F!SH:

When independent game developer Philippe Poisson (often translated “Phil Fish”) was still producing his debut FEZ, (a masterpiece which remains to this day both his breakthrough and his swansong,) he was the target of an inordinate amount of hostility from would-be fans who demanded that he satisfy the expectations he had aroused, having made early drafts public over the years. The bizarre onslaught of virtual violence, not atypical of gamers in any generation, whether passive or overt in its aggression, could be considered an expression of nostalgia for the old Greek norms regarding virtue and responsibility: that every individual has a teleological obligation to actualize his or her potential, as though that were not only a gift from the Gods, but a gift for all Humanity. To demonstrate talent without the will(power) to actualize it externally was an affront to both man and Divinity alike, for one was but a vessel for the expression of INTRINSIC potentialities; conversely, if anyone should inhibit the means by which an artist was to express his Inner Vision, one which is invariably Divinely Inspired, then the inhibitor could never appeal to the authority of the Society in doing so, since such an inhibition would be regarded as antisocial. The Artist, by being COMPELLED, by Social Pressure, to actualize his or her own Inner Potential, also became inextricably entitled to the MEANS BY WHICH to succeed; society was always on the side of the willing, often willful Creator, whereas only a disorganized mob could stand between the potential and its actualization. Even secular thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle retained this attitude, producing the likes of Alexander the Great and, arguably, Jesus of Nazareth.

Of course, modern man is seldom accustomed to this sort of pressure. Following the success of FEZ, Fish promised a sequel, or at least his intention to produce one was taken to be a promise. About sixteen months after FEZ was released, to stellar reviews, following a five-year development period, Phil Fish retired. Nearly seven years later, he is remembered as the sensitive genius who barely survived the production of his enigmatic masterpiece (a game that must be enigmatic by design, given its genre, but that remains mystifying owing to its backstory, both within the virtual world and our own,) and then disappeared from public life in a wave of fury, burning many bridges in his wake, citing numerous abuses.

It’s not all fun and games in this Industry, especially for independent developers. One must be reminded of how many people have died in theatre.

Artistically, FEZ was a breakthrough not only for Phil Fish but for gaming in general. The simplest expression of the premise is thus: that the game is set within a three-dimensional environment which is always perceived from a two-dimensional point of view. The player avails his or herself of this intricate, lush, candy-coloured World, composed predominantly of Islands and Castles in the Sky, by rotating the camera. With each ninety-degree turn, the controls are reoriented, so that the protagonist, an adorable pixel-art creature wearing a pixelated Turkish cap, walks along a two-dimensional plane perpendicular to his previous environment. Through a combination, therefore, of two-dimensional side-scrolling and three-dimensional modulation, the modern player experiences at once the nostalgic charm of retro platformers, as well as the immersive complexity of three-dimensional models, juxtaposed in a totally novel fashion.

THAT is the SIMPLE version.

In truth, what makes FEZ so astonishing is in its suspension of conventional, geometric realism. The game has been likened to a Cubist painting; not only does it introduce three-dimensional perspective, but it subverts it. Not only does the protagonist discover that a third dimension exists beyond the confines of his familiar, two-dimensional home world; the player also discovers that this three-dimensional World, which many of us take for granted to be “Reality”, (as opposed to the “playful illusion” of Games,) can be bypassed, and it is bypassed precisely by avenue of the two-dimensional plane.

Take, for instance, the common tendency for tourists to pose before the Leaning Tower of Pisa, pretending to embrace it. Were it not a matter of common knowledge that the tower dwarfs any human being in three-dimensional space, a flat photograph is likely to create the optical illusion that this structure is hardly taller than the tourist, who in fact is only standing closer to the camera, stretching an appendage.

What FEZ accomplishes is that it turns this optical illusion into a practical game mechanic. Much like Jonathan Blow’s Braid subverted the linearity of time, presenting the player with a series of increasingly challenging puzzles to contemplate the consequent possibilities, Phil Fish suspends the rigidity of space.

Each subsequent puzzle employs this suspension in new ways. The most early instance which stands out is one wherein the protagonist crosses a previously insurmountable gap between buildings by appearing, miraculously, atop the opposite building; this is achieved simply by rotating the camera so that the new building obscures the old one, so that the protagonist first appears to be standing atop the new structure, but then another rotation makes it so.

Not long thereafter, an even more obvious instance consolidates the mechanic. From one point of view, the hero Gomez reaches a physical impasse: the only way to go is up, and the only ladder leading up runs upon a ceiling which cannot be climbed from below, and, to make matters seem more hopeless, the next available ladder rests on the corner of this ceiling, out of reach by a long shot. Physical realism indicates that this is an impossible gap to traverse, but a simple turn of the camera, so that it faces both ladders, (each of which had previously faced either left or right,) presents the solution, clear as day, but hidden in plain sight. The ladder, at first appearing to be two all-too-separate pieces, appears as one.

Were we to presume upon the binding objectivity of our previous perspective, as well as its constancy in the three-dimensional New World, (which is what Physical Reality instructs us to do in daily life, so much so that we appear mad to question it,) we should consider this puzzle impossible to solve, yet anyone who perceives only the latter perspective (no pun intended) wouldn’t hesitate to say: “what’s the matter? Go up!!”

Of course, this is precisely what the player MUST do, and, miraculously, it works!! While we might retain the realist prejudice that the unified ladder is simply an “optical illusion”, the REAL illusion is a meta-illusion: the illusion of illusoriness. In the world of FEZ, what APPEARS to be a unified ladder IS a unified ladder, so long as we perceive it FROM THE POINT OF VIEW. What appears to be impossible becomes possible because semblance transforms into Reality, yet, by the same token, the moment that the perspective is altered, the Reality falls apart; it is never enough to simply retain a fixed, internal conception of the Universe, but the Universe itself must always be imminent, so that we can avail ourselves only of that which we can see, and we remember what we’ve seen only to recall the various Realities which, according to Common Sense, are incommensurable possibilities. 
In an age wherein professional philosophers profess the “Death of Metaphysics”, citing radical subjectivity as their source, one Canadian gamer uses that same subjectivity to revive Metaphysics. Deconstructionists sought to eliminate the Actuality of Being by reducing everything to Perception; Fish creates a World which incontrovertibly Is, in the sense that it exists as a series of possibilities which must be discovered and synthesized to progress, but then upon this Actual Being he IMPOSES Perception. The Second Dimension is never simply “assimilated” into three-dimensional reality; it always has a say, often with finality, and the very limitation it presents transforms impossibility into necessity.

Perhaps you see the irony, therefore, that Fish quit the business. In FEZ, the impossible becomes possible, and that is what makes it essential. In the life of Philippe Poisson, the possibility became an imperative, but the burden was too much for a postmodern mind to bear, though only a postmodern mind could have fathomed the possibility.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]