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Thursday 27 September, 2018
In my final play session of Little Nightmares, in which I completed the game. Several interesting things came up. For one, I confronted the character with the long arms that I described in my last entry for the last time. In the final encounter, it was my objective as the player to remove a cage from a door that was closing in order cut off his arms, all while avoiding being caught. This brings up an interesting question of whether or not cutting his arms off was ethical. Sure, as the player, most people will think, “of course it was ok to do so, that’s the bad guy that kills you if you’re caught.” While I would have to agree, the game never explicitly shows what happens the the other children present in the game, or the events that occur when the player is caught. What is known is that these children are put into cages, and that, alongside many other pieces of evidence, the player can infer that what’s happening is bad, but there is a layer of uncertainty.
Later in the game, throughout ‘The Kitchen’ portion, I ran into a few chef characters. In one particular instance where I was caught, the character brought me to a chopping table. The game cut to black just before he was about to attack my character with a butcher’s knife which, counter to my points above, was proof that getting caught is bad and results in death.
After progressing to the next section, I came across a rather interesting set piece in the game. One of several unnaturally large people boarding an incredibly large ship. A short while later I found that these people were doing nothing but eating uncontrollably, as if this is their sole purpose on this ship. Which caused me to think several questions; why are these people boarding the ship? Why are the children in the ship being treated this poorly? Who is in charge?
During this portion of the game, I was also with a friend who was watching me play through the game. It only happened one time, but at one point she suggested something to do in a room, before I even had the time to process and try everything I could think of. Her idea was also one that likely would have taken much longer try, yet it was the correct solution to the puzzle. This begs the question of backseating and developer intentions. On the developer end, if I had to guess, they are likely okay with, and might even encourage players thinking to puzzles together. What they probably wouldn’t want, and may be considered unethical as a result, is for players to simply look up the solutions to puzzles online without even trying, as that defeats some of the purpose of the puzzle. On my end of things, I generally wouldn’t want someone to backseat while I play, especially in a puzzle based game, as I feel as though that defeats the purpose of the puzzle being a puzzle. It only happened once so I didn’t mind, but it brings up the question of the ethics behind backseating, and when it would and wouldn’t be okay.
As I progressed further into the game, a segment occurred where my character became hungry, I believe this was the fourth time this happened in the game. One of the child like creatures came up to me holding a sausage. By this point I had grown a sort of affinity for them, as they didn’t seem to want to hurt me and they were just as scared of the big creatures as I was. So naturally I was quite upset when my player character chose to eat it instead of the sausage. From a developer perspective, is it ethical to build up this kind of relationship with a race, so set them up almost as equals to player, only to betray the possible relationship by the end? In a way it seems similar to a supporting character in any media betraying the main character, but in this case it feels as if it’s the player character doing the betraying. It’s an interesting turn that’s for sure.
The last point I’d like to bring up revolves around the ending. After killing the final, and only, boss(in the traditional sense) the player character gets some kind of dark power and uses it to kill several of the passengers of the ship. I should also note that this boss is likely in charge of the whole ship using these powers, and they tried to kill the player, killing in self defense is a whole other topic here. Regardless, yes these passengers are incredibly disturbing and carnivorous, but is it right for the character kill them all? It’s essentially revenge killing. It’s also hard to say how much control the character has over the power, so the ending as a whole is hard to judge. What if they could use that power to help these people? It’s hard to say.
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