familiar with his life, I'd never actually read any of his writings, so I recently picked up a copy of The Cost of Discipleship to get a better understanding of his thoughts and motivations.

I realized that my propensity for reading theology is directly proportional to the level of distress I feel over the state of the world. In the dark years of the Bush presidency, I devoured Kierkegaard in a quest to understand my place in the world, and Yoder in an effort to articulate my outrage over the invasion of Iraq. During Obama's reign, when we started very slowly moving in the direction of more kindness, I spent very little time or thought on theology. Now, as we seem to be lurching towards the apocalypse, the words and actions of Bonhoeffer feel incredibly urgent and relevant.

There are four main sections to the book. The first, "Grace and Discipleship", is an extremely powerful denunciation of the slippery tendency for Protestants to bask in the assurance of promised salvation. The core of this church is "by grace and not by works," and God has infinite grace, so it's tempting to believe that nothing is required of the believer: perhaps go to church and be told that you're going to heaven. Bonhoeffer calls this "cheap grace": grace that asks nothing of the recipient. As a Lutheran, he digs deep into Luther's own experience as a monk in the Catholic church, arguing that this was not at all Luther's intention, and in fact an inversion of his goal. Rather, Bonhoeffer believes, Luther sought to open up the demands of monastic discipline to the entire church. One is still saved through grace, and it's a grace that transforms your life. You cannot continue to live comfortably and idly, ignoring the suffering of the world, focused on your own pleasure. Grace is the grace to follow in Christ's footsteps, to lose everything of this world and gain everything of the next. It's a very powerful argument, discomforting in a really good way.

The second section is a long but very thoughtful and methodical walk through the Sermon on the Mount. I was looking forward to this, and thought it was good, but in a very different way than I had expected. I often point to the Sermon on the Mount as my favorite passage in the Bible, and it almost perfectly encapsulates my ideals of a moral life: compassion, humility, pacifism, acceptance, generosity, mercy. It's a radical document that flies in the face of our human nature and calls us to be better: turning the other cheek instead of fighting back when we are struck, abandoning the pursuit of money and possessions. I think I was sort of expecting Bonhoeffer to underline these values. He kind of does, but his main goal here is to explain where the call comes from, not what it's calling you to do. He isn't saying that these are good moral teachings that we should follow. He's saying that these are Christ's commandments, and that they're so extreme that only those who genuinely have been called will follow them. This isn't a path for fellow-travelers: it's an exclusive calling demanded of the elect. Again, this section was uncomfortable, which is good... it's an ongoing process of me re-evaluating what these words mean to me.

This is followed by "The Messengers", which wanders over a wider range of the Gospels but has a very similar thesis. Building on the two previous sections, this looks at all the various ways in which the Apostles were called and what they had to do. Their whole world was upended: not only giving up their livelihood to travel itinerantly with Jesus, but turning their backs on their families and even their faith. I think it's often tempting for us to think that we can know a religion is good and/or correct by checking whether its teachings are moral. Bonhoeffer isn't having any of that. Morality isn't an external barometer by which we can judge God. Nor is it an absolute that God is striving to reach. Rather, morality flows from God. We might believe that honoring our father and mother is virtuous, but if God calls an apostle to abandon his parents, then that is the virtuous thing to do.

Of course, to a non-Christian this all sounds dangerous and possibly harmful, the same sort of fanaticism responsible for much of the evil in the world today. Making morality the fruit of the church, and not the church the fruit of morality, feels risky; but I think it's that conviction that gave Bonhoeffer and others like him the courage to do what they did. Our own personal values can change and slide over time, in response to our personal circumstances and the people around us and the news we read and the temptations we face and the threats we fear. The unacceptable becomes acceptable, the beloved becomes shunned, the line that cannot be crossed is crossed and then ignored. But, if someone stays centered on God's word, and looks to it rather than their own desires and fears, then they will continue to do what it says is right, even in the face of opposition.

"The Messengers" ends with a chapter called "The Fruit". It's primarily about recognizing whether a teacher (a pastor or theologian or other figure) is actually a Christian or leading people astray. I don't think Bonhoeffer was thinking of himself at all while writing this, but I was struck by how the fruit he bore in his own life testifies to the working of his mind and soul.

The final section of the book is "The Church and the Life of Discipleship." Honestly, this was the least meaningful for me... it definitely isn't bad, but didn't feel nearly as eye-opening as the earlier parts of the book. Part of that may have just been fatigue on my part, but I think a lot of it was retreading well-established doctrine, as well as perennial disputes such as baptism. The content is still good on its own terms, just not as surprising and radical as the rest of the book.

While reading, I made note of several passages that particularly spoke to me. I have to admit that I was kind of thinking of maybe posting some of them on Facebook or something, but very quickly realized that that would be a bad idea, and kind of defeat the point. Unlike the vast majority of writers, Bonhoeffer wasn't out to convince the most people or to try and win over the world to his cause. In fact, I think he'd be the first to say that this book isn't aimed at non-Christians. All of its arguments and pleas flow from the central assumption of Christ's call to the individual, and all of his excellent conclusions are only (but thoroughly!) predicated on faith, discipleship, and, yes, grace.

That said, for posterity's sake, here are the passages that particularly spoke to me now in 2017. (All citations taken from the 1967 printing. Transcribed by hand, please pardon typos.)

If Grace is God's answer, the gift of Christian life, then we cannot for a moment dispense with following Christ. But if grace is the data for my Christian life, it means that I set out to live the Christian life in the world with all my sins justified beforehand. I can go and sin as much as I like, and rely on this grace to forgive me, for after all the world is justified in principle by grace. I can therefore cling to my bourgois secular existence, and remain as I was before, but with the added assurance that the grace of God will cover me. It is under the influence of this kind of "grace" that the world has been made "Christian," but at the cost of secularizing the Christian religion as never before. The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end... It is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine evangelical doctrine. In both cases we have the identical formula - "justification by faith alone." Yet the misuse of the formula leads to the complete destruction of its very essence. (p. 42)

At the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess: "I now do see that we can nothing know." That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception. For acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from the existence in which it is acquired.  (p. 43)

We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ. (p. 44) (Note: I, uh, think that Germans have a less reverential view of eagles than Americans do.)

Jesus prays to his Father that the cup may pass from him, and his Father hears his prayer; for the cup of suffering will indeed pass from him - but only by drinking it... Within the fellowship of Christ's suffering, suffering is overcome by suffering, and becomes the way to communion with God. Suffering has to be endured in order that it may pass away... But the Church knows that the world is still seeking for someone to bear its sufferings, and so, as it follows Christ, suffering becomes the Church's lot too and bearing it, it is borne up by Christ. (p. 81)

In the same way his followers are also called upon to bear, and that is precisely what it means to be a Christian. Just as Christ maintained his communion with the Father by his endurance, so his followers are to maintain their communion with Christ by their endurance. (p. 82)

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it by means of natural association or emotional or spiritual union. There is no way from one person to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behavior, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbours through him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbours, and corporate prayer, offered in the name of Christ, the purest form of fellowship. (p. 87-88)

As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others. They have an irresistible love for the down-trodden, the sick, the wretched, the wronged, the outcast and all who are tortured with anxiety... If any man falls into disgrace, the merciful will sacrifice their own honor to shield him, and take his shame upon themselves. They will be found consorting with publicans and sinners, careless of the shame they incur thereby. In order that they may be merciful they cast away the most priceless treasure of human life, their personal dignity and honor. (p. 100-101)

They are told that they must not only have peace but make it. And to that end they renounce all violent and tumult.... His disciples keep peace by choosing to endure suffering rather themselves rather than inflict it on others. They maintain fellowship where others would break it off. They renounce all self-assertion, and quietly suffer in the face of hatred and wrong. (p. 102)

"Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This does not refer to the righteousness of God, but to suffering in a just cause, suffering for their own judgments and actions. For it is by these that they who renounce possessions, fortune, rights, righteousness, honour, and force for the sake of following Christ, will be distinguished from the world. The world will be offended at them, and so the disciples will be persecuted for righteousness' sake. Not recognition, but rejection, is the reward they get from the world for their message and works. It is important that Jesus gives his blessing not merely to suffering incurred directly for the confession of his name, but to suffering in any just cause. They receive the same promise as the poor, for in persecution they are their equals in poverty. (p. 102-103)

That is the peculiar quality of salt. Everything else needs to be seasoned with salt, but once the salt itself has lost its savour, it can never be salted again. Everything else can be saved by salt, however bad it has gone - only salt which loses its savour has no hope of recovery. (p. 105) (Note: I think I would have really enjoyed Bonhoeffer's cooking!)

By confounding God and the law, the Jews were trying to use the law to exploit the Law-giver: He was swallowed up in the law, and therefore no longer its Lord. By imagining that God and the law could be divorced from one another, the disciples were trying to exploit God by their possession of salvation. In both cases, the gift was confounded with the Giver: God was denied equally, whether it was with the help of the law, or with the promise of salvation. (p. 111)

For the Christian, worship cannot be divorced from the service of the brethren... When we come before God with hearts full of contempt and unreconciled with our neighbours, we are, both individually and as a congregation, worshipping an idol.... Not just the fact that I am angry, but the fact that there is somebody who has been hurt, damaged and disgraced by me, who 'has a cause against me', erects a barrier between me and God. Let us therefore as a Church examine ourselves, and see whether we have not often enough wronged our fellow-men. Let us see whether we have tried to to win popularity by falling in with the world's hatred, its contempt and its contumely. For if we do that we are murderers... Let the fellowship of Christ examine itself and see whether it has given any token of the love of Christ to the victims of the world's contumely, and contempt any token of that love of Christ which seeks to preserve, support and protect life. Otherwise however liturgically correct our services are, and however devout our prayer, however brave our testimony, they will profit us nothing, nay rather, they must needs testify against us that we have as a Church ceased to follow our Lord. God will not be separated from our brother... He who says he loves God and hates his brother is a liar. (p. 116-117)

This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties... It has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. (p. 127)

If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. The disciple must realize this, and bear witness to it as Jesus did, just because this is the only way evil can be met and overcome... Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil. There is no deed on earth so outrageous as to justify a different attitude. The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer. (p. 128)

There were those who insulted and derided them for their weakness and humility. There were those who persecuted them as prospective dangerous revolutionaries and sought to destroy them. Some of their enemies were numbered among the champions of the popular religion, who resented the exclusive claim of Jesus... Over and above all these, the disciples also had to contend with the hostility which invariable falls to the lot of those who refuse to follow the crowd, and which brought them daily mockery, derision and threats... From now on there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him. (p. 131-132). (This is a challenging call to me right now.)

We must love not only in thought and word, but in deed, and there are opportunities of service in every circumstance of daily life... Let us show our love towards our enemy... Nowhere is service more necessary or more blessed than when we serve our enemies... Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not despitefully use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, so long as we pray for them... Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and to further the triumph of love. (p. 134)

But this raises the question of the relation between the Christians and their non-Christian neighbours. Does their separation from the rest of society confer on them special rights and privileges? Do Christians enjoy power, gifts and standards of judgement which qualify them to exert a peculiar authority over others? How easy it would have been for the disciples to adopt a superior attitude, to pass unqualified condemnation on the rest of the world, and to persuade themselves that this was the will of God! That is why Jesus has to make it clear beyond all doubt that such misunderstandings would seriously imperil their discipleship. The disciples are not to judge. If they do so, they will themselves be judged by God. The sword wherewith they judge their brethren will fall upon their own heads. (p. 162-163)

If the disciples make judgements of their own, they set up standards of good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard which I can apply to others. He is a judge of myself, revealing my own virtues to me as something altogether evil. Thus I am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me... Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love. (p. 164)

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are... If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves, for we are seeking to escape punishment for our own sins by passing judgement on others. (p. 165)

But the Christian is not only forbidden to judge other men: even the word of salvation has its limits. He has neither power nor right to force it on other men in season and out of season. Every attempt to impose the gospel by force, to run after people and proselytize them, to use our own resources to arrange the salvation of other people, is both futile and dangerous. It is futile, because the swine do not recognize the pearls that are cast before them, and dangerous, because it profanes the word of forgiveness, by causing those we fain would serve to sin against that which is holy. Worse still, we shall only meet with the blind rage of hardened and darkened hearts, and that will be useless and harmful. Our easy trafficking with the word of cheap grace simply bores the world to disgust, so that in the end it turns against those who try to force on it what it does not want. (p. 165, again!)

The disciples are not expected to show fear of men, nor malice, nor mistrust, still less a sour misanthropy, nor that gullible credulity which believes that there is good in every man: they are expected rather to display an unerring insight into the mutual relation of the Word and man. If they are content not to pitch their hopes too high, they will not be perturbed when Jesus warns them that their way among men will be one of suffering. (p. 191)

'In the flesh' a brother, says St Paul with emphasis, thus warning Philemon against those misunderstandings to which all 'privileged' Christians are liable. Such Christians are prepared to tolerate the society of Christians of lower social standing in church, but outside they give them the cold shoulder. Instead, Philemon must welcome Onesimus as a brother, nay, as if he were St Paul himself. (p. 231)

The Church can never tolerate any limits set to the love and service of the brethren. For where the brother is, there is the Body of Christ, and there is his Church. And there we must also be... If the world despises one of the brethren, the Christian will love and serve him. If the world does him violence, the Christian will succour and comfort him. If the world dishonours and insults him, the Christian will sacrifice his own honour to cover his brother's shame. Where the world seeks gain, the Christian will renounce it. Where the world exploits, he will dispossess himself, and where the world oppresses, he will stoop down and raise up the oppressed. If the world refuses justice, the Christian will pursue mercy, and if the world takes refuge in lies, he will open his mouth for the dumb, and bear testimony to the truth. (p. 232-233)

Wow, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would. Sorry! Honestly, either this is all totally irrelevant to you or you'd be better served by just reading the book.

There's a saying that's been floating through the social networks over the last couple of days: "If you ever sat in history class and wondered, 'What would I do?' the answer is: this. Whatever you're doing right now is what you would have done then." I'm glad to have done what I have (opened my wallet to organizations defending the weak, joined my body and my voice to demonstrations and protests). But, honestly, it's been very easy so far: I still live a life of comfort, and I'm fortunate enough to be surrounded by like-minded people and a local culture that protects dissent. I'm not a courageous person, and things will likely get much, much worse. I hope that I can find a source of strength and determination that will help guide me through the storm ahead.

Black Cat

So, um, yeah. The Cat Lady just might be the scariest, most disturbing video game I've played. It's kind of hard to evaluate entries in the genre; in much the same way it's tough to compare the fear generated by The Haunting to The Descent to Psycho, it's hard to compare System Shock 2 to Silent Hill 2 to The Cat Lady. But I'm pretty confident in saying that The Cat Lady probably has the most pernicious, sustained, permeating sense of dread. Every element of the game seems to be decaying, curdling, coming apart and revealing the horror that lies beneath.

Some other horror games are more focused, tuning in on one particular type of experience: enemies creeping up on you from just outside your field of vision, or sudden onslaughts of violence, or frightening imagery. The Cat Lady, while on its surface a very simplistic presentation (two-dimensional images, one-dimensional movement, mostly black-and-white graphics), manages to draw on an amazing range of tools to disorient and disgust. Those simple backgrounds twist and fade and flicker, calling their own reality and the protagonist's sanity into question. Tiny bodies expel unearthly screeching. And blood! Blood spurting everywhere, or discovered as evidence of past traumas.

There's plenty of violence in this game, but it takes many forms. There's the threat of violence, dangled over characters, freezing them or alarming them. There's active violence, often abrupt and unexpected, but sometimes premeditated and sadistic. And above all there's the evidence of violence, the awful discovery of untold misery that has paved the way and ended or destroyed prior lives. Which, of course, sets up the threat of future violence to echo the past, continuing the cycle.

All of this is very convincingly sold through the simple-but-relatable character designs, married to some really fantastic voice acting. One of my few quibbles with the game is that, while the actors all have terrific vocal tones (English accents FTW!), the technical quality of recordings can vary quite a bit. This was a low-budget game, and I get the impression that many or most of the actors just used their laptop mikes to record, so you'll sometimes get a subtle background hum or popped P's. Still, the emotion behind the dialogue is so persuasive that it didn't interfere with my enjoyment at all.

MINI SPOILERS

The game starts with the protagonist committing suicide. Things rapidly get worse for her.

As is often the case for these sorts of games or movies, Susan's plight is inextricably tied to questions of her sanity; these become explicit in the second chapter, when she wakes up in a psychiatric hospital, under observation after her "failed" suicide attempt. The root question is: did she really meet "The Queen of Maggots", and is she really immortal? The answer, within the context of the game, seems to be a tentative "Yes": it's possible that her earlier experiences were just hallucinations as part of a near-death experience, but she really does seem to come back to life after her subsequent murder. I suppose it's possible that this entire sequence is a hallucination, but if so the entire game would seem to be suspect, and I don't think there's enough evidence to support that. (That said, it is really interesting to see Susan's movement and perception visibly alter while she's on medication; these effects are very similar to her death experiences, which is one small suggestion that they are a mental rather than a physical journey.)

So far I've just been talking about the content of the game. The story and presentation is the main star, but the gameplay is sometimes used to great effect, immersing you in Susan's plight rather than just linking scenes together. I think the best example of this comes in Chapter 3. This is the one part of the game that directly deals with Susan's mental state. You receive two meters, one for her anxiety and one for her comfort. Anxiety ticks up whenever something happens to distress Susan: an object breaking, the lights going out, catching sight of an object with a troubled history. Any one of these can cause a large and abrupt jump in her distress. By contrast, every time Susan takes care of herself, her comfort meter rises just a sliver: paying her bills, cooking a hamburger, enjoying a cigarette.

It's all so fragile. I already cared about Susan, but being responsible for her in this way increased my motivation tenfold. On my first attempt, her night ended poorly: after an argument with her neighbor, she fell into a spiral of despair, cutting herself and sobbing throughout the night. I took advantage of the fact that this was a video game and not real life: I reloaded, peeked on Google to see how to make things better, and played through it again. Things that don't even register to me in real life became quiet and significant victories: keeping the lights on, making a nice cup of tea.

I get the impression that some people will particularly enjoy The Cat Lady for how it presents and represents depression, treating it seriously and exploring it without sugarcoating it. In my case, the game has made me realize just how lucky I have it. I'm incredibly fortunate in my personal life, and the strong pillars of support I have underneath me allow me to just shrug off things that might send someone else into a tailspin of sadness. If I scorch my pan while cooking dinner, I'll sigh, laugh at myself, then order a new one online and grab something else from the fridge to eat. But someone who already has a negative self-narrative might see this as yet another chapter in "Chris Can Never Do Anything Right" and/or "The Universe Is Out To Get Chris," and might become non-functional while working through the sadness.

Ultimately, this section strongly motivated me to be kinder. We don't know how secure or insecure the strangers in our lives are, and even small gestures from us can have enormous impact. Even tiny things like keeping a seat open on the subway, or responding with a smile rather than a frown after someone bumps into you, might continue to reverberate for the other person long after I've forgotten it.

The "sanity meters" were a clever addition; I kind of wish that they'd been present in more of the game, although it would have been hard to maintain their effectiveness over a longer time. In general, The Cat Lady tends to play out as a traditional adventure game: you move around, collect items into your inventory, and figure out how to use them to solve puzzles. For the most part, these are pretty logical, and given enough time you can puzzle them out on their own. I think there were just two times that I needed to resort to Google to find a solution; in both cases I felt retroactively justified, as the solutions weren't very intuitive. (In one case, you need to turn on a hot water tap, then keep it running for a minute until it steams up the room to reveal letters written on a mirror. The physics make sense, but it's not an intuitive action to take.) I think I also spotted a couple of visual allusions to Maniac Mansion, which was pretty amazing.

The game is divided into seven chapters. Each has a really good, strong focus: there's an overarching plot, but also very specific self-contained goals and mechanics within each sequence. I found myself wondering whether the creators had originally intended this as an episodic game, which seems to be the preferred way to distribute adventure games these days and would have lent itself rather well to this story.

They do a great job at gradually spinning out the plot over the course of the game. Some bombshells are dropped relatively early, which sort of lurk beneath the surface for a while, before finally being revealed and explained. These aren't exactly plot twists, more of an ongoing exploration and fleshing-out of a really sympathetic three-dimensional character.

I was slightly disappointed that they ultimately gave an explanation for Susan's depression. It honestly felt more compelling to me when it was mysterious and unexplained; I spent much of the game imagining that Susan had just slowly aged into her depression, which seemed more alarming and relatable to me than the eventual revelation that there was a Big Dark Secret Past responsible for her suffering. That said, though, given that they did give a background for her condition, I thought it was a great one: it was unique and unexpected, with a fantastic level of detail (that argument is agonizing) that makes it feel like a genuine core of the character and not a contrivance to place her into this situation.

MEGA SPOILERS

I'm still mulling over Susan's epiphany that the Queen of Maggots is her own self-hate. That seems to call into question the reality of the QoM, which in turn appears to invalidate Susan's immortality. While playing I'd interpreted this as an internal mental conversation or hallucination of some sort. After considering it more, though, I'm leaning more towards the idea that the QoM is a "real" externalized entity that was created by Susan's despair. Maybe somewhat equivalent to the Guardian of Ultima IX, or gods as depicted in American Gods or Discworld: created through mental energy, but able to physically impact the world once created.

I was really surprised, and delighted, to have a genuinely happy ending. I was not expecting that at all! The whole game was relentlessly bleak and dark, with only a few moments with Mitzi breaking through with little sparks of light and grace. It felt incredibly earned, though: we ultimately see that this has been a long, hard journey that Susan has been on, and at the end she finds what she could never have hoped for: hope itself, and a reason to keep on living.

END SPOILERS

I'll have a hard time making any blanket recommendations for this game, thanks to its gory and disturbing content. Still, players who are able to stomach the dismal elements will be richly rewarded. Yes, the game is unremittingly bleak and dark; but that same darkness helps the brief flashes of light shine all the brighter. It treats forbidden topics of depression and suicide with such candor that it earns the right to show a path forward. Not with a saccharine assurance that everything will be okay, but with small acts of grace and bravery.

Albums! I'm increasingly frustrated with Google, whose legacy Picasa infrastructure is falling apart at the seams, and am actively looking for replacement photo-hosting services. In the meantime, here are a whole bunch of pictures from the game. WARNING!!! These contain a little nudity, and a lot of gore, and are absolutely not safe for work by any stretch of the imagination.
Chapter 1: House in the Woods
Chapter 2: Second First Breath
Chapter 3: River
Chapter 4: Bullet for Susan
Chapter 5: Some Flowers Never Bend Towards the Sun
Chapter 6: Legend of Cat Widow
Chapter 7: Don't Feed the Troll

Pleasant dreams...