DRIVER: San Francisco's Subvertive Narrative
[[28/5/24]]PS: Real warning because this post has a lot of fanboying, and it is quite long. I still have so many things to talk about in relation to DRIVER, but this post is mostly about the narrative. I also might add images if I do find some good ones to spice up this post, but no guarantees.
I think I've mentioned it to a certain level that DRIVER: San Francisco is my all-time favourite videogame. It's a sort of game that I always return to, and that I never get tired of. I'm obsessed with almost every part of the game, and it is the reason DRIVER is my favourite videogame series. I've replayed the main story campaign like 21 times, and I am ready to go back and finish it for the 22nd time. But it goes without saying how much I am in love with this game.
For the people out of the know, the simplest way I can explain DSF to you is that it's an action-adventure open-world driving videogame made in 2011 by the developer Ubisoft Reflections, who used to be Reflections Interactive before they were absorbed by the frenchies.
The game is very popular, because of the way it subverts expectations in a creative way. One of the most popular features in the game is the ability to "Shift;" The ability to press a button, jump into an eagle's eye view of the environment, and select another car to drive. It was never seen and probably will never be seen in another videogame ever.
However - as with most videogames of this type - the most overlooked aspect of it is the way that it ties narrative and gameplay to such a mind-boggling way, and the sheer quality and care the developers and writers had when writing the story for this game. Some articles boast about it having more lines of dialogue than the game Mass Effect 2.
I understand this will be a lengthy blog post because there really is a lot to talk about in what the game's narrative can hold. Most of it comes down to the sheer attention to detail, and the thought put behind each choice. In the first part, I will talk about how the game's narrative itself, then I'll explain how it ties narrative to gameplay so thoughtfully.
What's the story?
It's set in the city of San Francisco. I'm not even joking, it's an almost complete replica of the city of San Francisco. The game's story continues loosely from where it ended in DRIV3R. We are introduced to the staple two undercover detectives who are also best friends, John Tanner, and Tobias Jones. The story, unlike most involving detectives, begins after the criminal is apprehended. The criminal is a former assistant/goon, leader of a large international smuggling gang(in DRIV3R), and now just a criminal in jail by the name of Charles Jericho.
Jericho is on parole, and the story begins with Jericho being taken from prison and to court. He however has agreed with an associate of his in jail, a man simply referred to throughout the story as Rufus, that he enact a major-scale operation in exchange for Jericho receiving a total sum of 30 million dollars. The operation itself is a prison break disguised as a terrorist attack involving the releasing of hydrogen cyanide(cyanide gas) on the whole city. Though this is only revealed in the end of the story as a plot twist during the final mission, part of which is an allegory for cardiac arrest. Hold on with me.
Meanwhile, Tanner and Jones are talking about John's unhealthy obsession with his job, mainly manifesting in the fact that he does not believe that Jericho will simply accept a parole like any regular criminal. This is a nod to one of the main themes of the whole story, that being John's unhealthy obsession with Jericho after years of tracking him down and working to stop him and take down on him through undercover criminal work.
Jericho secretly kept an acid pill between his teeth, which he used to melt the metal of the chains on his handcuffs. He paid a mercenary called Leila Sharan to hijack the news helicopter and stop the transmission to TV. Jericho takes control of the armoured truck he was being sent to parole in, and makes an escape.
Tanner, however, jumps in, and using his skills in getaway driving from years of experience, he was able to chase Jericho. However, in a turn of events, Tanner jumps into an alley to chase Jericho, wherein Jericho is behind him in the alley. This results in Jericho ramming Tanner into the highway, resulting in a fatal car crash.
From the rest of the story, it takes place within John Tanner's hallucinations during a short-lived coma. This is where expectations are subverted. Usually when a coma is used as a plot device, it is used in a way that allows for timeskips, to justify the story going from one point into another. But DSF uses the coma as one of the main devices for the narrative. Almost everything is a nod to the coma, a consideration of how that thing would work to explain a certain part of Tanner's mind.
This brings me into the second part of the blog post.
The way DRIVER: San Francisco tells its narrative.
The game establishes early-on that it is set within Tanner's head. This is because almost every other thing in the story relates as to what happens within Tanner's coma hallucinations. Tanner hallucinates that he is solving the case in his coma, with every single small detail of the game coming from the hospital TV on the news. It splits the narrative into what Tanner(and you, the player) experiences throughout the game, and what's actually happening.
Everything ties into the fact that the story is set within the main character's coma. When you are in SHIFT mode, the higher you zoom up, the clearer there is of an overlay image of a heartbeat monitor. If you are in lower zoom levels, you will see the moving overlay image of an eye, most probably Tanner's eye. In most healthy sleeps, and in an overlap with comatose patients, the sleeper will have what is reffered to as REM: rapid eye movement. This is an aspect of deep sleep mainly, implying that Tanner's eye is the eye of somebody in deep sleep, or in other words, a coma.
And not just small details of the game reflect this. Real events within the story tie into the coma, and allow for the story to explore deeper into Tanner's mind. The entire story - whilst veiled under the idea that it is an undercover driving missions game like the rest of the DRIVER series - actually is about Tanner's descent into madness as he is forced to face the fact he has been solving the case in his mind, and also his unhealthy obsession with Jericho.
The game starts out only revealing the fact its a coma to the player. Tanner himself is framed as if he discovered some superpower, whilst we the players recognise he is in a coma. We recognise he is in a coma much before he does. Tanner just believes some supernatural has given him the ability to shift, and with it he must help people in San Francisco in order to complete the story.
The game manages to break the fourth wall without actually breaking the fourth wall. What I mean by this is that if we consider Tanner's coma as a stage, much like any story in this metaphor, we can assume that the story deteriorates the fourth wall of Tanner's mind and into the stage of the actual story. It's what the entire story revolves around.
The way it is revealed to Tanner this is a coma is through a slow deterioration, or derealization of his reality. The people he helps, who once would just go on talking about their issues, begin saying out of pocket things as if they know Tanner personally.
One of the best examples of this is a recurring series of side missions you must complete throughout the game. Much like other side missions in the game, it revolves around some subplot, that being two japanese brothers who get into street racing to pay for college funds. Jun and Ayumu. Ayumu is always in the passengers seat, and he is the one who insists on street racing, first as an unorthodox method of payment, then he proposes it in place of college as a full time job. Jun, in between most of the races, keeps insisting that he was not the one driving the car. Jun keeps stating that the only person who keeps driving the races isnt him in soul, though he can't articulate this properly.
When Tanner begins the missions, he often banters with Ayumu as if he were his brother, but the more times he is forced to go through saving them by winning them races, he begins to lose any sympathy for Ayumu's irresponsible behaviours, and sometimes chimes in with things that appear to Ayumu as if his brother is being possesed, which he is.
"What's the matter with you two!" Tanner via Jun.Then, at the end card of the final mission, whilst Tanner is pretending to celebrate the victory of the race, Ayumu begins a dialogue that breaks the fourth wall of John's mind. That being the following piece of dialogue out of the many masterpieces this game has made.
"Give me my brother back. Find your own body, fight your own battles." Ayumu, in his final mission.Fun fact, this breaking of Tanner's fourth wall can be triggered earlier. If you damage the car throughout the mission, there is a chance this line of dialogue will be triggered.
Tanner: "Just a little scratch won't hurt."Ayumu: "Who cares, John?"
Tanner: "What did you say to me?"
Ayumu: "I said who cares, Jun. We can always buy a new car later."
There are also main missions, which are basically missions that contribute to the main mission and aren't just side missions with subplots. I think some people have mentioned the missions "Frozen", "The Target," and the final mission, "Deja Vu." Now, because I love each one of these missions individually because of the way they can demonstrate the strength of DSF's narrative so poignantly, I'll talk about each of them in separate sections.
Frozen
The mission introduction pseudo-cutscene begins with Jones calling for Tanner, but Tanner is not yet possesing his real body yet. Jones then remarks that Tanner is probably off in some other car or something. It is a recurring motif, of Jones trying to start a conversation but Tanner not realizing. From the beginning, Jones does understand John's 'superpower.' In fact, an entire mission is set to convince Jones you have psychic powers, which Jones does believe, but again, a lot of the story is tunnel-visioned, and the very fact that we finally get to see what happen when Tanner isn't present with the side character throws the player off for a moment. That is if you're focusing on the story.
Then, a cutscene is triggered when we begin the mission. Tanner stops the car by the sidewalk. Jones tries to begin a conversation. But then after some silence, Tanner actually begins speaking.
Tanner: "Something just doesn't make sense."Jones: "Oh yeah, well just add it to my list of crap that don't make sense when I'm with you."
Then, Tanner begins talking about how the operation that Jericho is making doesn't make sense. He fails to articulate this, and his irritated partner speaks over him, resulting in them speaking over each other. Whilst Jones' line: "You're blowing hot air like a balloon: It's called a brainfart." is quite Le Funny(TM), this is not the main topic. Tanner snaps his fingers in the middle of the conversation, which freezes everything and causes a major shift in the color pallete in the cutscene.
Every single sound, and every single movement, except for Tanner's ceases to happen. You could even interpret that the light is frozen, with the way that everything is shifted to a cold monochrome color pallete. The car that Tanner is in is then the only object without this color muting, which signals that Tanner is the only thing moving so far. Tanner then begins driving the car aimlessly, whilst saying to himself he has definitely gone crazy.
Then, he spots a running ambulance. The ambulance is a motif, and an allegory that stands in for John's physical health as he deteriorates within the coma. The mission itself consists of you chasing the ambulance through frozen traffic, and to remain within the trail of the ambulance, until your heart rate is lowered to a safe number. It starts at 180.
Once you have succeeded, you return back to the same sidewalk you were parked in again, where we get to hear the rest of Jones' "brainfart" monologue. However, Tanner is extremely tired from chasing an ambulance. Jones asks him what happened, and John responds with the following before he actually explains what happened.
"Just another one of those things for you to add on that list of yours, Jones."This is first of all a demonstration of how the game makes a story out of each mission, and ties things together. The bit of dialogue from the beginning we could clearly hear was Jones' list line. Then it is referenced again by Tanner, signalling the end of this part of the mission. On another point, "Frozen" displays a break in Tanner's coma reality, that of which without, he wouldn't have been convinced it was a coma, alongside all the other details. The break in reality shown in this mission through a "freeze" is comparable to the freezing of a game or program before it inevitably crashes on PCs. By using this line of thought, "Frozen" freezes the reality itself, signalling that sooner or later, the coma hallucination will 'crash' in a sense. It's a very smart method of foreshadowing, and a sheer combination of thought and attention to detail on the writers part, that makes up for the kind of genius narrative DRIVER: San Francisco weaves.
Now, this post has been really long. It has taken me close to two days to complete even this amount of it, as I am extremely interested in the game. I might make a second part, but this is a good point to split the post into two hopefully for another continuation later.