Creative Response to Art: Video Games

I am about seven or eight years old, sitting on the cabin-print couches that dominated our downstairs living room with a white Xbox 360 controller in my hands. I am playing my favorite game, one of the only games I know of that has a story to it. I explore, I fight, and I wipe out evil aliens. I do this when I am not doing chores around the house with my sister. In fact, my sister is sitting next to me on the couch carrying us through each level despite being player two since she prefers player two’s character over the main character who is player one. We are on our billionth run of Halo 3.  

To this day, Halo 3 is still my favorite game of all time due to the positive impact it had on me while growing up. I played the game so many times that I could probably recite it to anyone who asks. I could tell someone exactly what is being said and done during every second of the score just by listening. Hyper-fixations aside, the game gave me a drive to explore the story of Halo and learn more about it. Over time, I came to realize just how detailed the Halo universe is. I learned the difference between whether a game has good writing but bad gameplay or bad writing and good gameplay. It became a passion of mine to explore other video game stories as I got older while still hanging onto the appreciation of the game that started it all. I went to college for Musical Theatre, wanting to be an actress and longing to be a singer. I am now coming out of college with a dream to write the stories for video games.  

This change of heart was fueled by the releases that marked a new era of games for me. It started with playing Halo 5 for the first time. The game was released in October of 2015. I was in my freshman year of high school, my room was painted a bright and obnoxious green that rivaled a green screen, and my parents were out on date night while my sister was doing lord knows what. I had been waiting so long for it to be released that I sat on my giant beanbag for six hours straight experiencing it from beginning to end. While I had mixed feelings about the plot, I was enchanted by the realistic graphics as they were the best I had seen yet. After all, the plot for each game following Halo 3 dwindled after the franchise belonged completely to Microsoft and the original composers no longer worked on the score. 

Years later, I experienced the elaborate story of Detroit: Become Human. I did not have a PS4, so I watched Jacksepticeye’s playthrough of the game. The game was released in 2018 but I was a bit late to the party in experiencing it. However, I remember it being the fall of my junior year of high school, a time when money was for shopping and saving; life was good. I laughed alongside him as he shouted and worried over a human-like android detective. I distinctly remember watching through each video as my life changed with every beat. 

 Not only were the graphics incredible, but the game was well thought out and compelling. The game was created using motion-capture on the actors to make the characters more polished and realistic. This was not the first time I had seen this, but it was the first time I had seen it in a decision-based game. It had a story that was not linear with characters that were easy to be emotionally connected to. Never before had I seen such detail in a game with so many possibilities and an overwhelming amount of outcomes. Seeing the characters, the story, as well as the effort that was put into it sparked a new passion alongside my drive for performing. It silently burned beneath a front of awe for the stage, fueled by a newfound obsession with watching behind-the-scenes videos of the game being made.  

Finally, there came Red Dead Redemption 2. My dad bought me the game for Christmas. It was between that and “We Happy Few.” Being exposed to an open-world game of this scale was overwhelming, to say the least. It took me over a year to fully complete the game from Chapter One to Epilogue Part Two since there were so many details and side-quests throughout the game. It also took another person telling me to complete the epilogue because I was refusing to play it after being so heartbroken from the six chapters within the main storyline. I watched an outlaw who lived a life of anger and brutality be guided by the player and become a man who looks back on his past with regret and wishes to right the wrongs of his past in any way he can. I watched character development unfold within more than just the main character, unlike anything I had ever seen. Rockstar, the company that created the game, had successfully rocked the worlds of countless gamers, myself included.  

The game carried me through some of the toughest times of my life. On April 1st, 2021, I was broken up with. No, it was not a harmless prank. I was actually broken up with on April Fool’s Day. Flying back to Kentucky to begrudgingly and heartbrokenly finish my spring semester, I pick up my blue controller and sit on my dorm bed. I continue my perhaps hundredth playthrough of the game. My roommate walks in, ready to comfort and distract me, sitting on her own bed. On the game, I hop on a train that was being robbed and ride across the map on it. Taking in the game’s thorough scenery, we talk for hours about our lives. This didn’t solve my problems, of course, but it was enough.  

Red Dead Redemption 2 was released nearly five years ago. Five years later, I am still discovering new details within the game and new aspects of the story that I had never thought of before. With every year and playthrough of the game that passes, it has increasingly encouraged me to tell stories that will impact people in the way that these games have impacted me. Time and again, I have found myself overanalyzing each beat of the story, each line, and each little detail that becomes easier to pick up on the more the game is played. After a first year of college spent in chaos and confusion as to how I would live my life, revisiting these games gave me the answer. I wanted in on the writers’ room.  

I often look back on the games I have played and experienced as they fuel the flame within me that began with a single spark: Halo 3. Not only did these stories influence my path in life but the way in which I live it. I learned valuable lessons with each story, with every line of dialogue. I have learned to appreciate instrumental scores underneath the game as the story would be incomplete without compelling music to lead it. Finally, I learned more about myself over the years. I saw myself in the characters of Detroit: Become Human who were determined to make a better world for themselves and others. I learned from an outlaw in Red Dead Redemption 2 that it is never too late to start changing for the better. As a child, I even learned from Halo that there is no fight too great to protect the world. With enough time, I saw myself as a writer who could create stories such as that. Most of all, I learned that my passions burn brightest in the world of storytelling. Whether it be on a stage or in the text of a page, I am determined to bring to others the same experiences that were brought to me in the most crucial and developmental years of my life.