Trigger Happy
180
Outcast is a fine example of the sort of quasi-
“cinematic” narrative sweep that a videogame with a
three-million-dollar budget can create. The player’s
character awakes in a strange alien world, and is
identified by the inhabitants as a long-awaited prophet.
He must win the trust of people in the game while
embarking on a quest to find five religious artefacts.
While exploring the game’s gorgeously rendered
organic-looking planets, the player may ride a
twolegged camel, slap a robed elder, and now and then,
of course, shoot enemies with very big guns. Masclef
enthuses that such a game should ideally be like being
“thrown into a big, exotic movie.” The appeal of this
sort of epic videogame is “to be an action-movie hero.”
The game’s specially written two-hour musical score
was recorded by the Moscow Radio Symphony
Orchestra; twenty hours’ worth of character dialogue
was provided by sixteen different voice actors; as a
reward for finishing the game, the player is given a full
half-hour cut-scene to watch. There’s a lot of story
going on in this game, but how much of it is the
player’s business?
Our blond Belgian expert insists that a designer
cannot simply leave the whole story up to the player.
“A totally open world is okay,” Masclef muses, “but if
