Pengfei Li/Assistant Researcher, School of International Culture, Capital Normal University
Word Adventure Games (AVG) have always been a relatively niche presence. Unlike action games, shooter games, or role-playing games, these games have almost no combat scenes, and players mainly read text, observe pictures, and make choices to advance the game's plot. Its similar novels are different from the unique charm of novels to attract many "die-hard" players. Among them, the more famous works include Japanese games such as "Reverse Referee", "Gate of the Stone of Destiny", "Song of Saya", as well as European and American games such as "Lifeline", "Bliss Disco" and "80 Days" that have been popular in recent years, as well as domestic masterpieces such as "Invisible Guardian" and "Will: A Better World".
Among the many game companies, Japan's Spike Chunsoft is famous for producing high-quality AVG games, which can be said to occupy half of the Japanese AVG, and its representative works include "Projectile Broken", "428 - Blocked Shibuya", "Horror Horror Night" and so on. This article is mainly about the last work in the "Projectile Theory Broken" series, "Projectile On Breaking V3" (2017), and hopes to use this work to make a simple review of the reasoning games on the market.
The core of speculative fiction also exists in the mystery game
"Projectile Theory", "Projectile Breaking 2", and "Projectile Breaking V3" all unfold in a similar worldview background: high school students with extraordinary talents are trapped in a specific location, and if they want to escape, they must kill their companions who live with them without being known to others, and are not selected as murderers in the final school trial (the link to decide the prisoner). The core fun of this type of game is that the player can actually solve the case by substituting the protagonist, rather than traditional reading, although the reader is also exposed to the same case information, but there is no room for play, and can only watch the detectives in the book perform.
By its very nature, speculative fiction, like a mystery game, focuses on enjoying the puzzle-solving process in reasoning. Even if the criminal uses a variety of strange tricks to try to cleverly hide the crime, in the player's (detective)'s deep observation and careful thinking, all the mysteries will be revealed. Watching criminals think they are perfect criminal methods are all debunked in the player's stripped-down reasoning and exquisite analysis, the refreshing sense of accomplishment of a detective who is the embodiment of high intelligence and justice can bring special happiness to reasoning games that distinguish them from other types of games.
In this way, speculative fiction and speculative fiction have the same core as speculative games. How to design the framework of reasoning, so that readers or players can enjoy the excitement and freshness brought by reasoning, has always been the focus of speculative fiction and reasoning games. In other words, whether it's a game or a novel, what matters is that the intense stimulus of puzzle solving makes the act of "reasoning" interesting—a joy that is as if we had solved a mathematical puzzle with what we had learned as a student.
So both the author of a mystery novel and the producer of a mystery game have poured all their energy into making puzzles. Even for a while, the only criterion for judging the quality of a speculative novel or a reasoning game is whether the "puzzle" (criminal technique) can make the reader or player feel the fresh excitement of "unexpected and reasonable".
Crime is an act in human society that deserves attention and analysis. The generation, process, result, and treatment methods of crime can be analyzed from the aspects of literature, law, political science, and ethics, so that we can more deeply understand the two subjects of "human beings" and "human society". However, the pursuit of the puzzle itself by speculative fiction, that is, the hollowing out of the mind to innovate the criminal method that is divorced from reality, only creates a sensory stimulus for the reader, and does not do any deep thinking about the crime itself, resulting in a huge gap and separation between the novel/game and reality, and also causing the literary community to criticize popular literature such as speculative fiction.
For example, the most famous mystery novel, "Sherlock Holmes Detective Collection", when the Mass Publishing House introduced it in 1981, Teacher Wang Fengzhen wrote in the preface: "In the "Complete Detective Sherlock Holmes", although Conan Doyle involves crimes in society and objectively reflects some social conditions at that time, after all, he did not consciously describe social reality, put forward social moral problems and criminal problems, he only borrowed these problems (or fictionalized some problems in this regard). Just create a compelling story. ”
In Japanese speculative fiction, this style of writing that focuses on the puzzle itself is called "Honge Reasoning" (i.e., Orthodoxy, the Japanese word for "Honge" means the format it should have). "Benguet reasoning" believes that speculative fiction should inherently focus on the puzzle itself, and for the causes, reasons, motives and other matters of crime, it can be "given a reason"; for the social reality and background of crime, it is not touched. Therefore, the authors are happy to set the background in "snow-enclosed mountain villages", "isolated islands", "secret rooms" and other places that are completely isolated from society. The character description of the detective character is often based on a simple impression of the same such as a sense of justice. The other characters who appear in the story are either similar to the "distraction options" that appear in multiple choice questions or become "background material" that provides a narrative of the problem. Such designs have made the defenders of "pure literature" criticize the popular literature of "speculative fiction".
Of course, among the speculative writers, there are also figures who reflect on these criticisms and intend to improve and change the Benge school, and their representative figures are Kiyoharu Matsumoto, Seiichi Morimura, and Keigo Higashino. When creating speculative works, they began to combine the puzzle and deciphering process with social reality and social psychology, excavating as many personal and social causes as possible that led to crime, and describing the psychological activities of criminals, detectives and other characters, so as to reflect social reality and analyze human nature. These works, which are clearly different from the "Benguet school" and have received high praise in the literary world, are collectively referred to as "social" speculative novels.
But almost all of the famous reasoning games to date have followed the thinking and design of the Benguet school. For example, Capcom's famous "Reverse Judgment", because of its light and witty dialogue, unexpected scene reversals, and unique court debate mode, it has a large number of fans around the world. But we will soon find that Reverse Judgment barely touches any elements of reality, only a court system that is detached from reality, a facialized character, and so on. It makes people feel that this kind of game corresponds to Wang Fengzhen's evaluation, but it is just "creating a fascinating story." "Another example is "Horror Night", "True Horror Horror Night: The Eleventh Man", etc., which are also murders that occur in a completely virtual enclosed space (Blizzard's closed mountain villa) - although the "Horror Night" series can play a variety of different styles of stories after the regular level, its main content is to detect the criminal methods used by the murderer. And game works derived from anime or novels, such as "Detective Conan" and "Kaneda Ichi Shonen Detective StoryBook", are almost Xiao Zhicao, who has no courage to break away from the framework of the original work, and there can be no novelty and special play.
Is there only one way to go in the current reasoning game?
Reflections on battle royale mode
On an isolated island, high school classmates who were originally like family members had to brutally attack their formerly loving good friends to survive because of the rules of the game set by adults - they must kill each other and only survive.
This is the backstory of Japanese director Shinji Fukasaku's famous work "Battle Royale". After its release in 2000, the film caused great repercussions, and under the appearance of seeming blood, excitement and extremes, the film was considered by many critics to be a metaphor for social reality. The survival pressure in the movie can be understood as the survival pressure of teenagers entering society, teenagers can be understood as representing different social groups, and the cruel killing in the game is no different from the cold competition in real social life, and so on. This setting has influenced many games and movies, such as "Chicken Eating Game" and the American movie "The Hunger Games", which have applied the "battle royale" mode.
The backstory of the Projectile Break series is the same as Battle Royale, and we can see that it pays homage to Battle Royale in many details, which also raises player expectations for Battle Royale.
However, after playing the first two films, the author only felt disappointed and sighed.
The first part of the "Projectile Theory" series, the setting of its "battle royale" background makes people feel inexplicable. The talent of a female high school student is "super high school despair", which inevitably plunges the whole world into eternal turmoil of smashing and burning. Elite high school students who are hopeful about the future decide to shut themselves up on a campus that is forever sealed to prevent the turmoil outside from spilling over into them. In this perverse background setting, the plot can be imagined: all the members have been brainwashed to lose two years of memory, and the killing method must be completed by the prisoner's "super high-end" technology... These completely divorced designs and unreal character settings make the whole game like a puppet show floating in the air, and it is difficult to chew out any deep meaning except for hunting.
In the second part, the absurd worldview of the "Projectile Theory" series is "perfectly continued". The stage of cannibalism shifted from a closed school to a closed desert island. On this desert island, high school students must use their unique superpowers to commit unnecessary killings in violation of the principles of natural science. When encountering situations that cannot be rationally explained, the game will finally argue that "this is just simulating reality". Such a defense makes players who want to accuse the game of derailment from reality have to be dumbfounded.
Admittedly, some of the motives in the game are not completely divorced from reality, but most of the absurd motives are still ironic. Most importantly, the lack of realistic environment settings and human settings makes it difficult to believe that the story in the game will happen in the real world, let alone discuss the deep topics of good and evil, human nature, right and wrong, violence and desire. Many of the game's killing methods also require the use of the character's "super" abilities, and even make people feel that the game deviates from the scope of Benguet reasoning—Shoji Shimada believes that the criminal method of Benguet reasoning should be to use the abilities and objects that exist in reality.
At one point, the author thought that "Projectile Theory Breaking V3" (hereinafter referred to as V3) simply inherited the first two benguet reasoning games, or moved closer to the "new benguet". Its salient feature is that no matter how "surreal" the crime may seem, the mystery of the crime must be able to be reasonably explained by "common sense or science in life" at the end of the truth reveal. For example, V3's killing methods will not be like the first and second parts, there will be incredible "super" ability to kill people such as god pitchers who can walk through Yang in a hundred steps or must achieve their wishes, and all criminal methods exist in the framework of reality. These subtle changes make the whole game look realistic compared to the crimes of the previous two films. But overall, V3 still only renovates the method of killing, and there is no change or transcendence in the framework and theme. For example, after a series of homicides, the game is ready to uncover the final mystery. V3's mastermind behind the murders after retrialing an incident has been hiding in the "protagonist group" casually, and so far, the "Projectile Theory" series seems to have just prepared a standard fast food for customers along the established format.
But "Projectile Theory Of Broken V3" obviously wants to express more than that.
The shady screen (game boss) confessed after being exposed for the crime, she is actually the planner of the "Projectile Theory" series of games, a series of killing games are from her design, the reason why everyone gathered together to kill each other, is because there are countless viewers looking forward to seeing each other kill the game, and it is precisely because of the viewing demand that there is this killing game that looks like a modern version of the "Colosseum". Even if these people who are forced to participate in the game hate to kill, refuse to kill, and want to cherish their companions, but under the need for many viewings, high school students cannot escape their fate of becoming "gladiators".
As mentioned earlier, the reason for the cannibalism in Projectile Break 1 & 2 is that the pleasure of the game boss is watching the game of cannibalism. In V3, the reasons for high school students' cannibalism are more complex and establish a realistic basis, addressing issues that were not dug into in either Battle Royale or The Hunger Games.
Why can such entertainment, which violates the basic morals and laws of modern society, exist openly and be held continuously? What exactly makes us accept this kind of scenario that cannot exist in reality? "Battle Royale" films have come up with many explanations, such as to dispel citizens' distrust of schools, to calm the public's anger at juvenile delinquency, to improve the survivability of teenagers, etc., but they are limited by duration and theme, and they cannot do much analysis on this issue. But these seemingly unrealistic explanations are still accepted by the audience, perhaps because this special "killing game" is the same as the happiness that human beings have received in entertainment activities such as the "Colosseum", "Slave Fighting", "Cockfighting", "Cricket Fighting" and so on from ancient times to the present. V3 pointed the muzzle at the pathological psychology that produced the cruel stage, and pointed out the reason: there are countless spectators who expect this cruel game of killing each other, and they can get excitement and fun from watching, so that this killing game will last forever.
As the story progresses, the protagonist rebels against the audience and game planners who entertain themselves and their friends' lives. But the game's boss throws out a fact that makes the protagonists crash:
All the people and things standing in this scene are fictionalized using computer programs. You are actually a virtual character created to make the "audience" and "player" happy. The protagonists do not have the basic conditions that "past", "family", "ability", "ideal", etc. are originally "super high-level" and even "ordinary people" have social human beings.
Even the characters themselves exist for the emergence of the game, the promotion of the plot, and the fun of the player. What is the meaning of the "friendship", "ideal", "unwillingness", "pain", "survival", "resistance", and other human emotions that these characters are now pursuing? What's the point of being a digital figure who's been completely virtualized to entertain real humans, and now doing everything that seems like a "human reaction"?
In the game, the protagonists decide to give up en masse, ending their mission and life to rebel against the boss. Boss, who previously confessed to planning the killing game, revealed his second identity, that is, the mastermind of the video game V3, that is, the protagonists believe that the real killing game and themselves are virtual, she asks: When existence itself is nothingness, is there any point in rebellion? This is not a new ethical issue. One day, the characters in the video game (virtual) learn to think, knowing that they are video game (virtual) characters, they have no physical existence in the real world, and their emotions and thoughts still make sense? Do they have the right to decide their own destiny? Does their own existence still make sense? In today's rapid development of AI, perhaps this is no longer a distant problem. The game maker of V3 gave his answer through the mouth of the protagonist: "Even if our existence is fictional, even if the world is fictional, the pain in our hearts is real!" "Even if it is fictional, our actions are still meaningful, and our actions still affect others!"
It can be argued that V3's approach to this question is to turn the question to the meaning of the game and even the virtual itself. If the actions and stories of the virtual characters in novels, anime, dramas, and movies can give spiritual strength and comfort to the real characters, the virtual characters in the game will of course also have an impact on reality, so that the game and even the virtual will find their own meaning.
As for whether the emotions of the characters in video games (virtual) have self-awareness, this is a question that cannot be answered at the moment (the protagonist is only the "double" of the producer after all), and can only be left to the player to think.
The end of the projectile theory
V3 ends with the protagonist abandoning the game as a whole. The protagonists are finally freed by the collapse of the entire environment. Perhaps this will be the last installment of the series, where the game's environmental foundation has come to an end in the game's own development.
The questions raised by V3 are far beyond the scope of intrinsic reasoning. Completely different from the forced happy ending of the previous two generations, V3 carried out a long period of foreshadowing and deception, and intensively threw questions about killing, resistance, existence, virtuality and reality to the player at the last moment, and quickly brought the game to an end, leaving players with almost no time to breathe and think, and could only experience a strong contrast with the previous game. Stimulated by this contrast, players have to think about the deep meaning of the game, and then find that the game breaks through the traditional original reasoning of bold innovation.
When all kinds of reasoning, tricks and events become the details of the development of the story, become the growth factor of the protagonist's personality, and become the fuse and preparation in the final story; when the whole game is no longer simply to create a few cases that create sensory stimulation, but hopes to overthrow the inertial thinking that only needs to enjoy pure basic reasoning formed by the player in the first two works, and finally form a shocking reversal at the end, highlighting the deep reflection and discussion of the problems of human society that the producer wants to convey. This is a lethal bullet fired by Projectile Theory V3 into the world of benguet reasoning games it has built, and of course, this has also caused the polarization of the game's wind reviews on the Internet.
As far as the history of speculative fiction is concerned, the attacks on the Benguets were initiated by the "social" mystery writers, whose attacks have been 50 years long.
In almost all the reasoning games that follow the original reasoning idea, perhaps "Projectile Theory Breaking V3" has launched an attack on the "Benguet Reasoning Game" itself. Of course, this attack is still a little naïve, but it can be seen that the author is still trying to express it. However, this article wants to remind all readers of this article: who said that reasoning games cannot attack Benguet reasoning? Who says virtual games can't carry more missions and missions? In "Projectile Theory Broken V3", we can see not only from the final declaration of the protagonist of the game, but also from the entire game, a ray of hope that changes the game of reasoning.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Yijia Xu