Well. This game posed a problem for me, because I played it when it came in,
and sat there feeling vaguely punched in the gut, and then couldn't discuss it
with anyone because no one else was able to play it yet. It owes, as another
reviewer noted, an unmistakeable debt to Photopia, both in the structure
(nonlinear event sequence, shifting perspectives) and in the theme (inevitable
outcome, innocent protagonist one would like to protect.) And like Photopia it
is manipulative in ways that I feel and resent as a player, that make me
disengage slightly. Manipulative or not, though, I did, in spite of myself, find
much to care about, which is a tribute to the skill of the author and the
humanity of the characters as revealed in their conversation.
Having raised that comparison, I'm now going to ignore it. Photopia is
perhaps the most widely-reverenced work of IF in existence, and I'm not
interested in trying to determine whether Voices approaches it in quality; the
power here is almost entirely subjective, so I can't know whether other people
will respond to it as I did. Instead I'd like to address it on the terms that
the author raised: is it acceptable, interesting, workable, as a piece of
propaganda?
I'm biased, naturally, being Christian; one is bound to have certain
reactions to a game that rails openly against a Christian God. At the same time,
I found it less offensive than I did Jarod's Journey, which in my opinion
reduced and belittled the deity and his agents, making Jesus someone to be
addressed in formulaic forms and his angels little glowing critters in
unwrinkled robes -- a kind of cross between the Sylvania Light Bulb Man and a
spokesbeing of Tide With Bleach. Where was the spectacle, the wonder, the glory,
the terrible wings and eyes?
Voices came closer, I thought, to respecting the content of my religion -- by
trying to address it seriously and directly -- than JJ did by trying to make it
into something advertiseable and shallow. Yes, Voices railed against God-- but
railing against God is often done. Cf. Jonah, and Job, and Jacob wrestling with
the angel; Abraham bargaining for Sodom and Gomorrah; Peter with his failures,
Thomas with his doubts, Jesus himself asking to be spared what he knows is
coming. I could see something like this being written by a Christian author, in
fact.
To all this, I thought, the romance aspect was almost tangential. The matter
of the game is Love, yes, but it's divine love and protective love and the
desire to spare what cannot be spared. So the plot rang false for me, finally;
but maybe this is because I have other answers for Aris' questions than the ones
he settled on. Believing what I believe, I would make the story differently;
which I guess returns us to the question of whether a story can or should be
inherently evangelical. I would've made Tapestry differently, too.
Ultimately, I guess, I thought the theological questions raised were ones
that have already (at least for me) been adequately answered, though people
will, of course, go on poking at them for as many generations as religion itself
endures; to postulate a just god in an unjust world is always problematic. It
was a problem for the Greeks before Christianity existed -- what to do with this
Zeus character, who was supposed to be a force for justice but who kept handing
out bad things to decent people, and (on top of that) in all of these stories
did assorted nefarious things? The explanations there are complicated and
sometimes half-hearted (Zeus is bound by Fate, eg; there's nothing he can do
about what Must Be. Or: Zeus is in favor of justice, but he doesn't care very
much about individual humans.) Christian arguments about free will are much more
interesting to me, and effective, but I am, as noted, biased.
All that said -- I wasn't persuaded, I wasn't even really all that challenged
in the terms of my belief, but I do think that this is more the way to go than
some other efforts we have seen. If you want to convey something, then writing a
story that conveys it as part of the soul of the story is a good way. Perhaps
even better would be to allow for some interplay, create an NPC (or someone) who
plays the Devil's Advocate (God's Advocate?). But still. Intriguing.
