Don't Upset The Bear

His stance changes.

“Back off ‘hanzer, this don’t concern you!”

Yes, it does.

Once, a long time ago, these same fuckers gave me that same look, that same disdain, the same slouchy posture of untrained but experienced weapon handling.

But back then, I was a cop.

I had weapons, body armour and at least three other guys as backup.

I had what was left of the state judiciary on my side…

I had… I had scruples.

I refused to kill an augmented suspect.

At least, that’s what the guys back at C&C wanted. Tactically, it may have been the right move, but I… It wasn’t like I couldn’t do it. I didn’t WANT to do it. I watched the suspect through the scope and I saw the same things the Chief viewed through my scope and cams. Only I saw a frightened kid, probably no older than 16; the brass only saw his electro-mechanical brachio-thorax.

As a cop, as a SWAT team leader, you drill, train, build up the muscle memory for the moment when all other options have evaporated - the moment your perp raises that barrel, even the moment you see ‘em mentally lining up that shot… but that’s for when you run out of options.

My partner, Wayne Haas… he took away all those options.

He took the shot.

Nobody came out of that raid pretty - from that one shot onwards, the Mexicantown Raid became a bloodbath. If anything it crystallised a decision for me; it was time to leave the force.

When David Sarif hired me, it wasn’t like I had that many options. Megan… well, she pulled strings or something, but I got the job despite criticism from some people within the company. The contract I signed, well, lets just say it was massive, detailed… Hell, I needed the money. I wasn’t exactly in any shape to send it to my attorney and quibble about all the convoluted clauses in the colossal section about their health care plan. The DPD brass had seen to that.

It’s been more than six months since that night - the night Sarif’s labs burned and about half their research staff were murdered. Six months since I had my options taken away.

I read Dr Marcovic’s report; when they pulled me out of the wreckage, all I had were my legs and a left arm. It felt like they’d broken every other bone in my body when that merc tossed me through the wall. I vaguely remember a raised gun barrel, then… nothing.

It could have ended there, but I guess Sarif had a point to prove. He ordered replacements not just for my arm or my shattered torso. He could have just dealt with my brain damage and called it even. He ordered almost a whole body replacement - I should have had that contract checked after all. Six months of recuperation, physiotherapy, more surgery… thank Christ for the meds. They call it “augmentation”, but for those months of constant fine tuning, waiting for the flesh to heal and connect with the alloys, the augs were just dead weight. They were worse than useless - excruciatingly painful one minute, massively over-powered the next.

I’d tried my best to keep up with the state of augmentation technology when I was a cop - back then though it was mostly Vets going on the rampage with army surplus or VA issued augs… Between that and what I gleaned from Megan’s work, I thought I knew what they went through. But this? This was a whole other level.They say Detroit used to be the centre of the world’s car manufacturers; well, Sarif’s people did their best to turn me into a walking concept vehicle.

One by one, the augs started connecting up; movement came more easily thanks to the constant firmware updates and the subsiding problems with my cranial haemotoma. But… my current condition leaves me… troubled.

On one level, Sarif’s right. Once you’ve taken a dive off a six storey building and landed without a scratch… once you realise that you can now make vertical leaps of almost five metres, punch through brick walls, lift ridiculously heavy objects and just toss them around like they were made of cardboard… there’s a real kick, an exultation. But then I remember who, or rather, WHAT I am now.

What if I tell you I can now unlock any door, control any camera or robotic device? Or that my employer now has a direct channel into my eyes and ears, listen in on any conversation I have with anyone else for the rest of my life? How about me being able to see through walls?

What was it Oppenheimer said? He quoted the Baghvad Gita, something about becoming Death, the Destroyer of Worlds… That’s what I am now.

I have a pair of retractable, configurable machetes - one in each arm. they’re semi-autonomous; it doesn’t matter if I punch forward or back, with my fist or elbow. If I want them, they just know when to come out and where.

I can upgrade my chest to turn myself into a human claymore, firing explosive pellets in a wide arc; I can pulverise whole rooms full of people at the flick of a neuron. And that’s before I tell you I can carry enough heavy weapons to start an invasion.

Somebody somewhere decided these were necessary. Someone ordered and paid for them to be developed, someone paid for the testing, deployment, upgrades, accessories packages. Hell, I’m waiting for someone to decide they need to build a gun directly into my goddamned skull.

There are other things too - I don’t understand how my Augs are connected with these damn protein bars. Seems like everything from the number of silent beat-downs to the chameleon skin augmentations run down my body’s nutrient supply but these nutrients only seem to come in bar or tub-sized doses! I wish someone would explain how that works. I mean, seriously, punching  and judo-throwing someone can’t possibly burn up that many calories, right?

To tell you the truth, I’d have traded in all these guns for a Costco sized case of these damn bars.

For all these powers I have, I’ve begun to worry that someone or something is monitoring me, subtly noting my actions and selectively permitting or forbidding how I would use my Augs. I bothers me - why can I pick up massive vending machines, refrigerators and crates, but not say, chairs, tables or pot plants? Why can I pickup a photocopier in say, the DPD precinct 17 building, but not in some warehouse in Hengsha? What’s stopping me from say, never using a door, smashing my way through any walls I want to? Hell, I can’t even break a window unless I use a bullet.

And what about weapons dropped by fallen guards? I’ve noticed this strange compulsion - I can’t seem to pick up a weapon without squirrelling away the ammo. After that, I can’t seem to find the weapon itself, it’s like it’s just vanished, edited from my consciousness…

I can’t work out if… is it someone controlling what I can or can’t do? Or are the augs themselves deciding that I don’t need to be able to so stuff? I haven’t seen a clear pattern yet… but when I do, I’ll be straightening that out. Sarif and others may have built my body parts, but they attached them to me - they’re mine now. I am the owner, their master. I’ll jump when I want to, carry what I want to, when I want to.

I am troubled though by many things I’ve seen, many situations I’ve been in where for all my new powers, I find myself helpless to change. I have, through what I like to rationalise as necessity, done many questionable things.

Sure, I helped put a crooked cop behind bars. ONE crooked cop in a system where crooked is looking like the new straight. I took down Sanders; he was holding a woman hostage, but I wish he could have seen reason, could have seen he was being played. I rescued a girl from the hands of pimps keen to “leash” her with a combination of Augs and the anti-rejection drug Neuropazine. I helped frame their boss… after I nearly punched his jaw clean off.

But I’ve been inside a FEMA run… I don’t know,  I guess you would call it a concentration camp. People go in, nobody comes back out the other side. Its very existence… this wasn’t what I became a cop for. This wasn’t what I ever stood for, what I thought my country stood for. As much as I wished I could have dropped a nuke and levelled the place, I had to let it go.

I’ve dealt with a Triad warlord; the kind of man… the kind of men I would have gladly cut down in times gone past… Yeah, I traded favours so I could get closer to the people who killed Megan. I’ve had to deal with back-alley arms dealers; these guys I disliked most of all.

I know from bitter experience how many times the same gun can show up over and over in literally waves of crimes - the only way to take them out of criminal hands is basically confiscate and destroy them. Hell, some of these guys even deal in shoulder launched missiles! I mean, seriously, what would you need a missile launcher for when an EMP mine is way more effective against even the biggest military Bots? And using one against a human enemies? That’s just insane. Maybe they’d be good if you needed to open a door in a hurry or something, but hacking doors is much quieter.

Yet here I am, I find myself forced to collect them and trade them in at a dealer for tranquiliser darts or taser darts. Damn these mechanical hands - I wish I could just take all those damned pistols, tear apart their trigger assemblies, warp the barrels, something, ANYTHING to stop them recirculating. Yet here I am, selling bunches of assault weapons so I can buy a Praxis Kit or a better scope for my tranquiliser rifle. I wish I could take all these damned frag mines and defuse them too - the mine chassis I could still turn into an EMP or Tear Gas mine… but here I am, selling off frag mines to turn a buck. They’ll turn up on the street again, they always do… but there’s nowhere safe to dispose of them without setting off an enormous explosion and jeopardising my investigation.

There’s my dilemma.

This investigation; the path I’ve been put onto. I’m not an employee anymore - I’m a demonstration piece, a demonstrator model, a goddamned piece of walking intellectual and company property. Sometimes I think this whole thing was a set up, a massive hardware test.

I’m less than I was before those mercenaries attacked my workplace. I’m a ridiculous experiment, a super-powered cyborg powered by booze and protein bars for crying out loud! Zelazny got one thing right - there’s no resigning from the company for men like us.

There’s one thing they’re not going to take from me, not if I have anything to say about it. I’m never activating the Typhoon system. The machete blades will stay sheathed; I am not Sarif’s creation or anyone else’s tool… not completely anyway. I was made to kill; they rebuilt me to do just that. They hope my thirst for justice or vengeance, combined with these new powers will break me down, destroy my humanity.

I won’t give them what they want. I will not kill.

I will not kill this fool standing before me now.

He shifts his weight, drawing his weapon; his confident friend, now alert to my presence half-runs, half-struts over.

I will not kill him.

I slide in between them both with inhuman speed and grace; the first one, now on my right takes a swing at me. He seems so surprised when I spin behind and around, swiping his ankles out from under him. He stays airborne just long enough to gasp as I slam him down onto the pavement with a blow to his solar plexus. His friend, terrified now, turns to see himself briefly reflected in the glass of my new eyes; he will not remember them. I manoever around him effortlessly through his feeble blows, to land one to his face hard enough to throw him several metres away. He’ll have one Hell of a headache when he wakes up, but I’ll be gone by then.

Right after I’ll have rifled through their pockets for a protein bar.

The first demo videos promised a god like control of the elements and the fate of tiny bands of mask wearing African tribesmen. The scale of the geological events ranged against these people left a very strong impression - not to mention the amazing tech demos that followed, showing real-time terrain deformation with huge waves of water as the earth rises, displacing entire oceans, propagating tsumani-like waves that crash against erupting volcanic floes… it looked by far to be the most amazing God-game ever devised.
 
The art style too was startlingly fresh. It could only have come from a French studio - French tastes in exoticism has always run towards the North Africa of a pre-WWI imagination. The intimate, loving, almost reverent pastiche of African decorative styles, the amazingly thought-out explanations of the people’s mythos and even their reasons for wearing masks could, in my opinion, never have been brought forth by English, Canadian or US based teams. Musically though, it takes cues from a wider set of inspirations. There are Didgeridoos, stringed instruments from Mali, hints of Andean pan-pipes.

 
The whole package, even as I loaded the game was just beautiful and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little breathless with anticipation. I’d been a huge fan of Populous, Dungeon Keeper and the Sims games and I guess I had some… well, different expectations.

The player is not a God. Players are actually the personification of the collective spirit or “Breath” of the tribe; a player’s only power, really, is collecting and dumping sand, lava and water from all over the map - basically they’re like a big kid scooping and shaping a giant sandpit to let a line of ants get from hither to yon.

 
The tribe remains faceless, nameless; they wander endlessly through desolate lands, searching for answers to ancient mysteries, of knowledge and skills lost to time. Of particular interest are the Ancients’ artifacts that dot the land for it is only around these monoliths that tribesmen can form villages. So long as the village stands, the player can call upon temporary powers like Amplify The Breath, which lets you temporarily pick up and dump twice the normal amount of matter, Jellify Water which lets you carve Moses-style paths through rivers and lakes or even Infinite Earth which simple lets you dump as much sand as you like wherever you choose. There are many more, but there’s only ever a maximum of four monoliths on any given map.
 

These powers though can be invoked by players almost at will. There are also sacred locales, places where ancient stones bear long lost secrets, fragments of myth (which take the place of the usual game-y ‘achievements’), or even passive forms of magic that deflects massive tidal waves, forest fires or even lava floes around villages without player intervention.
 
These passive powers become mightily important around mid-game when there are plenty of distractions. They can be hard to obtain however as players must first click on the artifact, summoning a man to come from a village to obtain the knowledge (not always the nearest one). Once there, he calls the player to click on him again to unlock it. After that, he must make the often perilous journey back to his village of origin. After a moment or two, the knowledge is activated, signified by the flying of a brightly coloured kite from the top of their monolith.

 
This is your only true contact with the people - floating your cursor over the mysterious monoliths to summon them to create villages, to investigate sacred artifacts or once all villages are occupied, to call them to the Exit Ritual Monolith. Even the propagation of passive magic is out of player hands - as new villages are established, wise men spontaneously run to these distant places, bearing their colourful kites with them.  

As their helper spirit, you remain aloof, above the people whose souls you are composed of. You are not an intimate god, interested in the personal whims and best interests of your individual believers.  Nor are you an evil or capricious deity in the Peter Molyneux sense of the word.

You could try and bury villages and individuals in sand (though this usually is considered a positive act - it raises the terrain, saving your people and their village from nearby lava or floods and suppreses the growth of vegetation temporarily which can act as a temporary fire break… 

Certainly, there are opportunities for bathing villages or individuals in lava or flood them with all the water you can carry, washing them out to sea. You could decide to leave the frequent wildfires untended, killing all in their wake. But toying with the elements is counterproductive; lose all your villages on a map and it’s game over for you.  
 
And this is perhaps what bothered me for a long time as I played through the ten-odd “missions” the game provides in its story mode; its something brought into further sharp relief in the final level where you’re granted almost limitless sandbox power, raising earth from the sea, forging volcanos, planting monoliths.

I had focused so much on saving my people from catastrophe throughout the game, yet I had no personal stake in their lives other than this one fact - their death was my end-of-game screen. Why did Chahi’s team not give me greater interaction with my people I wondered? Why was I not helping them, say, build docks so they could build boats and get about without my desperate land-bridge construction? Why was I not helping them raise their crops? It was then that it came to me - the Molyneux or Will Wright model of a God-game, the Bullfrog and Maxis DNA on which all subsequent games of the genre have been built are about omnipotent micromanagement of the lives of each little bitizen. They are all about God as Line Manager.

Chahi’s game is different in that it reminds us that We as Players are not Gods. We are given relative measures of free-will (or as Ian Bogost would probably say “You have been provided with your box of shit-crayons”) within the game and relatively amazing powers. We can manipulate lava, soil and water. But we do not control the quintessence of all creation - we have no power of life. Sure, we are permitted the means to extinguish it or make it difficult - but we cannot create it.



The tribesmen can be asked to come to a monolith to take possession and build a village near it, but they choose their own path to get there (which can lead to freakouts about why they chose not to use the paths you crafted for them). When they arrive the land is bare - it is only when they found their villages do we see the flourishing of plant life; encouraging the spread of plants by dumping sand over bare rocks or drizzling water over barren deserts brings forth animals.Who knows where they come from, but they do, crawling forth like the great Ohmu from Miyazaki’s Nausica and a Valley of the Wind.  The people sustain themselves somehow - for as long as a village stands, it is self sustaining, requiring almost no player intervention.

The villages too do not expand as such - over time, great trails of pretty bunting is strung between nearby trees, but there are no signs of expanded population, technological development or indeed modernity; these people live like the romanticized noble savages, humans in a state of nature and therefore of grace. They want for nothing but mercy from the implacable forces of nature - so they crafted their own counter-force.

What I’m trying to say is this - we have been tricked. This is not a God-game in the way we’ve become accustomed. In From Dust, we the players are but the magically extended hand of the tiny people that scurry across the worlds they inhabit. And when the game tells you that you’ve greened most of the land, that animals have come, secrets have been re-discovered and that men now wish to leave through the portal to populate the next world where the Ancients once lived… it’s because they, the wee people want it - they are ready when you are done messing about with the hills, ridges, islands and fjords.

We may own the software and the hardware, we boot the program, we are the true Gods… and yet in their realm, the inhabitants of From Dust have constrained us. We, the players, you see… we are their servants, not the other way around.

:D

All image copyright belongs to Ubisoft and/or their respective owners. I just took some screencaps.