Photo / Emma Puranen
40 floating in the air, ghostlike, in front of them.”
story and its themes of violence and pacifism.
With this in mind, perhaps games should consider placing an emphasis on consequence rather than choice. So many games try to implement thrilling, cinematic quicktime events that often culminate in some sort of momentous life or death choice. Meanwhile, other games render choice into an ingame mechanic that classifies the player’ s choices as good or bad, leaving little room for interpretation. In
both instances, choice becomes less of an impactful decision and more of a gamified gimmick. Sure, making a choice can be engaging, but how does the game world and its characters react to a choice? Who and what gets affected as a result of that choice? Are the repercussions negative or positive? The result of a choice should feel like a tangible factor in the game’ s narrative, not a simple statistic or a binary expression of good and evil.
Photo / Emma Puranen
“ Their noses were almost pressed to their phones, their fingers scribbling against the screens in the anxious hopes of catching whatever animated Japanese collectable monster happened to be
40 floating in the air, ghostlike, in front of them.”