Thursday 8 November, 2018

After diving into the game for the third time, something that I had missed jumped right out at me and almost discredited everything I was thinking about the Police Chief. An easily skipped opening scene that plays every time you open the game fell onto my lap when I had booted it up this time around. Instead of sitting with a controller in hand when the game started, I got up and grabbed something, allowing for the opening scene to play out rather than be skipped over by my anxious button jamming to get the game going. This scene depicts a less morally conscious Police Chief who goes to an underground strip club and seemingly pays off people to be there without anyone knowing. If I had seen this scene before the press conference, that I discussed in an earlier entry, took place, I would have been much more suspicious of the man, rather than siding with him as if I was the character since I was the one controlling him. The setting of the strip club and the interactions Jack, the Police Cheif, had set a different tone for the character. There could be several explanations to why he attends the club and acts the way he does there, so I do not want to judge him right off the bat, but is it ethical for him to be there, fueling the very corruption that has taken his job and degraded the city he seems to care so much about?

Great job! You’ve got a lot of really interesting thoughts! One of the topics you tackled (at least in part) was the idea of making decisions without knowing the full context. You brought up the point that you had to answer questions about the mayor’s character before you as a player had as much knowledge as the character Jack. How does putting player’s in a situation where they must make choices without all the information affect their gameplay experiences? Can that be used as a useful design tool or is it just a frustration to the experience? Do those answers hold true when applied to the character you’re playing? For example, you thought you were playing the one honest person in a bastion of corruption until you saw more of the opening, how much would seeing the opening the first time change how you played the game?