#narrative dissonance

[fluffycakesistainted]

[maple-clef]

RoL Go

I really like the idea of a RoL game in the style of Pokemon Go, an Augmented Reality app where you can walk around London and meet ghosts and see weird shit and interview members of the demi monde. It would be the best thing. And it doesn’t have to be exclusive to London; you get to explore any town/city/rural area and the stuff you meet is particular to that place...

So yeah, that should happen.

Except... there’d always be the Thing where you have to suspend your disbelief because in Rivers-verse, your mobile would be kaput if you did, in fact, use it around magic.

And that would mean the pretend reality wasn’t abiding by its own canon [meta]physics - and that doesn’t easily slide in this particular fandom :P

[dyslexicoedr]

Narrative Dissonance and Video Games

So I figured I would make this short little post about something that came to mind because of Watch Dogs. When Watch Dogs was first announced, I was very excited by the potential that the setting, gameplay, and narrative presented. It seemed like my kind of thing as I am very interested in game mechanics and stories that revolve around digital technology and empowering characters through it as well as near future settings with a cyberpunk angle. However, as time wore on, my interest began to wane as the game seemed to focus more and more on being a slightly altered GTA. One of the first video's they showed started out great with slipping into a club and interrogating some people, hacking a computer to get some info on a target, stuff like that. Then you head out into the street and use your hacking to set up a roadblock and wreck the bad guys car. But from there it devolved into a standard third person action game of shoot the bad guy in the face with a gun. It hasn't gotten better.

But one of the things that finally turned me all the way off from the game was something they showed the Friday before launch. The scenario started out with the player getting an alert that a crime was about to be committed a few blocks away from them, the kind of spontaneous mission that pops up in these sorts of open world games that encourages the player to make a quick detour for a little reward. In an effort to reach the site of this little quest all the quicker, the person playing the game runs out into the street and carjacks a woman. So, to reach the mugging, we just committed a even worse crime? Now of course, the player could have just run to the other incident, but that really isn't the point. The point is that in a game where your character is supposedly motivated by the victimization of the powerful, maybe, just maybe, don't give them the ability to victimize other people in the exact same way.

I understand that part of these games is that you can choose to be a selfish bastard that only cares about his own revenge and screw anyone who gets in your way, or you can be a punisher like figure who only hurts the bad guys. But to me, it creates a very uncomfortable space where the narrative is being corrupted by the freedom we have given the player. In the end this sort of thing only ends up sending one message - that your motivations are justification for behaving in whatever way you see fit. That no one is more important than you. Why are we as game developers so obsessed with letting people play with the abuse of their power while sacrificing the narrative to it. What in the game would have been harmed if the character in Watch Dogs simply hadn't had the ability to victimize innocent people who had nothing to do with his quest for vengeance?

Along with a number of other issues with the game's racism, sexism, and generally distasteful design, I won't be playing this game that I was once quite excited for and that sucks, because I know Ubisoft can do better.