Ladies and Gentlemen, This week we are Destroying Planets. We are taking a look at gaming and the lack of choice it provides us to do with what we will. The lack of repurcussions and the lack of situations where you the player must take responsibility for your actions.

I understand how these things work, be it Film, Book, Television or what we are addressing today... Games. The story will follow the path that the creator has laid out for us and we the participant must adhere to this. We must follow this pre-determined path through to the end, to the conclusion and no amount of actions you take can prevent this from happening. You may be given the illusion that you are creating your own destiny but at the end of the day that's all it is... Illusion.



Games like Oblivion advertise themselves as open-ended, freeroaming with the ability to carve your own story but ultimately there is a limit to what you can do, and ultimately there are no real downsides to any choice you take in the game. Choices will either immediately affect you for the worse, allowing you to reload your last save or continue with the minor, avoidable and fixable annoyances. Failing that, the choice will affect you for the better. It's almost a win win situation and there is no challenge or sense of reality in this.



Maybe I am sick and I would quite enjoy a game where I can walk around and kill people and have to deal with the consequences. Even games where this is possible like GTA and Fallout, there is nothing bad that can come from taking these actions. Morally you feel bad that you got a kick out of splattering a prostitutes head across the sidewalk with a baseball bat, but the extent of the repurcussion is that a cop will start shooting at you, you will shoot back, kill him, dive in a bush and wait for everyone else to pass by so you can then carry on as normal.

This is of course just a by-product of me having brain damage.

In the end a game like Oblivion is as linear as TimeShift, you are just given a wider path to reach your ultimate destination. Exaggerated I know but my point is that I have a craving to break from the path in games that even the most free-roaming can't provide. I find myself trying to break from what I am doing and either being downright refused or just wander aimlessly with nothing to do. The interaction level is currently running at pre-historic standards.



You will often find yourself in games being confined by "invisible walls," or just lacking with character interaction. You can punch and shoot and cast spells at people for them to have no reaction or to simply repeat the words "ouch," "hey," "stop that," repeatedly until you get bored. And hey let's not forget about "The Villain." The bad guy, the guy that we are forced against without a choice otherwise. Personally I quite liked him, I agree with what he's trying to say so how do I join his side? (Yeah, I've played Arcanum you don't need to mention it.)

Maybe sometimes I would like the option to scrap the tiresome "Travel-Quests" and dungeon crawls to assist in the destruction of the planet or the kidnap of the princess. It's been known to be done, At the end of Arcanum we can suddenly bring about the destruction of the planet. We can join odd factions in oblivion that allow us to assasinate random people or steal things but ultimately you CANNOT complete the game without being the good guy and it never detracts from the storyline or stops you going back to finish up with the good guy quests. Even then there is no consequence.

Let me just get this straight right from the get-go. I don't think killing and stealing and destroying planets is RIGHT or GOOD and I don't enjoy doing these things in real life but I am an escapist. I like to cop-out of real life, to escape from existence once in a while and live for a short time as someone else (and frankly I am getting a bit disappointed.)



I'm going to stop talking about PRO-KILLING games for a second to talk about the repurcussions. Let's take GTA as our primary example here:

I walk into a crowded shopping centre, pull out a huge machine gun and mow down every last person in the store. We are then presented with an immediate repurcussion allowing us to reload our previous save and not have to worry about it if we want. The SWAT team arrive and I proceed to blow their helicopters out of the sky with a rocket launcher while every now and then switching out for the 12-Gauge to drop some rag-tag soldiers to their knees. It's getting a little hairy so I run out into the street, drag an old lady out of her car and high-speed down the freeway to my nearest pay'n'spray where I am suddenly cleared of all wrong-doings and it is as if nothing ever happened. Despite the fact I have massacred possibly hundreds of people it is fixable and I can now continue playing my game.

Where is the game (please name it for me I am asking) where the slightest, almost undetectable choices have repurcussions so much later in the game it is impossible to see them coming and it is impossible to reload your save. Personally I don't think game companies do this because they are scared of frustrating their audience, but they also don't put their player in a situation where he has to deal with the consequences of his actions.



I feel like I've ranted at you enough for one Lounge Session, you can all make your own choices on the matter of course but you've heard what I have to say about it so I'll just conclude up here. I'm not an idiot and I do understand that the possibility of creating and coding something on a scale so large that it would provide you complete free-roaming is an impossibility right now. But as games develop it's exciting to imagine that in the future, as story-telling, technology and interaction improve, this might become a reality.