I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream - A Favorite Game Retrospect

You know, I have been having trouble lately thinking of new blog ideas to do. Usually, I will have enough to sustain me for an entire year and some after, but these last couple of months have been a struggle. Call it burnout, but it's been difficult to really write. It makes a writer feel incredibly stuck. Or to put it thematically, I have no thoughts and I must write. Yeah, that's good enough to segway into today's entry. 

I have been feeling dark, and October can't come soon enough, so we are doing it on one of my favorite horror narratives in all of media. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, or for brevity's sake, ugh. I don't even have it in me to think of a clever shorthand. Ugh, anyway, it's a 1995 graphic adventure game based on the short story by Harlan Ellison where a computer AI goes psycho and traps five people in a hellscape of constant torture. There is more to it than that, but that's the gist. 

As you can tell, this is not going to be a retrospective in the traditional sense. For one, this story has been analyzed to death, and there are a nice selection of video essays to choose from. If you want my suggestion, the one done by Grimbeard is excellent. And two, Im less interested in the post-WWII politics and sexual themes and more my personal feelings this game caused. Most of those feelings being misery. 

What Draws Me to Horror

Despite not getting into horror media until I was a young adult, I felt I was always drawn to horror. My favorite levels were always the haunted castles or mansions. My autistic affinity for lists would compile movie monsters. I don't think being magnetically pulled to horror stemmed from having a sheltered childhood or being socially anxious (though I don't doubt that's a part of it). It's probably as simple as how most kids got into horror. The psychological catharsis of exploring something forbidden. The adrenaline of danger that violates any sense of safety. I mean, you think Five Nights at Freddy's is popular among children for the Chica design? 

As I grown older, I realized a lot of my favorite horror bring out a sense of dread than actual fear. The thing with fear is that it is never timeless. Something like the Exorcist frightened me when I first watched it but lost its bite when I rewatched it years later. Even concepts I find theoretically scary, like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, have lost their fear factor. This is not to say these narratives are bad. In fact, they are still among some of my favorite horror movies. But like a new car smell, it's a scent that can't help but fade over time. 

Let's just say the feeling of dread has a more profound effect on me. Texas Chainsaw Massacre may not be scary, but the reality of psychos being enabled by police corruption nestled deep in our small towns is dreadful. 

A type of dread that personally unnerves me are inescapable hellscapes. And weirdly, stories about inescapable hellscapes are few and far between. Sure, there are certainly stories that provide a threat of an inescapable hellscape, like Hellraiser, but a story that immerses you in that dwelling is rare. This is the first point that makes I Have No Gum such a worthwhile game even almost thirty years later. 

This game is raw! Your characters are physically deformed from years of bizarre torture. With one exception, there is practically no reason why these five are chosen to be mutilated. It's a hellscape so inescapable the characters are not even given the release of death. 

Now, some may call this edgelord musings taken to an unnecessary extreme. However, there is a telegraphed purpose for depicting this suffering. Aside from the historical context of warning people about the end result of escalating the Cold War, and making that feeling felt, there is a more universal theme of dread equals comfort. 

I Have No Chicken Strips recognizes that what separates torture porn from torture as an effective narrative device is agency. The beauty of the original short story is the victims finding agency under dire circumstances, which spoilers involves one killing the other four in order to spare them from an eternity of suffering. It makes the hope for humanity shine through unhopeful odds. And what's great about the game version is that this agency gets explored further with some of the worst gameplay ever conceived- wait, what?

Can Bad Gameplay Be Enjoyable? Short Answer, No. 

If you're familiar with graphic adventure games, they are notorious for having frustrating design choices. Things like hidden soft locks that force you to restart to your nearest save, picky object selection, slow movement. And worst of all, the thing that makes adventure games so hard for modern players to go back to, overly obtuse puzzles. 

I Have No Patience is one of the more egregious offenders of the genre to the point where my recent revisit of the game was through a long play, and thank God I did. One sequence that stood out is in Benny's level. There is a crucial item that is guarded by a villager. Game logic dictates you need to do something to distract the villager. But no, instead you randomly check in and out of the room. And at some point, he will disappear to gather food. There are other moments littered throughout that feel as cheap and or downright don't telegraph the rules for how the game work. Heck, there are times where the game is inconsistent with how the rules work.

So objectively, the gameplay is terrible, but that's not the discussion point I want to bring up. My question is does the bad gameplay enhance the experience?

There is certainly an intentionality to the frustrating gameplay. In fact, the game was initially conceived to be virtually impossible to finish. From the very start, the game was designed to reflect the hopeless circumstances of the characters. And narratively, it also makes sense. AM, the aforementioned computer AI, tasks the group of five to go through a 'game' of their own personal hell. The typical intentions of video games, whether it be escapism, challenge, or stimulation, are absent within the context of the story. It is a scenario designed by a computer meant to taunt and discourage its victims and by extension the player. 

And to the game's credit, its structure works to its benefit. The game allows you to choose which of the five you get to play first. So, if you get stuck on one character, you are not blocked out of the rest of the content. I feel if you didn't have a walkthrough, you likely wouldn't finish the game, but you still be able to explore a good chunk of each character's level.  

That being said, this interesting experiment of narrative gameplay synergy has its limits. It's clear the game didn't have any future proofing as modern walkthroughs take the bite out of the entire credence of the game. The game is a haunted house, but a walkthrough is like turning the lights on. What you are left with is a known successful route where you get to see the man behind the curtains meant to be hidden by the darkness of its failure states. Likewise, there isn't much explored within the successful route. When the game's form of suffering is just being hard to solve, you don't get much of the horror once you know what to do. I wish the game explored suffering in more creative ways, but I say that with the benefit of hindsight. Games like Eternal Darkness and Fear and Hunger have since build on what I Can't Get No established. 

So no, I don't think bad gameplay can be enjoyable, but I am not going to fault I Have No Mouth for trying and in a time period where games were still in its infancy. Art doesn't always have to be a marble statue meant to always be perfected and well formed. Something messy and sloppy can be just as valuable if it compels discussion and intrigue. A lot of the time that means stuff that's objectively crap like YIIK, but I Aint Got No Time For That rises above that and that's because...

The Writing is An Arkansas Ten 

Video game writing is seldom good let alone great. Naturally, this is due to video games being a very young medium. Older mediums have the advantage of decades of canon to build off of. Great American Novels are great not in a vacuum but because of how it builds on top of the legacy of the culture before it. 

And not only that, standards and circumstances are different. I will be the first to say that writing is very difficult, and people who say otherwise are literal morons. Now add onto the fact you or a member of your team have to be good at programming, sound, art, animation, music, voice acting, scenario design, lawyering if your Ubisoft. Discipline after discipline. And as you add more, writing becomes less and less of a priority. And unlike film, the production isn't always revolved around a written narrative. 

That said, certain genres lend themselves better to more elaborate stories, and graphic adventure games are one those genres. That THAT being said, writing for graphic adventure games still has its unique challenges. 

Imagine writing a novel but you can only write in the form of command and response and also there is a sentient ghost, and it gets really annoyed if it doesn't get to participate. 

Now, it would take an entire entry to discuss the relationship between player and author, and how to maintain a balance between a crafted narrative and a narrative that allows play for the audience. Simply put, I think I Have Hanky Panky does a solid job at this balance, at least for 1996. 

For one, the story is more character driven. Where the original short story is 13-pages of "well this sucks" (to put it simply). The game embraces the medium by fleshing out the five characters and their backstory. 

This is where the writing earns its high marks. Now let me reiterate, writing is difficult. And when writing about say genocide, rape, and grief, it's very easy to indelicately portray these themes and come off as either exploitative and or out of touch with the subject matter. I Have No Grapes almost masterfully takes these difficult subject matters and uses them in a way that's impactful while still respecting the nature of that reality.

Unfortunately, I say almost because it doesn't quite go the full monty if you can excuse my crude segway. In the short story, Benny is homosexual with his um, appendage deformed, which is absent in the adaptation. It's another circumstance that got in the way of the game seeing its full potential, and I understand that. However, when the game does such a good job exploring other taboo subjects, I feel they would also have the bravery to include that as well. 

That being said, what remains is still a rich story. And while the voice acting is fairly hit and miss, they still manage to deliver effective dialogue. And when you consider that this game came out the same year as Yoshi's Island, and you realize how ahead of its time it is. Frankly, time has yet to catch up in my opinion. Sure, games have tackled difficult subjects but very few AND I MEAN VERY FEW have approached the themes and subject matter with the level of intensity that I Have No Mouth has. To me, this is the final frontier to really propel gaming's status as an art form. It has to challenge beyond the mere reflexes of a Star World level from Super Mario.    

 

Conclusion

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream represents everything I like about art. It favors being interesting than appealing. It's rough around the edges and somewhat compromised by the circumstances of the time. Yet, the authenticity is on its sleeve and still remains one of the most of the most unique experiences in interactive art. 

So get a Gamefaqs walkthrough and play it on Steam. And now if you excuse me, I have to endure my personal hell which is waiting for bloody Halloween season to come.