Red Dead and Shenmue walk into a bar...
Looking for games that capture the mundane - suggestions welcome
Howdy all!
I’ve been sucked into my annual replay of Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018).
It’s an all-timer with one of the most believable game worlds of all time - and that partly stems from all the cowboy life admin it asks you to do. Chop wood, haul hay bales, brush your horse, grease your hair, hunt deer, send mail, set up a tent, sleep, pour coffee in the morning.
Hunting is genuinely fun but most of these, individually, are dull. Chopping wood, for example, is a minute-long animation of protagonist Arthur Morgan bending to pick up a log, steadying it, slicing it, and picking up another (repeat times 6), your only interaction hitting a button to bring down his axe.
These moments work for three reasons.
First, they anchor you in the world, making the Wild West fantasy real and believable. Second, they establish a slightly-boring baseline that elevates the really dramatic moments - the gunfights, duels, heists and train robberies. And third, there’s a video-gamey, character stats reason to do each one, beyond the story reason your character might give. Story reason: You chop wood for your camp’s fire. Video-gamey reason: It boosts your ‘deadeye’ stat that slows time during battle.
The more I’ve played (and I’m probably about 30+ hours into my current save file), the more I’ve wondered where I can find other games that do this sort of thing.
Got a suggestion? Hit the button below.
One place I’ve searched is deep in Sega's archives. Shenmue is a series that began in 1999, continued in 2001 with the sequel Shenmue II and finally got a long-awaited followup, Shenmue III, in 2019.
I’ve never played it before (until this week), but it’s discussed enough for me to have a vague idea of what it’s about: a revenge-fuelled role-playing brawler that tries to simulate bits of real life. Part-time jobs on a forklift, shops that open and close at set times, a daily allowance to spend, mini games where you play pool - that sort of thing.
With no more context than that, I bought Shenmue I and II for a few quid in a sale and booted up the original Shenmue on my Steam Deck. I've only spent 90 minutes with it so far, but I intend to give it a fair try in the hope of capturing some of that Red Dead magic.
Early impressions are not good, but mainly because of the controls showing their age - your character, on foot, has the turning circle of a double decker.
But I've spotted promise. A small example: in your inventory is a book, and one of the pages is a telephone directory. As you leave your house you pass a phone with one of those old rotary dials - to call a number, you have to select each digit in turn. It gives me hope that at some point, away from the main plot, I’ll have a mundane reason to call somebody - to flick through the book for the right number and punch it in.
Once again, if you think of another game that fits the bill better than Shenmue, give me a shout.
I hope your week’s going well.
(Oh, and I haven’t forgotten about restarting that Discord server! I just haven’t got around to it yet).
I wrote a piece about the value of mundane rituals and processes in games last year, which may be of interest: https://mediafoundry.talenthouse.com/post/everyday-rituals-and-processes
More recently, Deliver Us Mars was quite memorable for making the most of its shuttle launch sequence, by asking you to press all the buttons to complete the safety checks before takeoff. While other games might have sped through this stuff, I think it adds a lot to the sense that you're beginning a great journey where so many things could go wrong.