Games With Grey

The Missing is a bizarre admixture of derivativeness and innovativeness. Foundationally, the game belongs to the thriving puzzle-platformer genre, inheriting the tropes and mechanics inherent to said genre – herein lies greatest derivativeness; the game adheres too closely to this blueprint; originality suffers; genius is fleeting. Expectantly, then, the game places occasional emphasis on platforming and jumping puzzles, though more traditional, robust and cerebral puzzles far eclipse the jumping puzzles numerically and in terms of complexity. A rift exists even here, when considering overall playability, these dual identities and gameplay approaches. The platforming controls are but serviceable – inoffensive but unremarkable, clunky though not damnably so. Unremarkablity does not equate to goodness, of course, so these platforming sequences are unengaging at best, frustrating at worst; when they emerge, they are slogs to tread through, even though they inject greater gameplay variety, a major asset. Fortunately for the player and the experience, they are mostly minimized – dramatic attention is instead lavished upon conventional puzzles, most revolving around environmental manipulation and careful scrutiny. If platforming is generic and inconsistent, then these puzzles are essentially their inverse; they are consistently engaging, frequently imaginative and inventive. But unexpected paradoxes erupt even here. Logic suggests that solving a particularly difficult puzzle – and such puzzles are rather numerous – would evoke intense cathartic sensations; endorphins should be stimulated. In actuality, however, this rarely happens, as the general sense of self-satisfaction accompanying a puzzle’s solution is typically rather slight; the puzzles fail in gratification, even when at their most elaborate and ambitious; collectively, gameplay falters.

And then, a wonderful, vital, gleamingly bright originality emerges, an originality revolving entirely around one core gameplay mechanic – the player character, J.J., essentially cannot die, no matter the traumas endured, those traumas’ devastations. This mechanic institutes a paradigm shift of sorts. In almost all titles – puzzle-platformers among them – death is something to be avoided always; the player must guide the player character around danger, self-preservation being a guiding motivation, death typically associated with failure. In The Missing, however, the player must actively embrace death, willingly subjecting J.J. to innumerable brutalities, all for the sake of achieving narrative progress. In the opening moments, well before the game finds its footing, traditional platforming / puzzle solving dominates the gameplay; this crucial mechanic goes largely unemphasized. When this commanding focus on the cliché is displaced by the willed-dying mechanics, the gameplay actually soars, correspondent to originality’s emergence and thriving. It is difficult to overpraise this core gameplay mechanic, which dismantles genericness in its inclusion; the developers grapple with genre and ultimately better it. Many examples could be advanced of this mechanic’s vitalness, its boldness. Consider one trip through a lumber mill, logically containing whirling blades and other utilitarian implements, a reminder of the human presence. Rather than simply assessing these blades and plotting a path around them, leaping over them, crouching to pass beneath them, the player is actually tasked with deliberately plunging upon them, for contact with the objects propels J.J. upwards and outwards, permitting her to access an otherwise inaccessible region by way of added momentum. Progress is made just as J.J. is literally torn to shreds, though the player can take some solace in the knowledge that she can reassemble herself. In some other instances, J.J. must willingly immolate herself by way of flame. Fierce infernos do not, again, destroy her, even as her agonizing screams in this enflamed state communicate the vast magnitude of her sufferings. So enflamed, the player might direct J.J. towards some deliberately placed flammable obstacle, using the flames encircling her to eviscerate that obstacle and progress ever onwards. These mechanics, repeated countless times throughout the title, are masterful achievements, prompting the player to approach gameplay from a totally different angle. They serve a narrative function, too, in that they intensify the player / player character bond. It is easy and instinctual to identify with J.J., to feel her sufferings and to emphasize with them. For all its swelling, commanding violence, then, total desensitization never settles in; that pervasive violence is ever affecting, as J.J. reassembles her mangled frame at will, a reassembling coupled with sounds of breaking bones, agonies. The Missing, in gameplay and in narrative, is a mature and challenging title. This matureness permits transcendence; the commanding genericness is overridden.

And The Missing’s core narrative is a major source of originality; brimming with heart, emotion, and sincerity, it is instantly engrossing and remains ever engrossing onwards through towards completion. Relative novelness abounds even here, as protracted cutscenes and exposition-heavy sequences are mostly absent, while formal voice is similarly minimized (though this minimalization actually has positive repercussions, in that it enhances the specialness attached to voice acting when it is indeed present).The narrative does begin, however, with a formal cutscene, establishing the player character, J.J., and an additional figure of paramount importance – Emily, J.J.’s companion and by subtle extension her lover. Narrative agency shows itself from the first; Emily and J.J. are separated while sojourning on a mythical island off the coast of Maine, and it is J.J.’s responsibility to locate Emily and rescue her, whatever her fate – therein lies the narrative’s greatest motivation, one only complicated by J.J.’s capabilities for resurrection, never fully explained though presumably connected to a lighting strike inflicted upon her, either a freak occurrence or one orchestrated by some higher power who saw in J.J. a potential beacon of strength, a figure singularly capable of rescuing and recovering Emily. Their relationship’s profoundness carries the narrative, which almost adopts an investigative tone, everything hinging upon Emily’s eventual discovery and the knowledge and personal insights necessarily attached to that discovery. As figure, Emily is immensely valuable to and cherished by J.J., Emily filling a void within that latter character, while their relationship generally is depicted as mutualistic, transparent, and confessional in nature. Even in the narrative’s later portions, as Emily occupies an almost villainous stance, corrupted and darkened upon her removal from J.J., a removal which essentially doomed her, Emily’s likability never fully recedes or evaporates, and for all her implied villainy she remains a tragic figure, a statement which could be extended to J.J., too, a figure whose very existence in the narrative revolves around suffering and loss. Ample interpretability does indeed exist here, largely owing to the commanding bizarreness which eventually surrounds Emily and J.J. both.

Further inklings of originality are also present in the narrative’s unusual method of secondary advancement. The occasional voice acting and environmental storytelling are supplemented by an included text messaging system, the player capable of accessing J.J.’s phone at essentially any moment, wherein the player can view texts and respond to them. The contact list totals roughly eight in number, consisting of figures as diverse as J.J.’s mother and one of J.J.’s professors in college. Indeed, in these message threads – which update organically as the player makes narrative progress – a new, vital facet of J.J.’s identity is revealed; she is a fledgling student at University, recently removed from home and forced to grapple with that removal, its aftereffects; an existential crisis seems imminent, owing to this period of adjustment. Even while occupying this formative and sometimes angst-ridden state, J.J. is largely defined by her diligence and her intellectualism – though these two attainments do not come at the expense of humanity, groundedness, or believability, all of which are observable in her messages to her companions, Emily among them. Reflecting her youth, vulgar language is ubiquitous, while crass and imaginative emoticons have their place, too. The messages’ generally brief, rapid fire nature also reflects believability, as most text messengers eschew exposition in favor of total succinctness. Diversity is immense, as J.J. adopts a plurality of different voices in these messages, showing respectfulness and deferentialness for her professor, showing sharp frankness to her overbearing if well-intentioned mother, while the cordialness defining J.J.’s addresses to her fellow youths and students illuminates another key aspect to her character, its multifacetedness. This entire construction, this way of advancing the narrative, is incredibly novel, its generally unintrusive nature being vital to its successes. Many games rely upon secondary, discoverable documents to flesh out their core narratives, to be sure. In most games, however, these documents can be intimidating, owing to their length and occasionally the intimidating prose style. Here, though, the writing is ever conversational and brisk in length, is tonally disarming – the text messages are wonderfully inviting, and hearing the phone’s vibration, a vibration which signals a newly-received message, was a consistently thrilling affair. Some might consider this relative overdependence upon the messages as somehow lazy, as a poor substitute for conventional narrative constructions – see formal cutscenes – though ultimately this clever design is magical and transformative in nature, developing not only J.J., not only her correspondents, but the world that J.J. and those correspondents both occupy and share.  

The Missing is brimming with atmosphere – a true sense of place is captured, almost all world-building decisions subservient to reality and strivings for an immersive believability. From the first, the game does stress location – here is an isolated Maine island, almost mythical in construction, featuring habitation though still clinging to folklore, a past existence. Mostly, however, humanity is emphasized, and accordingly the player guides J.J. throughout decidedly human environments. Consider only the sawmill explored at roughly the narrative’s midway point, its inclusion suggesting the lumber industry’s centrality for the quaint island’s economic microcosm, employing countless individuals. Vibrant greens abound; the forests are lush and verdant, are oddly and beautifully evocative of Greenvale, Washington, principle environment in SWERY’s earlier Deadly Premonition, itself a moody and brooding construction. Nature and civilization are thus engaged in a certain warfare here, the lumber mill – a human construction – having its prominent place, while the skies, peopled by innumerable gleaming stars, exert their own influence – consider only the narrative’s masterful opening, J.J.’s introduction, Emily’s introduction, the pair affectionately relaxing beneath those selfsame twinkling stars. Further displays of human ambition, of resistances to nature, are observable in an explorable diner, wherein the player must manipulate such decidedly human constructions as a jukebox, a reminder of civilization even given the island’s geographical detachment. Openness / confinedness vacillate with fair regularity, and environmental diversity is abundant – freshness is ever preserved, actually expands as the narrative progresses. Superficially and artistically, these environments are unremarkable; the developers rejected the overt stylization defining a game like, say, Limbo, a game brimming with desaturation, all visuals being either grey, white, or black, or a mixture of the three. This game is not instantaneously gripping as that title is, but rather than being a marked failure, this design decision instead points towards subtlety; in its masterful world design, The Missing is never overbearing or heavy-handed. Rather than navigating some arbitrarily designed world, one featuring illogically positioned spikes and other obstacles which clash with reality and are instead included for gameplay’s sake, the player instead navigates human environments almost always – see as additional illustration a bowling alley traversed in the later portions, a place brimming with atmosphere, lights, and neon, the place again marking a bold rejection of overt fantasticalness. A misstep does emerge in the closing moments, as the player is forced to ascend a sprawling clock tower, a structure featuring innumerable blades whirling and moving about with great haste and intensity, but this departure from reality, this embracing of gaminess, is essentially an anomaly – world-design is a triumph.

The Missing is a good game, an excellent one, though it is rarely an enjoyable game; it lacks the vital spark of life so fundamental to a consistently engaging experience, even with its scattershot ambitions for innovation and genre advancement – see the pivotal life / death mechanic, J.J.’s capabilities for resurrection. This one novel gameplay wrinkle does compensate for gameplay failings and genericness evinced elsewhere – see the occasionally inconsistent puzzle quality and the rather imprecise platforming controls and sequences, fortunately infrequent. This novelness is complemented by a plurality of narrative novelness, too, storytelling arguably marking the game’s finest achievement, whether one is speaking of formal cutscenes, environmental storytelling, or the clever, well-implemented text messaging system; the narrative overflows with sincerity and an affecting poignancy. While quantitatively J.J.’s odyssey is rather brief in length – the entire experience is certainly completable in under ten or so hours – still her narrative and quest could be likened to an odyssey, even as the game is designed in a hyperlinear fashion, a hyperlinearity which could potentially alienate some players, could endear and engage others with its focusedness. Collectables have their place, to be sure, collectables which unlock compelling secondary content – see beautiful concept art and a litany of various skins for J.J.’s character model – but alongside hyperlinearity comes the minimalization of exploration; the game features little secondary content. Continuing this thought, those fully seeking escapism and an excess of pleasure will likely be repulsed by The Missing, owing to its generally unfun nature. Unenjoyable or no, the game can also be distressing in construction, owing to the constant interrogation with death, its ramifications. How fiercely mortality should be preserved – or neglected. Is J.J. cursed in that she cannot die? Or is this forcibly-instilled fate somehow an empowering asset? Much exists to be puzzled over – player engagement is fierce. A rather calamitous and frustrating conclusion actually undermines earlier narrative successes, though. A dramatic revelation is advanced, and while SWERY and his team likely expected that revelation to be impactful and rewarding, in actuality it was deflating, compromising those earlier achievements – had the game concluded some fifteen minutes earlier, had it concluded on a very mournful tone, a tone emphasized repeatedly throughout, then the overall experience would improve immeasurably. Instead, cheapness abounds, as does an optimism which seems woefully out of place. This failure is not insurmountable, of course, and while The Missing possesses many alienating attributes and design decisions, and while its firm genre adherence is ultimately stifling, those who enter with a receptive mind are richly rewarded.