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《孤岛惊魂2》中的环境设计

发布时间:2017-02-16 10:58:05 Tags:,,,

作者:Jonas Kyratzes

关于《孤岛惊魂2》我最喜欢的便是其反转。游戏的情感影响便是让你认为自己是英雄然后让你经历恐怖的结果或让你遭遇背叛或受控制。游戏也未曾让你对任何发生的事负责,即未将故事变成你一个人的罪行。它始终恪守着前提:你是被内战所摧毁的一个小小非洲国家的一名雇佣兵。所以你不可能去做对别人有帮助的事。

Far Cry 2(from mydrivers)

Far Cry 2(from mydrivers)

当游戏开始时,你会感到力不从心。你本该去追逐并刺杀军火商Jackal,但你却因为感染了疟疾而遭遇任务失败,你被夹在了两方的战争之间。在出色的环境设计支持下我们可以看出这是一个非常吸引人的前言,与众不同的建筑风格,浓密的丛林,破损的道路等等都让人觉得非常真实。如果你曾经去过非常贫穷的区域(即使没遇到内战),你便会感同身受。开发者投入了许多精力去创造这一逼真的游戏背景。

《孤岛惊魂2》的游戏设计是备受争议的。许多玩家都因为不断再生的护柱,在路上穿行的汽车,不能在不同位置间快速穿梭以及武器的降级而受挫。在我玩游戏的50多个小时里,我发现自己经常被这些内容所激怒,特别是在我重复穿行于同样的区域并只能反复清除同样的护柱时。所以有时候我会只玩一小会游戏。但不管怎样我认为这些选择还是有效的,即使它们本来可以执行得更好。

通过让玩家沉浸于其现实感与严厉的规则,这款游戏开始产生一种我很少遇到过的作用,就像出色的《潜行者》游戏那样。当你在玩这类型游戏时,你便会开始了解如何在区域中生存。这就像是学会一项特殊技能,习惯,反应,并且你也将了解更多有关所处区域的地形和居民的生活习惯等信息。你将开始觉得自己就是所扮演的角色,因为你将所处区域当成一个场所,也将游戏当成一种生活方式,而不再只是一个关卡或一系列挑战。在《孤岛惊魂2》中便是如此。你将开始思考面对特定情况的策略。你将明确最快与最安全的路径。你会发现自己对引擎的声音,夜晚的车灯以及灌木丛中的沙沙声都充满警惕。你会开始变成自己所扮演的那个坚定且偏执的雇佣兵。

《孤岛惊魂2》中的战斗很残忍也很迅猛。里面的敌人比大多数游戏中的敌人都聪明,会尝试着包抄你,跑过你,并想办法去寻找你,同时他们还会去帮助自己受伤的同伴。巡逻车会突然加入战斗中,游戏还有惊人的火模拟,所以你将能在此感受到最印象深刻的战斗。起初这些战斗都很可怕且让人兴奋,在此生存下来会让你很开心。毕竟你本来是个倒霉之人而且你所对抗的人也罪有应得。但在不久后这一切就会开始发生变化。

不只是任务本身。虽然你所做的大多事都是可怕的,但在某种情况下它们会变得并不可怕,即当你尝试着去拯救孤儿,但其实那些孤儿却是将摧毁流产医院的秘密克隆人。你将摧毁基础设施并刺杀目标,即做着一个雇佣兵会做的事。显然你们双方都不会关心平民生活或者他们所支持的意识形态,并且你的行动也没有任何建设性意义。有些任务会比其它任务更让人不安,如摧毁医药资源或刺杀传道者。

但等量的暴力便是游戏玩法的结果。你将在别人步履蹒跚走离你的时候从背后朝他们开枪。你将等待有人救走他们手上的同伴并在他们到达安全区域时将其一网打尽。你甚至会慢慢折磨一些敌人而不是让他们直接死掉。你将把子弹放在不能走路的敌人头上。你最终也将杀死那些喋喋不休地说着自己不想死的敌人。

但所有的这些都不是过场动画。这些都不是游戏强加于你的内容。而你会去这么做只是因为想要存活下来。

有些人批评游戏太长了,但我认为这一长度刚好符合玩家的情感弧线。有时候你将不再倒霉。你将获得最厉害的装备,并了解所处区域,且真正擅长于做这些事。但你也不是英雄。恰恰相反地,这将反映出你的声誉。即有些人会认为你是恶棍。尽管你一直在做些残忍的事,但有时候你会开始觉得穿梭于地狱间是非常可怕的。你一直在杀戮着,那你到底完成了些什么呢?什么都没有。

你只做了一些微乎其微的事。为了获得治疗疟疾的药,你不得不去帮助Underground,这是致力于帮助国外难民的组织。还有个非洲记者想要面向全世界曝光这里所发生的一切。这些非洲人都是游戏中最具人性化且最英勇的角色。

然后便是Jackal这个角色,在他自己的话来说便是,他“曾经是你”。这款游戏受到了《黑暗之心》的影响,Jackal其实就是Kurtz。但他又和小说中的象牙贸易商或者《现代启示录》中同样出名的上校不同。首先Jackal并不是领导者,他并未受到当地人的崇拜。就像上面所说的,游戏中的平民(虽然很少看到)是野蛮人。Jackal想要“根除所有野蛮人”,但在这里这意味着双方处于矛盾中,当然这也包括雇佣兵,即作为玩家的你以及Jackal这一角色。

在游戏最后你所遇到的Jackal将变得特别强大,因为你已经知道他来自哪里。你已经屠杀了许许多多人。你也为两方都效力过。你经历过恐怖的场景并且希望坚持到最后。游戏中总是会突然跳出个自以为是的角色向你传达个人责任的重要性。如果说这时候有什么不同的话便是,你将遇到对你为Underground以及你的记者朋友所做的事心存感激的正常人。让人感到讽刺的是,Jackal是游戏中唯一一个真正理解你的人。因为他就是你。

在游戏最后,你将尝试做些好事。你将摧毁最高统治者并帮助难民洮难。你必须牺牲其中的一个自己,Jackal便建议一个生存者去牺牲自己以保全难民的安全。cancer必须被摧毁。这也是你们所能到达的唯一具有逻辑性的结果。

但这是否可行?

并未将内战变成个人罪责(虽然你的角色将体验自责,但并不是因为战争),这款游戏避免了基于后现代自由政治愿景游戏所表现出的那种道德主义。这并不是说这款游戏具有马克思主义元素,但它的确呈现出了一个带有历史与物质根源的背景。像你自己和Jackal那样孤立个体的行动虽然具有影响力,但却不能真正去解决潜在的问题。

所有的这一切都是一个更大问题的组成部分,即太多强大的人都不想去解决问题,因为他们对国家所提供的资源更感兴趣。更多士兵和更多武器也不能带来和平。游戏也不会说一方更“温顺”所以能够消灭另一方。这并不是关于意识形态而是关于力量。

而这刚好就是游戏最大的优势。因为你将记得这里的城镇,道路,丛林以及无尽的杀戮。

因为你一直在那里。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Horror of Far Cry 2

by Jonas Kyratzes

My favourite thing about Far Cry 2 is that there isn’t a twist. Its emotional impact doesn’t come from making you think you’re the hero and then somehow making your actions have horrible consequences, or making it turn out you’ve somehow been deceived or controlled. Nor are you somehow responsible for everything that happens, reducing the story to one of individual guilt. It just stays true to its premise: you’re a mercenary in a small African country ravaged by civil war. So by definition, the things you do are extremely unlikely to help.

When the game starts, you’re completely in over your head. You were supposed to track down and assassinate the Jackal, an arms dealer, but instead you’ve contracted malaria, your mission is a failure, and you’re caught between the two sides of the civil war. It’s a very immersive introduction, helped by the excellent environment design. The distinct architectural styles, the thick jungle, the badly-maintained roads – all of it feels like a real place. If you’ve ever been to a very poor country (even without a civil war currently happening), there’s a lot you’ll recognize. A huge amount of work has clearly been put into making the game’s setting as believable as possible.

Far Cry 2‘s game design is controversial. Many players felt frustrated by the constantly respawning guard posts, the cars patrolling the roads, the extremely limited ability to fast-travel between locations, and the weapon degradation. In the almost fifty hours I played, I also found myself occasionally irritated by these things, particularly when I had to repeatedly traverse the same terrain and thus clear out the same guard posts over and over. On occasion, I resorted to only playing the game in short bursts. And yet I think these choices were valid, even if aspects of them could have been executed better.

By forcing you to stick to its reality, to its harsh rules, the game starts having an effect that I have very rarely encountered, the other case being the excellent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. As you played those games, you started learning how to survive in the Zone. This felt like acquiring a very specific set of skills, habits, reflexes, combined with increasingly detailed knowledge of the Zone’s geography and the behavioural patterns of its inhabitants. You started feeling like you were that character you were playing, because you knew the Zone as a place, almost as a way of life, not as a level or a series of challenges. The same thing happens in Far Cry 2. You start developing strategies for dealing with certain situations. You figure out the fastest and safest paths to places. You find yourself instinctively alert for the sound of engines, for headlights in the night, for rustling in the undergrowth. You start to become the hardened, paranoid mercenary you’re playing.

Combat in Far Cry 2 is brutal and fast. Enemies are smarter than in most games, trying to outflank you, run you over, searching for you if they lose you, helping injured comrades, and so on. Between that, the possibility of a patrol car suddenly joining the fight, and the game’s stunning simulation of fire, you get some of the most memorable fights I’ve ever encountered in a game. At first, these fights are terrifying and exhilarating, and surviving one makes you feel great. After all, you’re the underdog, and the people you’re fighting aren’t exactly innocent. But after a while, it starts to get ugly.

It’s not just the missions themselves. Sure, most of what you do is awful, but it’s not awful in some manipulative way, where you’re trying to save the orphans but the orphans are secretly explosive clones who will destroy an abortion clinic if you don’t torture them (i.e. the Battlestar Galactica approach). You’re blowing up infrastructure, assassinating targets – the kind of thing a mercenary does. It becomes clearer and clearer that neither side cares about civilian lives, or even about the ideologies they claim to espouse, and your actions are definitely not constructive in any way. Some of the missions are more disturbing than others, like destroying a source of medicine or assassinating a radio propagandist.

But an equal amount of disturbing violence is simply the result of the gameplay. You’ll shoot people in the back as they’re limping away from you. You’ll wait for someone to pick up an injured comrade to carry him to safety and then kill them both. You might even use that as a strategy, injuring some enemies instead of killing them outright. You’ll casually put bullets in the heads of enemies who can’t walk anymore. (I couldn’t stop thinking of that clip from the Charlie Hebdo murders.) You’ll kill enemies who are so terrified of you that they’re babbling about how they don’t want to die.

None of this is a cutscene. None of this is forced on you. You’ll just do it because you’re trying to survive.

Some have criticized the game for being too long, but I think its length is actually essential to the player’s emotional arc. At some point, you are no longer the underdog. You’ve got the best equipment, you know the terrain, and you’re really good at this. But you’re not a hero. Quite the opposite, as is reflected in your Reputation statistic. Some people think you’re the Devil. And while you’ve never done anything out of cruelty, at some point you start to recognize the unspeakable horror of this neverending slog through hell. You’re killing and killing and killing and what are you accomplishing? Nothing.

There are some minor good things you do, almost accidentally in some cases. To get more malaria medicine, you have to help the Underground, an organization dedicated to helping refugees out of the country. (More than a few governments would see this as your only crime.) There is also an African journalist trying to document the things that are happening and expose them to the world. These ordinary Africans are easily the most human, most heroic characters in the game.

And then there is the Jackal, a character who, in his own words, “used to be you.” Predictably enough, the game is influenced by Heart of Darkness, and the Jackal is its version of Kurtz. But he is quite different from the novel’s ivory trader or the equally-famous colonel from Apocalypse Now. The Jackal isn’t a leader, for one thing, and he isn’t admired or worshipped by the natives. As noted above, the civilian characters of the game, though sadly rarely seen, are the least savage. The Jackal has simply taken the disgust the player is starting to feel to its ultimate extreme. He does want to “exterminate all the brutes” – but in this case, that means both of the sides in the conflict, as well as the mercenaries – including you, and including himself.

Your encounters with the Jackal near the end of the game are particularly powerful, because you understand where he’s coming from. You’ve slaughtered so many people. You’ve worked for both sides. You’ve seen the horror and you feel dirty and you want it to end. And at no point has the game popped up some self-righteous character to preach at you about your personal responsibility. If anything, the sane people you meet are grateful for what you did for the Underground and your journalist friend. Ironically, the Jackal is the one person who really understands you, who can talk about the cancer that you’re part of without sounding judgemental. He is you.

At the very end, you try to do something good. You destroy the leadership and help the refugees escape. One of you must sacrifice himself, and the Jackal suggests that the survivor should kill himself as soon as the refugees are safe. The cancer must be destroyed. It’s the only logical conclusion of what you both have become.

But does it work?

By not reducing the civil war to a matter of personal guilt (your character experiences personal guilt, but the war is not caused by that), the game avoids the kind of simplistic moralism that games with a postmodern liberal political outlook frequently fall prey to. That’s not to say the game is Marxist, but it certainly presents a situation that has historical, material causes. And as such, the actions of isolated individuals like yourself and the Jackal, while having an impact, can’t really fix the underlying problems.

In the end, all of this is part of a much bigger problem, which too many powerful people aren’t interesting in solving, because they are far more interested in the resources the country has to offer. More soldiers and more weapons won’t help bring peace. Nor will claiming that one side is “moderate” and helping it destroy the other. This isn’t about ideology; it’s about power.

You know that, and that’s the game’s biggest triumph. You know that because you remember the towns, the roads, the jungle, and the endless killing.

You know that because you’ve been there.(source:gamasutra

 


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