I’ve lately had a borderline unhealthy obsession with post-apocalyptic settings. Or I guess I always have, just never to the degree that I have in the last couple months. I don’t know what it is about places devoid of people, hostile and unforgiving. The elements of discovery, survival, and perseverance that are endemic to the stories they tell, I think.

This whole idea was brought to my attention when I started reading A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller. The novel opens to a world 600 years after a 20th century global thermonuclear holocaust which destroyed nearly all of civilization. We meet a monk on a vigil for his church in the desert who runs across a rock chamber. Inside this chamber is a doorway to a nuclear fallout shelter, along with some remnants of the past. Handwritten notes, a toolbox and tools, some cryptic messages, and even skeletal remains. What follows is elaboration upon the church’s goals and ideals: they collect, memorize, copy, and preserve ancient text, much of it completely mundane and useless (like a grocery list), but mysterious and unknown to future mankind.

Being thrust into a world like this is a wonderful feeling for me as a reader. At the beginning, I have no idea where we are, when we are, or who the people are in the story. I’m simply thrust into a landscape devoid of life, with vague references to a “Flame Deluge,” “simpletons,” and a whole lot of religion. I eventually discover that the story is set in the western United States, and that some sort of nuclear disaster has happened, but it is all described through the perceptions of characters ignorant of technology and what once was. All they know is their church (the Catholic Church has survived in some form) and their “relics,” pieces of history from before the “Flame Deluge.” Reading on, I also find out that following the Deluge, there was a “simplification,” an event which saw a backlash against science and technology on the part of mobs of the less-educated in response to the development of nuclear weapons. The mobs rampaged through the country destroying technology and murdering any learned people, eventually illiteracy became rampant. This sent the world into the “dark age” in which the story begins (loosely resembling the “age of faith”). Part two ventures into an “age of enlightenment” and part three into an “age of science.” The novel eventually becomes a commentary on the cyclical nature of human history, with mankind returning to the Dark Ages, enlightening itself once again in a Renaissance, and continuing into self-destruction.

Another fabulous (that doesn’t sound right) post-apocalyptic setting is portrayed in The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read The Road about a year ago and it’s one of the most haunting, yet inspiring stories I’ve ever experienced. It tells the tale of a man and his young son traveling on a road to the ocean several years after an unspecified cataclysm. As the story unfolds, we discover more and more about their characters as a result of their actions, and just how bad a place they’re in. Along the road they encounter slavers, cannibals, thieves, murderers, all while combating their own health and hunger. This survival tale overwhelms you with fear for the desperate father and son, father toting a revolver with two bullets to use in the event of their capture. One for him, one for the child. The desolate and treacherous landscape through which they travel sort of serves as a vehicle to put this man into the worst of situations so as to discover his innermost character, and the true depth of the love for his son. Without these stark circumstances, the story would not be nearly so profound.

McCarthy doesn’t let on to the severity of the characters’ situations right away. As you read, little snippets of story and situations the father and son get into gradually reveal the complete horror in which they’re trying to survive. They scrounge for food and supplies at every building or ransacked house they discover. They fear everyone they see, and are constantly vigilant of any forms of life around them. In this world, everyone is desperate for survival; any stranger could be a thief, murderer, or even a cannibal out for food. There’s a certain sense of discovery, albeit discovery of terrible things, associated with reading The Road. As the father/son duo scrape across the wasteland in an attempt to survive, I as the reader am venturing through the unknown with them, hoping just as they are that they’ll find some salvation at the end of the road.

Games are a fantastic medium for post-apocalyptic environs. In 1997, the Black Isle game Fallout made it’s post-apocalyptic setting a titular element (or, rather, “post-nuclear”). The world that the protagonist emerges into from Vault 13 is harsh, unknown, and unforgiving. Immediately outside the hermetically sealed Vault, I’m completely unarmed, helpless, and ignorant of what I’m supposed to do. I’m given a single task: find a water chip to save the Vault’s water supply.

Even such a simple task as a glorified “fetch quest” can become a nearly insurmountable problem in the world of Fallout. Everywhere I turn there are mutants, bandits, scorpions, highwaymen, all out to maim and kill. I’m left to explore the wastes of Southern California, along the way running across small towns and their citizens, either helping them in exchange for goods or services, or plying my craft of schemes and tricks to cheat my way to my Vault’s rescue. The radiated desert in this game serves as an excellent backdrop for exploration, discovery, and survival. I must scrounge and explore in order to provision myself for travels, looking for my water chip. The technologies and machines that remain in the world are mere shadows of what they once were, pieced together from chunks of metal or other machines in shoddy, barely-working states. I simply love this survival-at-any-cost aesthetic. And Fallout comes with a snarky sense of humor to boot.

The three separate examples I’ve laid out here all happen to be specifically “post-nuclear war apocalypses” (not a definite in The Road, but probable). Really any setting that features “civilization lost” or “cities that are no longer” could be considered in the same vein. The world of Rapture in BioShock is similar, having suffered a catastrophic devolution into drug-fueled anarchy. As is the “The Zone” in STALKER, haven for desperate or greedy treasure hunters braving psychic anomalies to find artifacts. There are also settings involving disease or some other epidemic. In I Am Legend it’s a vampiric virus. In Children of Men it’s global infertility. In The Mist it’s the opening of a portal to a dimension of horrendous monsters. In The Stand it’s a man-made superflu virus.

All of these different types of stories produce similar settings and environments. As a result we end up with similar storytelling elements: discovery, survival, struggle, perseverance, and sometimes even rebirth, in a sense, of either self or civilization.

Ever since I recently played through the entire Half-Life series again after picking up The Orange Box, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that something always leaves me slightly uncomfortable while playing any of the Half-Life games. When I saw this post at actionbutton, it dawned on me: it’s the fact that Gordon Freeman never speaks, is never seen, and doesn’t even so much as have a reflection throughout his entire journey in the Half-Lifeverse.

The actionbutton post brought up the idea of silent protagonists; what they mean to games and why they exist in the first place. In thinking on that subject for a few minutes, I realized that several of the games I’ve played recently use this same mechanism to move the player through the experience. Why do so many designers choose this silent, invisible role for the player? Is it in order to give the player a more “immersive” experience and create their own personality for the character? Or is it just laziness on the parts of the designers?

The first-person shooter is really the only style of game for which this method makes sense, due to the simple mechanics of the thing (maybe it’s used in simulators or something, but I haven’t played any). The player is stuck in one place at a time and should never have an “omniscient” third-person viewpoint at any point in the storyline, otherwise it rings fake and unnecessary.

As I mentioned above, Gordon Freeman is probably the most obvious example of the “strong, silent” protagonist. When you think about Half-Life’s gameplay objectively in terms of how it should work, it seems completely impossible to pull off if there are going to be other characters you’re supposed to give a damn about. Somehow, however, Valve’s design executes so well during the game that you barely notice how ridiculous it sounds that Alyx keeps talking to Gordon for some reason, even though he’s an ass and never responds to her. And I don’t know, maybe it’s just a Valve thing, but Portal plays out in the same style: protagonist that never speaks, but this time you can actually see her if you look through the right series of portals.

In the Half-Lives and Portal, the surrounding characters are all so distinct and colorful, they make the main characters look like inanimate objects. Even a robot in Half-Life 2 (Dog) and a computer in Portal (GlaDOS) each have more individuality and character than the protagonists of both games. In fact, the player classes in Team Fortress 2 have more to define them than either Gordon Freeman or Portal’s Chell. Maybe it’s something about that Half-Lifeverse? Maybe there’s an overabundance of mutes in Black Mesa, City 17, and the Aperture Science facility?

Of course there are other games that use this device to advance the player through a game, most recently: BioShock. “Jack” from BioShock actually does utter a few words in the prologue sequence before the plane crash, but that’s it. After that, all you have to listen to are the distorted psychos filling up Rapture with crazy. In BioShock, however, your characters silence and unwavering adherence to the advice of your narrator is addressed as being as intentional part of the storyline. I’m grateful that they were able to pull it off in a believable fashion, too. I was worried as I approached the last 1/4 of the game that it would all go out the window and become ridiculous, but to my surprise I actually enjoyed the end sequence and last boss (I know that’s a contentious point of view with a few people).

So what does all this mean? Who knows. I guess it just means that the idea of using a silent protagonist to immerse the player in an experience is perfectly okay, as long as the hamfistedness is kept to a minumum.