Militsioner
PC
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched? It’s an awful sensation: a nauseating prickle on the back of your neck, a burning about the ears. Usually, it’s just a feeling, but the horror of Militsioner is that it’s not just your mind playing tricks.
The eponymous Militsioner is unnerving, to say the least. The gigantic policeman sits on the outskirts of the post-Soviet town, legs drawn up, arms resting upon his knees. And he just stares at you. You must use physicsbased puzzling to MacGyver an escape. Militsioner’s objective is to observe your every movement – and, when your getaway seems assured, to slowly reach down with a huge hand, thumb and forefinger primed in a pincer of annoyance, to arrest your victory.
It’s terrifying stuff, but the developers would have us believe that Militsioner isn’t an object of total revulsion, despite the protagonist repeatedly referring to him as “disgusting”.
“In Russian culture, there’s a character called Uncle Styopa,” explains Vladimir Semenets, art lead and game designer. The freakishly tall, kind-hearted policeman was a symbol of the value of the militsioner during the Stalinist era – ‘copaganda’, essentially. “After several months of searching for an idea, we saw a work by the artist Andrey Surnov, titled Rest. We were struck by the depth and relevance of the giant policeman’s character in our country, and for us personally.” This is no monster you’re dealing with. He thinks, eats and sleeps like anyone else – opportunities you can use to make a run for it. “Militsioner is first and foremost a human,” Semenets continues, “and it is his human qualities we want to show.”
Indeed, while balancing ladders across rooftops or climbing onto moving trucks,
Tallboys hopes you’ll be developing a kind of relationship with Militsioner. “Initially, the game was planned as an immersive sim with elements of stealth,” Semenets says. Prey: Mooncrash was one early influence (Militsioner keeps the idea of a shrinking window of opportunity for escape, splitting its deadline into days), but now Tallboys is looking to the works of Team Ico for inspiration – specifically The Last Guardian and its central non-playable entity, Trico, we’re told.
It’s already clear that the team is putting special effort into his behaviours and facial expressions: there’s humour, even, in the way Militsioner’s eyes narrow suspiciously as he spots you trying to stack crates, then boggle as the penny drops. “He reacts to what happens in the city and with the player,” says Vyacheslav Petska, AI programmer. “He has an opinion on any situation that intersects with his job obligations.” He’s a more complex character, then, than the various regular-sized policemen around town: “The rest of the police are depersonalised,” Semenets explains. “They are the very institution of the police, with its obvious flaws, while the Militsioner is a person with his own fears and views.”
There’s a worry that this is a game setting out to ‘both sides’ a far-right figure. To us, however, it’s plain that Tallboys is simply being very careful not to say too much here. Understandable – not only because so much of Militsioner’s allure is in its mystery (why are you escaping? Where to? Is Militsioner even real?) but because the game has already attracted the ire of Russia’s state-owned media, which has drawn its own conclusions about the developer’s “Russophobic” intent.
For anyone with even a surface knowledge of the country’s cultural history, however, this is the latest in a long-held artistic tradition of using symbolism to turn a subtle lens upon the past. The omnipresent, all-seeing Militsioner – friend, foe, a neighbour fit into the form of something else entirely – stares unblinkingly. We wonder what we will see when we start staring back.
“Militsioner has an opinion on any situation that intersects with his job obligations”