Ebert’s gone and shot his mouth off again, opining that “no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium [of video games] as an art form”. He repeats his statement that: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets[sic].”
Bunk. Trinity.
Below, I briefly explain why Trinity is art and Ebert, therefore, wrong. Be warned: I’m going to talk about the game’s denouement, and you’re cheating yourself if you read this before playing the game. If you’ve beaten it, and/or will never play a text adventure, please read on.
Synopsis
Trinity is a text adventure. In such a game the player reads descriptions of places, characters, and events, and types english commands to manipulate the game environment. His goal is to advance through the game by solving various puzzles presented in the descriptions.
In Trinity specifically, the character controller by the player (the PC) begins the game on holiday in London, on what turns out to be the first day of World War III. The character is quickly transported to a fantastical landscape, where he will spend most of the game. Prominent among the features of this place are giant mushrooms, into which white doors are set. Each door leads to the site of an atomic explosion (either historical or fictional) shortly before that explosion occurs.
In the endgame, the PC finds himself at the Trinity site a few hours before detonation. If the player fails to solve all the relevant puzzles in time, an ahistorical multi-gigaton blast wipes out New Mexico (and kills the PC). If the PC does everything correctly, and sabotages the test, the historical results are produced.
Impact
I see that I’ve neglected to mention an important feature of the game: the narrator. The narrator is an unseen presence who occasionally speaks to the PC (and he is addressing the PC, not the player). That established, after the PC sabotages the Trinity test, the player reads this:
You slide the blade of the steak knife under the blue wire and pull back on it as hard as you can. The thick insulation cracks under the strain, stretches, frays and splits…
Snap! A shower of sparks erupts from the enclosure. You lose your balance and fall backwards to the floor.
“X-unit just went out again,” shouts a voice.
“Which line is it, Baker?”
“Kid’s board says it’s the ground. The others look okay. We’re lettin’ it go, Able. The sequencer’s running.”
The walkie-talkie crackles for a moment.
“Congratulations.”
You turn, but see no one.
“Zero minus fifteen seconds,” crackles the walkie-talkie.
“You should be proud of yourself.” Where is that voice coming from? “This gadget would’ve blown New Mexico right off the map if you hadn’t stopped it. Imagine the embarrassment.”
A burst of static. “Minus ten seconds.”
The space around you articulates. It’s not as scary the second time.
“Of course, there’s the problem of causality,” continues the voice. “If Harry doesn’t get his A-bomb, the future that created you cannot occur. And you can’t sabotage the test if you’re never born, can you?”
The walkie-talkie is fading away. “Five seconds. Four.”
The voice chuckles amiably. “Not to worry, though. Nature doesn’t know the word ‘paradox.’ Gotta bleed off that quantum steam somehow. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a good-sized bang every time they shoot off one of these gizmos. Just enough fireworks to keep the historians happy.”
With that, the PC is returned to the start of the game, where the player can (re-)walk him through its first few steps. Before long, however, he reads this:
You stare up at the umbrella.
Passersby begin to gather, craning to see what everyone else is looking at. You hardly notice them. Even when the sirens begin to howl, and the crowd scatters like leaves in the east wind, you can’t take your eyes off the umbrella swaying in the branches, back and forth.
A gentle voice whispers in your ear. “It’s time.”
You bend to pet the roadrunner waiting impatiently at your feet, then hurry off to find a soccer ball. But that slogan keeps echoing over and over in your mind…
“All prams lead to the Kensington Gardens.”
Art
It may be unclear from my somewhat hasty retelling, but the PC is caught in a time-loop, and was instrumental in triggering the end of his world. (If the initial Trinity test had been a million times larger, there’s no telling what would have happened, but WWIII wouldn’t have come to pass as it did). I want to focus on the impact of this story on the player.
The player has spent the entire game solving the problems placed in front of him, out of curiosity, out of a desire to preserve the virtual life of his avatar, and because it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. The in-game consequences of all this problem-solving were not at all what he expected. This produces some degree of shock.
I argue that the player is thus forced to adopt the perspective of the scientists and technicians who developed the atomic bomb; these men also solved the problems put in front of them out of curiosity, inertia, and self-interest, with consequences that were … complex.
One can argue with Trinity’s viewpoint, but one must, I think, concede that it has a viewpoint, and that it uses its medium to trigger a particular set of thoughts and emotions in the player, in a way that no other art form could manage. It is art.
