One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.
Gamers love choice. They love games that let them make momentous decisions: killing a character or sparing them, siding with the rebels or the powers that be, blowing up the city of Megaton or disarming the nuclear bomb at its centre. The bigger the choice, the better, and it’s best if the choices change the plot of a game in fundamental ways. Gamers sneer when a choice seems purely cosmetic: being nice or nasty to a character, only to get a message that so-and-so will remember how you treated them? It’s not like that character won’t be eaten by zombies ten minutes later, so what does it matter?
Most gamers look at choice in binary terms, and choices only matter when they affect the plot of a game. As if the choices we make on a daily basis, the ones that aren’t life-or-death, weren’t the ones that defined us – perhaps not individually, but certainly in sum. It’s our many small decisions that shape us for when a big decision comes around.
