Backing Backbone

Earlier this year I bought several games on Steam. It was winter. It was cold. It was wet. I was inside a lot. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Three of those games had very similar settings and themes. They were all variants of the anthropomorphic noir detective subgenre, in which animals talk and act like humans as they go around behaving as if they were starring in a 1940s B-movie alongside Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. 

There are a lot of games like this. Why, I have no idea. I find it difficult to imagine how the subgenre even came to exist, let alone why it's become so enduringly popular. I mean, I'm a year or so off retirement and the movies that inspired these games had already fallen out of fashion before I was born. And yet here they are, all those cynical PIs with their irony and anomie, trudging through neon-lit streets in the rain, swapping gruff one-liners with hoodlums in leather jackets and swearing never to get involved with another dame, just as they get involved with another dame.

Except now they're all cats and dogs and raccoons and even goddam chickens. Explain it to me. Go on, I dare you.

So far this year I've played four of these games, three on Steam, one on Prime Gaming, and finished three. I guess I must like them. 

Not that they're all the same. Or even all that much alike. They vary from lighthearted spoofs to existential essays but they all have two things in common - talking animals and mystery. 

The game I just finished, Backbone, started out as a Kickstarter. Having played it, I was curious to see what the pitch had been. It was clear a lot of people weren't happy with some of the turns the game had taken in development and I wondered whether they'd been misled by the campaign or by their own expectations.

Having read the details, I do think the complainers might have a point. I should caveat that by saying I loved the game, finding many of the aspects others label as problematic to be among its many strengths. I wouldn't, however, disagree that it doesn't seem to be exactly the game the Kickstarter was selling.

Back in 2018, the campaign funded at $95k over a $63k ask. Canadian dollars. It hit 50%  of its stretch goals. The game was scheduled to release a year later. It actually arrived on Steam three years after the close of the campaign, in June 2021. By Kickstarter standards and given everything that was going on in the world at that time, it seems like a reasonable outcome. 

The question comes not so much with the timeframe as with what was eventually delivered. The pitch promised "a pixel art cinematic adventure with stealth and action elements" in which players would be able to "solve detective cases, interrogate witnesses, explore the intriguing and dangerous world... and sneak your way to safety using smell-based stealth mechanics". 

Further gameplay detail included "No hand-holding - move forward through the game by your own rules. Every case has numerous trails, and it’s up to you to decide which one to follow." There would be "Stealth & Action. In the animal world, smell is the most powerful sense. Hide in multi-level environments, mask your scent in garbage bins, follow suspects and escape the chase. "

Unsurprisingly, given all of that, some people thought they were getting a detective game. That's not really what happened.

Backbone currently has a "Mixed" rating from nearly 1600 reviews. It's Recent Review status is better at "Mostly Positive." I imagine the improvement comes from newer purchasers having already heard the complaints and factored them in before committing. Almost all those complaints revolve around two things: lack of agency and the ending.

Of the former, there can be no doubt. There may be "numerous trails" as promised but all of them lead to the same destination. Different choices result in varying conversations but no matter what you choose, the plot moves inexorably forwards to its one and only conlcusion. There's no option to save. The game does that for you as it sees fit, keeping just one updated copy. You have but one choice at all times: continue from where the game last saved or start over from the beginning.

As for "Stealth & Action", it wouldn't be fair to say they don't feature in gameplay at all but they do seem at best tacked on and even that limited degree of interaction dwindles away as the game progresses. The vaunted "smell-based stealth mechanics", if they even exist, passed me by completely. I don't remember a single instance when smell came into play.

I did read a complaint or two about a lack of puzzles, which seems less fair. There are a couple, near the start, but the Kickstarter pitch never claimed there would be any. Backbone is very much not a Point & Click adventure game. It's much more a visual novel.  

A more reasonable complaint involves the absence of the promised "detective work". While it may be nominally correct to say there's some investigating involved, every clue and every discovery is pre-ordained. Every interactable object is highlighted, mostly only as and when required. "Detection" largely consists of walking through the scrolling landscape, clicking on each prompt as it appears.

Complaints about the ending and particularly the major change of direction taken by the plot in the latter part of the game seem to me to be far less justifiable. The Kickstarter page clearly describes a world that "combines the visual and social contrasts of film noir with anthropomorphic animals, retrofuturistic technologies, and dystopian fiction". No-one should really be surprised by the strong science fiction elements when they appear.

The storyline lives up to its billing as "challenging" and "thought-provoking". Unsettling and disturbing would be two other adjectives I might use. It's easy to see why backers, already irritated by the absence of the kind of gameplay they expected, might bridle at the discomfitting nature of the narrative as it reveals itself.

And so to that ending. Without spoiling anything more than the illusion that this might be a cosy, comfortable game full of cuddly animals who talk, I'll say it's bleak, uncompromising and depressing. I loved it.

It's also - and I think this might be the real reason it's proved so unpopular - wholly incomplete. It leaves the player with that unpleasantly familiar sensation of coming to the end of the final season of a series that's failed to renew. There are more plot threads left dangling than were there when it began.

Unlike a cancelled TV show, however, I have the strong impression this is entirely intentional. It's certainly consistent with the stated desire to tell "a tale about how our environment shapes us, and how we influence it in return." Given that Eggnut, the developer, went on to release not a sequel but a prequel, "Tails: The Backbone Preludes", it seems the original game ends in just the way they intended. 

Within those constraints, the game they made is excellent. It is, indeed, as they also said it would be, "a pixel art cinematic adventure". The art lives up its billing as "a modern take on the classical retro adventure look", filled with "contrasting silhouettes against the setting sun, dust particles, neon signs and steaming sewer hatches". It's one of the most visually appealing games I've played for a good while, with enormous depth of detail that richly repays long moments spent studying the background of every scene.

The writing, which gets plenty of praise even from some of those who dislike the game as a whole, is, for once, almost as good as people say. True, noir tropes do provide a safe scaffold, but here language expresses itself with an unconstrained fluency, not limited by the expectations of the form. As the visuals are cinematic, so the writing feels novelistic.

While the plot maintains a steady throughline, numerous diversions add considerable tonal variety. As anticipated, world-building is to the fore, matching the claim that there's "A rich, living and breathing world waiting to be explored". It's a world whose depth and detail we'll most probably never get to see but isn't that always the way of these things?

As for the music, described as "combining jazz and electronic music to create a viscous soundtrack that feels like a dark, enveloping veil of bebop and cinematic soundscapes"... well, judge for yourself. Suffice it to say, every time a song started up in game I stopped whatever I was doing and listened to the end and I'm writing this post to a backdrop of the soundtrack right now.

All in all I can heartily recommend Backbone to anyone who doesn't develop a twitch when they aren't in control. It may not be that much of a game but its a hell of an experience. In tone and range it reminds me most of Disco Elysium, a comparison Steam itself seems keen to promote, although it's flatter and less nuanced. Still, it would be a high bar to reach. Even to challenge it is praiseworthy.

I've wishlisted "Tails" to pick up when it goes on sale. It's currently rated "Very Positive", strongly suggesting the original game found its audience. I would be among them.

Street Life

I wasn't going to post today. I thought about it. I didn't have anything I particularly cared to say. Then, it was getting along around nine, I decided I didn't want to skip a day, after all.

I've been playing Backbone since I wrapped up Nine Noir Lives and I've taken a few shots. It's an extraordinarily beautiful world. I thought maybe I'd share.

It's not just a rainslick surface gloss. Each city block reels with depth. Whole lives pass in the glimpse of an open window. Every shopfront tells its story.

Paging through the shots, I wish now I'd taken more. I was too busy watching this world go by. These streets. Filled with life. The city pulses with it. Start taking pictures, you might never stop.

Behind the doors there's more. Much more. Lives lived in the evidence of their own, thick past. If I could I'd show you but I let it all wash over me. I followed the story down and now it's all gone, washed away.

On the strip, everything is neon. Reflections gleaming in the rain.  So bright.

Everywhere, dreams for sale. In plush seats. In smoke-filled bars. In paper twists. Secrets and lies, promises and horrors.

Behind the lights there's a darkness. Broken parks, bleak alleyways, lost hopes, empty bottles, hard times. And in that darkness, only chance and circumstance. Not choice. Never choice.

After what I've seen I need some air.

Feel the wind across the water. Let it clear my head.

Soon enough, it'll all start over. The city never sleeps.

But I do. 

Sweet dreams.

Sing Me A Song

I have something of paradoxical relationship with music in games. Except for very rare cases, I always leave the audio on its default setting. It's my contention that the soundscape, music included, is as important to a game as the visuals. I literally never do what I hear some people do and play my own choice of music instead.

Usually that works perfectly well. At worst the music might be bland and uninteresting, in which case the DJ in my brain fades it out. It has to be exceptionally jarring or unpleasant for me turn it down. If it ever comes to the point where I feel I have to turn some or all of the music off, which has happened, but rarely, it's more than likely I'll decide to stop playing the game altogether rather than carry on in silence.

This means I hear a lot of music that's written specifically to loop while play goes on. Most games of all genres seem to use something of the kind. The whole point of game music is that it can be heard countless times without making you want to rip your speakers out and throw them through the window. Inevitably, that tends to favor the kind of music that's easy to ignore.

There are exceptions. The incidental music in Vanguard was memorable enough that I downloaded all the soundfiles from YouTube when the shutdown came. I went a step further when I heard City of Steam was closing. I bought the soundtrack on iTunes. I even play it sometimes.

Had those games not been about to disappear, removing the possibility of my ever hearing them again, I wouldn't have bothered. It wasn't even that I couldn't bear the thought of losing the music itself, more that I feared listening to it might be the closest I'd ever come to playing the games again. Sadly true in the case of City of Steam but gloriously not so for Vanguard.

My take on film music is much the same. It's self-evidently crucial to the experience but I own thousands of albums on vinyl, CD and download and only a handful are soundtracks. Even of those few, most are really just collections of songs. 

Separated from the visuals in film or the gameplay in games, non-diagetic music doesn't do much for me at all. Diagetic music though...

Oh, boy.

I love diagetic music. I love it in movies, TV shows, games... wherever, whenever, however. I love snatches of songs that play on the radio for a few seconds. I love the blare of a pop classic over the tinny tannoy system in a down at heel funfair and the smokey jazz drifting from the stage in a nightclub scene. 

I love it when there's a whole scene where a band plays a whole song as the dialog runs under, over and around. And best of all I love when someone in the cast steps up and sings, not in the great tradition of musicals, though I love musicals too, but in context and in character.

 

In my opinion these things don't happen nearly enough. Although maybe that's why it's so unforgettable when they do. And I do find it hard to forget, which is significant since, as regular readers will doubtless remember, unless they have memories like my own, remembering stuff is not one of my prime stats.

I was brought to thinking about all this because of several things that happened to me recently. The first and most striking was a moment in Disco Elysium. More than a moment, really. A set piece, of sorts.

This is a minor spoiler. Fair warning. There's a task you can pick up quite early on that culminates in your character performing a karaoke version of a song called The Smallest Church in Saint-Saens. There's a dice-roll to decide whether you sing it well or badly. 

I failed the roll. The game then locks as the performance starts. You can't stop it. You can't access options to mute the sound. You can't even tab out. It was so excruciating I had to close the game using Task Manager even though I hadn't saved for a while. I could link to a version of the failed performance on YouTube but I won't. Don't go looking for it. You'll regret it if you do.

In retrospect I could just have turned the sound down on the speaker but I was so in the moment I didn't think of it. I just wanted it to stop. Then I reloaded the most recent autosave, fortunately not too far back, and tried again. As I've said before, I don't enjoy save-scumming and I hadn't planned for it this time but it turned out for the best. 

 

The second time I passed the check. When the successful take begins you might think it was going to be another difficult listen but by the time it ends you'll take a different view. Or I did. 

Curiously, the song itself isn't entirely original to the game. Disco Elysium's soundtrack is by British Sea Power, a band of which I've long been aware without ever really taking much notice. They seem to have re-purposed one of their own pre-existing originals The Smallest Church in Sussex. Honestly, it's no surprise it was a b-side. The in-game version is much better.

So that was one. Then there was the night-club scene in Backbone:Prologue. I say "night-club". It's really a brothel. Oh, spoiler. Sorry. (Actually, not a spoiler, since the distinction has no material impact on the plot. Unlike what goes on out the back).

You'd expect a song in a night club and you get one. It's good, too. Once it gets going. There's a curiously anachronistic texture to the treated vocals that give it a trip-hop feel. Nothing wrong with that. And who knows how genres might interact in a world where squirrels deal drugs on street corners and spaniels in poodle skirts vamp under klieg lights?

The final trigger for this post didn't come from a game at all but from the fifth episode of the fourth and final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, in which all the main cast members perform a ridiculously professional version of Bonnie Tyler's eighties barnstormer Total Eclipse of the Heart while supposedly jamming in someone's basement.

I was planning on embedding it here because it really is something to see as well as hear but in what has to be one of the most impressive acts of self-parody I've seen in a while, the video is age restricted on YouTube. You have to give Google your credit card details or send them a copy of photo ID, which can take up to three days to verify, just so you can watch a completely, totally innocuous clip of some fictional teenagers singing a pop hit from nearly forty years ago. Of all the things they could pick on, they went with this?

I guess if they'd left out the intercut scenes of Sabrina finally getting to do what everyone else in Fright Club did in Season Three we could have avoided all that fuss. Instead we'll just have to have the band, minus Sabrina on lead vocals, thrashing their way through Teenage Dirtbag. No age verification required.

That's not one of my favorite examples but it still works. And that's the thing. Diagetic songs almost always do work. It's just a question of how well.

There's something irresistible about music and performance that arises organically from the world we're seeking to inhabit. Something extrinsic melody layered across the surface or slipped in behind the flats can't match. Yes, both play their part, and when it comes to directing attention and marshaling emotion a finely-judged score can't be beaten, but it's the performances, staged or found, that land.

And there aren't enough of them. Particularly in games. There should be more spots like the red room in Ninelives or the cellar bar in EverQuest II's Thalumbra, both of which I thought I'd already recorded and uploaded to my YouTube channel, something which now seems to have happened only in my dreams. 

Here's a thought: mmorpgs that have music systems should also have dedicated locations for live performances by players. Concert halls and clubs, where gigs can be scheduled and promoted. With in-game posters and fliers you can hand out. Why is that not a thing?

Which begs the question, if it were a thing, would it even count as diagetic music at all? Mmorpgs offer options for integrated performance that other media can't. In a movie theater the audience can sing along but they can't appear on screen. Players can.

As you can probably tell, this isn't so much a considered analysis as me working out some thoughts as I go along. The whole thing feels like a sprawling tapestry of interwoven concepts and I'm not so sure I want to pick it apart at the seams. I think maybe I just want to sit back and enjoy it.

Or maybe join in.