In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved after decades of world unrest. The fall of the USSR followed a period of reconstruction and reform in an effort to scale back conflicts with their political rivals, an effort that brought forth a semblance of reconciliation between East and West. The Cold War had come to an end, but to this day, it remains a popular subject in fiction as it had been while the conflict was ongoing. It's inspired a countless amount of media over the years, and today, we'll be looking at a small indie video game from 2013 that takes place in a Soviet-inspired nation on the verge of war with its neighbors. While not strictly an allegory for the Soviet Union, it demonstrated the poor conditions that its citizens lived in through the eyes of an immigration inspector determining whether or not people can enter his country. And despite the simplicity of its gameplay, it received widespread acclaim and remains an example of powerful storytelling in video games. This is Papers, Please. After leaving Naughty Dog in 2010, developer Lucas Pope transitioned to working on indie games to create more unique titles and experiences. One of his jobs required him to move to Singapore, and Pope and his wife would often travel between Asia and the United States during this time. From these travels, Pope became enamored with the process of passport inspection and thought that it could make for an interesting game, and in late 2012, he began work on a title called Papers, Please where players would be a border inspector in a fictional totalitarian state. Previously, Pope created a game called The Republia Times about a news editor who must decide which headlines to print and whose choices would ultimately change what their readers thought of their country. Pope applied similar themes and ideas to Papers, Please, emphasizing the same dystopian, controlling tone from The Republia Times. While Pope took inspiration from the Soviet Union when designing the setting, he took care to avoid direct references or allusions to the USSR, including avoiding the word "comrade" in localization. Pope's aim wasn't to make any kind of political statement; he wanted to explore the daily routine of an immigrations officer and how they would react when dealing with extraneous circumstances. When it came time to market the game, Pope wasn't sure if people would like it, citing its hard-to-explain gameplay as a major potential obstacle, but that may have been the game's biggest selling point. Papers, Please was a major success for a game of its size, selling over half a million copies within a year and receiving a wide breadth of critical attention from the gaming press. So how did a little game like Papers, Please create such a huge impact? Let's find out. Papers, Please is set in late 1982 in the country of Arstotzka, where political tensions with nearby nations are at an all-time high thanks to poor living conditions and a war that ended in a welcome but uneasy peace. You are an immigration inspector at a border checkpoint in East Grestin, where it's your job to examine the paperwork of everyone coming through to determine if they're cleared for entry and send them away if they aren't. Your goal is to process as many immigrants as possible, granting or denying them access while earning enough money to provide for your family. All the while, the Arstotzka government is monitoring your activities and will crack down on you if they catch you messing up while immigrants and Arstotzkan citizens complain about the poor conditions at the checkpoint or how difficult their lives have become. And even with a number of terrorist attacks and a mysterious organization trying to overthrow the government, you still show up to work every day and carry out your duties, never knowing if this day will be your last. Papers, Please revolves around a simple gameplay loop that is purposefully repetitive and doldrum to highlight the intense regulations of the Arstotzkan government that you must adhere to. When a person approaches your booth, they hand over their papers so they can be considered for admittance into the country, and you need to examine all their records to see if they're clear for entry. Your guidebook contains information on every document and country and what immigrants need to have with them, which changes every day as current events influence Arstotzka to create new requirements. As an inspector, you need to carefully examine each document to look for errors, conflicting information, or falsified identification, all of which are potential grounds for rejection. Not every discrepancy is inherently a reason for denial, but if the immigrant can't prove their identity or don't have the proper paperwork, Arstotzka demands that you turn them away. Of course, it is possible to either allow someone without the right papers to enter or deny someone whose documentation checks out, which earns you a citation with this infamous noise. [PAPER PRINTING NOISE] The gameplay is purposefully limited and boring to lure you into a false sense of security, giving you a series of mindless, repetitive tasks that make it all the more shocking when something out of the ordinary happens. It could be something as simple as a person commenting on the state of the world or as drastic as a terrorist climbing the border or blowing himself up. But whatever it is, it becomes a major distraction if you don't know it's coming, and you may be so surprised that you'll fumble trying to solve it. In the grand scheme of things, the majority of your work is the ordinary processing of immigrants, a tiring job that becomes weirdly engrossing. With both the dismal atmosphere and the ever-present threat of failing Arstotzka in the back of your head, the desire to get everything right becomes critical not just because you want to succeed, but because of the consequences should you fail. That makes the tension feel much more palpable when the tasks you need to complete become increasingly complicated. At first, your job requirements are simple, with the first day's rules being as plain as can be: allow Arstotzkan residents to pass, and deny all foreigners. From Day 2 onward, however, you can inspect documents to determine if they've been forged, prohibiting people from entering if they are. The amount of required paperwork increases as Arstotzka introduces new regulations, and every document must be perfect down to the last letter because missing even one detail that isn't in order will earn you a citation. But it isn't just a matter of hitting your denial stamp the second you notice a discrepancy, because while people can change, documents are static. Typically, you can safely deny a passport that contains mismatching serial numbers or is missing a government seal without question. But it's always useful to highlight discrepancies and interrogate the person about them, because factors like height and weight can change over time and a person with different names can be verified with a fingerprint test. Papers, Please simultaneously pressures you to be methodical to avoid making mistakes and to be quick by processing as many people as possible. You earn money for every immigrant you deal with, and since you only have so much time on each day, you're encouraged to not spend too much time on each person so you can save money for rent, food, and heat. But going too fast inevitably means you're going to miss a critical error on a document, leading to a penalty that reflects poorly on you as an inspector and can mean a loss of money if you're too careless. Occasionally, you'll even be given a dilemma where someone wants you to let them in even when their paperwork isn't in order, either begging you to let it slide or bribing you to let them pass. Often, taking the moral pathway means ignoring Arstotzkan rules, so in order to make the "right" decision, you must purposefully fail to do your job, tightening the margin of error you have before you're penalized. The game is a fine balancing act between these two goals, and there can be devastating consequences if you lean too heavily on either side. It absorbs you into the suspense, dread, and boredom that comes with a job like border inspection, and that's reflected in every area of the game. The art direction creates a world that seems completely sapped of life, reflecting the terrible conditions these countries put their citizens under. With the use of desaturated colors and sprites that indicate disrepair and ruin, the Arstotzkan border feels constrictive, as if it's sucking the energy out of everyone who tries to cross it. This is accentuated by the lack of any music during an in-game day, only featuring a muted city ambience with passing cars and urban soundscapes. Nobody appears happy to be crossing the border, and some will give you a hard time because of circumstances you aren't responsible for. These people see you as the ultimate judge of whether or not they enter the country, even though you're just abiding by the rules — although in the final act, you press the stamp onto their passport, so in that sense, you are what they perceive you as. But because many view their home countries as dystopian, they see Arstotzka as a better place — or maybe they only wish that it can bring a brighter future as they view it from the outside. Arstotzka's Ministry of Admission prides itself on strict bureaucratic measures supposedly to help keep Arstotzka safe, but that also alienate and segregate people even further. Many rules are introduced on a reactionary basis, a response to daily news headlines and ongoing situations, and Arstotzka is not above turning immigrants away because of a spat with their country's leaders. This causes resentment among the populace and a growing hatred of Arstotzka, leading to attacks on the border and thus more regulations to stifle further resistance, creating a vicious cycle of hostility that neither side seems to want to break. Because these are fictional countries, we don't know much about the historical factors that led to this mutual resentment between nations other than what the news and the people tell us, which is skewed by perspective. We know that Arstotzka was recently involved in a war with neighboring country of Kolechia, and the Grestin checkpoint is situated on the border between two halves of a divided city. The parallels to communism and the Soviet Union are obvious, but the game goes deeper than that with an examination of authoritarianism and control, but also of anarchy, terrorism, and public apathy. Choosing to support either the Arstotzkan government or the forces trying to bring it down isn't cut and dry, because Papers, Please presents both sides in a morally grey light. Of course, the inspector receives their information from a perspective that places Arstotzka in a favorable manner, but the occurrences at the checkpoint and the unique characters provide a broader context for the world at large. But if the background notes deliver the soul of Papers, Please, then the characters you meet and repeatedly encounter are the heart. The majority of immigrants you screen are randomly-generated NPCs who leave no impact on the inspector after they leave the booth — an ironic note considering the inspector leaves a huge impact on them by granting or denying them admittance. When you have a swarm of uninteresting, repetitive encounters with average folk, it makes the unique people stand out because they knock you out of the monotony that permeates the rest of the experience. When you first notice that something about the encounter is different, it sets your brain for a loop because you've been programmed to deal with the process of checking documents and nothing else. This is intentional design and Papers, Please is not the first game to show this off, but it uses these breaks to deliver its real impact. It starts off light, with people on the first two days making comments about the border opening or telling the inspector to hurry up — stuff that brushes off easily since you're not trying to analyze a bunch of papers yet. But the ending of Day 2 shocks you with the first of several terrorist attacks, demonstrating the lengths people will go through to penetrate the Arstotzkan walls and maintain the state of unrest between nations. Attacks by suicide bombers increase in frequency as the game progresses, signaling how fragile the peace between these nations is, and every event feels like it could be the straw that breaks its back. Arstotzka is, to put it mildly, a stressful place for the inspector as alongside the attacks come increased regulations that force you to scrutinize documents and immigrants more carefully every day. That makes every unique encounter simultaneously welcome and unwelcome in the best way possible. It's welcome because it breaks up the document analysis and gives your brain something to ponder, and it's unwelcome because you're thrown out of the gameplay so quickly and subtly that it becomes jarring. But this is the beauty of Papers, Please's narrative and perhaps the reason for its existence: to demonstrate the effects that a semi-mindless job like passport inspection has on a person by dragging them to the pits of boredom and then thrashing them out of it. It helps, of course, that the characters and events are genuinely interesting and, in some cases, heartwarming if you handle their scenarios correctly. One of the earliest examples is a husband and wife who visit you on the fifth day, fleeing from the country of Antegria to live a better life in Arstotzka. The husband can pass through just fine, but the wife is missing papers, so you must choose either to follow through with your job and deny her entry or allow her to pass with her husband to keep the couple together. Situations like this highlight just how important your job as immigration officer is, as the simple decision of choosing the red or the green stamp can mean everything to the person waiting in line. Two of my favorite characters in the game are Sergiu and Jorji, whom you encounter multiple times throughout the story and who have their own arc that the inspector takes part in. Sergiu is an Arstotzkan guard assigned to the Grestin checkpoint midway through the game and is one of the few of your co-workers who isn't cold towards you, regarding you as a friend. It's possible for Sergiu to be killed in a terrorist strike, but if he survives long enough, he asks you to let in a Kolechian woman named Elisa whom he met during the war. When Elisa shows up, unfortunately, she doesn't have the proper identification, although in my eyes, seeing Sergiu and Elisa reunite is always worth earning the citation. Then there's Jorji, a bumbling man who initially seems to be a clueless idiot, showing up on the third day with no passport and claiming that Arstotzka is so good that it doesn't need to see any passports. Jorji tries to enter again multiple times, each time not having the right documentation until he eventually has everything in order, and even as you continuously deny him entry, he never loses his optimistic mood. While the inspector initially disregards him and even becomes annoyed at his persistence, he eventually warms up to Jorji's antics, and even feels sorry for him if he detains Jorji when he starts smuggling in drugs. And then as the situation in Arstotzka worsens, Jorji offers a way out if the inspector confiscates enough Obristan passports to let the inspector escape with his family, even offering up his own passport to help in this effort. This is the only time a citation is forced on the player since Jorji's passport is technically confiscated illegally, but Jorji's transformation from a silly character to one of the inspector's best friends in increasingly tough times just tugs on the heartstrings. And those tough times do have long-lasting consequences for the inspector depending on the actions you take throughout the game. There are 20 different endings in Papers, Please, most of which are failures that occur when the player goes against the Arstotzkan government or performs very poorly and runs out of money. These endings typically feature the inspector being arrested by Arstotzka either to be imprisoned for life or to be put on death row, with his family in varying degrees of safety in the aftermath. However, the major endings revolve around the inspector making it to the end while dealing with a major political revolution courtesy of EZIC. EZIC, or The Order of the EZIC Star, is an organization bent on replacing the Arstotzkan government because of its corruption, and their agents attempt to persuade the inspector into working for their cause by giving them tasks throughout the game. Whether or not you go through with these tasks is up to you, and they will typically result in a citation and are potentially dangerous if you handle the task incorrectly, such as when you need to apply a poison to the passport of the right person before handing it back to them. At the end of the final day, EZIC will attack the checkpoint to tear down the wall, and will either attack the inspector or let him be so long as he doesn't interfere depending on how many tasks you've completed during the game. While there are variations in how this finale plays out, there are three main endings that you can achieve here: escaping to Obristan, which can be done on any of the last three days provided you have enough passports and money to secure passage for you and your relatives, with the fates of any family left behind unknown; stopping EZIC's insurrection if you've never aided them and stop them from dismantling the border, where Arstotzka keeps you at your job as Arstotzka and Kolechia reach a peace agreement with each other; or letting EZIC take over if you've done enough tasks for them and they destroy the wall, bringing about a new era to Arstotzka as EZIC offers the inspector to become one of their agents. The thing is, none of these endings are inherently satisfying as they leave off on a transitional note without showing us what happens next, and in all three endings, it isn't assured that the depravity of Arstotzkan life will end. Escaping to Obristan shows the player's fear of what might happen if they stay, and loyally serving Arstotzka indicates an acceptance of their rule regardless of how much it destroys. And while the EZIC ending seems the most optimistic as it signifies a change, we've seen throughout the game that the organization sometimes takes similar measures as the former government, and it's possible that they would be just as much a tyrant as the old system. But Papers, Please is not about the conclusion of these events; it is about the circumstances that bring ordinary people to want to escape and how one person can determine everything by the simple actions they take. On the surface, all you do is bring a stamp down on a piece of paper, but that stamp acts as the word of God to these immigrants, a statement of acceptance or rejection coming from your mouth. You can claim it to be the fault of a government that has you in their crosshairs, but ultimately, you are the one making the decision. The lives of these people are in your hands, and every action taken, insignificant or otherwise, is a choice; a choice to follow your orders or take things into your own hands for belief — or for curiosity. That is the true worth of Papers, Please: how it stresses the power someone in this position has over those who otherwise do not matter in their lives. It is not an easy game to swallow, and yes, it may not appeal to everyone, but beneath its seemingly drab exterior lies a game with plenty of emotional tension that builds as it progresses. It is a deceivingly weighty game, luring you in with the promise of a simple gameplay loop and then hitting you with an uncompromising vision of a country teetering on the edge and a populace in distress. Papers, Please doesn't leave you with the promise of a better future, but if you play your cards right, you might leave with the hope of one — an appropriate message for a game that is otherwise dismal and grey.
