A Retrospective of Killzone
First-person shootin’, politics and blah storytelling.
The Killzone franchise is celebrating two milestones this year: the initial PS2 exclusive turns fifteen and its sequel — which is seen by most gamers and critics as the best one — turns ten. Admittedly, I am a couple months late to the Killzone 2 anniversary and months early for the Killzone anniversary, but at least I’m in the ballpark.
It’s been a strange ride since its inception, with the industry toting the first game as a “Halo killer,” only for Halo to indeed still be alive with a new game on the horizon. The series went from a respectable success for Sony and Guerrilla Games to basically dead in those fifteen years, with the latest game being a PS4 launch title six years ago. Along the way it has certainly had its detractors, but in general they’ve been received as at least average, but good to various degrees for most of them.
There have been many flaws documented throughout the process, with one of them being a game-breaking bug in Killzone that prevented you from completing a mission. I can’t argue that the bug in the original game was awful and caused me great frustration, but I still enjoyed the campaign and spent many hours destroying bots with my friends.
Some people have commented on how sluggish the gameplay feels. The sluggish gameplay is just slow to me, and flies in the face of almost every other shooter out there — that’s what I like about it. I adore that you feel heavy in it, I admire the more methodical pacing, but I understand that people tend to prefer more twitch-based quick combat, as evidenced by the success of franchises such as Call of Duty. I’m not against that style either because I love Titanfall 2 and that is undeniably fast, but — and not in an attempt to discredit personal taste — I often wonder how much the way our society is structured plays on preference. We live in a kinetic world where it’s hard to keep up, we have had to become conditioned to that. I’m not trying to present this as the only reason why this style isn’t admired by the general populace, but it is one element that I can’t deny.
Other criticisms have centered around the level design, to which I state that the series has had some of the most memorable maps I’ve ever experienced but as a whole people don’t seem to be as forgiving towards Killzone as they are other franchises that commit the same sins. Or maybe the fact that Killzone is decidedly old-fashioned in the sense that it technically is easier to camp — a practice that is loathed by todays standards — plays a role in that. I have seen plenty of people remark upon how the areas are not inspired, but they seem no less inspired than other games in the genre. It’s a science fiction game with war-torn environments, which may speak to a bias in myself, but they’ve always done a good job of environmental storytelling, making the war feel as oppressive and violent as it should. In the case of Shadow Fall they actually made a concentrated effort to open the levels up more, providing us with non-linear progression while not being completely open world.
Speaking of storytelling, the element of the series that sticks out negatively the most is by far the narrative, which is a real shame because it has one of the best stories in all of the first-person shooter genre. Before I continue this, let me extend an olive branch because I don’t want to just throw that grenade in the room and walk away from it. It has one of the best stories but it is told horrendously. If you scrutinize the series based solely on the in-game presentation (which you should) then the common knowledge that the story is lamentable to downright laughable holds some serious ground. It bothers me considerably less than its disparagers, but I get that anecdotal evidence is not strong unless supported by other statistics.
There is a legitimately epic tale of oppression, imperialism, violence, authoritarianism, colonialism, class struggle, corporate interference and nationalism on display. There’s a lot of political and socioeconomic intrigue and a lot of moving parts. It alludes to important world events such as the Israel/Palestine conflict, among others, but also draws heavily on World War 2, and specifically Hitler. It sounds reductive and corny to reference Nazism given the current climate, but let’s call it like we see it: the Helghast are space Nazis.
Guerrilla Games put in a lot of work drawing up a story that says something and goes beyond just being another fictional account of good vs evil. When you stop and consider what the message they’re trying to broadcast is, it’s not obvious who the true villain is. Like so many issues in the real world it’s a complex one, one where the easiest and possibly most rewarding stance to take is the one based most on intuition. In this case it is simple to cheer for the ISA and frown upon the Helghast because we know Nazis are evil and people in the Western world are taught to believe wholly in their own countries. We identify more with the ISA, even though if you break it down to its core, the Helghans were initially the victims to some degree. There were potentially shady business practices that allowed them to have the legal right to colonize some planets, but once they did it they established peace and prosperity among themselves.
It details a very salient point that the ISA/Helghan war is perpetual because once injustices have been started it’s very difficult to get them to cease. If that sounds familiar that’s because it’s a continuous thing in real world Earth as well. “An eye for an eye” is not just a meaningless statement but an axiom. That “makes the world go blind” is often tagged at the end of it also adds some insight. Try as we might to fix a problem after it’s been in effect for a long period of time, the pendulum will swing, sometimes going too far in one direction, only to start the cycle again. We see this all the time but society and culture advances so swiftly it’s hard to let it sink in. Technology evolves at such a rapid pace that our minds may not be able to evolve fast enough beside it, so we subconsciously select uncomplicated opinions rather than more analytical ones. The irony is that the more information we have, the less we use it.
There have been some neuroscientific studies done that show one of the reward systems in our brains lighting up when our beliefs are reinforced after being threatened. We get a kick of dopamine, just like when we take drugs, so some psychologists suggest that sticking to our own side might actually be addictive. So we continue to not appreciate opposing viewpoints like we should. This ties in directly to perception of wars and foreign policy/relationships in our own world and the battle between the opposing forces in Killzone.
The Helghans were forced to emigrate to a harsher planet and ended up mutating from humans to sub-humans, and it’s indisputable that they went too far once they started viewing humans as lesser than them and adopted an authoritarian presence. But the charm arises from everything that happened over the course of centuries, the grey area that brought all of this to the dance.
The problem is that the games neglect the rich history and the opportunity to make an imperative statement almost entirely. They could have crafted memorable characters and given us some real commentary. Admittedly my memory is poor (that’s an understatement) but I only remember the games offering brief hints of any sort of depth to the universe. Guerrilla Games did themselves no favours by burying the official timeline on their site and then getting rid of the page that housed it. Luckily it still exists if you click here, but you shouldn’t have to do that. I don’t expect them to tackle every single element of a complicated plot, but the developers could have had something truly special had they done. The games would have undoubtedly been better received if the same amount of effort was put into the story as it was the technical aspects.
From an artistic design and visual sense the games have always been astounding. They’ve simply been gorgeous all around, and some would argue that most of their time probably went towards that. That’s probably true, at least in the case of Shadow Fall, which was a showcase of what the PS4 could do. So while they do get enough credit for technical brilliance, I don’t think they’ve ever gotten enough recognition for the world they created. It’s elaborate and detailed, and without talented artists designing it the graphics would have just been pretty but bland. Killzone is anything but bland.
Sometimes there’s some wiggle room if you make your characters look cool. The influence from the movie Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade is obvious in the Helghast, but they benefit from what is sometimes known as the Boba Fett Effect. Simply put, even substandard storytelling can be overlooked to some degree if the characters look cool. Fett looked cool, the Helghast looked cool, and while I’m not saying the Helghast are on the same level of fame as Fett, their reception operates on similar psychological grounds.
Mostly though I just like how the game plays. Games can offer us many different types of adventures in its many genres, but for my money, if I had to pick one aspect that should reign above all, it’s gameplay. The shooting is satisfying and hefty with AI that is mostly sufficient. The multiplayer modes may be few but there’s always the one that offers a dynamic and seamless experience, full of chaos.
It’s still just a FPS at heart but they took a different approach to how it feels. I don’t want every shooter to be uniform, I want the variety, even if sometimes the variety doesn’t connect with me. Call of Duty does not appeal to me anymore but I still want it to exist. I don’t want any art form to stagnate because it refuses to do something off the beaten path. This philosophy is why I am a weird who loves Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice to death: I appreciated that it was a contrasting take on the superhero genre. I also instantly regret shoehorning my love for that film into this article, but you get my point.
It’s fine to not like the series. It may be that it merely ticks off a very specific group of boxes for me, or maybe it being one of the only shooters I’ve played extensively with my older brother creates a more intense affection for it. I realize that I came down pretty hard on their methods of storytelling. They formulated a good narrative and didn’t present it in a satisfactory way, which is something that I think Horizon: Zero Dawn suffered from as well. Maybe Guerrilla Games just hasn’t found their voice yet when it comes to story, but despite what I’ve said, they are still one of my favourite development teams because they deliver in every other way. I don’t think they do a great job with their plot, no, but it’s also not enough to take me out of their games.
The truth is that I miss Killzone. It’s my go-to online shooter and one of the only games of its ilk that I consider myself legitimately good at. It’s not often I can say this confidently but I rarely failed my team. The series has been unfairly misaligned over the years, especially now with Horizon being such a runaway success. It seems unlikely that Sony or Guerrilla are eager to go back to a franchise that wasn’t as productive to their bottom line as Horizon. Maybe someday, but for now I will have the memories of actually having a kill-death ratio over 1 and the heartwarming yarn of disaster and interplanetary combat.
