Canadian Identity in Video Games...

        
                     It occured to me rather suddenly in class today that a number of the highly-acclaimed, "AAA Titles" that are made by Canadian game companies share a number of particular elements cholars in film have identified as trends in Canadain cinema...
The Road Movie
The Loss of Identity
Body Horror
Boarders

Titles like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda), and Bioshock (Digital Extremes) are good examples of games that exhibit these trends...
Now, if youve played, or are familiar with these titles, you'll likely see where I'm going already, so bare with me (or feel free to skip ahead to the next post).Each of these titles involves a player character who we honestly know very little about. At most, we're given very, very rough details...
In Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, you're a prisoner in a cell. We're never told why.

In Fallout: New Vegas, you're a Courier who starts the game by being shot in the head (presumbly resulting in memory loss).
In Bioshock , you're a man on a plane, who had pictures of people (who may, or may not be your parents), which we are able to view briefly before the plane falls from the sky and into the ocean. You are the only survivor.

See the connections?

We'll look at Fallout: New Vegas as an example...
We begin the game with a video cutscene in which the player's character is shot in the head by a group of thugs led by a ma in a checkered suit. Upon waking, we are met with a kind but tired sort of fellow by the name of Doc Vollmer, who informs the player of how we had been discovered shot on the outskirts of the town, Goodsprings and brought there for treatment.
From here, the formation of the player's character and their ultimate destiny begins - physical appearance, gender, age, skills, physical and mental attributes are all determined by the player's decisions. And as the game progresses through seige, open desert and impending war, the player and their character discover the past that lead to the violent and near fatal events of the game's opening cinematic.
In short, Fallout: New Vegas is a game centered on the ideas we see so often in Canadian cinema:

Road Trip
Our adventure begins as a journey to New Vegas, over the course of which we, as players, learn and develop our character to suit the environment in which they exist,  evolving and "maturing" in that world until the completion of the game.

The Loss of Identity
The opening sequence of the game involves a litteral loss of identiy,  and we begin as a fully-grown adult who must begin from scratch.

Body Horror
We are constantly plagued by the problem of radiation poisoning, and the player is forced to carefully monitor what the character eats and how much to avoid reaching a state in which the character becomes ill, suffers health loss and (if desired), may cause mutations in the character's DNA that will result in them becoming like some of the hostile creatures found in the desert called Ghouls.


Boarders
A constant theme throughout the story of New Vegas, regardless of the path the player chooses, is the idea of invasion from other stronger forces. Whether it be from Cesar's Legion, the Powder Gangers, the Vipers, the NCR or any number of other groups all fighting for control over the limited resources found in the post-nuclear apocalypse Mojave Desert.

It's obvious that even in these seemingly alien and far-removed worlds, those same themes of Canadian identity (or lack thereof) prevail in even the new media of video games, but unlike film, seems able to reach out beyond Canada's borders to an international audience that receives it with open arms...