Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

230 - Allyship in Action: Lessons from In-Game Allies - Part 02

• Gaming The System - The Feminist Gaming Podcast

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Exploring Allies in Gaming: The Good, The Bad, and The Betrayals

In this episode, the hosts delve deep into what makes a bad ally in gaming and real life. They discuss various instances from popular games like 'Star Wars Jedi: Survivor,' 'Spyro,' 'Pandemic Legacy,' and 'Baldur's Gate III,' highlighting how betrayal and inconsistent allies impact gameplay and player trust. They also share their favorite in-game companions and how these characters enrich their gaming experiences, touching on titles like 'The Last of Us,' 'God of War,' 'LA Noire,' and 'World of Warcraft.' The conversation wraps up with a teaser on relationship-building mechanics in RPGs and a nod to their ongoing series on 'The Last of Us.' Join us for an engaging discussion about allyship, strategy, and the profound effects of game narrative on player engagement.

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Matt:

We've touched on on what makes someone a bad ally. Let's just dip into that a little bit further. So what are the biggest, the biggest, oh no, we can't have them our movement things. for me, the, the being a bell end to, I don't like,

Alex:

Mm-hmm.

Matt:

one thing.

Alex:

Betrayal is a pretty big one. Definitely if you get betrayed by someone who you count as an ally that's happened. That's a good example of one I think. I can't remember his actual name, but I think it's something like Bodhi in Star Wars Jedi survivor. start out. Well, I, I, I thought he was bad from the start, so I picked him early on. But the game wants you to believe that he's your ally until about halfway through, and he betrays you and you have to have a big fight with him. you end up killing do you kill him? I can't remember. I think that's one of the major at the end, sorry for spoilers. Have mentioned that beforehand, but nevermind. so that's a big one. Another one is when you have to interact with an ally, quote unquote, but they essentially extort you for you to be able to progress through the game. And my favorite example of that is money bags from Spiro. Does everyone remember money bags

Matt:

Yeah.

Alex:

that blasted bear? When he'd be like standing by bridges and stuff and he's like, oh, if you pay me 500 gems, I'll let you go through. And you're like, it's clearly not that much money. But he just uses you to get rich. Basically, and you can't, sometimes you just can't do anything except to pay him. So you have to go and, and basically farm gems if you don't have enough till you get enough to pay your money bags and then you end up with no gems.'cause you've spent all your gems on money bags, is a horrible feeling, but you have to do it to get further through the level, which is annoying. But I think at the end of, I think it's by Ray three, you get to chase him down and, and bop him. Which is a, a satisfying thing to do.

Jem:

Yeah, I think that. Characters who are there, who, who you think are on your side, and then you lose them for some reason, either because they betray you or because the story takes them out in some way. Either because they've got loads of your loot on them and then they go, or because you make some decision that ends up with them, with them being lost in the story. I think, you know, coming out of Yeah. Dying, I mean coming out of the sort of game computer games world and into the board game world. I've, I'm currently playing Pandemic Legacy two, but in Pandemic Legacy one. One of the characters who I can't remember, so I'm not going to share it anyway ends up betraying you. And this was one of my favorite characters. It was the one that I played. And right in the middle of the go, it was like, oh, if you've got this character, you need to ditch him.

Alex:

Oh.

Jem:

And I was kind of like, what? And then I had to take on like a, a stock character. I lost all of the benefits that we put on this character, and you have limited bonuses that you can add to characters and all of that's just gone. So that kind of ally, the sort of turncoat

Alex:

Yeah.

Jem:

ally is, is definitely the worst because not only does it. Mess you up in, in your flow anyway, but it also makes you doubt all of your other allies. It makes you, it makes you unsure of anyone that you, that that's there to support you. And I think if we're sort of comparing this to real world allyship and real world campaigning or whatever it, that's, that's a, that's a really awful thing when, when you think somebody is on your side, you think somebody is, is, is in your movement and has, has the right end of it and, and, and is with you and believes what you believe and then suddenly something happens that demonstrates that they are not on the same page or they change their position or whatever. It, that's a, that's a real blow, I think to, to the confidence of the individuals who knew them, but also to the whole movement. And we've seen that happen in, in movements throughout history where somebody has suddenly turned out to either be working for the other side or they just change their mind. And it, that has a very destabilizing effect. And I think that is reflected in the way that it impacts on in computer games as well and, and board games that you put your, in order for an ally to be useful, you do have to rely on them to a certain extent. And then if that ally turns on you or is taken from you or leaves you. That you have to, you have to adapt your, your tactics. And I think, you know, like it's a bit of a spoiler, but LA takes a bit of a holiday in Boulder's Gate three and she wasn't a, a mainstay of my party at the time, but if she had been, if she'd been one of my main characters that I took out and was used to using, it would've thrown me completely. So I think when an ally is not consistent and not reliable or stabs you in the back, that's actually pretty harsh in gay and doubt of game.

Matt:

Yeah, definitely.'cause the, the, the point, the reason of allies is to go we'll get where we want to go f faster and easier to if we do it together. And that requires trust to a certain extent.'cause there are some people who go, right, I don't trust you as far as I can throw you, but we're, we've both got

Alex:

Mm

Matt:

mind flare worms in our heads. And there's no, like when lay Allen's shadow heart at each other's throats and you talk'em and go, yeah, well if there are more of us working on this, then the better. But then when someone does is in that position. Alongside you. It's much easier to stab someone in the back if you are, you are stood behind them. And key thing that comes like, and the worst that gives someone who's a really powerful ally then becomes your mortal enemy, which is what happens to with frayer in God of war. And you go, oh and the how complex it is. And it's important to bring up how being, having a really bad person experience with someone who is very close to you and that exploding can really damage your ability to trust people again and to go. It's much, much. It feels much safer to go, well, I, I just won't have allies then

Alex:

Mm.

Matt:

do it on my own. And it's a very, very, very hard thing to go. That was one person in one situation. I don't need to worry about everyone in my party, with solace in dragon age, all of a sudden, oh yeah, I'm the dread wolf and I'm gonna kill everyone and out of nowhere. And that was devastating. And then you realize not only do you have to fight the fight that you were fighting alongside them, you've got to fight the fight against them going forward as well. And it's that thing of, he hell is other people. But then the second part of that is that heaven is each other. And. Yeah, it's just people are tricky, but we'll go, we'll move on to our, some of our favorite people now, the companions that we either choose to bring with us as much as we can, or the ones that we have to have alongside us that are our favorite. Should we, should we do a round robin where we'll do one, one each as we go round? so I'm going to choose Alex first.

Alex:

So one of my favorites is Sparks from Spiro it back to Spiro again because, he's just really, he's just a little. The clue's in, in his color. He's all golden. He's a little dragon fly, and he's the little spark of light. He flies around you and again, it's an indicator for Spiro's health. So when he changes color you know close Spiro is to death, and then you, when you get health, you, he kind of flies around and eats butterflies, then he changes color back to his original gold color. I think it goes from blue to green gold, but I can't remember exactly the colors. And there's such a weird noise when it eats butterflies as well. It's like a, it's like a weird cow noise almost. It's very odd. But and then you'd have sort of the mini levels with Spark as well, where he'd kind of be talking to you. And in the early games, he didn't really have a, a voice. He'd just be like like, you know how they do in old games where they just have. Noises instead of voices. So those were fun. And then there were some games where you could actually play a box, but it was like a top down shooter. It was kind of weird. It was cool though. But he is one of my favorites just because of the nostalgia value, I think, and just how he interacted with the world. Like he would go and scoop up the gems for you. So whenever you broke open a jar, he'd be like, and flying in front of you and, and like pump the gems back to you. And it's just one of the, a really fun game set of games. The Trilogy, spiral Trilogy and if you haven't played the remastered version or indeed the original version, go and play them. Because it, it's just a really fun time and Sparks makes it the experience is definitely.

Matt:

Yeah, so there's the, the, the compan, the little companions, the animal companions from

Alex:

Yes.

Matt:

are always a,

Alex:

Yeah.

Matt:

a favorite. I'm going to most of the people in God of war because we, so the core, the core one is atreus and thinking, and another, another metric of how a companion is is. How much your game, your game experience is impacted by their absence because Kratos, fighting without Aus is feels really weird. And there are a few bits where, or one very interesting bit where he's being all weird and aggressive and Aggy and he isn't doing, when you press square, he doesn't do, doesn't do what you're doing meant to do, so you're taking those things for granted. So he's, he's very useful. And then Fray is probably the most interesting companion character because she has to go all the way from to kill Retos for killing her son. And she has that similar arc to Gemini. Talked about Ellie in the last of us yesterday, where Ellie goes to Joel. I don't think I can forgive you, but I'd like to try. And then they go from there. And that's exactly what happens with Frayer and Kratos. And then all of a sudden you've got mortal enemies back to wanting to kill Odin. And so in terms of power usefulness. And then of course you've got MiiR who is useless, but he is awesome at and calling out targets. He's

Alex:

you get the the little power up for him though,

Matt:

Oh yeah.

Alex:

a, you know when you

Matt:

Unpleasant.

Alex:

and he goes, blah, it shoots out. Yeah. That's the only time when he's physically useful. Fuck do I interrupted you? Go on.

Matt:

No, he's, he's, he's just a, a, of how a relationship and, and a relationship you can have with someone is, makes them worth carrying them on your belt.'cause he, he literally can't do anything without Kratos and Kratos always takes him with him. And, and then we've got the, the, what's gonna happen in future games with fucking SRY. I think Sry is gonna end up being a big bad

Alex:

Mm.

Matt:

'cause of at Trauss, at Trait's Fault and War. What's gonna happen with that and. And then of course all the, the animals in it. And then it's always, you got the good hooray, everyone coming together for the final battle. That's what we need. unfortunately there isn't, in the real world, there aren't final battles. There are just endless grinds where if one person chooses to portray you, it has a massive devastating impact and it's, anyway. Gem. Good news. Your, some of your favorite companions.

Jem:

Oh, I'm, I'm just going to go with this. It's a bit soppy, but I was gonna actually go with my husband, Daniel, because in it might, as an in game. Ally, he's, he, he's been so helpful. And many years ago when we played World of Warcraft, I had a, a little gnome character called Ari, who I, he was so cute, and she was a little warlock and tiny, and he played a an elf warrior who was really big and always did the shoulder roll. The, the ELFS had a shoulder roll action that they to do, but because he was a warrior, he always had these ridiculously massive shoulder armor. So it was always really obvious when he did it. And they weren't our main characters. They were, they were set sort of spare characters that we, we just sort of played for fun. So we didn't do a lot of raiding with them, but we used to just do questing and adventuring and. We just used to run around and have so much fun. And he was always there because he played the warrior. He was, he was the tank. And he would just go in and protect me, and my little character would be like firing spells from, from behind and from a distance. And then something would come and get me and she'd be like, and run and hide behind his character. And they were so, they were so much fun together because they were such an odd couple, these two little, these two characters running around. And I wrote all these stories about their adventures that they had together and the things that they did, which were sort of based around the world of Warcraft events and various things that they, they did, but we, we played, oh, divinity, original. Sin, divinity together. And again, Daniel is just a really good ally in that. He is, he is always plays really well. He is patient with me and patient with the fact that I get really easily distracted and really easily bored. And, and, you know, he, he is kind of like, oh, let's go over there. And he lets me do all the fun stuff like opening the chests and exploring things and stuff. And then more recently we played Heim and then we went on to play grounded. So, you know, he's, he's a good ally to have in game because he is, he likes, he likes the gaming. It's not about ego for him, and he is prepared to work as a team to go towards a, a shared goal. That's not to say that we don't bicker and, you know, complain when one, one of us wasn't there to protect the other one or whatever. But it's fun. It's fun. And we have the bands and we have all, all of that and the loyalty and all of that. So I, I really wanted to kind of, yeah, pick him up for that. So, but then if I was talking about an in-game character, then I would probably say a stallion. I really liked him because I liked his skillset. As you said, Matt, he was great for starting fights. He was great for hiding in the in in the shadows. He was great for unlocking stuff. And, but I did also like that his character development. I liked the chat that he had with the other characters, but I also liked the fact that you, I felt genuinely pleased when it became clear that he actually wanted to stay with my group. He actually wanted to hang out with me. And the, the story evolved in that way. That meant that he, he wanted to be part of my gang. And I, I think when a character grabs you in that way and sucks you in and you actually care about them, you actually get properly engaged with them. That's excellent writing and excellent gaming. And it just gives, it gives any game that added bit of, of depth.

Alex:

Mm-hmm.

Jem:

I've got more that I can say about others. If you want me, I dunno if you want to go round again or we're getting towards.

Matt:

have you got any more?

Alex:

Sure. so I'm gonna go completely the opposite direction and talk about something that perhaps doesn't quite have as much depth, I liked some of the partners that you have in LA Noir which if you don't know, is you play a 1947 police officer investigating the crimes of la and you get put on different desks as you get promoted through the ranks, and then at a certain point you get demoted and you go back down the ranks as well. But there's two partners that stand out for me. The first is Rusty. From the, the, the homicide desk section of the game, which is where you investigate all these murders, brutal murders of women, across the city. And, basically Rusty is your, sounding board for a lot of it while you're trying to work out what's happening with It's essentially a series a, a serial killer that you end up catching in the end. And yeah, he's just really, like, obviously they're very caricatured, they're very of their time, they characters, so they make and say a lot of things that, that a lot of assumptions and say a lot of things that probably wouldn't be okay now. And those sorts of things. Oftentimes Rusty will be your straight sort of. Not very smart cop, where he'd be like, oh, well it must have been this da da da. That's why it's always like this. It's always the husband or whatever. And he'd be like, well, it's always been like this, so that's what the answer is. And then eventually he'd work your way through the case and you'd prove Rusty wrong, and, and he'd, he'd come round and support you. Always be supportive of your, your line of investigation. But he would always be initially quite skeptical. So that was quite fun to play out for each case and, and you build up the relationship over that over the course of those different cases. other partner that I wanted to mention was Roy El, who is the partner that everyone loves to hate pantomime villain of, of LA Noir, as it were. He is, you know, your caricature horrible person where he would. He's basically a massive racist and lots of others, most probably, but racism comes in quite heavily when you are on the vice desk and you cover a lot of crimes and, and cases around the black population of la. So that comes into it. But generally his attitude, he's very self-centered, very overconfident, very egotistical, and clearly he and Cole don't get on. So to see that relationship as a contrast is quite interesting as well. Unfortunately if you know the story of El Noir some of those loose ends don't get tied up in the way that you might want them to. so it is just interesting in terms of the characters like. They're probably not as deep as, as what Jeremy mentioned for things like Baldes Gate and that sort of stuff, but they're just fun to kind of bounce off of and, and kind of immerse you in their, the sort of Elaine Nori like film noir type decade of, of, media at the time.

Matt:

Yeah, I, I, you've reminded me of Star Trek, the original series again, and how there's, it's so interesting'cause it comes up so often.'cause it's, it's, got Captain Kirk, he's the captain of the enterprise. He's, he's the leader. He's the one indisputably in charge, but he has Spock and McCoy who couldn't be more different. And they, they help, they allow him to come to the best decisions by, by conflicting with him and with each other and disagreeing with things and how, and then, but then he's the captain. So it's just like you are the main player. You always get to decide what happens. But having these companions that you are actually interested in what they have to say and what they're, what they're going to try and convince you to do will have to finish soon, unfortunately, because,'cause we've, we've barely scratched the surface on this. And what I want to, I'll have to do a part two and maybe a three on this, but wanted to talk about the relationship building mechanics in RPGs'cause. Learning about relationships is what may makes the world go round. And I'm personally trying to, to learn more about relationship building and think more about that. in gaming, it's nice and simple. It couldn't be, it's a, the simplest in the fallout games or it's like Ava loved that, liked that, disliked it or hated it. And you can probably, you could probably apply that simple spectrum to any, any interaction with people. So it'd be interested to know what we, what we come up to in that sphere. We'll end with a, with a question about companion quests. Are these things that you, you guys are interested in for all companions, or do you pick and choose?

Alex:

I definitely pick and choose depending on which companions I like the most. For sure. That was definitely the case in Boulder's gate. was certainly some quests I was more drawn to than others, definitely.

Jem:

Yeah, I'm a bit of a completionist, so I struggled not to do all of the quests, but absolutely there were, there were certain characters who, who I wanted to complete their, their story and find out more about them. So that's what drew me to, to, to doing that. And I think you sort of hit the nail on the head earlier, Matt, when you said about one of the, the companions that you'd had being so helpful and so useful that, that inspired you to, to, to do their quest. And I think when you get sort of emotionally engaged with your companions, then you want to, you want to help them, you want to, to do that because they're helping you. And it's, it's kind of, it's a nice example of how. Gaming can encourage us to have that compassion and that care for another creature, even if it might be a virtual one.

Matt:

Yeah, there's so much, the, the best I, I find, so when I'm not necessarily engaged in the challenge of a companion quest, it's the the narrative reward that you get at the end of it. And sometimes it's just, it's, it'll be an interesting story that's getting told. The God of war. Rag rock is excellent at those little side quests, particularly with MiiR because we see, we want MiiR to be happy because we care about these companions, and you want, you just want them to be happy and live a long life. And then the gay world gets in the way. with characters like Karlak, I wanted to, the first thing I wanted to do was fix her heart so that she could live, live happily with me forever. And with MiiR, has a lot of guilt and shame, probably most clearly in the Lu Backer quest, which is basically this massive whale thing MiiR basically got as a present for Odin, and it's been trapped in this lake for of years, or centuries at least. And help, you help sort of free it. You aren't, and chain it. But it's, it's got nowhere to go, but it's just gonna stay there. so that's tragic. then when, when Atress touches it afterwards, Meir, Meir feels terrible. He's like, but we can't fix this. And Kratos says, sometimes something can't be fixed. It can't be fixed. It can only be better than it was. And then Atress touches it and he can speak to animals, basically. And he says, oh, it, it likes the, it likes the feel of the wind on its face'cause it's been stuck underwater for centuries. And you go, oh, and then the. Yeah, what good writing can do. you to do think, to go out of your wave'cause this whale doesn't matter. It it in the grand scheme of things, but matters to us

Alex:

Mm

Matt:

and I think we'll end on that point. Thank you both for this conversation. Barely scratch the surface and I want to talk on for another couple of hours, but I think so we'll have to draw it to a close here. You know, would find us every Thursday. New stuff. Sign up to our Patreon. We've got our doing our me and Gem on the last of us new series and we've got episode left of that to go. So you've got that to look forward to. Massive long episodes we've been going on for nearly an hour and a half. It's been great fun. there's plenty of content for you there. from all of us, we will see you next time. Bye-bye.

Alex:

Bye.

Jem:

Bye.