Would you believe me if I said Press E To is actually kind of powerful, even if it’s suuuper minimal and based on a goofy moment from Call of Duty?
Press E To is a free PC game that emerged in part from another project creator Leo Burke was working on, and in part from, well…
This.
In what has become probably Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare‘s most notorious scene, the player attends a funeral and has to “hold [button dependent on game platform of choice] to pay respects.” It’s a clumsy intersection of traditional video-game-y-ness and narrative, a crossing of the streams that ends in unintentional hilarity rather than tragedy. Even Conan made fun of it. To borrow phrasing from my good friend Morbo, FUNERALS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY.
Press E To actually takes place a while after a funeral and aims to get your tear ducts gushing — or at least lightly spritzing, in the fashion one might apply vinaigrette to an appetizer salad. It’s brief yet melancholy experience, a short forest stroll to a lonely grave followed by a not-quite-conversation. I won’t spoil the content of the talk, but suffice it to say that it’s meant to get you into the mindset of actual mourning, the aching regret and longing.
Press E To isn’t the most profound game I’ve played all year or anything, but it’s an interesting little digital art piece and a look at what can actually be done with the sort of thing Call of Duty lazily glossed over. Personally I think there are better ways for video games to convey a character’s grief (or any other emotion, for that matter) than a quick button press, but it is what it is.
Now then, good graveyard games/games with graveyard scenes: go! And yes, I know about The Graveyard. Weirdly, it came up during a lesson in one of my college media courses once. I don’t remember why.
Comments
5 responses to “Hold X To Play This Call Of Duty Funeral Tribute”
If only you had shown this image of the scene. This was just excellent:
http://i.imgur.com/zdSCM1a.png
That reminds me, I need to play Boon Hill some time.
I doubt that you are truly friends with Morbo.
“All humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo.”
Man, I really need to catch up on the ‘press X to funeral’ stuff.
I haven’t seen any clips of the actual event, but there are times when I think that very accurately portrays some of the difficulty in life’s hardest moments. With the right cinematic direction, it seems like it could be a very powerful device.
Have you ever eulogized someone?
Someone you cared about, a beloved friend? You get up in front of all these people, and they’re all wracked with emotion, and their eyes are on you, and it’s just such a recognizable ritual that if you let yourself, you can get caught up in reflecting on things past, things present and things that should have been, ripped away. Robbed by fate. And as you stand there… well. I would not be surprised if you pinged the brains of anyone who has to do that and found a huge amount of activity in the ‘reluctance’ area of the brain.
In the silence and the weighty atmosphere of grief, staring out at those mourners is like staring at the edge of a cliff. And you’re on the edge of it, waiting to step off, stopped in your tracks by the quiet little voice that sadly tells you:
“If you do this… you’re saying goodbye. You’re acknowledging that this is real and they are gone. Forever.”
And as much as you might want to drag that out, put down the controller and walk away, you know you can’t.
Your fellow mourners are waiting. It’s not a feeling of being judged… everyone there knows exactly why you’re pausing. But there it is… that cliff. And even though those seconds feel like eternity, at some point you know you can’t spend the rest of the time staring at an imaginary ‘press X to end a chapter of life’ .
You’ve gotta push that button if you want to move on.