This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee takes a look at audio logs and how games like The Callisto Protocol, after all these years, are somehow still getting them wrong by making people stop playing the game to hear them.
Extra Punctuation Transcript
It’s all very well doing video essays on big weighty topics like emotional tone and what it means to be fun and who our favourite Persona waifu is, but with the contrarian nature of Youtube commenters they always seem to lead to arguments. Of course games have to be fun. Of course tonal mishmash can be used for deliberate dramatic effect. Who the fuck sticks with Rise? She’s basically the free sample. So for the sake of bringing us all together for the holidays, I thought for this episode it would be nice to discuss something completely inarguable. Let’s talk about a universally negative thing video games persist in doing. Doing intentionally, I should clarify. A deliberate design choice that isn’t a result of bugs or hardware limitations or publisher interference that absolutely everyone hates.
Impossible! I hear you cry. Surely even the most egregious common design feature of video games will bring out at least one person who likes it, even if they’re a weirdo who lives in a cave. And really likes Sonic the Hedgehog. Well, I think I have it. It was the Callisto Protocol that made me think of it. I was gonna bring it up in the ZP review, but frankly there wasn’t room to squeeze it in alongside everything else I wanted to complain about. So, fine, I thought, we’ll take it to Extra Punctuation and give it a real motherfucking airing out. You ready? Here it comes.
If your game has audio logs, that the player can find and collect, for the purpose of scene setting and story building, just play the fucking things when we pick them up. Do NOT, just stick them in an inventory or menu screen for us to play later at our leisure. I mean, I assume it’s in some way relevant to the area or situation we’re in since we picked it up here, why would I want to listen to it later when I’ve moved onto other things?
But if for some reason you HAVE to force the player to dig through the pause menu with a shovel looking for the thing they just fucking picked up, do NOT, and that’s a bigger NOT, do NOT abruptly stop playing the audio log the instant we close the menu. Just let it keep playing over gameplay.
No prizes for guessing the approach Callisto Protocol takes. If that game had a motto, it’d be “If we’re going to fuck up, might as well completely fuck up.” But I see this so often in mainstream video games that have a collectible audio log element and I’ve never met a single person who disagrees with me on this. Maybe I lack the power to nudge video gaming as a medium in line with my broader philosophies like immersion storytelling, but if I can at least drive home this one specific issue and get it into the head of at least one high level designer then perhaps my whole career will have been worth it.
The issue was particularly highlighted in Callisto Protocol because I was playing the PS5 version, having been very emphatically advised against the PC release, and like a lot of PS5 games it was trying to get some use out of that stupid controller speaker. Every time someone talks to the protagonist over his radio it comes out from between your hands. Which I generally don’t like because it messes with immersion. It’s not supposed to be MY radio, it’s Jacob Lee’s radio. If every other sound Jacob Lee and his equipment makes is coming from the TV the radio should be the same.
But then I found my first audio log and thought “Well maybe it’s smart to play audio logs out of the controller speaker ‘cos I’m not really listening to those in-universe, as it were. I’m doing that as a player wanting to know more about the story. And if it’s coming out of a different source it’ll be easier to separate from the diegetic game audio. Turned out I needn’t have worried, of course, because the logs wouldn’t play over gameplay. I was expected to pop a squat on the menu screen and support my chin in my hand as my controller babbled away for thirty seconds. I did feel obliged to listen to them. I was afraid of missing some deep backstory some poor contracted bastard had put his heart into writing.
So the big question for me is, why WOULDN’T you let us play audio logs over gameplay? Isn’t that the point? To encourage us to keep playing the game, not completely kill the pace to stare at a menu for two minutes? I get bored very easily just listening to something. That’s why when I listen to podcasts and things I’m usually working or playing some boring cozy game in another window. A bit of flavour story would be ideal to play over the next few minutes of bumbling around the environment.
It’s a reasonable assumption that if we have picked up an audio log then we are in bumble around mode. Obviously it depends on what sort of game we’re in, but if it is something like survival horror with clear incentive to search all the cupboards for health drinks and shit, then I could pick up any visible audio logs first and then listen to it while I ransack the rest of the furniture in the room. A no-brainer, surely. But I see all you contrarians getting ready to pounce with your no having to sit on a menu listening to audio logs like a stupid toad on a spoon is good, actually, arguments. Why don’t I save you the trouble.
Oh, what if you get into combat or some other thrilling gameplay event while the audio log is playing? What if you do? Keep playing the audio log. Your average combat loop engages a different part of your brain to your speech centre, I often pick things like boomer shooters or other repetitive violent games for my cozy podcast listening sessions. I don’t expect letting the narrator drown out a few random barks, grunts of pain or chunky head exploding sound effects will severely taint the experience.
Oh, oh. What if the audio log drowns out some game dialog? Could happen. What, like banter? Like the banter discussed in our previous episode that games like God of War indulge, constant useless reiterating of whatever the last story event was for the sake of having dialogue constantly dribbling through our ear pipes – yeah, I doubt missing out on any of that will leave my life hanging in ruins, thanks. Pause all banter until the log’s finished playing if it’s THAT important to you.
Oh, oh, oh, not necessarily banter, Yahtzee. Important story dialogue too. What if you blunder into one of those seamless cutscenes games like so much these days and some vital character moment starts happening while your audio log is prattling away. What if you’d been watching the love scene from Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and had to listen to someone meandering about pomegranates while the hero was going in for the big snog?
Alright, legitimate point. To be honest I’d probably have hated it less than being forced to stay on a menu to listen to it, but fine. Couple of things you could do. You could pause the audio log while the important scene happens. Although it might be a bit of a mental lurch if it automatically resumes when the scenes over. So maybe just stop it altogether. Or remix the audio so the log becomes quieter than the important dialogue? If we’re THAT interested we could always play the audio log again.
But frankly, my first thought when faced with the problem of the audio log playing over something important scenario is, so fucking what? Why should you, the designer, care? I’m not going to hold it against you. I was the one who started playing the audio log. I accept the consequences for my own actions. It’s like I’ve said, the best game experiences feel like a coalition between the player and the designer, don’t stress out about us not having the full experience YOU intended, we know how to have our own fun.
In any case, getting attacked by enemies while we’re listening to a log sounds like emergent gameplay to me. I thought it was safe to sit in a corner and listen to a podcast but, whoops, turns out it wasn’t. That’s a classic nugget of risk-reward game design right there. Brings to mind how you could play games on your PDA in System Shock 2. So you’d be playing Minesweeper on a window on the left side of the screen while keeping one eye on the gloomy silent corridor you’re standing in in case a shotgun dude lurches around the corner.
More games should do that. Stick in a little optional minigame to fiddle about with on a whim. You know how stealth games can involve a lot of crouching behind cover waiting for a patrolling guard to turn around? That’d be a perfect moment to dig out the old communication device and do today’s Wordle.
