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“This is the most beautiful place on earth.”

That’s the opening line to Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, which is the furthest thing from a video game. Desert Solitaire serves as one of the central novels of environmental literature, a cornerstone of the current legacy of Americana. In it, Abbey discusses his views on society, spirituality, and nature, all of which are topics related to my favorite form of philosophy, existentialism. The reason I draw this comparison is to try and dissect what makes Firewatch, a walking simulator from Camp Santos, so compelling to me. The game itself is gorgeous: A combination of artistic genius and clever game-design, I often find that I’m pausing just to look around because the aesthetic quality is through the roof. For me, the visual direction is what sells the experience.

You are Henry. You are in the Shoshone National Forest. You are trying to find a way to pass the summer because you know what awaits you back home.

Home means going back to your apartment. Home means caring for your wife, Julia, with dementia. Home is the antithesis of what you should be doing in your late 30’s.

So, you came out to Ol’ Shoshone because you couldn’t stand the thought of having to face the reality of your own life. It’s a theme that I think most of us are familiar with. When the going gets tough, we have to re-evaluate what it is we value, who we are, and why it is that we do things. These changes often mean having to contend with the idea that we aren’t superhuman, or even human. We are animals with the decency to wear clothes, and with a chance to think more critically about the never-ending vignettes that occur throughout our lives.

What Henry does throughout the game is live. He climbs rocky shales. He walks around eating sandwiches. He even raises his hand to cover his eyes from the glare of a setting sun. He is by all stretches of the imagination, human.

As human as you or I, Henry goes about his life trying to make sense of the occurrences that define him. Coping is little more than living in the moment for him, and you as the player. Existentialist in nature or not, there is a simplicity in being able to engage with your surroundings without the pretense of a “grand narrative.” Why would you worry about the consequences of your actions, when you can go back to gazing at the birds and the trees. That is the premise of Firewatch — a look deep into the human condition that is unsaddled by the weight of our modern world — drawing you into a fictional world that feels palpable.

But, there’s more to this underlying idea. As Henry, you only have one other person who you interact with, Delilah. You start off by talking on a radio, and entertain the idea of meeting someday. You make plans together to have late-night chats about whatever strikes your fancy. You are both on firewatch — enlisted to protect the “nation’s greatest resource,” the forests. By the time you two hit it off, you are in the thick of understanding the social dynamics between two people who are desperately trying to find meaning. As a player, you too are also trying to discern what a statement might mean in the broader context. To say that you do find some tacit truth is probably an overstatement in my reading of the game.

You are both people saddled with baggage. Delilah is someone who has a long-term boyfriend back home. You’re Henry, and your wife is very sick. You engage in an escape of sorts, both in the physical manifestation of the Shoshone forest, but also in a murder mystery. You think that someone is watching you, from off in the distance. More and more, you start to see glints of light in the night. Things go missing from your camp. You’re not alone, which is probably scary as hell.

Someone is watching you, and you can do nothing more than wait for them. If we consider the search for meaning in Firewatch, this is what the future is. You are a slave to whatever happens next. You don’t have a say in this, nor do you know why things will happen the way they do. All you have is “Delilah,” a disembodied voice on the other side of your radio, but a source of comfort. That is profound in a way that few other games manage to achieve. Rather than wait for you as the player to engage with the narrative as the “hero,” you’re just a person who is there.

You come and go from your home in the watchtower, trying to find a source of your paranoia. As you investigate, you realize that someone is following you. He lives in the breadcrumbs on this trail, a trail you follow throughout the game. You realize that as you keep going, the smoke and mirrors on display are mere projections of your own fears. Loss, ambiguity, and depression are all parts of this puzzle that you have to tease apart. You are nothing more than a pawn in a non-existent game. No-one is out to get you. Delilah is just there stoking your fear. You’re just alone in the forest.

The man who is trying to drive you off? He is just another soul who is trying to make sense of being alone, of being human. Towards the end of the game, you discover that this man’s big secret is that his son died. You glance around at his possessions, noticing the untouched scenes from his son’s life. Delilah knew them when they worked here. She said that both were always quiet. The son was living there with his dad. Now his dad looks out for strangers who are on the verge of uncovering this past. When you find the son, his desiccated body is buried underneath rubble. You are no more responsible for this than was his dad, but you feel guilt.

Firewatch places the onus of finding meaning on nobody. There is no grander truth in trying to understand what happens and why. Like Delilah, you are just somebody who happens to be alive. There are vignettes and narratives we paint ourselves, but you are there by circumstance. Whatever meaning you drive to derive is artificial, a figment of your imagination. That message is liberating in ways that, as Henry, you can’t even imagine.

Delilah is as broken as you are. Neither of you are responsible for one another. You’re never going to meet, to fall in love, and that’s fine. There is nothing to life that you should expect, even if you think that you deserve it.

It’s not your fault that Julia is dying, and there is nothing you can do about it. The most you can do is to go home and see her.

Henry, is like all of us, just trying to find meaning. What you have to realize is that that meaning comes from what you define as important. That is the point of being responsible: Breaking it off with somebody; facing the fears of certain mortality. This task may sound Sysiphian, but it goes beyond that. You are human. You have the control to make the vignettes make sense. Embrace it, and you too can go to Ol’ Shoshone, and find that meaning is nothing more than human.

Cyberpunk, in particular Cyberpunk 2077, recently captured my attention for lots of reasons. But, what intrigued most was the depiction of transhumanism in the form of “Soul Killer,” a device in-universe that allows someone to upload their conscience to a computer.

It’s a far-out idea. Uploading our minds to a machine seems almost absurd when said aloud.

But, this idea is neither foreign in thought experiments, nor too far off from what I imagine the future might be like. Transhumanism is the belief and practice that humans will transcend humanity through manipulation of the human form, whether that be through technological advancements or some other means.

Cyberpunk’s universe stresses that humans have reached a form of practical transhumanism.

Everyone has access to technology that alters their bodies in some way: Whether that be through subdermal implants that decrease ballistic damage sustained in a gun fight to eyes that function as high definition cameras.

It all boils down to giving people enough freedom to customize their bodies, with the only real limitation being the fabrications that people choose for themselves. If we ever do pursue transhumanism, or any form of futurism, that leads to some radical shift in how we look or function, it’ll probably be a slow change, ripple across society.

I imagine that cultural attitudes might treat transhuman modification as a taboo. It might be like seeing a tattoo in the 19th century, a shock then, but ubiquitous now. However, upgrades to your brain might be a more profound implication on what it means to be human.

This brings me back to my central point on uploading our minds. Ray Kurzweil, a rather prominent futurist, already posits that we’ll be able to upload our minds or consciousness to the internet within our lifetimes. But, this technology is unrealized as of this writing. What I think is happening is that futurists are expounding a form of wishful thinking that comes from, what I believe, to be the real fear of mortality.

What CD Projekt and the Cyberpunk universe go ahead and promise us is that these technological advancements exist. The ethical implications exist, but in-universe, there are little limitations that govern the use of transhumanist technology.

Cyberpunk goes ahead and imagines that we do have this alternative, a means to escape death. Yet, the implications of such a technology are downright horrifying. What we end up seeing are these simulacrums of the human mind: People who know that they have died and left to suffer an eternal existence, or are unable to realize that they are copies, Xeroxes of humans.

What I ultimately think of transhumanism is this: At least in the world of Cyberpunk, there is no true means of preventing the erasure of the mind. All parts of the human brain, experience, and any other components, are subject to expire just as the human does.

Maybe that’s a sobering reminder that the point of existence is not one that should be tampered with by human hands, altered to fit a narrative that we make for ourselves. Perhaps, but I can’t think of how this scenario may play out in our own reality when that day, if it ever comes, will look like.

I’m always enamored by the opening of Assassin’s Creed II. It may not be my favorite entry in the ever expanding pantheon of Assassin’s Creed games, but it’s opening draws me in every time I start a new playthrough.

Set in Firenze, Italy at the height of the Renaissance, you brawl, loot, and race up the backdrop of plaster walls and overgrown ivy to learn the basic mechanics. Not only that, but Florence is a beautiful and realized setting that I felt was perfect for a historical setting. As you climb the ecclesiastical towers and traverse the town, you eventually wind up at the top of a watchtower with your brother.

You reach the top of the tower, listening to banter between two brothers after a long day of misadventure.

Your brother states that, “It’s a good life we live brother.”

Your character replies, “The best. May it never change.”

And, as you watch the camera zoom out, you get to see the full majesty of Renaissance Italy come into view. Both of you overlook the beautiful city, bustling even at night, before the title music plays.

“Ezio’s Family” by Jesper Kyd is one of my favorite pieces from any video game, and the orchestral backdrop punctuated by the angelic vocals just makes the next line hit all the harder.

“And, may it never change us.”

Years on, I found myself clambering up the side of a Norwegian mountain in yet another setting. This time, I’ve found myself playing as Eivor, a vikingr, scaling sheer cliffs in nothing but tattered robes.

As I reached the top of another cliff overlooking a vista, I found myself drawn into a similar trance that I had experienced more than a decade prior. I sat there, slack-jawed at the rendered beauty of a pristine, unkempt Norway.

This time, no dialogue played, but instead a track that felt familiar took the lead. Shrill vocals, orchestral splendor, this was yet another piece by Jesper Kyd. Another opening that left me wondering what would lay before me.

I could feel that old magic and excitement creeping through the fibers of my very being, nerve endings anticipating a new narrative just waiting for me.

The “Golden Triangle” isn’t the “Holy Trinity of Halo.”

It is Halo. It describes the rock-paper-scissor gameplay loop. You shoot, melee, and grenade. Ideally, gameplay loops are simple, but not limit what players can do. Core gameplay loops help engage the player in games by adding a meaningful process that rewards their actions.

For arcade-focused first-person shooters like Halo, the gameplay loop doesn’t need to be articulated with complex mechanics. It only needs to exist as the base for an expanded formula.

Gimmicks, like invulnerability, were challenges to this gameplay philosophy, but ultimately proved to win out in the Halo formula. Entering a firefight, you no longer have to just rely on frantically spamming your shots and grenades against someone with a power weapon. Now you can rely on an armor ability, such as ”Armor Lock”, to grant you invulnerability. Sticky situations call for even stickier solutions, and when the Golden Triangle evolves, the gameplay takes on a life of its own.

Innovation isn’t just about trying to appease fans with a new gimmick either; it's about owning the gimmick.

The Golden Triangle didn’t start out as an established rule, and building on the formula has meant numerous additions to the Triangle over the years. In Halo 3, the addition of equipment acted like power-ups fractured the loop. For example, players suddenly had bubble shields that could provide them mobile cover, or use a regenerator to buff their health. In Halo: Reach, armor abilities became the renewable power ups. In Halo 4, armor abilities were expanded, and sprint became a mainstay gameplay mechanic.

Every iteration of the game was followed by either support or pushback from the Halo community. Fans would claim that the old equipment, armor abilities, or whatever other changes to the gameplay ruined the Golden Trial. But, the final straw for many people was the introduction of “advanced mobility” in Halo 5.

Players suddenly became “Spartan Super Soldiers.” They could sprint, dodge, and ground-pound their way through different gameplay scenarios that were seen in Halo’s original marketing. Despite my own reservations about the advanced mobility found in that version of Halo, I can only imagine that in a few years, fans of the Halo games will find any other additions to be less than palatable.

What I think is going on is that gameplay changes are causing people to feel a sense of nostalgia for a concept that we made up. Even if that concept was and will be upheld by game developers, I don’t believe that we’ll ever find a perfect concept of what the Golden Triangle is. Maybe the right way to approach changes in games like Halo is to embrace them, and think about these innovations as necessary steps forward for a franchise.

Or maybe, there’s simply no way to say that Halo or any other franchise is going to reach a peak level of gameplay that all players, developers, and fans can agree on. Either way, I’m still going to enjoy whatever the hell Bungie, 343 Industries, or another developer produces.

Dear GameFreak,

I think that I speak for many fans when I mention that I have a problem with Pokémon typing, particularly as of late.

Sure, the dual types are nice and everything, but there’s only so many dual type combinations that exist. Bug-poison, fire-fighting, dark-rock, steel-physics, water-grass, I could go on, but I think my greatest gripe are the normal dual typing combinations that have started appearing more and more in the latest games. What compels someone to pick a grass-normal type over a grass-ground or grass-poison? Why would I want to pick a Pokémon that has a weakness to fighting types and no real advantage outside of being immune to ghost-type moves? There should be a greater emphasis on providing trainers with more options, and I think that should be the direction the Pokémon games should take.

Why not consider these “new directions?” You could start by fixing your yearly release cycles. I won’t lie, I thought Sword and Shield were fun, one-off distractions rather than games. There was a lot of excitement, hype even, for a game that was on a mainline console, but you decided not to innovate.

Maybe I was naive to think that you would change your habits and add some more gameplay variety, but even the animations are something that I can’t imagine necessitated the removal of well-over 400 Pokémon. Don’t tell us fans that you were thinking about expanding the Wild Area only to make the rest of the world linear, and the story soulless. I don’t play your games to witness some grand narrative, but I also don’t appreciate how little player agency was presented in this latest iteration.

As a long-time fan (I mean “played Pokémon Yellow and FireRed as a kid, long-time fan”), you have finally lost your touch. You choose to not treat us like your fans, coasting on the fact that Pokémon is one of the biggest franchises in the world and will always have high sales figures. I’m tired of this mentality capitalizing on the lack of oversight for media conglomerates like yourselves. Focus on your developers, reduce crunch! Let them work on their work with more creative input. It would do everyone, including your own future sales (if we’re being that cynical), a hell of a lot better.

So, I implore you. Fix your mentality. Fix your practice. Bring back the GameFreak that I grew up with and still love.

And fix your typing, it’s an absolute mess and is screwing up the meta for everyone.

Sincerely,

Andy

Although I don’t often mention it to people, the Legend of Zelda is a recurring signpost in my life.

At the age of six, I remember playing the Minish Cap on my Gameboy Advance, and getting lost in the pixelated adventures of a boy named Link. At thirteen, I downloaded an N64 emulator and started playing Ocarina of Time, getting wound up in a story I don’t think I’ll ever forget. In high school, I played through numerous titles in the series: Majora’s Mask, Twilight Princess, Spirit Tracks, and the list goes on.

I like to think that the video games and media we consume are ultimately what shape our worldview and understanding of how life works. Especially in our formative years, there is comfort in knowing that we can enter a space that is familiar in uncertain times. While I have reservations about calling the Legend of Zelda my favorite series of all time. I can say that it is one of few that have left a profound impact on me.

Every time I play one of the Zelda titles, I feel a deep sense of wonder: About the world, the adventure, and the people. It’s a magical feeling to say the least, and that I think we all experience when we indulge in something we used to do. Looking back, I used to even think that every adventure Link went on were extensions of different points in my life. Every dungeon I cleared or treasure I found was like a trophy I could carry in my memories. Every nook-and-cranny poked around was now part of my mental map of Hyrule. Every ending, soundtrack, moment spent sitting in awe of the beauty.

This is even truer when I play Breath of the Wild.

I was first introduced to the game when my roommate Liam asked me if I wanted to start a save file. We were living together, and he had brought his Switch. On a whim, I said, “Sure.”

The first few hours spent traversing a ruined Hyrule was nostalgic, even surreal. This was a high-definition recreation of a world I had visited many times before. Yet, it was a far more ominous place than I remembered. Monsters roamed barren towns, torched by Ganon during the “Great Calamity.” What few remaining races were left in their own cloistered strongholds, guarded by towering peaks and dipping valleys. It was a scary prospect, but one that was filled with joy.

Liam would point me in the direction of somewhere new. We would sit and he would point to a shrine or a town. He would point out what I was missing in my soups for a greater buff, or how to parry a laser. There were days where we would just sit there in silence, watching Link ride around Hyrule, off to some grand, new adventure.

Those memories really hit home for me. It was a weird time in my life, where I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do with my life. Everyday was a new opportunity to ask, “What am I doing with my life?” Adulthood is a scary prospect. Your friends graduating and starting their lives while you’re still contemplating what you want to do is a scary prospect. It wasn’t the moblins, guardians, or whatever enemy barreling towards me that terrified me, but it was the future.

Unknown.

But, every night was an opportunity to gather myself, indulge in nostalgia and simplicity of having fun. They were a way to accept that life continues, much like life continued for Link after the Calamity. You can’t go backwards in time, and you can’t just ignore life, but you can appreciate those small moments where you can talk about your day while running around Gerudo Town, or eat pancakes while fighting a Lynel.

I don’t think Breath of the Wild was special to me because of the “great adventure” that lay ahead of me. If anything, it was the little things that kept me going.

Nor do I think that video games are necessarily the most polished, or well-crafted, but neither am I.

What I have, is those memories. I think what really matters was having those fleeting moments, and being able to know that they happened.

Titanfall 2 is one of the most innovative games, with an amazing blend of storyline and game mechanics.

Tutorials within video games follow two major kinds of schema tutorials that require players to follow a certain set of button prompts to fulfill an objective. These buttons are usually set up as contrived scenarios where an action is meant to be explicitly tied to a consequence.

For instance, the tutorial section of Cuphead presents commands, but also scenarios that allow players to test buttons to jump over obstacles, navigate the screen, and otherwise acclimate to the controls necessary for gameplay.

However, the other form of tutorial blends narrative with the mechanics being introduced.

The player may not be fully aware of the mechanic immediately, but developers will leave clues that help to “breadcrumb,” contextualize the concepts, being presented to the player.

The central theme being explored is time itself.

While I would call this a level that is worth experiencing on its own, Titanfall 2 does a wonderful job of exploring this latter kind of tutorial in the mission “Effect and Cause.”

Straight away, the title itself reveals the central conceit of the level. The average person reading the title may find the sentiment of “effect-and-cause” to be contradictory. We know “cause and effect,” but the mechanic is just different enough to screw with your head. From this premise alone, the developers are able to set up a situation that wouldn’t be possible in another medium.

Let me set the stage for you: You enter the beginning of the mission about half-way through the duration of the campaign. The setting itself is dilapidated and abandoned, a research center without scientists, civilians, or combatants but full of useless, or long abandoned junk and machinery. The almost apocalyptic ambience is a far cry from the otherwise sleek presentation of titanium corridors and untamed nature that persist in the overarching level-design.

Up until now, the game has attempted to craft a more serious sci-fi experience that would be better suited for the climax of a franchised game like Dead Space. But, this notion is quashed by a flashback that leads the smashed bay windows and overgrown flora to recede into polished composite wood panels and vibrant sunshine. People reappear, dressed in uniforms you might have suspected that the corpses littered throughout the facility would have worn when they walked the earth.

This all leads to the question of what comes next.

After all, progression through the level leads to a window that is guarded by some kind of feral chimera which means wasting ammo from a puny ballistic weapon in your possession. The scene is one broken only by the smashing and snatching of said creature by a pterodactyl.

Mind you, prior to this encounter, you learned that these creatures are hostile and can overwhelm you in numbers, without proper support.

As the glass cascades to the floor in this reality, you are transported to another realm where the window is intact. You are prompted to peer out the porthole to a manicured facility with giant robotic security machines? Robots? Androids? Even people are found everywhere in these sequences. At this point, you may begin to suspect something is wrong. The transition between the decrepit reality and otherwise presentable universe you swap between indicates that something is amiss.

The threats cease, but the premise only becomes more confusing as time continues. Security bots that were initially deactivated eventually become active after yet another not-so-subtle transition between the dichotomous settings. This time, the enemies lurch forth from their fallen positions in your destroyed environment.

This crux makes itself more apparent than you’d expect.

You can’t avoid combat by hiding in between the two universes because the game will constantly throw enemies that can end your life rather suddenly, in either dimension. The game also oscillates between the two so much that your navigation becomes a more burdensome task. You start to notice that your path is blocked in one reality, while clear in another. Thankfully, there is always an easy way out of these situations: Fleeing forward through the level. “Fight or Flight” is always highlighted in games, and it seems the game is emphasizing the “flight” option in this situation.

As you run through predetermined points of the linear journey, you can avoid fighting enemies in either reality. You also learn that if you do choose to engage with these enemies, their corpses will remain in the future you find yourself in.

What makes this tutorial so effective is the punch-line that the developers give you a third of the way through this level. You receive a “device” that allows you to manually shift between the two realities on demand, at the push of a button.

Before this point, you are at the mercy of the scripting provided by the developers. You can only react to what imminent danger is present in the gameplay scenario. But, through this “time-hopping romp,” you learn the basic context of how “time-hopping” works. You know that enemies and their placement will be different between the different realities. You also know that certain parts of the level might be obfuscated in one, but not the other reality.

The developers set up a situation with a contrived plot, but also a situation that allows you to experience the mechanics required for the level. Unlike other tutorials in video games, including in the early stages of Titanfall 2, the developers assume that you will follow the prompts (causes) and observe the consequences (effects) without needing any form of hand-holding. There is an implicit amount of hand-holding required for the level to function, but the developers grant you autonomy to use the mechanics as you please.

This stands in direct contrast to other design philosophies that will clutter your menu with an absurd amount of icons, or instructions that need to be laid out for players to navigate even the simplest gameplay scenario. Titanfall 2 doesn’t insult your intelligence, but instead allows you to think that you are in control of the situation at hand, while still guiding your hand in a planned direction. Obviously, this can’t be true from a technical standpoint, but a great tutorial will make the proverbial puppeteer seemingly disappear.

Without considering the limitations of certain genres, “Effect and Cause” demonstrates what I hope will become a cornerstone of modern tutorials. The development of a concept shouldn’t just invoke the actual mechanics themselves, but rather seek to uphold an experience that helps transition a concept from merely becoming a footnote of poorly constructed game design. What we might not consider is that this trend started out in Titanfall, while being largely absent in other traditional RPG’s or other games that you might otherwise consider to be better platforms for this mechanic. Maybe this is the way tutorials should be kept, lively and engaging, free to explore whatever dynamics can bring players into the futures they help craft.