 |
Call Home: An Analysis of Hotline Miami
Hotline Miami was an indie game released in 2012, published by Devolver Studios and developed by Dennaton Games. In the game you follow Jacket (yes that’s his name) as he unravels his memories and mysterious phone calls driving him to massacre the russian mob in late 1980s Miami. Jacket is a fairly mysterious figure and much of his characterization is decrypted by details of his journey such as his willingness to go out and murder hundreds of russian mobsters being rooted towards the history of his world. To truly understand him we must understand the environment as revealed by the game and its sequel as it contextualizes his actions and the type of man he is. Hotline Miami takes place in an alternate timeline where the events of the Cold War are escalated to say the least as now the war has Russia occupying the Hawaiian islands where we see the first chronological point of Jacket’s journey. He is a part of an elite unit called the Ghost Wolves, where he is sent on escalating risky missions each time coming out victorious. Much of these missions he “interacts” with his unit, especially Beard (again yes that’s his name), who is implied to be his best friend. As the missions stack on we understand at least at this point where his prowess came from and with each mission finished we see his relationship with the team and Beard especially built up. That is until his final suicide mission where they must take on an entire powerplant with no backup. Against all odds him and his unit make it through until the plant is put on lockdown and so they quickly rush to an exit to which an enemy IED is set off, halving one of the squadmates as well as severely wounding him. Beard would then carry him out of the plant and the day is narrowly won and they are sent home. Jacket would call home in Miami while Beard lived in San Francisco until the morning of 1986 while they were on a phone call, Beard along with San Francisco would be reduced to ashes, ending the war.
We now come back to present time and see how these effects have changed Jacket as we know him in the first game. From the summary we can determine that he is obviously driven, whether or not he is aware of it by a largely anti-russian sentiment as no sane person would continue day in and day out slaughtering people left and right no matter how evil. But there lies some more clues as he was written to be a sociopath as confirmed by the writers which justifies how he is able to dehumanize his foes so easily, perhaps shaped by the war as high proficiency in violence is often caused by an innate lack of morality or conscience on Jacket’s end. In the game we see many events and details like how he obsessively collects newspaper clippings of his escapades like a serial killer or the dreamlike sequences where he talks to voices in his head. Simply put, Jacket is a character of great discussion as many facets are left ambiguous to the point where I have literally run out of words to discuss any further in this blog post, but if you are interested a simple search will yield many video essays on him and the series as a whole, and with that I bid you adieu.
An interesting topic where you had talked about an old game and how it had developed throughout the years to present time. First including some background on the game and the main character the player would follow and see the character's past life. Some of the names of the game were actually pretty funny as they are common words that people use on a daily basis. Without even playing the game, your description of the environment makes me feel like I am inside the game.
ReplyDeleteI love this post, because this is someone I love to do in my free time, thinking about the deeper meanings of video games and other forms of pop culture. Though Hotline Miami is a game I never really looked at, I have heard about it and was very interested in at least why this man that wears animal masks and murders people does these things. After this blog I am very interested and I will check out videos of the game and watch more to learn about this strange man.
ReplyDelete