The Bunker: An FMV Triumph

The Bunker is a “full-motion video” (or FMV) game, meaning that it relies entirely upon prerecorded live-action footage to convey its narrative, being akin to an “interactive movie”. FMV games have mostly disappeared from the modern industry, however, as their “movie” and “game” components tend to cannibalize one another; Their prerecorded nature vastly limits the amount of different choices the game can present, while their interactivity can interfere with the pacing of each live-action scene. However, The Bunker mostly avoids these pitfalls through an exceedingly clever plot structure which allows both its static and interactive elements to shine.

The Bunker essentially has two different plots, each of which intertwine with one another throughout the game until they thematically converge at the finale. The first plot, which takes place in the present, is about our protagonist, John (played by Adam Brown), and his attempt to escape from the bunker’s increasing levels of radiation. This “present” portion of the game is predominantly driven by player interaction, allowing the player to direct John through the environment to search for the items he needs. Most of the bunker’s locations are not required for the player to progress, but they contain various important artifacts for the player to discover, such as handwritten journals, audio tapes, and John’s old toys. This creates a more “archaeological” style of storytelling, where narrative context is primarily conveyed through the discovery of objects and what the history of those objects might imply. Such a narrative would be unbearably boring to watch as a movie, but as an interactive experience, The Bunker recontextualizes these moments as the player’s (and John’s) conscious choice to satisfy their curiosity. In doing so, the present portion of the game is uniquely successful at crafting the kind of slow, exploratory narrative rhythm that gives meaning to each and every object that was left behind.

The second (and arguably more important) plot, which takes place in the past, is about John’s childhood memories of what happened to the bunker’s other inhabitants. While the present portion of the game is defined by more frequent interaction, the “past” portion’s interactive moments are few and far between, helping to reinforce the feeling that it is ancient history which can no longer be changed. These two plots then begin to increasingly mirror each other over time, as the further John descends into the bunker, the more he plunges into the repressed corners of his psyche. Furthermore, while the present portion is developed via clearly marked objectives and optional exploration, the past is always forced onto the player when they least expect it, in the form of John’s traumatic flashbacks to his childhood. Cleverly, this lack of choice or interaction helps the player to empathize with the lack of agency that John suffered throughout his youth.

However, the game also takes significant measures to ensure that the player does not feel comfortable putting down the controller during these moments. The first piece of interaction the player is exposed to during these flashbacks is a circle that must be clicked within a very short window of time. When I first saw this unfamiliar prompt, it immediately triggered a panicked response from me as I rushed to pick my mouse back up again. This moment creates a stressful paradox within the player’s mind from there on out, because while these scenes have very few moments of interactivity, the moments that are there tend to be far more sudden and demanding.

Setting this precedent also lays the necessary groundwork for the single most affecting moment in the entire game. Throughout The Bunker, John has sudden violent flashbacks about a man in a full-body hazmat suit wielding an axe. Unsurprisingly, this turns out to be the Commissioner, a foul-mouthed authoritarian (played by Grahame Fox) who serves as the “villain” in most of John’s childhood memories. After a tense chase scene, the Commissioner corners John and his mother before attempting to strangle her to death. As he’s distracted, however, John picks up his gun and points it at him. It was at that moment that I, the player, clicked on the Commissioner’s backside and shot him to death. What makes this moment truly masterful is that the game never actually prompted me to shoot - it was my decision to hover my reticle over his vulnerable flesh and pull the trigger. This doesn’t just reinforce the horror of the Commissioner’s murder, it provides the necessary emotional context for why John did what he did, all without a single line of dialogue. I didn’t actually know if my click would actually result in firing the gun, nor did I really care; Like John, I felt like nothing more than a scared little kid in a bad situation, and I was ready to do anything I could to save my mom.

Finally, The Bunker concludes both of its plots, past and present, within the same climax. After trudging through a tunnel of corpses, John’s repressed memories come flooding back to him, and he realizes that not only was his own mother responsible for the deaths of everyone else in the bunker, but it was him whom she ordered to set up the necessary chemical poison. Wracked with guilt, he makes a wrenching climb up several flights of stairs until he reaches the bunker’s final available exit. A hallucination of his mother as a younger woman appears behind him, stating the tragic truth that everything she did was for him, and demanding that he stay in the bunker with her. Then, the player is presented with the decision to either stay or leave. This is the game’s first and last real choice, not just for the player, but for John, who up until then had lived his whole life in a world of isolation and routine. Fittingly, the prompt to “Stay” is near the center of the screen, the reflexive default for both the player’s cursor and John’s tormented mind. It even overlays on top of where the hallucination of John’s mother had appeared just moments prior, strengthening its thematic connection to her. But if the player chooses to diverge, like I did, and choose “Leave,” it represents a final act of rebellion against the horrible things that John’s mother made him do. There is no changing the fact that John’s obedience resulted in dozens of deaths all those years ago, but by presenting him with this choice, The Bunker allows both John and the player to definitively say “No. Not again. Not anymore.”