Daddy Issues< This blog post contains some potential spoilers for Heavy Rain and Red Dead Redemption. Best leave it if you haven’t completed them >I penned a piece for Ready-up back in late 2009, titled Daddy Issues, which was a look at just one of the underplayed and underused themes in videogames: parenthood. I mean, how rare is it to play as a father or a mother in a game? I asked my Twitter followers for help, and beyond the obvious stand-out dads, from Sam Fisher and Max Payne to Kratos and the slightly-less psychotic one from Kane and Lynch, it was hard to name any other playable pops.But since penning that article, I’ve been inundated with dads in games. Just this year alone, I’ve played three major releases that had a father, or a father figure, for a protagonist. Plus, all three of which offered up some real, in-game interaction with their kids.Heavy Rain is the stand-out example, making parenthood the central theme of its twisty narrative. There’s plenty of hanging around seedy clubs, snooping around motels and busting down doors, but the key plight is Ethan Mars’ endless search for his missing son, Shaun.But it goes way beyond Max Payne and Kane’s parental plight. In those games, the child in question is either hidden away by kidnappers for 90 percent of the game, or killed in the opening cutscene, offering up lazy motivation for our protagonist’s next 12 hours of bad-dude genocide. Because it’s inherently understood that parents adore their offspring, and would quickly mow down 100 nameless goons to rescue them, or get revenge for their death. It’s so intrinsic, and easy to relate to, that a brief flashback or a wistful photo in a wallet is more than enough drive to make us murder.But Heavy Rain goes one giant step further, giving us precious time to get to know Shaun before he’s snatched away. And you’ll probably do a botched job of it, making his cruel kidnapping all that more heart-wrenching. Now split from his wife, Ethan has Shaun over to a crappy, dirty flat. And you’re forced to either make Shaun do his homework and resent you for tearing him away from the TV, or let him enjoy his evening only to be told off at school the next day for neglecting his work.And then, most crushing of all, he asks for a lost teddy bear before dropping off to sleep. I searched high and low for that bloody bear, trying to patch up our cruddy evening together and feel like a good dad for once. But I messed up. I couldn’t find the bear. I was rubbish.So when Shaun was snatched up in the playground the next day, it hit with so much more force. I wanted to get him back because I’d got to know him in the opening scenes, and because I felt like a crap dad who needed to do much better. Having some proper interaction with Shaun made my motivation much clearer, and really made the choices Ethan faces later in the game so much tougher. It was powerful stuff, hence my nod for a Game of the Year award.Red Dead Redemption plays it the other way around. It continues the tradition of having a distant, withheld wife and child that you murder your way to, but for once it actually gives John Marsten that quality time with his kid in a playable epilogue, rather than a curt cutscene.And it works spectacularly well: you spend much of the time passing knowledge and experience, like shooting a gun or rounding up cattle, down to Jack, just like a real father would. And you’re genuinely passing down learned knowledge to your son. You don’t know how to shoot, round up cattle and ride a horse because its some of John’s inherent knowledge: you know how because you’ve been doing it for the past 30 hours. You’re genuinely passing down skills that you learnt and mastered, onto your kid.And finally, Yakuza 3 lets Kazuma once again play father figure to Haruka, as well as a whole bunch of kids. Taking a little girl out for ice cream and sorting out squabbles amongst the orphans under your care might not be the most exciting gameplay mechanic of all time, but it helps advance Kazuma’s character beyond bad-ass face kicker, and helps frame and motivate the game’s later face kicking.In the original piece, I put forward the suggestion that the experienced fathers and mothers of Hollywood are more inclined to tackle parenthood than the 20-something game developers that churn out our action epics. The simple immaturity of the people who make and play games meant such lofty themes would be out of bounds for the time being.So it’s pleasing to see that a year after making the broad statement that games are crap at showing playable parenthood, the industry has already made that claim much more difficult to argue. And that’s not even mentioning Octodad.

Daddy Issues

< This blog post contains some potential spoilers for Heavy Rain and Red Dead Redemption. Best leave it if you haven’t completed them >

I penned a piece for Ready-up back in late 2009, titled Daddy Issues, which was a look at just one of the underplayed and underused themes in videogames: parenthood. I mean, how rare is it to play as a father or a mother in a game? I asked my Twitter followers for help, and beyond the obvious stand-out dads, from Sam Fisher and Max Payne to Kratos and the slightly-less psychotic one from Kane and Lynch, it was hard to name any other playable pops.

But since penning that article, I’ve been inundated with dads in games. Just this year alone, I’ve played three major releases that had a father, or a father figure, for a protagonist. Plus, all three of which offered up some real, in-game interaction with their kids.

Heavy Rain is the stand-out example, making parenthood the central theme of its twisty narrative. There’s plenty of hanging around seedy clubs, snooping around motels and busting down doors, but the key plight is Ethan Mars’ endless search for his missing son, Shaun.

But it goes way beyond Max Payne and Kane’s parental plight. In those games, the child in question is either hidden away by kidnappers for 90 percent of the game, or killed in the opening cutscene, offering up lazy motivation for our protagonist’s next 12 hours of bad-dude genocide.
Because it’s inherently understood that parents adore their offspring, and would quickly mow down 100 nameless goons to rescue them, or get revenge for their death. It’s so intrinsic, and easy to relate to, that a brief flashback or a wistful photo in a wallet is more than enough drive to make us murder.

But Heavy Rain goes one giant step further, giving us precious time to get to know Shaun before he’s snatched away. And you’ll probably do a botched job of it, making his cruel kidnapping all that more heart-wrenching. Now split from his wife, Ethan has Shaun over to a crappy, dirty flat. And you’re forced to either make Shaun do his homework and resent you for tearing him away from the TV, or let him enjoy his evening only to be told off at school the next day for neglecting his work.

And then, most crushing of all, he asks for a lost teddy bear before dropping off to sleep. I searched high and low for that bloody bear, trying to patch up our cruddy evening together and feel like a good dad for once. But I messed up. I couldn’t find the bear. I was rubbish.

So when Shaun was snatched up in the playground the next day, it hit with so much more force. I wanted to get him back because I’d got to know him in the opening scenes, and because I felt like a crap dad who needed to do much better. Having some proper interaction with Shaun made my motivation much clearer, and really made the choices Ethan faces later in the game so much tougher. It was powerful stuff, hence my nod for a Game of the Year award.

Red Dead Redemption plays it the other way around. It continues the tradition of having a distant, withheld wife and child that you murder your way to, but for once it actually gives John Marsten that quality time with his kid in a playable epilogue, rather than a curt cutscene.

And it works spectacularly well: you spend much of the time passing knowledge and experience, like shooting a gun or rounding up cattle, down to Jack, just like a real father would. And you’re genuinely passing down learned knowledge to your son. You don’t know how to shoot, round up cattle and ride a horse because its some of John’s inherent knowledge: you know how because you’ve been doing it for the past 30 hours. You’re genuinely passing down skills that you learnt and mastered, onto your kid.

And finally, Yakuza 3 lets Kazuma once again play father figure to Haruka, as well as a whole bunch of kids. Taking a little girl out for ice cream and sorting out squabbles amongst the orphans under your care might not be the most exciting gameplay mechanic of all time, but it helps advance Kazuma’s character beyond bad-ass face kicker, and helps frame and motivate the game’s later face kicking.

In the original piece, I put forward the suggestion that the experienced fathers and mothers of Hollywood are more inclined to tackle parenthood than the 20-something game developers that churn out our action epics. The simple immaturity of the people who make and play games meant such lofty themes would be out of bounds for the time being.

So it’s pleasing to see that a year after making the broad statement that games are crap at showing playable parenthood, the industry has already made that claim much more difficult to argue. And that’s not even mentioning Octodad.

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