Choice, this week’s theme, played out in different ways for me across different games. When playing Loved, I found myself deliberately trying to go against the narrator’s directions, heavily doubting they were giving me advice that would be beneficial to my character’s well-being. When the narrator instructs you to fall into a pit with spikes, I admittedly did fall into the pit, but not because I wanted to. I was being careless (I like spamming jump in most games) and jumped too soon. I felt so upset, the reward of the compliment given for falling had the opposite affect on me than it would have in other games. In this game, the narrator affected the way I played the game even though I did not listen to them, because I did not listen to them. I think another reason why I felt so free to rebel was the instant respawn if I died. It conveyed the feeling that even if I mess up in some great way by not listening, I won’t be that affected.
During The Stanley Parable, I found myself initially not listening to the narrator for a different reason. I was not purposefully trying to sabotage an attempt to tell a story in the way the narrator seems to interpret Stanley’s disobedience. I was mostly making my choices based off of what I felt like doing. The narrator’s anger was a side effect of my gameplay not its influence. The three-dimensional open world gave me a sense of more agency to explore. Midway through the game and the demo, I found myself choosing to do certain things because I wanted to see how the narrator would react. I repeated certain actions to find the limit of different things the narrator would say. My choices in this game were generally more sporadic and less thought out. I figured I couldn’t make a mistake in this game because a ‘mistake’ was just another ending waiting to be revealed. I would say the ‘wrong’ choice in this game would be forgetting which paths I previously chose and choosing them again thus reaching an ending I had already seen.
Papers, Please was the game in which I actively tried to follow the rules to the best of my abilities. It is also the game where I felt most detached from the character I was playing. Throughout the games I did question and think about what I was doing, why I should follow the rules outlined, what benefit was there to following the rules. Getting written up for incorrectly assessing someone affected me more than the punishments in the previous games did. Having low productivity levels was another challenge that had very ‘real’ consequences in terms of my family’s well-being. I at some point, let the agents in early in the game but I hadn’t even realized I did until I got paid. Unfortunately, it was too late for most of my family though.
In my view, Papers, Please depicted a very real cruel fact of life; sometimes following the textbook rules is not the ‘best’ option. Only my wife survived. The extra money from bribes would have probably saved at least one family member but that would mean compromising the integrity of my character. I chose country over family (or tried at least) because that’s what I thought my character should do. I had a similar mentality when playing BioShock. When it came time to harvest or save a little sister, I initially was going to harvest her. I am not a kid person and they looked kind of creepy so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to harvest them. However, I stopped and thought, “what would he (Jack) do? He seems like the kind of person that would save a little girl since he decided to help find the family of some guy he just met over the radio.” And so, I chose to save the little sisters. Afterwards, I looked at forums to see if there was a choice I should have made and saw that for my shorter gameplay experience, harvesting would have been better so I could get a better advantage over my opponents but it was satisfying to know I was on the right path for the ‘good’ ending.
Reflecting on all of the games, I think it’s interesting how certain things affected my rationality. In my experience with the games, perspective played an interesting role in how I interacted with the game. First-person perspective generally allows the player to connect more with the character but it can have limitations. Likewise, a narrator can function in different ways to affect gameplay. Did anyone else notice a difference in the way they made choices across different games? Was your rationality the same across the games despite the differences in the games’ mechanics? Was there any correlation between your connection to the character you were playing and the way you decided what to choose?
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