Monday 27 August, 2018

I played 'A Way Out (2018)' with my older sister for roughly 45 minutes today. Would have played for longer but wasn't able to play it until late at night. I feel like classes have just begun and we haven't covered enough topics in class for me to connect this to our topics in class perfectly just yet. I can understand what the game is going for and will have to wait and see where it goes. It seems very similar to the 1994 film 'The Shawshank Redemption' as well as the book that it's based off of.

Since i'm too early in the game to tell, i'm not 100% sure what the themes or moral questions of the game are but I imagine they'll be similar to 'The Shawshank Redemption.' It dealt with questions about the American judicial system and whether those on the inside were really any worst or criminal than the guards and warden that watched over the prison. One big difference at this point however, is that the prisoners of Shawshank are nearly all innocent with the exception of Red while our two protagonists in 'A Way Out' were convicted of some actual crimes. I imagine that as the story unfolds, we will learn the motivations of both characters and may be lead to believe that they were justified in the actions that landed them in the prison.

For right now, not much has been necessarily revealed for either character's histories. The backstories we do get come from the little biography that appears when selecting the character you control. Vincent and Leo both have a brief conversation early on that they both have some sort of history with a mysterious character named Harvey and that the actions of Harvey led to both of their current situations. I left off around the part where you and the other player must work together to steal a chisel off the desk of a worker in the hospital. We will see where the game goes from here but I hope this summation is sufficient.

I'm not actually sure how long these entries need to be nor how in depth I should get about my game session and interpretation. I would appreciate some feedback so I can improve these later on. That is all for now.

Good job Ivan! You asked for feedback about log entry length and depth, so I'll give you my two cents: The logs you wrote are just fine and you bring up a couple interesting points, but you'll have an easier time writing your OPAs if you dig for a little more depth. Right now you make a lot of good connections to other things, but if you really dig into those connections I think you'll find some really interesting material. For instance, you compare the game to Shawshank Redemption and mention that "One big difference at this point however is that... our two protagonists in A Way Out were convicted of some actual crimes." How much would knowing whether or not your characters were guilty or innocent, and of what crime, change your perception of the situation and story? Does not knowing for certain what you're in prison for affect the morality of the fact that your goal is to illegally break out? From a game development perspective is it fair to the player to put them in prisoner's shoes without telling them the crime they've been imprisoned for?