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Monday 6 October, 2008
Through my final play of Grand Theft Auto IV, I played a little bit of the online multiplayer, which doesn't exactly apply to the assignment, and a little more of the main game. Being a sandbox oriented game, I can't help but think I would be making more moral/ethical oriented actions in a game such as Second Life, or possibly even a Baldur's Gate or Fallout game. With Baldur's Gate and Fallout, player's actions directly affect relationships with other characters in an important manner, and a player is provoked then to care about their reputation in the world. In Second Life the player's character is even more so an avatar of themselves, and their actions with other people can definitely be equatable to moral, just, socially responsible, friendly, or any other actions we personally might feel.
Grand Theft Auto doesn't try to go for that idea. It isn't designed to present you with morals in its sandbox style of play. I have heard that later in the game you can actually have relationships with people that a player can make or break, but even so, that's a player's decision of how they want their avatar to act with other characters in the game. The game will go on, nothing really is affected by your actions, and Niko can get in his vehicle and go drive more people over. In Baldur's Gate (in contrast), if you want your character to kill a priest in a big city to get some loot he may have, your character's "world" reputation will go down , everyone in the city will be hostile towards him/her, and the game has dramatically changed due to your actions. The game attempts to make you a good person and do morally good things by having critically game-affecting consequences. THis creates a more of a dynamic experience where the player cares about their actions.
Grand Theft Auto IV, on the other hand, gives the player no real incentive to morally judge their actions. Sure, through my experiences of running down my fellow civilians in the game I've gained the attention to a lot of policemen, who either arrest or kill me, the game starts up again and I haven't really changed the world at all. I could, for instance, steal a taxi cab and pick up a passenger, where a mini game begins where I can drive them to their location. I could do that. Or, without any moral or reputation effecting dilemmas on my character, ram the car into an on coming semi truck on the highway. I get the satisfaction of experiencing an explosion, game-physics launching Niko through the windshield (awesome!) and injuring, if not killing, my passenger. Now the developers could have made the situation of when I hit the semi very unsatisfying, but they didn't for the very reason that Grand Theft Auto is a game where you are not supposed to be making moral choices. The game is too oriented around entertainment to make room for negative actions taken against the player for immoral activity. Grand Theft Auto IV, though I never made it to the first mission, was an entertaining experience, one with an over-exaggerated society and movie-action violence at my fingertips.
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