The Problem With Backpacks
By Xanthe Brown
I am a civilian. I move through the world with the trepidation of a layman. By this, I mean I do not take risks. I whisper in doctor’s offices. I respect the empty seat between my fellow subway riders, which is filled with a mutual reverence for the cultural norm of personal space. I am your typical jeans-wearer, sheep, upholder of social contracts, and know no better than to politely get herded with the herd. My favorite color is blue. My favorite drink is iced tea. Baa, baa. There is nothing wrong with me, and I am ok with that.
Little Nightmares
Unfortunately, I am a civilian in the world of video games. This is the worst place to be a civilian, because I am asked to be a hero, to step outside of the bounds of the ordinary and rise to a spectacular occasion, and to realize the inner power I’ve had all along. And at times, a game can bring the hero, kicking and screaming, out of the chasm of my rule-following heart. The first time I played Little Nightmares, I felt like a witch-eating baby Einstein badass motherfucker. Super Mario Galaxy will live on in my heart as the game where I – not Mario – bravely climbed along the fur of a gigantic bee seeking golden keys. Why that moment feels more epic than, um, dodging meteorite showers and incredibly intense toy-themed universe levels in that game, I can’t say, but I don’t care. I’m not playing by the rules of what you think should be mentioned in this essay. I can’t deny that games give me a chance to grow as a person, or to be a wholly different one than the one I am on subways and in doctor’s offices. Just for a time, in games, I get to break contracts, because I have to, to win.
The games I am good at, the ones I like, are linear. They put you on a literal straight line, left to right, from start to finish. They prepare you for and expect your success. Here’s the kicker: no matter how many bees these games throw at you, you are following their rules by design. You are still a civilian, completing tasks and solving problems. Only the setting has changed. It is never clearer to me that linear games have underprepared me in the hero department than when I play open world games. Or, honestly, when I play any game with an inventory. Watch me play Fallout 4 and try to stay awake. I spend at least 60% of any game session managing my inventory. I fast travel in the middle of battles to get better weapons in Diamond City. When I clear an area of Raiders, I loot every filing cabinet, every dead guy, and every dog in the entire establishment. I loot the feral ghouls of their baby rattles and spoons. What if I need the plastic to build something at a settlement? What if the spoon can be sold? I what-if the fuck out of the game so hard that my experience is more like cleaning my house than fighting bad guys.
Fallout 4 Inventory
I know that my frustration is shared. Every gamer knows it sucks to have an overflowing inventory, and to have that hinder your progress. This is why the backpack is the most coveted item in games where it’s collectible (next to the shotgun. Everybody feels like a big boy when they get the shotgun). The backpack is the sigh of relief, it’s the knowledge that you can now carry what you need for success. And there are many times where the backpack enhances, even completes the gaming experience. Early Resident Evil games are a nightmare without a backpack – it becomes a game of trudging across the mansion, through rooms you have already cleared, to go get something you left on a different floor because you couldn’t fit it into your belt with all the other puzzle pieces. The gameplay is excruciating.
At this point, you are probably thinking, what is the point of this? Don’t worry. I would never break your trust as a reader of my article and not deliver a point. Do I seem like a person who would do that?
Here it is. It is in the backpack’s helpfulness that it actually becomes harmful. At least, to a civilian like me. While extra inventory space might allow me to play the game faster, to make it more exciting, it will allow me to continue playing safely. It will allow me to continue tailoring the world of Fallout 4 so that I am prepared for every battle, so that I never have to make a choice, so that I never have to take a risk. Not-risk-taking is not what games are for. And it is not what civilians need from games like these. What I lack, in my life, in my gameplay, is bravery. Bravery is the resolve to do something that you are completely unprepared for. My biggest regret in my life is that I have done very few things I was unprepared for. And some of the best things in my life came from things I did with no preparation, with no backpack, per se.
This is the problem with backpacks. To mix metaphors, backpacks are a double-edged sword. I would not become a better gamer with more inventory space in Fallout 4 – I would still pause during battles, I would still run away, I would still needlessly loot everybody, probably even more than I already do. I would not see what I can do under pressure, would not expand my belief in my ability to handle the challenges of the post-nuclear-war apocalypse. If I had less inventory space, I would learn how to kick a Deathclaw’s ass with a 10mm pistol. And that’s what it means to be a hero.
Video games, like all storytelling, are beautiful because they tell us about ourselves. They tell us what we would do in fantastically perilous situations, and we feel most connected to stories where the characters like us face challenges we don’t believe we can overcome. It can be a deeply emotional experience to see yourself overcome something. What makes video games special is you actually have to do it. You do. Not Scarlet Johansson. You. The civilian. And I think for some of us, for me, we do not believe we can do it unless we are fully stocked and ready to go, shoes tied, backpack on. The reality is, we can.
I will always be a civilian. But screw the backpacks. I’m going for the shotgun.