2-BSide

begun to dabble in one of 
video game storytelling’s most 
unique aspects: The ability to 
give players a sense that their 
actions matter to the world of 
the story.
The advent of modern video 
games, however, wouldn’t truly 
begin until the release of Hideo 
Kojima’s “Metal Gear Solid” in 
1998. “Metal Gear” tells the 
story of Snake, a work that 
was so unmistakably different 
from other games being put 
out at the time because of its 
sweeping, cinematic nature. 
The game’s many cutscenes 
offered dynamic, interesting 
“camerawork,” 
alongside 
dramatic voice acting, that lent 
the game a sense of gravity and 
importance that had thus far 
been absent from the medium. 
This would lay the groundwork 
for 
games 
like 
Sony’s 
“Uncharted” series, which has 
been described as playing a 
movie. This signaled one of the 
first times that mainstream 
video gaming had embraced 
its role as a medium capable 
of telling intense, deeply felt 
stories.
The late 2000s and beyond 
would see the beginning of the 
storytelling explosion. Here, 
studios began to experiment 
with the concept of player 
choice. Games like “Metal 
Gear Solid” did important 
work in terms of establishing 
video games as a legitimate 
medium of storytelling, but 
it still seemed as if there was 
little that video games could 
do which other storytelling 
mediums 
couldn’t. 
“Metal 
Gear Solid” could just as easily 
have been a movie; in fact, you 
can watch all of the cutscenes 
spliced together on YouTube 
as a serviceable substitute for 
actually playing the game. 
Unsatisfied with this being 
the benchmark for storytelling 
in 
games, 
developers 
such 
as Telltale Games began to 
create games with alternate 
endings and storylines based 
on choices given to the player. 
These 
games 
seemed 
to 
emulate the choose-your-own-
adventure novels sold to kids in 
elementary school, albeit with 
more adult subject matter.
Cut to the modern day. 

The last couple of years have, 
in my opinion, seen video 
games truly come into their 
own as a medium that can 
tell unique, powerful stories 
which could only be told 
as video games. Games like 
Toby Fox’s “Undertale” and 
Davey Wreden’s “The Stanley 
Parable” come to mind as 
members 
of 
a 
developing 

medium 
that 
almost 
feels 
reminiscent 
of 
the 
1920’s 
literary postmodernism; these 
games dissect what it means 
to be a game. Players can 
exploit glitches, mess with 
game files and more. “The 
Stanley Parable,” for example, 
is a game meant to be restarted 
dozens of times. It has almost 
20 achievable endings, some 
of 
them 
entirely 
random, 
including 
some 
in 
which 
Stanley, the game’s voiceless 
protagonist can either choose 
to comply with or rebel against 
the game’s whimsical British 
narrator. Games like this make 
me think that if Samuel Beckett 
were alive today, he’d be a game 
developer. Wreden’s follow-up 
game, “The Beginner’s Guide,” 
tells the story of his friendship 
with a reclusive game designer 
by walking the player through 
the games his friend made. It’s 
an entirely unique narrative 
structure, a story about an 

artist in which the audience is 
placed inside of their art.
One of the most unique 
offerings I’ve seen has been 
Giant Sparrow’s 2017 release, 
“What 
Remains 
of 
Edith 
Finch.” 
The 
game 
follows 
the titular Edith Finch as she 
explores her now-abandoned 
childhood home and unearths 
generations-old secrets about 
the 
Finch 
family. 
“Edith 
Finch” is the first video game 
I’ve encountered that I can say 
tells a story that could only 
ever work as a video game; it 
makes such creative use of all 
facets of the medium, from its 
interactivity to its non-linear 
narrative to how effortlessly it 
manages to tell a story through 
its environment. The player 
is left to wander aimlessly 
through this massive house 
and, 
through 
discovery 
of 
old 
family 
heirlooms, 
step 
into the memories of Finch 
ancestors, 
experiencing 
the world uniquely as each 
family member did. In one 
such sequence, the character 
plays as a baby sitting in a 
bathtub, able to control the 
bath toys floating and swirling 
around in the water as Mozart 
plays alongside the player’s 
movements. 
The 
game’s 
emotional journey is ingrained 
in its interactivity.
This isn’t to say that all 
modern 
video 
games 
are 
art. On the contrary, truly 
artful games make up only a 
small portion of the medium. 
However, this is the case 
with all artistic mediums. For 
every masterfully constructed 
art-film, there’s a mindless 
blockbuster, and for every 
“What 
Remains 
of 
Edith 
Finch,” there’s a “Call of 
Duty.” There’s nothing wrong 
with the latter — it’s in fact 
beloved by many — but for the 
first time in the history of the 
young medium, video games 
are beginning to consistently 
offer an upper echelon of well-
crafted games that tell deeply 
felt and uniquely experienced 
stories. Today, some of the 
most moving, profound stories 
being told anywhere are being 
told in video games — we’ve 
come a long, long way from 
“Pong.”

I love video games. For me, 
they are almost inextricably 
tied up in childhood nostalgia. 
I think of countless hours 
spent 
with 
my 
brothers 
huddled around a GameCube, 
Wii or PlayStation. I think 
of collecting Pokemon on my 
GameBoy 
Advance 
during 
long car trips. These probably 
sound like familiar stories, 
and that’s because they’re the 
kind of experiences shared by 
many kids who grew up during 
video games’ “golden age” 
through the late ’90s and early 
2000s. As millennials grew up, 
video games seemed to change 
with them — just look how far 
graphics have come from the 
clunky, polygonal look of the 
N64. This change expands 
far beyond how video games 
look, however, and has greater 
implications for how they tell 
stories. The last 15 years have 
seen video games come into 
their own as a unique form of 

expression.
I’ve always held that many 
of the best pieces of art — 
your “Casablanca”s, your “Les 
Misérables”s, your “Catcher in 
the Rye”s — are told via their 
respective mediums because 

that medium is the only way to 
most effectively tell the story. 
A great film, for example, 
should be able to do and show 
things that only a film can do. 
Today, we’re in the midst of 
video gaming’s renaissance; 
inspired, 
motivated 
content 
creators 
are 
continuously 

finding new ways to push the 
boundaries 
of 
storytelling 
within the interactive medium 
of video games at both the 
indie and mainstream level.
This 
prolific 
explosion 
of artful storytelling didn’t 
just 
happen 
spontaneously, 
however. Rather, it was a slow 
build over nearly two decades of 
progress and experimentation. 
Through much of the ’80s, 
video games existed mostly 
as 
novelties; 
games 
like 
“Tetris” or “Galaga,” which 
told no stories, but were just 
intended to be, well, games. 
Throughout the early to mid 
’90s, this began to change. 
Games like “The Legend of 
Zelda: A Link to the Past” 
began incorporating fleshed 
out stories with dialogue. The 
beauty of these early story-
based single player games was 
the ability of the player to step 
into the world of the game. For 
example, Link, the protagonist 
of “The Legend of Zelda,” 
has no lines of dialogue; he’s 
just a stand-in for the player. 
These roleplaying games had 

4B —Thursday, March 22, 2018
b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

A few years ago, Charlie 
Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine of 
the Spotless Mind”) and Duke 
Johnson (“Community”) made 
the 
stop-motion 
animation 
film “Anomalisa” with eerily 
realistic puppets. I watched the 
first 15 minutes with my mom 
last summer before a rather 
explicit sex scene started and 
I quickly changed the channel. 
“That’s why I recognized it!” 
my mom yelled and shuddered. 
When 
the 
film 
was 
first 
released, she and a friend went 
to the theater to see it under the 
impression of watching a funny 
animated movie — more along 
the lines of Disney’s “Big Hero 
6” than Seth Rogen’s “Sausage 
Party.” I remember her friend 
laughing and telling the story 
at a Christmas party, acting out 
how my mom covered her face 
with her jacket and eventually 
ran out of the theater. Sure, it’s 
weird watching puppets having 
sex, but her reaction had more 
to do with the phenomenon 
called “Uncanny Valley.”
Kaufman and Johnson were 
warned 
“Anomalisa” 
would 
creep 
out 
audiences 
since 
the puppets were 3D printed 
and highly photorealistic, the 
equivalent of a painting by 
Richard Estes. In an interview 
with the Los Angeles Times, 
Johnson 
explained 
their 
reasoning 
for 
this 
hyper-
realistic style:
“The challenge we felt with 
so much animated stuff is that 
you’re always conscious of the 
animation, and we kept asking, 
‘What if we could escape that? 
What would it be like?’” In 
other words, these filmmakers 

steered into the skid, embracing 
the 
disturbing 
nature 
of 
Uncanny Valley, a theory that 
Stamps 
Associate 
Professor 
Heidi Kumao describes as “the 
aesthetics of a human look-
alike.” As Kumao wrote in 
an email interview with The 
Daily, “We are fine with (and 
have empathy for) objects that 
have human features, but are 
recognizably different from us. 
When the look-alike appears 

to resemble a human being too 
closely, however, we become 
uneasy. An eerie sensation is 
triggered. We are naturally 
repulsed by objects that are so 
realistic that we almost mistake 
them for a real person.”
Technological advancements 
in the medium of animation 
drive 
the 
competition 
between 
large 
companies 
like Pixar, Disney and video 
game corporations to achieve 
ultimate realism. According to 
Professor Kumao, “realism is 
their currency. It is how these 
types of movies sell themselves: 
They try to outdo each other 

with 
technical 
wizardry. 
As they strive to reach this 
technical goal, the goalposts 
keep moving.”
In 
addition, 
the 
fervor 
around 
virtual 
reality 
and 
augmented reality has turned 
animators into cowboys in the 
Wild West as they discover how 
to make animation interactive 
and 
visualize 
360 
degree 
environments. 
As 
a 
result, 
cutting-edge technology has 
forever altered the process of 
animation. Take “Anomalisa,” 
for instance, which used 18 
different 3D-printed versions 
of the main character, Michael 
Stone, so the animators could 
change 
expressions 
and 
physical gestures with extreme 
precision. However, as Kumao 
wrote, 
this 
scramble 
for 
realism is a “technical task that 
leaves nothing to the viewer’s 
imagination.”
Although 
brand 
new 
technology 
like 
VR 
and 
3D 
printing 
are 
incredibly 
expensive, 
access 
to 
basic, 
affordable 
equipment 
has 
also altered the independent 
animation 
scene. 
Since 
the 
creation of YouTube in 2005, 
several 
animation 
artists 
have 
established 
themselves 
as popular channels. “How it 
Should Have Ended,” “Happy 
Tree Friends,” “Cyanide and 
Happiness” and many more all 
benefited from the affordability 
and easy access to animation 
technology as well as the rise 
of social media. No longer do 
studios have a monopoly on the 
art form, as individual artists 
and anyone with a computer 
can create their own material. 
For these low-budget YouTube 
channels, there is no race for 
realism. The same goes for many 
animated television series that 

MEGHAN CHOU
Daily Arts Writer

The Uncanny Valley effect 
& the future of animation

FILM NOTEBOOK

produce over a dozen episodes 
each season. While the old “Tom 
and Jerry” cartoons and the 
new episodes from the reboot 
noticeably differ in style, the 
series has stuck to 2D animation 
and less-realistic avatars as 
have other cartoon staples like 
“The 
Simpsons.” 
However, 
Hollywood 
productions 
and 
some independent films have 
larger staffs, more money, more 
time and a desire for realism, 
which can lead to some ethical 
problems.
After the tragic death of 
actor Paul Walker during the 
shooting of “Furious 7,” the 
studio used his brother as a body 
double and computer-generated 
images of the deceased Walker 
to finish the film. Some people 
congratulated Weta Digital for 
preserving 
Walker’s 
legacy, 
while 
others 
felt 
queasy 
watching this digital rendering 
of the actor. The latter not 
only questioned the ethical 
legitimacy of the quasi-real 
CGI, but also felt the images 
fell irretrievably deep into the 
Uncanny Valley. Since “Furious 
7,” other big franchise films 
have used computer-generated 
clips of actors. For example, in 
“Rogue One,” audiences did a 
double take at the animation of 

Grand Moff Tarkin portrayed 
by Peter Cushing (“Dracula”), 
a beloved actor who died 20 
years prior to the release of 
this particular “Star Wars” 
installment.
Besides 
bringing 
actors 
back to life, studios have also 
started to animate younger 
versions of stars like Robert 
Downey 
Jr. 
(“Iron 
Man”) 
in 
“Captain 
America: 
Civil 
War.” While the script did call 
for a brief appearance by a 
younger Tony Stark, Marvel’s 
experiment 
inspired 
Martin 
Scorsese to “de-age” Robert 
De Niro to fit a younger role 
in the much-anticipated film 
“The Irishman.” So where’s 
the line? Should older stars 
skilled in their craft be able 
to take opportunities away 
from up-and-coming actors? 
Is de-aging as morally tricky 
as profiting off of digitally 
reincarnated 
actors 
without 
their 
permission? 
There 
remains plenty of grey area to 
cringe at and debate. However, 
the 
biggest 
concerns 
arise 
when this technology, once 
contained to the most powerful 
and wealthy companies that 
must obey legal restrictions, 
becomes available to that creep 
commenting 
anonymously 

online or irresponsible internet 
users.
The invention of FakeApp, 
and other similar programs, 
has made this a reality. Almost 
anyone can paste a random 
face on another person’s body 
with this software that leaves 
minimal differences between a 
real video and a “deepfake.” Like 
many worrisome communities 
on the web, deepfakes have a 
faithful following on Reddit 
where users post videos ranging 
from innocent re-imaginings 
of superheroes with different 
actors to modified pornography 
featuring celebrities, politicians 
or 
exes. 
These 
are 
the 
consequences of animation’s 
quest for realism — a quest 
that the Uncanny Valley can 
keep in check. The discomfort 
that forms when an animation 
looks too realistic is an ethical 
defense mechanism. When a 
de-aged or computer-generated 
version of a deceased actor 
appears on screen, listen to the 
urge to squirm and feel a little 
sick in the stomach. Someone or 
something is trying to warn us 
about the future of animation: 
We are on a dangerous path 
and our only guide is the 
phenomenon of the Uncanny 
Valley.

MAX MICHALSKY
Daily Arts Writer

NINTENDO

For every 

masterfully 

constructed 

art-film, there’s 

a mindless 

blockbuster, and 

for every “What 

Remains of Edith 

Finch,” there’s a 

“Call of Duty”

Video games, storytelling 
& the growth of a meduim

A great film, for 

example, should 

be able to do and 

show things that 

only a film can do

VIDEO GAME NOTEBOOK

We are naturally 

repulsed by 

objects that are so 

realistic that we 

almost mistake 

them for a real 

person