![]() ![]() But there was substance there, giving meaning to the central gimmick. The Walking Dead was a flashpoint for player choice not the first game to propagate player choice, but certainly one of the most prolific and oft-imitated. Whether you agree with these games or not is somewhat irrelevant - the judgment comes hand-in-hand with a core thesis. ![]() They posit that guilt is shared between the game for creating these no-win situations and the player for continuing to engage with them. Spec Ops: The Line turned a generic modern war shooter campaign into a commentary on agency and choice. These “subversive” games all center around the relationship between the player and the mechanic. Hotline Miami infamously asked the player if they liked hurting other people. It’s playing off the “ will remember that” notifications from the Telltale games, almost as if writers Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman are subverting the cliché they introduced in The Walking Dead.Ī game passing judgment for the simple act of playing it is one thing. ![]() Henry is scared by what the notes represent, and the player feels judged. The notes are designed to screw with you, both in a metatextual and literal sense. As Firewatch winds down, Henry finds early drafts of the notes in a makeshift bunker, exposing the whole conspiracy to be nothing more than an elaborate goof perpetrated by one shitty dad. It was a judgment passed down on me by the developers, the likes of which I had seen time and time again.Įxcept it wasn’t. Henry is described as ‘Guilty,’ along with a series of other traits I assumed I had accumulated over the course of my playthrough. There’s somebody listening in on Henry and Delilah, and you find their notes around the halfway point of the game. Towards the midpoint, I hit the scene I had been dreading up to that point the part where the game rounds up your choices to date and gives you a psychological reading.įirewatch initially hangs its hat on a conspiracy, the kind you might find in the political thriller novels Henry finds scattered around. I never felt great about what I made Henry do, but I was certainly engaged. There was a disconnect between the “honorable” option and what I felt was the most accurate. Cowardice like that rarely belies a hidden kindness. No self-professed good person would have ditched their sick partner to begin with - I found it difficult to believe that Henry was just a solid dude aside from that one big thing. These were the Bad Choices, to be sure, but they made for a more interesting character. I’ve certainly done my fair share of hiding from difficult interpersonal situations, but never something quite this egregious. With every decision I made, I became more disconnected from Henry. Throughout the game, I picked the dialogue options that made Henry aware of his cowardice, but unwilling to face his choices head-on. I went with this option because I found it the most narratively compelling Henry came to the forest as an escape from his wife’s disease, it makes sense that a man capable of that would take the next logical step. Of course, this was my particular reading - for the less romantically inclined, you could absolutely portray the two as being good friends. The two had chemistry, the sort you only see when you’re on the outside looking in at two people who spark in every conversation they have. This happened in Firewatch, where I pushed protagonist Henry into having off-screen phone sex with his colleague Delilah. I don’t have a wife and I don’t think Jordan Devore is up for much of anything. If you break up, you will have permanently damaged another human being’s ability to trust and you will find that your newfound first-hand experience makes you just that much more paranoid.Īll that being said, I cheated on my dementia-stricken wife with my boss. If the relationship continues, you or your partner will never look at each other quite the same way ever again. Let me preface this admission of guilt with a disclaimer: cheating on a romantic partner is the worst. ![]()
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