Wednesday 26 September, 2018

Seems like I left off yesterday right before things picked up. Played for a lot longer today, about 2-3 hours. Honestly would rather be playing right now than typing this up. I think the biggest part to talk about would be the amusement park section. Think section made me spectacularly happy, I loved seeing all the little adorable robots with balloons having a good time. Some of this game choices seem like a better version of Spec Ops : The line to me. Standard game-play would tell you when a giant enemy that you are told is dangerous comes out you have to kill it. Nines even tells you that you should attack and kill this giant boss. In this play through I think I'm going to be consistent and only even attack after an enemy attacks. So I walked up to the tank and no hostile actions where taken. I just took the staircase and left them on their little party float.While I do love the combat and boss battles so far, the boss battle after this made me wish there was a peaceful pacifist solution to every battle. I would love to do a run of this game seeing just how few machines I could harm. First time through this battle I hesitated at the hacked android bodies and was hoping there was some way to save them. In some ways it seems out of character for 2B but as long as the mission doesn't require it I will not kill an enemy.

Good work Dell! You have some interesting commentary on the different ways you can play, pacifist or “genocidal” like your description of your roommates play style. Additionally, the discussion on the varying play styles and their relation to the largely non-hostile robot NPC’s as well as your wishes for their to be a completely pacifist play option shines light on the various way video game violence could potentially be approached both by developers and players. Your comparison to Spec Ops: The Line also addresses some of this defamiliarizing video game violence theme. The themes of non-hostile NPC’s in context with player actions and game progression restrictions, the game forcing you to destroy machines to progress, could be a good starting point for your OPA.

On another note, in the future make sure to post your gamelogs the day you write them, otherwise I have no way of knowing if you played the sessions on seperate days.