Steam is a gigantic digital boutique of video games. Titles that
begin through Steam Greenlight range from fantastic to shovelware, with more
survival titles than you can count, and all kinds of copiers. The service includes also dozens upon
dozens of RPG Maker titles, and stuff that ranges from innovations to rehashs. But we can all agree that in this ocean of softwares, some were so ground-breaking and incredible that their developers’ names
will make it into the Hall of fame of video games. Toby Fox, Scott Cawthon… and Davey Wreden.
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Move around. That's all you need to do.
Flick a switch or two, maybe. |
The creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s
Guide, Davey Wreden, is a genius and I will hear no word to the contrary.
Whereas Undertale revolutionized RPGs and Five Nights at Freddy’s reinstated a
form of honor to horror games, Davey Wreden’s titles are some of the greatest
examples of a genre known as “Environmental narrative”. This relatively new
genre focuses on having as little gameplay as possible – frequently reducing it
to a “walking simulator” (a term frequently used in a derogatory manner, but I don't) with few interactions here and there with the surrounding world – and instead attempts
to tell an immersive story, seen as we walk around and often solve minimal
puzzles. Don’t go in there expecting fights or complex controls. The genre is
one of the most basic out there, doing away with most gameplay conventions,
which also means a creator of environmental narrative games must excel in every
other department (mostly story and design) to make up for the otherwise lacking
number of actions the player can do.
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A must-play. |
One of the major problems with Davey Wreden’s games is
that you can hardly discuss them without spoiling anything. I purchased both on
Steam, and I have yet to play The Stanley Parable, but I’ve had some parts of
it spoiled to me. And it's brilliant. A major selling point of The Stanley Parable was that its
narrator would often have humorous reactions to the, ahem, stranger decisions
made by the player. And that’s already saying too much. There is a problem with
all these innovative games; they are so special, that almost every single
aspect of them is a spoiler. Once again going back to Undertale, it’s supposed
to be a surprise to the players that they can choose different paths of
“morality”, but the game has been so widely discussed, memed, and referenced,
that it’s not a spoiler anymore. It's a similar problem for The Beginner’s Guide: It’s extremely difficult to discuss any aspect of this game without spoiling
any of it. Any player with enough deductive skills will figure out a lot of
things out of even the simplest synopsis.
By the way, the game came out on October 1st, 2015 - so it's been almost one year and one week since its release. Talk about a coincidental date to review it.
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Ah, the reassurring light of the lamppost. Surely we
cannot expect anything bad from it. |
In this game, Davey Wreden speaks to us as a
commenter. He has compiled a series of games made by a person he knew, a person
named (or nicknamed) Coda, and will speak to the player as they visit each game
made by Coda since 2008. Davey offers the transition between games, and makes
it clear that he is publishing this collection of games as an attempt to reach
out for his friend.
And that’s already saying too much.
If you haven’t played this game, you should play it
before you read everything else in this article. Major spoilers ahead, guys.
And this will get VERY analytical. Like, very few jokes, if any. Therefore,
either you play that game, or you watch a Let’s Play, or you ignore my warning.
You have a choice in the matter, of course. Doesn’t really matter though, in
the end. The analysis is still here, if you’re willing to scroll down just a
bit.
Seriously though, go play it.
It’s about 90 minutes long.
At least go watch a Let's Play!
Are you sure about this? There’s no going back.
Once that knowledge of the game is in your head, it
will never go away. It’s unforgettable.
No! Don’t seek info of this thing on TVTropes or
Wikipedia. They unmark the spoilers.
*sigh* Fine, ignore me, but you should buy this game.
Give brilliant game developers like Davey Wreden a chance, y’know? If you
proceed, The Beginner’s Guide won’t have as much of an impact on you; you’ll
know what happens in it.
Ready to get spoiled? Here we go.
There are four things to always keep in mind when
playing and discussing this game:
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This is a maze, but I'm not even sure how I could
get lost in it. Can't visit most other halls! |
1. The narrator presents himself as Davey Wreden. He
is NOT the real Davey Wreden, and every event he recounts in this game is
fictional. The only reality of this game is that it’s a work of fiction, and
thus interpretations of this game’s “story” are never to be imposed on any
real-life events. Davey Wreden as the narrator is a character.
2. This game invites interpretations on multiple
levels: It can be seen as a commentary on storytelling, on game development and design, on
the game industry and on gaming in general. You could also call it a commentary
of interpersonal relationships and certain personality disorders, if you’re
willing to stretch that far.
3. At the same time, it’s a game that calls out, demonizes those who tend to offer interpretations of all kinds about a game and its meaning.
More than that, it’s a denunciation of people who hazard guesses on an oeuvre’s
creator based on these creations.
4. This game, if you experience it blindly, will make
you go through all the freaking emotions and, like The Stanley Parable, is
oddly self-reflective and existential.
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Stairs, AKA That Level That Turns The Player Into
A Snail As He Climbs The Stairs. |
The game starts off as “Davey Wreden”, the Narrator,
thanking us for purchasing The Beginner’s Guide. Yeah, well, this better be worth
my 10.99$ USD, Davey. He starts showing us the creations of Coda, whom he calls
his friend, and immediately begins speculating on what they mean. First is a
level for Counterstrike, then a few tests follow; among others, a game that
forces you to move backwards, a longer level with a maze (which Davey unceremoniously
skips you through) and a staircase that must be climbed, which ends with the player’s speed slowing to
a crawl (and Davey changed it so that you can press Enter and get to the room at the top,
as it would otherwise take a few minutes).
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You have no idea where I passed to get here. A world
of complete whiteness, a black void with floating
platforms, and I spoke to cube-heads. |
That’s the key word: “changed”. The obvious main point
of the game is that Davey, having played all of Coda’s games, wanted to make
sense of them, invent a narrative around them, as a way to “understand” who
Coda really is. Starting with the level in Counterstrike, Davey immediately
admits he is putting the player through these games for that sole purpose. To
understand Coda, he is revisiting his works. Unfortunately, it becomes quickly
evident that Davey is tampering with Coda’s work, first admitting to make some
unplayable parts playable, second by adding lampposts and other elements to
later games. And it also becomes clear that Davey has his own version of the
story, the one he wants to tell about his “friend”. He presents Coda as a
hopeful young developer who started off making games for fun, then started
looking for a purpose or a link between all his creations, only to fall into
depression (and thus concentrate on prison games) and disillusionment. And
that’s the thing: Davey isn’t trying to “understand” the real Coda; he has his
mind set on an interpretation and will do whatever is needed to make these games
fit the erroneous vision of Coda that he has built.
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Usually that's not what "being shown the door" means. |
Davey’s narrative starts to fall apart near the end,
when Coda starts making games that become directly spiteful. First the Theater, which implies that Coda has
issues speaking to others (as whatever choice you make in the dialogue, it’s
always a wrong choice) and preferring to isolate himself. This was hinted at
earlier by Davey. Then the game Mobius, which Coda
programmed to admit to himself that he was tired of making games, that it was
draining him; it gets worse in the next one, Island, where he gets even angrier
at himself, and his attempts at convincing himself that he still enjoys making
games fail miserably – leading to a prison. I hope I don’t need to explain
the symbolism there. Then, in Machine, we have a discussion with a “machine”,
the metaphorical motor that kept Coda running on making games, followed by a
section where the walking “protagonist” grabs a gun and starts tearing down scenes
from previous games, erasing them.
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Since Davey is such a knucklehead,
Coda's message is as blunt as possible.
And I am not sorry for Davey at all. |
The last game (not counting the epilogue), Tower, was
sent to Davey through an e-mail. It’s technically unbeatable, with an invisible
maze that sends you back to the beginning if you hit a wall, and then a
six-digit code lock with no way to know the code. Davey helps the player
through these, building a bridge over the maze and telling the player the code.
Then we get a door that only Davey’s hacking can open. As a result, the rest of
the “level” could only be seen by a hacker like Davey, who has no qualms about
modifying games that don’t belong to him. This leads to many hallways with
messages on the walls; messages from Coda, for Davey, where Coda calls his
“friend” out for tampering with the games, for building a false image of him,
for sharing those personal games with other people without his approval. And,
of course, he also calls Davey out on getting the positive comments and
leeching off them as if they were addressed to him, not to Coda. In fact, all
those messages left by Coda about loathing game design and feeling strained by
it are not the result of a depression. Rather, they were caused by Davey’s
constant inference and toxic attitude that was overtaking Coda’s creative
process, stealing it in a way; Coda stopped making games not because he was depressed,
but because Davey was being an intolerable prick just waiting for his next fill
of gratification through Coda’s work. By the end, Davey realizes that he
royally done fucked up, as we say, but he isn’t quite aware what it is that he
did wrong. Worse even, Davey posting this collection of games to Steam goes
strictly against Coda’s orders to stop showing the games to other people.
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"Even if I had it, I wouldn't give it to you, you leech." |
Those are the facts, the elements that are pretty much
stated either by Davey or by in-game text (mostly in the Tower level). While there are many
additional interpretations and commentaries that can be viewed in this game
(list below), a popular theory is that this game’s Davey is a narcissist who
used Coda’s game to fill that need for gratification. When Coda stopped, packed up and left, Davey was left with nothing to feed his narcissistic
addiction. Due to his condition, Davey can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong,
nor can he figure out that he’s making things worse by posting these games and
seeking Coda – likely just so he can get more gratification out of his work.
Instead of, you know, doing something by himself. Although, like most interpretations built by the game's players, it's just a theory.
In the end, it’s a game that exemplifies why we should
never come to conclusions about a person through their work. It’s the mindset
Davey has throughout most of the game, only to come to the realization in the
last two or so levels that he didn’t get to know Coda better at all while
revisiting these works. It’s actually a fairly dangerous and damaging
assumption that an author pours their all into whatever they create and thus
we’re allowed to theorize and judge on a person’s well-being and state of mind
through what that person has put out.
There are many other interpretations that we can take
from this game. These may or may not have been intended by Davey Wreden, so
take this as my own ramblings and observations, and not as actual statements
that can be found in the game or interpretations that were intended.
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The Epilogue, where Davey realizes part of his mistake
(but not nearly enough of it), transitions between very
different locations. Quite psychedelic. |
-The need for meaning that some players have; Davey
ended up enforcing his interpretation of Coda’s games, even annoying Coda about
it. The game could thus be seen as a very fierce critique of people, enjoying
any work of fiction, imposing their interpretations of that work to others or,
worse even, to the creators themselves. As if someone sent a diatribe in a
hundred tweets to J.K. Rowling explaining why the main characters in Harry
Potter all represent Jesus in a way or another… Don’t laugh, some people are
that crazy. There’s a reason some authors in conventions will refuse to listen
to fan theories.
-The split between narrator and author. Never assume
that the narrator is automatically the author of the story; in pure
storytelling theories, a narrator is a character, omniscient or not, and the
audience shouldn’t reason that the narrator is an author. The same way that
viewers shouldn’t assume a narrator is trustworthy, as a common twist ending is
that the narrator, whom we were led to believe as a form of authority on the
subject of the story, is unreliable. In The Beginner’s Guide, this is
exemplified by Davey apparently starting off with good intentions, only to
pollute the narration with his own theories and narratives about Coda, until we
find out he’s the reason Coda packed up and quit.
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"The game is nothing but giant blocks of text explaining what's
happening." No thanks, I already have that.
It's called a novel. |
-Yet another idea is that Coda’s personal games do,
indeed, reveal some things about him as a game designer, but nothing linked to
his personality; early games were Coda playing around with level-making and gameplay
mechanics. The prisons may have happened when he tried finding numerous ideas
for a same basic concept – something developers have to do when, say, they need
to create multiple solutions for a puzzle in their game. Chapter 4, Stairs,
leads to a room with ideas Coda had for games (some which are utterly
ridiculous, like “You are a gate”, or some that are kinda comical, like “Press
U to surrender”). Many of those ideas are unplayable, or wouldn’t spark
interest in the player. Some reviewers, like The Mysterious Mr. Enter, theorized that
this room contains ideas Coda discarded; and the reason it took about five
minutes to get to the top of that staircase is because Coda pondered about each
idea for five minutes at least, and if he dropped an idea, he would put it there.
However, the games still weren’t following any pattern, and Davey’s toxic
behavior are what led to Coda’s disillusionment and the grimmer, depressing
final games – and Davey interpreting it as a personal issue of Coda, not one
that involved him.
-Without explaining them, I can say there are theories out there that say Coda has Asperger's syndrome, explaining some of the more bizarre decisions in game-making Davey mentions ("Like, when he had finished a game... that was it; it was dead to him", he says in the Stairs level). There is another theory that says Coda is actually a woman or a trans woman, as a few games use a female voice and others refer to the player character as female and this, despite these games supposedly meant to never be shared. There are hints for both, but as far as I know, neither has been confirmed. Then there are theories that say Coda is merely the fictional Davey's own creativity. Like I said, there are dozens of things that can be interpreted in this game, but in the end, you just need to remember that your theory and your wild guesses are just that: Theories and wild guesses, not facts set in stone.
-Lastly, it can also be seen as a commentary on game industry
and development as a whole, with Davey representing the wider market, which
wants “complete” games to show off and sell, and the creator’s personal
experiments, which aren’t meant to be distributed. It’s implied that Davey and
Coda worked together for a while, or at the very least were in contact close
enough that Davey could take the games and show them to others. Let’s be honest
here, many of these games aren’t all that great. Psychedelic, perhaps, and odd
experiences for the player, sure, but these do look more like experiments than
actual projects. Coda was even angrier that these games were suddenly given a
spotlight, as he never wanted to show them.
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So my prison was actually... A furniture store!
Who knew? |
That last point ties into my criticism of the game; in
the context of the story, the player was never even supposed to see these
things, hence why they’re sometimes unplayable, or have no apparent purpose.
Davey published that collection, not because it’s playable, but because of his
motive. And he makes some games playable, “beatable” as a result, highlighting
more of his hypocrisy in the process. These games are experiments, attempts at
style. They are not good as games published for a wider public. That’s the
idea.
The environments look really good, and the music, whenever there's any to be heard nder Davey's narration, The narration itself is done really well, with Davey conveying just the right amount of emotion and the right intonations to go with the text - which sometimes adds to the meaning of what he's saying. I also like that the game has additional options for those who want to play sans narration, as well as a few very minor secrets in the narration if you actively go against Davey's orders.
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Gotta admit, this looks really neat. |
Thus, The Beginner’s Guide is a great game worth playing for the
story. Though, if you haven’t played it before reading all of this review, then
perhaps you feel no need to. Well, let me assure you, dear reader, that the
bland retelling of the plot that I do in these reviews is never nearly as
interesting as viewing the game directly. Although, to be fair, it’s impossible to amaze
someone with the controls of a walking simulator; the whole point of those is
to bring an interesting story that will make the player want to carry through despite a
relatively bland gameplay. And on this, Davey Wreden wins. He has only released
two games, both are walking simulators, environmental narratives, and both are
awesome.
I have The Stanley Parable (HD Remix?) in my Steam
collection, so I will probably discuss it sometime soon. Probably in 2017 or
2018. Either way, I heartily recommend The Beginner’s Guide. And if you don’t
want to spend 10 or 11 dollars on it… well, wait till it’s in a bundle. Or
watch a friggin’ Let’s Play.
Or, you know, maybe Davey of The Beginner’s Guide is
just some guy who plays through games, passes judgment on them and on their
maker, and makes a few jokes left and right along with his analysis, with some
kind of bigger story around it. Everybody knows a reviewer like that, after
all.
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