Telling Tales

Stories are impor­tant. They’re older than lan­guage and as wide­spread as human­i­ty. Stories are how we attempt to rec­on­cile the gulf between our inter­nal selves and the exter­nal world; they are the bridges between indi­vid­u­als. Even the sim­plest piece of human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, take a cave paint­ing for exam­ple, says an excep­tion­al­ly pow­er­ful series of things- ‘I was here’, ‘I saw this ani­mal’, ‘This ani­mal is impor­tant to me’, ‘I’ve fig­ured out how to use paints’, ‘I’m aware that other peo­ple may see this paint­ing and think of me’, ‘It is impor­tant enough that other peo­ple think of me that I will take the time to paint’. Stories bypass the bod­i­ly lim­i­ta­tions of being human, they can be in many places at once, they can live for­ev­er, they evolve and adapt with­out dying.

Games aren’t known for the com­plex­i­ty of their sto­ries. By and large they tend to be side-thoughts, func­tion­al excus­es for where the devel­op­ers want­ed to take their game­play. There are the odd gems here and there, of course, but for what is osten­si­bly a nar­ra­tive medi­um there is a wor­ry­ing lack of sophis­ti­ca­tion. Imagine, then, my sur­prise when in a cut-price down­load­able Wild West FPS, the lat­est in a series that has ranged from decent enough to utter shite, I found what may well be one of the most nuanced uses of nar­ra­tive struc­ture I have ever seen. This, ladies and gents, is Call of Juarez: Gunslinger.

This arti­cle won’t be too spoi­lerif­ic but I will be look­ing in some detail at the first level of Gunslinger, which is avail­able to down­load as a demo. Alternatively you could take a look at this playthrough, com­plete with inex­plic­a­ble attempts to mount a cow. Or if you don’t feel like either, read on! I’ll give a lit­tle sum­ma­ry of the action.

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In the game’s pro­logue, Silas Greaves, noto­ri­ous boun­ty hunter of the past, walks into a saloon in Abilene. In the bar, Greaves regales the other patrons with his sto­ries in exchange for booze, with one par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed party- the naïve young Dwight. This is where the play­er steps in, tak­ing con­trol of Greaves in the past to fight his way through Pat Garrett’s armed mili­tia who are in a shoot out with none other than Jessie James. We briefly fight along­side James and then make off alone in search of a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure Greaves has sworn to kill. Approaching a barn we pass some chick­ens and a scare­crow and inside find Garrett him­self. From here Dwight takes over the nar­ra­tion for a moment, fin­ish­ing the story as he read it in a Dime Novel- Greaves and Garrett go ‘toe to toe’ in a duel. We play this duel as the first of a recur­ring mini-game in which the play­er must use one ana­logue stick to focus on the oppo­nent whilst con­trol­ling his gun hand with the other. The object, of course, is to shoot and not be shot. Once the play­er has beat­en Garrett, Greaves once again takes con­trol of the nar­ra­tion. That’s not how it went at all! The game rewinds, vis­i­bly, to the chick­ens and the scare­crow and we once again enter the barn, only to be sucker-punched by Garret. Greaves blacks out and the level ends.

The most inter­est­ing and uncom­mon aspect of this scene is the rewind. This is the first exam­ple we encounter of a theme that will repeat through­out the game, in which Greaves’ uncer­tain and unre­li­able nar­ra­tion caus­es the world to shift and divert. At times, whole sec­tions of game­play will revert to an ear­li­er point as Greaves decides that’s not what hap­pened, at oth­ers the very land­scape will reassem­ble to reveal a con­ve­nient lad­der or door­way through which to escape an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion. The over­all effect, of course, is to paint Greaves as a typ­i­cal Unreliable Narrator, but it also opens a series of inter­est­ing lines of thought we might pur­sue.

Consider, if you don’t mind a bit of gram­mar talk, the tense in which the game sit­u­ates itself. A nar­ra­tor using the past tense is hard­ly unusu­al in any sto­ry­telling for­mat, in fact it’s the norm. But the norm is also for that story to flow con­tin­u­ous­ly through begin­ning, mid­dle and end, cre­at­ing the sen­sa­tion that the play­er (or indeed lis­ten­er, view­er, read­er and so on) is inhab­it­ing or observ­ing the pro­tag­o­nist dur­ing the events described. Take the orig­i­nal God of War, in which Kratos’ adven­ture is nar­rat­ed in the past tense by Athena, yet in play­ing we feel very much in the moment, we do not regard the action as being a pre­vi­ous event. In such cases the past becomes the present with the nar­ra­tion echo­ing down from some indef­i­nite future. In a direct refusal of this con­ceit, Gunslinger puts a big ol’ road­block between then and now by dis­turb­ing the flow of its nar­ra­tive with these moments of revi­sion and at times, it is hint­ed, plain inven­tion. The play­er can­not sus­pend her belief regard­ing these events when the actu­al fab­ric of time and space is being treat­ed so dis­re­spect­ful­ly. Only in one place can some­thing like that occur- the brain. The game’s shift­ing real­i­ty sit­u­ates its nar­ra­tive very much in the mem­o­ry and imag­i­na­tion of Greaves, there­fore main­tain­ing a link with the present tense moment of the saloon in Abilene, 1910. Reinforcing this are the reg­u­lar inter­jec­tions from Greaves’ audi­ence, always attract­ing the player’s atten­tion back to the actu­al telling of the story. Never are we play­ing as Greaves in the late 1800’s as he cavorts mur­der­ous­ly across the Wild West, we are always Greaves’ mem­o­ry of him­self.

Except, we’re not. Gunslinger may in fact be doing some­thing much more com­plex with its nar­ra­tive than I at first gave it cred­it for. As I’ve out­lined, the sto­ry­telling is led by Silas Greaves and the actu­al moments of play­er con­trol are sit­u­at­ed with­in Greaves’ per­spec­tive dur­ing the events he describes. But some­thing in these early moments of the game doesn’t quite ring true to that. When Dwight takes over the nar­ra­tion the game fol­lows his ver­sion of events up until Greaves cor­rects him, set­ting up that inter­est­ing moment when the game rewinds on itself. What if we aren’t play­ing from Greaves’ per­spec­tive at all? What if we’re play­ing from Dwight’s? This actu­al­ly explains the revi­sions and rearrange­ments that hap­pen in real-time dur­ing the game equal­ly well, if not bet­ter, than play­ing from Greaves’ own view­point. They become an active process with­in the mind of Dwight in response to the way Greaves’ is telling his story. Thus, for Dwight, the ‘truth’ was that Greaves and Garrett fought a duel that day up until Greaves cor­rects him. The rewind we see is Dwight’s mind active­ly revis­ing that truth and over­writ­ing it with new infor­ma­tion. Likewise, Dwight’s imag­i­na­tion can be seen react­ing to Greaves’ words as and when new infor­ma­tion comes to light. Later, Greaves will some­times find him­self trapped or ambushed with nowhere to run when he’ll sud­den­ly spot an exit. What the play­er sees is a gap in the rocks or a lad­der or such­like phys­i­cal­ly emerge where there was no such thing before. Now, from Greaves’ per­spec­tive the geog­ra­phy would be constant- that gap would have always been there, he just wouldn’t have noticed it. But in Dwight’s imag­i­na­tion the gap can­not exist until it is men­tioned, hence the demon­stra­tion of it com­ing into exis­tence.

Gunslinger is there­fore doing some­thing actu­al­ly very com­plex and rather sophis­ti­cat­ed with its nar­ra­tive struc­ture. The moments that you play are the evolv­ing recre­ations of one man’s expe­ri­ences with­in the imag­i­na­tion of anoth­er man, based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of that first man. That’s before you even add on the fact that both those men are fic­tion­al and the only one hav­ing any actu­al expe­ri­ences is you, so that the only gen­uine expe­ri­ence is the very one cast into doubt by the game itself. The game is toy­ing with lay­ers of per­spec­tive, using some neat lit­tle nar­ra­tive tricks to dis­turb the very foun­da­tions from which its own story is built.

The con­se­quence of all this is a game that fol­lows the BANG BANG BULLET TIME BOSS BATTLE REPEAT for­mu­la but man­ages to be about some­thing far more cap­ti­vat­ing. Gunslinger is fas­ci­nat­ed with sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, per­cep­tion and the flex­i­bil­i­ty of truth. It’s a story about sto­ry­telling. As Robert Rath observed with typ­i­cal astute­ness in his Critical Intel col­umn, this is a very appro­pri­ate path for a game about the Wild West to fol­low. Its slot­ting of the fic­tion­al into the fac­tu­al, (there was a Jessie James, there wasn’t a Silas Greaves, there was a Wild West, it wasn’t what we think it was) is a reflec­tion of the appro­pri­a­tion of truth that exists in all recount­ing of human expe­ri­ence, but has been par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able in the Tall Tales of this peri­od of American his­to­ry. Rath also notes with inter­est the col­lectible cards that are scat­tered through­out the game, pro­vid­ing a more serious-faced his­tor­i­cal account of the peo­ple, places and events that fea­ture. These 4th wall-smashing cards once again under­line the fal­li­bil­i­ty of the account we’re being given of the game’s events, but also that of the received wis­dom regard­ing the peri­od. Heroes had dark sides, vil­lains were per­haps mis­rep­re­sent­ed and, so help me god, peo­ple shoot­ing other peo­ple actu­al­ly isn’t all that roman­tic and rarely, if ever, jus­ti­fi­able.

Gunslinger’s plot itself isn’t much to write home about, a fair­ly bland tale of revenge with heav­i­ly sign­post­ed plot twists and some fun cameos from the big names of the Wild West (lack­ing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday, to my regret). The game’s tri­umph, (and a tri­umph it is), is an impres­sive meta-narrative sleight-of-hand that places the play­er simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in var­i­ous dif­fer­ent posi­tions along the process of the cre­ation of a story. We hear Greaves’ ver­sion of the tale whilst play­ing Dwight’s visu­al­iza­tion of that tale all the while read­ing out-of-character cards that demon­stra­bly con­tra­dict the very tale we’re play­ing. The nar­ra­tion is set in 1910 and, as I’ve men­tioned, the game never lets us for­get that that’s the sit­u­a­tion in the back­ground, but mean­while the events we play are from much ear­li­er. However, again, as they’re demon­stra­bly shown as false works of second-hand imag­i­na­tion, one could argue that the whole game actu­al­ly takes place in 1910 in Dwight’s head, moment by moment. This sub­tle set-up both presents Greaves’ story and draws our atten­tion to its man­u­fac­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly the flaws of an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor and a lis­ten­er for whom the story is evolv­ing ad hoc. It’s not hard to imag­ine Dwight’s later story of the griz­zled old boun­ty hunter who walked into the bar, which his lis­ten­ers in turn imag­ine and adapt, cre­at­ing an ever-shifting nar­ra­tive which flows, unsta­ble, from mind to mind. Call of Juarez isn’t about a griz­zled old boun­ty hunter, it’s not even about the day Dwight met him. It’s about how sto­ries are born, and how they live.