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3/6/09: Histrionic Commando

ZP this week is Bionic Commando (last week it was Duke Nukem Forever, sarcasm quotes), and I wanted an opportunity to talk about the twist ending. So if you're still playing the game or care in the slightest about having the plot spoiled, try not to accidentally trip, fall forward and highlight all of the following text.

Okay, so your chap has a great big robot arm. It shoots a grappling hook and can punch people into space. He has it because he lost an arm in a war or something and the government made him better, stronger, faster, etc. At around the same time his wife disappeared, leaving only a note, but our hero suspects that there's more to it than her simply doing a runner.

At this point I wasn't really expecting that subplot to have any sort of twist, because it made perfect sense to me. Obviously his wife left him because she was creeped out by him being half robot monster (and the game establishes that this is a common feeling amongst normal humans), and judging by his violent tendencies he probably wasn't above smacking her around a wee bit. Our hero keeps yelling on about WHURR'S MAH WAHF throughout the entire game so I was expecting it to be revealed that she'd gone off on her own accord and he was just a jealous clingy ex. That would have been a very human and relatable scenario.

But then comes the twist. At the very end of the game it is revealed to us in flashbacks and old records that bionic limbs require a human mind to function, and that it has to be someone close to the recipient. So in order to create your bionic arm your asshole superior kidnapped your wife, cut her brain out and put it in the arm.

The description I just gave was a little bit dry, so go back and read it again in a really sarcastic tone of voice. This is the bit where I clutch at the brim of my hat and yell "WHAT?!"

This doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense. Firstly, your arm is ENTIRELY mechanical. It shoots hooks on the end of a bit of string, that's ALL it does. There's no evidence (or even any particular need) for it to contain any kind of intelligence, not even the AI of one of the Pacman ghosts. If the game had established that there was some kind of support AI inside the arm that showed you where to go and gave you advice, Navi-style, the twist would have been an appropriate payoff, and may even have made us a bit guilty for inevitably hating the chatty bitch. But it's JUST A MECHANICAL ARM. You pull a switch and it fires a hook. It'd be like needing HAL 9000 to power your electric toothbrush.

On top of that, what possible fucking use would a brain be in the thing? You can't reel the string back in by thinking really hard. You can't regenerate the explosive material necessary to fire the hook by conjuring it from dreams. The only possible use I can think of is to guide the trajectory of the hook to hookable places, but this is a function that could EASILY BE PERFORMED BY THE BRAIN OF THE PERSON WEARING THE BLOODY THING.

But let's just assume for a moment that the mechanics work. Why not. A human brain is the only thing that can make a grappling hook launcher create enough pulling strength to support a full-grown human and an arm the size of a caravan, much more efficiently than, say, a really powerful winch. Assume that all makes sense. Now. How the fuck do the military get away with this shit?

Surely the many bionics would have noticed that every single one of them had a close friend or relative disappear at the time of their accident? If not, surely SOMEONE involved with the project would raise a stink about the STAGGERING lapse of ethics and the inevitable lawsuits such a policy would create. And considering that risk, was there really not a single other solution to the hardware issue than stealing people's brains? Come on, get the techies in the meeting hall with a weekend's worth of pizza and Jolt and I'm sure they could come up with something, ANYTHING, that doesn't entail Dr. Frankenstein-esque organ harvesting. Like, say, an artificial intelligence. Or a REALLY POWERFUL WINCH.

Worse yet, it instantly removes any decent characterisation the wife may have had. She's just now and always been a personality-less non-individual whose life revolves around the hero. And he's just a noble injured party looking for his twoo wuv. YAWN A RAMA.

What a stupid mess they made of that plot. I'm going to play Infamous instead.

* BONUS INFAMOUS ENDING SPOILER *

Oh okay so the big baddie was actually you from the future? Well that sounds perfectly reasonabRRAAAAH YAHTZEE SMASH STUPID PLOT TWISTS

-Yahtzee

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