I ponder about things a lot, when everything is quiet and I’m trying to sleep… I ponder things instead. Last week I talked about BioShock and the way it invoked deeper meaning through story, which left me rather annoyingly stewing on its allegory of freedom. Freedom used to be such a euphoric feeling that games could create, it was more important than anything else. Escapism, validation, joy, they all come from the freedom a game gives you to interact with a world. Nowadays however I don’t really get that euphoria, its more about the linear story that has to be told this specific way and this camera angle that will instil this particular emotion. Games aren’t used to their full potential and may never be, but we won’t reach that pinnacle if we forget their origins.

The more I pondered the more I realised that I stewed on BioShock because it both proves and breaks the concept of freedom in videogames. BioShock completes the majority of its pre-defined narrative in the first five minutes. There is very little actual plot between the initial use of plasmids and killing Andrew Ryan.The game leaves you, as a player, with little information. More importantly there is never an explanation of the character and what his motivations, origins and desires are. The only characteristic known is that he has the will to survive, no matter the cost. That is in essence freedom.

You define that character and you use a set of rules to interact with the world exactly how you want to. Sure, you as a player have to meet Sander Cohan and help the gardens no matter what, but even you doing those you are free to play as you wish. All of this comes to a grinding halt at the end, which is when the game becomes an ironic parody of itself. All freedom is taken from you. As soon as you are ‘œfree’ of Fontaine’s control, Tenenbaum is directing your every move into becoming a big daddy and the eventual defeat of Fontaine.

Throughout the game you are given the choice to interact with the little sisters in some way. Whether it is harvesting, saving, ignoring or simply watching, while breathing slightly heavier than usual, going faster and faster, holding your breath and feeling your toes curl and then… you go hit a splicer in the face with a wrench. But now all of a sudden you have to directly protect this particular sister because somebody is telling you to do so, telling you that this is freedom. A sense of freedom can’t be obtained because somebody says it is so however, this contradicts its very sentiment. True freedom would come from a complete disassociation from others’ will, anything and everything is possible.

To some BioShock was a liner game that was meant to be a roller-coaster that you simply ride and follow every loop-de-loop and apex that the track leads you through. The end in that case would be perfectly justified, but that defeats the purpose of it being interactive. Fun and entertainment come through the actual gameplay, but that is like cutting off your feet and saying how great wheelchairs are.

To me, the concept of freedom seems to run parallel with narrated story. Neither one can really meet because they oppose each other. But what if this wasn’t the case? What if as a player I can create my own story. Freedom can only exist by all definition, when structure is stripped away. Think of it like this; you are born with a set of DNA and the upbringing that follows defines what you can make of your life. Your personal choices alter how you use those talents and preconceived views to reach milestones in life. We need linear stories, or else movies wouldn’t exist, but games just have too much potential to be something more than that.

When I used to play a game, there was almost no story; instead there were basic game mechanics, a 2D world and a destination to get to. The lack of help or interaction added to difficulty, but that also created an unhindered progress to the end. A set of controls and rules to follow have been left for me and nobody is going to tell how to use them, but if I’m so inclined they will probably help me finish this level. I don’t have to finish this level, there is no real consequence if I don’t but maybe something new will be on the next one. The lack of story created the freedom to play a game exactly how I as a person want to.

Even in open-world games, freedom is just an outlandish concept that is discussed but never realised. There is always a format. Finish these side-missions that are all varied and such and then complete a main objective to progress the plot. Even on a base level where the choice of mission types and quantities is measured in the player’s hands, freedom is never really there. Sure you can choose which one of these missions to take up, but either they will have you complete them all anyway or a mission of identical structure will occur later.

Red Faction Guerrilla is a primary example of this. You have to lower EDF morale and it ‘œdoesn’t matter how you do it’. Except it only doesn’t matter because there is only one real way to do it. Freedom in that game trickles down to ‘œdestroy this base and rescue people’, ‘œdestroy the bridge because the EDF control it’ or ‘œdestroy this building because we want to test whether you grasped the concept of destroying stuff yet’.

When I look back on games like Kirby’s Fun Park I didn’t need an open world to feel free, the tightest corridor filled with a set amount of enemies that respawned in the same place every time was freedom. I could walk past them, I could use any ability I had absorbed or I could stand there because I didn’t have to help my character avenge his brother.

The more I write these Nostalgia pieces the more I feel that games are not necessarily moving backwards, but are trying to move forward when what they really need to do is complete a circle. For a long time developers were concerned with the ‘œCinematic Experience’ in a game and not how the player could affect a world. It’s like the thought process has become ‘œwouldn’t it be cool to shoot a gun at things’ rather than ‘œwouldn’t it be cool to have a choice to fire that gun depending on how I have viewed this world’. Games can be that roller-coaster that drives your emotions through a whirlwind of unabated feelings that could never have existed if you didn’t experience that linear story. That just doesn’t mean something greater than linear stories can’t come from the freedom to simply exist in a world.