32 | New Scientist | 27 July 2019
Views Culture
VIDEO games, as a medium,
normally see you saving the world
rather than saving yourself. The
technical challenges and large
teams involved in creating lavish
3D worlds and complex scenarios
means that there is rarely room
to also tell the kind of personal
stories that lie at the heart of
novels or films. But this is starting
to change with titles tackling
issues around mental health.
Sea of Solitude, released earlier
this month, places you in the
shoes of Kay, a young woman
cast adrift in a small boat on a
dark, stormy sea. Immediately,
you can tell something isn’t quite
right, as Kay appears to be a furry
humanoid with glowing red eyes,
but for the first few minutes, at
least, it is quite fun. Quickly, the
inky black gives way to gorgeous
sunshine in a flooded city and you
meet a strange flying girl.
Then the darkness returns. A
gigantic, crab-like monster blocks
Kay’s path, berating her: “You
worthless piece of shit, you have
no idea what you are doing!” The
game involves navigating around
a series of these large creatures, allof which represent some aspect of
Kay or her family.
It is clear she is lonely, unhappy
and struggling to relate to others:
as the game goes on, audio clips
from her “real” life play out,
detailing how she failed to notice
her younger brother was being
bullied at school, or how her
parents met and eventuallydivorced. Kay absorbs their
darkness, restoring them and the
landscape, but at a cost to herself.
I admire what Sea of Solitude
is attempting, and found myself
feeling for Kay and her family, but
the metaphors are fairly basic. It
felt unsophisticated compared to
something like Eleanor Oliphant is
Completely Fine, a recent novel by
Gail Honeyman that memorably
tackled similar issues.
The biggest effect Sea of Solitude
had on me was to trigger a form ofFeeling the pain Great storytelling and rounded characters don’t feature that
often in video games. A new genre tackling issues around mental health will only
work if that changes, says Jacob Aron“ Sea of Solitude felt
unsophisticated
compared to a recent
novel that tackled
similar issues”Games
Sea of Solitude
Jo-Mei Games
On PC, PlayStation 4
and Xbox OneHellblade: Senua’s
sacrifice
Ninja Theory
On PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox
One and Nintendo Switchclimate anxiety, as flying over
abandoned rooftops made me
worry about the floods to come.
That isn’t to say games can’t
successfully examine mental
health. In Hellblade: Senua’s
sacrifice, the titular Senua
experiences psychosis and
hears voices. This is brilliantly
realised with the aid of binaural
audio – sound recorded with
two microphones placed in the
ears of a model head. Played
with headphones, you can be
bombarded with sounds from all
sides or hear someone whisper
directly in your ear.
The game, partly funded by the
Wellcome Trust medical charity,
sees Senua explore a dark version
of Norse mythology as she tries
to resurrect the soul of her dead
lover. The origins of Senua’s
hallucinations are ambiguous –
some may represent real people
from her past, while others are
like facets of herself.
It is also unclear exactly what
role the player has in all of this.
You control Senua from a third-
person perspective, but at times
she seems to speak directly
through the screen to you.
Like Sea of Solitude, Hellblade’s
mental health metaphors also lack
subtlety – darkness abounds, you
literally fight demons and must
often examine the world from
a new perspective to progress.
But the superb audio elevates the
experience. The game also warns
you that failing too often leads
to your progress being deleted,
lending a sense of genuine peril.
When I finally reached the end
of Senua’s journey, I felt glad to
have accompanied and learned
from her, but also pleased to leave
her finally in some kind of peace. ❚ELECT
RONICARTS
UKIn Sea of Solitude, heroine
Kay battles the red-eyed,
furry monster withinThe games column
Jacob Aron is New Scientist’s
deputy news editor. He has
been playing video games
for 25 years, but still isn’t
very good at them. Follow
him on Twitter @jjaron