Game Noir A Case History of LucasArts’s Grim Fandango Galen Davis STS 145: The History of Computer Games 3/18/022 LucasArts’s Grim Fandango served as a strong revitalizing force for the adventure game genre in 1998. It has been widely recognized for its strong narrative and engaging interface, winning “Adventure Game of the Year 1998” awards from PC Gamer, Gamespot, Computer Gaming World, and Computer Games Strategy Plus and Game of the Year from Gamespot. Tim Schafer – the game’s lead designer, responsible for the narrative and its dialogue – made a concerted effort to put the story first and to adhere to an overarching goal of immersing the player in a rich virtual environment. And what better narrative to immerse the player than that of the noir film? I wish to approach my case history by first summarizing the plot of Grim Fandango, then moving on to discuss the game’s design and gameplay, finishing with an analysis of the game’s strengths and weaknesses with a critical eye towards its strong noir themes. The Plot Grim Fandango’s plot, like any other game’s plot, is difficult to summarize succinctly and still encapsulate its breadth and depth. After all, games are meant to be played, not watched, which implies an extended period of interaction; while it may take only two hours to watch a film, exploring the entirety of a game narrative may take weeks or even months. The player steps into the shoes of Manuel Calavera, a travel agent in the land of the dead. His job is to ferry the newly-dead from the land of the living and offer them lucrative travel packages to ease their way across the Land of the Dead towards the Ninth Underworld, the place of eternal rest. With enough premium sales (i.e. sales on the Number Nine train, which offers a four-minute journey instead of the usual four years, offered only to souls whose lives were lived saintly) Manny can work off the time to the powers that be. Apparently he has done something in his life for which, in his death, he must atone.3 The game starts with Manny’s career on the decline, having received no premium clients – only deadbeats and swindlers. He does what any savvy salesman would – steals a client from his evil colleague Domino. Mercedes Colomar turns out to be the perfect client – she didn’t even litter during her lifetime. Manny’s computer will not allow him to purchase a ticket for her, however, and when he leaves, frustrated, to see what’s going on, Meche (Mercedes’s nickname) mistakes his frustration at the situation for frustration with her and she leaves, despite her deserving quick, safe passage through the dangerous Land of the Dead. Manny’s life (or death, in this case) is consumed by his desire to find Meche after being fired by the DoD (Department of Death). Along the way he uncovers pieces of a sinister plot – a crime boss in El Marrow, Hector Lemans, is stealing souls’ tickets to the Number Nine and selling them to the highest bidders. He also befriends a gentle, if enormous, demon named Glottis, who becomes his closest friend. Before leaving the concrete jungles of El Marrow where the DoD is located, Manny becomes a member of an underground resistance called the Lost Souls Alliance – initially a small organization cognizant of the DoD’s corruption – headed by a charismatic rebel named Salvador Limones. Manny arrives in the small port town of Rubacava and, thinking he has gotten ahead of Meche, opens a nightclub and casino, waiting a full year for her arrival. She shows up, exactly one year later, but evades Manny and leaves on a boat. Manny gets on the next boat, and in the course of his yearlong pursuit becomes captain. Two of Hector Lemans’s agents sneak on board to kill Manny and Glottis, but they escape and eventually make it to the edge of the world where Domino holds Meche prisoner. After killing Domino, Manny escapes with Glottis and Meche and they eventually return to El Marrow to strike at the source of the corruption – Hector Lemans himself.4 The game bases itself on the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead (and the player plays every year – all four of them – on the Day of the Dead). El Día de los Muertos has a complex history tracing back to the Aztec month of Miccailhuitonli dedicated to children and the dead. Usually this fell towards the end of July or the beginning of August, but with the Christianization of Mexico the date was changed to coincide with the celebration of All Hollows Eve; now Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead on the first two days of November, and the celebration combines elements of both Christianity and Aztec aboriginialism. It is fundamentally a celebration: families decorate the graves of their deceased and congregate for elaborate meals and festive celebration. The Day of the Dead is celebrated throughout Mexico but varies depending on the degree of urbanization; most towns have parades involving participants dressing as skeletons, creating an interesting juxtaposition of the festivity of the celebration and the morbidity of death.1 A skeleton in a Day of the Dead parade.Hence all the characters in Grim Fandango are skeletons, which poses some interesting questions regarding the logistics of speaking, wearing clothes, and the like. Grim Fandango cleverly circumvents them, however, in its immersive environment, and in a particular dialogue Manny has with a balloon-twisting sarcastic clown: Manny: Some festival, huh? Clown: Yeah, yeah. My carpal tunnel syndrome is really acting up. Manny: But you don’t have any…tendons… Clown: Yeah well you don’t have a tongue that doesn’t seem to shut you up, now does it? 1 For useful information on the Day of the Dead (my primary source), see Ricardo J. Salvador, “What do Mexicans celebrate on the ‘Day of the Dead?’”, http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rjsalvad/scmfaq/muertos.html.5 Humorous dialogue like this is to be found in nearly all of Tim Schafer’s games (Full Throttle (1995), Day of the Tentacle (1993), and some of the dialogue from the first two Monkey Island games, all developed by Lucasarts). The Mexican mythological elements help to explain the seemingly odd combination of retro-fifties American art deco and Aztec architecture we see in the game. The postwar American look allows for many stylistic elements germane to film noir (e.g. oblique angles, juxtaposition of light and dark, etc.), a point which I will
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