Gravity Rush Remastered

From Way Up Here

I fall sideways from one rooftop to the next, collecting ever more precious gems from the city's heights. Once no more are in sight, I allow Kat – the game protagonist and my in-game avatar – to leap from the Paris-inspired rooftops, bathed in what seems to be eternal twilight. She plummets to the endless depths below. Once she has sufficiently fallen beneath the hovering city, I halt her descent. She floats in stasis as I glance above, seeking every nook and crevice where those purple gems could be hidden. Finding a half-dozen glittering treasures gathered by what looks to be steam piping, I launch Kat toward the prize. Her hair and limbs stream behind her as she lunges towards her destination.

She lands with a puff of dust and a percussive shuddering of my speakers. The camera readjusts. Kat's hair hangs "skyward", and hoverboats in the distance appear to be capsized in mid-air. It's different here, quite literally beneath the city. Where above it was clean cobblestone and bourgeois mansions, down here it's all dirt, metal, and industry.

Once I've collected the gems, I leap again. Kat's hair seems to be magnetized towards what, from this orientation, I perceive as the sky. She slowly arcs and begins falling upwards, towards the sun. I watch as the industry becomes sewer, slum becomes food stands, and balconies finally give way to spires.

Gravity Rush Remastered has quite possibly provided my favorite method of exploring an open-world game.

If you were to take all of the open-world games I love, you'd no doubt be able to spot one common trait between them. They all provide unorthodox methods of exploring the environment. Assassin's Creed was the first one to truly grab me. I lived among rooftops of Damascus, Jerusalem and Acre, viewing the cities from above while the inhabitants of the streets below remained some vague, ill-defined other. I never really learned how to navigate by walking the streets. I only recognized them from the tops of roofs.

Other games have expanded Creed's rooftop parkour. inFamous adds powers into the mix. Don't just climb up to rooftops; speed along power or rail lines! Cross entire sections of the city in seconds rather than minutes. The Arkham games allow the Batman to soar over the heads of criminals below, perching himself upon rooftops to plan his method of attack. Currently I'm having the greatest blast navigating the world of Gravity Rush Remastered by flying – or, rather, by choosing in which direction I fall.

Each of these games provides fascinating ways to navigate their terrain. Each of these games also provides a variety of collectibles to encourage exploration. However, each of these games comes with an unspoken cost.

In fact, when Shawn "Certis" Andrich has talked on the Conference Call about how playing Assassin's Creed II and Unity helped him and other players recognize cities in Italy and France during real-life visits, I've paused. "Wait a moment," I said to my car windshield while driving home from work, "You mean they're actually spending time on ground level?"

I cared little for the lives of the NPC's on the ground beneath me.

It seems a tad silly to care about these little bits of software skittering about town. Most of them are either wandering aimlessly or on scripted paths. Their intelligence is as artificial as the tiny Charlie Brown Christmas Tree I place in my living room during the holidays. Even so, if I accidentally kill an innocent with explosive damage in inFamous: Second Son, my response should be more than agitation that I screwed up my accumulation of "Good Guy Points". Good guys don't lament the death of the innocent because it's inconvenient, after all.

The contrast is particularly strong between L.A. Noire and Saint's Row the Third. In the former, my role as a cop kept me grounded enough to obey traffic lights and follow the speed limit. If I ran over a pedestrian or crashed into a car, I felt like a fraud. By failing to steer the car properly, I failed to steer protagonist Cole Phelps properly. The game didn't really punish me for it – it simply reminded me that such an action is not becoming of a police officer – yet I still felt a sense of guilt, because the game kept me on the road, and each time I broke a traffic law or struck a pedestrian the game reminded me that I shouldn't do that.

Now contrast with Saint's Row the Third, whose cartoonish criminality strips the player of empathy and reaffirms a division between player and NPC. "Don't take this seriously," it seems to say.

Like L.A. Noire, Assassin's Creed takes steps to keep the player "in character". Deviations from the Assassin's code will result in "desynchronization". The game actively punishes the player for disrespecting the laws of the Assassins, sending us back to our last checkpoint and saying, "Now do it right this time".

But while this may direct the player to act "in character", it still fails to make the crowd seem real. From on high, the NPC's don't even look like ants. They simply don't exist to the eye of my superior assassin. They aren't even worth being rendered by the engine. They aren't important, and neither are the textures of the cabbage cart or chicken cage upon the ground.

One could argue that this is thematically appropriate for the character of Altair. He is so conceited and prideful at the start that he truly wouldn't care much about the people on the ground. It was only through his blood-soaked journey that he developed a sense of humility and wisdom – a sense of perspective, if you will. Yet the game never truly encourages the player to adjust their behaviors. If anything, the increased presence of beggars and lepers drives a deeper loathing into the player, further encouraging us to elevate ourselves above the dregs of society and play by our own rules, because we can.

Years after Assassin's Creed, as I find myself falling over the rooftops of Gravity Rush rather than climbing up to them, Kat is hailed as a hero by the population each time she restores a part of the city. Newspapers champion Kat in their headlines, and citizens excitedly ask her for assistance. Yet this very same Kat failed to notice a feeble old man get caught up in the pull of her gravity powers, accidentally launching him halfway across the city. "Oh God!" I thought. "I didn't mean to do that!"

The fiftieth time it happened, I launched two girls and their dog into the abyssal depths below.

"Meh," I thought to myself, "They'll be alright."

Empowerment is not inherently bad. After all, empowerment is what allows me to navigate these fictional (or authentic, but not factual) cities in such an enjoyable, engaging fashion. Yet empowerment comes at a cost. From way up here, the NPC's don't even merit RAM and processing power to render. So as we look out across these rooftops, as we seek out objective markers and icons that promise boons and benefits – Where's the next story mission? What's going to allow me to upgrade my abilities? What secret collectibles lie in wait for me? – perhaps it's worth asking whether geography can be more than a series of obstacles and objectives. Maybe we should ask what the player can do for the world instead of in spite of it.

Comments

perhaps it's worth asking whether geography can be more than a series of obstacles and objectives. Maybe we should ask what the player can do for the world instead of in spite of it.

I like this idea a lot, but it also calls to mind games where I run up to everyone and ask them the same questions (Name? Job?), which then brings to mind this clever little bit:

Elderly Hive Dweller wrote:

I'll bet ye've got all sorts o' barmy questions! (She mimics your heroic stance) Greetin's, I have some questions... can ye tell me about this place? Who's the Lady o' Pain? I'm lookin' fer the magic Girdle of Swank Iron, have ye seen it? Do ye know where a portal ta the 2,817th Plane o' the Abyss might be? Do ye know where the Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum is?

Currently I'm having the greatest blast navigating the world of Gravity Rush Remastered by flying – or, rather, by choosing in which direction I fall.

This same mechanic, or at least one very similar, is a part of the setting in Brandon Sanderson's new fantasy book series The Stormlight Archive. Very highly recommended!

Brandon Sanderson is brilliant at coming up with new systems. I feel he loses something in the story telling at times though.

I think we need a collaboration between Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson!!

Someone mentioned Brandon Sanderson to me before. I'm curious, but I've got too much else to read when I finally get back around to it (R. Scott Bakker is currently the fantasy author I need to keep up with). However, I bounced off of The Name of the Wind. Something about the writing and prose just seemed poor to me.

Which naturally makes me feel odd given how many people love the guy.

Here I was just thinking you might want to read Miguel Sicart, but that'd be a pretty different kind of reading.

if I accidentally kill an innocent with explosive damage in inFamous: Second Son, my response should be more than agitation that I screwed up my accumulation of "Good Guy Points". Good guys don't lament the death of the innocent because it's inconvenient, after all.

This actually relates to one of my favorite mechanics in the older inFamous games: how your karmic ranking affected citizens. If you were rated heroic enough civilians would actually defend you against your enemies and if attack you if your karma was low. The fact that the NPCs were capable of doing something to either benefit or harm me made it feel like they were more tangible, more real. They were definitely more important to me than the NPCs in Infamous: Second Son who don't really interact with you either way.

It's the streamlining of details like this in favor of appearance and quick gameplay that made inFamous Second Son my least favorite in the series.

Huh. I do not remember that stuff happening in the earlier games at all. Granted, I've never played an evil run of an inFamous game yet. It's one of those "eventually" plans. However, by time it mattered, it may go to show just how rarely I was on the ground level with the civilians.

Which still feeds right back to a lot of my original point for this article, fortunately.