I shored up a lot of my nonviolent leanings in the original Splinter Cell series, as well as Deus Ex and its sequels and others of the stealth action genre.
You can exploit a few glitches in the first Splinter Cell and play the entire game by killing exactly one person; Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a pacifist achievement, etc.
I recently tried a D&D campaign after a long time away from tabletop RPGs and found it fairly difficult to drop into the "kill orcs, get gold" mentality. Playing an elven ranger, and knowing full well that kobolds are lawful evil, ganking one on the road still felt ... weird.
It would be easier with an older edition of D&D, where you didn't gain XP but rather gold. Which changes the entire dynamic really, now stealth and nonviolence are viable options.
I prefer the milestone level system for the same reason, you're leveled up after important character moments or plot advancement so you're not incentived to kill everything
The article's first example is of a person using a metaphor common to the ex-Mormon community about breaking "the shelf". "The shelf" is where the facts that bring one to question church doctrine go to be explained (or not) later.
Undertale had an effect like this for me. [Warning: spoilers] Near the beginning of the game you are forced to fight a character who has been nothing but kind to you. The easiest thing to do was kill this character to progress, but immediately after I felt regret and a strong desire not to have done that. Fortunately I made the decision not to save and so was able to revert my decision by taking the more difficult – at the time, far less certain – path of refusing to fight the character. (Though I still felt bad; and the game doesn't let you forget entirely either.)
Another belief-altering moment from the same game came after reflecting on the gameplay as a whole – I had developed an affinity for the main characters in a way I hadn't in any other RPG. I realized that this was due to the characters initially not liking me, and me having chosen to do things which didn't benefit me at all in order to help the characters achieve their goals, which resulted in their friendship. The option was always there to simply kill them and move on. But the act of investing energy doing things solely for the benefit of these characters built a relationship – and I realized that this is ultimately the basis of all human relationships.
Path of Radiance is pretty standard Japanese role-playing game fare. The world in which it takes place is on the brink of war, with the larger nation of Daein occupying the smaller nation of Crimea.
Considering it came out in 2005, that paragraph is pretty interesting in and of itself.
It didn't make me question my beliefs because at the time I didn't really have any. But the opening of Bioshock and Andrew Ryan's monologue got me thinking about that stuff for the 1st time.
"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
It really got me thinking about who makes demands on whom about what in society.
It's been a while, but if I recall, wasn't Bioshock's plot a rather on the nose critique of these ideas? Particularly objectivism?
Since the city was eventually destroyed by research/monsters created by these scientists "not bound by petty morality" and their exploitation by the wealthy class?
FTL: Faster than Light changed me. Its mantra of 'losing is part of the fun' really changed my approach to games, as well as towards picking up real-world skills.
Interesting. I never played more than a few minutes of this game, because the learning curve was more than I was willing to put in at the time, and I died on the first encounter.
Keep in mind that your success in FTL tends to be highly variable too, I still occasionally manage to die on the first encounter, even though I also often make it to the last sector.
Nier: Automata has made me think about the limits of games and how much untapped potential there still is when it comes to interplay of game mechanics and narrative.
The game also explores various philosophical topics without shoving (political) opinions down your throat better than any recently released (western) game I've come across.
All true but it doesn't change the fact that it has fairly inconsistent characters who swap traits all the time.
It also doesn't help that they are fairly typical anime archetypes which sadly are often annoying.
Combine that with the occasional shock value quest that explains nothing and... I quite like the game in the philosophy department but it's not that great in several other aspects.
It's mostly 9S and 2B playing swapping the being curious and questioning authority role. Most of the time 9S does that but here and there 2B does it as well and then 9S jumps in to give the benefit of the doubt and call for a reasonable approach -- all the while he's fairly unreasonable himself pretty often.
(SPOILERS) I also got quite irritated by 2B never succeeding in muttering even one word of affection. That android had to be on the verge of her permanent death so as to leave a romantic plus dramatic (and incoherent) voice note to 9S. It felt like a highschool drama. :( (Where saying even one word to your crush seems like the end of the world, I mean.)
Another very irritating moment for me was 9S waking up in the presence of the only two androids able to repair other androids, and instead of saying thank you he proceeds to interrupt their explanations with "where is 2B". Zero appreciation.
Maybe it's me showing what kind of people I dislike, don't know. But the general anime archetypes that are shown in this game don't appeal to me.
A2 isn't much better. "Stop talking", "don't tell me what to do", "you are useless", "stay out of my way".
Don't know, man. I like the message of the game a lot. The delivery could have been much better though, IMO.
What philosophical topics were explored? Honest question. I got all the endings but, like the other commenter in this chain, I don’t remember much of anything except some anime archetypes. I never understood what it was that made many people so emotional over the game. Perhaps I am stupid.
The Witness was one for me. The whole game made me look at the real world in a different light.
I played it with headphones on, and the volume loud enough to hear the crunching of gravel under my feet. The first time I found one of the "second kind" of puzzle, I nearly jumped out of my skin, and searching for them made me see things I hadn't seen before in ordinary places I visited.
I never finished Metroid as a kid, but I expect that the reveal that underneath the spacesuit Samus Aran is a woman made a lot of people question the idea that only men can be action heroes.
A more recent example for me was when I played and finished Dark Souls 3 and then Bloodborne.
I had been reading the discussions on a fixed vs growth mindset, and grit, but it hadn't really clicked for me. I realized that my default state was a fixed mindset. I remember my mother praising me for always being better and smarter than other kids, not based on any real results or me having spent a lot of effort doing something, so I just assumed it was something built into me. In school, I had an easy time with some subjects, but a harder time with others. This didn't encourage me to work more on the hard ones, but avoid them. I valued people that displayed seemingly effortless genius rather than people who worked hard, because I thought the hard workers were stupid or less skilled and just had to make up for their lack of talent.
I finally had a tough time with math as a master of science student at the university, because I didn't have any study habits and expected math to be effortless like before. When I did pass the exams after multiple attempts, having finally sat down to study, I wasn't proud, I was just relieved and hated the whole experience. I was annoyed that math seemed to be based on making mistakes: You reach a problem you don't immediately know how to solve, you attempt it and fail, and study the rest of the material until you can figure it out. But the whole point is to be challenged! If you could breeze through all math problems without failing, the level of math is too easy for you. But I hated failing or feeling stupid.
Back to Dark Souls 3! The game is very hard, but it's also very fair. When you die it's because you made a mistake, but the game will throw the same thing at you again and now you can avoid it. Enemies are placed behind corners that surprise you the first time, but the second time you know they're there. Bosses telegraph their attacks. The first time you fight them, you're supposed to die and have to fight them again and again, learning their moveset. If you could beat all bosses in a Dark Souls game at the first attempt, same as with math, the game would be too easy. It's supposed to challenge you and, same as math, force you to be precise and focused, forcing you to accept that you will have to adapt your playstyle to the bosses to beat them.
In Dark Souls there's a a feedback loop where you die, but get infinite lives and can retry the same section of a map or a boss over and over. You know that other players can beat the boss, so why shouldn't you? The game definitely taught me grit and perseverance, where I before would quit a difficult game, this time I attempted again and again until I had figured out the map or boss.
A lot of people view playing the souls games as masochism, and I can see that in the same way that I considered studying math to be masochistic. Now I've learned to appreciate the process and take joy in learning to incrementally overcome an obstacle. I'm no longer afraid of not knowing enough when I start a task at work, but instead know that by just spending time and incrementally attacking a problem I will be able to figure it out. Dark Souls and Bloodborne helped me move from a fixed to a growth mindset, something I try to instill in my kids today.
32 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] threadYou can exploit a few glitches in the first Splinter Cell and play the entire game by killing exactly one person; Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a pacifist achievement, etc.
I recently tried a D&D campaign after a long time away from tabletop RPGs and found it fairly difficult to drop into the "kill orcs, get gold" mentality. Playing an elven ranger, and knowing full well that kobolds are lawful evil, ganking one on the road still felt ... weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_CBF318nBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxWlJ_muK0I
I've always found it curious how anti-corporate sentiment disappeared from the Deus Ex sequels.
Hopefully, Cyberpunk 2077 will be in the same vein.
Another belief-altering moment from the same game came after reflecting on the gameplay as a whole – I had developed an affinity for the main characters in a way I hadn't in any other RPG. I realized that this was due to the characters initially not liking me, and me having chosen to do things which didn't benefit me at all in order to help the characters achieve their goals, which resulted in their friendship. The option was always there to simply kill them and move on. But the act of investing energy doing things solely for the benefit of these characters built a relationship – and I realized that this is ultimately the basis of all human relationships.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
Considering it came out in 2005, that paragraph is pretty interesting in and of itself.
https://papersplea.se/
"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? "No," says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor." "No," says the man in the Vatican, "it belongs to God." "No," says the man in Moscow, "it belongs to everyone." I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
It really got me thinking about who makes demands on whom about what in society.
Since the city was eventually destroyed by research/monsters created by these scientists "not bound by petty morality" and their exploitation by the wealthy class?
I might have to give it another go.
Watching a few better players helped me getting started.
The game also explores various philosophical topics without shoving (political) opinions down your throat better than any recently released (western) game I've come across.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJxNhJ8fjFk
It also doesn't help that they are fairly typical anime archetypes which sadly are often annoying.
Combine that with the occasional shock value quest that explains nothing and... I quite like the game in the philosophy department but it's not that great in several other aspects.
Mind elaborating on this? I haven't actually noticed any inconsistencies.
(SPOILERS) I also got quite irritated by 2B never succeeding in muttering even one word of affection. That android had to be on the verge of her permanent death so as to leave a romantic plus dramatic (and incoherent) voice note to 9S. It felt like a highschool drama. :( (Where saying even one word to your crush seems like the end of the world, I mean.)
Another very irritating moment for me was 9S waking up in the presence of the only two androids able to repair other androids, and instead of saying thank you he proceeds to interrupt their explanations with "where is 2B". Zero appreciation.
Maybe it's me showing what kind of people I dislike, don't know. But the general anime archetypes that are shown in this game don't appeal to me.
A2 isn't much better. "Stop talking", "don't tell me what to do", "you are useless", "stay out of my way".
Don't know, man. I like the message of the game a lot. The delivery could have been much better though, IMO.
I played it with headphones on, and the volume loud enough to hear the crunching of gravel under my feet. The first time I found one of the "second kind" of puzzle, I nearly jumped out of my skin, and searching for them made me see things I hadn't seen before in ordinary places I visited.
A more recent example for me was when I played and finished Dark Souls 3 and then Bloodborne.
I had been reading the discussions on a fixed vs growth mindset, and grit, but it hadn't really clicked for me. I realized that my default state was a fixed mindset. I remember my mother praising me for always being better and smarter than other kids, not based on any real results or me having spent a lot of effort doing something, so I just assumed it was something built into me. In school, I had an easy time with some subjects, but a harder time with others. This didn't encourage me to work more on the hard ones, but avoid them. I valued people that displayed seemingly effortless genius rather than people who worked hard, because I thought the hard workers were stupid or less skilled and just had to make up for their lack of talent.
I finally had a tough time with math as a master of science student at the university, because I didn't have any study habits and expected math to be effortless like before. When I did pass the exams after multiple attempts, having finally sat down to study, I wasn't proud, I was just relieved and hated the whole experience. I was annoyed that math seemed to be based on making mistakes: You reach a problem you don't immediately know how to solve, you attempt it and fail, and study the rest of the material until you can figure it out. But the whole point is to be challenged! If you could breeze through all math problems without failing, the level of math is too easy for you. But I hated failing or feeling stupid.
Back to Dark Souls 3! The game is very hard, but it's also very fair. When you die it's because you made a mistake, but the game will throw the same thing at you again and now you can avoid it. Enemies are placed behind corners that surprise you the first time, but the second time you know they're there. Bosses telegraph their attacks. The first time you fight them, you're supposed to die and have to fight them again and again, learning their moveset. If you could beat all bosses in a Dark Souls game at the first attempt, same as with math, the game would be too easy. It's supposed to challenge you and, same as math, force you to be precise and focused, forcing you to accept that you will have to adapt your playstyle to the bosses to beat them.
In Dark Souls there's a a feedback loop where you die, but get infinite lives and can retry the same section of a map or a boss over and over. You know that other players can beat the boss, so why shouldn't you? The game definitely taught me grit and perseverance, where I before would quit a difficult game, this time I attempted again and again until I had figured out the map or boss.
A lot of people view playing the souls games as masochism, and I can see that in the same way that I considered studying math to be masochistic. Now I've learned to appreciate the process and take joy in learning to incrementally overcome an obstacle. I'm no longer afraid of not knowing enough when I start a task at work, but instead know that by just spending time and incrementally attacking a problem I will be able to figure it out. Dark Souls and Bloodborne helped me move from a fixed to a growth mindset, something I try to instill in my kids today.