Seeing Red Dead mentioned in the GOTD thread, it has got me thinking about my primary beef with that game, and with Rockstar Games in general:
(This post contains some spoilers to Red Dead Redemption, GTA 4 and L.A. Noire. You've been warned.)
Many people say that what they love about Red Dead Redemption is it's ability to let you live out your cowboy fantasies: You've got a huge playground to run around in and there are countless hours of fun to be had playing in the Wild West sandbox that Rockstar has put together for you. Similarly with GTA4: You've got a fantastic re-creation of NYC (and it is pretty amazing: The parts of NYC that I know personally fit together pretty much exactly as I know them in real life!) with a bunch of things to do.
However, the big issue that have have with these games is that while they give you a huge amount of player choice in between missions, allowing you to fly off the handle and murder and rampage or to abide by the rules and help those in need, ultimately the games take any real player choice away from you.
In both games you find yourself in situations where you're working for people you don't want to work for or have you in situations where there are clearly other solutions that are not being explored. When in player hands your avatar can be a one man army, killing hundreds of people without blinking an eye, but all of that disappears when it's time for a cut scene.
I guess my beef really boils down to the fact that your "freedom" is something that the designers don't really feed back into the game: No matter how many evil things your John Marston does, he will still be a stoic, heroic figure in the cut scenes, incapable of say, attempting to murder the people clearly setting him up over and over and over again. (You kill them in the third act, dummy!)
At least games like L.A. Noire force you into a particular role: Cole Phelps is a police officer, and a pretty damned good one, and you only control him when he's on the job: In the context of that, it makes sense that you don't have a choice to say "Screw this police department!". And then, when it's revealed he's been having an affair, it doesn't feel like choices were taken away from the player: The player never chose what Cole did in his off hours to begin with. All you do is control a man's working hours, and he works as a police man, with a necessary amount of control out of his hands: He doesn't choose his cases, he just tries to solve them.
This makes less sense with Niko however: At a certain point, you've got a million dollars, a loving cousin and things are going along great with your girlfriends: It would be narratively interesting to allow the player the choice to give up the grudge: Even more so if doing so had consequences- But no, Niko persists and the story plays out more or less the same any way you slice it.
Ultimately, at the end of Red Dead Redemption, you take on the role of James Marston and take revenge for the death of your father, to continue a cycle of violence that has consumed your family. The goal is to feel the inevitability of the situation and see how John's choices led not only to his own destruction but to the destined path that his son will take in his shadow. It's a powerful moment, but one whose poignancy was always blunted, to me, by the fact that I never made any of the choices that brought me there.
(This post contains some spoilers to Red Dead Redemption, GTA 4 and L.A. Noire. You've been warned.)
Many people say that what they love about Red Dead Redemption is it's ability to let you live out your cowboy fantasies: You've got a huge playground to run around in and there are countless hours of fun to be had playing in the Wild West sandbox that Rockstar has put together for you. Similarly with GTA4: You've got a fantastic re-creation of NYC (and it is pretty amazing: The parts of NYC that I know personally fit together pretty much exactly as I know them in real life!) with a bunch of things to do.
However, the big issue that have have with these games is that while they give you a huge amount of player choice in between missions, allowing you to fly off the handle and murder and rampage or to abide by the rules and help those in need, ultimately the games take any real player choice away from you.
In both games you find yourself in situations where you're working for people you don't want to work for or have you in situations where there are clearly other solutions that are not being explored. When in player hands your avatar can be a one man army, killing hundreds of people without blinking an eye, but all of that disappears when it's time for a cut scene.
I guess my beef really boils down to the fact that your "freedom" is something that the designers don't really feed back into the game: No matter how many evil things your John Marston does, he will still be a stoic, heroic figure in the cut scenes, incapable of say, attempting to murder the people clearly setting him up over and over and over again. (You kill them in the third act, dummy!)
At least games like L.A. Noire force you into a particular role: Cole Phelps is a police officer, and a pretty damned good one, and you only control him when he's on the job: In the context of that, it makes sense that you don't have a choice to say "Screw this police department!". And then, when it's revealed he's been having an affair, it doesn't feel like choices were taken away from the player: The player never chose what Cole did in his off hours to begin with. All you do is control a man's working hours, and he works as a police man, with a necessary amount of control out of his hands: He doesn't choose his cases, he just tries to solve them.
This makes less sense with Niko however: At a certain point, you've got a million dollars, a loving cousin and things are going along great with your girlfriends: It would be narratively interesting to allow the player the choice to give up the grudge: Even more so if doing so had consequences- But no, Niko persists and the story plays out more or less the same any way you slice it.
Ultimately, at the end of Red Dead Redemption, you take on the role of James Marston and take revenge for the death of your father, to continue a cycle of violence that has consumed your family. The goal is to feel the inevitability of the situation and see how John's choices led not only to his own destruction but to the destined path that his son will take in his shadow. It's a powerful moment, but one whose poignancy was always blunted, to me, by the fact that I never made any of the choices that brought me there.