“I tell myself it was always going to be a one-way trip. That’s what love is.” is the opening line of the new project by Strange Scaffold, El Paso, Elsewhere. It stuck with me because of its truth – I’ve been fortunate to have many loves in my life and each and every one of them has fundamentally altered me as a person. I don’t look at the world the same why I used to. For better and for worse, I carry these experiences with me and they shape the decisions that I make and the way I empathize with others. Good art does something similar. It alters our worldview, changes our lexicon, provides us with a new meterstick for gauging and understanding our placement in things. In this way, El Paso, Elsewhere will stay with me too – it has changed me.
There's a hint of melancholy in most of the output of studio Strange Scaffold. Their viral hit, An Airport for Aliens Currently Run By Dogs presents as a comedy adventure game about navigating surrealist spaces and running errands for talking dogs (represented by stock-photo still images of dogs put into the game as billboard sprites), but ultimately it’s a game about two people Making It Work Despite It All. The studio’s latest offering goes for the jugular immediately – much like its hungry vampire antagonists. This surreal, weird-noir shooter is wearing its theming on its sleeve. It wants you to think about addiction as much as it wants you to slowmotion dive through a window while filling nightmare creatures full of bullets. There are moments of levity, mostly in the form of collectible radio drama snippets of the metanarrative Pill Cop, but for fifty gore-spattered stages, El Paso, Elsewhere keeps its foot plant firmly on the gas.
Max Payne-alike is a fair description (and the developers themselves consider the game an homage to the Max Payne series), but it severely under-serves the thematic swings at play and undersells perhaps the greatest accomplishments of the team. El Paso, Elsewhere may take a lot of gameplay and tonal inspiration from Max Payne, but it also successfully takes the ludonarrative dissonance of a neo noir detective gunning down hundreds of enemies and removes it entirely. James Savage, the protagonist of El Paso, is a pill-addict. The very pills that provide the player with health and the ability to keep progressing as they take damage are the ones that are killing him. James has taken a seemingly lethal dose of pills at the beginning of the game knowing that the withdrawals will kill him painfullly. The game constantly puts the player in sync with James as well – the effect they’re having on his body is frequently referenced in the narrative, and each tap of the “heal” button has James making a sick, almost retching sound as he dry swallows pills. The health meter may refill, but there’s a suspicion that we’re only borrowing time.
On the other side of the ludonarrative coin, El Paso’s gameplay manages to update the Max Payne formula while using it sublimely to make a point about intimacy as a whole. James’ mission in the game is to stop his ex, Draculae, from completing a massive sacrifice to regain her full power as Lord of the Vampires. As the game continues, it becomes apparent that James and Draculae’s relationship was toxic and abusive – she never physically harmed James, but always made sure that he knew that she could. It’s hard to imagine what a gun-slinging, John-Woo action hero folk lore expert/monster hunter could possibly fear, except maybe the Lord of Vampires. However, it’s not just her literal power – this gives way to a different, more personal (and possibly scarier) truth: to love someone is to relinquish some agency – to afford them a lot of power over us and trust they will wield it responsibly. James, a black male protagonist who can dive through the air with dual pistols and slay thousands of monsters of the course of the game’s run time, allows El Paso Elsewhere to drag these contradictions out into the spot light. James is physically capable, confident, and funny. He cracks jokes to mitigate his discomfort with the situation and congratulates himself when he downs a room full of monsters. He’s also the victim of terrible abuse. What can feel like a contradiction on the surface reveals a deep understanding of the dynamics of power in relationships, especially with relation to traditionally “masculine” men.
While the “one way trip” revenge story is well-tread ground, El Paso, Elsewhere frequently surprised me in the likeability and charisma of its protagonist. Where many stories of this nature feature protagonists who are searching for a reason to live, El Paso feels like a story of a man who is frequently looking for an excuse to die, and yet his mission continues to reveal to him reasons he shouldn’t. Upon player death, the game repeats the adage “YOU KEEP GOING” before immediately dropping the player back into the last checkpoint. With no chance to accept or quit, it started to feel less like an inspiring adage to encourage the player, and more like a truth, a cast die. You don’t quit here. It isn’t over. You keep going.
The game begins with James pulled over on a desert highway to a motel in the middle of El Paso, Texas. He breaks the fourth wall and asks us, the player, to believe in him. Moments later, we’re behind his shoulder as he guns down armies of monsters and rides an impossible elevator down to hell, located in a surrealist void inside a motel. It’s a big, high-concept check to cash, and while I think Xalavier Nelson Jr. (head writer and creative director, as well as voice talent for James) is certainly the kind of creator who likes playing in these spaces – these aren’t unconsidered. I do believe in James – he excites me, makes me chuckle, and even disappoints me. All the way to the tragic conclusion he feels real, considered, and extremely human. To believe in James means to believe that we are capable of inflicting pain, but that we can grow and be better. That we are not chained to the roles expected of us, that we needn’t grow cruel with time. I can’t say for certain what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t played this game, but I now know that every time I engage with art; real, honest art, it’s a one way trip. I’m a different person at the end, and that’s a trip worth taking.