San Andreas's achievement lies in performing what Rockstar has never managed to do before or since but has flailed for its lifetime to monopolize: the cinematic game. Yet it elides their usual trickery: long, laborious cutscenes with facile gesticulations of composition and montage, acting that mugs the eyes and ears to no particular end or effect, lightweight ideas imposed by the heaviest-handed touch. No, San Andreas chances upon its fertile relationship to cinema by accident, stumbling into a rich moving image tradition and by the vulgarity of its non-intention, dressing itself in those films' aesthetics and arriving at a place only a video game could reach.
In what tradition has Rockstar done it? Rockstar has tried its luck with the gangster film and the Western. Shock of shocks, it makes it with blaxploitation. The linear story of GTA games, often criticized for conflicting with their open world charm, is hardly so linear here, per the rhythms of that tradition. CJ's return to Grove Street and family and friction with corrupt police is interrupted by the betrayal of your annoying friends. After that comma, CJ gets bondage tortured by a psychopath lady in the countryside, torches weed farms, invests in upstanding businesses in Las Vegas, and robs a bank that indirectly leads to the catastrophes of GTA III. Then, with the help of a CIA agent that put you through hell and even worse, flight school, CJ returns to his neighborhood, to the police station where his brother was all this while kept, and upon hearing his traditionalist, slightly ungrateful brother instead chastise his disloyalty to the hood, erupts, "What did the hood ever do for me?" You are supposed to feel that line as though it is a culminating moment in Boyz in the Hood, a powerful, steadily building drama about the troubles of boyz in the hood. But you never really stayed in the hood. You jacked your first bike, did your street crimes for less than a third of the game, and some hours before your reunion with your brother, you infiltrated a military base and jacked their experimental jetpack. I used it to get to the police station faster.
It is at this reunion that something greater is reconciled than CJ and Sweet: CJ and Sweet Sweetback, something that people point to when they feel the "spirit" of the GTA games have been lost following this game. What is unified is the blaxploitation film and the open world game in the one narrative ethos - incredible, explosive, ridiculous distraction with a destiny: family, the hood, police corruption, resilience.
Yet here's the most important part of this case: one would argue - rightly, that San Andreas is not really about these things. I am not saying this is a political (read: politically interesting) game, which may be its most serious divergence from blaxploitation. But that's the crucial, kingmaking difference, what makes one remember and look back with longing. Every Rockstar game afterwards would attempt to deal with gravity, suffering, pain. In their vanity, they once again import film: Heat, High Noon, Rio Bravo, the entire hodgepodge collage. But even at their most ironic, such as Trevor's tirade about torture on the ride to the airport after pulling the shmuck's teeth out, they are deathly sincere about the important ideas they have and more importantly, the projection of the fact that they have important ideas. Not necessarily moralistic, but even at the peaks of satire, always too pointed in the way an accusing index finger or a flippant middle is brandished at the most obvious grotesqueries of modern/frontier life, and about as insightful. But what remains is insecurity. What remains is pointed certainty that video games believe it must negate video games to be serious. What's at this point moving about San Andreas is its stark, lonesome stance athwart all of this, no less as a blockbuster game from a blockbuster studio. Its lightness of feet and mind allow messages to not sound as thudding monologues but resonant echoes, easily drowned out by K-DST, possibly the greatest rock radio station in any video game. That is not passivity; that is confidence, grace, style, fun, and art.
The dreaded storygamer, Youtube analyst, or some unconscious industry poptimist asks, if not a message, though, what is there to hear? San Andreas is not a game of questions but it is a game of one, polyphonic answer. No "morals", no "satire", no thoughts, head empty. Pathos in the close periphery, lethally large dildo in hand, Ballas in view, sunrise in Grove Street, sunset in Mt. Chiliad, guns, muscles, fat, stamina, lung capacity, sex appeal, two number 9s, gang wars, martial arts, katana fight, the Truth, Samuel Jackson is in this, boats, following trains, nosediving jets, girlfriends, hot coffee, it's OOOOG Loc, all we had to do, one, two, three and to the four, ah shit, here we go again.
in the place of a message, music: gaming's most badasssss song.
In what tradition has Rockstar done it? Rockstar has tried its luck with the gangster film and the Western. Shock of shocks, it makes it with blaxploitation. The linear story of GTA games, often criticized for conflicting with their open world charm, is hardly so linear here, per the rhythms of that tradition. CJ's return to Grove Street and family and friction with corrupt police is interrupted by the betrayal of your annoying friends. After that comma, CJ gets bondage tortured by a psychopath lady in the countryside, torches weed farms, invests in upstanding businesses in Las Vegas, and robs a bank that indirectly leads to the catastrophes of GTA III. Then, with the help of a CIA agent that put you through hell and even worse, flight school, CJ returns to his neighborhood, to the police station where his brother was all this while kept, and upon hearing his traditionalist, slightly ungrateful brother instead chastise his disloyalty to the hood, erupts, "What did the hood ever do for me?" You are supposed to feel that line as though it is a culminating moment in Boyz in the Hood, a powerful, steadily building drama about the troubles of boyz in the hood. But you never really stayed in the hood. You jacked your first bike, did your street crimes for less than a third of the game, and some hours before your reunion with your brother, you infiltrated a military base and jacked their experimental jetpack. I used it to get to the police station faster.
It is at this reunion that something greater is reconciled than CJ and Sweet: CJ and Sweet Sweetback, something that people point to when they feel the "spirit" of the GTA games have been lost following this game. What is unified is the blaxploitation film and the open world game in the one narrative ethos - incredible, explosive, ridiculous distraction with a destiny: family, the hood, police corruption, resilience.
Yet here's the most important part of this case: one would argue - rightly, that San Andreas is not really about these things. I am not saying this is a political (read: politically interesting) game, which may be its most serious divergence from blaxploitation. But that's the crucial, kingmaking difference, what makes one remember and look back with longing. Every Rockstar game afterwards would attempt to deal with gravity, suffering, pain. In their vanity, they once again import film: Heat, High Noon, Rio Bravo, the entire hodgepodge collage. But even at their most ironic, such as Trevor's tirade about torture on the ride to the airport after pulling the shmuck's teeth out, they are deathly sincere about the important ideas they have and more importantly, the projection of the fact that they have important ideas. Not necessarily moralistic, but even at the peaks of satire, always too pointed in the way an accusing index finger or a flippant middle is brandished at the most obvious grotesqueries of modern/frontier life, and about as insightful. But what remains is insecurity. What remains is pointed certainty that video games believe it must negate video games to be serious. What's at this point moving about San Andreas is its stark, lonesome stance athwart all of this, no less as a blockbuster game from a blockbuster studio. Its lightness of feet and mind allow messages to not sound as thudding monologues but resonant echoes, easily drowned out by K-DST, possibly the greatest rock radio station in any video game. That is not passivity; that is confidence, grace, style, fun, and art.
The dreaded storygamer, Youtube analyst, or some unconscious industry poptimist asks, if not a message, though, what is there to hear? San Andreas is not a game of questions but it is a game of one, polyphonic answer. No "morals", no "satire", no thoughts, head empty. Pathos in the close periphery, lethally large dildo in hand, Ballas in view, sunrise in Grove Street, sunset in Mt. Chiliad, guns, muscles, fat, stamina, lung capacity, sex appeal, two number 9s, gang wars, martial arts, katana fight, the Truth, Samuel Jackson is in this, boats, following trains, nosediving jets, girlfriends, hot coffee, it's OOOOG Loc, all we had to do, one, two, three and to the four, ah shit, here we go again.
in the place of a message, music: gaming's most badasssss song.
3 Comments
You really know ball, respect.
What a write-up. Sadly, I feel this will be seen less than it absolutely needs to be. This should be shared by IGN / Gamespot etc etc on their front pages.
HyperQ
2 years ago