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Sep 27th, 2018 at 14:35:38 - This is the Police (PC) |
September 26th Entry
I lost "This is the Police" by Day 11. I could tell that the game was pushing the player to accept the mafia's grip and reluctantly embrace a certain level of corruption. But I was curious to see what would happen if I chose only to uphold the law and refuse to participate in perpetuating the corrupt system. I turned down each and every offer or request from Christopher G. Sand, the mob boss at the head of it all, and on Day 11 I was gunned down in my own kitchen by a drive-by shooter. So I restarted. I overlooked certain low-level crimes from Sand's men, but I made a personal decision to punish the more serious transgressions. Doing this, I discovered that Sand could be placated without fully indulging his every wish. However, now I began to understand a new complicated issue in my gameplay, this time a moral one. The game's mechanics offer no distinction between crimes aside from the potential challenge they may pose to the responding officers. Petty theft, vandalism, suicide, arson, terrorism, homicide, or even mass murder are all treated with the same unemotional calculation of success or failure. So when weighing whether or not to respond to Sand's criminal activities, I realized that I was deciding on the basis of my own personal moral values, though admittedly through a more utilitarian lens than I might normally use. At what point do I believe that the crime outweighs the potential good I can do later on if I keep Jack Boyd within Sand's good graces? Robbing a casino with a hand grenade? Alright. A sentenced criminal shooting up a court room and taking a hostage? Not okay. But a shooting in broad daylight leaving the victim in critical condition in the middle of the street? Fine.
Now I've reached Day 18. A gang war has started and I had to choose who to back: Sand, the ruthlessly efficient kingpin with powerful connections everywhere and the mayor in his pocket, or Varga, the old-fashioned upstart with a propensity for taking down untouchables and getting what he wants. I chose Varga, mainly because I hate the mayor and hope that he suffers along with the Sand gang in the upcoming bloodbath.
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Sep 25th, 2018 at 23:47:01 - This is the Police (PC) |
I am already obsessed with "This is the Police" for its engaging, challenging gameplay and significant moral dilemmas. You play as Jack Boyd, the chief of the Freeburg city police department. Entering into the game, the police department is just recovering from a massive corruption scandal in which officers operated in the pocket of the local mafia, and the game makes it explicitly clear that these issues are ongoing. The local mayor is open about his complicity while the player is directly presented with decisions between corruption and righteousness. Gameplay consists of managing a squad of cops and delegating them to handle crimes and occasional special tasks. To that end the player must manage the experience and energy levels of each cop, discover hidden vices that may impact job performance, and hire/fire police officers as needed. This all takes place on a delightful little isometric diorama of the city on Jack's desk with sunlight (and weather patterns) that comes through the window to light up the setting. The game also intersperses this with cutscenes and dialogue decisions that reveal more of the game world and the overarching plot. Already, I've been confronted with a decision between saving the life of a corrupt cop by taking on his responsibilities as the mafia informant or letting him die at their hands. I believe this game will continue to focus on similar moral decisions, choosing between upholding the law and keeping people safe.
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Aug 30th, 2018 at 23:54:36 - Nier Automata (PS4) |
August 30
2B and 9S are sent into the desert to root out and destroy a population of machines. The quest seems simple enough: enter a zone, kill everything as it jumps out and attacks, and repeat. Only when you reach the last little zone, one lone machine turns around and flees. Up until this point, the player has learned that all the machine enemies are fairly generic and single-minded. They will idly wander about until the player wanders too close. Then they charge and attack until either you or they are dead. Occasionally some machines appear to malfunction and only attack if they are attacked first. But they never flee, until now.
That moment, when the lone machine turns and runs, is so striking because it goes against the mechanics that the player has come to expect from this game as well as from stylistically similar games. The gameplay typically revolves around fighting a horde of enemies and demands the player learn to combo, dodge, and parry effectively to survive. Part of what makes the game so exciting is assessing the oncoming enemies and weighing the potential to land an attack without opening yourself up to attacks from other angles. So when the machine simply turns and runs, it feels like a violation of the basic mechanics of play.
Other small details begin to suggest a shift in the game's direction. The machines are found wearing clothes. Some begin to speak simple phrases. They seem to demonstrate a sort of rudimentary intelligence now, whereas before they were only the most generic enemy forces. It all culminates in a final arena buried deep in the ruins of ancient buildings. There, a couple dozen machines sit about performing actions that are distinctly human (though not effectual): rocking a crib, imitating sex, etc. At this point, 9S argues that they still are only machines and are only imitating humanity, but I couldn't bring myself to attack them.
How does one define life? A machine can perform any action it has been programmed to carry out without being "alive". Perhaps their programming (or else some small glitch in their software) led them to pick up the odd human trait and replicate it. But still I doubt most players would consider that to be living. Even if they had picked up and replicated every little aspect of being a living human, could we ever truly call that life? The question shows up again and again in scifi works like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Blade Runner, and Ex Machina, but this game presented it in a slightly different context. Those machines, along with about a hundred more that began crawling from the surrounding ruins, linked together to apparently transfer all their combined learnings into one being which then dropped down with birth-like imagery.
This new creature (which I believe will come to be named Adam in the game) possessed the same white hair and human physique as 2B and 9S. I had unconsciously already decided that the two YoRHa androids were alive, by my standards. But the game forced me to directly challenge this conception by literally breaking down the elements that went into the creation of Adam and forcing me to question whether or not that was enough to be "alive". And I can't quite say for certain what I believe.
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Aug 30th, 2018 at 04:06:48 - Nier Automata (PS4) |
August 29
I knew I'd been too critical in my first log on Nier Automata, but I have immediately realized that I misunderstood everything about the game. From that moment 2B first flies over the ruined Earth, I have been finding detail after detail to love about this game. The game is clever about introducing its menus to the player through the main android's conversation with 9S, and I'm already itching to see what will happen now that I've flipped her self-destruct setting off. I think that it is genius to include UI upgrades as in-game purchases. I still maintain that the style of the characters and the game world are definitely flashy for my taste, and yet I am beginning to feel just how well they all fit nicely with the game's plot and themes.
From the standpoint of ethics, the game has already given me plenty to think about. Random NPC androids bring up very human-sounding concerns and predicaments while simultaneously discussing their own artificiality. One "man" in particular brought up an interesting quandary as he considers replacing his outdated left leg, the only part of his body remaining from his original model. And then to top it all off, the game presents the subtle topic of a self-destruct switch hidden in the menu, forcing the player to consider that choice blindly and bringing to mind questions of suicide, death for the greater good, cloning, and life purpose.
The game is already up to that 5/5 stars, and I'm excited to explore the supposed 26 endings that I overheard a classmate mention.
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