I just watched a trailer for a new game coming out called Remember Me. I see people describing it as Total Recall in a Blade Runner setting. It looks like a great piece of science fiction: computers becoming part of who we are as humans making our memories open to manipulation, changing what we do and who we are through one electronic attack. I have a feeling I'm really going to like it.
Last post I bemoaned the loss of good, let alone great, science fiction on TV. It's sad to see it go, and I still hope eventually we'll turn away from our love of watching the "reality" TV dregs of entertainment and return to having something on TV that seeks to challenge and explore our existence and future, but until we do when I really want to experience that I'll have to turn to video games.
Currently I've been playing Mass Effect 3, the latest in one of my favorite series and what I'd argue may be one of the best pieces of science fiction ever written. In my humble opinion Mass Effect can easily go toe to toe with Star Trek, Star Wars, or any of the other greats of science fiction. It's a classic space opera with aliens, intergalactic politics and adventure, and spaceships. It's got some fascinating science to go with the fiction, the title of the series referring to localized physical phenomenon that changes the effective mass of objects in a certain area. It's probably the only work I've seen that mentions that lasers as a weapon could work, but will be limited to short ranges due to diffraction.
Mass Effect also carries the proud tradition of solid writing and well done characters set forth by developers Bioware. There's an alien from a proud warrior species who's gruff and cynical like one of those proud warrior race dudes might be, but wistfully lament's his species inability to come together and rebuild themselves after being struck with a biological weapon that's reduced them to near sterility. There's a professional, very physically attractive woman whose appearance might seem pandering to a male audience at first, but I feel reinforces the later revelations of her difficulty accepting herself as an independent human being more than her father's genetic experiment in creating the perfect offspring to carry on the family name. There's an artificial intelligence seeking that if you prod in the right direction will fall in love with your ship's pilot. And these are just the outstanding instances, the game is full of great stories. You get to take part in writing some of them yourself if you play it.
I've also quite the fondness for the series Deus Ex. Deus Ex may be the quintessential exploration of what it means when we finally begin to merge ourselves with machines. The title itself is almost certainly a play on the phrase "deus ex machina" or "god from the machine" and likely refers to the apotheosis of humanity through human augmentation. It plays on what it will mean for mankind when electronic surveillance becomes a part of everyday existence and communication, what will happen when physical ability can be bought and sold, and every moment of gameplay makes you wonder what we'll be able to do when our eyesight can be enhanced with a computer chip or our strength with a set of servos. It's a game that makes one wonder deeply about the future of humanity as we hurtle toward technologies drastically changing who we are and how we interact.
Thoughts such as this are what make science fiction is a wonderful and important genre. While it may be too expensive to hire the writers and special effects team necessary on a TV show now, video games make the perfect stage. The games already computer generated, and so special effects are mostly just paying artists for the ideas. Writing in video games is still an art that few can do well, but the industry is constantly learning and we've clearly already made some gems. There's not much I like on TV these days, but there's some great things to play on the game console.
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