G String (essay)
Gray rain clouds suddenly glowed with a cold yellow light. A frail girlish figure in a black tight suit, climbing among the ruins over a pile of rubble, froze and looked up. Squinting and tearing up from the acid raindrops, she saw an increasingly brighter column of light that was rapidly moving in her direction. Startled, the girl rushed headlong into the first crack in the wall. The next second, an orbital laser hit the abandoned warehouse opposite. With a deafening roar, an avalanche of scorching air rushed through the alleys, part of the walls collapsed, and from the windows and doors knocked out by the blast wave, engulfed in red flames, mangled robotic housewives fell out and rolled like a pile of garbage. Their twisted bodies, with melted silicone skin hanging like torn rags from charred steel bones, slowly moved with their legs and arms, crawling out onto the sidewalk. Drops of rain hissed on their blackened bodies, as if on a hot iron, raising clouds of steam above the ground.
The fugitive, whose name was Mio, watched this scene tensely from the basement of a neighboring house. Every time a robot with leaking electronic eye sockets turned blindly towards her hiding place, she instinctively reached for her submachine gun, even though it had run out of ammo several shootouts ago. A few minutes later, from around the corner, with torn bulletproof vests and cracked helmets, stunned by the explosion, several soldiers came out swaying. Having shaken off the ash and dirt from the bolts of their pulse machines, they began to methodically shoot the crazed machines.
A rustling sound came from the depths of the flooded basement. Mio immediately forgot about the crazy action taking place on the street and fixed her eyes on the impenetrable darkness. A ball of fire jumped from her fingertips and, making a turn in the air, flew up to the source of the noise. In the corner of the basement, a rat was gnawing on several corpses floating in the muddy water. Sealed suits made of thick orange rubber did not allow one to assess the degree of decomposition by eye, but the bloated silhouettes of the dead underground fighters and the unbearable stench indicated that they died long before they were discovered. Before the fireball went out, the girl hastily collected the medicine and ammunition scattered around the basement, but disdained to take the oxygen cylinders left on the corpses. The sensor built into the suit showed that her supply of clean air should last for several more hours, and therefore she did not lose hope of getting to the nearest underground base to replenish her supplies there.
Half an hour later, the shooting on the street died down, and the soldiers left somewhere in the direction of the highways hanging above the horizon. Mio, timidly looking around, crawled out of the basement and hurried to hide in the nearest alley, where her traces were soon lost in a maze of electrical cables and sewer pipes.
Alpha and Omega
Hello, have you ever heard of G String? I would tell you myself, but they did it for me a long time ago. If you are not familiar with this monumental creation of human thought, you can read a note about it on StopGame. If you have no special desire, then I will tell you the story of G String briefly.
It’s 2006. A resident of Japan of Korean origin, hiding under the nickname “Eyaura” (initially, however, the nickname was “MyoHyo”) unexpectedly discovers the well-known “Garry’s Mod”. Soon, just as suddenly, she discovers the Hammer map editor and begins to rivet locations for Garry’s Mod on it in the spirit of a futuristic dystopia. After another year, so many of these cards accumulate that the scattered pieces of the puzzle begin to assemble themselves into a certain picture against the will of their creator. The events of the next four years are shrouded in mystery and even the author herself does not talk much about this period. Although perhaps there was nothing to tell? In any case, the work on combining the cards into the mod went on for the next four years and the result justified all the work.
On the morning of December 24, 2011, on the ModDB website, without an announcement about the release, a full-fledged mod suddenly appears, which does not even require Half Life 2 to run: a free Source SDK 2006 and a Steam account were enough. The game was not noticed for the first few days, but within a month a cult of fans began to form around it.
"G String BETA". It’s 2011. Even many AAA projects of that time could not boast of such an artistic and geometric style, let alone modification.
Unusual design, cool and dark atmosphere, in the end, the genuine efforts of the only female author won the hearts of many who were able to overcome the general crookedness of the modification and complete it to the end (among them was me). Albeit limited, but still a success, it turned out to be so unexpected for Eyaura that instead of leaving the field of gaming once and for all, she began to bring the modification to mind. In 2013, an updated version of the first levels of the mod – “G String – Day One” – was released for a small group of testers, and the original project received the suffix “BETA”.
After positive reviews for "Day One", the game was taken seriously, and over the next seven years it was polished, improved and completed in every possible way.
On the morning of October 16, 2020, without a release announcement, two months ahead of schedule, “G String” suddenly released on Steam.
Oedipus complex
Here I could rush into listing the advantages and disadvantages of the game… but I don’t want to. Yes, and I don’t think it’s necessary. Almost everything that could be said about the new version of “G String” was already said back then, back in 2011, about the original, and even without me, heaps of more articulate reviewers, to whom the 2020 version will be new, will be able to restate what was said.
The only thing new that can be said about “G String” can only be said by comparing the old and new versions, but not by considering them separately. Once upon a time, a school psychology teacher said that if you take and mirror the right and left sides of a person’s face, you will get two completely different people: on one side there remains an imprint of all the evil that a person has done, and on the other – an imprint of all the good deeds of a person. But in the end, the mirror is put back in the nightstand and the two faces merge into one.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Of course, this is most likely a stupid fairy tale from the field of fortune telling by coffee grounds, but this fairy tale, like nothing else, describes the situation with the old and new versions of “G String”: an old face and a new face, a good face and an evil face. Same face. However, every person had a childhood, and it leaves its mark on the rest of their lives. For G String, this childhood can be called “Half-Life 2” – after all, it was on the Source engine that both versions were created.
Therefore, in the future I will draw parallels between these two and a half games. If you came here for some kind of review, then you should probably save your time and go read something else, because what follows will be mostly my chaotic personal thoughts and notes on the topic: dissection is such a thing, you understand.
Cartography
What types of cards can there be in games?? They are usually divided into two subtypes: linear and open. In open world games, maps are mostly free to explore from the start. And even if most of the territory is initially closed for exploration, then when it is opened, the previous locations do not become inaccessible. A similar approach exists, for example, in Metroidvanias, where one of the main pillars of the gameplay is the ability to freely travel around the game world, using newly acquired abilities to open new locations. Also, an open world is welcome in the RPG genre, even if it is essentially empty and exists only to waste the player’s time moving from point A to point B.
The second subtype is linear. The name speaks for itself: there is a beginning of the location and its end. There’s only one way from here to there. Many platformers and action games use this approach because it allows the player to have a continuous ride where they have no chance of missing out on the item of entertainment placed right in front of their eyes, be it an exploding barrel or a powerful sniper rifle.
This is all, of course, very beautiful, but where should I go now??
However, even within some genres, experiments with the types of maps are quite possible: if in “Call of Duty” the maps are a gut with a couple of branches, then in more respectable representatives like “Unreal” or “Quake” the levels, even if they require you to go from point A to point B, still provide enough free space to get lost in them, or vice versa: accidentally shoot through the entire map without seeing even one fifth of its contents.
Remembering “Half Life 2” you can remember what maps there were large, but at the same time not confusing. The path from A to B was more or less clear and understandable. Valve did a good job, licking the cards to perfection and taking into account the problems of even the most dull players. Various inconsistencies between the logic of geometry and the logic of the gameplay were covered up with various futuristic elements: moving walls that devoured the ground beneath them, poisonous hordes of leeches in sea water, Alliance checkpoints and energy fields that conveniently allowed only enemy fighters to pass through. From above, all this was smoothed out by the work of artists and designers, leaving behind a perfectly polished product that is pleasing to both the eye and the brain.
The main thing is not to replay the game again, otherwise the illusion collapses and the large and open world turns into a very large room, on the ceiling and walls of which endless fields under the blue sky are painted in oil paints by a very talented artist. The problem is this: this world feels so organic precisely because it has been artificially processed. A person’s hand is felt even where logically it shouldn’t be. If, during an investigation, for example, of a murder, the suspect turns out to have too much incriminating evidence, then it is quite natural for the investigators to begin to suspect that the person has been framed: everything is going too well!
This is why natural landscapes are considered the weakest points in video games that try to show the real world. Because that’s where nothing should go wrong. But this directly contradicts the logic of creating maps, which claims that they can be completed. Nature is not anthropocentric, unlike factories/offices/warehouses, which are planned in advance with the expectation that you can walk from one place to another without endangering your life (hello, “F.E.A.R"!).
Some scenes look so good in dynamics that sometimes you don’t believe that this is still an old Source Engine that has undergone the most minimal processing in the hands of a single developer.
What approach does G String choose??
No, really. And this is its uniqueness.
In primitivism there is such a concept as “naive art” – it refers to the works of artists who did not have a professional education related to art. In a word, these are amateur artists. Yes, of course, some of their works look like childish crap, but sometimes original ideas, interesting compositions and non-standard approaches to creative activity begin to appear behind the sloppy layers of paint. Yes, these are not very good works from the point of view of academic assessment, but they are, firstly, unique, and secondly, sincere. This is exactly the moment when the phrase – “I am an artist, this is how I see it” – has a basis.
In the case of “G String” this is the card that is played.
-What do you most wish casinoandfriend.uk you knew when you started working on a mod??
-Most? About how to make games.
(“Eyaura” in an interview with LambdaGeneration on October 92013)
"G String BETA" begins unconventionally – in a two-story apartment with many rooms. To leave it, you need to find the key. The key is on the ledge under one of the windows. No direct clues are given about its location. Question: how long will you stay in your first apartment before you understand what to do?? I spent probably half an hour, after which, out of hopelessness, I began to break all the windows in the house, looking for some way out, until I came across this damn cornice with this damn key.
However, this first “failure” of the author of the game, as a game designer, served me as a valuable lesson: throughout the entire game I never again expected at least some brightly glowing marker or hint, and I got wild pleasure poking into all the corners in a row. Primitive and inconvenient? Yes, indeed, but you never get the feeling that you are being led by the hand, and that around this corner there will be another performance where actors in clown makeup have been waiting for you for a long time. Such uncut corners contribute to the perception of in-game objects as something that appeared naturally, and not during hard work “from above”.
This entire location is available for exploration. You can rush through the ruins of a skyscraper to the next location, or you can lose fifteen minutes looking for a way to valuable ammunition.
The intuitive search for a path is accompanied by gigantic… no, excuse me – huge locations. I opened the Hammer editor and spent a long, long time studying what the nameless Japanese woman had created over several years of continuous work. It often happened that maps in height and width were selected to the limits beyond which the engine could no longer withstand and gave rise after departure.
One of the maps was a large abandoned quarter of a destroyed city. All rooms and nooks and crannies that were not filled with stones and debris were completely open to exploration and exploration, even if they were empty. Detachments of enemy soldiers roamed the streets, but they could be easily bypassed if desired. If this were “Half-Life 2”, then the level would be neatly filled with obstacles so that the ability to complete the level would disappear, but then every five steps you would have to run into squads of flimsy bots, and every remaining accessible nook and cranny would be filled with ammo and first aid kits: in vain, perhaps, the player is wasting his time, in the end?
Or another case – a river with deadly dangerous water, on the surface of which a flimsy raft swings. I jump on it and it begins to roll left and right, hinting that it can and should be pushed if you want to move somewhere and not stand still. Five minutes later I found myself off the map, driving the raft not to the other side, but against the current. But there was absolutely no feeling that I was doing something wrong!
The raft crossing across the wide canal is one of the most memorable scenes in G String BETA.
One day I was making my way through a dirty alley somewhere in the lower city when I noticed pipes sticking out of the walls. Yes, they stuck out so temptingly that I decided to climb on them. And then climb higher onto the adjacent pipes. And more, and even higher. Until I finally found myself on some rooftop. Surprised by the non-standard approach they offered me in passing the level and… I ran into an invisible wall. A little confused, I began to study the roof and saw that in some places there were no textures, in some places there were no collisions. That’s when I realized that I had spent about fifteen minutes stupidly getting out of the map. And again – it seemed to me that I was doing everything right! You are confused, but for some reason you don’t feel like you made a mistake. What is this if not great card design??
G String’s 2020 gigantomania has not diminished, but there is less immediate freedom. Unfortunately, the maps have become more linear. No, this does not mean at all that in the new revision there are fewer forks and non-standard tasks – their number has not changed and many fragments from the beta have been transferred without any special changes, or even vice versa – becoming even more confusing and branched. The linearity is that now all the forks are smoothly spread throughout the game, instead of throwing them all in a crowd and disorder on one map.
Here you can jump down without crashing. Even if at first glance you don’t believe it, there really is a whole bunch of valuable supplies below and a way back.
However, there are also pleasant innovations: almost every chapter can now be completed in two different ways. If one of the paths is open immediately, then the second path must be carefully searched. Moreover, each road leads to a new location, which will not be accessible if you choose another fork. This increases the replayability and overall duration of the game, and one playthrough will not be completely similar to another. The main thing is not to forget to save if you feel that you might stumble upon a transition to the next location: the way back, unlike “Half-Life 2”, will always be blocked for you.
Sometimes you can get creative and avoid fighting with enemies by finding somewhere a ventilation or a hole on the roof that will allow you to bypass the enemies. Not like Sam Fisher, of course, but the opportunity itself is already pleasing. In addition, at each level there are special caches with powerful and rare types of weapons, to find which you need to be very clever: they are really hidden very well. And if the cache, on the contrary, is like an eyesore, then this means that when it is opened, a punitive detachment will most likely come to your soul – in fact, no one was going to give away valuable equipment just like that.
With or without shield
The very first encounter with a humanoid enemy in G String will touch an old callus in the cerebellum of seasoned shooter fans. For the first few minutes, the connection between these two events will be unclear, but soon an epiphany sets in: “Yes, these are repainted combine harvesters.”!». The set of weapons also evokes melancholy: a hammer, a pistol, a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and so on – just like the repainted weapons from “Half Life 2”. When it comes to the paranormal abilities of the main character, it turns out that telekinesis is a common gravitational trap, and pyrokinesis means that at any moment you can “spawn” one or more fireballs in front of you, which will immediately flop down to the ground like an ordinary physical object. Not very cool.
“G String” is well aware of this, and is trying with all its might to hide the problem: the secondary nature of the gameplay, brazenly copied from “Half Life 2,” is more than compensated for by the originality of its approach to the key conventions of the game. In "G String BETA" it was surprising to discover the absence of any armor: the protagonist’s life hung on only one health bar. This made it possible to make the battles somewhat more interesting and more difficult, because without additional protection the maximum strength was several times less, and in some clashes even blind and flimsy dummies could prevail, putting pressure on the player in numbers. If necessary, you can slow down time: there is no full-fledged “bullet time”, but this allowed you to quickly navigate the space or throw back a thrown grenade.
In the 2020 version, time dilation was cut out and the armor was returned. However, the dummies’ accuracy, damage, and reaction speed have been tweaked. Because of this, the game turns into a competition for the title of the fastest hand in the West: whoever shoots first wins. On the one hand, there is realism, and on the other, the F6/F9 keys are used here almost more often than the left mouse button, and every won battle evokes a burning desire to press ESC and go out onto the balcony and smoke a cigarette or two in the cold night air, thinking about the futility of existence.
At such moments it becomes a shame that time dilation was cut out of the new version.
If “G String BETA” evenly rewarded the player with the necessary resources as they moved towards the final credits, without departing from their ancestor in this process, then “G String” changes the model: if for a pistol and a submachine gun they give out loads of cartridges in every nook and cranny, and even changing the difficulty to a higher one does not fundamentally change anything, then more powerful weapons – be it a shotgun or a revolver – are now turned into rare specimens, to find which you need to find a local secret. Due to the increased difficulty, valuable ammo has to be saved for when the game throws you into a closed arena against hordes of enemies. Over time, the heroine’s arsenal will be significantly replenished and life will become easier, but in the first half of the game, excessive wastefulness can lead to the fact that you will be left completely without ammunition.
Necessity forces the main character to use fireballs: in themselves they are absolutely harmless and are only suitable for igniting pre-arranged oil stains. However, if you give them acceleration using telekinesis, they turn into powerful melee weapons. Bright flashes of fire make it difficult to throw them at maneuverable opponents, and therefore it is best to use them against slow robots.
Nothing is encrypted in the QR code: it only shows the locations of the caches.
In the frequent moments of calm, when no one is chasing the player and no one is shooting at him, it is too early to relax: the environment itself is still working against you. Revisit the worst platforming moments in first-person games and get ready to relive them all at once. What’s in the beta, what’s in the new version, every ten minutes you are forced to imagine yourself as an Italian plumber and jump from pole to pole over an abyss of varying degrees of lethality. To avoid the desire to throw the keyboard out the window, the actual dimensions of the player are slightly larger than those determined visually. Because of this, you can safely run along thin wires, but you cannot immediately crawl into huge holes in the floor.
In addition to acrobatic skills, you also need to demonstrate observation skills: booby traps or poorly placed explosive barrels are often hidden around corners. Unlike their compradors from "Half Life 2", in the new "G String" they have a bad habit of sometimes exploding even if touched unsuccessfully. If this was not enough, then they will try to finish off the player with jets of poisonous gas and columns of water flowing from the pipes. Which water from the pipes is poisonous and instantly eats up all health and armor, and which is not – I still haven’t figured it out. As a result, I panicked and dodged both of them.
One or two seconds in this water – and you’re dead. Thank you for at least painting it malachite color.
However, there were some concessions: now, when you first get into the water, you hear the most beautiful thing in the world: the suit will tell you in crooked English that you have three hours of air left. If in “G String BETA” there were practically no water scenes, then in the new version you will regularly have to dive under water. Thanks to the absence of rapidly escaping air, potentially irritating episodes have turned into discharging ones: there are no enemies or traps in the water, and even the in-game music sounds muffled. All other elements of the suit received the same “upgrade”: if you need to take a running start, the sprint button works without a break to “recharge”. Built-in flashlight always shines. After Half Life 2, where you either ran or shone, such an indulgence slightly sweetens the bitter pill of imbalance.
Desaturation
In the first version of “G String”, the first thing you notice are two black stripes at the top and bottom of the screen, which in addition were framed by a rather noticeable vignette. It was all sprinkled on top with a “grain” effect. If you didn’t know the console commands to turn off these effects, then you could go through the entire game with them. However, not everyone was able to get used to such a “movie” attitude, and they threw the author of complaints with a carriage and a small cart. The artist listened to people’s cries, but did not completely abandon her ideas, and even on the contrary, she increased the scale of transformation. Now in the main menu, along with the classic settings menu, the “special effects” plate proudly hangs.
When you turn it on for the first time, your eyes start to run wild, but in the end you inevitably find comfortable game settings.
Since all of them are disabled by default, the picture looks much brighter and more saturated than the faded and gloomy original. If someone doesn’t like it, they can at any time make the picture either black and white or green and red. Even the unfortunate stripes were left at the top and bottom. I especially liked the ability to enable optical distortion of the image: it works perfectly indoors, creating the effect of amateur photography in the spirit of “Kane & Lynch 2”. In general, options for every taste right out of the box where you usually need to get to the bottom of them using special programs.
Even the HUD and the ability to see the heroine’s body if you point the camera at the ground can be configured separately. There is no lush bust, ala “Trespasser”, but it affects the immersion in the slightest degree.
It’s a small thing, but it’s nice.
The move from “Source 2006” to “Source 2013” is immediately noticeable. Lighting, HDR, dynamic shadows from flashlight and third-party lighting sources. The high detail of the environment catches your eye: on every wall, in every nook there is something interesting. If the game had a VR mode, then you could spend days with it, just looking at the world around you. Advertising posters offer to insert a chip with the brain of a 12-year-old child into your cat, vending machines for used underwear guarantee that their products have been worn for at least a year, and sex robot manufacturers proudly declare that their product does not know the word “no.”. By the way, sometimes they are encountered as ordinary opponents: what distinguishes them from ordinary robots is that when they notice you, they begin to shake their hips invitingly and moan electronically, inviting you to come to them. When such a creature with its legs torn off emerges from the darkness, erotically wheezing, at you, you involuntarily shudder and try to run away, without even entering into battle.
Through the binoculars included in the suit, it is not only convenient to target distant enemies, but also to meditatively look at the local landscapes. Something interesting is always happening on the horizon: neon signs flicker, advertising airships slowly float by, factory chimneys spew out flames mixed with toxic smog. One of the chapters generally begins with a five-minute train ride and looking at the landscape outside the window.
In the second half of the game, when you are already tired of the slums, the game will sharply lift us up into outer space. The yellow golden picture will be replaced by a charming cold blue background. As a reward, you are allowed to fly and shoot in a space fighter. The difficulty of the game is reduced here specifically so that the beauty of local species is not overshadowed by the constant need to load the nearest save game. No shooting, no haste, only calm contemplation. Your screenshot folder will definitely swell like a family album after a trip to Egypt.
The console command “noclip” is as good for this game as cheese is for wine or roach is for beer: there is so much to look at and explore.
Even the most seedy nook and cranny does not feel like one because of the enormous diligence that was invested by the creator of the game into every meter of the playing space.
But don’t be fooled that the visual merits of the game are limited only to a whim for the eyes and a punishment for the video card. All graphic bells and whistles are just seasoning for the main dish: a dense and gloomy atmosphere. Although “gloomy” is a wrong definition, even the opposite in meaning to what is really in fashion.
In Freud’s psychology in his later years, there were two, as it seemed to him then, main motives of human consciousness: “Eros” and “Thanatos”. The first – Eros – consisted of the desire for life, for creativity, for the process of creation, and was also responsible for the libido of the individual. Thanatos, on the contrary, manifested itself in the desire for death, in the readiness to accept it, and was associated with old age, when many great goals had already been achieved in youth and a person had nothing left to desire. At the same time, both Eros and Thanatos were not tied to physical age: a young girl, who logically should live and rejoice, cuts her wrists with a razor for trifles; and the ancient old man, who already has one foot in the grave, still runs vigorously in the morning and enjoys painting pictures on the veranda after a hearty lunch.
In Half Life 2, despite the spirit of dystopia and general decay, the spirit of Eros was more pronounced: here there is an inseparable couple that meets throughout the game, and a resistance movement that is actively creating new means of fighting aliens. The absence of children and even teenagers does not mean that this world is definitely doomed – especially after the suppression field is turned off, as Dr. Kleiner happily announces in the first episode. Even the quasi-love line in the person of the couple Alix and Gordon was not forgotten.
The Alliance represents the opposite – the power of Thanatos. They are not only responsible for the extinction of unnecessary earthlings, but also took an active part in the death of the planet’s biosphere. Aliens in this paradigm destroy all life on earth, arranging a kind of delayed apocalypse. The conflict between Eros and Thanatos in its most obvious form also flares up between the young civilization of earthlings against the more ancient and advanced aliens. Young Gordon, who has not aged a day in stasis, against the old and gray-haired administrator Brin, who broadcasts his mournful propaganda from the screens in a mentoring tone. This is the classic structure of the conflict between conventional good and evil.
In “G String” there is no such struggle in both versions. There is no Eros. Only Thanatos. Yes, according to the plot of the game, humanity long ago conquered the solar system and even began terramorphing the planets, but this was a necessary measure due to the death of the Earth. The planet in the world of “G String” has long been beyond salvation, because there is practically nothing living left in it. The reproductive instinct is actively suppressed by the government for literally humanistic reasons: the pollution of the planet has led to a decrease in suitable spaces for existence, and if there is no careful medical control over the development of the fetus, then children are born with a distorted genetic code.
Even though all these girls are harmless cardboard cutouts, you still don’t want to turn your back on them. What if?
The decline is not only material, but also spiritual: many religions have long been banned, but drugs and alcohol are ubiquitous. Many people transfer their consciousness to virtual worlds to escape the horrors of reality, or indulge in hedonism, surrounding themselves with lustful sex bots and electronic toys of all varieties and sizes. The few remaining states have been transformed into militarized autocracies that do not take into account the human losses of either their own or others. The theme of the post-apocalypse inevitably touches on the topic of preserving the old world or its revival from the ashes in one form or another. In “G String”, at the moment that the main character manages to catch, this station has been passed a long time ago. There is nothing to save, and there is no need – it is much easier to escape to another planet, or to the next world through euthanasia.
-(. )How did you come up with the G String backstory??(. ) You managed to create a world in which you really don’t want to live!
— I simply took current trends and extrapolated them: what if the climate continues to deteriorate, coastal cities will go under water, and we will run out of oil? What if we continue to pollute the planet?? What if there are even more people and there is an alienation of capital?? However, it has already happened: money is now no more than a piece of paper. There are surveillance cameras in every corner and the gap between rich and poor is growing every minute. Where will this lead us?? (. ) In fact, there is no way out anymore: humanity does not believe in the spiritual, but believes in the digital. We bet on high technology, risking losing everything in the end.
(“Eyaura” in an interview with LambdaGeneration on October 92013)
This rationalization of the game’s backstory brings it closer to the famous documentary film "Zeitgeist", which was extremely popular ten years ago. In the 2011 version, this was evident in the posters of anti-globalists and conspiracy theorists hanging here and there. In the new version, educational work on the global situation is harmoniously woven into the narrative.
The immediate premise of “G String BETA” also does not shine with joyful moments. The story begins with the awakened Mio, her father informs her that her lover was taken away by the police this morning, and he himself is painfully dying from the same disease that had previously killed her mother. His only two requests: to burn him alive to end his suffering, and to take revenge on the powers that be.
It’s surprising why Valve themselves couldn’t do anything like this on their own engine.
2020’s G String changes the recipe a bit: it all starts in the laboratory of a megacorporation that uses Mio as a living weapon in their experiments. Her parents and lover died a long time ago in a huge flood, and she herself has neither friends nor relatives. Having barely left the laboratory by chance, she immediately becomes the target of government agents.
While the local flavor is heavily inspired by key pillars of the Cyberpunk genre (especially Philip K. K. K.), it is also extremely original. In short, the local world is simply dysfunctional. There is no hope for a positive outcome, or even just the status quo. From the very first minutes it becomes clear that what is happening on the monitor will not end well for anyone. All our actions are just an attempt to survive. That the resistance movement, that Mio, that the special units of the government are nothing more than maggots swarming in the corpse of a dead dog. Can a decaying corpse have a happy future, or a future at all??
Epilogue
While I was enjoying the sight of flying limbs after a well-thrown grenade, I couldn’t help but think about how much effort was put into the game. Models and textures created completely from scratch, many new sounds and completely its own music (“Eyarua” is also responsible for almost the entire soundtrack of the new “G String”). 12 years is a significant period. Even if we take as a starting point not the year 2007-2008, when the first part began to be created, but the period from 2011 to 2013, it still turns out that from 9 to 7 years were spent on the project. The epic novel War and Peace took Tolstoy six years to complete. David Lynch’s Eraserhead took five years to film. Peter Jackson’s Space Stew – four years. Cave Story and Stardew Valley took four years to develop. "Undertale" – three years.
And here – at least seven years. Moreover, without any guarantees of success or fame. It’s hard to imagine what a blow this is, first of all, to the human psyche. And the worst thing is that there is no turning back and there cannot be. Long before getting acquainted with “Source Engine”, the author tried to translate her ideas into music and cinema, but to no avail. Only in the field of game development did she manage to express herself. Here we see the result of not only creative work, but also the therapy of a person who put too much at stake.
"Tired. Tired of waiting, tired of investing so much without knowing whether my work will ultimately be in vain or not. I’m starting to wonder if I wasted my 20s and 30s. Maybe I should have been doing something else?»
("Eyaura". August 20, 2020.)
And yet, I personally, now until the end of my days, will consider the “G String” a symbol of the creator’s struggle with a capital “C”. The man who reached the end and did not break.
And in my opinion, “G String” is the best adventure of the past year, albeit joyless, like death.
